Walt Disney World has brought back the “secret” lounge for the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival! This spot is a great guest hideaway for escaping the heat and crowds, relaxing & recharging with free drinks as well as activities and VIP concert seating. This post takes a look inside and how to access the special venue in World Showcase. (Updated September 20, 2024.)
This marks the fourth consecutive year that there’s been a free lounge in EPCOT during the Food & Wine Festival. During the first year, it was truly a hidden gem. Even after writing a post to hype it up, we seldom saw more than a dozen people in the entire space. That was despite the lounge very much “hiding” in plain sight, right next to the Frozen Ever After queue.
Last year, the lounge had to relocate from Norway, as its former home in the medieval castle was being reclaimed by Akershus Royal Banquet Hall. It moved to a true secret spot, hidden gem, hole in the wall, under-the-radar escape, etc–literally in the most tucked away location in all of World Showcase at EPCOT.
In so doing, the Florida Blue Lounge–now located in the Restaurant Marrakesh–became much more popular. We’d expect that to be true once again during the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival. Word has definitely gotten out since that first year, so now you can expect to encounter a waitlist to enter on busier dates and weekends.
If you’re unfamiliar with the location of the Florida Blue Lounge, it’s deep in the Morocco pavilion down a dead-end corridor–this area is only home to Restaurant Marrakesh. Pre-closure, Restaurant Marrakesh was not particularly popular. This was likely in part due to its more exotic cuisine, but location played a bigger role. Due to that, there was routinely a Cast Member in the front courtyard of Morocco beaconing guests back, showing menus and touting the (underrated) restaurant.
When EPCOT reopened, Restaurant Marrakesh did not. Even after the third party operating participant exited the Morocco pavilion and turned over operations to Disney, the restaurant still stayed closed.
Again, unsurprising. Pent-up demand for dining has fizzled out, to the point that even popular restaurants have become relatively easy ADRs. And Restaurant Marrakesh was never the least bit popular before. Our expectation is that eventually this becomes an Aladdin character meal, but the future of Restaurant Agrabah is a different story for a different day!
With that said, let’s take a look around the Florida Blue Lounge.
The Morocco pavilion was based on designs found in the cities of Casablanca, Rabat, Fez, and Marrakesh. (We’ll bet you can’t guess which city inspired this particular restaurant.) Like many Moroccan cities, the pavilion is divided into new and old cities, demarcated by the Bab Bou Jeloud (“Blue”) Gate.
Restaurant Marrakesh lies beyond the Blue Gate, and largely maintains its opening day appearance with ornate design and stunning details. Morocco is a country of “timeless wonders” with ancient mosques, synagogues, souks, churches, and kasbahs where the art and architecture have been designed and refined over centuries.
This is evident inside Restaurant Marrakesh/Florida Blue Lounge. The setting is truly transportive, feeling worlds away from a contemporary theme park in Florida. From tile work to the tea dispensers to the ceilings and (especially) the light fixtures, Restaurant Marrakesh is an opulent exemplar of old world Morocco–and old school Imagineering aesthetic sensibilities.
Obviously, you don’t get the full experience from visiting the Florida Blue Lounge. During an actual meal at Restaurant Marrakesh, you’d enjoy music from a two-piece combo performing traditional songs and a belly dancer showing off her talents and beckoning kids to join her on the dance floor.
Then there’s the cuisine. Restaurant Marrakesh served up a variety of complex but approachable dishes, with a wide variety of spices and herbs producing authentic Moroccan dishes with nuance, but not necessarily intense flavor or spice. To the contrary, one of my favorite dishes here was the roasted lamb shank, which was fall off the bone tender. Even Signature Restaurants couldn’t compete with this.
Oh, and Restaurant Marrakesh was significantly cheaper than other restaurants. Due to its lack of popularity, the location frequently offered lunch specials or large samplers that were a bargain by Walt Disney World standards.
Now let’s cover the highlights of the free Florida Blue Lounge in the Morocco pavilion.
For the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival, the lounge should have stations with self-service water, Moroccan mint tea, and cold brew coffee. Sadly, there was no snack cart on any of our visits to the lounge, so we’re guessing that’s a thing of the past. There also were not any bottled beverages available upon request. But the cold brew and mint tea are fantastic–I’d take this free cold brew over most of the coffee sold at EPCOT!
