This was our last full day at Disney, and Epcot, a convenient five or so minute walk away, was our park of the day. In order to use your time wisely, I highly recommend not only using the FastPass+ system, but understanding it as well. At Epcot, rides and attractions are grouped into two tiers and you may only select one FP from Tier 1. Of course. And what's included in that first tier? Soarin', Frozen Ever After and Test Track. Of course.
Let's discuss Frozen Ever After, the new Frozen ride located in Norway. Standby wait times ran between 90 and 120 minutes during our visit. I anticipated this and so the first FP+ selection I made was for Frozen Ever After. I was able to get the date I wanted and a decent time (11:45-12:45.) Note that I had logged on to make my FP+ choices a few hours after my window of time started that morning. Oooops. From what I've been reading on various Disney blogs and forums, Frozen Ever After FastPasses are hard to come by. I suppose it depends on when you are visiting but folks who were there when I was had difficulty.
Rich wanted to arrive at Epcot when the gates opened that morning. Yeah, so we are most definitely not rope droppers but I agreed that we should try our best. We left our rooms right about the time gates were opening and as we walked to Epcot, I checked wait times and formulated a plan. The wait time for Soarin' was immediately at 10 minutes so we made that our first destination. It is a super long walk from the International Gateway to Soarin' and by the time we arrived, the standby wait had been bumped up to 20 minutes. In reality, there wasn't a 20 minute wait. We walked through the queue and waited maybe 5 minutes before we boarded the ride. Soarin' has been redone and is now called Soarin' Around the World. We all enjoyed it and the girls jumped at the appropriate parts.
We grabbed some breakfast items to snack on after Soarin' and then the girls asked to ride Living with the Land. Next up was the Nemo ride, which surprisingly had a line. It was short (15 minutes or so) but we've never waited in line that long for this ride. There was a little bit of time to kill before our window of time opened for Frozen Ever After so we went through the Anna and Elsa meet and greet, which has been moved from Magic Kingdom to Norway. During our visit, wait times averaged 20 minutes or so. A far cry from the two hour wait two years ago.
In typical Disney fashion, Frozen Ever After was very detailed and engineered to perfection. It's a short ride though, in my opinion. While the girls enjoyed it, they were disgruntled over the fact that Anna and Elsa were singing an Olaf song. (Note that if you want to attempt photos, it's best to sit on the right side of the boat.)
We always seem to eat a meal at the quick service place in Mexico. For lunch, we picked up some nachos and tacos to share. The girls like what they call the Donald Duck ride in Mexico so we rode that after lunch. We were happy with how our morning had worked out so we walked back to the Yacht Club to cool off in the pool.
I had made dinner reservations for Via Napoli, located in Italy, of course. I actually wasn't able to make "dinner" reservations but I snagged the last time for lunch reservations, so close enough. This was our first time eating here and we would most definitely dine here again. The food was extremely tasty. The only negative, in my opinion, was that they did not offer free refills on my diet coke. Say what?!
After dinner, we decided to go on one more ride before heading back to the pool. There was no wait for the Figment ride so that's what we did. The girls found it amusing. I personally thought Figment was a bit creepy during parts of it.
The girls seriously had the best vacation. There were actual tears that last night at the pool with the realization that we would be packing up and heading home the next morning. I may or may not have mentioned the potential for a long weekend visit next year. Or something.
I'll have a few more Disney posts coming up discussing planning tips, thoughts on the resorts we stayed at, etc.
2 comments:
Via Napoli is the only repeat place we ate at this time (from our trip in 2016.) I will go back there again some day. I dream of it. I know Epcot has tons of other great places to eat but I don't care. Ha!
I'm sad your vacation recap is over! Haha, I love trip recaps (especially Disney!). I look forward to your posts coming up.
Your day at Epcot sounded great! I loved Soarin' when I went at Disneyland earlier this month (it also did the World changeover) and Frozen looks good (it was still under construction when I was there), but Via Napoli sounds AMAZING. I'd also be surprised to see Anna & Elsa singing an Olaf song when they have songs together.
My nephew was just shy of a year when we went and he loved Figment, but he really liked the "Donald Duck ride" :)
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