Updated 3/8/25: All about our experience when we visited Mardi Gras at Universal:
Suppose I asked you to picture a theme park in Florida that hosts a yearly festival. This festival involves over a dozen pop-up booths featuring food and drink items from around the world available for purchase. It also has special entertainment, merchandise, and concerts with popular artists on select nights, all included with your park ticket.
For most Disney fans, their minds probably go to Epcot first – most likely the Food and Wine Festival. But Disney isn’t the only game in town when it comes to fun festivals!
Did you know that every year, Universal Orlando hosts a Mardi Gras celebration that’s 6(ish) weeks long? It includes all of the above, and I’ve had the chance to visit the past 2 years!
Is it worth visiting during this time of year for the Mardi Gras celebration? I won’t make you wait in suspense – for me at least, it was an absolute blast, and I highly recommend it! In this post, I’m excited to share the details of Mardi Gras at Universal, as well as my personal experiences this year.
Mardi Gras at Universal: the food
Arguably the most popular theme park festival is Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival, so it’s no surprise that other festivals in Orlando also focus heavily on food. Universal’s Mardi Gras puts food at the front and center as well, with their “International Flavors of Carnaval” tagline.
They usually have around 13-18 booths spread out across the Studios park. Many of them were countries from around the world. Then you had a few that were New Orleans focused, and the Coca-Cola Market Square, which specialized in drinks.
Each booth typically had 2-3 food items and 2-3 drinks that you could order. Food seemed to range in price from about $7-15 depending on the item, and drinks were in the $12-20 range. Portion sizes varied a lot. Some items felt more like Epcot festivals where it was just a few bites, while others were almost full meals. You could typically tell by the price whether it would be a small or large portion, but more consistency here would be nice (I vote for smaller portions so I can try more of the things!).
One thing which I loved about this festival was the souvenir cup! There were a number of drinks available to buy in their souvenir cup, and after paying ~$19 for the first one, you could then get other drinks in your cup at a discounted price. The discounted price was usually the same as the regular price, except the souvenir cup holds 20oz vs the 12oz or 16oz standard size.
We found this to be a great deal for us – we wanted to try a number of the drinks, and with two of us sharing them 10oz was a a good size per drink. If you think you’ll be sharing some of the cocktails, or visiting over the course of several days, the souvenir cup is a great value.
Plus you get a cool cup to take home. In 2024 it lit up! That was not the case in 2025, but I think it was sturdier plastic. However, there were fewer cocktail options this year than last year too.
Another money-saving tip – you can buy a food and beverage gift card which can be used at the Mardi Gras booths. You pay $65 and get $75 on the card. We purchased a few of these during our time there. Any money we can save is a good thing!
I will note that we never had to wait long to order at the booths, or for our food/drink. It felt like it wasn’t too crowded when we visited… at least not at the food/drink booths (wait times were quite long one day we were there). Once or twice they were making a new batch of something from scratch so it took a few extra minutes, but we never encountered long lines or waits.
I won’t detail every food and drink item we sampled (that’s another blog post), but I’ll highlight a few favorites!
My personal favorite booth was probably Mexico – which is not what I typically think of when I think of Mardi Gras! Both years the drinks were pretty good, but the food dishes were excellent. This is one of the few booths that was consistent in its menu from 2024 to 2025.
We ordered the Chilaquiles Verdes, and it had great flavor, a little bit of spiciness, and was a nice portion size. But I liked the Quesabirria even better! I could have eaten even more of this.
And then of course the New Orleans booths had some great food. The Twisted Tater with cajun seasoning and remoulade was definitely the winner in my opinion. But the Cajun Mac and Cheese and the Chicken & Sausage Gumbo were quite good too. And Beignets, of course!
Mardi Gras at Universal: the entertainment
Food and drink feels like the focal point of this festival in some ways, but the entertainment is the other big part of it. There are two “bigger” entertainment aspects – the Mardi Gras parade, which happens most nights, and live concerts, which occur on select evenings.
Entertainment is not limited to those two things, though! Throughout the day we saw a number of performers out and about. There were stiltwalkers or costumed performers posing for pictures, as well as a band that played a few songs. Some of the regular street entertainment added some Mardi Gras themed fun to their sets as well.
The Mardi Gras Parade
Double-check the parade times for your visit because they vary, but if you want to watch the parade, it’s a lot of fun.
In true Mardi Gras fashion, you can try to catch some beads! (And from our experience, you will probably be hard-pressed NOT to catch some beads, there are so many flying at you from the floats!).
There are several floats that are the same each year, but then the ones in the middle typically switch out with a different theme. This year the theme was the 30th anniversary of Universal’s Mardi Gras celebration. Last year was an “elements” theme, so there were floats based on Earth, Air, Fire, Water, etc.
In between the floats were dancers, stiltwalkers, and other fun performers. They were all very entertaining and talented!
If you really want to get into the fun of it all, you can actually ride on a float yourself and throw the beads – more on that below in the “Float and Dine” section. We did Float and Dine one night and watched the parade the second night so we could see it from both sides. It was fun both throwing and catching the beads!
