Pixie Dust and The Dark Side.**8 parks in 9 days... Can it be done?!?**

[laekia]

Well we arrived back home yesterday... back to the ice and snow that is central Canada.... and I can sincerely say that all of us would be driving right back to Orlando if we had our way!

I started a pre trip report originally but I decided the title didn't quite fit.

I'm not sure if I should be putting just the Disney days here and everything else elsewhere.... but someone can just yell at me when I do it wrong

So who are we? I'm Brianna, I am 31 and the mom of 2 girls. Im definitely the official trip planner for this venture... everyone else just follows along.... which is both excellent since i get to make all the decisions but omg a lot of work lol. On the plus side they don't complain about what i choose

So the other 3 members of my family are my husband Kevin who is 37, our oldest daughter Kaitlyn who is 12 and our youngest daughter Alyssa who is 8. This was our first Disney vacation and meant to be a once in a lifetime trip that we would never be able to do again. Its almost 4000 miles from here to Orlando so its not a short journey for us

Also traveling along with us this trip were my parents, my sister, and my grandmother who all were also Disney first timers!

This trip had a lot of ups, a few downs, and some amazing memories Even with all my research there were a few things that blew my mind and I hadn't anticipated in the least. Fast Pass + was a bit hit and miss... its worked for us towards the end of the trip but not at all in the beginning, however i never experienced the other way so I cant compare it as well as I would like. I think I would have preferred the old method, but alas Disney doesn't really care what i think

Sit back, relax and welcome to a whirlwind trip!

 

[laekia]

I thought I had been conservative in picture taking.. including our memory maker
and my phone we had somewhere around 2500 pictures... for a 16 day trip for me thats nothing our 14 day cruise last year had about 4000 pictures as an example lol... I like pictures. But since i was also riding rides and there are so many no pictures rides it brought my typical average down.

Anyways the point is i may only have 2500 pictures but DANG it takes a lot of time to go through these. I havent even started editing and ive already spent at least 3-4 hours just uploading and transferring.

 

[laekia]

So our story really begins the day after we got to Orlando... We left home on Feb 14th and drove over 3000 miles to Orlando. We got to Florida on Monday the 17th and for us the trip really began on the 18th when we got to our first park.... This (on the 17th) however I think is the very best sight

Im not sure who was happier to see that sign.... Me or the kids...

But onto the story
Feb 18th Our first Park day!! I picked Animal Kingdom to be our first park because it was supposed to not be too crazy busy that day, although I was a little bit concerned since it was the park that we most wanted to go to before the trip began. The park opened at 8am so we were at the gates around 7:40 and after about 5 minutes they started letting us in. We headed straight for Expedition Everest and got there just before 8 (before the ride even opened!)

We waited about 10 minutes before they opened the ride and headed through the super long que area to the ride (We discovered pretty quickly that every single ride in every park had an 8 mile long que line lol. we enjoyed them though, there was some that i actually wished the wait was longer so i could check things out a little more.) This was a roller coaster that went in the dark and light and one part goes backwards. It wasn’t too bad but DD2 hated it. I think it was maybe a little too much for a first ride at 8am for an 8 year old….. We left Expedition Everest and headed towards the Dinosaur ride. We stopped in the kid dinosaur area to go on Primeval Whirl which is another roller coaster where the car you sit in starts spinning about halfway through the ride. We have a ride like that at the fair here and I generally hate it…. But DD2 loves it and after her hatred of Everest we thought we better give her one she likes. After that we headed to Dinosaur which was really cool but really fast and jerky and I wasn’t expecting it at all.

I wish I could have gone on this one again to really experience it but it wasn’t meant to be. We left dinosaur and headed back to the gates to see if the rest of our group was around yet. It was about 9:30 at this point I believe. We did some shopping in the shops at the gates and then gave up waiting and decided to head to Africa to go on the Safari ride. When we got there the line said 15 min which is really short for the safari so we jumped on it. This might be a good place to note that we had a very love hate relationship with line times. Generally if the line said it was about 15 minutes it would be either more like 5 and we would walk on the ride, or we would wait for at least 25-30. Almost every ride in every park Disney or Universal was that way. There was no more than half a dozen rides that were actually at the times listed. But with that said, we did get lucky and have less wait times about half the time so we cant complain too much…. It was the 10 or 15 min that was really 30 that were more frustrating. Anyways I digress…. The safari was very cool, it was fun seeing the animals so close sometimes and to see them roaming freely like that.

