World Showcase

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Epcot's World Showcase is an ongoing World’s Fair encircling a picturesque 40-acre lagoon. The cuisine, culture, history, and architecture of almost a dozen countries (and one make-believe kingdom) are permanently displayed in individual national pavilions spaced along a 1.2-mile promenade. Pavilions replicate familiar landmarks and present representative street scenes from the host countries.

World Showcase has some of the loveliest gardens in the United States. In Germany, France, United Kingdom, Canada, and, to a lesser extent, China, they’re sometimes tucked away and out of sight of pedestrian traffic on the World Showcase promenade. They’re best appreciated during the day, as a Clio, Michigan, woman explains:

Visit World Showcase in the daylight in order to view the beautiful gardens. We were sorry we didn’t do this because we were following the guide and riding rides that we could have done later in the dark.

Unofficial Tip

If you don’t want to spring for the Passport Kit, the Disney folks will be happy to stamp an autograph book or just about anything else—even your forehead.

Some kids find World Showcase boring, so to make it more interesting, most Epcot retail shops sell Passport Kits for about $12. Each kit contains a blank “passport” and stamps for every World Showcase country. As kids accompany their folks to each country, they tear out the appropriate stamp and stick it in the passport. Disney has built a lot of profit into this little product, but guests—namely, parents—don’t seem to mind the cost. As this dad from Birmingham, Alabama, relates, the Passport Kit helps get the kids through World Showcase with a minimum of impatience, whining, and tantrums:

Adding stamps from the Epcot countries was the only way I was able to see all the displays with cheerful children.

Children also enjoy Kidcot Fun Stops, which are usually nothing more than a large table set up somewhere in each pavilion. Tables are staffed by Disney cast members who stamp passports and lead modest craft projects relating to the host countries.

A mom from Billerica, Massachusetts, is a fan of the Fun Stops:

The Kidcot project at Epcot was amazing! Our 2- and 5-year-olds loved making masks and collecting stamps.

An adult version of passport-stamp collecting is known as Drinking Around the World, an activity enthusiastically endorsed by a woman from party-hearty New Orleans:

We drank a beer in each country at Epcot—Dad was the designated driver—and posed for photos in each, and it quickly became hilarious, as were the progression-of-drunkenness photos that followed.

World Showcase offers some of the most diverse and interesting shopping in Walt Disney World.