Did You Miss Me?

What?!  You didn’t even notice my week and a half absence?  Fine.  If that’s really all I mean to you people.  I guess you don’t even want to see pictures of my vacation and hear every sordid detail either, do you? 

You don’t? (sad sigh)

Ha!  Well, I have to tell you that two…count’em:   TWO real people actually saw me this morning and said, “Beth!  When are you posting photos and writing every sordid detail of your trip out for us to see?” 

So for those two people, this is for you, and for everyone else, well…I’ll see you next week when my vacation installments have been completed.  So there.

Day One:  Epcot

First of all, let me direct you to this website, Undercover Tourist, which is an excellent site to visit if you’re heading to Disney.  I bought my Disney tickets from there for a good discount, and they arrived within 5 days (I bought Universal tickets from the Universal site, however, they were actually cheaper than Undercover Tourist), and they have a Crowd Calendar which shows the best days to visit each park.  The Crowd Calendar told us that Epcot would be the least crowded park our first day, so that’s why we went there first.

You must arrive at any Disney park as the park opens.  Do not tell me you’re on vacation and you should be allowed to sleep in.  If you want to sleep in, go vacation somewhere else.  All of the parks are at their emptiest and most maneuverable for the first two hours of the day. 

When visiting any Disney park, you need to have your Fastpass System in place ahead of time (I’m not explaining Fastpass here…just telling you how we work the system).  Dave and I usually work it out on the tram ride through the parking lot.  There are not a lot of rides to Fastpass at Epcot, but when we got inside, Dave and the kids headed left to Test Track, while I headed right to Soarin’ where I printed out 5 Fastpasses.  I then headed back to Test Track and rode that one with everyone (they were on their second ride by that point ), then we did the Nemo ride and got this awesome photo:

It’s a tradition!

…and then we headed to Soarin’.  By now, the waits in the line were at about 30 minutes, but we got on in 5 minutes using our Fastpass.  Soarin’ is a great ride, and we all love it.  Don’t miss this ride! 

The Honey, I Shrunk the Kids 3D movie was changed to a really bad 3Dmovie:  Captain EO. Don’t do it!  We all agreed it was cheesy and dumb.

By now, the countries had opened, so we headed over there.  The best thing about the countries is the food.  Instead of eating one meal at a restaurant, we got small meals which we shared, and ate our way around the world.  We got empanadas in Mexico; lamb, couscous, and hummus in Morocco; egg rolls and pot stickers in China, etc.  Everything was delicious, but Dave and I especially loved the Moroccan food.

As you can see, we also tried the very exotic Chicken Finger basket.

The weather was beautiful!  Temperatures were in the eighties and the sky was a brilliant blue.  The park is so spacious, and Undercover Tourist was right, we really never encountered any crowds.  I thought about Tara from Taradactyl a lot when I was here, because she wrote the most awesome blogpost ever about her day in Epcot, just about two weeks before we visited.  Read it, you’ll thank me!

For the first time we tried doing a KimPossible Mission.  There are stands set up around the countries, just stop at one of them and sign up (it’s free).  They give you a “cell phone” and a mission in an assigned country.  The mission takes about 30 minutes to complete, and the KimPossible characters talk to you via the phone and give you clues as to where you should head next.  Your cell phone activates hidden screens/makes puppets move etc. This activity was fun, but lost its appeal kind of quickly.  About 15 minutes into it, the kids were ready to move on to something else (although we did finish the mission).

There aren’t many rides in the Countries.  One that is there is Maelstrom, which we had Fastpassed earlier.  We went back at our assigned time and got right on the ride.  We enjoyed our time there in Norway.

After we finished walking through the countries we headed to the Coke shop across from the main fountain.  Inside is a place where you can try Cokes from around the world for free.  Italy’s Coke is terrible!

Our last ride is always Spaceship Earth (aka, the giant golfball).  This ride is excellent since they’ve revamped it, and you can almost always get on it with a very minimal wait.  After the ride are a lot of fun, interactive games, like virtual shuffleboard and virtual driving.  Look up when you get into the final room, your photo is likely displayed on one of the giant screens!

We had a little fun with the golf ball ourselves this year:

And then we went back to our hotel and went swimming.  Our first five days in Florida, the temps were in the high eighties/low nineties and we took full advantage of the hotel pool.

Now if you’ve stuck with me so far, you’re probably thinking, “Wow, Beth’s biceps must be deceptively strong to have held up that Giant Golfball all on her own.”  Or perhaps you are thinking, “Oh great, another perfect blogpost from another perfect blogger about her perfect family and their perfect vacation.”

Only the first statement is true.

Our first day was really wonderful.  Everyone was excited and in a good mood and not tired or grumpy at all. But if you stick with me over the next few days,  I promise descriptions of being stuck at the top of a major ride, someone in our family causing the shutdown of the Kali River Rapids in Animal Kingdom,  plenty of grumping and tears (mostly from Dave), and Vomiting as a Grand Finale!