Hey Howdy Hey James and welcome to planDisney!
James, as an avid foodie of EPCOT, I can 100% relate to your concerns here! The ability to pop into EPCOT for a meal and view
Harmonious as you please would be a great benefit to living close to the park. I also love the fact that the food and drink options in EPCOT are ever-changing depending on the season. So many great festivals throughout the year with such variations in food and drink offerings would never really get old!
So it looks like the biggest issue that you have is trying to make this a consistent thing in the most economic way possible. The ultimate answer here is purchasing an
Annual Pass. With the Annual Pass, you would not feel guilty just popping into the parks for an afternoon, evening or morning for that matter, and then leaving right after. You would not have to pay the larger fee of the daily ticket and your biggest concern was making sure you were able to secure a
Theme Park Reservation for the day you were looking to visit the park.
While all passes are available for Florida Residents, two, in particular, are special offers only for Florida residents. These passes,
Disney Pixie Dust Pass and Disney Pirate Pass are the ones special for Florida residents. The issue with them is that it looks like at this time, the sales of Annual Passes have been paused other than the Pixie Dust Pass.
In a lot of cases in the past, Disney has been flexible with Annual Pass holders if they purchased one pass and wanted to upgrade to another, they were able to apply what they paid for their pass to the purchase of the upgraded one. This may be true for you if you did decide to purchase the Pixie Dust pass and then want to upgrade when the others became available. Just make sure you look at the details of the passes before you purchase, as some have specific time frames you can use them for and blackout dates.
Of course, you also have the option to purchase regular tickets. You also have benefits as a
Florida resident to purchase tickets at a discounted rate. The decision will come to you with how often and when you would want to drop into EPCOT if the ticket option vs Annual Pass would be better.
Good luck with the decision from here moving forward with the Annual Pass consideration. If you have any further questions please feel free to drop by and let us know, we would be happy to help!
Have a Magical Day,
Nick