Some people visit BlogMickey.com for the construction updates. Others for the breaking news. Even more for photos and videos from inside the Walt Disney World theme parks. And for a very, very small percentage of you, you visit for the hard-hitting investigative journalism. This article is for you. With the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival just around the corner, and the new solar trash cans spreading throughout World Showcase, we decided to test how well the new bins would function as tables. Here’s what we found, and what you should know before eating and drinking your way around World Showcase.
Using Solar Trash Cans as EPCOT Festival Tables
Ah, the once-humble trash can. At EPCOT, the trash can held your food before, during, and after you were finished with it. Now, Disney World has new trash cans fitted out with all of the bells and whistles. They are solar-powered. The new cans have the ability to expand their capacity by 5x with internal compaction. They also alert Cast Members when they are getting full.
While Disney fans have had a lot to say on the topic of the solar trash cans, one question remains unanswered: will they function as tables for the EPCOT festivals? We’re here to answer that question.
We’ll start with a look at the curved dome top of the trash cans. I imagine that the curved top is to prevent accumulation of water and to keep the area relatively clear for the solar components underneath. As you can see in our side profile shot below, the curved top can provide a challenge for using the trash can as a table. While I don’t have an exact measurement, the angle between the apex of the curved portion of the top of the bin and the edge of the bin appears to be some 6-10° of slope. With it being curved, that 6-10° may only be a couple of degrees across the base of your dish. Instead of relying on math, let’s see if we can get some food items to fall off the edge.
Field Testing the Solar Trash Cans as Tables
While there is no EPCOT Festival ongoing right now, we can still simulate what it might be like to use these trash cans as a table when the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival arrives at the end of August. Of course, you can’t just run this simulation with any quick-service dish. The EPCOT Festival dishes are somewhat unique. The closest that we could find to simulate the Festival dishes during this Festival-free time of the summer was the kids’ meals at Lotus Blossom Café in the China Pavilion.
While the portions are marginally larger than EPCOT Festival menu items, this should serve as a good test for using the solar trash can as a table.
As you can see in our photos below, we placed the “dishes” at various points along the curved top of the solar trash can. The dishes did remarkably well, perhaps aided by the textured plastic. It seemed like the heavier the dish, the better it did, even at extreme angles. We placed our food irresponsibly close to the edge of the trash can, and they stayed in place. That said, drinks were a different story.
As seen in the photos below, drink cups start to get unstable. They will begin sliding off of the top of the trash can if they are placed anywhere in the lower third of the top of the bin. I’m not sure I’d trust a $4.99 Coca-Cola on top of the bins, much less a $22 Le Geant Slush. You can even see the angle of the drinks as they began to tip in the first photo below. The Coca-Cola is pushing up against the lid, creating quite the high center of gravity relative to the food dishes.
In this experiment, none of the items fell, but that was mainly because I didn’t want to create a mess in service of “content”.
On the whole, I think that the solar trash cans will work fine as tables in a pinch. That said, they will require a bit more attention than the flat-topped legacy bins. I wouldn’t suggest that any liquids be placed on the top of the bins at all. Any food items should be placed closer to the centerline. That will reduce the chance of your $10 filet mignon from Canada ending up on the ground.
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!