EPCOT opened as Walt Disney World's second theme park on October 1, 1982, inspired by the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow that Walt Disney envisioned for what became the Walt Disney World Resort.
EPCOT today is big on food festivals, which now run almost every week of the year, starting with the Festival of the Arts in January, then continuing with the Flower & Garden Festival in the spring, followed by the Food & Wine Festival in late summer through fall, wrapping up with the Festival of the Holidays in November and December.
Looking for discount tickets? Get Walt Disney World Resort theme park tickets
For more information about Walt Disney World's EPCOT, jump to...
Our recommendations below come from our ongoing survey of Theme Park Insider readers. Locations with star ratings ★ ranked especially highly among our readers. Vote here to take part in our surveys and submit your picks for top attractions.
EPCOT features table service and some walk-up counter service restaurants throughout its World Showcase national pavilions. Festival marketplaces also serve themed food and drinks during EPCOT's many festivals throughout the year.
Elsewhere at Walt Disney World, Theme Park Insider readers recommend Citricos, a Mary Poppins-themed, fine-dining dinner restaurant at Disney's Grand Floridian Hotel and Topolino's Terrace, serving French and Italian cuisine at dinner with a character meal at breakfast, in Disney's Riviera Resort. In Disney Springs, our readers recommend Chef Art Smith's Homecomin' for a Florida-inspired "farm-to-fork" table-service meal, and The Polite Pig for casual service barbecue.
EPCOT is part of the sprawling Walt Disney World Resort, located in Lake Buena Vista, Florida – about 24 miles from Orlando International Airport (MCO).
Note that Disney no longer provides free Disney's Magical Express bus service to and from the Orlando airport for its hotel guests.
If you are renting a car while visiting Orlando, you can save on toll road fees by getting a Visitor Toll Pass at the Orlando airport rather than renting a toll transponder from your rental car company: Toll Discounts Return for Orlando Theme Park Visitors
Disney's theme park ticket prices vary by day, so you can use Disney's pricing calendar [scroll down] to see which days have the highest expected crowds. The lower the price for a ticket, the smaller the expected crowd that day.
In general, you will find the lightest crowd levels at the Walt Disney World theme parks during these periods:
Large crowds will fill the parks on runDisney weekends:
In addition, crowd levels are high during:
Whenever you plan to visit, you must make date-specific reservations in advance to use your tickets. You can see which dates are open to reserve on Disney's "Park Pass" availability calendar. See the next section, below, for more advice on planning your Walt Disney World visit.
If you want to visit more than one Walt Disney World theme park on a single day, you will need a "Park Hopper" ticket.
Dining reservations can be made via the Disney World website, and each date's reservations open 60 days in advance, at about 5:45am Eastern Time. Disney's on-site hotel guests may make reservations for their entire stay (up to 10 days) starting 60 days before their check-in date. That gives Disney's on-site hotel guests an advantage in making reservations for the most popular restaurants.
Disney's hotel guests also get 30 minutes of early access to each of the resort's four theme parks every day. So hotel guests should plan on an early start each morning to take advantage of empty queues. Unfortunately for guests staying off site, this new early admission policy means that they no longer have any opportunity to be the first to enter any Walt Disney World theme park in the morning.
As for planning your day, Walt Disney World now offers a new tool on its official My Disney Experience app to create a custom itinerary for each day of your visit. In addition, Disney offers two ways for its theme park guests to pay to access shorter wait times for many popular attractions. You can learn more about these options in our posts:
If Guardians of the Galaxy is using a virtual queue, try to enter that via the My Disney Experience app at exactly 7am the morning you visit. If you do not get into the virtual queue, you might consider buying Individual Lightning Lane access, if there is no standby queue option. Definitely try for the free virtual queue before paying for Lighting Lane access, though.
Otherwise, do not follow the herd and ride Spaceship Earth as soon as you enter the park. That line drops significantly later in the afternoon, as does Soarin'. Choose instead to go for Frozen Ever After first thing when the park opens and definitely before 11am, then your choice of Remy or Test Track, which are the next-longest waits in the park. Our choice would be Test Track, since there's a better chance of shorter waits at Remy later in the day. Also, that allows you to finish the north half of the park before doing the circuit around World Showcase. EPCOT is a huge park and there is a lot of walking around required here.
If you are spending the entire day at just EPCOT, Disney Genie+ is not necessary, though buying the Individual Lightning Lane can be worth the money if you really want to get on Guardians. If you are Park Hopping and combining EPCOT with the nearby Disney's Hollywood Studios, Genie+ can allow you to hit the highlights at both parks in one day.