It’s time to party!

Mardi Gras!

Universal Orlando is expecting some pretty big things in 2025 with its new resorts, Epic Universe finally opening, and major changes to some iconic rides. While we wait for everything exciting to come our way, we’re partying it up at Universal’s Mardi Gras celebrations, and we’re bringing you with us!

We are finally inside the park for one of our favorite Universal events of the year! This year’s Mardi Gras festivities take place from February 1st through March 30th, 2025. This year is a big one for the festival thanks to this being the 30th Mardi Gras celebration that Universal is throwing! We attended a media event to learn more about this year’s celebration, so join us as we see what’s happening this year!

Food and Drink

There are so many different food and drinks to try at this festival, thanks to the 13 different booths! This year also includes a new booth: India. Universal says they tried to make the food booths as authentic as possible. This year, they’re particularly proud of the vegan red beans and rice, Cajun baked Mac & cheese, and the China booth. We got to sample a few things, like the Pinchos de Lechon From Puerto Rico…

Pinchos de Lechon

…Potato Dosa from India…

Potato Dosa

…the Hot Maple Lacquered Salmon from Canada…

Hot Maple Lacquered Salmon

…and more!

Entertainment

When it comes to entertainment for these celebrations, there are two major things to catch. First is the parade! Many of this year’s floats this year come from Kern Studios in New Orleans, which Universal is celebrating a 30-year partnership with.

30th anniversary float

All the floats are hand-glittered (that sounds like a LOT of work). This year also features six brand-new floats and a new parade line-up!  Each parade float is inspired by New Orleans Mardi Gras traditions like beads, music, food, and more!

King Gator

One of the best parts about the parade is you can join in on the fun! Each year, guests can participate in riding the floats and throwing beads to the crowd by signing up for the virtual line queue on the Universal app. It’s a free way to get in on the fun and have a unique experience that not everyone in the park will get to do.

You can be IN the parade

For the media event, we got some fun special Mardi Gras entertainment straight from the Cursed Coconut Club, which is on CityWalk. Every year for Mardi Gras, the Red Coconut Club gets transformed into the Cursed Coconut Club. Fun, right?

Cursed Coconut Club

The second bit of entertainment for the evening is the Mardi Gras Concert series! There are tons of different performers heading to Universal this year, including Joe Jonas, T-Pain, Foster the People, Kool & The Gang, Foster the People, All Time Low, TLC, and DJ Pauly D. See the full lineup of performers for this year’s festival here.

We’ll be updating this post throughout the weekend, so stay tuned to DFB for more updates from the 2025 Mardi Gras celebrations at Universal!

Read everything we know about Universal’s Epic Universe right here

Are you excited for this year’s Mardi Gras? Tell us in the comments!

Disclosure: In nearly all circumstances, Disney Food Blog writers and photographers pay full price for their own travel, hotel, food, beverage, and event tickets. We do this because it’s important to us as journalists to ensure not only that we give you unbiased opinions, but also that you can trust us to do so since we’re paying our own way. On rare occasions, when we are invited by a company to attend a preview as media, and when we choose to accept that invitation, we will always make you, our readers, aware of that situation. Today, we were invited by Universal to attend their media preview of Universal Mardi Gras. Note that when we attend events as media we are 1) Not required to review that event/food on any of our channels, and 2) Not required to review that event/food favorably. You can always count on DFB to give you a 100% unbiased and honest review of any event that we attend, food that we eat, or beverage that we drink. You can see more in our Disclosure Policy. Thank you for reading. — AJ