Living Orange: Epcot

We decided to take the boys out of school for a week this February to go to Disney and Universal. We figured it was the last time this would be easy to do since Carter is in second grade (he has very little homework and there is no end-of-year testing yet). And this would be the last year that Gray is free.

We went the week before President's Day to try to avoid the crowds as much as possible. We left on a Saturday and returned on a Saturday. As usual, we drove and we very lucky to never hit any traffic (the drive is long enough!). I think we picked a good week and we did a pretty good job with our fast passes but there were a few times we waited longer than we'd like to. But over the week, most waits were 5-10 minutes and we occasionally waited 20 minutes. I think we did maybe two waits of 30 minutes.

For the first time we also decided to do Universal. Since we had six days in Orlando, we decided to do one day at each of the four Disney parks and one day at each of the two Universal parks. We stayed at a Drury Inn & Suites near Universal because now that we are a family of 5, the cost of a suite at a Disney hotel is insane. We had a wonderful huge room with a separate bedroom along with free breakfast and free dinner at the hotel. The dinner wasn't amazing but after a long day at the parks, we were usually fine with it.

As always, our boys were up super early (much earlier than normal even) so we were at the parks in line usually about 45 minutes before they opened (and we were usually killing time in the hotel room before leaving each morning). Since we weren't staying on property, we weren't able to enter the parks early and I made sure to avoid whichever park was opening early each day.

We did Epcot on our first day in Orlando (Sunday, February 12th). The boys were ready for their first day of fun!

Gray never wears a hat but was obsessed with it most of the trip. He wears it pretty well :)

Epcot let everyone through the entrance where you show your tickets early and then stopped everyone at Spaceship Earth until the park officially opened. We were right up front and watched these guys perform until we were allowed to head to the rides.

We tried to fit in as much as possible each day (and were worn out by the time we left each day - usually between 5:30 and 7pm). We pretty much hit every ride in every park each day. We figured out after the first day how to take advantage of the fast pass system and rider swap (the advantage of having a toddler with us!) so that we could get more fast passes each day which was awesome. Instead of having all of us do the same 3 fast passes (the most you are allowed to sign up for each day), two of us would pick 3 and the other two would pick a different 3. The two that went on the ride with the fast pass got a rider swap fast pass for the others without all of us having to scan our cards. Plus, with rider swap, it counts for 3 people so both kids would get to go on the ride instead of just the one who hadn't been able to yet. (That explanation sounds very confusing now that I'm rereading it , but if you go to Disney, hopefully it makes sense and will help you out!) Rylan was tall enough for almost everything at Disney (there was more he and Gray were too short for at Universal). Universal also had a great child swap option that cut down on wait times for us and let the big boys ride most rides two times.

I tried to take some pictures throughout our days at the parks but not nearly as many as I normally would have. Here are the ones I took at Epcot.

The Seas with Nemo and Friends: