Epcot or Animal Kingdom

[kbkids]

I'm re-thinking my plans now with Living Seas being closed during the time we're there. We've got about a half a day that we had planned to spend at Epcot. There were only a few things we were going to do - Test Track, Imagination (DD loves Figment), Soarin, Turtle Talk, and Ice Station Cool. Well, Ice Station Cool was out - disappointed but we'll still go. Well, now Turtle Talk will be closed - I'm seriously re-thinking this. DD mentioned that she wanted to do Kali River Rapids again, so now I'm thinking we may just do Animal Kingdom instead. One of the parks will have to be skipped on this trip, and it was going to be AK. We won't be going back until 2007, so I was going to hold off on AK again until Expedition Everest was done. Now, I'm not so sure. I would like to do Soarin, but I suppose it could wait. What do you guys think? My kids are 7 and 4. They like all the parks, but they are not a big fan of the World Showcase, so Epcot is usually a quick trip for us. We can do AK pretty quickly too. We're going in October, so AK won't be as hot. Is Soarin that amazing that it can't wait until the next trip?

 

[wdwgoofeeee]

Soarin' is a pretty amazing experience.....but the lines right now are the really amazing story. It is not uncommon to see 1-2 hours wait times on stand-by. Although October should be much better than now, you would still want to get to Soarin' at opening. If you are staying at a Disney resort I would recommend the morning EMH at Epcot, but I see you live in Florida so that's probably out. How about Soarin' at opening and then head over to the AK?

 

[kbkids]

Soarin' is a pretty amazing experience.....but the lines right now are the really amazing story. It is not uncommon to see 1-2 hours wait times on stand-by. Although October should be much better than now, you would still want to get to Soarin' at opening. If you are staying at a Disney resort I would recommend the morning EMH at Epcot, but I see you live in Florida so that's probably out. How about Soarin' at opening and then head over to the AK?

Actually, we will be getting off our DCL cruise that day and going to the parks for a few hours before we head home. We're in Florida, but we're still 6 hours from the parks. We will have already been at the resort and done MK and MGM before our cruise. We'll only have about 4 hours before we've got to get on the road to go home. I figured we would have plenty of time to do those few things at Epcot in that time frame. But Soarin' is making me a little nervous. By the time we get off the boat, we probably won't be to the park until around 11:00. I'm afraid of Soarin' FPs being for too late in the day by that point. I'm really leaning towards AK now. Not sure if we're going to upgrade to park-hoppers at this point, but if we do, we'll just do Epcot on our MGM day. Park-hoppers add $140 to our tickets though, and it seems kinda silly to pay that much money for basically 3 rides at Epcot.

 

[disnut8]

If you're not going to be at Epcot until 11:00, I'd skip it and head to Animal Kingdom instead. That is, if Soarin' is your priority. FastPasses for us at noon were for five hours ahead. And then we still had to wait thirty minutes to ride it. So if that's what you want to do, you'll spend your four hours not having a good time.

If you go to Animal Kingdom, you can probably get onto Kali easily enough, plus do the walking trails since there's never a line for those. See Flights of Wonder, have a good lunch at Flame Tree or Tusker House. And totally relax. My two cents.

 

[blueangel]

Agreed. Though I, too, am a huge Figment fan, I doubt you'd get to do Soarin' on that time line. At AK you can also wear the kids out at the Dinoland play area before the car trip.

 

[kbkids]

Well, AK it is then!! I had forgotten about Primeval Whirl. DD is just tall enough on this trip to finally do Rock N Roller Coaster. She'll be thrilled that there will be two new rides she'll get to do!

If I decide to splurge on the parkhoppers, we'll squeeze Epcot in earlier during the week.