Monday, June 29th, our Epcot day. I was still running on the adrenaline of Disney excitement and was the first up. After I showered I woke Judy up and then started finding more and more reasons to go into the kitchen to start turning on lights and making noise so that the kids, who were sleeping in the living room, would get the hint. The girls slept on the pull-out couch and James on the pull-out chair. James was happy with the comfort of the pull-out chair, but the girls werent real crazy about the couch. Eventually it became evident that the gentle stirring of activity wasnt doing the trick, so Judy had to pull back the curtains and exclaim, Stop yer snorin and lets get to Soarin. (Yes, she really said that.)
We got to the bus stop at about 8:30 am, and had to wait about 10 minutes for an Epcot bus. I took a picture of the gang while waiting for the bus.
I asked Marlene to take one with me in it
.just to prove that I was in fact, on this trip. I will have lots of photopass pics to post eventually, but we did a share with a few other families so I wont get the cd for probably a few more weeks yet. Im wearing one of the two shirts I got at the World of
Disney store in Downtown Disney. One of the Goofy sayings on it is Thinking Causes Thought -- we like that one and are still using it around the house sometimes.
The bus pulled-in to Epcot right at 9:00, so we slightly missed rope drop. We stuck with our plan though, that Id go to Soarin for fastpasses and the rest of the crew would leisurely make their way to Test Track and then Id meet them there. It took a little while to get the fastpasses. What a mob at the Soarin fastpass machines first thing in the morning, when youre at the back of the rope drop crowd.
And let me add, dont get behind me in a grocery store line, because I sure have a knack for picking the slowest line. Our return time was for 10:24, which is a little late for the first fastpass of the day, but maybe not too bad considering it was for Soarin and we were behind the rope drop crowd.
I made it over to Test Track
and we got in the standby line, which said it had a 20 minute wait, and was probably about right. I took this picture while in line, because I saw the 13 Year-Old Girl on the wall and Marlene nearly is a 13 year-old girl.
While in line I had the idea
that at Epcot Disney should offer face paintings of the test dummy circles -- the ones that are four quadrants of yellow and black. I think they'd be popular. I'd get one. Okay, no I wouldn't, but I bet other people would.
Here are a couple of pictures on the ride.
The guy beside Marlene was a very nice guy from Michigan who was a single rider who got matched-up with us. We got a chance to talk to him a little bit because the ride broke-down part-way through, while we were still inside. This was already his second ride on Test Track that day.
Heres a redneck picture from our ride. It took me a little while to figure out what settings I needed to use on my camera to get this to turn out. I dont think I had it set quite correctly for this one, but I got better as the week went on. (Then the hard part became remember to adjust the settings back for regular pictures.)
I was the only one of us who had ridden Test Track before, and everyone loved it! Particularly James. Its not technically a rollercoaster, but it was definitely another step in his progression of thrill rides.
From there we went over to Mission Space, which none of us had ever ridden before. That being the case, we decided to just try the Green (tamer) version. We all enjoyed that, and the kids wanted to try the Orange version. Judy decided to pass on that, so I went with them. We liked it even better. You dont have a spinning sensation, like on those dreaded teacups.
Its the same ride as the Green version, but a little more intense. When your rocket lifts off you can feel your feel the face on your skin pulling back, especially near your ears and jaw. And when you are asked to push buttons as part of your assignment (each seat is a different crew member with assigned tasks), your arms feel quite heavy and you have a little difficulty getting them to reach the button.
When we left Mission Space I went and got a set of fastpasses for another ride on Test Track. The return time was 1:50.
Now it was time to head over to Soarin to use our fastpasses. It was around 11:00, so I wanted to get the kids signed up for Kim Possible, but the only recruiting station I was aware of from my research/planning
was out as you make your way away from Future World to the World Showcase and that was quite a bit out of the way, so we just went straight to Soarin. Later in the week when we were back at Epcot, I saw recruiting stations in both of the Innoventions buildings, which we could have stopped at on the way to Soarin, but I wasnt aware of them at the time.
We rode Soarin and enjoyed it. Both Judy and I had been on it before, but it was the first time for the kids. They got a kick out of the golf ball coming at you and the smells of pine trees and orange trees. As we left Judy mentioned that its a good ride, but not one that shed necessarily want to have a fastpass to ride a second time immediately after. I agreed.
At about 11:30 we stopped at the Kim Possible recruiting station. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this, its a new offering this year. Kids receive a Kim-municator cell phone that they use to help Kim Possible (a Disney Channel cartoon character) to complete spy missions around the World Showcase. At the recruiting station you receive a ticket that tells you what time and at what country in the World Showcase your mission will begin, and you have to go to the Kim Possible station in that country to receive your Kim-municator and start the mission. The ticket is like a fastpass, but doesnt count as a fastpass. Its just so that they can control whos doing what, where, and when so that they dont happen to have everybody at the same country at the same time. Our return time was for 12:45 in Norway, which was not what Id hoped for since our lunch ADR was for 1:00 at Biergarten. I was wishing that somehow we had gotten a ticket when they opened the recruiting centers at 11:00, but we didnt know about the ones in the Innoventions buildings.
So, we started walking around the World Showcase. We headed to the right, toward Canada, which meant that wed have to walk all the way around to get to Norway. I know, what was I thinking? I dont know.
I took this picture as we started off.
And these in Canada.
A photopass guy took this one of us in France. The sun was absolutely brutal at this spot and really hurt our eyes. Our photopass pictures here turned out about the same as this one.
Trying on berets in France.
I took this one because I thought the crowd seemed pretty light. This was around noon.
Around Italy James feet started to hurt so we made a plan that he and I would take a break there, while Judy and the girls would go on to Norway to check-in for Kim Possible, then meet us back at Biergarten. I took this picture of Spaceship Earth as seen from across the lake in Italy.
While we were waiting there, Sergio appeared and prepared to perform.
James got to throw a ball into a net Sergio was holding.
Sergio went around and had all these various kids throw the ball into the net, even a small child in a stroller (you can see her on the right side of the picture above). Of course hed move the net however far he needed to for the kid to make the shot. Then he gave the ball to a man in the crowd and when he shot, Sergio didnt move at all, so the man missed. Sergio moved closer and the man still missed. Through mime and with the whistle he was blowing Sergio conveyed, Hey all these kids made it. Even this little tyke! So he moved closer and closer until the guy practically dunked it into the net. It was quite funny.
Then we thought wed better get moving to meet the ladies in Germany. We were definitely getting hungry, thirsty, hot, tired, and ready for a break indoors.
In the next installment: Lunch at Biergarten.
Link to next installment 
luckylady
, and waited 
, and waited some more 
. I cant remember if I went back to the check-in counter once or twice, but I remember them telling me they had had a lot of parties of 5. They said something about running late and I said, yeah, but a half an hour late? Fortunately, a manager walked by about that point and overheard and made a little more effort to get us seated than the other CMs were. It was 7:40 when we were finally seated. On the way to our table the CM asked Judy if it was our first time eating there. She replied, Yes, and itll probably be our last based upon how long it has taken us to be seated with a reservation. 
The restaurant was definitely behind the 8-ball now, in trying to please us. Im pretty forgiving, but Judy and the kids were not happy.
He asked her if she wanted anything else, but she said no. (I think if hed have given her some ideas/options she might have taken him up on it.)
(This is probably the only time I'll use the word "banana" in this TR, so had to insert the dancing banana smilie.)
