Epcot Early Entry ?

[pleakley]

Hi everyone, I just joined these boards and what a wealth of information here!!
We are taking our first trip to WDW in early June and I am working on our itinerary, my question is - how important is early entry for Epcot? We will be staying onsite, but currently I don't have Epcot scheduled on any ee days - should I change that? I had read somewhere that it is best to avoid the park that is having early entry, is this true for all the parks? Any help you could give me on this subject I'd really appreciate.
Don't know if this will help any, but we are a family of four with two young children, dd4 and ds6.
Thanks!!

 

[mathgeek]

There are some who love early entry and some who won't go to the park that has it due to crowds. I am one of the former - I have found that I can see a LOT of attractions during that extra hour. (On New Year's Day I was able to do 10 attractions including all 3 mountains at MK with no wait before 11 AM since I got there for EE at 8 AM.)

With the ages of your children I would say definitely do EE at MK since there are a number of Fantasyland attractions open, but I don't know about Epcot. There are only 3 attractions open - Spaceship Earth, Test Track, and Universe of Energy - so it might not be worth the extra effort.

 

[jlaspoq]

I don't find ee to be that useful at Epcot. The only reason to plan a morning at Epcot IMHO is if Test Track is an absolute must do for you. My favorite part of Epcot is World Showcase - and my kids like it much more than I thought they would. It's easy to just wander and enjoy the atmosphere there.

With your kids so young, you will definitely want to do ee at MK - we're doing it twice in fact! You can get SO much done. But that is the only ee's we are doing this trip - just worked out that way.

EE is very early for little ones to do every single day - I get a little carried away and forget that sometimes. In fact, even just getting to the park at regular opening every day can get tiring for the little ones.

 

[Harambe]

We also love EE. On our last trip in November after 9/11 they had stopped it and it really made a difference! We get tons done in the hour! We try to do both EE's for MK during our week-long stays. Go to Fantasyland one EE and go to Buzz Lightyear on the other! My family also got to ride Spalsh Mountain three times without leaving their boat! The CM just kept letting them through. I was on the bridge screaming at them to get off!

At MGM, my DS went on Star Tours a mess of times during the EE.

Personally, I don't think you need to do Epcot EE. We tend to go in the off season so Epcot is the park for late afternoon/evening.

 

[pleakley]

Thanks for all your help, I'll leave the day at Epcot where it is - actually I think I've cut it down to just one day and the other day we'll have a free day where we can sleep in and maybe play miniature golf. With a two hour time difference we will most likely need a day to rest. We've already resigned ourselves to the fact that we aren't going to see everything anyway. I do have down at least one MK ee, I left a couple days at the end of our trip free from planning (well, almost - I'm obsessive) so we can go back and do what we missed or our favorites. We're going for the Star Wars weekends (ds is a SW fanatic) and we won't be able to go on an ee day for that so I have another day for MGM ee so ds can ride Star Tours a bunch of times. DH and ds rode it 5 times in a row at Disneyland while dd and I (re)did all of fantasyland
Thanks again!