When we got off the ride the rest of our group was waiting for us and they wanted to go on the safari as well so we went on it again. The second time we actually were stuck for about 5-10 minutes by a herd of giraffes in the road. They were so close to the truck that I literally could have reached out and touched one.

It was an amazing experience for sure. When we got off we decided it was snack time so we all got pretzels and some watermelon from a food stand close by. The jalapeno cheese pretzels were amazing and I recommend one to anyone at Animal Kingdom.

DH was pretty sad we never found those pretzels again on the rest of our trip. After our snack we headed off for the conservation station. We were getting a little tired by then, so we did skip a lot of this area, but the girls got to see their first Disney character Rafiki! Lion King is a favorite so that was a good one to be able to start with.

We headed back from conservation station and DH, DD1 and Dad went back on Expedition everest twice with the Fast Passes while the rest of us ate some ice cream and took a break. We weren’t used to the +35 weather!! But trust me we weren’t complaining. Have I mentioned how in love I am with this tree?

The line for Kali River Rapids had been long and there were no fast passes left so I had skipped it but I REALLY wanted to go on it so I said we will just wait however long it is, and the line ended up being only about 15 minutes. It was a fun ride and I am glad we got to go on it once. We all got a bit wet which was nice in the heat. Next we headed towards Dinosaur because we had fast passes for that one as well, and we ended up seeing that the nemo show was going to start in about 30 minutes so we decided to do that instead. If I had known better I would have gone and done the Dinosaur fast passes quickly while we still had them, or skipped the nemo show. The rest of our group liked it though. We headed to dinosaur after but the line was too long. We ended up catching a meet and greet with a really short line right by dinosaur and the girls got to meet Donald Duck.

We headed to our 6pm ADR at Rainforest Café which was delicious. I cant remember exactly what we all had but it all involved steak and shrimp for the most part. Heres one of our whole group.

We left Animal Kingdom at 8pm which was park closing. We did spend some time in between things wandering and seeing a few animals but we missed most of the trails.... We could have happily stayed longer for this one. Great first day/first park. I was surprised actually since I heard so many people say it was boring or that they skipped it, I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as I was hoping it would be but Animal Kingdom happily exceeded my expectations.

 

[momabaarjo]

Joining in...

You can put both Disney and the darkside here in the same TR. I did both and then I posted just the Dark Side also in the Universal area...just so people could see my information on the dark side without having to sort through TR forum for Disney. I like reading about both places...I love my time with Mickey but Harry and Ron make my knees weak!

WOW...you drove....

I love picture heavy TRs...more fun looking at pictures and sharing the moment! Pictures are truly worth a 1000 words or more!

So jealous how close those giraffes were! Fun!

I have yet to have one of those pretzels...maybe next trip.

 

[laekia]

Joining in...

You can put both Disney and the darkside here in the same TR. I did both and then I posted just the Dark Side also in the Universal area...just so people could see my information on the dark side without having to sort through TR forum for Disney. I like reading about both places...I love my time with Mickey but Harry and Ron make my knees weak!

WOW...you drove....

I love picture heavy TRs...more fun looking at pictures and sharing the moment! Pictures are truly worth a 1000 words or more!

So jealous how close those giraffes were! Fun!

I have yet to have one of those pretzels...maybe next trip.

Welcome I'm still learning all the tricks to these forums so be warned lol

Thanks for the info, I was going to go ask whether I had to split the Disney and universal parts. We are huge Harry potter fans too so there was no way we could pass up universal, but there's definitely something special about Disney All of us had favourite things from both (like butter beer... Yum!) I would have a hard time choosing only one favourite.

The drive actually wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be... We would actually do it again no problem.

I will happily oblige with many pictures lol it's hard keeping it to not too many.

And trust me... Eat a pretzel. The jalapeño ones. Hubby is still lamenting over only having had one

 

[momabaarjo]

Welcome I'm still learning all the tricks to these forums so be warned lol

We all have to earn our ears at some point. Just ask questions and people will help you!

