EPCOT Archives - Cherise and Shine

EPCOT

We adventured to EPCOT the second morning of our insane 2-days at Disney World. For an overview of our trip and tips (as well as links for the other parks), click here. For details on EPCOT, keep reading!

After a very restful night’s sleep following our crazy 20-hour day, we woke up and headed over to EPCOT: the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. I remember watching Disney video tapes (yes, I’ve just dated myself—90s kid!) when I was little and seeing promos for EPCOT in all the Disney World ads. I would stare at that giant golf ball-esque sphere and think, “WHOA! I’m going to go there someday.” 20 years later, that came true! Honestly, I was still giddy when we first stepped into EPCOT, and so ready to take on the day.

We had woken up at 7:30am-ish and hopped on a bus around 8:15am to get to EPCOT by 8:30am to start our day. We hung around Future World until 11:00am, which gave us enough time to ride Spaceship Earth (Orlando-specific, Fast Pass), The Seas with Nemo & Friends (Orlando-specific) and grab a Starbucks coffee (of course).

Around 11am, we made our way over to World Showcase, where we spent the majority of our time (and also where most of my Disney Instagram pictures came from). It goes without saying that World Showcase was my favorite part of the park, and honestly probably of Disney World as a whole. I adored the building facades and country-inspired international foods. It’s difficult to choose a favorite pavilion, but we really enjoyed Japan (some bias there), Morocco, France and Canada. We circled the whole World Showcase display twice before lunch.

MEXICO: This pavilion is quite pretty from the outside, and nicely air conditioned on the inside. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time here, but really enjoyed walking around it.

NORWAY: This one was really more of an Arendelle pavilion, to be honest. Almost everything around it was Frozen-themed, and while it was pretty, we didn’t get as much out of it.

CHINA: The Chinese-themed pavilion was fun to walk through, and we really loved the 360 “Reflections of China” film. I’ll confess I’m a little biased since I used to live in Shanghai, but it’s definitely worth a walk-through. Also, fun fact: this pavilion served as the music video location for Christina Aguilera when she sang “Reflections” for MULAN!

GERMANY: This one looked like a cute German town, and has a model village with toy trains to the side of it that my husband really enjoyed. We didn’t spent a whole lot of time here since much of it is a Biergarten and there’s not a whole lot of German food I can eat with my gluten allergy.

ITALY: We didn’t spend much time here, either, but we loved the architecture. This pavilion has recreations of Saint Mark’s Campanile and Doge’s Palace, which give it such a classic feel.

USA: To be honest…we completely skipped this one both walkarounds. I don’t even have a photo to share. From the outside, it sort of looked like a rehash of Liberty Square at MK.

JAPAN: The gorgeous pagoda (again, bias from living in Tokyo), replica of the Imperial Palace and Itsukushima Shrine make the Japan pavilion a standout. This is one of the original pavilions, and has a cute little shop inside that we struggled to resist purchasing anything at.

MOROCCO: Did you know that the Moroccan government actually aided in the design of this one? It shows!!! The architecture at this one was our favorite of all the pavilions, and really added fuel to our desire to visit Morocco someday. There’s not a whole lot to do here, but definitely stop by to take in how pretty it is.

FRANCE: Meant to look like a Parisian town, the French pavilion can definitely make you feel like you’re in a scene from Ratatouille. We grabbed ice cream here at L’artisan des Glace, and really loved it. This area carries so much charm, and I only wish we had enough time to watch “Impressions de France.”

UK: Honestly, we weren’t too impressed with this pavilion. It was fun to walk around and see the Twining’s tea shop, but it wasn’t as rich in culture as I felt it could have been.

CANADA: Truth be told, we really liked this pavilion. We had fun watching the 360 “O Canada!” film with Martin Short, and found the waterfalls to be quite pretty. But most of all, OUR LUNCH AT LE CELLIER was soooo good. We managed to score a reservation there on Canada Day, so the place was packed. Le Cellier has great lunch deals and also has substantial allergy-conscious selections. We were able to have a refreshing poached pear salad, delicious steaks (me a ribeye and him a filet mignon), the BEST truffle-wine poutine ever and a maple crème brulee. Easily one of our top two favorite meals!

After our (long and worthwhile) lunch at Le Cellier, we finally made our way over to Hollywood Studios. We opted to take a ferry boat from one park to the other, and while walking may have been a faster option, it was quite fun and ended up being a nice place for us to nap a bit to recover from our food coma. Plus, it was raining a bit, so it was great to be covered. We finally arrived at Hollywood Studios close to 4pm, and just had a few hours to spend there before our dinner reservation!

For Hollywood Studios, click here.

I’ve heard exactly two things about Disney World in July: that it’s miserably hot and miserably crowded.

Well, I’ve also heard that it’s incredibly spread out and impossible to do all the parks in two days.