Concerts during Mardi Gras
On select nights (usually the weekends), there are live concerts. These are included with your park ticket. There is a stage towards the front of the park with a big grassy area for seating. It’s a great venue, and they have some great acts!
For this year, some of the bigger names who are performing for Mardi Gras include DJ Khaled, KC and the Sunshine Band, The All-American Rejects, Queen Latifah, Barenaked Ladies, Walker Hayes, and more.
Unfortunately we were not at Universal over a weekend, so there were no concerts going on during our visit. I’d love to go back sometime and see one though!
Float and dine
Want to really get into the Mardi Gras festivities? You can not just watch the parade, but be on a float! There are two different ways to ride on the float. You can try your luck with a virtual queue, or you can pre-purchase the “Float Ride and Dine” experience.
Float Ride and Dine includes a 3-course meal at one of several select restaurants, plus a guaranteed spot on a float, for $85 per person.
We decided to purchase this dining package, and selected Cowfish as our restaurant. In 2024 they assigned us a dining time (3:30pm – our float check-in time was 5:30pm with the parade starting at 6:15pm that night). In 2025, they updated it so that you pick your own dining time.
We could order anything we wanted off the Cowfish menu for an appetizer, entree, and dessert (all sushi rolls counted as an entree), as well as one non-alcoholic beverage. We were given instructions for float check-in and after eating we went back to the park and met to get instructions, get our outfits, and get on our float.
There are some rules about throwing the beads (one at a time, don’t throw overhand), as well as some general advice. They tell you to wait about five seconds between each throw so you don’t run out of beads. You don’t want to get halfway through the parade and then have nothing left to throw to the crowds!
So we get onto our float keeping these instructions in mind, and the team member says to us “what they just told you about waiting to throw beads – don’t. Throw them as fast as you can, though still one at a time. We have half the amount of people on this float as we normally do and so many beads. It would be a huge accomplishment if we actually went through them all.”
Well, challenge accepted! I went up on that float and threw beads as fast as I possibly could (safely, of course). It was frantic and exciting and so much fun. I was working hard and sweating by the end of the parade. But we did it – we gave out all of our beads!
I would absolutely do this again. It was a unique experience and I would say the highlight of my Mardi Gras at Universal experience!
Mardi Gras at Universal: the merch
And what’s a good festival without some merch, right? The Mardi Gras Tribute store is where you’ll find all of the Mardi Gras merchandise available for purchase.
This was the one thing that was somewhat disappointing to me. I really didn’t see anything I was interested in purchasing, as it really was not my style. The main logos featured on everything were all skull-based. I didn’t realize skeletons were such a big part of Mardi Gras, but apparently they are.
The other main logo was the Gator. The one that was more “happy-cartoonish” was pretty cute. They had a King Gator plush that was adorable, as well as a popcorn bucket. I just don’t really need more of either of those things!
The rest of the gator stuff was more of a creepy looking gator though. Lots of power to those who are into the creepy stuff, but I’m more about the cute stuff!
There were a few other items without skeletons or gators, but not many. I saw some items online that had a music festival style poster (without skeletons or skulls) that was a cool design, but they seemed to have sold out of most of it by the time we got there.
The Tribute Store itself is pretty neat though, as it has a different theme each year (not necessarily matching the theme of the parade or the rest of Mardi Gras!). This year’s theme was “Legends of the Bayou.”
I was drawn to a purple shirt that said “Life of the Mardi,” and although I didn’t purchase it if I had gotten anything, it would have been that. I also enjoyed the shirt that said “Beads or Bust,” but I’m not sure I’d actually WEAR it.
So my only Mardi Gras at Universal merch this year is my souvenir cup – but that is pretty cool and it does light up! And I hope to be back at Mardi Gras in the future so maybe they’ll have merch that’s my style then.
Cursed Coconut Club
Outside of the Universal park, you can get into the fun at the Cursed Coconut Club in Citywalk. This is a re-themeing of the Red Coconut Club, but they really went all in!
All ages are welcome to come in and explore. There are some good photo opps and lots of neat decor to look at. There are even some “special effects” happening in certain parts of the venue!
They have 3 different bars, and each bar actually has a unique menu. So there’s lots of interesting cocktails available. I was pretty tired so we only had one drink, but if it had worked in our schedule I would have tried more. My drink I ordered at the upstairs bar even came with a “show”!
Overall thoughts on Mardi Gras at Universal
Overall, I was super impressed with the Mardi Gras at Universal festival and celebration. The food and drink offered was very good and there was a nice variety of options. They offer some discounts (unlike Disney), but I think the true highlight for me was the entertainment. In an age where we keep seeing Disney cut their entertainment and things like roaming street performers, it was exciting to see things like that pop up at Universal.
And of course throwing beads from the parade float was a million times more fun than I thought it would be. I was pretty good at it, too – who knew that was my secret talent?
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Have you ever attended Mardi Gras at Universal? Would you be interested in going in the future?
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