The EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival has officially begun once again in Disney World.
For the past several years, EPCOT has generally been celebrating 4 different festivals throughout the year — Flower & Garden in the Spring, the International Food & Wine Festival in the Fall, the International Festival of the Holidays in the winter, and the International Festival of the Arts right at the beginning of the new year. And with news about ticket prices in 2022 and other things, we started wondering — are the EPCOT festivals getting more expensive? We did some digging, and here’s what we found.
For purposes of this article, we’ll be looking at several factors to see if things are getting more expensive. Specifically, we’ll be looking at park tickets during festival days, the prices of festival food, and the prices of festival merchandise and activities. Let’s dive in!
Park Ticket Prices
In terms of park tickets, it’s a bit more difficult to compare against prior ticket prices as that historical date-by-date pricing is not up on the Disney World website. So, for the purposes of park tickets, we’re going to look at a forward-looking comparison. In other words, we’re going to look at what ticket prices look like right now for festivals taking place this year — and what they’ll look like in 2022.
The Flower & Garden Festival started on March 3rd and lasts through early July. Some of the March tickets are actually fully sold out according to the Disney website, so we’ll look at prices in April. Here’s the chart of 1 day, 1 park ticket prices for April.
And here’s the chart for 1-day, 1-park tickets in April of 2022.
Disney has not actually increased the range of its ticket prices, but we have noticed that several days in 2022 are now priced at one of the higher price brackets. We did the math and the average ticket price in 2021 for April is $131.93, while the average ticket price in April of 2022 is $140.40.
So, if you’ll be heading to Flower & Garden during April of 2022, your average ticket price might be slightly more expensive than it would have been in 2021. Of course, this is an estimation based on just one month, but it still shows the potential for an overall increase in price.
We also took a look at Food and Wine dates. For this comparison, we used September, which can sometimes be a slower month with kids back in school, but is a month when the Food and Wine Festival would be going on. Here’s a look at 1-day, 1-park prices for September of 2021.
And here are the prices for the same type of ticket in 2022.
The average price in September in 2021 is about $117.53, while the average price in September 2022 is $121.20. It’s not a dramatically large increase, but it is still an increase.
This doesn’t technically seem to have anything to do with the festivals themselves, however. We noticed that Disney placed more days in 2022 into higher price levels generally — and that’s not exclusive to festival times. But still, you may find that your festival trip will cost you slightly more in 2022 in terms of ticket prices than it did in 2021.
Festival Food Prices
Okay, so your ticket prices might be more expensive in the future, but what about the price you’ll pay for food at the festivals? Let’s take a look at Flower & Garden and some of those items that have returned year after year. The Northern Bloom booth has been serving up the same food items for 4 years!! There’s the scallops, tenderloin tips, and griddled maple pound cake.
In 2018, these items were priced at $6.50, $6.75, and $4.50 respectively. In 2019, only the scallops went up in price slightly to $7.00. The other two items remained at the same price. In 2020, only the griddled cake went up to $4.75. And all of the 2020 prices actually remained the same for these three items in 2021.
So, all in all, prices really have only increased by a matter of cents over the years at this booth.
Even some of our favorites haven’t changed a lot. The Frozen Desert Violet Lemonade was priced at $4.25 in 2018 and 2019, it increased to $4.50 in 2020 and stayed at that same price in 2021.
What about the other festival we’ve already checked out in 2021 — the Festival of the Arts? The Deconstructed Dish has been serving up its Deconstructed BLT (with just a few ingredient changes in 2021) and deconstructed strawberry cheesecake for several years.
The deconstructed BLT was priced at $6.75 in 2018, and $7.00 in 2019, 2020, and 2021. What about the strawberry cheesecake? That was priced at $6.00 in 2018, and $6.25 in 2019, 2020, and 2021.
So, while things have increased in terms of price — the increases here have been minimal. Of course, this is an estimation based on just a few booths at a few festivals, but that’s the trend that we’ve seen from the items we looked at.
Click here to see what was on our Best of the Fest list for the Festival of the Arts!
Merchandise and Activities
What about merchandise? While the designs have changed, the Orange Bird Spirit Jersey released for both the 2020 Flower and Garden Festival…
…and the 2021 Flower and Garden Festival were priced at $69.99.
The Minnie Mouse Flower & Garden Tank Top from 2020…
…and 2021, again with different designs, were also both priced at $39.99.
And even other things like the AP Watering Can Mug from 2020…
…and the Minnie Watering Can Mug from 2021, were both similarly priced at $19.99.
Even the little Orange Bird sipper (which got a new design in 2021) hasn’t increased in price dramatically. It was $14 in 2019, and then increased to $15 in 2020 and 2021.
Again, this is just a sampling of a few random items we chose that we could find comparable versions of during these years, but it seems overall these prices haven’t dramatically increased.
Click here to see ALL of the Flower & Garden merchandise for 2021!
Even activities like Figment’s Brush with the Masters (a scavenger hunt at the Festival of the Arts) haven’t dramatically increased in price. The scavenger hunt was priced at $6.99 in 2019, and then increased to $7.99 in 2020 and 2021.
Keep in mind, this is just a small sampling from a few of the festivals (we really didn’t touch on the Festival of the Holidays but we anticipate the results would be similar). But, from what we’re seeing — over the years, some things have gotten more expensive at the festivals. Those increases in prices though seem to have been pretty minimal. Other times, prices have stayed relatively the same.
Looking to the future, more ticket prices for 2022 seem to be priced in a higher bracket so to speak, but that doesn’t necessarily seem to be specific to festival dates. So, are EPCOT’s festivals getting more expensive? In some ways yes, though the increases appear to be much smaller than what you might have expected. But, only time will tell how prices will change in the future.
Click here to see our BEST of the FEST for the Flower & Garden Festival!
Click HERE To See All The Updated Details For Epcot’s 2021 Flower and Garden Festival!
Ready to Plan for Your 2021 Epcot Flower and Garden Festival Trip?
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Have you felt like EPCOT’s festivals have been getting more expensive? Tell us in the comments.
The post Are EPCOT Festivals Getting MORE Expensive?! first appeared on the disney food blog.