We’re just back from our trip, and had the most wonderful time! But I’m curious about the one and only off day we had – Epcot. I’m sure others have at one time or another experienced THAT day on vacation, when things go off the rails a bit. Epcot was that day for us. The plan started out well – rope dropped Soarin after PPO breakfast at Garden Grill. We then headed to Frozen but the ride was down. That was disappointing but not completely surprising --rides do go down every once in a while. So we tried to reorient ourselves and ended up doing two rides on Mission Space before our Test Track fast pass, then headed to Mexico to watch the Coco version of the Mariachi show in Mexico. We got there 6 or 7 minutes late. Show ended about 5 minutes after we arrived. I thought this was supposed to be a 25 minute show? With the Miguel puppet, etc? We saw none of that. By 11:12 or 11:13, the performers had left. We then rode the ride in Mexico and headed to watch the 12 pm show of the American Adventure, which we enjoyed. We tried to play a little Agent P in Germany but didn’t finish because we rushed back to see the Voices of Liberty at 1 pm. I believe we arrived right on time. They were wonderful, but only 3 songs. Is this normal? I guess we were expecting more? Generally speaking, our morning/early afternoon in Epcot felt stressful because of the race of long distances to make timed events that then let us down in one way or another. It actually turned out to be a very nice day in the end, since our evening plans went more smoothly and we were all in better spirits, but I’m curious if I was misinformed about the Coco show and Voices of Liberty, and it was just a mismatch of expectations?
Overall our trip was lots of fun! Between the fast passes we had in advance and our use of same day fast passes (modifying to get immediately available window, grabbing the known same day drops, etc.), we rode everything we wanted to multiple times with waits of less than 15 minutes. We loved Animal Kingdom in particular, and the same day FoP drops worked out really well for us – we rode 4 times over 2 days! And we could have done 2 more rides since I snagged the fast passes but we then gave them up since we left the park early. Everest was also an easy fast pass to get repeatedly by modifying a few times.
We had the free dining package (upgraded from quick service to standard), which we made great use of, even though it complicated matters as we tried to maximize value, and we got lots of fancy drinks when normally we’d be happy drinking water from our water bottles, and I was practically forcing my kids to have more snacks. We some great meals at Hoop de Doo, Raglan Road, Garden Grill, La Hacienda, and Sanaa, and BOG as well. We were also very happy with Pop Century – it served our needs very well. Overall a great trip!
I wouldn’t stress about it, show times might vary especially due to heat. If it’s super hot outside, tends be shorter performances because of the weather.
Epcot has always been my favourite park, and it has had the craziest things happen to me. From getting stuck upside down on Sum of all thrills for 20minutes, to someone who who bounced their margarita off my head while aiming for their husband outside of Mexico and even sitting in LeCelier when my room cam picked up movement and sent me a pic of people in my Boardwalk Villa packing up my family’s stuff (turns out the front desk assigned them our room, still had 5 days left) Had to sprint from Canada out the back entrance to the hotel.
If we have a choice on extra time, Epcot is still always my first choice.
In May, my DD19 & I visited EP on our 2nd day at WDW. It is always the most exhausting but enjoyable day…so much walking and less trees so very hot!
We seemed to have to chase FPs times/locations too. We made sure we had a long late afternoon lunch in a cool restaurant to build strength for the evening.
I hadn’t been to EP since 2011 and was disappointed in the quality of the goods for purchase in the World Showcase. There used to be bountiful beautiful Venetian masks in Italy…now just a few. In Morocco, no more lovely clothes. Now I saw soccer jerseys everywhere! The only place I liked to shop was in the French Pavilion.
All in all, we ended up walking over 12 miles!
I love Epcot, but it is huge and we end up walking more there than any other park. Not a lot of rides DH and I are interested in at Epcot these days. So I tend to just hang out in WS and eat/drink and generally be merry
Yeah, best 200 bucks I ever spent travel wise. Ever since the incident I came back to a hotel in SanFran where I was attending a conference and I noticed someone wheeling a very distinct piece of scuba luggage to their car with a very unique painted image on the front my friend did for me, I’ve been super paranoid about my hotel room.
Yeah I got it back, it’s amazing how bad someone can lock up when you yell “Thief! that guy is stealing my luggage!” Especially when you think you’re about to get away with free stuff. Hotel security ran over pretty quick, he didn’t even remove my name tag or airline tag off it.
As for BV room, there was admittedly, a lot of yelling, but as it turns out they had a new front desk member who was looking at the reservation and saw that 1 party member checked out and left early, and since it was after 6pm the next day, surely it must have been turned over and she could assign it to someone else. I was seeing a great deal of red that evening. Short end of it, we got all our belongings back and our DVC points back for the trip as well as a nice comp’d dinner at the flying fish.