On a positive note, there are additional free activities. In the past, these have changed throughout the day or over the course of the event, and there have been things like watercolor painting and free Henna tattoos.
Every time we’ve visited the Florida Blue lounge during the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival, this area has been a create your own ornament station. You get to choose glass and beads and insert them into sand-colored ornaments. Looks cute.
For us, though, the highlight is the reserved seating for the Eat to the Beat concert series. (See our Guide to the Eat to the Beat Concert Series.) They used to offer more official-looking cards, but our experience in 2024 has been these makeshift wristbands. Perhaps that’ll change.
In order to take advantage of this, we’d highly recommend going to the Florida Blue lounge sooner rather than later. There have been a couple of days where I’ve gone within the first two hours the lounge was open and there were very few people inside (as you can see in these photos!), but availability was already limited for the wristbands above.
From what we’ve seen, the Eat to the Beat concerts are much more popular in 2024 than in the past–likely due to a selection of musicians appealing to elder millennials as opposed to baby boomers, as the former is increasingly becoming Walt Disney World’s target audience. Since we’re averse to purchasing dining packages, this was a fantastic way to see popular performers without waiting in long lines. Highly recommended!
This year, the Florida Blue Lounge is now open for the 2024 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival. It’ll be open through November 23, 2024 from 12 pm until 6 pm daily.
Eligibility is always a tricky topic when it comes to the Florida Blue Lounge. Officially, according to both Walt Disney World and the insurance company, this lounge is open to “Florida Blue Members and their Guests.” Does that mean you have to be accompanied by a Florida Blue Member, or are guests permitted on their own? Nobody really knows.
In previous years, anyone has been admitted to the Florida Blue Lounge who registers for the Guest Pass. You can do that at this link. As you can see from the screenshot above, nowhere does it ask you to enter info about your health insurance company.
Below is the Guest Pass itself, which also says nothing about being required to show your Florida Blue insurance card or anything aside from the Guest Pass. Again, you can obtain that without being a Florida Blue Member.
Over the course of the last several years, we have visited the Florida Blue Lounge dozens and dozens of times. Not once have we had to show anything other than the Guest Pass, which is consistent with what the Guest Pass itself says.
However, we’ve had several commenters in both of the last two years who were denied access to the Florida Blue Lounge. I guess we’ve been very luck–or some readers have been very unlucky (or maybe a bit of both).
There’s also a third possibility, which is that they’re not confident or ask questions about being able to enter, which leads to confusion among Cast Members and guests, causing denials? I don’t have the slightest idea–it just strikes me as odd that we’ve probably entered this lounge 30+ times without once having the issues reported by others.
Regardless, we want to caution that this is a YMMV thing if you’re not a Florida Blue Member, and dependent upon whoever is standing guard at the lounge entrance. And, perhaps, your own confidence level–so act like you belong and don’t ask questions!
Hopefully Walt Disney World and/or Florida Blue get on the same page this year, and it’s clear whether access is for those with Florida Blue insurance or guests as well. I don’t know how this remains so ambiguous after three years, but it is what it is.
Suffice to say, don’t book a trip to Walt Disney World solely because you want to get some free cold brew. The lounge might change policies, deny you entry, etc. Here are a few more photos of the gorgeous Florida Blue lounge:
That last photo shows the restrooms at the end of the hallway. While these don’t make our esteemed list of the Top Toilets at Walt Disney World, they’re absolutely worth checking out. If we had awards for bathroom doors, these would be near the top of that list. (Hmmm…maybe we should?!)
Ultimately, we’re looking forward to taking advantage of the Florida Blue Lounge at Walt Disney World yet again…assuming we don’t get shut out by having different health insurance…and wanted to give you an early heads up about its return.
Beyond the free refreshments and activities, what we really love about the Florida Blue Lounge is the setting. It’s an exemplar of old school EPCOT Center and Imagineering at the height of its game–a criminally underrated World Showcase restaurant that even many diehard Walt Disney World fans have never seen. It really is a great spot to rest, recharge, and relax. Plus, it’s not every day that you get something truly free at Walt Disney World!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you taken advantage of the Florida Blue Lounge in EPCOT? Have any issues gaining entrance into the location with the Guest Pass? Will you be visiting this free temporary refreshment spot on an upcoming visit to Walt Disney World in 2024? Excited about the opportunity to experience the design and details of Restaurant Marrakesh? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
