Epcot is my favorite park on a good day, so I’m especially partial to it during the holidays. It’s by far the park with the most decorations imo – the decorating doesn’t stop at the front of the park, it continues into every country in World Showcase too! This year they also have many special holiday treats for the Holidays Around the World. Similar to the Food & Wine festival, we went around sampling lots of different things and I thought it would make a great post for the 12 Days of Kaelamas!
The first thing we noticed was that there aren’t as many booths out for the holidays as for Food & Wine, but the portions are much bigger! Food & Wine portions are usually a few bites, but we found the portion sizes for Holidays Around the World to be almost the size of full meals. Case in point – our first stop, Holiday Eats & Treats:
Pictured is the Holiday Sandwich – cranberry bread, roast turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and the Chocolate Grasshopper with peppermint Schnapps and candy cane crumble. That sandwich was as big as it looked – it was like a panini you can get from Panera or something. And it was delicious!! It reminded me of the Holiday Turkey sandwich from Earl of Sandwich. The chocolate grasshopper was great too. We were expecting it to be a drink but it was more of a sundae, and they poured the Schnapps on top so it was very alcoholy towards the end! Both were really good and we all enjoyed them.
Next up was a booth called Feast of The Three Kings, located in what used to be the Islands of the Caribbean booth from F&W. The area had little signs telling the story of the Three Kings and it was a really cute display. Here we tried the Three Kings Bread:
It was a sweet little roll with some frosting and sprinkles on top. I confused this with that King Cake that’s served around Mardi Gras where there’s a little baby Jesus doll inside hahaha there’s no Jesus doll in this one, don’t worry. It was pretty good – very light and sweet. They also have a tamale that looks great at this booth so I’ll have to come back to try that one!!
Next we moved on to Alpine Haus, located between Morocco and France where the Brazil booth was for Food & Wine. Here we tried one of the best things I’ve ever tried at Epcot:
This is the Sachertorte, a chocolate cake with apricot jam and a dark chocolate glaze, and Cheese Fondue served in a bread bowl with vegetables. This booth was definitely a winner for us. The cake was good – very dense and richly chocolatey. And the fondue was incredible!!! It was gooey and melty and had a delicious sharp flavor. We scooped out what we could with the bread and veggies and then I just ate it with a spoon, it was so good. I also ate the entire bread bowl hahaha it was seriously so good I almost went back for another one. One of the best foods I’ve ever had at Disney, seriously. I’ll definitely be getting this one again!!
Our next stop was American Holiday Table, in (predictably) the American Adventure pavilion:
This is the Slow-Roasted Turkey served with stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and veggies. This was another example of how huge the portion sizes are – this was a ton of food and was easily split between four people. It was honestly really delicious, especially for being (I assume) something that’s made in mass quantities. Everything was warm and tasty and I wouldn’t hesitate to get this one again either.
When we were there Candlelight Processional was about to start, so we decided to stop and watch for a bit:
I mentioned it in my Holidays at WDW post, but Candlelight is a really fun event that gives you that warm fuzzy “it’s Christmas” feeling. I still remember all my parts from when my choir did it in high school so I also love to sing along haha. The narrator on this night was Anthony Mackie who plays Falcon in the Marvel Universe movies. He was funny and adorable and did a good job 🙂
After a brief stop to ride Test Track, we headed on to our next booth, which was Prost! at Germany:
It was starting to get dark at this point so I apologize if the photos start to get bad haha. This is the German Artisan Cheese Plate, with German ButterKase with Alpine ham, mushroom Brie with pretzel crostini, and Tillamook cheddar. This one was more like the Food & Wine Festival portion sizes that we’re used to so this one isn’t easily shared. I always try these cheese plates because I LOVE cheese, and I feel like they’re usually just okay. This one was fine, the ham was really good and everything tasted awesome paired together, but I’m not sure I’d spend $5 on a few bites of cheese again. But it was still pretty tasty so it’s fine. They also have a beef dish with German spätzle that I’m interested in so I’ll probably go back anyway!
Next up we stopped at the Gelato Kiosk in Italy:
This was the only major disappointment of the day. This is the Italian Chocolate Panettone, which was described as an Italian Christmas Cake…but it was more like a prepackaged, really dense and hard muffin hahaha. None of us liked it and we were really disappointed to throw it away after eating about half of it. Oh well. On to the next one!
The next one being our final stop of the day – Mexico! We tried two items here:
First is the Chicken Enchilada served in a corn tortilla. I thought this was really good and a pretty good amount of food. It was fresh and a bit spicy. The second thing is Tacos de Carnitas also served in a corn tortilla with tomatillo relish. I liked this one a lot less – it was very small and only allowed for a few bites, and was difficult to eat. The enchilada was the winner for me here!
After all our food sampling, we finished off the day with Illuminations. I love Illuminations enough to begin with (every time I watch I remember the time we watched it after getting engaged and get teary-eyed all over again), but the Peace on Earth holiday tag at the end is one of my favorite holiday fireworks shows. I always say that Magic Kingdom fireworks holiday shows are these carefully crafted pieces with lots of coordinating music and fireworks, and Epcot holiday shows are just like “let’s light every firework on fire at once” hahah. Peace on Earth is truly amazing to watch and I make a point to do it every year.
I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on the Holidays Around the World food offerings! I didn’t get everything this time but I look forward to going back and getting the rest (and getting that fondue again!) Additionally, my resource going in was my favorite WDW blogger EasyWDW – he tried every booth and took pics of everything, so be sure to consult that before going in blind. Hopefully I can get back and try some more new things soon!
That’s all for today! <3 Kaela
