It’s one of our favorite times of the year! No, not Halloween — not the holiday season, either!

It’s the 2022 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival, and we’re bringing you everything you need to know about the fest’s opening day. From Global Marketplace booths with stellar snacks to exclusive merchandise and live music, we’re sharing it all. But, we’re not the only fans who love the Food & Wine Festival, so let’s check out the crowds on the first day!

EPCOT festivals are some of the most popular events hosted in Disney World, and for good reason! Guests can sample and savor a wide range of different flavors from around the world, and even take in additional entertainment offerings.

We arrived at EPCOT bright and early to make sure we didn’t miss any of the action, and we certainly weren’t the only ones with this plan.

Once we arrived inside, we saw a lot of people up near the front of the park close to the entrance.

As we moved deeper into EPCOT, we saw that there was quite the line forming already for Spaceship Earth.

Back in the World Showcase area, the crowds remained pretty heavy, but not as terrible as they could be.

Lines at popular festival booths aren’t anything new, and this year doesn’t seem to be any different. One of the longest lines we saw today was at the China booth — and this is nothing new, China often has the longest line at a lot of the EPCOT festivals. If you go here, get the bao buns — it’s worth the line; you’ll thank us later.

We also saw a decently long line at Shimmering Sips, which is the booth that has the different flavored mimosas, including the famous POG Juice Mimosa, so what’s not to love?

But once you got out of line and were just walking around World Showcase, the crowds didn’t seem that bad. There was space to move around, and you weren’t standing or walking shoulder-to-shoulder with the person next to you.

Plus, many booths didn’t have very long lines at all! The Ireland booth, for example, had a very short line, and it was easy and quick to just walk right up and place our order.

There were, of course, some areas that were busier than others, for example, we saw a lot of people in the UK pavilion, but even that was pretty manageable. Apparently there are a lot of people who wanted to eat and drink around the world today!

And given how hot it was outside, we expected that the one booth with indoor seating, Appleseed Orchard, which is located in the theater that usually shows Canada Far and Wide, would have a lot of people, but even there, we were surprised to see that there was plenty of space to head inside and take a load off in some AC!

Want to know more about this year’s 2022 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival? You can learn more here! If you want to guarantee a good spot at the Food & Wine Festival Eat to the Beat Concert Series, consider booking a dining package.

Can’t wait to see all the delicious eats from the 2022 festival? Check out all of our full reviews of each booth here! And make sure to keep following DFB for the latest Food and Wine Festival updates!

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What’s your favorite EPCOT festival? Let us know in the comments!

The post PHOTOS: A Look at Opening Day EPCOT Food and Wine Festival CROWDS first appeared on the disney food blog.