Welcome to the final part of my October 2025 Disney World trip report. In this post we cover an evening at EPCOT with dinner at Biergarten, plus a departure morning at Animal Kingdom, where Zoe got to ride two all-time great rides!

ICYMI, you can catch up on part 1 of the trip report here, and part 2 of the trip report here.

Evening at EPCOT and Biergarten

We arrived at EPCOT by monorail at 4:08PM, with plenty of time before our 5:35PM Biergarten reservation. If you’re ever heading to EPCOT for dinner from another park, you’ll want to make sure you budget appropriate time.

Popular restaurants in the Japan, Italy, and Germany Pavilions are just under a mile from the front of the park, for example. And Space 220—another favorite of ours—is about 0.7 miles from the Skyliner entrance that you’d use coming from Hollywood Studios.

Zoe is a big fan of Test Track, so I was happy to have grabbed that Lightning Lane earlier (since reopening, its been one of the most popular Lightning Lanes at EPCOT). We waited 15 minutes in the Lightning Lane when the standby wait was 90 minutes. (Remember that kids must be at least 7 years old to ride single rider, so that isn’t an option for them at Test Track.)

I grabbed an immediate Lightning Lane for The Seas with Nemo & Friends, another of our favorites, and we rode that with no wait at 4:57PM.

I really wanted to start making our way to the Germany Pavilion, but Zoe loves the aquarium, so we spent a few minutes watching the fish. It can be tough to say “yes” as a parent at Disney World when you’ve spent so much time and energy attempting to build the “perfect” schedule, so I try and make a point to do it whenever I can, even if my hurried brain is pulling me elsewhere.

I’d booked the 5:35PM Biergarten reservation a few weeks back after checking the schedule for Oktoberfest Musikanten, the restaurant’s band. That schedule’s not posted anywhere except on a sign at the host stand, and it can change. But when I checked a few weeks back there were shows at 5:40PM and 6:50PM, so we booked 5:35PM with the plan of catching two shows, which worked out perfectly.

Biergarten is one of our favorite restaurants, but owing partly to our vegetarian diet I’ve never felt like reviewing it. It’s a buffet, and there are plenty of tasty vegetarian options, all good. You can also request a plant-based sausage from your server.

The atmosphere of the restaurant is supposed to mimic a Bavarian biergarten, and it does a good job at that. The outdoor theming really transports you to a different place that feels like something more than just a restaurant. Biergarten is home to Oktoberfest Musikanten, which Disney describes as “a lively Polka band” putting on an “oompah beat”.

Emily noted that they did two very different sets at this visit. In the past, I’ve noticed small differences, but there was a more noticeable difference between the two sets this time. The first featured both the traditional music, plus smaller segments with the alpine horns, bells, and the glockenspiel. The second set was just a traditional band performance. It was all fun, and the dance floor was open for the band segments, with plenty of kids and a few adults dancing.

Biergarten also offers liter beers. A liter is just over two pints, so it’s a good portion of beer. While we’re not big drinkers, we come to Biergarten in part to enjoy the vibes and toasting with our liter beers. This is also partly why I didn’t have alcohol at The Beak and Barrel earlier in the day.

I should concede that if you’re not blindly enamored by the vibes, Biergarten is sort of just a limited microcosm of EPCOT itself (but without rides). There’s okay food, but not as much variety as you’d find walking around the park. There’s good beer, but one liter of one beer could instead be several smaller festival cups of all different sorts of beers from around the world. There’s fun entertainment, but you also could walk from pavilion to pavilion catching different shows.

But we are enamored by the vibes, possibly owing to our midwestern roots. Coincidentally, we actually were at the real Oktoberfest—in Munich, Germany—just a few weeks ago. Zoe had a school break that lined up perfectly for a few days abroad. In case you didn’t know, Oktoberfest is a huge festival in Munich, including tons of carnival games and rides. It’s a ton of fun—you can read more about visiting Oktoberfest, particularly with kids, over at Emjoyable Explores.

After Biergarten, we made our way over the Norway Pavilion to ride Frozen Ever After. I failed to take timestamps of that ride, but I recall it was a typical Lightning Lane wait of under 10 minutes versus a posted standby wait of 45 minutes.

As noted in part 2 of the trip report, we had a split stay booked, and tonight we were checking in to BoardWalk Inn. I’d already gotten the text that our room was ready, and I could see from AirTag tracking that our bags were at the hotel.

Riding Frozen Ever After at about 7:30PM and making a leisurely exit, I had retrieved our bags, stopped at the Club Level desk for a chat, and made it into the room by 8:19PM.