Given all these things, why on earth would my husband and I choose 4^th of July weekend (the busiest time of the year) to go to Disney World for the first time? Well, like many people, Independence Day weekend was when we had some time off from work and didn’t have to request extra days to travel. Flights from LA to Orlando were fairly affordable. And let me tell you—with the right amounts of research, fast passes and meal reservations, even crowded Disney World in Florida heat is nothing short of magical.

HOW TO STRATEGIZE

PRIORITIZE: Let me start off by telling you that you certainly won’t be able to go on every ride or see every show at Disney World if you’re there just two days. The key to enjoying two days is prioritizing what you want to do most. I’m a bit of a Disney nut. I had already been to every other Disney theme park in the world at this point! Crazy, I know. But it also made me aware of the attractions that were unique to only Florida. For example, Seven Dwarves Mine Cart is one of the most popular rides in Magic Kingdom, but we opted to skip this as we had already gone on it at Shanghai Disneyland.

FAST PASSES: Fast Passes are unique in Orlando as you can make selections 30 days prior to arrival with ticket purchase (or 60 days prior to arrival with a Disney resort hotel booked). You can reserve up to 3 Fast Passes per park per day, but popularity tiers also come into play. I highly recommend doing research ahead of your trip to find out what 3-ish rides are most important to you in each park, and planning around those. Touring Plans was an enormously helpful resource for me. It helps you see average wait times, rankings, summaries and tiers of all the rides for each park. We decided to prioritize things like Space Mountain (different from Hyperspace Mountain in Anaheim and in Paris) in Magic Kingdom, Expedition Everest (Orlando-specific) in Animal Kingdom, Spaceship Earth (Orlando-specific) in EPCOT and Tower of Terror (different from Tokyo Disney Sea and Paris Walt Disney Studio Parks) in Hollywood Studios.

RESTAURANTS: If you’re going during the hot summer months of 90F (32C) weather and 40% humidity, it’s wise to plan sit-down meals in the middle of the day for rest, AC and hydration. You can reserve these as early as 180 days prior to your arrival, but if you’re like us and don’t know you’re going until a couple weeks before, you can still usually snag popular restaurants by leaving your computer monitor open and refreshing until an available reservation shows up (fair warning: this may take 2-3 days). This is how I managed to get us spots at Be Our Guest (Magic Kingdom) and Le Cellier (EPCOT) for our two lunches. There are different blogs you can reference that rank the restaurants throughout the Disney World resort (Disney Tourist Blog and Travel and Leisure have some suggestions), but you can also always rely on Yelp and TripAdvisor for reviews. We were incredibly pleased with all our meal options, which included Be Our Guest, Jiko: The Cooking Place, Le Cellier and California Grill. More on these below!

ACCOMMODATIONS: We did lots of research and considered Airbnb, but ultimately stayed at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, which was cheaper than usual due to ongoing renovations at the hotel. If you can, I would HIGHLY recommend staying at a Disney Resort hotel. We loved the pool here, fashioned after the Lost City of Cibola. We enjoyed grabbing a margarita flight at the hotel lounge. Beyond the amenities, staying at a Disney hotel makes your trip more convenient. They will mail your magic bands (functionally your tickets/room key/Fast Pass/restaurant reservation-tracker) straight to your home address. And if you’re planning far enough in advance, you can lock in fast passes up to 60 days in advance instead of the normal 30.

You’ll also be able to take advantage of the free airport shuttle and the free buses to/from the theme parks and Disney Springs (the Downtown Disney shopping area). Not only that, but you’ll get “Extra Magic Hour” in the theme parks—for us, this meant two hours after closing (11pm-1am) in Animal Kingdom to explore Pandora: The World of Avatar. Check online to see what the Magic Hours are for which parks before booking. There are other little conveniences (e.g. checked luggage delivered straight to your room, return flight tickets printed and delivered to your room complete with check-in for your domestic flight, etc.) that made staying at a Disney resort completely worthwhile for us.

WEATHER/CLOTHING: Like I mentioned previously, Florida during the summer is very warm and humid, so pack accordingly! Another thing to note is that it rains almost every day for a short period of time. It might be common sense for many of you, but when I was checking weather before our trip, I naively thought “thunderstorms” in the forecast just meant storms with no rain. We ended up purchasing ponchos in the park—which was expensive, but worthwhile. I would recommend bringing shorts, tanks, sunscreen, sunglasses, comfortable walking shoes and a rain jacket/umbrella/poncho. Also, I brought multiple changes of clothes per day.

Now, without further ado, our crazy two days!!! Links below for each of the four parks:

DISNEY’S MAGIC KINGDOM

DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM

EPCOT

DISNEY’S HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

CONCLUSION

And there you have it! All four Disney World parks in two days. It’s definitely possible to do it and have fun without getting heatstroke or feeling miserable. While we didn’t get to hit up everything, we felt rather satisfied with the amazing things we did get to do, and have no regrets.

And pardon the cheesiness, but I must share—when I asked my husband if he had any Disney World words of advice for this post, he sweetly said, “The most important thing to do is make sure you go with someone you love, because no matter where you are whether at a show or in a line, you will be having the time of your life.”

Tag: EPCOT

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