It’s fun. It’s also absolute chaos. And somehow, every year, we do it again. So, how exactly do we cover 30+ EPCOT Food & Wine Festival booths in one day? Grab a tiny plastic fork. We’re taking you backstage.

It Starts MONTHS Before the Festival

Opening day may be the main event, but our Food & Wine Festival coverage starts long before anyone hands us our first suspiciously tiny $9 plate. Usually about five months before the festival begins, we start watching for Disney to officially confirm the dates. Then we watch. And watch. And WATCH.

At first, we’re checking weekly for announcements. As the festival gets closer, that becomes daily. We’re watching official Disney websites, Disney social media accounts, press releases, videos, and pretty much anywhere Disney might quietly drop a detail it assumes nobody will notice. We notice. A casual sentence in a Disney Parks video mentioning a new seminar? Noted. A restaurant quietly adding a festival brunch? Got it. A merchandise preview hiding a festival logo in the background? Hello, new browser tab.

Booths, entertainment, special meals, seminars, merchandise, scavenger hunts, dining packages…if Disney announces it, hints at it, whispers it into the Florida humidity, somebody on our team is probably writing it down, and then broadcasting it to the whole company “BREAKING FESTIVAL NEWS.” And then the rest of us log in with our magnifying glasses and conspiracy theories to see if this suspicious hint in the blurry background of a photo is actually a clue.

Then the Menus Arrive

This is where things get serious. Once Disney officially announces the Global Marketplace booths and their menus, our team starts digging through every single item.

And we aren’t just comparing this year’s menu with last year’s. DFB has been covering the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival since 2009. We have RECEIPTS. Editors from the website and our guidebooks work with the social team to investigate basically everything Disney has decided to put on a festival plate.

• Is this actually a new dish?
• Was something remarkably similar served four years ago under a slightly different name?
• Have we eaten it before?
• Did we love it?
• Did we hate it?
• Was it once a Best of the Fest contender?
• Has the recipe changed?
• Has the presentation changed?
• Did Disney add a drizzle of sauce and decide this is now an entirely different entrée?

We know your tricks, EPCOT. If something is genuinely new, we’re almost certainly getting it. And even when something is returning, we often get it again because recipes, portion sizes, presentations, and quality can change from year to year. This is how we generally end up purchasing somewhere in the neighborhood of 94% of the festival. Yes. Ninety-four percent. Including a LOT of beverages.

Opening day is not the moment to discover your assigned booth has three beer flights.

We Build the Festival Battle Plan

Once we know what we need to try, everything goes into what can only be described as the Festival Plan Cauldron. Editors have priorities. Social media has priorities. The video team has priorities. Our guidebooks need information. And somewhere in there, several dozen menu items are staring back at us, demanding to be eaten before somebody melts into World Showcase Lagoon.

Then we figure out who is going to EPCOT. That sounds simple until you remember our reporters are actual human beings. Some have food allergies. Some have dietary restrictions. Some don’t drink alcohol. Some have foods they simply cannot or will not eat. So we make sure assignments work for the people actually covering them.

And reporters who can’t eat much at a particular festival? They’re still BUSY. Food is only one part of an EPCOT festival. Someone needs photos of the decorations, entertainment, crowds, merchandise, scavenger hunts, festival passports, and all those little details that make EPCOT feel different during festival season. Yes, Germany’s tiny train town might make the assignment list. The trains deserve journalism, too.

We also make sure everyone has the appropriate park admission and reservations they need because there would be something particularly tragic about spending months planning opening-day coverage only to have someone standing outside EPCOT texting, “So…tiny problem.”

The Home Team Starts Cooking, Too

While reporters are preparing for EPCOT, a huge chunk of the operation is happening nowhere near Disney World. This is the part you don’t see when a review suddenly appears on DFB approximately seventeen seconds after somebody has finished swallowing.

Before opening day, we assemble the whole team for an all-hands-on-deck type of day. The Social team is ready. Video editors are ready. Photo editors are ready. Website editors are ready. Scriptwriters are ready. Our guidebook team is ready.

And then there is our Festival Queen, sitting at the center of this enormous information spiderweb, directing photos, videos, tasting notes, assignments, updates, and approximately eight thousand other moving pieces toward the correct people. Opening day requires reporters, editors, writers, photographers, video editors, scriptwriters, social media professionals, designers, and more. It takes a village. A village with big opinions about the cheese soup.

Festival Morning Starts EARLY

Eventually, opening day arrives. For our EPCOT reporters, that means getting to the park bright and early. World Showcase and most of its festival booths may not open until later in the morning, but the festival itself is already waking up. There are decorations to photograph. Festival passports to find. Merchandise to inspect. Entertainment to document. And locations like Connections Café & Eatery or Sunshine Seasons may already have festival offerings available.

We do not waste perfectly good festival hours. While reporters gather that early information, the home team is already online. Writers are waiting for tasting notes. Photo editors are watching upload folders. Social media is waiting for video. Editors are updating festival pages. The video team is grabbing footage. Scriptwriters are assembling information for upcoming videos.

Then World Showcase opens. And all heck breaks loose. Eat. Photograph. Upload. Repeat.

