My parents had bought the Disney package that included the water parks Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon. Hard to believe in the 7 days we were there we had a hard time figuring out when to fit in the water parks, but we really did. We ended up only going to Blizzard Beach for a few hours on this day. In hindsight, we all agreed there wasn’t any need to get the water park add on. Blizzard Beach was cool, and the kids enjoyed it, but it wasn’t worth only getting half day at Epcot. Plus, we took the Disney buses which was 2 hours just for transportation alone. Made the day super long and rushed, unfortunately. If you rent a car, it might be more doable otherwise skip it.

Started out well, though. Love our family pictures from Epcot!

We decided to tackle Future World East and West in the morning because we had reservations at the Biergarten Restaurant for dinner so we knew we’d tackle the World Showcase then.

We started at Test Track which we all LOVED! Loved creating our own car and then testing it out. Hilarious seeing the children of hippies choosing a gargantuan truck that got about 1mpg and would’ve surely put a gigantic hole in the ozone every time it started out. That’s neither here nor there.

We went through the Innoventions East and West but it didn’t thrill anyone, though I did enjoy that the boys chose this area:

and Dailah chose this, because, of course:

Rides/Attractions we loved in Future World East/West:

Mission: Space (Zach, my dad and Tariku chose the Orange team-super intense journey, the rest of us went on the Green team which was completely doable), Advanced Training Lab, Soarin, Captain EO, IllumiNations (must see!)

Ones we didn’t: 

The Seas with Nemo & Friends (seriously lame even for little ones), The Circle of Life (kind of boring, old stats but the moral of the story is good-humans can affect change in our environment either for good or bad)

After Blizzard Beach we came back to Epcot for dinner and the fireworks show IllumiNations. Biergarten Restaurant was really good as well! We thought we’d expose the kids to all of their heritages (African/German, you get the idea) while we were there. Kids loved the food and we adults loved watching our Ethiopian children dancing to the German music.

After dinner we walked around the World Showcase a bit but didn’t get a chance to go into most countries. I remember loving it as a kid though, so if you have time check all of those out! Definitely get yourself some beer in German country though, not to be missed!

Again, IllumiNations was really, really good but it’s just 10 minutes long. I recommend getting a spot about an hour early near the exit so you can be some of the first on the Disney buses. We did that and left about 2 minutes before it was all over so we could get the first bus back to the resort (you can see the fireworks decently as you leave). By the time the bus came there was a huge line for the buses so I would highly recommend doing that as well or you can count on not arriving back to your hotel until after 11pm.

 

All that said, I love Epcot, it’s one of my favorites but I have a thing with being obsessed with other cultures and inventions and the like. If you do too, plan on a full day at Epcot!