EPCOT is kind of the red headed step child of Disney World at the moment. Designers are in the process of renovating large portions of it and what does remain feels dated in many ways.
As such, this was probably our lowest priority park overall, though we definitely still wanted to visit! We scheduled our EPCOT day to overlap with Magic Hour, which means hotel guests have access to the park and hour before standard opening time. This was the one and only day we did not arrive before the park opened, since we’d be behind park guests anyway. It opened at 9am, so we had a relatively leisurely start to the day!
Kamy was hoping to do a meet and greet with Princess Aurora in particular, so she came prepared. 😉
We made a point of staying in the front section of the park in the morning and then worked our way around the lagoon through the World Showcase after lunch.
Soarin’ was a big hit and lovely as always. We also did Spaceship Earth in the big geodesic dome and Living Off the Land.
We also really enjoyed the animated film festival that was running constantly — with three stand alone animated films running back to back to back. Piper was my personal favorite, but we all enjoyed the three films!
We were able to meet Micky Mouse too — with NO LINE! So we had to take a minute to get a family photo.
The Festival of the Arts was running while we were there too, so many artists had booths set up with Disney inspired artwork for sale, as well as numerous chalk artwork hidden throughout the park. Kamy and Caden particularly enjoyed looking for the hidden pictures around the World Showcase.
The Frozen re-skin was new to the adults, as it is a re-theme of Maelstrom. We were fortunate to get a Fast Pass for it, as the line can be ridiculously long.
Kamy was able to meet Aurora and both kids stood in line to meet Belle.
In the China section of the Showcase, they had a 360* film about China and a spotlight exhibition about Shanghai Disney! It’s definitely on our bucket list to visit!
Also quite interesting was a digital projection sequence about the changes that are coming to EPCOT in the future. It looks quite amazing and will implement an entire new section based around Moana and the Pacific Islands.
To end the day we rode Mission Space, though Min sat this one out. We started with the tame version (green), which both kids really liked and then begged to try the full ride. As it works in a centrifuge, some people feel poorly after spinning so much. Surprisingly, both Keller and I handled orange okay, though once was more than enough.
We managed to catch a bit of the firework show once we left the ride, but it was nothing like Magic Kingdom. I wouldn’t say today was a slow day by any means, but we were not quite as exhausted. 😉