Our Reporters Come PREPARED

Festival opening day is not the time to realize your phone battery is at 11%. Your phone is your camera, notebook, video recorder, communication system, upload device, map, and occasionally the object you stare at while wondering why one photo is taking SIX MINUTES TO UPLOAD.

So our reporters arrive prepared:

• Portable chargers are non-negotiable. Sometimes multiple portable chargers.
• Food trays are enormously helpful because one person may suddenly find themselves carrying enough festival food to cater a small wedding.
• Wet wipes are essential for messy hands, sticky tables, and desserts that did not survive their glamour shots.
• Hand sanitizer? Obviously.
• Travel cutlery can save the day when a booth runs out of disposable forks approximately two bites before you desperately need one.
• Then there’s the standard Florida survival gear: ponchos, umbrellas, neck fans, portable fans, and whatever else prevents opening-day reporting from turning into EPCOT Survivor.
• Mini tripods help capture those cheese pulls and close-up shots you see online.
• Soft cloths keep phone screens and camera lenses clean.

And one particularly underrated piece of equipment is a phone cooling case. Phones overheat in Florida. A LOT. Normally, you can put your phone down for a while and let it recover. On festival day? Absolutely not. There are 47 notifications waiting, three photos uploading, a writer asking whether the sauce was spicy, social media needs that vertical video, and your next booth assignment is calling. Your phone cannot take a spa break.

Meanwhile, At Home…

The home team has its own version of festival survival. It involves fewer portable fans and significantly more staring at progress bars.

Imagine the perfect food photo finally coming through. You download it, edit it, save it, upload it…and then realize there was another angle you liked better. You JUST saw it, but in the time it took to finish that one photo, 38 more have arrived, somebody sent over tasting notes, Slack has lit up with six new notifications, a video file dropped into the folder, and an editor is waiting on the article. Naturally, this is also the exact moment your photo-editing software decides it needs an update. Before long, even stepping away from your desk to go to the bathroom starts to feel like abandoning your post in the middle of battle.

Opening-day coverage has a very specific rhythm. “I’ll just finish this one thing.” Famous last words.

Constant Communication Is Everything

Throughout the day, the reporters and home team are essentially attached by an invisible information leash. Where are you? Did you get the photo? Did that upload? Is the booth sold out? Can you grab another angle? Was that spicy? Which beer is which in this flight? Was there alcohol in that? Did the portion seem smaller? Can you photograph the sign? Is it raining? WHY IS IT RAINING SIDEWAYS?

Plans also change constantly. A booth can run out of something. A menu item may suddenly be unavailable. Crowds may explode in one area. Florida can drop an entire bathtub of rain on EPCOT without consulting our schedule.

Sometimes a reporter finishes early and jumps over to help someone else. Sometimes an assignment gets shifted. Sometimes somebody’s meticulously photographed food becomes lunch for an extremely ambitious bird. We adapt. Mostly because there is no other option.

 

Eventually, Everyone Gets VERY Full

There comes a point during every festival coverage day when eating stops sounding like a reward. This is hard to explain until you’ve spent hours tasting bite after bite after bite after bite. One more slider. One more dumpling. One more dessert. One more cocktail. One more spoonful of something involving truffle. Eventually, someone announces that they physically cannot consume another morsel. And then somebody else checks the assignment sheet. There are four booths left. Godspeed.

This is also why having a team matters so much. Nobody should have to personally consume an entire EPCOT festival. We divide, conquer, share bites, compare opinions, and occasionally stare at the next plate with the forlorn expression of someone who once believed unlimited festival food sounded exciting.

Then We Do It All Again

By the end of opening day, everyone is exhausted. The reporters have walked miles through EPCOT in the Florida heat while eating enough small plates to build one enormous, deeply confusing meal. The home team has spent hours writing, editing, cropping, uploading, publishing, updating, messaging, and trying to remember whether the ravioli photo was IMG_4827 or IMG_4872. There have probably been technical problems. There may have been rain. Something almost certainly melted. Someone has probably spilled a beverage into a bag. And somewhere along the way, a bird committed a misdemeanor.

But we also got to spend the entire day talking about Disney food with people who care about it every bit as much as we do. That’s the weird little secret behind these massive festival days. Yes, they’re stressful. They are LONG. There are moments when everyone involved is one failed upload away from wishing they’d never heard of Adobe Lightroom.

But they’re also ridiculously fun. Our coworkers are texting encouragement from across EPCOT. Someone at home is celebrating because the photo finally uploaded. Reporters are helping other reporters finish their assignments. Writers are shouting virtually about an unexpectedly great dish. The social team is watching everyone fall in love with something we tasted 20 minutes earlier. And by the end of the day, we’ve somehow taken one enormous, messy, delicious festival and turned it into reviews, photos, videos, guides, posts, updates, and recommendations that can help YOU decide what’s actually worth your money.

We get paid to eat Disney food and go to Disney World. There are worse jobs. Even when there is bubble tea in your backpack. So the next time you see us declare something Best of the Fest just hours after the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival opens, know there was an entire tiny-food command center behind it. And probably one very tired reporter asking whether they really have to eat another dessert. Yes. Yes, they do.

REVIEW: If I Could Marry an EPCOT Food & Wine Festival Snack, You’d Be Calling Me Mrs. Brazilian Cheese Bread