These Snacks Are Someone’s Favorites at 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival, We Guess?

Technically speaking, the best booth at the 2024 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival should be the one that more or less proclaims as much in its name, right? Walt Disney World would never lie to us. After all, CommuniCore Hall really is “limited only by the boundaries of imagination,” correct?

Obviously, I’m kidding. Our review of World Celebration was far from glowing. Ditto our big-picture review of the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival (the part focusing on the event as a whole, not the individual Global Marketplaces). But in this case, sarcasm aside, I think Disney might actually be correct.

The dishes, desserts and drinks at the ‘Festival Favorites’ booth actually are among the most beloved items from Food & Wines of years past. This Walt Disney World dining review will get to the bottom of that, while also sharing menu prices, food photos, and our thoughts on what’s worth your money or Disney Dining Plan snack credits at Festival Favorites, one of the two new ‘booths’ in CommuniCore Hall.

Festival Favorites isn’t brand new nor is it a booth, per se. Instead, it’s a permanent new quick-service food and beverage window on the outside of CommuniCore Hall, right next to the CommuniCore Plaza Stage. Festival Favorites opened earlier this summer, debuting during Diet EPCOT with menu inspired by Encanto along with dishes from Flower & Garden.

As astute readers will probably already realize given the name, Festival Favorites serves up fan-favorite menu items from EPCOT Festivals over the years. So basically, it’s booth a new booth and a returning one, in the sense that nothing here is new–it’s exclusively dishes that have migrated over from other Global Marketplaces, all of which are ‘extinct’ for the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival.

From a practical perspective, I’d add that Festival Favorites actually serves two purposes. First, it allowed Walt Disney World to retire a couple of Global Marketplaces. The reasons for this are unclear, as I don’t think they were necessarily underperformers. It could be a simple matter of wanting a greater distribution of booths in the former Future World and something needing to go. 

Second and similarly, it allows CommuniCore Hall–as a whole–to become a de facto secondary counter service restaurant servicing the front of the park. Connections Cafe & Eatery is really busy–even during festival season–and this becomes overflow for that. Honestly, this is somewhat sad from my perspective, as I love Sunshine Seasons and would love to see that make more of a comeback. But that’s another topic for another day.

In any case, I strongly suspect that the two booths inside and outside CommuniCore Hall were purposefully picked to be crowdpleasers so that they could, collectively, serve as a makeshift counter service restaurant. And if current crowds are any indication, they’re fulfilling this role admirably. But I digress.

Here’s the menu for the Festival Favorites booth at the 2024 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival:

Here are our food reviews from the Festival Favorites Global Marketplace quick-service window:

Kielbasa and Potato Pierogi with Caramelized Onions and Sour Cream ($6) – This dish was previously available at the Poland Global Marketplace, which is not appearing at the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival. Actually, it’s been a long time since the Poland booth last appeared–about a decade if memory serves me correctly.

Honestly, I don’t remember the Pierogis at all. Digging into the DTB Archives, I found this as our last ‘review’ of them: “After poor experiences with this dish in the past, the consensus among our group was that it was not worth even bothering with this. Maybe you’ll get lucky and this won’t be minuscule and frozen-food quality, though?”

Uh, okay. Not exactly a real review. That was back in the day before we ate everything (except the Italy booth), though. In any case, the Kielbasa and Potato Pierogis were pretty good! The sausage was glorious, and the pierogis were pretty good–thick wrappers that were nice and chewy. The caramelized onion and sour cream brought it all home, making for a rich and creamy indulgence with the right medley of flavors and textures.

Honestly, the Kielbasa and Potato Pierogis would not make my personal list of ‘Festival Favorites,’ but I can certainly see why others love them. They’re a nice comfort food that’s satisfying and tasty. I also appreciate Disney bringing back something after such a long absence. It gives me hope. This is a reasonably good option if paying out of pocket, but not so much on the Disney Dining Plan.

BBQ Pork Rinds with Pimento Cheese ($5) – This dish was previously found at the Swanky Saucy Swine Global Marketplace, which also isn’t appearing at this year’s event. If you said “what?” to that booth name, you’re probably not alone. Swanky Saucy Swine was only around two years–and they were during the phased reopening when a lot of people weren’t doing Disney.

