After hearing that Epcot installed two dual Level 2 EV charging stations the SCEV Drivers, being a short hour and twenty minute drive away, decided we needed to head over and check them out.

So last Sunday afternoon we loaded up and took the Chevy Volt over to Orlando, FL to Disney’s Epcot center to test the brand new chargers. Over the past few months there has been a growing number of people contacting WDW pushing for the installation of chargers. Josh and Brenna had tweeted and e-mailed on a few occasions letting them know that they needed to catch up with their California counterpart and get some charging stations installed. We mentioned we were not going to visit the happiest place on earth until they installed some charging stations. Being people of our word as soon as we plugged up we headed over to the guest services counter and purchased two seasonal passes.  We let them know that the reason we purchased them was a direct result of the installation of these chargers. This serves as a very good example on how installing charging stations can attract new business.

Details about the charging stations:
They are installed at the very front of the Epcot center parking lot near the monorail station located near the handicapped rows. Unfortunately you still have to pay the $17 to park like normal (unless you have annual passes) in addition to the cost to charge. When headed in they will try to direct you down a row before you get to the spaces. You will have to tell the parking attendant that you drive an EV and need to use the charging station and they will let you pass them. You have to turn down the row before the station and take it all the way up and around to get to the stations due to the one way set up. Once you arrive you will see two, dual J1772 level 2 stations from ChargePoint serving the first four parking spaces with 4 total J1772 plugs.

They charge 35 cents per kWh with a minimum of $1.50 but there’s no limit to how long you can park there. We parked, plugged in, and swiped the ChargePoint card and were on our way. We arrived at 5:30 pm and left after the park closed. It is nice to be able to park there, take a bus or monorail to all the other parks and come back to a fully charged EV.

A full charge on the Volt will cost about $4.50 making it a  bit expensive but worth it for the up front parking and not having to use as much gasoline as it would without the charge. Disney World is about 80 miles from home so we were able to go 40 miles there on electric power from home, then use about a gallon of gas to get there. We left with a full battery so we got 40 miles back on electric power from Disney then another gallon of gas to get home. So we spent about $5.75 on electricity and only 2 gallons of gas for the whole trip.

Thanks for the charge, Disney!