Minnesotans Celebration Cruise Day 3
In an effort to keep these posts shorter I am no longer going to type the background to our trip. If youre lost and looking for whats going on you can find the complete saga as written on my web site http://www.geocities.com/picturedisney
Day 3 January 2, 2004
We again woke up early and took the monorail to Epcot where we started the day with a behind the scenes tour. We took the Undiscovered Future World Tour which showed us a number of hidden areas in Epcot including an executive lounge and a few places now closed to the public which were once attractions. We also learned a bunch of interesting facts like there are 11,324 triangle tiles on Spaceship Earth. The best part in my opinion was when we went into the cast member only areas in Epcot. We saw places like the Costume shop, and employee store while on our way to seeing the storage and preperation locations of the Illuminations Barges.
After the tour we went to Animal Kingdom to ride Kilamanjaro Safari and saw Tough to be a Bug. At this point we were getting a little cold again so we skipped Kali River Rapids, ran back to the Poly for our jackets and returned to Epcot for our PS arrangements at the Rose and Crown Pub.
We were able to get a nice waterside table where we were able to get pretty good pictures of Illuminations during dinner. After Dinner the place cleared out pretty fast so we left taking pictures of the park at night again as we did in MGM.
On the way out we caught the singing archway thing, I never did catch a real name for it, but it was a series of arches that played music and had dancing lights in time with the music. We thought it was pretty neat and a nice frame for pictures of spaceship earth. We were then caught by the fountain in its performance before we finally managed to get out of the park and to the Magic Kingdom. In the 2 hours we had there before the park closed we were able to see the new Philharmagic show and rode Space Mountian. After the park closed we got on the monorail and went back to the poly to sleep.
This was by far our shortest day to write on because of the Epcot Tour so Ill take a moment to write a bit about Security and the weather in the winter. Neither of us had ever been to FL in the winter and while we were there it was in the upper 70s to mid 80s during the day but would cool off to about the mid 50s in the evening. The entire time in WDW we were comfortable in pants and tee shirts, adding sweatshirt jackets at night. It never rained once while we were there but was a little cloudy occasionally. Overall it was WAY better than Minnesota.
As for security, it was the same as ususal since 9-11. We flew down and had most of our vacation under Orange, only the last few days were back to yellow. The airports were the same and Disney just did bag searches at the gate. Two pieces of advice here. 1: If you want to have your film hand checked at the airport or at the cruise Terminal, have extra time to do it in, they dont move quickly on it but will do it if you push the matter. In Minneapolis I had to insist on it because it was going through several scanners and only then did they agree to do it. I just sent it through at the cruise terminal but be advised they do scan it every time you get back on the ship, so most of my cruise pictures were done on digital cameras. MCO agreed to check the film no problem but I had to stand there waiting for them to get to it for about 20 minutes. 2: If you are trying to get through the Disney Security at the gates quickly, bring with you as little as possible. Also the clear backpacks or mesh backpacks that they can see through go through much faster than other backpacks and carry just as much.
Daily Milage: 13 miles
Coming soon: Day 4 - January 3, 2004, our last full day in WDW before the Cruise!
Minnesota
In an effort to keep these posts shorter I am no longer going to type the background to our trip. If youre lost and looking for whats going on you can find the complete saga as written on my web site http://www.geocities.com/picturedisney
Day 3 January 2, 2004
We again woke up early and took the monorail to Epcot where we started the day with a behind the scenes tour. We took the Undiscovered Future World Tour which showed us a number of hidden areas in Epcot including an executive lounge and a few places now closed to the public which were once attractions. We also learned a bunch of interesting facts like there are 11,324 triangle tiles on Spaceship Earth. The best part in my opinion was when we went into the cast member only areas in Epcot. We saw places like the Costume shop, and employee store while on our way to seeing the storage and preperation locations of the Illuminations Barges.
After the tour we went to Animal Kingdom to ride Kilamanjaro Safari and saw Tough to be a Bug. At this point we were getting a little cold again so we skipped Kali River Rapids, ran back to the Poly for our jackets and returned to Epcot for our PS arrangements at the Rose and Crown Pub.
We were able to get a nice waterside table where we were able to get pretty good pictures of Illuminations during dinner. After Dinner the place cleared out pretty fast so we left taking pictures of the park at night again as we did in MGM.
On the way out we caught the singing archway thing, I never did catch a real name for it, but it was a series of arches that played music and had dancing lights in time with the music. We thought it was pretty neat and a nice frame for pictures of spaceship earth. We were then caught by the fountain in its performance before we finally managed to get out of the park and to the Magic Kingdom. In the 2 hours we had there before the park closed we were able to see the new Philharmagic show and rode Space Mountian. After the park closed we got on the monorail and went back to the poly to sleep.
This was by far our shortest day to write on because of the Epcot Tour so Ill take a moment to write a bit about Security and the weather in the winter. Neither of us had ever been to FL in the winter and while we were there it was in the upper 70s to mid 80s during the day but would cool off to about the mid 50s in the evening. The entire time in WDW we were comfortable in pants and tee shirts, adding sweatshirt jackets at night. It never rained once while we were there but was a little cloudy occasionally. Overall it was WAY better than Minnesota.
As for security, it was the same as ususal since 9-11. We flew down and had most of our vacation under Orange, only the last few days were back to yellow. The airports were the same and Disney just did bag searches at the gate. Two pieces of advice here. 1: If you want to have your film hand checked at the airport or at the cruise Terminal, have extra time to do it in, they dont move quickly on it but will do it if you push the matter. In Minneapolis I had to insist on it because it was going through several scanners and only then did they agree to do it. I just sent it through at the cruise terminal but be advised they do scan it every time you get back on the ship, so most of my cruise pictures were done on digital cameras. MCO agreed to check the film no problem but I had to stand there waiting for them to get to it for about 20 minutes. 2: If you are trying to get through the Disney Security at the gates quickly, bring with you as little as possible. Also the clear backpacks or mesh backpacks that they can see through go through much faster than other backpacks and carry just as much.
Daily Milage: 13 miles
Coming soon: Day 4 - January 3, 2004, our last full day in WDW before the Cruise!
Minnesota
