The 2021 EPCOT International Food and Wine Festival is getting ready to kick off in Disney World!

We’ve been analyzing the menus to decide what to get, taking a look at the entertainment we’ll get to enjoy, and more! But, there are some secrets or things you may totally overlook at the Festival. Today we’re breaking those down for you here so you don’t miss them!

1 — Festival Merchandise Online

Grabbing some merchandise themed to the Food & Wine Festival can be a great way to celebrate your visit and remember the time you spent there. But, did you know that you can generally get Food & Wine Festival merchandise online too? This year, shopDisney has already announced that the Food & Wine Spirit Jersey will be available online on July 15th.

We expect that much if not most of the other Food & Wine Festival merchandise will also make its way to shopDisney soon! Last year, a ton of the Food & Wine Festival merchandise became available online in October. We expect the same will happen this year. This is a great way to get in on the festival fun even if you can’t attend in person.

Click here to get a first look at the Food & Wine Festival merchandise that will be released this year!

2 — Free Festival Passports

If you’re trying to keep track of the food items you’ve purchased, see what’s coming up at the next booth, or mark off the items you’ve eaten from Emile’s Fromage Montage so you can get the special surprise at the end, then you can pick up a Festival Passport!

You’ll find these passports typically at the front of the park and throughout other areas in the park as well. They contain a full list of all the booths and the items you can find at them. They’re useful and can serve as a great souvenir!

Want to get some more FREE Food & Wine Festival things? Click here to see our DFB exclusive printable for all of the booths!

And click here to get our FREE DFB exclusive Food & Wine Festival printable map so you can get planning!

3 — FREE Scavenger Hunt

While the Food & Wine Festival definitely has a lot of great food and drinks for you to try (it’s in the name!), there are some great activities to participate in too! One of those is the FREE Remy’s Ratatouille Hide & Squeak scavenger hunt.

During this scavenger hunt, you’ll look for little Remy statues that have been hidden throughout the park! Now, you can pay to get a map where you’ll indicate where you found each Remy statue. If you pay for that map and complete the scavenger hunt, you can get a prize, which is really fun.

But, if you don’t need or want the prize, you can just play for free by making a point to search for those Remy statues throughout your walk around the park! It’s great for kids and adults alike.

Click here to learn more about the return of this scavenger hunt!

4 — CHEESE Crawl

Want to get a prize for eating tons of cheesy dishes? Good, then you’ll want to complete Emile’s Fromage Montage (a.k.a. the Food & Wine Festival Cheese Crawl)!

For Emile’s Fromage Montage you’ll need to get the 5 menu items at the various Food & Wine Festival booths that are part of the cheese crawl. Be sure to get the stamps on your Festival Passport to indicate that you’ve gotten each of these items. You’ll want to grab those stamps when you get your food at each of the booths.

Once you’ve gotten all 5 items, then you can head to Shimmering Sips for a special prize! If you’re going to eat a bunch of food and you love cheese, this might be a win-win. Eat food + get prize = perfection.

Click here to see what 5 items are on the cheese crawl this year!

5 — Specialty Items at Booths You See All Year Long

While you can’t really miss the festival booths that are out in the park and pretty clearly marked as Festival booths, you might not realize that there are specialty festival items being served in some places that serve up food all year long.

For example, you can find limited-time offerings that are specific to the Food & Wine Festival at the Joffrey’s Coffee locations in the park, at Refreshment Port, and at Refreshment Outpost.

It’s not really a “secret” that the items are being served there, but these spots can totally get overlooked in comparison to some of the other booths. Be sure to look at the menus and see if any of the items they’ll be serving up are things that sound interesting to you so you don’t miss them!

Click here to see all of the menus for the booths at this year’s Food & Wine Festival!

6 — Plan Ahead

Typically, the booths at the Food & Wine Festival open when the park officially opens and they stay open until the park closes. But, we have experienced situations at some EPCOT festivals where one or more booths may close a bit earlier than the park’s official closing time.

This may not happen all that often, but if you have your heart set on getting an item at one particular booth, be sure to prioritize it and get it well in advance so you aren’t stuck running up to the booth 20 minutes before the park closes only to find it has already closed. Also depending on crowds, some booths may only be open on the weekends during certain parts of the festival.

