Now that Disney World’s parks have reopened, we’re putting together a series of posts examining wait times during the first week of reopening. Epcot is an interesting case—its hours have been drastically changed (now 11AM to 9PM for the entire park), but strategy hasn’t been too impacted overall.

This post has two main parts. First, we present the Epcot Wait Times scorecard. This is a set of four tables diagramming wait times from the last week. I give a little bit of commentary on that, but mostly the analysis is in the second part, where I discuss Epcot touring strategy.

SOURCE DATA AND REMINDERS

This post is based on wait time data collected at Thrill-Data.com. I highly encourage you to use their data in putting together your own analysis, particularly if I’m too lazy—er, busy—to keep putting up these posts.

This isn’t big data analysis, and it isn’t any sort of serious statistical project. I try to be straightforward about why I chose the data points I chose and their limitations. I hope it’s helpful, but if you want to do a more serious analysis, go ahead.

Wait time analysis in general is imperfect. Posted wait times are inaccurate, and the realities of visiting a park often differ from the conclusions we see in the numbers.

Epcot Wait Time Scorecard

Here’s a look back at one week of wait times at Epcot, in four parts:

You can see that the average wait times for the week aren’t particularly high, with the top two rides—Frozen Ever After and Test Track—both having 33-minute averages.

The daily trends don’t have much to offer us. I’d note the chaotic Test Track patterns are in part due to the ride experiencing significant downtime, so its patterns are sort of skewed by when it unexpectedly closes and reopens.

Frozen Ever After, Soarin’, and Living with the Land all gradually increase, probably as people arrive and go to other rides after Test Track (a popular first choice).

The above chart looks at the lowest wait from 2PM to 7PM daily for each ride. 2PM to 7PM is sort of the core of the 11AM to 9PM Epcot schedule, so it’s good to see that even if you don’t get on the rides immediately to start the day, you’ll still have a good chance a low waits in the afternoon.

Lowest Wait is definitely an imperfect metric. Test Track, for example, often had those low waits right when it reopened from a temporary closure, but it still spent the bulk of the afternoons closer to 30 minutes.

The “n/a” in the above and below charts mean different things. For Test Track, the ride wasn’t operating Wednesday from 2PM to 7PM. For Gran Fiesta Tour, that ride often doesn’t have a posted wait time (even when it’s running) because it spends so much time at 0-5 minute waits.

Maximum waits are nice to see how bad a day can possibly get. I don’t know what’s going on with Journey into Imagination some days (I have guesses), but no part of me believes anyone waited 75 or 80 minutes for that ride this week.

You can see that on the day with the highest maximum waits, you would have spent just over 6 hours in line if you’d waiting in every maximum wait. No one should, or would, ever do that, but it serves to show that even in the worst imaginable case, you’d still have over 3 hours free during the 10-hour park day.

This is my favorite chart right now, because it really captures how low waits have been. While Frozen Ever after and Test Track don’t get down to 15 minutes too often, they spend most of the day at or below 30 minute waits. Everything else is usually at or under 15 minutes.

Epcot General Strategy – The Multi-Lap

We continue to recommend the same three-part strategy for Epcot:

Ride some rides in Future World (or Mexico/Norway Pavilions)
Do a lap around the World Showcase
Repeat 1 and 2

Usually we only need two laps, but you can make more too. If you ride three rides, do a lap, ride three rides, do a lap, and ride three rides, you’ll be done with the nine rides.

Nowadays, with the park opening at 11AM, you’ll ride some rides, then take a lunch lap. Then ride three rides before an afternoon snack lap. Then finish the ride before dinner.

Similar to what I did in the Hollywood Studios wait time analysis, I’m going to start with low-priority rides because that allows us to simplify the conversation. But first, I want to remind you that there’s more to Epcot than rides!

Non-Ride Things

Epcot has plenty to do besides rides, though the offerings are more limited than before the closure. You’ll find some shows around the World Showcase (Impressions de France, for example), and the new cavalcades go around the World Showcase.

Check the app (Attractions, Entertainment sections) and Times Guide for details on what’s available in the parks. Use these things to fill time between rides, keeping in mind that shows might end before the park closes, so you don’t want to delay them too much.

Currently, Epcot is hosting the Taste of Epcot International Food and Wine Festival—a modified version of the Food and Wine festival.

