From the Magic Kingdom we took the resort monorail over to the Ticket and Transportation center. Heres another shot of Bay Lake Tower, taken as were were about to go into the Contemporary.
While we waited for an Epcot monorail we ate some sandwiches we had made that morning, then caught a ride to Epcot. We were able to finish our sandwiches before getting on the monorail, but ate some carrot sticks while riding
shhh.
Heres a picture of my gang arriving at Epcot. You can see Spaceship Earth through the window
we were actually
in Epcot -- we were at that little loop the monorail takes into Future World and then back out.
Once we got into Epcot I went to get fastpasses to Test Track while the rest of the gang made a pit stop.
Then I backtracked, found the rest of the gang, and we got in line for Spaceship Earth. The line was kind of long. It looped a couple of times on each side of the entrance, and man, it was extremely hot out at this time of the day. We just about melted when we were in the sun, and felt very fortunate when we got to a shady spot. Fortunately the line moved pretty quickly. I think it only took us about 15 minutes until we got inside the doors. I hadnt been on this ride for a long time, and I really liked the changes theyve made.
Lauren rode with me, and I guess we selected some kind of undersea adventure.
And James and Marlene must have made similar choices.
From there we went into Innoventions West, which can be dangerous since James loves computer games and could easily spend his whole vacation in there. We went in and the kids wanted to do this videogame-thing sponsored by IBM. Judy hates videogames so opted to wait. I love videogames, so volunteered to chaperone the kids. I dont remember the name of this thing, but it puts
you in a videogame. Each of the four of us went to a separate booth and it took pictures of us jogging, jumping, and doing a victory dance. Then we got to play a videogame where
we were the characters we were controlling. It was pretty cool. It reminded me a lot of the videogame that the band Journey had out in the early 80s. (There I go, showing my age again.) Then we could enter our e-mail addresses and supposedly wed be able to replay the games from home for a month. None of us ever received an e-mail from this game. (But we did receive postcards from our future, from Spaceship Earth.)
While we were putting ourselves into videogames (remember TRON?), Judy discovered the Epcot Character Spot and saw that Minnie was there, so thats where we went next. The kids didnt want to spend all that time in line, but we said, hey, weve done a lot of things you wanted to do, so you can wait for a while so Mom gets to do something she wants. After watching a few cartoons on the monitors repeat themselves about 4 or 5 times (Donalds are the best
watching him throw a fit never gets old) we were finally next. Mickey was the first character, and as we watched the people ahead of us get their pictures we noticed that Mickeys shoe was kind of crumpled-in. Then we got our turn and Mickey had to take a break to eat a piece of cheese. When we came back we noticed his shoe was fixed also!
Now I could post a bazillion pictures from all of these character-meets, since we got a lot of individual and group shots, from both my camera and the photopass people, but Ill try to keep it manageable.
Heres James getting the Big Cheeses autograph.
And a group shot with Mickey.
Then Pluto.
And next was Minnie. First, some shots of the kids.
Does this guy look like hes not enjoying meeting the characters?
Now I had never known that my wife had such a soft spot in her heart for Minnie. I had always thought she was more of a Tink fan -- shes got Tink pajamas, a Tink charm on her bracelet, I dont know what-all. But here we were on a quest to meet Minnie, and when we got there most of the pictures look like shes getting overly-misty. (Nobody tell her that you can get pictures with the fairies!)
Heres one of the better ones from photopass.
I was able to get a couple after she regained her composure.
And a group shot.
Then on to Donald, who by his own admission is #1.
And finally, Goofy.
I was excited to meet Goofy. The kids pointed out that I was wearing my Goofy shirt, so when I met him I pointed to my shirt and said lets do this pose. Well, Goofy got it right, but because (I guess) I looked at the shirt upside-down, I was doing a raise the roof pose instead of a blissful state of Simplicity pose. Whos lookin goofy now? Duh.
And finally, our group pose with Goofy.
I love my Goofy shirt though. It says
Worlds Best Kept Secret
The Blissful State of Simplicity
Your Own Personal Utopia Awaits
Thinking Causes Thought (our family favorite, we still say this)
Goofy Is What Goofy Does
The Goofy Mind is a Happy Mind
What You Dont Know You Dont Know
Trust Your Heart For Answers
In the next installment: A Final Test.
Link to next installment