Thanks for the info, I was going to go ask whether I had to split the Disney and universal parts. We are huge Harry potter fans too so there was no way we could pass up universal, but there's definitely something special about Disney All of us had favourite things from both (like butter beer... Yum!) I would have a hard time choosing only one favourite.

No need to split, but make sure you put a TR in Universal...

I am so excited about the expansion! Oh what I would not do for a butter beer right now! Forbidden Journey is my favorite ride of all...

The drive actually wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be... We would actually do it again no problem.

There probably would have been a death in my family had we drove that far...I have one child that does not know the meaning of silence. It was a killer just so sit next to him for the 3 1/2 hour plane trip!

I will happily oblige with many pictures lol it's hard keeping it to not too many.

And trust me... Eat a pretzel. The jalapeño ones. Hubby is still lamenting over only having had one

On my list for my next trip...this time I will have one!

 

[laekia]

Now that we have experienced the magic of Disney it was time to venture over to the Dark Side *cue ominous music*.
I had a lot of preconceived ideas before we left… I spent hundreds of hours (literally) researching this trip (my family thought I was crazy). I was expecting Universal to be fun… we are all huge Harry Potter fans so that was a huge draw, but I was expecting to love Disney and think of Universal as a great one time thing. Don’t get me wrong, we did love Disney, but Universal surprised me…. Anyways more on that later.
We got to Universal a little bit later than we wanted… This was one of those days that just started off a bit wrong. We were all in good spirits for the most part. When we got to the park we parked and took the LONG walk to the actual parks. I read about this but I was still unprepared! And it was about 9:15 at this point so there was 12039830948309480398 people around Not the best start to the day. We got down to the bag check and DH realized we didn’t have our wallet…. Totally my fault  I had left it in the van when I took it out to pay for parking. So he ran back to get it (muttering some choice words under his breath I can imagine) and I have to give him tons of credit cause he didn’t say a word! So finally we got in and got to Universal Studios the original park.

There were so many people it was insane…. Not at all what I was expecting. We stopped for a minute and looked around in horror and then shook ourselves off and planned to make the best of it.

This was no later than 9:30 am.... park opened at 9 <.<


So we start down the main street… Despicable Me wait time…60 minutes. Nope not happening. Shrek 4D…. 10 minutes! AHA! So we made that our first ride. It was cute but I am perfectly ok with having it be a one time only ride. We had gotten over our initial Universal shock by this time thankfully!

Stopped to meet Shrek and Fiona quickly


And DD1 and DH wanted to ride the roller coaster of course. I took one look at that one and said absolutely not. We had a preplanned plan for rides before we left home. DH and DD1 are far more adventurous than myself and DD2 so they were ride partners and myself and DD2 were ride partners with me agreeing to follow her lead. Fortunately for me (I really don’t love thrill rides) DD2 never quite got over Expedition Everest the whole trip and avoided most of the crazy coasters. So in this case since there was no way I was getting on this ride DH and DD1 went to do that while DD2 and I wandered and eventually decided to go on twister. Another good “I’ve done this once that’s plenty” ride. We met back up and headed to Transformers which was the ride I was most looking forward to… and it didn’t disappoint. This is when I truly began loving Universal. Ive never been on a ride like that and if you ever get the chance you really should experience it at least once. This is easily one of my top 5 favorite rides from all the parks combined. We also stopped to see Megatron.

This was in Line for Transformers


We kept wandering down the street and went to Disaster which was another fun one time thing, and the Fear Factor show which the rest of my family didn’t really want to go to but I really did and they are glad that I made them cause it was actually really fun. DD2 still talks about the girl with the scorpions on her head, and the milkshakes that were made with gross things like meat you wouldn’t even put in hotdogs. Yeah my kid… she likes strange things…. Anyways next we hit MiB which I loved… nothing like challenging your family to an alien shooting contest. The rest of our group showed up shortly after this and we headed with them over to the Simpsons area.

That was a blast I used to watch The Simpsons every week when I was younger, and my kids actually watched it when they were young but we stopped for some reason. The whole land was really well done. We took my dad on the Simpsons ride which none of us were expecting too much from, but we all agreed later that it was another favorite for sure.

Actually by about day 6 I was asking what everyones favorite things were and all 5 of us mentioned the Simpsons ride!

