Think about what you would wait hours and hours for in the Florida heat. Maybe the newest rollercoaster, a meet and greet with your favorite character… but not many would wait for a purple dragon popcorn bucket—except, of course, the people who did wait many hours for one in Disney World the morning of January 14th.
Epcot (the one with the giant golf ball) holds many festivals throughout the calendar year, from Food and Wine Festival to Flower and Garden Festival. In the first few months of the year, the Festival of the Arts occurs with special events and limited-edition items to celebrate the arts. There are Broadway performers, Disney artists, artistic activities for guests to participate in and more. Instead of these getting the most attention on the opening day of the festival, the line of people spanning across half the park for most of the day grabbed the attention of guests, cast members and news outlets alike.
Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California often release limited-edition popcorn buckets, sometimes to celebrate a special event or new area. Most times they do this, the lines are long with excited guests but also the dreaded resellers. This time was different, with major news outlets like CNN and the New York Post covering one of the longest lines in Disney history.
Many people who did wait in the very, very long line for this popcorn bucket throughout the day say that they waited anywhere from two hours to seven hours within that first day of the festival. Before the food stand sold out of the popcorn bucket a few days after its debut, the line was still about an hour long.
Unfortunately, quite a lot of people in the lines were not looking for a fun companion for themselves and their popcorn, but a way for them to make a little money. Resellers were not even waiting to leave the park before they posted their listings of the newest Disney popcorn bucket. Amongst all of this, when photos eBay listings of the Figment popcorn buckets started being posted, a seller named Julia posted a “bad” drawing of this popcorn bucket with a promise to send the drawing with a bag of microwave popcorn to the highest bidder—with all the proceeds going to charity. Before the fun was ruined by a bidder who said they would buy the drawing for $10,000, the bid got up to $600 with multiple people bidding on… a bad drawing of this purple dragon. Very meta.
Within these horror stories, there were also happy ones with the magic of Disney being shown through strangers. There were stories of people giving their popcorn buckets to kids farther down the line and Instagram influencers giving away theirs to followers to spread a little Figment magic.
So if you find yourself at Disney World before February 21st (when the festival ends) and were hoping to grab a Figment popcorn bucket, you might be disappointed. But hey, there’s always the limited-edition Figment spork that is still available and not going for hundreds of dollars online!