Not So Fresh Epcot Flower and Garden Festival

It was a perfect day. I wanted to enjoy a date with my wife while capturing what was new at this year’s Flower and Garden Festival. The tag line for this year’s festival is Fresh Epcot. So, let’s look for fresh!

The entrance was marked with Huey, Dewey and Louie. I think they are new. They are new, aren’t they? I’ve seen so many topiary, I can’t remember. Don’t mistaken me–I like the topiary. But it all seems to be one thing after a while.

The Flower and Garden Festival at Epcot was for the most part beautiful. It always is. But shouldn’t Epcot always be beautiful? I did see some things that stood out. There was a beautifully done aquaponics bar with plants on top and fish on the bottom. Not sure there is a market for this. Hard to replicate at home.

Next to it was probably the nicest hen house I’ve seen. Again, not sure it would change my thinking about raising chickens.

I thought this arrangement of orchids for the Donald Duck meet ‘n’ greet was really beautiful. It made my wife and I wonder, if this is what the wall between the U.S. and Mexico would look like, I think more people would embrace it.

But beyond this, little was memorable, and certainly not “fresh”.  I thought my wife–who loves to eat healthy–would welcome grabbing the watermelon salad sold at the Urban Farm Eats. Her response was sort of, “been there done that.”

So around Epcot we went looking at all of this. It wasn’t tired looking–it just wasn’t fresh looking. I think the sum of my feelings about the festival could be totaled by my visit to Prehistoric Plants. What is Prehistoric Plants you might ask? Well that included some tropical foliage found commonly throughout Florida with little plastic dinosaurs inserted in each.

Really? Do they not remember that they used to do something like this for previous festivals?

It’s a serious problem that the festival has gone down that badly, that you would stick plastic toys in bushes. The festival could have done some topiary based on The Good Dinosaur. That would have been fresh. But cretaceous toys inserted in a native foliage is not cutting it.

I’m going to assume that the whole Walt Disney World gardening staff was so busy this year trying to figure out how to create the primeval out-of-this-world Pandora (and no, it can’t look like the Cretaceous Trail over in Dinoland) that they didn’t have much time to pay attention to this year’s event.

Did you see something fresh I did not? Please share. Because I really thought this was probably one of the weakest Flower & Garden Festivals I’ve seen. That said, my next post suggests what might make next year’s festival a lot more fresh.