EPCOT Lightning Lane Multi Pass Touring Strategies

If you visit every attraction in EPCOT using the shortest path, you’ll walk a little under 4 miles. If you’re running back and forth to save a few extra minutes with Lightning Lane reservations, you can make that a lot longer. A. Lot. Longer. But there’s good news! One of my favorite things about picking Lightning Lanes in advance – as Lightning Lane Multi Pass lets you do – is that you can make a touring plan that both saves time and also minimizes backtracking. If that sounds good to you (and your feet), read on!

There are three sets of example advance picks for Lightning Lane Multi Pass at EPCOT below. Each comes with suggested touring strategies to minimize backtracking and ideas for additional choices to make throughout the day. No matter when you plan to arrive at the park or what’s available when you make your advance selections, hopefully you’ll see an approach to using Lightning Lane Multi Pass at EPCOT that gives you some ideas. Afterward, I’ll talk about how to fit these loose strategies into actual times for your selections.

When you’re in the parks redeeming your Lightning Lanes, you’ll be trying to make new picks that still give you a smooth route and avoid extra walking.  But when same-day opportunities don’t have an obvious winner based on location or return time, you can use the rankings in The Best Time-Saving Picks for Lightning Lane Multi Pass to break ties.

The Basics

Lightning Lane Multi Pass advance selection windows depend on your lodging and ticket type. Advance picks are open 7 days before arrival if you’re staying onsite, for the length of the stay. Or, for those holding date-based tickets and staying offsite, you can begin making selections three days in advance, for the length of the ticket. Most international guests won’t be able to buy Lightning Lane Multi Pass until they arrive in the US.

No matter when you purchase, you’ll select three attractions and times before pushing the “Buy Now” button. If it seems like there’s “nothing good left”, you can walk away and simply decide not to buy Multi Pass for that day. If you continue with purchasing, all three advance selections need to be in the same park. And attractions in EPCOT are grouped into tiers; no more than one advance selection can be a Tier 1 attraction.

Once in the parks, you can select a new Lightning Lane Multi Pass each time you use one. For these in-park picks, tiers and same-park restrictions no longer apply. However, you can only use Multi Pass once per attraction per day – no re-rides.

The tiers for EPCOT advance Lightning Lane Multi Pass selections are shown below, along with predictions about what same-day availability will look like. These predictions are based on historical data from the Fastpass+ and Genie+ systems. They’re relative, so you might find same-day availability for “poor” selections if crowds are low on the day of your visit, or poor availability for “good” attractions if you’re visiting during Christmas week. As data for Lightning Lane Multi Pass becomes available, we’ll update the same-day availability below.

• Tier 1
  • Frozen Ever After – poor
  • Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure – poor
  • Soarin’ Around the World – good
• Tier 2
  • Mission: SPACE – limited
  • Spaceship Earth – limited
  • The Seas with Nemo & Friends – good
  • Living with the Land – good
  • Journey into Imagination with Figment – good
• Shows (Tier 2)
  • Turtle Talk with Crush – good
  • Disney and Pixar Short Film Festival – good

Shows have been separated because using a Lightning Lane for shows rarely saves time. At both of these shows, the theater is filled as soon as the audience for the previous show has departed. Most of the time, you will get into the next show whenever you show up. Turtle Talk sometimes has a wait and could be a good “instant availability” pick if you’re already in the Seas Pavilion, but they are very poor choices for advance picks.

The biggest challenge at EPCOT is that there are only a few rides where a Lightning Lane saves you more than 10 minutes … and guess what, they are all the Tier 1 attractions! All the example strategies below assume that only Soarin’ will have Tier 1 same-day availability. But that might not be true, so don’t be afraid to call an audible and adjust your plans if you’re lucky enough to snag the other “big two” reservation that you didn’t book in advance.

The obvious answer for only being able to plan on one of those two is to arrive at park opening, and use the power of rope drop to attack the other one. But it also means that if you don’t care to do both of those “big two”, or are willing to chance waiting in a peak-hours line for the other one, EPCOT can be a great park for a later arrival.

