Just a few more months to go. Maybe 6 months. Hopefully less. While visiting EPCOT recently, we decided to take a spin on the monorail to check in on the CommuniCore Hall construction in the World Celebration pit.

The CommuniCore Hall multi-purpose building replaces the World Celebration Festival Center, which was budget cut during the theme park closures in March 2020. CommuniCore Hall will be home to a festival stage, meet & greets, a demonstration kitchen, a mixology bar, and serve as a festival support center. It is expected to open in late 2023.

Here’s a look at concept art for the building, which will sit in the southwest corner of World Celebration.

Here’s a look at the festival stage that will be part of CommuniCore Hall.

We can see that the building structure is now complete, with crews working on insulating the building and working on hardscape areas in what will be CommuniCore Plaza. Here’s a site plan of the area, with the main building to the north, and the plaza and festival stage sitting a bit further south. It’s not immediately clear what the outcropping building to the east is, but it could be seating or a shaded area for guests who don’t want to relax in the sunbaked plaza.

Zooming out a bit, we can see how this building will fit in with the refreshed World Celebration area in EPCOT.

Ok, time for the construction update portion of our article. We’ll start with some wider shots to get our bearings, and then zoom in to see what we can of the construction. The flower bed looks great as we continue to enjoy the Flower & Garden Festival.

Working our way across the site from left to right, we’ll start with the CommuniCore Hall building, which will also house the future Mickey & Friends meet and greet space. As you can see, Disney is finishing the building exterior with sheathing before more theming is added.

It looks like access to the building will be very easy from multiple spots. Here’s a closer look at the access point facing south toward CommuniCore Plaza.

Turning our attention to CommuniCore Plaza, we can see that hardscape work has begun.

The site plan calls for an open area with planters in the shaped concrete on either side of the plaza. Here’s a closer look at those planters.

Tucked away in the shade of the overhang and behind the crane is the outline of a stage that will be utilized for Festival entertainment. It’s a much smaller stage than the American Gardens Theater, so we’ll be interested to see how effectively it can be utilized. Right now, we’re picturing something certainly smaller than the American Gardens Theater, but something more useful than the World Showcase stages that can be found in other countries like Canada or Morocco.

Continuing left to right, we can see this outcropping structure.

The concrete structure under the canopy appears to be the service stairway to the underground basement in this part of EPCOT, so it’s possible that some of this area could be backstage for Cast Members and not part of plans for guest-accessible spaces in the WOrld Celebration.

Changing direction, we’re now going to turn out attention t the north side of the building as we continue along the monorail loop in a clockwise direction around The Pit. The only structure that remained in this area from Future World is this set of restrooms. They are currently behind construction walls, but it looks like work is completed.

Beyond the restrooms, the Mickey & Friends/CommuniCore Hall building continues to the north as it wraps around the restroom building.

Continuing clockwise on the monorail, we can see the northern end of the building complex. Essentially what we’re looking at below is the CommuniCore Hall/Mickey & Friends complex to the south (right), an east to west walkway in the middle, and then the Journey of Water – Inspired by Moana site to the north (left) out of view behind the tree. The walkway directly below the monorail is the on that leads to The Land Pavilion “behind” us, and the World Celebration construction site in front of us. The trees and building off in the distance is the Creations Shop/Connection Cafe area and then World Discovery beyond that.

Here’s a closer look at the hardscape being installed now.

Disney has previously said this entire area will be open later this year, but an exact date or even month has not been disclosed.

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!