The EPCOT International Festival of the Arts is in full swing, and we were there on the first day to check out ALL the offerings!
Festival of the Arts
We stopped by every food booth, checked out the Disney on Broadway Concert Series, scoured the art on display, and enjoyed the various performers and artists out and about. But there’s one big problem with this year’s festival…and nobody seems to be talking about it!
If you’re a plant-based eater, you’re going to have a HARD time at the 2024 Festival of the Arts. During other festivals, we’ve seen Disney offer a plethora of plant-based eats, but at the Festival of the Arts this year? There are only TWO plant-based items throughout the whole fest.
One of the plant-based offerings
Compared to other events like the Flower & Garden Festival and the Food & Wine Festival, this can be particularly disappointing. We’ve seen entire plant-based booths at those festivals in the past, with menu items made completely for those on vegetarian or sometimes vegan diets. If you come to the Festival of the Arts with that same expectation, you might be let down.
Impossible Meatball from Earth Eats at the 2022 Flower & Garden Festival
But what about past years at this festival? Well, compared with the menus from the past three years, things weren’t much better. In 2021, 2022, and 2023, there were only three plant-based items at the festival each year. That’s not a lot of options if you’re hoping to enjoy the offerings to their fullest!
2024 EPCOT Festival of the Arts
So consider this your warning if you’re a plant-based eater. You might want to look into other dining options around EPCOT so you don’t go hungry — after all, those festival portions aren’t exactly big!
If you do want to try the two items, the first is the Stone-baked Moroccan Bread with hummus, chermoula, and zhoug dips at Tangierine Cafe: Flavors of the Medina. The other is the Wild Mushroom Risotto with truffle shavings and zinfandel reduction at Gourmet Landscapes.
Stone-baked Moroccan Bread with hummus, chermoula, and zhoug dips
We’ll keep you in the loop with more Disney World dining news, so stay tuned to DFB for the latest!
Click Here to See All the Festival Menus!
MAKE THE MOST
OF YOUR FESTIVAL DAYS
DFB's guide to the Festival of the Arts details everything you need to know to maximize your time, budget, and stomach space! Know what's worth it and what to skip with our full-photo menus of each booth, complete with DFB's Best of the Fest.
It includes all the must-have information for navigating this colorful festival at Disney World, including:
- 🍭 Booth & food photos, maps, and crawls with DFB's exclusive recommendations!
- 🖌 The COMPLETE schedule of events (so you don't have to go hunting for all the dates!)
- 🎨 All the details on special events, artist meet-n-greets, festival-exclusive merchandise, and more!
MORE Festival of the Arts INFO!
See the FULL LIST of Food Booths, Menus, and Photos from the Festival of the Arts
Learn More About the Disney on Broadway Concert Series and Dining Packages
Click HERE for All of the Latest News and Details About the Festival of the Arts!
Join the DFB Newsletter to get all the latest Festival of the Arts news right in your inbox! Click here to Subscribe!
Are you going to the Festival of the Arts this year? Tell us in the comments!
Our handy (and portable!) ebook guides make sure you get the best deals and can plan a vacation of a lifetime.
I’ve also noticed gluten-free options are slim no matter what festival you go to.
Not even a small salad of some type? A fruit kabob? A cup of a vegetable soup of some kind? Surely, they could have found a couple more items that might also appeal to those who don’t eat strictly plant-based diets. I suspect that some of the offerings didn’t sell well in previous years, but you can get even steak eaters to order some heirloom tomatoes drizzled with balsamic vinegar or some colorful mango salsa with chips as a side to their meat dish.
And this is the exact reason why it’s my least favorite festival. Thanks for shedding some light on this!
I noticed the same thing. Being a plant based eater, there’s been an increasing focus during recent years. It seems like either the ball got dropped or the culinary team just didn’t care to think about it this time around.
Thanks for mentioning this! My husband and I are very disappointed with the limited options. It makes no sense, as plant-based foods are very popular, especially with younger people. According to research conducted by the Harris Poll for Vegetarian Resource Group, about 25% of U.S. adults order vegan meals when dining out.
We’re hoping for better in April when we’re back for Food and Wine. In the meantime, Sunshine Seasons has the great roasted veg sandwich and the fab cookies and cream mousse, so I think we’ll have some good options.
On a related note, the move toward prix fixe is a loser for plant-based diners as well. We pay as much for our usually less expensive meals and have very limited choices. This is our first trip since i don’t know when that we’re not going to California Grill because there’s only one veg entree, a pumpkin ravioli. We don’t want the same thing, and the pumpkin ravioli is an odd choice since if we get two different apps, one of us will need to get the Sonoma goat cheese ravioli. It’s fab, but two raviolis doesn’t make a lot of sense.
It seems like the pandemic really produced a setback for plant-based options. I was here on October 1, 2019 when all restaurants and QSRs had or added something plant-based. Now there seem to be some places with nothing.
Again, we won’t go hungry, and we enjoy so many wonderful options (Casey dog, Friar Tuck vegan bratwurst, vegan beignets, Dole Whip and more). But it’s disappointing to see things moving in the wrong direction.