New Dining Surface Alternatives Installed at EPCOT Ahead of This Year's International Food & Wine Festival

Guests visiting EPCOT now have an additional option (aside from atop contained refuse) to enjoy their festival food and drink with the installation of new counter surfaces in World Showcase.

What's Happening:

• A viral sensation literally hours after they debuted, a new feature has arrived at EPCOT just in time for the park's International Food & Wine Festival.
• Though something that those attending Disney California Adventure's Food & Wine Festival have enjoyed for several years now, counters for dining have been added to fence lines in the World Showcase area of the park.
• As of press time, a lot of these new features were spotted near the Odyssey pavilion. Funny, considering that this particular former full-service dining location adjacent to these counters has an abundance of tables for guests to utilize when enjoying the sips and bites offered inside, or brought from elsewhere in the park.
• Those who have been to, frankly ANY, of EPCOT's numerous festivals know that the festival kitchens placed throughout the park are a big draw, though it all started with EPCOT's International Food & Wine Festival. However, they have become so popular that many folks found themselves dining on their delectables using the tops of nearby trash cans as a surface.
• Social media in recent years has eaten this idea up, turning the trend into an outright rite of EPCOT festival passage, as opposed to something one just has to deal with since there are no free tables nearby. Some Etsy artists have even sold EPCOT Trash Can tablecloths for use while visiting the park during a festival.
• Perhaps not as coincidentally as one might initially perceive, the countertop additions come as new trash cans have appeared throughout the park - notably with a small curve to them and solar panels to compact the trash within - which doesn't allow for easy placement of food, drink, and other items.

• As the new counters have appeared on social media in recent days, a large swath of comments were either honestly misguided thinking they were for sitting - or made quips to how fast these will be gone because people keep sitting on them.
• That said, EPCOT engineers have likely foreseen this as well, with each of the countertops emblazoned with a "no sitting" icon.
• When we spotted them in the park, they were largely concentrated near the Odyssey pavilion though we anticipate they will appear throughout World Showcase, if not all of EPCOT, in the near future.

• The EPCOT International Food and Wine Festival is set to launch next week on August 27 and run through November 21, 2026.
• To plan your visit to Walt Disney World during the festival or any other time of year, be sure to reach out to our friends at Mouse Fan Travel!