EPCOT’s International Food and Wine Festival is HERE and we’ve already checked out everything there is to experience so far!

We’ve tried all the food, checked out the entertainment, and even completed a scavenger hunt! We were hunting for any announcements about this popular festival weeks prior, but there are a few things that still have majorly surprised us!

MUPPETS!

We were SO excited to hear that a bit of Muppet Labs would be arriving to this year’s Food and Wine Festival near the Brew-Wing Booth in The Odyssey Pavilion!

However, it’s important that we note that you can only see Beaker and Dr. Honeydew through screens, even though some of the eats at the booth are their experiments. So while it’s still a super cute theme, you won’t get to see too much of the Muppets.

But we loved all the decorations inside The Odyssey and how it felt like it was really transformed into Muppet Labs (minus the actual Muppets).

A Pickle Milkshake?

Speaking of Muppet Labs, one of Beaker and Dr. Honeydew’s lovely creations for the festival is the Pickle Milkshake at the Brew-Wing booth.

Yes, you read that right. A pickle milkshake. And yes, we drank it to tell you all about it! It certainly took us on a flavor journey, and all we’ll say here is that if you don’t like pickles, don’t even TOUCH this thing.

Read our review of the Pickle Milkshake here!

Not Every Booth Opens With The Festival

That’s right, you don’t get to experience every single festival booth right now.

EPCOT has decided to delay the opening of the following SIX booths:

• Hawai’i (Opening August 15th)
• The Noodle Exchange (Opening August 15th)  (Opening later this fall)
• Char & Chop (Opening later this fall)
• Wine & Wedge (Opening later this fall)
• Bubbles & Brine (Opening later this fall)
• Swirled Showcase (Opening later this fall)

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this happen, but this year will be especially rough, as two booths open in August, but the others won’t open until WAY later in the fall. This makes it hard for people who may want to plan vacations towards the beginning of the festival because they won’t get to experience every booth.

Not Everything Is Returning

And of course, we were sad to find out that some of our favorite booths wouldn’t be returning this year. When EPCOT released its list of booths for the year, the following were not on it, and have not been announced to be returning since:

• Hops and Barley (but a similar carrot cake is on the menu over at Flavors of America!)
• Appleseed Orchard
• Mac & Eats (major sad face)
• Swanky Saucy Swine (many people may not miss this one because of how adventurous it was, but we appreciated it!)
• Earth Eats (While we miss a booth solely dedicated to plant-based offerings, there are lots throughout the other booths)

Yes, we’re sad these aren’t returning, but there are tons of other booths (both here now and coming in the future) that make up for it. Don’t worry — there are still plenty of delicious eats around this festival!

Here’s our best-of-the-fest list for the 2023 Food and Wine Festival!

Don’t forget though that with those booths opening later this year and plenty of other EPCOT news coming out, the Food and Wine Festival news is far from being over! Be sure to stay tuned to DFB for all the latest Disney news so you don’t miss out.

Here’s EVERYTHING you need to know about this year’s Food and Wine Festival!

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What’s your favorite booth this year? Tell us in the comments!

The post 4 Surprising Announcements For the 2023 EPCOT Food and Wine Festival first appeared on the disney food blog.