Disney World has four theme parks — Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Any Disney fan has their favorite. Maybe you love Magic Kingdom for the nostalgia and historic rides. Perhaps World Showcase does it for you in EPCOT, maybe your Star Wars fandom leaves you loyal to Hollywood Studios, or it could be that you love seeing the creatures at Animal Kingdom. For me, EPCOT reigns supreme…but I truly hate going there.
Before we dive in, you can see a bit more about why EPCOT is my favorite park by checking out the video right here!
But let’s talk about why I actually hate going there.
Why I Love EPCOT
I’ve been going to Disney World for pretty much my whole life and EPCOT has been my favorite park for as long as I can remember. I always loved the edu-tainment vibe, the classic rides and the new ones, and World Showcase.
Now that I’m older, the food is a standout for me as well! There’s nothing like being able to eat around the world. But the real reason I love EPCOT is because it’s my parents’ and brother’s favorite park too. EPCOT, for me, is a nostalgic and special place that has a lot of fond family memories.
So, what could there possible be to hate?
The Construction
First off, I hate the construction. EPCOT is currently undergoing the EPCOT transformation to revitalize and bring new experiences to the park. So far, I’ve loved the results and I’m looking forward to the final product. But in the meantime, the construction is the worst and it’s been overtaking the center of the park for years now.
The former Future World has been rethemed into three lands: World Discovery, World Nature, and World Celebration. World Celebration, the center land, has been completely blocked off by construction walls for a long time.
Not only does this construction greatly diminish the aesthetics of the park, but it also makes walking paths difficult and means a lot more walking to get where you want to go as you try to navigate the construction. And that brings me to the real reason I hate going to EPCOT.
The Layout
EPCOT has long had a reputation in the Disney community as the most tiring park. It’s a common joke to hear on the buses at the end of the night, “EPCOT stands for Every Person Comes Out Tired!”
I can live with tiring! Every Disney World park is huge and you’re in the Florida heat so a Disney vacation can feel like a gauntlet. But EPCOT takes the cake when it comes to an inconveniently laid out park. The construction certainly compounds this, but even without it, EPCOT is shaped something like and “8.”
Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom are wheel-and-spoke layouts which means it’s pretty easy to access the center of the park. This helps when it comes to crossing the park to get to another land that isn’t adjacent. I often try to maximize what I do in a park day so that means a lot of back and forth and criss-crossing. But even when you don’t try to maximize, a situation might arise where your Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind boarding time is called while you’re in the France Pavilion, or you need to head to your Garden Grill reservation while you’re in the Italy Pavilion.
The layout of EPCOT makes getting around a challenge. If you’re at the front of the park and you need to get to Japan, you’re in for a long and tedious walk. Even crossing World Showcase is a haul because you have to go around the lagoon.
With the construction, the front of the park is no different. You’re basically circling a massive, uncrossable section of the park to get from World Discovery to World Nature.
The one saving grace is the boat in World Showcase lagoon that runs between Canada and Morocco. This boat runs about every 15 minutes and can save your legs and some time if you time it right. But even that isn’t as helpful as it used to be. There are actually two more boat landings in World Showcase where a boat used to run between Mexico and Germany but we haven’t seen this boat operational in some time.
All of this to say, it’s kind of the worst trying to get around EPCOT and it actively deters me from wanting to go sometimes. This is, of course, very sad considering I do love it so much.
Perhaps EPCOT will become a little more accessible when the construction finally wraps up and we can hope that the second World Showcase boat comes back but for now, I do kind of hate going to my favorite park.
Want to learn more about my EPCOT strategy? Click here!
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Do you have this problem with EPCOT? Tell me in the comments!
It might be better to consider Epcot as two separate parks. Go one day to do World Showcase and go another day for the former Future World. I do wish World Showcase was larger.
EPCOT is my favorite park as well.What I don’t like about it , ironically, is that it is not big enough! The walking I do not mind. But I cannot do any thrill rides. I even have to close my eyes for small segments of Soarin and, despite my excitement at getting to ride it, I had to close my eyes for most of the Ratatouille ride. What I would like to see is a bigger World Showcase area. More countries. More stuff for people like me. I cannot enjoy any of the new rides in any of the parks, but I still go and make the best of it. But EPCOT makes up for a lot I cannot do.So after this current construction is done, more countries, please.