04/01 EPCOT - 3rd park day, our second day at EPCOT. We decided to embrace our night owl tendencies and not attempt rope drop at EPCOT; we would simply hold off on doing any rides until late evening when the lines went down. We woke around 10am and then headed to Disney Springs for "breakfast" around 12pm because I wanted to try Everglazed. I immediately regretted this choice when we were routed through the parking garage cattle chute style back-and-forth, back-and-forth that immediately adds half a mile to your walk before the day even starts. It took about 30 minutes just to get IN to Disney Springs around noon. On a Thursday. Ugh. Everglazed, however, was amazing. The donuts tasted SO fresh! My husband had a burger that was really good also. But Disney Springs was an absolute zoo with horrific crowds and long lines to get into every store, so this day had me regretting I had booked so many dinner reservations for our non-park days here.....I knew it wasn't going to be very restful.
Headed to EPCOT around 2:30 and were scanning into the parks about 3. We spent 4+ hours in World Showcase just grazing the F&G festival booths, admiring the floral displays, and hunting for Spike. Crowds were manageable in World Showcase: we never had more than a 5-minute wait for food booths and many areas of the pavilions were totally empty once you got off the main walkways.
We finally headed to Future World around 7:20 for Test Track. This was my son's "try ride" for EPCOT (a new-to-him ride he agrees to try to force him out of his comfort zone). I have been wanting him to try this ride forever because he has been obsessed with wheeled machines pretty much since birth, but he was always too scared to try TT because he thought it looked "too fast." Well........he loved it!! (I knew he would.) He got off the ride and did this little jump he always does when he's excited and said, "I guess I have a new favorite ride" (so cute). Our wait on this would have been about 35 minutes except they did a 15 minute cleaning cycle RIGHT before we got to the front of the line, so it was 50 minutes -- longest wait of the trip so far. Worth it for my son's reaction
At this point we paused to eat at Sunshine Griddle food booth. This was the BEST food booth of the festival hands down. Everything we had -- shrimp and grits, corned beef hash, avocado toast, Froot Loops shake, cinnamon bites--was SO, SO good. Run, don't walk, to this booth next time you are at EPCOT!
About 9:00 we were in line for Spaceship Earth. It was about 15 minutes to front of line. After SE we headed to Soarin'. For this one we waited about 30 minutes and had a great ride. It was getting close to park close at this point, but I had promised my son I would take him to the WDI Presents the EPCOT Experience exhibit in the festival center so we did that for about 10 minutes before hopping in line at 10:45pm for FEA. I have not been on this ride since it was Maelstrom and this is a fun re-make, but some of it seems kind of low-budget. There are whole parts of the ride that are just black wall on one side, which seems very.....not Disney-like. The line theming, however, is adorable. The ride has a drop in it, therefore my son hated it.
Overall I think that in non-FP times late evening touring at EPCOT is the way to go if you can swing it with your family's preferences. The crowds are so light and the lines as short as they're going to get. I know that's probably difficult for folks with little ones, but happily our son is a night owl just like mom and dad and he is rarin' to go and happy as a clam about 7pm, so this worked well for us. The relaxed touring in WS and (relatively) short lines in FW made this our best park day so far.
