We’re back in EPCOT and we have news!

The 2022 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival is in full swing and a highly anticipated merchandise item just dropped — we have a FULL report about how it works in EPCOT! Come along with us to find out all the recent EPCOT news.

EPCOT Construction Updates

Construction is still in progress in Mitsukoshi in the Japan Pavilion. The pearl experience area continues to be empty and inactive…

…and a black tarp wall covers a large portion of the store, save for one plant placed in front of it. We’ll be watching this construction progress, so stay tuned for more updates!

Over in the Odyssey Pavilion, a stage has been erected. It was blocked off during our visit but Disney has not yet announced the purpose of this stage.

And in the Land Pavilion, one of the escalators continues to be down. Alternatively, you can take the stairs (right next to the escalator) or get in an elevator nearby.

Let’s go shopping!

EPCOT Merchandise Updates

Creations Shop

We spotted this Hunny Winnie the Pooh Mug in Creations Shop for $19.99.

Let’s take a trip over to Pin Traders.

Pin Traders

In Pin Traders, there was a new Mystery Pin Collection featuring Disney cats and dogs (and Stitch) for $24.99.

And ta da! The MagicBand+ arrived (we’ll get into this more in a bit). We found this Be Happy MagicBand+ for $44.99, along with a few other designs. If you want a plain-colored MagicBand+, you can expect to spend $34.99.

You can read more about MagicBand+ designs here, and some of them are also available for sale online!

Click here to check out all the MagicBand+ designs in Disney World and online.

EPCOT Various Updates

Okay, so what is the MagicBand+? These bands are the next generation of MagicBands, with regular MagicBand features plus new features like haptics, lights, and more. They start at $34.99 each so they’re not exactly cheap, and you need to charge your band fairly often to use the features.

The MagicBand+ gives wearers a number of interactive perks in Disney World, such as the ability to play a game in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, watch synced lights with nighttime fireworks, and even interact with the gold 50th anniversary statues. When you wave your MagicBand+ at a 50th anniversary statue, you get to hear a phrase or song, and each statue is different.

We visited EPCOT to see how the MagicBand+ would interact with the Harmonious nighttime spectacular, and we got to see how the features work with fireworks! Basically, the color and vibration of the band changed with every scene, and they seemed to be more synced with the music and videos rather than the fireworks. We noticed light patterns such as rainbow colors to match the colors in the scenes.

The synchronization seemed off during a few scenes but it otherwise matched well. And while it WAS fun, it was also a little weird to be holding up our wrist instead of watching the show, so we’re not sure how often we’d actually use this feature. Kids would probably enjoy it but we wouldn’t purchase the MagicBand+ just for this.

You can read all about our experience below, and don’t forget to check out our step-by-step guide to using the MagicBand+ if you’re hoping to get one for yourself.

See how the MagicBand+ interacts with Harmonious in EPCOT!

And that’s all the big EPCOT news! Keep following along with us as we bring you all the latest news and updates from every Disney World park and don’t forget to check back for all your Disney news!

Is the EPCOT Food & Wine festival more expensive this year? We’re doing the math.

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Have you visited EPCOT recently? Tell us in the comments!

The post What’s New in EPCOT: MagicBand+ Is HERE first appeared on the disney food blog.