Disney Day 2: Epcot Recap

Here’s a detailed run-down of our first family trip to Walt Disney World!

Day 2

EPCOT

Day 2: Epcot

Our day started around 5:30am so we could get ourselves up and ready before waking the kids up around 6:30am. I had already purchased Genie+ for our day, but the My Disney Experience app wasn’t loading for me when 7:00 rolled around (probably a digital traffic jam), so I had to come back to it a little later. We headed over to the Disney Skyliner, the ski lift transportation system that runs between some of the Disney resorts, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios. The Skyliner starts running at 7:30—we rolled in around 7:15 and there was already a huge line!

Part of this is because the Art of Animation resort and the neighboring Pop Century resort share a Skyliner station. I was a little worried since we had an early character breakfast reservation that morning, and since this was our first time on the Skyliner I didn’t know how long it would take us to get to the park. But we were impressed with how quickly the line moved once it started going.

The time in line gave us an opportunity to share a cup of overnight oats from the Landscape of Flavors restaurant—just a little snack to hold us over until our breakfast reservation. I also was able to book our first Lightning Lane for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure later that day.

Once we boarded the Skyliner, it was a short jaunt over to the Caribbean Beach resort station, where everyone has to disembark for a line change. From there you get in another queue for the line to Epcot or the line to Hollywood Studios.

Side note: if you have a single stroller, you can roll right in to the Skyliner gondolas! Double wide strollers need to be folded down.

When we arrived at Epcot, I felt much more confident about going through park security, scanning our mobile passes, and fingerprints. Plus the lines were MUCH shorter at Epcot than our previous day at Magic Kingdom!

I was surprised that we were in the park at 8:15, in time for rope drop at Epcot. Since we were heading toward Akershus Castle in Norway, we swung a left from the Skyliner station (which is between World Showcase: England and France) to walk through England and ran into a small crowd of people waiting for early entry rope drop. Josh even had time to rope drop the restroom while the kids and I enjoyed the sunrise over the lake, which really was a beautiful moment.

Then around 8:20 early entry began, and we power-walked our way around the lake to Norway. Our reservation was at 8:50 for the princess character breakfast at Akershus Castle, and we made it there around 8:30. Instead of sensibly checking in early for our breakfast reservation, we decided to squeeze in a ride on Frozen Ever After.

We were out of the ride at 8:45 and made it just in time for our breakfast. Downside: we didn’t know the Frozen ride is a water ride. Not the most dignified way to enter a castle.

We enjoyed the experience at Akershus, although the food did leave a bit to be desired for the price. Ivy was thrilled to see the princesses visit our table at breakfast. Even though she had already met some of the characters the previous day, I think it was good for her to get to meet them again. She was so starstruck at first she didn’t know what to do, but as she continued to meet characters throughout our Disney trip she became more comfortable and visibly excited.

After breakfast, Ivy still wanted to continue meeting princesses, so that was the main focus of the rest of our morning. We visited Snow White in Germany, Aurora in France, and Jasmine in Morocco. In Japan we stopped to watch the Matsuriza drum show, which was a nice break, and we had lunch at Les Halles Boulangerie & Patisserie in France.

Since much of our morning was centered around the breakfast and meeting princesses, we took a much slower pace around the Epcot World Showcase. The other part of this was due to the stroller breaking down unexpectedly—somehow a pin went missing from one of the front wheels, and we constantly had to stop to adjust it so we could keep rolling. It got worse throughout the day and definitely put a cramp in our flow.

After lunch we decided to catch the Skyliner back to our resort for our afternoon rest. When we returned later that afternoon, we went straight to the Disney-Pixar Short Film Festival, where we met Mickey and Minnie!

Ollie was so excited at one point he actually escaped under the queue to get to Mickey (but he turned course immediately when we called him back). We were one of the last groups to make it in line before the cast members closed the queue, and this was the longest line we waited in that day.

Then we hustled back over to France, where we went straight to our Lightning Lane for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure.

It was dinnertime, so after our ride we went over to Italy and got pizza from Pizza al Taglio, a quick service window next to Via Napoli. It was the perfect meal to end the day: pizza, a glass of Chianti, and a Nutella tiramisu. Ohhh, the Nutella tiramisu. I will be putting Nutella in every tiramisu I make at home from now on.

After watching the sunset over World Showcase: Italy, we decided to call it an early night and made our way back over to the Skyliner to get back to the Art of Animation resort. Once the kids went to bed I was able to shower, prep for the next day, reset the diaper bag, lay out our outfits, and review my itinerary for our next park day: Hollywood Studios!

Our day at Epcot was slower-paced for a few reasons: the stroller breaking, waiting to meet characters, some tummy troubles, and to be honest we were just tired from our full Magic Kingdom day. I didn’t take into account the character meet-and-greet schedules and hadn’t realized some of the princesses would only be out at certain times, so we had to bounce between countries in an inefficient way. The wait time to meet Mickey and Minnie was way longer than anticipated so we ran out of time to visit the other attractions in Epcot outside of the World Showcase.

Because I had planned for us to visit more rides and attractions after our afternoon rest, I thought we were going to get more use out of our Genie+ that day. In retrospect it might have been better to just purchase an Individual Lightning Lane for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, since we were able to rope drop Frozen Ever After, although we loved having Genie+ available to us for the day. It was still worth it to us to have the Lightning Lane for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure since the wait time pretty much all day was 70+ min, and with two young kids, that wasn’t a line we wanted to do standby.

What’s your favorite thing to do at Epcot? Let me know if you have any questions about our day in Epcot in the comments below!