EPCOT’s Transformation Continues: Firsthand Look at World Celebration Gardens, 'Walt the Dreamer' Statue and ‘Luminous’ Fireworks Spectacular

EPCOT’s multi-year transformation reached another major milestone on Dec. 5, Walt Disney’s Birthday, with the opening of World Celebration Gardens, the unveiling of the new “Walt the Dreamer” statue and the debut of the park’s new nighttime fireworks spectacular, “Luminous the Symphony of Us.” Here’s a closer look at the new offerings.  

After years of enclosure behind construction walls, World Celebration Gardens opened Dec. 5. Five distinct garden spaces surround a central hub where a planter and pavement design combine to form EPCOT’s iconic five-ring logo.

Elevated above the rest of World Celebrations Gardens, Dreamers Point overlooks the gardens and the walkway to World Showcase beyond. Seated on a long bench is a new statue, “Walt the Dreamer.” The statue “represents Walt later in his life when he was dreaming up the overall Florida Project and the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow,” according to the Disney Parks Blog. “He sits with a sense of fulfillment, enjoying the beauty of his realized dream: a park that represents pure optimism and truly celebrates the magic of possibility.” Guests are invited to sit alongside Walt and snap a photo.

World Celebration Gardens are intended to provide new spaces for slowing down during a day at EPCOT. “They’re a place for guests to connect and unwind,” said Chelsea Whikehart, a senior producer with Walt Disney Imagineering. “We’re putting the ‘park’ back in theme park.”

The design of each of the gardens connects back to adjacent areas of World Celebration. Each has a distinctly different design and identity, but the gardens all provide open space and seating options best suited to the nearest offerings. The garden closest to CommuniCore Hall and Plaza, which will introduce new dining and entertainment offerings when the space opens in 2024, has an eclectic mix of benches, standard and high-top tables and chairs, and bar-type seating surrounding trees in planters. Light fixtures with colored glass and geometric patterns hang overhead.

In addition to providing new spaces for relaxation, World Celebration Gardens will also become a home for “festival activations,” said Whikehart. “It’s kind of like a blank palette,” she said, providing hypothetical examples. “There could be a trio of instrumentalists; there could be artists doing a live painting here in our garden,” she said during our conversion in the whimsical garden nearest Creations Shop, which features sculptural benches that curve up from the ground, and blue and green wavy lines through the center of the garden paths. ”There are a lot of things we could do that we hope will shift and change along the way.”

In the garden quadrant nearest World Nature, casually referred to as Inspiration Garden, metal tree-like sculptures with geometric cut-out shapes stand tall over the garden. Wood-topped, curved benches surround the space, its earth tones reminiscent of the nearby, recently opened World Nature attraction, Journey of Water – Inspired by Moana.

Daisy Duck and Pluto have both begun meeting guests in the gardens. Daisy meets beneath the metal “trees” in the garden near World Nature, and Pluto seems to roam a bit more, but is officially listed as meeting near Creations Shop. Be sure to check the My Disney Experience app for times and locations during your visit.

Near Connections Café and Eatery, there’s a mix of tables and adirondack-style chairs for lounging with a Starbucks Coffee from Connections Café or a meal alfresco from Connections Eatery. Overhead, circular light fixtures connect back to fixtures inside Connections.

Charging Stations dot many of the garden seating areas, most prominently near tables in the Connections and CommuniCore quadrants. Charging stations are for 110V and USB charging — just be sure to bring your own cord (and plug) if needed.

A new background music loop also debuted in the World Celebration neighborhood on Dec. 5. Composed by Pinar Toprak, who is known for scoring "Captain Marvel” as well as the "EPCOT Anthem" that plays nightly during one of Spaceship Earth’s lighting show sequences, the new loop will soon be available on streaming services.

Easter Eggs and subtle references to classic EPCOT abound throughout World Celebration Gardens — from the use of geometric shapes to lighting and color choices. One not-so-subtle reference for those in the know is the paver design and the south entrance point into World Celebration. The Spaceship Earth design mirrors the one featured on the cover of the 1982 opening-year park map.

When the sun goes down, the lights go up, transforming World Celebration Gardens into a nighttime spectacle of light and music. Dynamic lighting sequences throughout the various gardens bring a kinetic energy to the area, creating a sense of movement and vibrancy that increases as the sky darkens and the lights take over.

As at the front of the park, the highlight after dark in the gardens is Spaceship Earth’s nightly display of light and music. The coordinated light display extends Spaceship Earth’s visual spectacle into the gardens. Lighting strips in the pavement, which form the garden hub’s EPCOT logo, along with the surrounding lighting columns, synchronize with Spaceship Earth’s “Points of Light,” establishing a new place to watch the series of coordinated displays of light and music that cycle throughout the evening.

Just as each garden quadrant’s physical details point back to the nearest areas of the park, so do their lighting treatments. By night, the lighting in the garden near Connections Café seamlessly transitions to lighting at Connections as well. Lights embedded in the ground along the walkway at Dreamers Point point channel nearby Spaceship Earth’s points of light and have the same programmability. And the sculptures near World Nature are bathed in a warm glow that enhances their geometric details while also illuminating the distant trees in an earth tone. 

“Luminous the Symphony of Us,” EPCOT’s new fireworks spectacular, also debuted Dec. 5. A refreshing departure from the heavy reliance on screens that’s become the norm for theme park nighttime shows, Luminous instead uses music, fireworks, fountains, light and narration to take guests on a moving journey through the life stages and moments common to the human experience. “We purposely didn't put visuals in this, and that's because we wanted you, the audience, to basically look into it,” said Steve Davison, creative executive for Disney Live Entertainment. Referring fireworks shows that pre-dated projections having inspired Luminous, he said, “We just basically did a story in the sky, and that's what we're doing here. We're doing color and texture and light to really have people go, 'Wow.' I can find something in my life to really kind of bring to them."

 

Luminous features new arrangements of nine well-known Disney songs, including multilingual arrangements of “You’ll Be in My Heart” from “Tarzan” and “Proud Corazon” from “Coco.” Bookending the show are two original songs “Heartbeat Symphony” and “Beating of our Hearts,” with Pinar Toprak’s EPCOT theme acting as the musical undercurrent. "If you think of it like a river, when we talk about Pinar’s theme, which she wrote for Epcot, it really is the base of the show,” Davison said. “You'll hear it moving throughout, and then woven into it are those original songs and the Disney themes that we’re bringing to it."

Unlike its predecessor “Harmonious,” EPCOT’s nighttime spectacular that debuted for Walt Disney World’s 50th anniversary and relied on massive, permanently moored barges that obstructed World Showcase views by day and only provided a full view of the show from central viewing locations, Luminous can be appreciated from nearly every point around World Showcase Lagoon. The Luminous barges have a much lower profile, and will be moved into and out of position daily, leaving World Showcase views fully unobstructed for the earlier portion of the day. Luminous’ barges, fountains and lights do offer an impressive show on the lagoon in addition to the fireworks in the sky, but the display has been choreographed such that it’s truly possible to enjoy exceptional views from any vantage point. Spaceship Earth does make a special appearance during the show that some guests will miss without it in view, but it’s not essential to the show.