We were, and the Swanky Saucy Swine was one of my favorite booths those years. I described it as Flavors from Fire meets Trowel & Trellis, which is fairly high praise. With that said, the BBQ Pork Rinds with Pimento Cheese were good, but not the highlight of that menu.

The pimento cheese dip is absolutely fantastic. Rich, creamy, and with a flavor that’s simultaneously semi-sweet, savory, and a bit spicy. The pork rinds were a mixed bag, quite literally. Some were fantastic–light, airy, and letting the cheese dip shine. Others were overcooked and/or stale. Nevertheless, the BBQ Pork Rinds with Pimento Cheese are ‘good enough’ to recommend, especially considering the portion size vs. price. Just pay out of pocket rather than using Disney Dining Plan credits.

Key Lime Tart with Toasted Meringue ($4.75) – If the DTB Archives are accurate, this is not a former Food & Wine Festival dish. Rather, it’s from EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival. If it is from Food & Wine, it’s a very deep cut that predates us doing the event annually in 2011. (It strikes me as more of a spring dessert, though.)

This dessert is better than you’d expect from one of Disney’s template tarts. The key lime flavor is surprisingly rich, with the toasted meringue having a far better consistency and quality than anticipated. The crust is lackluster and low quality, but that’s really our only quibble. This is a good enough dessert that should satisfy a key lime craving.

With that said, it’s only a mid-tier dessert at the 2024 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival, so we can’t strongly recommend it. Frankly, I also have a hard time believing anyone was clamoring for this to make a comeback. Maybe Disney leadership, because it’s high-margin?

Frozen S’mores ($4.75) – This is a Chocolate Milk Shake with marshmallow syrup topped with mini marshmallows and a graham cracker. If the DTB Archives are accurate (always a big if), it hasn’t been seen since the Desserts & Champagne booth at the 2020 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival. Similar shakes have appeared at other, more recent events.

We all have our guilty pleasures, and this is mine. Look, there’s nothing special about the Frozen S’mores Shake. It is exactly what you’d expect. But for whatever reason, I found it really satisfying (that “reason” probably being triple-digit feels like temperatures). It also worked well for me in approximating s’mores, right down to an ever-so-slight hint of campfire flavor (that I presumably imagined since there’s nothing to suggest it actually had this).

In any case, I can’t offer any objective reason for loving the Frozen S’mores Shake, but I do–and I did in the past, even when ordering it around the cooler holidays. Do with this information what you will. (Either way, don’t use a DDP credit on it.)

Irish Milk Shake ($12.50) –  The fan-favorite Irish Milk Shake consists of Guinness Stout, Baileys Original Irish Cream Liqueur, and Vanilla Ice Cream. It was previously found, as you can probably guess, at the Ireland booth. (Note that the beloved Chocolate Pudding Cake has been migrated over to America’s Salute to Hot Dogs.)

This website would go bankrupt if we reviewed booze (see that price!) and I’d likely die of alcohol poisoning (or perhaps more likely, diabetes). Regardless, I had this photo from a few years back and figured I’d include it. Also, it’s worth acknowledging that this is most definitely a fan-favorite drink. People absolutely love it.

Ultimately, there’s nothing at this booth that we’d consider our favorites of the festival. In fact, if all of these items were lost to the sands of time, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Don’t get me wrong, the stuff here is mostly fine…but ‘fine’ is a far cry from ‘favorites.’

None of these dishes are in my personal top 10 from the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival nor is the booth as a whole (not exactly high praise). Nevertheless, I can acknowledge that other Walt Disney World diehards have different tastes than me, and I can also appreciate what Disney is trying to accomplish with this booth. Even as the world’s biggest CommuniCore Hall hater, I’ll readily admit that I like this concept and am glad it exists. In large part because it leaves the door open for some of my personal, long-forgotten favorites to make a comeback. Disney, if you’re listening, I’ll never say another negative word about CommuniCore if my beloved Pumpkin Mousse is brought back!

Check out our Global Marketplace Booth Menus & Photos for the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival Booth Menus post if you want to see and read more about every menu this year! You’ll also want to read our full 2024 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival Guide before you go to get an idea of what to do, strategy for the festival (yes, you will need a strategy), and much more!

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YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think of the Festival Favorites booth? Have you tried any of the dishes, drinks or desserts here? Any thoughts on these items? Portion-size or quality-wise, did you have better or worse luck than us with what you ordered? 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!