I recently did something I had never done before when visiting Walt Disney World. I went for just one day and didn’t stay on property. It was a very unusual experience to say the least. So how did it go?

I was in Orlando and decided to plan for a one day visit to Walt Disney World. Needless to say, it was difficult to pick which park to go to. So the first decision we made was to plan on park hopping. We definitely wanted to try and ride Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. Also, the Food and Wine festival was going so we knew we wanted to end the day at EPCOT. For the morning we wanted to pick a park that had a few great rides that we would be able to do in a short time. We would begin the day at Animal Kingdom.

It was very unusual to go to Walt Disney World for just one day without planning for a long stay. We didn’t make any dining reservations and didn’t plan on using Disney Genie+. We did hope to get a Lightning Lane reservation for Guardians of the Galaxy and we were able to purchase those around 6:50 am.

We used a rideshare app to get to Animal Kingdom and it was smooth. We made it there by 8:30 am for a 9 am park opening. It wasn’t too busy yet and we got dropped off close to the entrance and didn’t have to wait in traffic.

We started at Expedition Everest and barely waited. We rode that twice and hopped on Dinosaur, again with nearly no wait time. We then headed over to Avatar: Flight of Passage with a wait of 60 minutes. After that we made it just in time to catch Festival of the Lion King. We almost didn’t make it in, but did so after the initial seating and ended up with front row seats. We had a quick lunch at Pizzafari, watched It’s tough to be a Bug and made our way to the exit.

We got to the EPCOT bus stop just after 1:30, which was a little later than we wanted to be. As we approached, the bus was leaving. We then had to wait about 15 minutes for another bus. That seemed kind of long, as it was the beginning of the park hopping window and there were many people trying to move.

We entered EPCOT without much of a line at all. I expected there to be more of a rush at the 2pm opening of park hopping. There was a bit of a hitch, as none of our fingerprints worked on the first try.

We had our Lightning Lane reservation for 4pm to 5pm, so we didn’t want to do too much before that. We enjoyed some snacks and drinks at World Showcase. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is unbelievably awesome.

We then enjoyed some more dining and exploring of the Food and Wine Festival. We only made it on Soarin’ and Test Track to end the night. There was just too much to doin EPCOT for a half day. We got off Test Track just in time to watch Harmonius.

Leaving EPCOT using a rideshare was, unfortunately, not easy. Walt Disney World has seemingly not prepared enough for the rise in this technology. There were too few signs directing us where to go. We got lost at least once when we followed a sign to an area and then got there to find another sign pointing us back. There were temporary rideshare signs placed around as guides, but they were difficult to find. When we finally stumbled upon the right spot, there was no organization to the area. People were just standing around hoping to find their rides. It really was a mess. Disney World is going to have to devise a system for this emerging transportation method.