We (2 adults and DD4) have 1 day for epcot planned in early december. We definitely want to do FEA, anna and elsa M&G, Candlelight processional, TS bfast or brunch for the candlelight processional dining package, pick a pearl in Japan, snow white in Germany, living with the land maybe. My daughter should be tall enough for Soarin by then, but I dont know if it’s worth it. When I try to build a TP, with time for holiday treats at some of the countries, I am way over the closing time of the park. Any suggestions on what to skip or what is a must do besides what I have listed? I haven’t been to Epcot in 25 years, and with all the refurbs and changes going on, I dont know how any of it works now. Also, Remy should be open by then. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Epcot is hard to do in a single day. It is usually a two-day park for us. You have to drop things, for sure.
In order to pull of Epcot in a single day for our May trip, we are pretty much whizzing through WS.
As far as Soarin’…it is probably my favorite thing to do in all of Epcot, so I recommend it. But with a 4-year-old, you can skip TT and Mission:Space for sure. So, basically skip that side of FutureWorld. 
Spaceship Earth will probably be closed, so that means doing The Seas, The Land, and possibly Journey into Imagination, plus the items you want to do in WS.
If you can get a pre-park opening breakfast at Akershus, that will get you extra park time since breakfast will be before opening, plus if you are fast, you can get on FEA with no wait.
Just a heads up on planning for the Processional - when we were there the second week of December, the line for people with packages was already stretched through Morocco (with some winding of the line too) by 3:30 pm for a 5 pm show. There was a threat of rain, so many people lined up 2+ hours early in the hopes of being in the covered area. I built in time to do do some holiday stops and had to cut most of them because of waiting for the processional. FYI for planning since I was shocked by how long the line was, even with having a package.
I’d say definitely do Soarin and we loved Pick a Pearl - highlights of our time in Epcot!
That’s unfortunate about the line. That was the whole point of buying the dining package, because the money was worth it not to stand in line for 2 hours.
Curious…since you had the dining package, if you didn’t care where you sat, then couldn’t you just hop into the line like just as they start letting people in? You will end up with no choice of where to sit, but you wouldn’t have to wait then since you are guaranteed getting in (as long as you are there before they start letting in Standby folks).
Your plan probably doesn’t have your fast passes yet. Try putting some fake fast passes in there and you should be good. Your plan doesn’t sound too overly ambitious - I think you’ll be fine.
Yeah I’m not sure how that works, or how risky it is to wait since the Standby line was even longer than the package line. On our case, we had two toddlers and didn’t want to make them sit through a 45 minute show in the rain, so we joined the line since seat location was important for us.
Exactly! I was extremely disappointed in the wait time. It may have had something to do with potential rain, but people in line said they typically got in line atleast an hour before. I guess the main reason to get a package is to have a seat at all, but I was really counting on it reducing our wait time.
If you don’t care where you are going to sit, then you can show up right before they let in SB. But when they let in SB is also up in the air. It may depend on the popularity of the narrator.
We had the package for the 6:45 show on December 22nd. Our narrator was Steven Curtis Chapman.
It didn’t matter to us where we sat because you didn’t need to see each member of the choir, orchestra, etc. The big picture was going to be good enough. But it was raining that night. So, we wanted to sit under the awning. When the show starts, everyone has to take down their umbrellas.
We got in line at 6 PM and they were letting people in at 6:20. There may have been 150 people in front of us. We were seated well under the awning. I can’t tell you when they started to let in SB or how full the theater was for that showing. I was totally enthralled with the show. My family loved it and it was the highlight of the day. But, we are Christians. Mr. Chapman has aged considerably since I last saw him. Which means, I’ve aged considerably, too. 
We were actually in Epcot five days earlier when the narrator was Pat Sajak. For the 1st showing, the theater was empty. We sat around the America Pavilion and heard the whole show. The narration is scripted. So, all the narrations are very similar. But the narrator does throw in something personal at the end.
Since both of us are into bargains, I will say that if you just want to hear the music and narration, you don’t actually have to be sitting in the theater. You can hang around the America Pavilion to do that. Having done both, the experience is much better in the theater. There are much fewer distractions.
There are probably better choices for restaurants participating in the Dining Package. We originally had Biergarten because it was the cheapest but changed it to GG because people here said the food was better. The character interactions were fabulous. In fact, because we were the last seating, the characters came around 3 times! The food for lunch was just food. The 4 of us barely finished the original servings they bought us. Maybe breakfast is better but I have a hard time paying that kind of money for breakfast. The up side? We had lunch at 2 pm and that was our only meal of the day. We were stuffed. We shared one snack in the morning and another 2 snacks in the evening.
I’m surprised by that! Pat Sajak would have been one of my favorites to see because of growing up with WoF. We had Gary Sinese, and I saw a lot of people wearing his foundation t-shirts, so that may have played into the large crowd as well.
SCC is the only narrator I really would love to see, since he is probably my favorite artist, and believes/means everything he is saying. Probably wouldn’t mind seeing Pat Sajak. I saw a YouTube video of Kurt Russel. It was awful. You’d think he showed up never having read the narration before in his life, and almost seemed drunk.
Anyhow, my wife and I have gone back and forth and are leaning towards not doing it, but instead, sitting outside the pavilion and just listening (unless there is room in SB at the last minute). Really, it is the only TRULY Christmas thing in the Magic Kingdom…everything else is just Christmastime fun. But at the same time, it isn’t really that different from the million Christmas cantatas we’ve seen or been in or I’ve directed…so there’s that.
We might not make a final decision until we know who the narrators will be.
That was what we wanted, too.