Jfsag123
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2013
Day 3 – June 8: Epcot, part 2
I was out of town this weekend on a relaxing weekend at a lake, so I got some time to write updates!
After we had our breakfast and our final ride on old Soarin’, we headed out of the Land pavilion and I got to take my first real look around at Epcot, since we’d been rushing on the way in. I love the feel of this park, especially Future World. It is my favorite place in all of WDW. I know this is not a popular opinion these days, and I definitely believe that it could use some serious updating, but I still love it. I also recognize that part of my love is nostalgia, as I remember visiting as a kid in 1992 and it was my favorite park then as well. I sure do miss the Wonders of Life pavilion!
Anyway, we darted across the path and headed toward the new(ish) character spot location with Joy and Sadness from Inside Out. This would turn out to be our 2nd longest wait of the trip. We got in line at 9:06 and didn’t meet the characters until 9:55. Ugh. This would also turn out to be one of my most pathetic moments of the trip. I hadn’t been able to rent a wheelchair when we first came in because we were trying to get to breakfast quickly. We then didn’t want to delay at this point again because we knew the line for Joy and Sadness would likely continue to grow, so we just hopped in line. My toe was killing me at this point and there was no way I could stand on it for any real length of time. So what did I do? I sat on the floor and scooted through the line. Yep, that’s right, I scooted on my butt through each winding turn of the line for the full 50 minutes. A proud moment to be sure.
But here’s the payoff:
It was a really cute meet and greet and I’m glad we did it, but I don’t want to wait that long ever again. Next we walked over to meet Baymax. Unlike with Joy and Sadness, you can see the meet from outside of the area, so I decided to go grab myself a wheelchair while Rees waited in the (much shorter) line with the kids. I then sat in the chair in view of Baymax and then got up and headed in through the exit once Rees and the kids reached the front so I could take pictures. It worked out really well.
I was glad we were able to make Baymax happen, as the kids had been really disappointed when we didn’t stop by and see him with Hiro in Hollywood Studios last year. Once we finished with Baymax, we still had some time left before our first fastpass window opened up, so we decided to run over into Innoventions and check out the Colortopia exhibit, as it hadn’t been there during our last trip.
The pictures are of making color shadows on the walls. The kids had a lot of fun painting with the “magic” brushes, while Rees and I enjoyed the color matching game that came before that. I would recommend stopping by if you have the time, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again if I only had one day in Epcot.
After we finished with Colortopia it was time for our first FP – Test Track! This is Cora’s absolute favorite ride and we all really like it. On this ride, I was with Alex (green car) and Rees was with Cora (blue car). We get a little competitive when it comes to our car designing and there is much trash talk during the process. Alex and I had some trouble with getting our design station to work and ran out of time before we could finish customizing, but we still kicked butt on the power test. It’s the little things…
We spent a little time playing in the after-ride area, then headed up to World Showcase. I like to visit that area of the park as close to 11:00am as possible because it’s usually pretty empty for the first bit of time it’s open. We stopped in Mexico first, had a picture snapped, then rode the Gran Fiesta tour with (of course) no wait.
We spent some time walking around the countries until it got close to Snow White’s meeting time, then we got in line to see her. It was ridiculously hot at this point, but we passed some of the time by chatting with the family behind us, one of whom happened to be a former Disney animator. One of the many things I love about WDW – a lot of time can be enjoyed just chatting with strangers, which we pretty much never do at home.
We planned to take our break after meeting Snow, but had to check out Sergio in Italy before we did. He picked on Rees quite a bit last year and it was hilarious. This time we got to watch some poor other person be pulled into the joke.
We walked out the International Gateway and went back to our room where the kids immediately asked to – you guessed it – change into their swimsuits and go back to Stormalong Bay. So Rees and the kids spent the bulk of our break there, while I relaxed on our long long balcony with a book and my feet up.
Rees and I were enjoying the break so much that we tried to talk the kids into just staying at the resort until dinner time, but they were having none of it. We had 2 more FP reservations and they intended to make them! So Rees and I dragged ourselves (or, more accurately, were dragged by our children) back to the IG where I grabbed another wheelchair and we headed to our FP ride.
