We decided to start out at Epcot, and we decided to split up, since Mom isn't much of a ride person and Dad can't ride a lot of things now. They started their day at the Living Seas exhibit if I remember correctly. Kenneth lobbied for heading straight for Test Track, which we did. Now, I'm not a roller coaster person, and as you enter the TT building you have to pass underneath the track. The cars pass right overhead with a tremendous WOOOOOOSH. I was having second thoughts while waiting in line; if the wait had been longer than the ten minutes or so it was, I might have chickened out. As it turns out, it isn't a roller coaster at all. In fact we experienced scarier things on I-95 on the way down. But Kenneth still thought it was one of the best rides he'd ever experienced. He couldn't wait for a chance to ride again. Steinar and I thought it was okay, but wondered what all the hype was about. Robert wasn't sure what to make of it and still isn't - if you ask him, he'll tell you sometimes that it was great and other times that it was a little too scary. However, he loved the exhibit that comes after the ride. You can tell who sponsors this pavillion - you have to walk past at least a dozen cars to get out, and every single one is made or marketed by GM....
Next, we backtracked to "the giant golfball". This is where we started noticing how light the crowds were. The queueing area for this ride is huge - corrals on both sides of the entrance that snake back and forth many times - but they hadn't even bothered to open most of it. And this happened at many other rides. We quite literally walked on many rides, and only rarely waited more than five minutes. That's not to say waits didn't get longer, but when we wanted to ride a popular ride like Test Track, we either went straight to it right after the gates opened, or we used FastPass.
The "golf ball ride" is called Spaceship Earth, and is a journey through the history of human communication. I really enjoyed this ride; it's very detailed and amazingly realistic. My only complaint is with the noise level! The narration is delivered through speakers in the headrest of your seat; the rest, the background music and other sounds, from speakers throughout the ride. The background sounds are so loud that we had to lean way back into our headrests to hear the narration - and that's not easy for a four-year-old who isn't tall enough to reach the headrests!
We stopped for a snack and realized that it was getting close to the time we'd agreed to meet up with my parents. Our first big mistake: we hadn't even made a dent in what we wanted to see. We'd underestimated both the amount of time we'd spend at each pavillion, and the amount of time we'd spend moving from one pavillion to the next. So Robert and I headed off to meet my folks, and Steinar walked back to Mission: Space with Kenneth.
We had agreed to meet my parents in an area called Showcase Plaza, a transition area between Future World (the science and technology area) and World Showcase (the "countries"). By this point I realized I was going to need a baseball cap; the sun was shining over and around my sunglasses and giving me a headache. So I left Robert with my parents and stepped into a souvenir shop to buy one. When I came out, a red British-style double-decker bus had stopped in the plaza and a number of costumed characters had stepped out. Robert was itching to go get a closer look. Now, some of the characters he found a bit overwhelming. Stitch, for instance, may be cuddly and friendly by the end of the movie, but blow him up to six feet tall and he's a mighty disturbing looking dude to a four-year-old. However, there was one character we did just have to see, and get a photo with. Here it is, folks, my little boy's first crush:
At the hotel, Robert wanted to swim. I think this was one of the highlights of the trip for him: swimming outdoors, in January. Kenneth relaxed in the air conditioned hotel room, watching cartoons on TV. I think taking a mid-day break is a good idea, especially for a park like Epcot which is open late even during the slow season, but next time I plan to make sure we have a time for going back. When Steinar came back a couple hours later, he needed a rest, while I was ready to go back again - but I was not going to take the kids back to the park by myself.
My parents, as mentioned, had reservations for the Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue, a country-music-and-corny-jokes dinner show that runs at the Fort Wilderness Campground. My sister had strongly recommended it. The desk clerk that checked our reservations for us recommended driving to the campground, and after our experience with getting back from Chef Mickey's my folks were only too happy to follow her suggestion. Even then, they said, it was confusing trying to navigate the roads in the darkness. But they had a wonderful time at the show!
We got back to Epcot just in time for our supper reservation. Marrakesh is a great restaurant. The food was quite tasty (and they had a kiddie menu, which Robert appreciated) and just suitably exotic, and the band and belly dancer were great entertainment. And the building is just gorgeous, inside and out. Steinar and I ordered one of the three-course menus, which was delicious but far too much food; Kenneth shared our appetizers and had, if I remember correctly, chicken kebabs; and Robert had some harmless bland thing like chicken fingers and fries. Since he had refused to eat lunch (very unusual for him - too much new stuff at once, I think), I was just glad he was eating something.
After dinner we strolled around World Showcase. Steinar had seen the movie in China that afternoon and wanted the rest of us to see it. This is a 360-degree movie, with screens wrapping around the top of the theater walls, and it is just gorgeous. Unfortunately, it also moves rather quickly, and I felt more than a little queasy at times. Once or twice I closed my eyes and waited for the music to change, announcing a new and hopefully quieter scene. At the time we were there, incidentally, the waiting hall featured an exhibition of clothing from different parts of China. I'm a fiber craft freak and enjoyed that as much as the movie.
Kenneth wanted to go to the Norwegian pavillion, not only to see how the country of his birth was represented, but to ride Maelstrom. This is a boat ride, and I guess you could call it a flume ride, but it's a very tame one. The trolls are fun, though, and I've never gone down a waterfall backwards before. The film at the end, though, is so old it's painful. We knew something was up when they showed the ski jumper at the beginning - hopping plow-fashion, which was last seen in international competition sometime before the 1994 Winter Olympics. Later there's a clip from a fashion show (fashion show? Norway? pardon?) featuring the latest look... anno 1989. Update the film, guys! (Also, the beginning flips back and forth between quiet and VERY LOUD so fast and so many times that Robert started to freak. But maybe I just have a weird kid.)
Every night at 9 o'clock there's a major lights-and-fireworks show called IllumiNations. It's supposed to be really something, but we were too tired to stay for it. Or rather, we could have handled staying for the show, but not fighting the crowds to get out of the park and onto a bus afterwards.
Next up: SeaWorld!
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Created 28 March 2005 * Last Updated 14 July 2005