Our first day in the parks, we spent at EPCOT and it ended up being our favorite park! It’s just so different than any of the other parks and being there for the first time as a family was so fun.

The fastest route from our hotel to EPCOT was to walk to the Ticket and Transportation Center from our hotel (a 10 min walk) and then getting on the tram that went directly to EPCOT, it was about a 20 min commute in total.

We got into Epcot an hour before the park technically opened to the public due to our hotel, so we got to the park at 8:30 am- which if you’re doing the math, was definitely an early morning for us Californians! I’ll be honest and say that the entire trip I was living off pure adrenaline and excitement, so the early mornings (8 am Florida time is 5 am California time) didn’t really bother me much, but my kids definitely slept in the stroller the entire commute and tram ride to the park.

Because of the early mornings, we grabbed breakfast in the parks each day once we got in and were on the go! In each of the parks they have Joffrey Coffee bar carts that serve breakfast burritos, donuts, croissants, coffee, and teas! So we ended up stopping at one of the carts on the way in for donuts and a chai tea for me while we walked to our first ride!

Being a type A planner, I tried to plan for as much as I could- which meant making sure that we for sure got on rides we’ve never been on. For EPCOT, there were two big ones- the Frozen Ever After ride and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure. While planning, I was under the impression that DisneyWorld would operate like Disneyland, which meant I anticipated looooonnngggg lines and knew that our time in the parks were valuable, so I ended up purchasing lightening lane passes for EPCOT.

*lightening lane passes are essentially “fast passes” to certain rides where you pay to get on certain rides without having to wait in the regular stand by lanes, when you purchase your lightening lanes, you pick an arrival time/window where you’ll have one hour to get to the ride to use your pass. If you’re going for the first time and have things that you know you don’t want to miss and/or want to be able to get the most out of your day, I’d say purchasing the lightening lanes are worth it, you can check the app and see how much they cost for your specific date! There are different packages available too, you can purchase single lightening lanes for single rides or you can purchase the “package” which gives you three lightening lane passes for three different rides. Another little disclaimer that requires you to do some research, not all rides are available for lightening lane and when purchasing the package, there are two tiers of rides and you can only pick one ride from tier 1 (spoiler alert: Frozen Ever After and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure are both tier 1, so you’re only able to choose 1 of the 2 for lightening lanes) and then your remaining 2 rides come from tier 2.

I bought the lightening lane package and chose to use it on Frozen Ever After, Journey into Imagination with Figment, and The Seas with Nemo & Friends. To make sure we got on Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, that was our first ride of the day, we used our extra power hour to get on that one without a wait which worked out really nicely!

Now I don’t know if we were there during the off season (October is hurricane season for Florida), but I can honestly say, I should have spent less money and just purchased a single lightening lane pass for Frozen Ever After because after we got on Remy’s, the rest of the rides were literally walk on and Frozen was a 40-60 minute wait the whole day, we did walk on because I had purchased lightening lane for it, but I could have spent less money and just bought the pass for the single ride, especially because we had the extra hour too. Alas, you live and you learn and you don’t know what you don’t know and I had to be prepared no matter what!

Again, if you’re not sure, I would purchase the lightening lanes to make sure you get on what you want to get on!

After getting off Remy’s, on our way to the Joffrey Coffee Cart for my chai tea and some donuts for us and the kids, we saw Belle walking around France! My daughter got to hold hands and stroll around with her for a bit which was really cute! Then we made our way into England and met Alice in Wonderland playing hide and seek with the Chesire Cat! The character interactions were really special here and I loved how interactive and free moving the characters were!

If you have littles, I highly recommend grabbing a “Fun for Families with Kids” guide at each park! This is a smaller park map that shows you the locations of where to find certain characters and where they have special activities/shows just for kids. We used it at every park we went too.