Click here to see a full list of all of the new menu items available at the Festival this year.

7 — Unexpected Places

This sort-of goes hand-in-hand with #5 above, but you can sometimes find Food & Wine Festival booths in unexpected places. If you don’t know where to look, you might totally miss them!

This year, you’ll find a Food & Wine Festival booth located INSIDE of the Canada Theater where Canada Far & Wide is typically held. There will also be items inside of the building that houses the EPCOT Experience.

Click here to check out our DFB printable map so you can see where all of the booths will be located!

8 — Things Change and Not Everything That’s “New” Is New

If you had a favorite item at a previous festival and don’t immediately see it on the same booth’s menu this year, be sure to search again. Sometimes festival items can move from one booth to another depending on the year and the set-up.

As part of this, sometimes you may see “new” booths serving up old favorites. For example, this year the Kenya booth is new as we haven’t seen a Kenya booth before. But, the main items being sold at the booth are things we’ve seen offered at festivals in the past.

Keep in mind that the reverse can also happen, older booths that have been around for years can get entirely new items or a whole new menu.

9 — Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages Festival

Because of its name — the Food and WINE Festival — many might think that the drinks available throughout the festival booths are exclusively alcoholic drinks. But, that’s not the case!

There are actually a number of non-alcoholic beverages available during the festival including a Frozen Apple Pie, Mango Bubble Milk Tea, a Strawberry Smoothie, and more! So, whether you simply don’t drink alcohol or you’re looking for something for your kiddos to drink while you sip your wine, there are options out there!

10 — Limit on Alcohol

It’s not really a secret, but this next item is something you should know about if you do plan on drinking alcoholic beverages at the festival. Generally, there is a limit of 2 alcoholic drinks at a time per ID.

Just keep that in mind as you make your way around EPCOT, particularly if you were planning on having one person in your group go and buy drinks for everyone.

11 — Take It Home!

Try a dish that you absolutely fall in love with at the Festival? Wish you could make it at home? Well, you can do that! First, you could check out our DFB Guide to the Food & Wine Festival! In the book, we’ve got a number of recipes for Festival dishes you can recreate in your own kitchen.

Our guide also covers tips and tricks about making your way around the Festival, news about what’s new, provides strategies for conquering the festival in 1 day, 2 days, or on a budget, and even has crawls specific to different types of food you may love (like a chocolate crawl)!

You can also look for Disney cookbooks or official Disney stories which may feature festival-specific recipes. We work on sharing LOTS of Disney recipes with you, so be sure to check back with us for more!

Click here to see lots of Disney recipes you could make at home!

12 — Gift Cards

The fact that Disney sells gift cards is no secret, but did you know they sell festival-specific gift cards on wristbands? These gift cards can be helpful and fun in a lot of ways.

They can serve as a little souvenir of all of the EPCOT festivals you’ve been to. But, during the festival itself, you can load these up with your set budget and it can help you stay within your spending limits.

You can also get some for your kiddos and load theirs up with their allotted spending amounts. Then they can go up and pay for their items, which is fun for them, without blowing your budget out of the water!

13 — Avoid Weekends

Again, this is maybe less of a secret and more of a tip, but we wanted to share it anyway! If you’re planning to visit Disney World for the Food & Wine Festival and you want to avoid some of the crowds, we recommend that you try to avoid going to EPCOT on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

During the weekends, many locals will come to EPCOT to enjoy the festival, making for some pretty large crowds. If you can instead visit the festival during the week, you’ll likely encounter shorter lines and less crowds!

And that’s our list of some of the secrets or things you might not know/might overlook at EPCOT’s Food & Wine Festival! Don’t forget — if you want a great tool to help you plan for your time at the Festival, you can check out our DFB Guide to the 2021 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival.

We’ll keep an eye out for more updates about the Festival and let you know what we find!

Click here to see the full menus for all of the Food & Wine Festival booths!

Join the DFB Newsletter to get all the breaking news right in your inbox! Click here to Subscribe!

Will you be visiting the Food & Wine Festival this year? Tell us in the comments! 

The post 13 Secrets About the EPCOT Food and Wine Festival first appeared on the disney food blog.