The Glimmering Greenhouses tour is back for a third holiday season at EPCOT. Behind the Seeds: Glimmering Greenhouses runs November 27 through December 30, 2026, at $59 per person, and reservations open September 24.
Three nightly time slots are set for this year at 6:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. That matches the schedule the tour settled into in 2025, after it debuted in 2024 with only two nightly departures.
What The Tour Actually Is
This is the after-dark version of Behind the Seeds, the long-running walking tour of the growing areas behind Living with the Land. Guests spend about an hour on foot inside The Land pavilion, moving through four greenhouses and the Aquacell fish farm, the same spaces the boats float past on the attraction.
The difference in December is the lighting. The greenhouses are dressed for the season with the Glimmering Greenhouses displays, and the tour puts guests underneath them rather than gliding by at boat distance. Guides work holiday food traditions into the route, tying them to the crops actually growing overhead.
The holiday additions in past years have included a hidden glass pickle tucked into a vegetable canopy and themed wrapping paper created by Walt Disney Imagineering, with guests sent home holding a gingerbread recipe card used by Disney’s own chefs. The standard daytime Behind the Seeds tour keeps running alongside the holiday version.
The Price Has Climbed, Then Held
The first Glimmering Greenhouses tour ran nightly from November 29 through December 30, 2024, at $45 per person. That figure reached $59 for the 2025 season, and Disney has now set 2026 at $59 as well, which makes this the first year the tour has not gone up.
The Overlay Came First
The tour exists because the ride overlay got popular. Living with the Land has carried some form of holiday decoration for years, but Disney first sold it as a distinct seasonal offering in 2019 under the name Merry and Bright Nights. That version came back in 2020 and 2021 before Disney renamed it Glimmering Greenhouses in 2022, and the name has stuck since.
The walking tour followed in September 2024, built for guests who wanted more than the view from the boat. Disney confirmed the overlay’s return for this year back in June, when it laid out the full Festival of the Holidays lineup.
Where It Fits In The Season
The tour dates line up exactly with the EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays presented by AdventHealth, which runs November 27 through December 30 and shares its window with the Candlelight Processional at America Gardens Theatre. Those dates were locked in when Disney published its 2026 holiday season calendar earlier in the year.
September 24 is the date to remember. The tour runs with a small nightly capacity by design, and the three departure times leave room to pair a walk through the greenhouses with one of the three Candlelight performances the same evening.
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