EPCOT's troubled in-ground lighting is gone, and crews have filled the channels with concrete

The curved light strips that traced an EPCOT logo pattern across World Celebration Gardens are out of the ground, and the trenches they left behind are being filled with concrete. That second part is the part that matters. Pulling the strips out left room for a repair. Sealing the channels shut does not.

Blog Mickey photographed the filled sections on Tuesday, August 18, reporting that crews "have now filled those channels with themed concrete that matches the surrounding pavers" and that the fill "traces the same curves the lighting strips once occupied." The outlet said Disney has not responded to its requests for comment about the work.

The curves are still there, now traced in fresh concrete instead of light. A wheelbarrow, buckets and a trash can sit staged at the right, beside the rolling hedge-covered barriers. Photo: Blog Mickey

What came out: the programmable in-ground lighting around the central planter behind Spaceship Earth, installed in what WDW News Today called "a nod to classic EPCOT" and modeled on the light-up pavement of the old Future World.

First the strips, then the concrete

Rolling, hedge-covered construction barriers went up around half of the central planter on August 11, according to Blog Mickey's timeline. By August 18 the strips themselves were gone, leaving narrow channels cut into the pavers with loose mortar and debris still sitting in some sections. Blog Mickey noted that no new conduit, wiring or lighting hardware was staged anywhere it could see.

The other side of the same plaza, photographed earlier in the day with the strips pulled and the channels still open. Photo: Blog Mickey

WDW News Today, which also photographed the area on August 18, reported that half of the center courtyard had been blocked off earlier this month and that many of the strips in the closed section were gone. Its writeup made the same point about not knowing yet whether Disney would fill the trenches or try again with new lighting.

The open half of the plaza remains walkable while crews finish.

Broken one day after opening

World Celebration Gardens opened on December 5, 2023. WDW News Today published photos of the lighting malfunctioning on December 6, under the headline "PHOTOS: Lighting Elements Malfunctioning in World Celebration Gardens at EPCOT Just One Day After Opening." In that piece the outlet described watching sections refuse to follow the rest of the area: "Here, you can see a section of the ground has turned red, despite the entire area changing to green." When the area shifted to blue, the red section stayed red.

The strips lit at night in December 2023, from the WDW News Today report that documented sections failing to follow the rest of the area. Photo: WDW News Today

The problems did not let up. In its recap of the installation's history, Blog Mickey lists the lighting as completely broken in November 2024, reactivated later that same month with struggles continuing, looking bad again in January 2025 as strips separated from the ground, and then getting a stopgap in June 2025 when Disney began screwing the loosened strips back down. WDW News Today has described the same fixes, reporting that warped and cracked plastic covers led to areas being roped off as a tripping hazard and that Disney tried holding the covers down with "random screws."

The originals used different technology

The effect was a callback, not an original idea. WDW News Today notes that the strips "paid homage to the light-up pavement that was removed from Future World for its World Celebration transformation," and that the old lights "were achieved with different technology and did not have the same issues."

The Future World original: clusters of tiny pinpoint lights set into the paving squares, a different technology from the programmable strips that replaced it. Photo: WDW News Today

That is the quiet irony of this one. The tribute to EPCOT's light-up pavement lasted two years and eight months. The Future World original it was copying ran on different technology and, by WDW News Today's account, never gave Disney these problems.

Neither outlet has a statement from Disney on whether a replacement is coming later, and the filled channels are the strongest signal so far that one is not.

Sources

• Blog Mickey, "UPDATE: Disney World Abandons In-Ground Lighting at EPCOT"
• Blog Mickey, "Problematic In-Ground Lighting Removed at EPCOT"
• WDW News Today, "Pavement Lights Removed From World Celebration at EPCOT After Years of Issues"
• WDW News Today, "PHOTOS: Lighting Elements Malfunctioning in World Celebration Gardens at EPCOT Just One Day After Opening"

Image credits: first two photos by Blog Mickey (the first is also the featured image). Last two photos by WDW News Today.