EPCOT Lightning Lane Advance Picks Example #1

1. Frozen Ever After
2. Spaceship Earth
3. Living with the Land

This is a good set of picks if your group has motion sickness issues and plans to avoid the thrill rides in World Discovery. How to work these selections:

Option 1: arriving at park opening via the International Gateway, with or without Early Entry

• Head straight for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
• Work your way around the World Showcase clockwise to Frozen Ever After. Make a new Multi Pass reservation for Soarin’ and adjust the time of your Living with the Land return if necessary.
• Head through World Celebration Gardens and ride Spaceship Earth. Make a new reservation for the Seas with Nemo and friends.
• Head to the Seas Pavilion (with a stop at Journey of Water), then work your way through the Land Pavilion and the Imagination Pavilion before returning to work your way up the right side of World Showcase

This plan can also work for a later arrival if you’re planning to stay through dinner – in that case, head straight for Frozen Ever After to give you the best chance of securing a Soarin’ reservation. Tour the World Showcase in the later part of the day when you’re done with the front of the park (and it will be cooler) and plan to ride Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure as you leave the park after dinner.

Option 2: arriving at or after regular park opening via the main entrance

• Ride Spaceship Earth and make a new reservation for Soarin’. Adjust your Living with the Land return time if necessary.
• Head for the Land Pavilion and do all desired activities there. Make a new reservation for Journey into Imagination.
• Head for the Imagination Pavilion, then work your way around World Showcase to Frozen Ever After
• Return to the front of the park and the Seas Pavilion to close out your day, including a stop at Journey of Water.

Don’t forget that you can adjust the times of pre-books once you’re in the parks, or even swap them for another ride! If availability is good for Living with the Land, you could choose to swap it for the Seas with Nemo and Friends once you see what your Soarin’ return time will be. Then make a new Living with the Land Multi Pass reservation after you ride the Seas to reconstitute the one-two combo in the Land Pavilion. Or if the line for the Seas is short, just head there anyway without a reservation in hand!

EPCOT Lightning Lane Advance Picks Example #2

1. Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
2. Spaceship Earth
3. Mission: SPACE

Option 1: arriving at park opening with or without Early Entry, either entrance

• Head straight for Frozen Ever After, then to Mission: SPACE. Make a new reservation for Soarin’.
• Ride Spaceship Earth, and make a new reservation for the Seas with Nemo and Friends
• Head for the Seas Pavilion via Journey of Water. Do all desired activities, and make a new reservation for Living with the Land when you ride the Seas.
• Work your way around to the Land Pavilion, then the Imagination Pavilion, then make a loop around the World Showcase and ride Remy’s Ratatouille adventure as you pass it.

Note: if you see that Frozen Ever After openings are available same-day and you’re arriving at regular park opening from the main entrance, you can head to Mission: SPACE first and try to snag a Frozen return time that works well with your overall plan. In that case, you can get the Soarin’ time when you cash in Spaceship Earth.

Option 2: arriving after regular opening, either entrance

• Ride Spaceship Earth and try to get a reservation for Soarin’ at a convenient time
• Head to Mission: SPACE and try to get a reservation for Living with the Land to match Soarin’
• Head for Frozen Ever After and snag a reservation for Journey into Imagination
• Work your way clockwise around the World Showcase to the Imagination Pavilion, then head to the Land Pavilion, followed by the Seas and Journey of Water.

EPCOT Lightning Lane Advance Picks Example #3

1. Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
2. Living with the Land
3. The Seas with Nemo and Friends

Option 1: arriving at park opening or later without Early Entry via the International Gateway

• Ride Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure and make a new Multi Pass Reservation for Soarin’. Adjust your Living with the Land return time if possible.
• Head for the Land Pavilion and do all desired activities. Make reservations for Spaceship Earth and Mission: SPACE when available.
• Move on to the Seas Pavilion, then head to Spaceship Earth (with a stop at Journey of Water) and up the left side through World Discovery, crossing to the Imagination Pavilion before heading back up through World Showcase.

