Hello and welcome to my runDisney Princess Half Marathon Weekend 2025 trip report! I’m returning to the blow-by-blow diary format for this trip. Today, we visit Epcot! Read all the posts in this report here. Onward!
Ah, irony – the day before we left for our Princess trip, Disney announced that it would be ending ALL its virtual queues in Walt Disney World. That’s right, both Cosmic Rewind and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure would have regular standby lines!
… Starting the day after we left. Curses!
YOU’VE CROSSED ME FOR THE LAST TIME, VIRTUAL QUEUE
Which meant that on Friday morning, if we wanted a second chance at Cosmic Rewind glory, we would have to get up at 7am to gun for a VQ slot. This we both dutifully did – and we both struck out! On the dot of 7am! Virtual queue, I will not miss you. 
Ah well; this would hardly be a tragedy of the first order under any circumstances, but we also had a fallback Single Pass Lightning Lane* for that afternoon. We would just have to hope our one go-around with the Guardians would feature a good song. (Becky is probably laughing right now but I would thank you not to get ahead of us, young lady!)
* That’s what it’s called now, right? I’m still shaking off the cobwebs of the old Genie+ system, so please bear with me.
Thus we were forced to go back to sleep virtually empty-handed. My kingdom for a Disney nap right now! I had slept pretty decently, however, and arose shortly after for a quick shower. We weren’t in any particular rush, so we got ourselves together for the day at a leisurely pace before piling into our golf cart and heading to the Outpost.
MY FIRST EPCOT FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS
Our bus to Epcot arrived fairly quickly, and we found ourselves walking beneath Spaceship Earth in reasonable time. I was most excited for the sights, sounds, and tastes of the Festival of the Arts, as I had never managed to attend this particular festival before.
Unfortunately we were a bit too early for many of the offerings. No problem – we had a plan! We headed straight for The Land pavilion. For Soarin’? Ha! Don’t be silly. Everyone knows Living with the Land is the real star of the show!
In all seriousness, though, I do really enjoy Living with the Land, which has shorter lines and a more relaxed atmosphere than Soarin’ (although admittedly 100% less Patrick Warburton). Plus you get to see Epcot’s Cast Members wandering around as part of the spectacle! Should we start making them do that on all dark rides? Things to ponder.
After our spin through the greenhouse, we had officially made it to Full Festival Time! By which I mean the food booths were finally open. Priorities, you know. So we started with some snacks. Festival of the Arts food reviews post to come, of course!
Hot tip: Epcot festival food booths should not be tackled all at once. Carve out time for digestion between rounds for cute activities – like helping paint a mural! Enter the line for the Expression Section and you’ll be handed a numbered little pot of paint.
I requested 13 because I like 13 (I was Wench 13 when I worked at Medieval Times), which was a flat white. Technically you’re only supposed to paint three squares, but I don’t know if this is really enforced. At any rate, here’s me painting my squares. As an added bonus my hair is falling over my face in such a way that we know now what it would look like if I were painting square but also had turned into a Clydesdale. What forelock? Such forelock!
Also on the bridge to the World Showcase were the chalk artists. Some works were finished and some were actively in progress, giving festival goers the opportunity to watch the artists work. My favorite was a random passerby who pointed to the Inside Out piece and called them “M&M guys.” I blame Disney Springs for that one.
We also availed ourselves of the photo ops scattered throughout the park, many of which enable you to seemingly step into an animated movie cel, like Sleeping Beauty and Mary Poppins:
Or a famous painting, such as Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware”:
I can assure you the photographer coached us into all those poses. Nailed it!
All that plus poking around in various tents and gift shops quickly ate away at the hours, until it was time for…
WELCOME TO THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, EPCOT TERRANS
Our Lightning Lane/Leeloo Dallas Single Pass for Cosmic Rewind opened up in midafternoon, and we were through the tapstyles right on time. We placed bets as to whether or not anyone would respond to Terry Crews’ question about what we call each other with an alcohol dependency joke, but it shockingly did not happen this time around. (Nor did it happen during our – spoiler alert – reride on Monday. This is going to absolutely decimate my stats.)
Other than that, though, no anomalies plagued us. The preshows unspooled in their usual fashion. The line moved fairly quickly. We climbed into our car and prepared to save the universe. As is customary, the Celestial was forced to ask: “What is that noise?” What was that noise? It was…
“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears. AKA OUR COLLECTIVE LEAST FAVORITE SONG. 
Look, I know reasonable minds disagree with me on this. But to my way of thinking it is toooooo slow. I know the lyrics are apropos but it just doesn’t feel as fun to me. Whelp, win some, lose some, I guess. Maybe someday they’ll cycle in new songs entirely!
Oh, we also said hi to Groot. We’re not animals. (For example, we are not raccoons.)
TERROR IN EPCOT’S JAPAN PAVILION
We bid Drax and the others who aren’t nearly as funny adieu and continued on our Festival of the Arts adventure, this time making a complete loop of World Showcase. Becky happened to mention the DuckTales World Showcase Adventures, which I had never tried before – are you familiar with this game? I think you access it through the Play Disney phone app. Not every country has an adventure, but for those that do, the app will send you traipsing around the area seeking clues and instigating effects and interactive elements.
Becky hadn’t done the Japan adventure yet, so we decided to give it a go. The interstitial, in-app cartoons are cute and clever! And the effects you trigger are varying levels of fun. I won’t give away the game (literally), but I do want to talk about the ending. You know what that means:
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
The Japan adventure involves chasing an evil robot and ultimately unleashing a kaiju… against it? Or possibly the robot is the kaiju? No, no, I think it fought the kaiju. Have I spoiled the story for you yet? Anyway, this is scarcely material. The point of all this is that in the adventure’s finale, you activate the evil robot, which rises from a display inside the Mituskoshi Department Store.
It’s not a particularly large or frightening robot, but it does make noise and flash its eyes in addition to popping up out of nowhere – and it scared the bejeezus out of the group standing directly next to the display. I’m talking jumping AND screaming, followed by relieved laughter. 10/10, would recommend. Download the Disney Play app today! Assuming that’s where you get it!
END SPOILERS
LAST MINUTE 10K PREP FTW
Obviously there was absolutely nothing we could further do in Epcot to top that, so we moseyed out of the park and picked up the bus back to Ft. Wilderness.
We were surprised to see a Cast Member leaving our cabin as we pulled up in our golf cart. “I was just leaving you a good luck sign for the race!” she said. Super cute touch, no? We propped up the sign in the window next to our wish card from 1900 Park Fare.
That’s not the only person we found at our cabin. Inside lurked the missing member of our triptych: Erika had arrived!!!
We immediately dragged her into some prerace shenanigans. There were the traditional race flat lays, of course. But more importantly, Becky was determined to color in the STRAW BERRY SHORT CAKE sign I had made for our race costumes.
She scrounged up some pens, but had trouble locating a suitable brown for the STRAW panel. She had just finished coloring it in with a literal fallen chocolate chip from a Gideon’s cookie when Erika came swanning in with a whole host of pens… including brown. Thus giving rise to one of the finest quotes of the race weekend: “You made me color with a chocolate chip!!!”
The tone having been set, it was time for early bed. In the morning: the Princess 10K!
Don’t forget, you can follow FRoA on Threads @fairestrunofall and on Instagram @fairestrunofall. If you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment or email fairestrunofall@gmail.com. See ya real soon!
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