We’ve gone to Epcot twice, and it has been our shortest day both times. Trip 1 the kids were tired of all the walking by lunch. We stayed a little longer but still left before 2 and didn’t return in the evening. Trip 2 we made it to about 4:30 and half the family returned for Illuminations. That day was unexpectedly crowded (predicted CL5 and actual CL9) and we were all DONE with lines and walking by then. Next trip is just me and DH, and we have a full day at Epcot planned. I’ll admit, I’m very curious to see how we feel about it without kids. With the kids, it’s my least favorite park.
Meh, in my profession, you learn to seethe quietly. Sure there was some initial yelling, some outrage, but then you have to dial it back when you want things out of a negotiation. Insist on meetings with the hotel and hospitality director. (this is where it pays to keep a nice pair of pants and collared shirt in your vacation clothing) lay everything out calmly, use the buzz words and phrases that hit all the buttons. Things like the safety of my family, trust and faith in their systems/employees. Give them a chance to hang themselves with a sad offer, be prepared to counter. Case in point, they initially offered a 50.00 room credit. I told them, if that amount mattered, we wouldn’t be at a deluxe villa. The staff there are really empowered to make things right, but you have to go for it.
But let’s be fair, in 12 years of being a DVC member with twice a year trips, we’ve only had 2 bad experiences, normally it’s smooth, the system works, you barely notice the bumps in the road. If it wasn’t super fun in the majority, we wouldn’t keep going back. Just keep your head.
If I walked into what I had been told was “my” room and it was full of another family’s things, I would have contacted the front desk immediately to find out what the mistake was. I can’t even comprehend just packing it up to… Do what, exactly? Keep it? Chuck it? Stick it out in the hallway and pretend they didn’t know anything about it??
That is that part of this story that is shocking to me, not the fact that there was a mix-up with roon assignments.
Yes. Just this past weekend when I was helping my kids move into their respective off-campus apartments (in two different states 1500 miles from my home, FWIW), I heard a mouse in my room at 3 am. Not the good kind of Mouse, either- although even Mickey would get the stink-eye from me at 3 am.
Crikey, it was loud enough I thought it could be a raccoon- or worse! But it only managed to drag one of my son’s French fries about 2 feet so I figured it couldn’t be anything too large. Plus, I have to shut. my windows at home every night to keep out hungry bears, so mice are not intimidating to me. Anyway, the next day we not only were moved and upgraded, but also comped free meals for the rest of the stay and had all our snacks replaced. All because I was calm and understanding that these things happen (unlike stealing scuba equipment) but also that I knew it was far below par.
I think most staff genuinely want to make guests happy, and take pride in their work. They had an opportunity to make it right, and they did.
Epcot this past Saturday was possibly a one and done park for my family as a whole, and I think the issue is a mix of Epcot and us. The kids by that point had made a rule that they weren’t riding any thrill-less rides (IASW was my biggest mistake) so refused to do the Three Caballeros and Living with the Land – they were ok with Spaceship Earth though I think they’d like the next announced version more. My husband’s injured knees were sore from all the walking, he didn’t want to watch any country movies, and he got super cranky and bored from walking WS clockwise in the beating sun and keeping a running count of how many hours we’d gone since a ride. DS7 wanted to try Agent P and we started a mission but DH and DS11 got grumpy until we abandoned it. We took the friendship boats from Morocco and skipped the UK, France and Canada entirely. And Mission Space green made 3 of us queasy. We were doing it without FPs to save them for MK that evening which may have been a mistake.
It wasn’t all bad it’s just Epcot was the most disappointing park for us. Club Cool was a hit with all 4 of us. I loved Soarin (DH liked it, the kids were ok with it but don’t want a second ride), we all enjoyed Test Track, DS11 wanted to do Mission Space Orange but the wait was too long because we did Test Track first. We didn’t see any performances because they would have had a mutiny if I’d tried to make that happen. And it was really really hot. We’ve been to most of the countries in WS and while the architecture was cool to me WS felt like a very pale approximation of actually being in any of those countries.
I loved Expo86 as a tween so I had high hopes of loving WS but it didn’t measure up to the country pavilions at Expo and I much preferred Future World. I may go back on my own Thursday afternoon to see what Food &Wine is like, to watch the China and France movies, to spend more time with the manatees, to ride Soarin as many times as possible, and to see what Living with the Land and the Three Mariachis and the Nemo ride are like.
