Seven Things to Know About CommuniCore Hall and CommuniCore Plaza at EPCOT
CommuniCore Hall, CommuniCore Plaza and the Mickey and Friends greeting location open in EPCOT's World Celebration on June 10, completing a park transformation that started in 2019. The new spaces bring two outdoor stages, the Festival Favorites quick service window, a show kitchen and a mural of EPCOT past and present.
The construction walls around EPCOT's World Celebration are down, and CommuniCore Hall, CommuniCore Plaza and the Mickey and Friends character greeting location open to all guests on June 10. The three spaces close out a park transformation that began when the first walls went up in 2019.
Key Details
- Opening: June 10, 2024
- Where: World Celebration, the neighborhood at the center of EPCOT
- What opens: CommuniCore Hall, CommuniCore Plaza and the Mickey and Friends greeting location
- New dining: Festival Favorites, a quick service window beside the CommuniCore Plaza Stage
- First show: Celebracion Encanto at the CommuniCore Plaza Stage, for a limited time from June 10
- Included with: Regular EPCOT theme park admission
Two new outdoor stages at CommuniCore Plaza
EPCOT already runs more live entertainment than any other park at Walt Disney World, from the Matsuriza drummers in Japan to the Voices of Liberty at the American Adventure to the JAMMitors working trash cans near the front of the park. CommuniCore Plaza adds two more venues to that roster.
The CommuniCore Plaza Stage opens first, with Celebracion Encanto, a family sing-along built around songs from Walt Disney Animation Studios' Encanto, running for a limited time from June 10. The show tells the story of the Madrigal family during the day, and after dark a Latin groove band takes the stage instead.
The second performance space sits at the opposite end of the plaza and is built for open-air entertainment. Disney has not said yet what will play there.
Festival Favorites brings festival dishes to the park year round
Guests peering over the construction walls in recent weeks spotted the sign for the new quick service location, and it is called Festival Favorites. It sits right beside the CommuniCore Plaza Stage and serves a rotating selection of items pulled from EPCOT's four annual festivals.
That is a meaningful change to how EPCOT works. Festival dishes have always been tied to a window on the calendar, and Festival Favorites gives them a permanent address. The opening summer lineup includes items inspired by Encanto, among them a cheese-stuffed arepa with cilantro-lime crema and cotija, and a coconut tres leches, a vanilla cake soaked in oat, almond and coconut milk and topped with toasted coconut.
Mickey and Friends, a new character greeting location
Next door, Mickey and Friends is a new indoor greeting space where guests can meet Mickey Mouse and other characters. The room is bright and heavily colored, designed as a photo location rather than a queue with a backdrop at the end of it.
The new EPCOT mural on CommuniCore Hall
Before stepping into Mickey and Friends, it is worth stopping at the mural on the side of CommuniCore Hall, which depicts EPCOT past and present.
Art has been part of the park since it opened. The communication history scenes leading into Spaceship Earth and the mosaic on the path to The Land pavilion are both original to EPCOT, and more recently Imagineers painted their own interpretations of Mickey Mouse on the walls of Creations Shop. The CommuniCore Hall mural joins that lineage.
What CommuniCore Hall is for
The brief for the center of the park was a space that could be several things at once: somewhere for guests to sit down, an anchor venue for the EPCOT festivals, and a room flexible enough to host whatever comes next. CommuniCore Hall is the answer.
Disney describes it as an ever-changing hall that will come to life seasonally around art, live music and food. On opening day the practical use is simpler: it is an air-conditioned room in the middle of EPCOT where guests can carry a plate from Festival Favorites and find a table.
The show kitchen inside
CommuniCore Hall includes a show kitchen, following the model already running at Connections Cafe and Eatery, where guests watch the culinary team make liege waffles and Baumkuchen. EPCOT culinary cast members will work the CommuniCore Hall kitchen for special events and occasions, and Disney has hinted that guest chefs may turn up in it.
The cast behind the transformation
EPCOT leadership used the announcement to credit the park's cast members and the Imagineers who worked the project from the first construction walls in 2019 through opening day. The point they made is the one Walt Disney made about needing people to turn a plan into a place, and it is cast members who will run CommuniCore Hall, CommuniCore Plaza and Mickey and Friends day to day.
Where this leaves the EPCOT transformation
CommuniCore Hall and CommuniCore Plaza are the last major pieces of a multi-year rebuild that touched every corner of the park. The additions along the way:
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind
- Remy's Ratatouille Adventure
- Journey of Water, Inspired by Moana
- Awesome Planet and Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along
- Canada Far and Wide in Circle-Vision 360
- DuckTales World Showcase Adventure
- Space 220, Takumi-Tei and Regal Eagle Smokehouse: Craft Drafts and Barbecue
- Connections Cafe and Eatery, La Creperie de Paris and La Gelateria Toscana
- Creations Shop and Club Cool
- World Celebration Gardens, Dreamers Point, the Main Entrance Fountain and new lighting on Spaceship Earth
What this means for guests
For anyone who has only visited EPCOT during the construction years, June 10 is the first time the center of the park reads as finished. The practical wins are a shaded plaza with two stages, an indoor room with seating, festival food available outside festival season, and one more place to meet Mickey Mouse.
The longer-term question is what CommuniCore Hall becomes between festivals, since a flexible space is only as good as what gets programmed into it. The first test is the opening summer.