FlightlessDuck
Y kant Donald fly?
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2006
- Messages
- 21,804
MouseEarsJenny said:
I am still not sure how much of the ******* this day was due to staying up too late, how much was reaction to the huge crowds, and how much was the bad weather. All, I think, contributed to the bad morning.
Actually, before the second rope drop there were two Mission: SPACE CMs with us until the Soarin' CMs showed up. One was named Daniel and the other was named Samuel. Both were somewhat funny and obviously about college age. Eventually they moved on to their ride (and/or their rope) and the Soarin' CMs came to our rope.
I was quite impressed at this accomplishment, actually. Everyone was very orderly and we were just lucky enough to be up front. One of the CMs waited with us at the turnstile and was spouting random Disney knowledge. A woman behind us was shocked to hear that Soarin' was such a short ride (under 5 minutes, I think someone said). The CM explained most Disney rides where less than 5 minutes. Spaceship Earth, he said, is the longest ride in WDW at 18 minutes. We were fairly sure that is incorrect since Ellen's Universe of Energy and the Backlot Tour are probably longer than that. But he seemed relatively knowledgable and very friendly
Yeah, that pretty much didn't work. Soarin' is my new favorite Epcot ride, but Trouble hated it. He didn't cry, which was fortunate, but you could tell he was not at all pleased with our selection.
The Living Seas was one of my favorite parts of Epcot as a teenager. Unfortunately, this day we didn't get off the first floor. And while I understand they wanted to add Finding Nemo things here and there, it kind of messes up the whole Sea Lab feel it used to have.
Maybe it was because I am an adult, or maybe it was because our kids weren't that impressed, but I didn't really like Turtle Talk. It was OK, but I don't think we'll be going back to it next time. It certainly wasn't worth a 20 minute wait. One of the somewhat awkward parts was when Crush picked a kid out from the audience and asked for the kid's parents. It took at least 5 minutes for the mom to respond. I was sitting there thinking "his kid's mom left him in here by himself!" She said that she didn't realize they were talking to her son. Crush then asked to talk to the Dad, which was a bad mistake, because she was a single Mom. Very awkward, indeed.
The "pavillion" idea is, I think, the fatal flaw of Epcot. At Magic Kingdom, you have certain lands, but they are all fairly large and open. In the Future World section of Epcot, everything is in pavillions. While it may be helpful during rainy days, it is also much more confining than the Magic Kingdom. And when one pavillion has a really popular ride, watch out! All the other rides will get that much more busy.
MEJ did say she was going to give away the passes, which I guess I didn't hear. Unfortunately, we had to wait through a large crowd while she went to pixie dust other guests. See, my discomfort with large crowds comes mostly from a fear that I may lose my children in a large crowd. I would have been more comfortable outside, or at a table near the snack bar. Giving the passes away was the right thing to do, since Trouble didn't want to wait for us to ride Soarin' again. I just wish there were less people around at the time.
It's no so much that I hated the rain per se. I was unhappy about my complete inability to drink my slushie. It wasn't liquid enough to suck correctly through a straw, so I had to use the straw basically like a spoon (only without the shovel part). It wasn't tasty.
Technically there was a garbage can by the turnstile right before the loading area. So if there was a line in front of us, moving slowly (but moving), we could have waddled along, eaten our snack, dropped the trash in the can, and gotten on the ride. In practice, however, it didn't work out that way. So I felt uncomfortable standing along the rail with a slushie I wasn't enjoying waiting for the kids to finish their snack.
I thought that MEJ was going to ask to get in front of a group coming up next to us in the line, since we had waited there longer than everyone else now coming through the doors. Anticipating her move, I had said something to the effect that I wish she wouldn't ask (even though it's not against the rules or anything). Unfortunately, she didn't hear me. The group of people that let us go were very nice about it, which was good. But I still felt unconfortable doing it, which made me grumpy.
I had the Asiago Chicken sandwich. It was OK, but not at all what I expected (chicken strips in gooey asiago cheese sauce on a hoagie roll).
Another part of my irritation, which was hard to describe at the time, had to do with our lack of efficiency when it came to getting on rides. MK, the day before, was awesome, because we were able to go from one ride to another back to back with little to no waiting. That didn't happen today because of the layout of Epcot. Each pavillion has one or two rides in it, and they are so far away from each other. Plus we had to wait for Turtle Talk, which didn't start until 10AM. So by the time we had left for lunch, we had been on two rides and one show. And there wasn't a single thing all of us enjoyed (again, unlike MK).