Couldnt pass up meeting Bart and Homer


After that the boys wanted a Beer and the littler girls wanted doughnuts so we bought the big pink doughnut to share. Im pretty sure I would have been in a diabetic coma if I ate that whole thing… and Im not diabetic lol. It was good but I thought it was really sweet…. The rest of my sweet tooth family loved it of course.

It was getting a bit later by the time we were done.. at least 4pm and we had dinner reservations at 6pm. My mom and sister decided to go on Shrek since they had missed it before, and the rest of us wanted to take my dad on Transformers and maybe the Mummy if the line wasn’t too long. We got to transformers and the wait said 30 min but the line was literally out the door… SO we went to check the Mummy and it was only 10 so we did that. That’s my speed of roller coaster lol… DD2 liked it too. We went back to Transformers and decided to brave the line which still said 30 but was just inside the door now. It took actually right around 25 which was one of the closest wait times we experienced. In comparison our earlier visit to transformers said 20 min when we got in line and it was really more like 45. By the time we were done it was just after 5 and DH and DD1 ran off to do the roller coaster one more time before dinner.

We found the rest of our group and went to Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville for our reservation. It was good but nothing to write home about. The best part was the girls on stilts and DD2 got a really cute penguin balloon animal that she adored.

By the time we were done it was about 8pm and we headed home. Universal was a bit more crowd busy than I was anticipating but it had some of the most amazing rides ive ever experienced.

 

[chs27]

Fantastic trip report! Thank you for sharing.

 

[momabaarjo]

It is a very long walk from parking to the gates at USO! I so much prefer staying onsite at the Royal Pacific...that way very easy access to the parks and no wait times on almost everything.

I am so jealous of the Transformers...can't wait to experience that ride next time!

My oh my what a doughnut! and Beer? LOL

I like the Simpson's ride...but so not a fan. Never even have watched an episode.

 

[laekia]

It is a very long walk from parking to the gates at USO! I so much prefer staying onsite at the Royal Pacific...that way very easy access to the parks and no wait times on almost everything.

I am so jealous of the Transformers...can't wait to experience that ride next time!

My oh my what a doughnut! and Beer? LOL

I like the Simpson's ride...but so not a fan. Never even have watched an episode.

We were looking at Royal Pacific... Im really leaning towards booking there if theres a next time....

Because of our large group we rented a house for this trip... which was great BUT the 30ish min commute to anywhere wasnt very fun and I think it lost a little of the vacation feel. It was an amazing house but im not sure anything beats the park resorts!

And whats a day at universal without huge doughnuts and beer? LOL I thought the beer was really gross... its tasted alot like budweiser and im not a fan. But the boys were happy

Transformers was amazing! Im so in love with that ride! Its just like Spiderman just with transformers instead... so if you have been on that one you will know what i mean

 

[Tasmen]

And trust me... Eat a pretzel. The jalapeño ones. Hubby is still lamenting over only having had one

Excellent! Glad to hear they have these pretzels at in the AK. We had those on our last Disneyland trip and they were SO good.

I also like picture heavy trip reports!

 

[laekia]

Excellent! Glad to hear they have these pretzels at in the AK. We had those on our last Disneyland trip and they were SO good.

I also like picture heavy trip reports!

I asked my husband what he would most want to do again if we went back and without missing a beat he said "eat another jalapeño pretzel!" Lol they really are good.... I think he would pay for park admission just to go eat pretzels

 

[Kirby]

Yummmm! Those pretzels sound really good! Another addition to my food list I'm going to have when we go.

 

[laekia]

Wow I realize we have been back from Disney for 3 weeks today! Seems like its been years. Especially since its still -25 or colder here... which in F terms is about -13 Coldest winter in like 100 years or some ridiculous thing. DH and I decided we are definitely moving to Florida

So I realized Ive been home for 3 weeks and Ive only gotten through 2 of 10 days and Im about to hit my busiest season at work so I wont have time to sleep let alone post trip reports So I better get my butt in gear if i want to get this done.

