Epcot 1 Day plan - is this good?

[inspectorgadget]

I will be in Epcot on 9/21 with a crowd level 3, rope dropping and staying all day. 2 adults and 3 children who are tall enough for everything. Please review this plan and tell me if it will work. I haven't been to Epcot in 20 years! I have no idea if the time frames are even close. I need to leave time for the kids to "tinker" with interactive stuff (not for too long) at the end of any ride, when available. Is there too much time in between everything? I'm fine if the schedule gets is ahead and I can move around things to work between FPs since the window is 1 hour. Thank you for your help!

9:00 TT
9:30 Sum of all Thrills (worth it?)
10:15 MS Green
11:00 FP+ Soarin
11:15 Living with Land (Soaring and LWL are interchangeable)
lunch
FP+ 1:30 characters
2:00 Journey Imagination
FP+ 2:30 Spaceship Earth
2:45 Nemo
3:00 Turtle Talk
Living Seas (how long will looking at everything take?)
4:00 Ellen Energy
5:00 countries
dinner
9:00 Illuminations

 

[lugnut33]

Just did pretty much that today. Had to skip Turtle Talk, Livinng w land, and Figment because lines much larger than expected. Keep in mind we wanted to return to resort by 2 for pool time.

As for the Seas, it all depends on how interested your family is in it. We always spend 20 minutes at the manatees.

 

[Lucius Best]

Morning looks good. I think you should have the time to squeeze in Figment or LwtL before Soarin' at 11am. Note that on our last trip (during low crowd period), LwtL sometimes had inexplicable long lines (~30 minutes) mid/late morning, something never used to happen before FP+. If you can get something else done before Soarin', then you could possibly do Nemo before Spaceship Earth. We can spend anywhere from 5-30 minutes in the Living Seas, depending on how active the dolphins/manatees are, if there are any shows which happen to be going on, etc.

The second half of the day is way too packed. You're not leaving yourself very much time to see the World Showcase. On a crowd level 3 weekday, you can probably get more done in the morning than you have planned. But if you only have one day at Epcot, I would skip Ellen (even though I enjoy it, it is 45 minutes long). That would give you an extra hour to spend more time in the countries. If you have kids and want to do interactive stuff, check out Agent P's Adventures.

 

[Cando86]

I think it looks great! The only thing is, like the person above me said, you don't have too much time to explore World Showcase. BUT if you only have one Epcot day then I think it just has to be that way. I might try to move the characters FP up to right after lunch which sounds like it might be closer to 12:30 if you're doing QS. Then move everything else after that up by an hour. If it were me, I would skip Ellen too. It takes a very long time if you're only there one day. But if it is something that sounds appealing to you by all means keep it! It's just a lesser-visited attraction that I don't know I'd do if I only had one day in Epcot. All of the above would give you extra time in World Showcase. Exploring World Showcase can really take all day and there's SO much to do so I would try to spend at least half of the day there.

Most importantly...HAVE FUN and do what is right for you and your family !

 

[inspectorgadget]

Thanks everyone for your input. It really helps. I'm going to tweak my plan and move things up a little. Also, I think we're going to skip Sum of All Thrills. I read that it's a 2-person thing and there are 3 kids and I don't want to spend the time waiting for a simulator. As for Ellen's Adventure, I know it's (super) long but I remember loving the dinosaurs as a kid. Have they changed it all? Are the dinosaurs still there? Also, how spread out are attractions in FutureWorld? How long should I leave for walking from one attraction to the other?

 

[Lucius Best]

Thanks everyone for your input. It really helps. I'm going to tweak my plan and move things up a little. Also, I think we're going to skip Sum of All Thrills. I read that it's a 2-person thing and there are 3 kids and I don't want to spend the time waiting for a simulator.

You're going to Test Track at rope drop, then Mission Space is right next door. Sum of All Thrills in Innovations East is close to MS and on the way as you cross over to the other side of Future World, you can check it out and see how long the line is. As far as how spread out the attractions are, Epcot is big, you've got TT/MS/Ellen on one side and Nemo/Land/Imagination on the other side and Spaceship Earth in the middle. You can cut down on the walking by not crossing back and forth repeatedly.

As for Ellen's Adventure, I know it's (super) long but I remember loving the dinosaurs as a kid. Have they changed it all? Are the dinosaurs still there?

Well, most of the dinosaurs are still there. On our last trip in April, we rode Ellen early afternoon on our second Epcot day (when it was wicked hot and we had already done everything else in FW and seen most of the countries and we were ready to sit in the cool darkness and relax). Some of the animatronic dinosaurs had been removed, as well as an animatronic Ellen. No idea if they were broken/removed/being repaired. With one day in Epcot, I would rather spend the time in World Showcase.

 

[inspectorgadget]

After reading the responses and thinking about it overnight, I've decided we're going to skip Ellen after all. There's just not enough time in the day to do everything. Thanks everyone! I'm going to rework my plan and will probably post it soon for review.