My favorite festival at Epcot is the annual Festival of the Arts, held in mid-January to late February. It is my favorite for several reasons including the cooler weather, the more ‘inventive’ food offerings in the festival food stands, the paint-by-number mural, the life-size art backdrops for photos, meeting my favorite artists, and the artwork offered for sale, display, and being created in person on-site. My tippy top favorite reason though is that my daughter started as a single-day chalk artist at the festival last year and was invited back this year to chalk for two days in January! Let’s dive into the trip deets!

We flew in to Orlando late on a Friday night, gotta work around the college schedule! Our lodging for this trip was the incredible Disney’s Polynesian Village resort in a deluxe studio villa. We’ve stayed in these before, on their opening day as villas in fact, and a few times since. I love, love, love the views from the lake view villa rooms. We had the best view of Magic Kingdom and Cinderella Castle from our patio. This was super when it came to watching fireworks from the room. One thing that majorly stinks about lake view studio villas here? The Magic Kingdom Ferryboat! The Transportation and Ticket Center, aka the way you have to come into the Magic Kingdom if you’re staying off-site, is right beside the Polynesian resort. This is great for being able to run over and hop on the Epcot monorail line. This is the pits though if you’re in a lake view studio villa because you hear the darn Ferryboat horn every time the ferry comes and goes over to the park. It’s enough to drive you bonkers until you finally get used to it… you know, on your last night of the trip. LOL. You can also hear the train’s whistle from Magic Kingdom but I actually quite enjoy that sound. But the ferryboat, man… and the ferryboat’s man, giving the spiel over the boat’s PA system about going over to the park and all that. At least you don’t have to ride to the park on that behemoth yourself though!! From the Polynesian, you can take the resort monorail line or hop on the resort boat from the marina (much, much smaller than the ferryboat). Boat noise aside, the Polynesian is my fave and I always love my time there.

So January, right? It’s Florida though, so it’s always hot and sweaty, right? No! No! No! I tell clients all the time that you’re not guaranteed the hot sticky weather unless you’re traveling in mid to late April through about early October. Before and after that, you can have the heat but you can also have the cooler temperatures. On our trip, it was FREEZING! I have been to Disney umpteen times, all throughout the year and have never had it that cold. The air temps maxed in the 50s but it was windy and felt much colder than that. Once the sun went down, BRRRR! We had heavy coats and jeans on and were still cold. Many guests had hats, gloves, heavy coats, etc. on every day and I think I only saw somebody in the pool once, on our very last day when it started to warm up a bit. I’m usually quite hot and don’t think I had one drop of sweat the whole time. It was a short little burst of cold and then warmed back up some the day we left. Wouldn’t you know?! We even came back to the room shortly after dark one night because it was just too chilly to be comfortable.

While we were there, we hit all of the parks except Animal Kingdom. That one seems to get less love from us than it should but we were on a tight schedule so that had to be pushed aside. We had three full days plus an After Hours event at Magic Kingdom from 10pm-1am. While the tickets for the event were close to $175/each, it was worth every penny to have the park be super empty with attractions open (basically no waiting on anything), free snacks (popcorn, various ice cream novelties) and drinks (bottled sodas and water), a second set of fireworks, and — wait for it — Tron with a standby line! Tron is normally only available with the purchase of an Individual Lightning Lane timeslot at 7am for about $25/person or by booking a free Virtual Queue slot at 7am (books in seconds and you still end up having to wait a while in line). There is no regular/standby line to use for this attraction due to popularity. But during the After Hours event, there is no Individual Lightning Lane/Genie+ service available and the Virtual Queues don’t operate either! So the standby line is put into service and you can ride as much as you want! The wait for Tron for us said 20 minutes but we walked right on and through the queue, up to the main room where you board the lightcycles. We probably waited 5-10 minutes in there. While we only rode once (thanks motion sickness) we could’ve ridden at least once or twice more with , that same super short wait. We also rode pretty much everything else we wanted to ride: Pirates, Magic Carpets of Aladdin, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Haunted Mansion, Peter Pan’s Flight (with maybe a 5 minute wait?), Buzz Lightyear (twice), Tron, Tomorrowland Speedway (the only people on the track!), and the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. We shopped, had snacks/drinks, and went at a nice pace. We rolled out of the park at just about 12:30am… with a flight at 10am and needing to leave for the airport at 7-7:30am, we had to get some rest!

Hollywood Studios was a blast, as always. We usually go in and head straight for Tower of Terror. I would ride that over and over if I could do it with a minimal wait. Those varying drop sequences are the best! We hit Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, went on Star Tours (hoping for a new clip in the ride but we always get the same few), had some lunch, enjoyed a bit of shopping, and then hopped on the Friendship Boat over to Epcot for the rest of the day.

Epcot is probably tied with Magic Kingdom for us as our favorite park. I love how it evolves throughout the year with each festival and its offerings. This was the first time we had been in Epcot since the area behind Spaceship Earth had reopened (in December) and it was a real delight to see what it had become. I love the new space being so full of trees and greenery, areas for sitting and relaxing, charging stations available, spots for character meets, the new Dreamer’s Point statue of Walt Disney, and the cool lighting that comes alive after dark to add a special touch to the area. I know there has been grumblings about how it took so long to morph the old area into this new space and that some people were expecting more but I think it is absolutely perfect. This area will continue to become just what Epcot needed, a place to relax and reflect and enjoy a bit of nature.

We tried out the new Moana water-themed walk through attraction and I really enjoyed that as well. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect and definitely prefer to walk through when it isn’t very crowded but playing with the water features in this area was a lot of fun and made for many great photo ops. I can imagine small children really getting immersed in the experience and having a blast, making lots of fun memories. Definitely try it out, no matter how old you are!

Festival of the Arts was our reason for coming to Disney and we could have stayed for several more days just to soak more of the festival in. The kid chalked for two 3-hour morning shifts and the hubs and I explored the festival while she was making magic on the bridge to World Showcase. I tell you, I could keep going back to the paint-by-number mural over and over (ok, so I might have done it three or four times one day) because it is just super fun. I love watching the little squares fill in and the mural come to life.

I wish the food stands had more vegetarian food offerings (and less of the fake meat posing as something vegetarians want to eat) other that just desserts but they are some pretty darn beautiful little desserts! The visual appeal of the food during this festival is on point. Of course, watching the artists create new pieces during the festival and also sign their art for fans is a huge draw as well. Fan-girling over our fave artists and seeing all of the different styles of art is the best. We can’t wait for next January to head back and create some more art-filled memories! Here’s my favorite artist’s work!

xoxo,

Amber