One of my favorite activities during Epcot’s four festivals is completing the festival scavenger hunt. During Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival, there is Remy’s Hide and Squeak. The Epcot’s International Festival of the Holidays brings Chin n’ Dale Christmas Tree Spree. Figment’s Brush with the Masters happens during Epcot’s International Festival of the Arts, and Spike’s Pollen Nation Exploration and Egg-stravaganza hunt take place during Epcot’s International Flower and Garden Festival.
All of them are fun. However, I think some of them are better than others. These scavenger hunts are an extra cost, but the maps make a neat souvenir to take home. It’s not too expensive and annual passholders get a discount. Shops around the world showcase sell the maps. Once you have your map, you search for the featured figures throughout the World Showcase and put the corresponding sticker on the map. After you found all the objects and placed the right stickers to the right countries on your map, you bring it back to the Port of Entry shop and receive a prize. The prizes can range from pins to patches. Prizes change every festival. These are my personal ratings of the scavenger hunts, but I would love to hear your favorites and least favorites in the comments below.
5. Chip n’ Dale Christmas Tree Spree
This scavenger hunt requires participants to search for holiday wreaths containing Chip n’ Dale that contain an ornament unique to the country that the wreath was located in. Once found, the participants find the sticker of that ornament and place it on the map. Some of the Epcot’s International Festival of the Holidays offerings feel a little bit like the leftovers of the Food and Wine Festival (mainly the food kiosks). I think this scavenger hunt suffers from being too similar to the the Remy’s Hide and Squeak hunt.
There is potential to make this a better and more engaging hunt though. I would love to see this game redesigned to fit the theme of Chip and Dale decorating a world showcase Christmas tree. Ideally, this scavenger hunt could be improved by replacing the wreaths with actual, large ornaments with Chin n’ Dale on it. This could open up more hiding places outside (like the Easter egg hunt) instead of being confined primarily to gift shops. The next change that I would like to see, is a change in the prizes. This year’s option of greeting cards just felt a little uninspiring. It’s the holidays and I would like to have something more like a keepsake. It would be fun to offer up a new ornament every year, then participants could relive the memories of the scavenger hunt every year as they decorated their tree with the ornaments they’ve collected.
4. Remy’s Hide and Squeak
Remy’s Hide and Squeak is offered during Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival. The goal of this scavenger hunt is to help Remy find all of the ingredients he needs to make his world famous ratatouille. Little figures of Remy holding an ingredient are found throughout the World Showcase. Once participants find what ingredient Remy is holding, they place that ingredient sticker on the corresponding country. Overall, I like the concept behind the game and it fits in well with the Food and Wine Festival, but some of the ingredients are so hard to see with the naked eye. I spend a large amount of time just trying to figure out what Remy is holding, and have collaborated with strangers who were also trying to make out what’s in Remy’s hands. It starts to feel a little like viewing an abstract art installation. Is it a baguette? Is it a squash? I just don’t know!
3. Spike’s Pollen Nation Exploration
Spike Pollen Nation Exploration debuted at the last International Flower and Garden Festival. In this scavenger hunt, participants look for Spike and a corresponding picture of a plant seed packet. Participants place the plant sticker on the map with the correct garden location. Most of the locations offer quite a bit of information about the plants. Spike can be found exclusively outside in any number of the gardens around the world showcase. What I love about this hunt is that it makes participants spend more time looking at the variety of gardens that they might otherwise walk pass.
2. Egg-stravaganza
I love this scavenger hunt!. Egg-stravaganza is offered in the spring during the International Flower and Garden Festival. Participants look for gigantic Easter eggs painted as Disney characters. These eggs could be inside gift shops, but many of them are outside (which make this one a little bit more engaging). It gives participants more ground to cover and look in some unexpected spots. This is a really well executed scavenger hunt and would probably be my number one if it was offered for a longer period. Unfortunately, Disney decided to offer this scavenger hunt for only a couple of weeks. It limits the amount of people who can enjoy this activity. The time of the Easter egg hunt also coincided with a lot of annual passholders’ blockout dates. I hope that Disney will lengthen the amount of time this scavenger hunt is offered in the future because it is so much fun.
1. Figment’s Brush with the Masters
I think Figment found his rightful home in the International Festival of the Arts. The Figment’s Brush with the Masters scavenger hunt feels like a more appropriate homage to Figment than what is currently housed in the Imagination Pavilion. I like to think that Figment traveled through time to inspire these artists to paint their works. In this hunt, participants search for works of art connected to the countries in which they’re located. The twist, here, is that Figment has put himself into these famous works of art. I love that this hunt introduces kids to masterpieces in a fun way. My background in the arts probably gives me some bias in choosing this as my number one. I get super excited to see works of art that I have taught being showcased in an imaginative way.
What’s your favorite Epcot festival scavenger hunt?
