EPCOT

Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. It was the name Walt Disney gave to a planned working city, not a theme park, and he died before any of it was built. What opened in 1982 kept the name and dropped the city. Disney has moved the styling around over the years, from EPCOT Center to Epcot and back to EPCOT in 2020, and today treats it as a name rather than an acronym.

Eleven. Going clockwise from World Showcase Plaza they are Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, The American Adventure, Japan, Morocco, France, the United Kingdom and Canada. The promenade around the lagoon is 1.2 miles, and most pavilions are built around food, film, shops and live performance rather than rides.

Eleven, if you count every attraction you sit down and travel through: Spaceship Earth, Test Track, Mission: SPACE, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Soarin', Living with the Land, The Seas with Nemo & Friends, Journey Into Imagination With Figment, Frozen Ever After, Remy's Ratatouille Adventure and Gran Fiesta Tour. Counts published elsewhere vary because some include walkthrough trails, films and Audio-Animatronics shows such as The American Adventure. Live wait times for all of them are on this page.

1 October 1982, as EPCOT Center. It was the second park built at Walt Disney World, eleven years after Magic Kingdom, and at the time it was the most expensive theme park ever constructed.

EPCOT usually opens at 9am park time, and closing varies a great deal by season, with the park regularly running later than the other three because of the evening lagoon show. Disney publishes hours a few weeks ahead and changes them, so check the live hours at the top of this page rather than relying on a fixed schedule.

World Celebration at the entrance under Spaceship Earth, World Discovery to the east for the thrill rides, World Nature to the west for The Land and The Seas, and World Showcase around the lagoon. Disney's own word is neighbourhood rather than land. One thing worth knowing: the Imagination! pavilion is officially filed under World Celebration despite sitting on the west side next to The Land, which is why Figment turns up in a different section from the one most maps imply.

A great deal, and it is the main reason people underestimate how long the park takes. World Showcase runs films, galleries, street performers and one of the strongest restaurant line-ups on property, staffed in large part by people on Disney's international cultural exchange programme. The park also runs four festivals a year, with food kiosks up around the promenade for most of the calendar, and finishes each night with a show on the lagoon.

Anna and Elsa meet in the Norway pavilion, Mickey and friends appear at World Celebration, and several World Showcase pavilions host character meets that rotate. Disney changes the line-up regularly and adds characters during festivals, so treat any published list as a snapshot and check the app on the day.