Good evening, my wife and I are taking out 6 year old and three year old daughters to Disneyworld this summer. We are back and forth between going to Epcot or Hollywood Studios for one of the days. The draw for Epcot is they are crazy about Disney princesses and frozen, I was going to do the princess brunch followed immediately by the frozen ride/meet Anna and Elsa. My wife and I have never been to HS at any point in our lives but a friend of hers who is a frequent Disney visitor swears that HS would be the better idea with Epcot under construction. Any thoughts?
I have 6,4, and 3 year old daughters and the last day of the trip they got to pick the park and chose Epcot. I think they liked the laid back nature and the character meets
If Anna and Elsa are important I would do Epcot… although HS has the frozen sing along, no meet, but everyone says it’s great. I see your dilemma. Epcot all frozen and HS has some shows they might like and toy story land.
It’s a hard pick— any draw for you and DW? Which one would you guys miss?
Are park hoppers an option? Both could be a half day if you just had a few things you wanted to do…
Honestly my wife and I would have no preference and I don’t think we would do park hoppers. I don’t think the kiddos have it in them to do multiple parks in a day.
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Yea I understand.
Well I think your frozen plan sounds quite magical for your kids! My girls loved it and the Anna Elsa meet and greet was great.
Edit to add I have a 6 and 3 daughters too! Last we went they were 2ish and 5. But I wouldn’t skip frozen our next trip.
I see the Epcot draw for your family. The seas pavilion is also cool for that age.
Frozen ever after and most of future world will play well with toddlers, even with the construction.
In the HS side, Toy Story land is going to be the big draw for that age. Unless they are into star wars, I think the rest may be a miss outside of the princess shows (mermaid, frozen, b & b) and Disney Jr show.
I think Epcot is a good pick if your going to do the meal.
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Another vote for Epcot, unless you can add another day to do both. For 3 and 6, SDD may be a little much unless they are daredevils, TSMM may be over their heads and the new Disney Junior dance party is much less geared to the preschool crowd than the old show was. I didn’t like it nearly as much, too much high-energy dance music and too little familiar characters and songs. With my 3 and 6 year old girls, our favorite part at HS was the green men show we happened upon that the girls participated in. That part was priceless. Otherwise there really is very little besides shows for little ones. Epcot has at least 6 rides that any age/height can go on, Anna and Elsa and lots of characters to meet as well as I think a more child-friendly fireworks show (Fantasmic can be kinda scary). And better restaurants - check out Biergarten!
My vote would be Epcot if princesses is important. Also, HS is likely to be a mess too (not from construction, but crowds due to the new Star Wars ride). We went last week with our boys (4 & 6). Our youngest preferred Epcot. He kept saying he wanted to go back to “Epicot”. Our oldest loves Star Wars so he preferred HS. If it didn’t have Star Wars stuff I think he would have picked Epcot too. Toy Story is fun, but HS doesn’t have much for young kids unless you want to do a bunch of shows. We got there at 7 am for the new Star Wars ride, did all of Toy Story and had nothing to do by 9 am because both our kids weren’t tall enough for the rides that were open (Tower of Terror and the coaster) and shows didn’t start until at least 10:30 or 11 in most cases.
We were at Epcot and HS in December, and while it was disappointing that Epcot is under a lot of construction, for those ages and a love of princesses, I would still pick Epcot.
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You can meet a bunch of characters around WS (Jasmine, Snow White, Alice (from Wonderland), etc) in addition to the ones at Akershus. We also met Ralph and Vanellope, Joy, and saw Baymax at the character spot, but they may be moved when you are there.
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The Anna/Elsa meet and greet is really great. The line goes through a cute Scandinavian house and both princesses take their time to chat and get lots of photos. Make sure you’ve seen Frozen 2 since they were in their newest gowns when we went!
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Our 3 yo daughter LOVED doing the “pick a pearl” in Japan. It’s in the main shop in the middle of the store. She got to pick an oyster, they did a little ceremony, and then opened it to reveal a pearl. It was a fun event and she still talks about it.
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Our kids also liked exploring the WS areas at that age. The Japan drummers, walking through the back of Morocco, and the Germany train set were particular favorites. It was much easier to wander and not feel lost there as well.
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I love Epcot food booths during festivals!
HS is great, but with young kids, we only spent a 1/2 day there. The Frozen show is just a retelling of the first movie (mostly with clips from the movie) and a few live actors narrating, so I found it a bit disappointing. Meeting Olaf was really sweet and the kids loved it, but they had more fun with Anna and Elsa (which also has a much nicer queue). Toy Story Land and Star Wars are both really, really well done, but unless your kids strongly want to see them, I’d hold off on visiting until they are older and can appreciate the detailing and ride more of the rides there.
FEA was one of the big highlights of our trip for our DD7 and she wasn’t even that into Frozen anymore at the time…but she got back into it b/c of that and the new movie.
If I had to pick one with kids those ages, I would go with Epcot.
Your plan of brunch with the Princesses following by FEA and Elsa/Anna meet and great sound great. Is there time before brunch for you or your wife to Rope Drop Soarin’ with your 6 year old (is your 3 year old 40"?) and do Ride Swap? Although they are not exciting rides for adults, my 4.5 y/o daughter loved the Three Caballleros and enjoyed the Nemo ride. We also did Turtle Talk with Crush, meet Mickey and friends at Charcacter Spot (though now I think Mickey is alone in the Imagination Pavillion), meet Vanelope and meet Baymax. There are many other character meet and greets in Epcot. When you go, it’s possible the Ratatouille ride may be open too.
We were done with HS after 1/2 day. We did TSL, the Frozen sing-a-long, and Meet Olaf. TSL was great, but overall I think Epcot has more for young kids right now.
Meant my reply above for OP, not you. Sorry!
That’s ok. 
It made me think about this thread again and I wanted to say that our last day we were at Epcot and the goal was to do a few rides and then Xmas at WS. But, WS was packed (really! bad! it was Black Friday) and I ended up off with my DD7 by ourselves for a long time. She had no interest in WS so after our FEA FP I took her back to Future World and just started going on rides. It was a perfect day!!! She loved things like Figment, LWTL, turtle talk etc that my older kids would have thought were boring, and in the afternoon like that most people had moved on to WS so we could get FP even on CL10 day. I do sort of regret not spending more time in WS but my DD7 had a blast and it was fun showing these rides to her. She’d been before but was too little then to remember.
We were in both parks in October with granddaughters ages 3 and 13 months. For the 3 year old, in HS, she enjoyed TSMM, meeting Olaf, seeing Muppet Vision, and the Frozen Sing Along. In Epcot, she loved eating in Akershus, meeting Anna and Elsa, the boat ride in Mexico, meeting Mulan in China, taking her passport all around the World Showcase, watching the mariachi band, watching Sergio in Italy, the attractions in Future World. You may not want another buffet in one day, but Biergarten was a huge hit with both girls.
Good afternoon, reviving this question as we ended up not being able to go to Disney in the summer of 2020 and are finally going to be taking our trip this April. Our 6 and 3 year old are now 8 and 5, the Akershus breakfast that we wanted to do is not back yet, and character meet and greets to my understanding are still limited. With the addition of the Mickey and Minnie Runaway ride, and my 6 year old now being 8 and more open to “bigger” rides like Tower of Terror and Rock "N Rollercoaster we were leaning towards HS over Epcot. My youngest daughter does like Ratatouille so that would be a point in favor of Epcot, but beyond that and Frozen would HS have more rides for us? We aren’t a Star Wars family so that would not necessarily be a point in favor of HS for us. Thanks everyone!