Summary of Ride Groupings

Since I’m doing the below analysis backwards, I’m going to give a more straightforward summary to start…

Frozen Ever After & Test Track — Head to one of these first and one later in the day
Soarin’, Living with the Land — Try and visit these second and third
Mission: SPACE — Visit this in the afternoon, or right after Test Track if you start there
Gran Fiesta Tour, The Seas with Nemo and Friends, Journey into Imagination, Spaceship Earth — Visit these throughout the day, when the other waits aren’t as low as you’d like them

Four Low-Priority Rides

Four rides—Gran Fiesta Tour, The Seas With Nemo and Friends, Journey Into Imagination With Figment, and Spaceship Earth spent 90% or more of the week with waits at or under 15 minutes.

For the most part, you can just plan to visit these four whenever they fit into your day (that is, when nothing else seems like a good option). If you’re breaking the rides into groups of three, try and space these out so you visit one or two more popular rides and one or two of these rides in around your World Showcase laps.

The Land and Mission: SPACE

Soarin’, Living With the Land, and Mission: SPACE are a hair more complicated than the above four rides. Waits over 30 minutes are very rare for these rides, and they regularly have low waits in the afternoon, but they’re not as low as frequently as the above four.

One interesting thing about all the wait times we analyze is that the wait time for a walk-on ride (i.e. with no real wait) varies. 0-minute waits are rarely posted at Walt Disney World. Usually if there is no wait, they post a 5-minute wait. It’s not that 0-minute waits are impossible in the system, it’s just rarely used.

Soarin’ never hit 5 minutes this week, and it barely ever hit 10 minutes. But it spent huge swaths of the afternoons at 15 minutes. Is that really because it managed to keep a consistent 15-minute line for hours on end? No way. It probably actually fluctuated between 0 and 20 during that time (mostly 0-5 minutes, I suspect), but the posted time was just left at 15.

Both Soarin’ and Living with the Land are located in The Land pavilion, and both see waits that plateau around noon—one hour into the day. They’re also both long ride experiences. Soarin’ takes forever to board, and Living with the Land is just a long ride.

Ideally, you’d visit Soarin’ and Living With the Land second and third in your day. One of them (usually Soarin’) should be second in most cases. If the waits get too high, though, you’ve got a few other rides—Figment, Nemo, Spaceship Earth—nearby. Those should have short waits, try them, see if your other ride in The Land gets a lower wait, or save it for the afternoon.

We’ve never been fans of visiting Mission: SPACE early, but that was because we used to always have a FastPass+ for it. Now, it could be a good second ride if you’re coming right from Test Track. Otherwise, just save it for the afternoon. We don’t ride the orange version of the ride with a full stomach.

And that brings us to the big two—Frozen Ever After and Test Track.

Frozen Ever After and Test Track

You’ll head to one of these rides as soon as the park opens, the only question is which.

This decision still comes (mostly) down to what entrance you’re using. If you’re using the main entrance, definitely start with Test Track. This might become debatable at some point in the next month, but for now it suffices that Test Track has been temporarily closed about 38% of the last week.

Ride Test Track first from the main entrance to avoid dealing with it breaking down later in the day. It’s also just not worth the time to walk to Frozen and then back to Future World for more rides.

If you’re coming from the World Showcase / Skyliner / Boardwalk entrance, go to Frozen Ever After, then into Future World. You might also do this if you’re coming from the main entrance and Test Track is closed to start the day.

We still don’t recommend doing both of these to start your day. I might do Test Track—>Mission: SPACE—>Frozen Ever After if I could get Frozen with a wait of 15-20 minutes or less. But generally it makes sense to do one of these and then knock off a few shorter waits, saving the other for later in the day.

If you’re riding Frozen or Test Track later in the day, I’d take any wait under 45 minutes. They spent about 90% of the week at or under 45 minutes, and just over half the week at or under 30 minutes. Both waits are a fine use of time.

Conclusions

Very similar to Hollywood Studios, Epcot is really a tale of two rides. Test Track and Frozen Ever After dominate your planning, with the other rides fitting in pretty easily anywhere in the day.

Unlike Hollywood Studios, no Epcot rides have outrageous waits right now. Similar to Animal Kingdom, there’s just zero stress involved in an Epcot visit right now (from a strategy standpoint). Mix and match your rides as you make laps around the World Showcase, and you’ll have a good time.

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