Hollywood Studios/Epcot Same Day Touring Plan - Help!

[CarolinaGuy21]

Hey everybody,

My girlfriend and I are making our first trip to Disney together the last week of July. I made about 10 or 11 trips to Disney when I was a kid but I haven't been in about 10 years and she's only been once when she was a kid.

This is the only day we are planning on park hopping and we are really struggling to come up with an efficient touring plan, some help from a Disney vet wouldn't greatly appreciated! These are basically the attractions we care about

Hollywood Studios: Rock n Roll Roller Coaster, Tower of Terror, Toy Story Midway Mania, Star Tours, and The Great Movie Ride (if there's time)

Epcot: Soarin', Test Track, Spaceship Earth (if there's time), Imagination (if there's time), and still deciding if we want to hit Mission Space or not.

We want to head back to our hotel at the Polynesian around 3 or 4ish to shower up and then head back to Epcot to tour the worlds, get drinks, and have dinner.

Any suggestions for a touring plan for this day would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[CarolinaGuy21]

Also I forgot I mention we plan to rope drop whatever park we start at!

 

[DVC_Dad_Canada]

Just looking at your attraction list, I would go to Epcot for rope drop, and head straight to Soarin'. With the added capacity, you might even get two standby rides in before the lines get crazy. Make a fastpass for Test Track around an hour after rope drop, then finish up Epcot around lunch.

Get your additional fastpasses for Hollywood Studios (I'm not sure how the tiered passes work with multi parks), seeing if there are more once your original three are completed. Personally, depending on park hours, I'd head back to the Poly for a Kona lunch and a few hours at the pool, then head to HS after dinner.

 

[Moushe]

Dh and I took a solo trip in February and also did HS and Epcot on the same day. This was our strategy:

Make FP at Epcot for the afternoon (starting at 3pm). This meant we couldn't get HS FP so we got there for rope drop and headed straight towards Rock N Roller Coaster, then Tower of Terror (minimal to no wait at both). Headed over the Star Tours and then Great Movie Ride - again little to no wait. We could've done TSMM since there was only a 25 min wait when we checked but we had a Hollywood Brown Derby ADR. After lunch we were exhausted since we had gone to bed late the night before so we decided to head back to the room for a mid-day nap before Epcot.

You could also do it the other way around - afternoon FP for HS and rope drop Epcot.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

We hit RD one morning at DHS. We hit all of those rides by 11 am and then went to Epcot with FP+. It's certainly doable.

 

[Jfsag123]

You can only pre-book FP for one park. I would RD Soarin' at Epcot, followed by Spaceship Earth, Mission: Space, then do Test Track via the single rider line and finish with Imagination. Catch the boat to DHS and use your FP there. I would book rockin rollercoaster as your tier 1 and tower of terror and star tours as your tier 2's. The standby line for toy story mania does not seem to be as bad since they opened the 3rd track.

 

[CarolinaGuy21]

Thanks for the help everyone! Glad to hear that our plan is doable

 

[Alli76]

I think that you could do it either way.... but think about where you want to end up at night. For me the choice would definitely be world showcase in Epcot. Given that I would rope drop HS and save FP for Epcot later on. You will have at least one longer wait as you can only FP TT or Soarin.

 

[SaharanTea]

Mission: SPACE will be closed for refurbishment from June 5 through the end of July. I don't believe there is an official reopening date, but other sources claim July 30th. It's a bummer, but it means you don't have to figure out whether you want to ride it or not (unless it happens to reopen in time).

We are also planning a split day between HS and Epcot (family of four) in late July. I'm planning to rope drop Epcot, and use FPs for the afternoon in HS. We'll already have spent a day in each park so we won't be scrambling to fit everything in. We generally find more things at HS for us, but you guys may like poking around in Epcot's countries.

Either way you go, I think it makes more sense to rope drop one, and put your FPs in the other.