The 2024 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival is underway, which means it’s time to eat our way around World Showcase (and beyond). Our culinary journey has been an interesting one so far, starting with the spiciest food at Walt Disney World, and then moving on to four loaded hot dogs. Keeping with the theme of wings and hot dogs, we’re headed to the Macatizers Global Marketplace in CommuniCore Hall to try four mac & cheese dishes that are all new to the Food & Wine Festival.  Let’s jump into our Macatizers review from the 2024 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival!

Macatizers Review | 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival

The Macatizers Global Marketplace is all new for 2024 and it’s part of the CommuniCore Hall festival center. We’ve had a lot to say already about CommuniCore Hall, none of it good, so we’ll focus on the mac & cheese for this review.

Up to bat are four mac & cheese dishes that range from traditional to un-traditional. We’ll take a bite out of each to see how they stack up, and if you should make a trip to Macatizers this year.

Traditional Macaroni and Cheese | $5.50

Topped with herbed panko

Good ‘ol mac and cheese. From (way too spicy) chicken wings to hot dogs to mac and cheese, our Food & Wine experience hasn’t exactly been fine dining just yet, but we’ll get there. With a close-up detailed shot of the dish, the small portion sizes are lost a bit. Some of our mac and cheese bowls were one-scoop, while others were two-scoop servings. Either way, the bottom of the bowl shouldn’t be visible and it was on three of the four bowls, with a healthy serving size of toppings saving one of the bowls.

I’m not a huge fan of panko on mac and cheese, so I was happy to see that it wasn’t layered in panko. There’s really not much else to say about the traditional mac and cheese – it’s mac and cheese. There isn’t anything elevated about it, unlike mac and cheese dishes of yesteryear at the Food & Wine Festival, but that’s not to say that it’s bad, just standard.

Cheesesteak Macaroni and Cheese | $6.50

with shaved beef, peppers and onions, and breadcrumbs

Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. This was the best of the bunch, and while the cheesesteak part of the dish didn’t disappoint on portion size, the mac and cheese part did. Again, tough to showcase small portion sizes with zoomed-in photos, but trust us on this one. Underwhelming portion size will be a recurring theme, especially compared to what is presented on the menu board (pictured below). Of course, if you actually received what was pictured at any Walt Disney World dining location, there probably wouldn’t be a need for fan site reviews.

Truffle Macaroni and Cheese | $6.50

Perhaps the weakest portion size of our visit to Macatizers was the Truffle Mac and Cheese – just look at all of the available space that wasn’t filled in. Tsk-tsk, Disney. This was basically a three-bite dish that we tried to turn into four or five bites to enjoy some of the truffle more. Again, the flavors were there but the portion size effectively felt like a rip-off (even by Food & Wine standards).

IMPOSSIBLE Chili Macaroni and Cheese | $6.50

The “chili” mac and cheese is a plant-based option, with IMPOSSIBLE “meat” doing the heavy lifting here. I liked it, and IMPOSSIBLE does a wonderful job of creating convincing “meat” for guests looking for alternatives. The execution here is nearly indistinguishable from the “real” thing. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Fritos corn chips here, but it makes sense for the dish as a whole.

Macatizers Beverages:

  • Crooked Can Brewing Company Vinifera Velvet Lager | $5.75/$9.75 (6oz/12oz)
  • Southern Tier Brewing Co Raspberry Shine Summer Wheat Ale | $5.75/$9.75 (6oz/12oz)
  • Lexington Brewing and Distilling Company Kentucky Pumpkin Bourbon Barrel Ale | $5.75/$9.75 (6oz/12oz)
  • Beer Flight | $10.25
  • Terrazas de los Andes Reserva Chardonnay | $6.50
  • Klinker Brick Bricks & Roses Rosé | $6.50
  • Beringer Bros Bourbon Barrel Aged Cabernet Sauvignon | $6.00 
  • Wine Flight | $8.00
  • Knights Bridge Sauvignon Blanc | $8.00
  • St. Supéry Domaine de l’Ile Rosé | $8.00
  • Caymus 50th Anniversary Cabernet Sauvignon | $20
  • Wine Flight | $14.00

Overall, Macatizers is just ok. It’ll work in a pinch, and perhaps the portion sizes will be better when you visit, but we didn’t leave feeling like it was a Global Marketplace that we’d want to visit again on future visits. The EPCOT Food & Wine Festival has definitely had better mac and cheese offerings in the recent past, and I don’t think this version of the dishes will make it into 2025. That said, the mac and cheese was tasty enough for what it was, and the cheesesteak mac and cheese was a standout dish. In a perfect world, we’d love to see Boursin sponsorship return to the mac and cheese booth next year!

As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!

You Might Like