I was out of town this weekend on a relaxing weekend at a lake, so I got some time to write updates!
After we had our breakfast and our final ride on old Soarin’, we headed out of the Land pavilion and I got to take my first real look around at Epcot, since we’d been rushing on the way in. I love the feel of this park, especially Future World. It is my favorite place in all of WDW. I know this is not a popular opinion these days, and I definitely believe that it could use some serious updating, but I still love it. I also recognize that part of my love is nostalgia, as I remember visiting as a kid in 1992 and it was my favorite park then as well. I sure do miss the Wonders of Life pavilion!
Anyway, we darted across the path and headed toward the new(ish) character spot location with Joy and Sadness from Inside Out. This would turn out to be our 2nd longest wait of the trip. We got in line at 9:06 and didn’t meet the characters until 9:55. Ugh. This would also turn out to be one of my most pathetic moments of the trip. I hadn’t been able to rent a wheelchair when we first came in because we were trying to get to breakfast quickly. We then didn’t want to delay at this point again because we knew the line for Joy and Sadness would likely continue to grow, so we just hopped in line. My toe was killing me at this point and there was no way I could stand on it for any real length of time. So what did I do? I sat on the floor and scooted through the line. Yep, that’s right, I scooted on my butt through each winding turn of the line for the full 50 minutes. A proud moment to be sure.
But here’s the payoff:
It was a really cute meet and greet and I’m glad we did it, but I don’t want to wait that long ever again. Next we walked over to meet Baymax. Unlike with Joy and Sadness, you can see the meet from outside of the area, so I decided to go grab myself a wheelchair while Rees waited in the (much shorter) line with the kids. I then sat in the chair in view of Baymax and then got up and headed in through the exit once Rees and the kids reached the front so I could take pictures. It worked out really well.
I was glad we were able to make Baymax happen, as the kids had been really disappointed when we didn’t stop by and see him with Hiro in Hollywood Studios last year. Once we finished with Baymax, we still had some time left before our first fastpass window opened up, so we decided to run over into Innoventions and check out the Colortopia exhibit, as it hadn’t been there during our last trip.
The pictures are of making color shadows on the walls. The kids had a lot of fun painting with the “magic” brushes, while Rees and I enjoyed the color matching game that came before that. I would recommend stopping by if you have the time, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again if I only had one day in Epcot.
After we finished with Colortopia it was time for our first FP – Test Track! This is Cora’s absolute favorite ride and we all really like it. On this ride, I was with Alex (green car) and Rees was with Cora (blue car). We get a little competitive when it comes to our car designing and there is much trash talk during the process. Alex and I had some trouble with getting our design station to work and ran out of time before we could finish customizing, but we still kicked butt on the power test. It’s the little things…
We spent a little time playing in the after-ride area, then headed up to World Showcase. I like to visit that area of the park as close to 11:00am as possible because it’s usually pretty empty for the first bit of time it’s open. We stopped in Mexico first, had a picture snapped, then rode the Gran Fiesta tour with (of course) no wait.
We spent some time walking around the countries until it got close to Snow White’s meeting time, then we got in line to see her. It was ridiculously hot at this point, but we passed some of the time by chatting with the family behind us, one of whom happened to be a former Disney animator. One of the many things I love about WDW – a lot of time can be enjoyed just chatting with strangers, which we pretty much never do at home.
We planned to take our break after meeting Snow, but had to check out Sergio in Italy before we did. He picked on Rees quite a bit last year and it was hilarious. This time we got to watch some poor other person be pulled into the joke.
We walked out the International Gateway and went back to our room where the kids immediately asked to – you guessed it – change into their swimsuits and go back to Stormalong Bay. So Rees and the kids spent the bulk of our break there, while I relaxed on our long long balcony with a book and my feet up.
Rees and I were enjoying the break so much that we tried to talk the kids into just staying at the resort until dinner time, but they were having none of it. We had 2 more FP reservations and they intended to make them! So Rees and I dragged ourselves (or, more accurately, were dragged by our children) back to the IG where I grabbed another wheelchair and we headed to our FP ride.
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