BoardWalk Inn

We were originally expecting the last (next) morning of this trip to be at EPCOT, hence staying at BoardWalk Inn. I wanted to be able to wake up, run, visit the lounge, rope drop, and then walk back to the hotel for more lounge time just before it was time to depart. But (also as noted in part 2), discovering Zoe was 44 inches, we’d changed our plans to go to Animal Kingdom, so the split stay was maybe more of an expensive nuisance than anything.

The other reason we were staying here was to revisit the Innkeeper’s Club, which we’d last visited several years ago. Again, owing to the change in plans I didn’t get as much lounge time as I would have liked.

Other than just linking here to our Review of Disney’s BoardWalk Inn and Review of Innkeeper’s Club Level at BoardWalk Inn, I’ll note that we’re overall big fans of both of these options. We like BoardWalk Inn’s new aesthetic, and the location within walking distance of two parks is unbeatable.

We’ve also consistently received good service at the Innkeeper’s Club, but, as noted in the review, you should be realistic about how much value you’ll actually be able to get out of the club with two parks so nearby.

Emily and Zoe went to bed around 8:30PM, and I spent some time in the lounge before heading to bed myself.

Departure Day at Animal Kingdom

As you might expect, I love the Boardwalk area hotels in part because there’s great running to be had around the Boardwalk. There’s also a fitness center in the hotel. With some sort of multi-hotel convention in town, the fitness center was pretty busy and the Boardwalk had its fair share of runners by 6AM.

One loop around the Boardwalk is about 0.8 miles. You can add a segment to Hollywood Studios—it’ll vary based on how far you go, I go to where the path meets the bus depot, which is 0.6 miles or 1.2 miles roundtrip. This makes a 2 mile “lap” when you put these together.

Screengrab from Strava of my Boardwalk Run

Running on the BoardWalk can be tricky. It’s usually wet in the morning—I assume due to overnight cleaning but maybe also just Florida. Near BoardWalk Inn this isn’t such a problem, but the segment by Yacht Club has several turns in succession—watch your footing.

Of course, the last time I ran this loop I was doing laundry at Beach Club in the middle of the day. It was about 90 degrees, a million percent humidity, and sunny. Less risk of slipping, but I think I’ll take the morning run when it’s an option.

After my run I took a quick shower and we packed up our stuff. After a brief visit to the lounge, we dropped off our bags at 7:30AM and got on the bus to Animal Kingdom at 7:34AM.

As with yesterday, we were “late” for a park with a 7:30AM Early Entry. And as with yesterday, I can’t do much but shrug and say “okay” to that. Yesterday it was low crowds at Magic Kingdom. Today was Animal Kingdom, and as much as I respect that park as a concept, the reality is that there’s little justification in setting the alarm extra early for it.

We had only two goals for the day—riding Avatar: Flight of Passage and riding Expedition Everest. These are the two rides Zoe can now ride, having hit 44 inches.

We debated the best order to tackle these two rides. If we were earlier, the usual approach of starting with Flight of Passage and then heading to Everest would make sense. We had sort of a “rip the bandaid off” mentality, though, and figured Everest would be a little scarier and better to just get done while it had no wait.

Both rides have good queues we wouldn’t mind waiting in, but if we had to wait in line for one, we’d rather it be the less terrifying ride. I’ve written about this elsewhere, but you don’t want to let the tension build up too much when your little one is trying out a new ride.

This is why I recommend a young kid’s first ride on, for example, Tower of Terror, be with a Lightning Lane. You don’t want to stand in front of the Tower listening to screams for 20 minutes before that first ride. We felt like the potential for tension to build up in the Everest queue was too big a risk.

So we headed straight to Everest. It took Zoe a while to figure out what was going on. One thing we knew would always be a problem in terms of spoilers was that Zoe is a huge fan of Can’t Miss Magic on the Disney hotel TVs (again, we insist on calling it “the Must Do”). There are major ride spoilers in that film, though, so Zoe had some idea of what was coming.

We were able to almost walk right on, delayed just one train so we could wait for the front row. Zoe found it overall to be a bit much (“you said it was like Matterhorn, it’s not really like Matterhorn”), but it definitely felt like one that will be a favorite after a period of adjustment.

Making our way back to Pandora, we got in line for Flight of Passage when the wait was posted 40 minutes. The ride wound up reducing capacity during that time, and we waited about an hour. But it’s a nice queue, and it was a good chance to practice patience, something we don’t get to do often using Lightning Lanes.

Part of the Flight of Passage queue (photo from different visit)

Zoe absolutely loved Flight of Passage. The glasses were a tiny bit difficult to keep on, but that was the only even minor issue.