Depending on what same-day availability looks like, you could swap the Seas Multi Pass for Journey to Imagination after riding Remy, and head to the Imagination Pavilion before the Land instead of later in the day. You can make a new Multi Pass for the Seas when you ride Journey into Imagination.

Option 2: arriving at the main entrance at park opening, with or without Early Entry

• Head straight for Frozen Ever After and ride. Walk back down through World Celebration to the Seas, and make a return time for Soarin’ when you ride the Seas with Nemo and Friends.
• Move on to the Land Pavilion, making new return times for Journey into Imagination and Mission: SPACE
• Head to the Imagination Pavilion, and collect a return time for Spaceship Earth after riding Journey into Imagination.
• Work your way clockwise around World Showcase, riding Remy when you come to it and then work back to the main entrance through World Discovery.

You can fit Journey of Water into this plan in two places; either on your way to the Seas Pavilion when you first arrive, or at the end of the day before riding Spaceship Earth.

Working Your Advance Picks Into a Touring Plan

You probably noticed that none of these example sets have times on them. That’s because it will depend on what you see when you pick, and when you plan to arrive at the park. At EPCOT there’s a third variable – which entrance you’ll be using!

It’s always true that placing return times earlier in your park day gives you the most flexibility to get more “valuable” selections as you use them in the parks. You’ll have more options making a same-day pick at 10 am than you will at 4 pm. Disney released capacity same-day for FastPass+, and they did it for Genie+, so there’s every reason to believe they’ll also do it for Lightning Lane Multi Pass. But it won’t get around the fact that there’s such a huge gap in the “value” of EPCOT’s Multi Pass reservations; if it went fast as an advance pick, it will also go fast as a same-day pick.

Here’s what I recommend. Start by making a custom touring plan built around one of these strategies. Include shows, meals, and other activities – there are self-paced attractions side-by-side with almost every ride in EPCOT that has a queue and a Lightning Lane. Make a TouringPlans custom plan to estimate how long your touring in each area will take and get an idea of where to place your Multi Pass return windows. After using Optimize for a single pass, don’t be afraid to group attractions in the same area together and use Evaluate to make sure they stay that way.

The closer you are to the park date, the more limited the selection of times will be when you book. If you can’t get the times you were aiming for, you’ll have to decide whether to adjust your plan around what you can get, or change strategies to get picks that you can begin redeeming earlier. Don’t forget that you can continue adjusting your selections and times after you purchase and before you get to the parks.

Once you have your advance picks, come back to your touring plan and enter them to finalize it. If you’re a subscriber, you’ll be able to use your plan with the Lines app in the parks. You can add in new selections that you make same-day and adjust your plan as you tour. (Because sometimes even the best plans run into some unexpected attraction downtime in the parks.)

What to Take Away

The big value of Lightning Lane Multi Pass at EPCOT rests on just a few rides.

⭐ There might not be “one right way” to use Lightning Lane Multi Pass at EPCOT. Once you’ve got your “big two” selection, strategic choices for the others can help you to make a touring plan that includes what you want to do, and also minimizes the miles you’ll need to walk to do it.

⭐ Aiming to plan clusters of Multi Pass reservations and activities based on park location provides some flexibility. Doing shows or other non-queued attractions in the same area will make it easier to fit same-day return times into your plan. In EPCOT, where many same-day return times can typically be made only a little ahead of when you plan to use them, so this may be easier to do here.

⭐ Try to plan your Lightning Lane touring so that you begin using your reservations early in the day. Tiers don’t apply once you are in the parks, and this gives you the best shot at high-value Tier 1 picks that you couldn’t make in advance. At EPCOT, most of the value lies in these picks, so if you don’t care to ride all of these attractions then a later start won’t impact you as much as it might in other parks.

⭐ Don’t forget that you can adjust the times of selections you’ve already made. If you find a valuable reservation for the other “big two” Multi Pass but the time doesn’t line up with your plan, take it! You can try to adjust your other selections (that should have good availability) to make your touring plan move around the park efficiently.

What’s your favorite way to use Lightning Lanes to tour EPCOT? Let us know in the comments!