If you’re visiting, I highly recommend getting an EPCOT passport! Especially if you have littles! Avery LOVED finding all the “Kidcot” locations to get her passport stamped! You can buy this passport book in any gift shop in any country, in it you’ll find a passport book with stamps. When you visit each country, you hunt down the “Kidcot” location where you’ll meet someone actually from that country! You give them your book and they’ll stamp your passport with the date of your visit, write the country name, draw a symbol from that country, and then if applicable, they’ll write your child’s name in the native language! It’s really so cool and such a fun souvenir! At the end, if you make it around the world, at your final stop, you get a postcard that says I traveled the world at EPCOT!

After completing all of our lightening lane passes, while we were circling back through a few countries to get our passports stamped, it started absolutely POURING! Like insanely hard and the streets were completely flooded! We ended up hiding in a bathroom with a few other groups of people for a good 40 minutes before the storm calmed down to a light enough sprinkle where we felt comfortable continuing on our journey lol.

For the trip, I bought multiple travel sized umbrellas (normal in size I’d say but the case really packs them down and makes them easier to fit into bags for sure!) and bought plastic ponchos so that we could at least prevent our clothes from getting wet and staying wet for when the rain did stop. I highly recommend doing this just in case!

The most EXCITING thing EVER happened as we were winding down and awaiting our dinner reservations (breaking down where we ate down below), while we were completing our EPCOT passport in the America Pavilion, we heard them announce over the loud speakers that the band Smash Mouth (RIP to their lead singer), would be performing in a mere 10 minutes. I thought it must have been a cover band but then it hit me that cover bands can’t actually use the actual name of the band, so looked it up online and it was in fact THE Smash Mouth (with their new lead singer)!! They had been booked for that specific week to headline the EPCOT Music Festival! I was FLOORED!!! I absolutely love Smash Mouth and the song AllStar is literally the theme song to my life lol. Another little fun fact- as a family, our halloween costume this year was Shrek and we made a video to the All Star song as our costume reveal– all filmed weeks prior to us going on vacation, so it was such an amazing coincidence!!

We watched their concert, which was only about 20 minutes and then headed to our dinner reservation. After dinner, we watched the firework show over the water, which brought us to park closing. It was such an amazing day!! I actually started crying while watching the fireworks show because it was so beautiful and I was just so happy to be having this experience with my family.

Rides We Loved

+ Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure : no height requirement

+ Frozen Ever After : no height requirement- small drop

+ Soarin Around the World

+ Living with the Land : no height requirement, educational ride through time and how the land/planet has changed

+ The Seas with Nemo & Friends : no height requirement

+ Gran Fiesta Tour : no height requirement

+ Journey into Imagination with Figment : no height requirement

+ Bruce’s Shark World : play area for kids

+ Journey of Water, inspired by Moana : walk through interactive splash pad/water play

+ Sea Base Aquarium : walk through aquarium

Shows We Loved

+ Beauty and the Beast Sing Along : a short 10 minute cartoon sing along show

+ Luminous Fireworks Show

Where We Ate

+ Breakfast- Joffrey’s Coffee Cart in England, heard great things about the crepes in France but we didn’t end up waiting in line.

+ Lunch: Via Napoli in Italy!! THE best pizza!!! We did not have a reservation (mainly because for lunch I did not know where exactly we’d be), and ended up getting seated within 5 minutes.

+ Dinner : Teppan Edo in Japan! This was so good! Highly recommend making a reservation early via the Disney World app! This restaurant gets very busy especially during dinner time!

+ Dessert: La Gelateria Toscana in Italy! This was THE PLAN, however, by the time the fireworks show ended, everything had already CLOSED! Another little thing to take into account! At Disneyland, all the ice cream parlors and churro carts stay open as guests exit the park, which is what I anticipated for Disney World- NOPE, everything is closed up precisely upon park closing, not a minute later! The Fireworks show is the last form of entertainment for the night, so if you’re watching, plan on getting your sweet treats beforehand or else you’ll miss the chance once the show is over.

It was seriously such a great day and we left the park already wishing we were still exploring but also excited for park day #2 which we spent at Magic Kingdom!

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave questions in the comments and I’ll get back to you!