I’d remembered that Satu’li Canteen brought back breakfast, so I was excited to try that. We placed a mobile order while we were in line and ate after the ride. I had some delicious french toast while we reviewed every bit of the Flight of Passage experience in great detail.

Since Zoe couldn’t stop raving about Flight of Passage, I dedicated a considerable amount of my attention to trying to get a Lightning Lane Single Pass. The tricky part was that since we had to leave by early afternoon, I couldn’t just grab any available time and then hope to modify it back. I had a good sense this would have worked, but if it didn’t I’d be out over $50.

Instead, I had to keep refreshing trying to find a time that worked for us. The wonky part of this is that the time it takes you to physically select your party in the app is enough time for the Lightning Lane to no longer be available. This is why it’s usually better to modify than to book fresh. When you modify, you don’t have to select your party again.

After about 15 minutes I snagged a time that worked, and paid $54.33 for three single pass Lightning Lanes for Flight of Passage. We had about an hour to fill before it was time to ride.

The only other ride we had any interest in was DINOSAUR. We’d already come to terms with DINOSAUR closing February 2, and I already pointed out we weren’t planning on coming to Animal Kingdom at all today. Zoe didn’t want to ride DINOSAUR, so we didn’t. Instead, we walked around the park just taking it in—Animal Kingdom is incredibly good for that.

Along with a visit to the Maharajah Jungle Trek, we also stopped to watch the Tam Tam Drummers.

I had forgotten that today was the first day of the Harambe Market closure. The restaurant will be closed for a while to convert to take over the core of Restaurantosaurus’s menu, with that burger joint set to close February 2. Some items from Harambe Market are over at Kusafiri Bakery now, but overall this is a loss for quick service food at Animal Kingdom.

Walking around Animal Kingdom like this really tugs at my sense of nostalgia. I’ve long loved the park, and when I started this site it was easily my favorite park at Disney World. But the park has changed, and so have I. It’s like visiting your old high school—you can appreciate why you felt that way in the moment, but part of you can’t fathom that this was your whole world at one point.

In this house, we don’t whine about the rides that have been taken from us…not too much at least. Attractions come and attractions go, that’s part of loving theme parks as far as we see it. But my worry about Animal Kingdom isn’t what it’s losing—it’s that it really isn’t gaining enough.

Once Tropical Americas is complete, Animal Kingdom will have nine rides, if you count the Wildlife Express train. So, eight, if we’re being real. This will be the fewest of the four parks at Walt Disney World, and by a margin of ten to eight once Hollywood Studios gets its new Monsters Inc. coaster.

Ride count isn’t everything, but it is something. And it’s not like the supporting lineup—three stage shows, two zoological trails, and a petting zoo—is out-of-this-world. I’m not sure what, exactly, I think could or should be done. But there’s a not-small part of me that feels like even after 2027, I’ll feel like Animal Kingdom is still missing something. Or maybe, if I can’t see what makes it special, it’s me who lost something.

Anyway, after that walk we waited 24 minutes in the Lightning Lane for Flight of Passage, versus a standby wait of 60 minutes.

We had time for one last thing, and Zoe picked Finding Nemo: The Big Blue... and Beyond! One thing I like about the last update to this show is that it was cut from 40 minutes down to 25. It’s a great show, but 40 minutes is a bit much. It was nice to be able to fit it into our day with no worry.

Heading Home

We had a relatively long wait for the bus—about 20 minutes. This was why I would have preferred to have been at EPCOT—walking distance from the hotel—on departure morning. As it was, we just planned plenty of time to be safe.

It’s common for the hotels around the Boardwalk to share buses, and ours was making stops at Yacht and Beach Club before BoardWalk. Nine times out of ten in this situation we just get out at the first stop and walk, which is what we did today.

Our Mears Connect pickup was set for 1:45PM. I’d given them the flight info for a flight departing at 5:20PM (on JetBlue since we needed to get to Terminal C). This wasn’t our actual flight—we were booked on a 4:20PM flight.

Picked up at 1:43PM we were at the airport at 2:16PM and through security at 2:28PM, enough time for a sit-down lunch before our flight boarded at 3:40PM.

Conclusions

We’ve had some good weekend trips before, and this one can be added to the list. Particularly if you’re not a first-timer, the weekend trip is a good way to get some Disney in without feeling like you’re losing a whole lengthy school break.

Our split stay didn’t work out as we expected, but it was for good reason. We pivoted to add Animal Kingdom to our itinerary since Zoe had two new rides to go on there.

The Magic Kingdom day was a home run, as expected. The low crowds on a party day made it easy for us to put together a fun, leisurely day. I think such a day was particularly nice because of the short trip. It was never going to be a “do everything” trip, and leaning into that make what could have been a high-pressure weekend a much more fun family trip.

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