Disney and Pixar Short Film Festival

Disney and Pixar Short Film Festival: attraction at EPCOT, Walt Disney World — live wait times, operating status, and planning data on MouseHub.

Wait time history

Historical wait patterns for Disney and Pixar Short Film Festival accrete daily as MouseHub records waits every 15 minutes. Charts appear here once enough history exists.

Visitor sentiment

4.6· 92 Google ratings

The MouseHub take

The Disney and Pixar Short Film Festival is an eighteen-minute 4D show in the Magic Eye Theater, the 3D theater inside EPCOT's Imagination! pavilion in World Celebration. It has run there since December 23, 2015. You put on 3D glasses, settle into a seat, and watch three animated shorts with in-theater effects timed to the films: light, sound, and seats that move under you. Before the doors open, the lobby holds exhibits on the creative process behind the stories and characters, which is the part most people walk straight past. There is no height requirement, so nobody in the party waits outside.

Most visitors treat it as what it is, a cool, dark, seated break in the middle of an EPCOT day, and it does that job well. The ones who come out unhappy went in expecting an attraction. The shorts are catalog films that plenty of guests have already watched at home, and eighteen minutes of familiar cartoons feels thin next to Test Track or Soarin'. Go when the heat peaks or the rain starts, not when the headliner lines are short.

At a glance

Best for
Families with toddlers, and anyone who needs a cool, seated hour off their feet in the middle of an EPCOT afternoon.
Skip if
You have one day at EPCOT with headliners left on the list, or you would rather watch these shorts at home.
Ride type
Theater show, three animated shorts in 4D
Intensity
Gentle but not still. Dark theater, loud sound, 3D glasses, and seats that move during the films.

The good

  • No height requirement, no split parties
    Disney lists this one as Any Height, so infants, toddlers, and grandparents all go in together and nobody stands outside holding the bags.
  • The air conditioning is why most people come in
    Eighteen minutes of cool, dim, seated time does more for the rest of a Florida afternoon than the films do.
  • The lobby exhibits reward a slow walk
    The pre-show space carries exhibits on the creative process behind the stories and characters. It's a few minutes of real content in a room most guests treat as a holding pen.
  • Captioning is available in the theater
    Disney lists both video captioning and handheld captioning here, which is more than a lot of EPCOT shows offer.
  • The wait rarely runs longer than one show
    The theater seats a large group at once, so the worst case is usually waiting out the eighteen minutes already on screen.
  • You can stay in your wheelchair or ECV
    Guests keep their mobility device and watch from the accessible spaces rather than transferring to a theater seat. Worth confirming on Disney's page before your trip if that affects your party.

The bad

  • You have probably seen these shorts already
    The films are Pixar and Disney catalog shorts rather than anything made for the theater, and visitors who recognized them from home say so constantly.
  • The pre-show wait is a standing wait
    You wait on your feet in the lobby until the doors open, which lands badly on the guests who walked in specifically to sit down.
  • The 3D glasses come back scratched
    Reused glasses show smudges and scratches by the end of a busy day, and the adult frames slide off small faces.
  • The seat effects startle small kids
    The bouncing and the volume catch toddlers off guard, and parents report spending the back half of the show with a kid in their lap.
  • It reads as filler next to the rest of EPCOT
    Guests describe it as something to do rather than something to plan for, and most say to drop it first when the day runs short.

Veteran tips

  • Leave it off your Multi Pass picks
    It sits in EPCOT's second Lightning Lane Multi Pass group, competing with Soarin', Spaceship Earth, and Living with the Land for the same two slots. Standby here is short enough that those win every time.
  • Save it for the worst of the afternoon
    Between one and four is when an air-conditioned theater is worth more than a ride. Spending a cool morning hour here wastes the best touring window of the day.
  • Duck in when the storm rolls through
    Afternoon rain empties the walkways in World Celebration, and the show runs long enough to outlast a typical Florida downpour.
  • Check the clock before you commit
    It runs on show cycles rather than a moving line. Ask a cast member how long until the next screening and come back if the answer is more than a few minutes.
  • Warn small kids that the seats move
    Thirty seconds of warning outside the door prevents most of the crying inside it. Sit on an aisle if you think you may need to step out.
  • Do not spend rope drop on it
    Nothing about this show gets worse later in the day, and the standby line barely grows. Use the first hour on Test Track or Frozen Ever After instead.
  • Pair it with Journey Into Imagination With Figment
    Both sit in the Imagination! pavilion, so you can do the two of them back to back without crossing World Celebration twice.

MouseHub editorial, written from visitor reports and official Disney sources. Last reviewed .

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