Epcot

It’s always fun to explore the festival center. This place is only open during Food and Wine and Flower and Garden Festivals. Merchandise and cool chocolate displays created by various Disney Park hotels are displayed in the Ghirardelli pop up shop. This year they had Jungle Book and Frozen displays just to name a couple. There is always an amazing amount of detail that each hotel puts into their display. Of course it is Disney, so everything is done to perfection. Along with various pop up shops with wine, festival merchandise and art, there are a couple of restaurants that are used for both ticketed food classes and various demonstrations. Special passholder merchandise is also available only at the festival center. So if you’re a passholder that’s where you would purchase the limited edition t-​shirt, pin and collectors coin. The festival center opens at 9 and closes when the park closes. It’s located in Future World close to Test Track.

We went to the dessert demonstration when visiting for the Food and Wine Festival at The Epcot Festival Center, located inside Disney’s Epcot Theme Park. We bought our tickets online prior to attend the park for a «live cooking» demonstration of a dessert to be cooked by a professional chef. When we arrived at the Festival Center we had to wait in line to get our tickets. We were not made aware of that when we first purchased the tickets ($ 15 each). Other than that, it was a fun experience and a nice break from the heat! Our dessert was half flan half chocolate cake. Both were delicious but the flan was the best! The demonstration lasted about an hour. The two chefs who did the cooking demonstration were funny, entertaining, and did a great job of walking us through the recipe. They gave us a print out to bring home so that we can try our luck at cooking the magnificent dessert they provided us with.

During the Flower and Garden Festival in the spring and the Food and Wine Festival in the fall, there are a good many presentations that go on. Many are from famous chefs, and famous people from HGTV. The majority of the presentations happen here at the Epcot Festival Center.
Even if you’re like me and not so much interested in the presentations, this is still a pretty cool place to check out. They booths set up inside which sell the various merchandise for the festivals. You can also find Limited Edition and Limited Release items here like the pins. There are also displays and whatnot set up.
As others have mentioned, it can be difficult to find. Head towards Mission Space. If you still can’t find it, you’re in the right area, so any Cast Member you happen upon will be able to point you in the right direction.

The Festival Center serves as the central hub for both the Flower & Garden Festival that happens each spring as well as the International Food & Wine Festival that takes place each fall. If you want to partake in any of the special seminars going on, this is where they go down.
If you don’t know where you’re going, the Festival Center is a little off the beaten circular path of EPCOT, however plenty of signage for each respective festival will guide your way. Plus, a throng of people to follow usually helps. Disney sets up little festival themed gift shops for you to peruse and it offers a nice chance to go to the bathroom before hitting the rest of the park.
Word of advice: They close down online reservations for seminars to allow for walk-​in sign ups. So even if you’re seminar choice is full, don’t give up hope, they might still have seats available on the day of the event.

This place can be hard to find. It’s sandwiched between The Universe of Energy and Mission Space. You don’t really see much of it from outside. If you aren’t looking for it you could easily miss it. Plus it seems to close earlier than the rest of the park. Usually when we think to look in here it’s already closed. We made it a point to go around 4pm and found not much going on. The building itself is really interesting. It’s a large dome with triangular patterns similar to the ones on Spaceship Earth covering the roof. There are large windows in the ceiling to let in light.
This is the place where HGTV personalities make appearances evidently. The presentations were well over when we got there. There was a Disney cast member giving a presentation about helpful bugs on crops, but we didn’t stick around for it. There was a café for some eats and some gift shops to look at. There was a section that looked like a classroom. Each of the places to sit had a potted plant on the desk. We weren’t sure what that was for. In the back of the building is an interesting history of topiaries at Disney throughout the decades.
If you’re at the Flower and Garden Festival during the morning this looks like it could be an interesting way to spend some time. In the late afternoon that’s not really the case.