Plus I would like to finish this TR before we need to make another one

 

[laekia]

Day 3 of our trip we were up bright and early as always. We were feeling like pros by now! We have successfully made it through our first day at Disney and at Universal and we were sure we knew what we were doing yeah we were dead wrong.... but we didnt discover that just yet. We headed off for SeaWorld somewhere around the crack of dawn (by day 3 9am felt like the crack of dawn... theres something about walking for 12+ hours each day that doesnt make the mornings a fun experience)... which was actually about 8am.

The park was set to open at 9 and we must have been there around 8:40 or so. We only waited in the crowd to get in for about 5 minutes or so before they let us all into the park. There was maybe 100 or so people there so it was nothing really especially compared to what we had already experienced. We watched the antics of a flock of flamingos as we waited for park open... I do love me some flamingos

SO once they let us in we went where you will find we always go.... whatever crazy roller coaster is closest or looks like it might have the longest line. So our first stop was the Manta.

At 9am I am rarely thinking rollercoasters are a good idea and DD2 was on the fence with this one so I convinced her to let the other 2 go on and we would go do something else. Thank God. I cannot say that vehemently enough. Right after they left for this ride the crowd parted and I got a glimpse of the actually seat for this ride. Now I will pause here to explain... Im *extremely* claustrophobic... especially with things around my face and head. without going into too much detail and confusing everyone I will just say that this seat resembled something I would only find in my worst claustrophobic nightmares. In fact the first thing my husband said when he got off was "You would NEVER have gotten on that ride"..... ok well im glad i stayed here with the pelicans I almost forgot to explain the ride ... obviously im too caught up in my claustrophobicness... if thats a word... anyways this rollercoaster straps you in and then moves you so that you are basically laying down on your stomach... think hanggliding. Then it takes you up down and around amillion loops at a million miles an hour... ok maybe im exaggerating it a bit

So i digress... DH and DD1 went on the coaster of doom and DD2 and I went and checked out the pelicans and she played some little cutesy midway game that was nearby and won a stuffed manta ray. She was beyond happy about that stuffed ray.... im not a huge fan of carnival games but this one was worth it. We also pressed a couple pennies. The other 2 werent gone very long and they came off proclaiming it to be one of the best rollercoasters ever. So if you are really into rollercoasters you should probably visit sea world (or busch gardens but thats another TR day). After that we went into the aquarium to check things out.

This was right before we entered the aquarium... you can see the stuffed manta.... what are they looking at you ask? some amazing ride or exotic creature?..... sadly no... they are going crazy over a squirrel. I pretended i no longer knew them shortly after.


Now I think i mentioned before but just in case i didnt, my family is huge into all things animal. SO an aquarium is right up our alley. Now we have seen aquariums... in fact at the beginning of this trip we went to Omaha Zoo which has (to us) the best aquarium ive ever seen. But the SeaWorld aquarium was surprisingly cool in its own way.

There were things there that i had never seen before and thats quite a feat in and of itself. Onew of my absolute favorites was the Leafy Sea Dragons. I would like one for my tank at home!!

Leafy Sea Dragon....yes i took about a hundred pictures to get this one... i was on a mission!

Loving the Rays



We left the aquarium and promptly got lost... I'm horrible at reading maps and this park/maps were horribly confusing We eventually made it to Kraken which was not where we intended to go but nonetheless we were there. DH and DD1 went on that one while DD2 and myself looked around again. This was another roller coaster that they enjoyed but wasn't as good as manta they said. Neither of them cared about going back at least. DD2 and I goofed around with the camera while we waited.

Ran out of picture room so splitting this into 2

 

[laekia]

Almost right beside Kraken is the Journey to Atlantis which is a drop water ride much like splash mountain. DD2 wanted to go so off we went. Now as I know Ive said before... i really hate drop rides <.< the things we do for our children. So we head up up up and as we are headed back up DD2 is not very thrilled (she also doesn't like drop rides so why she keeps insisting we go on them ) she did like the end of the ride though which was more roller coastery with some twists and turns.

We got mediumly wet on this ride... i dont think anyone was soaked. After this we met up with the rest of our group and headed to dolphin feeding. All 4 of us did it and fed some very cute dophins some very gross fish The girls were really into it and I think the husband liked it a lot too.

From there we went to the sea turtle area which was a long aquarium with sea turtles and manatees which we of course enjoyed and then a 3d movie at the end.... the movie was good BUT i dont get motion sick in the least and even I was a little woozy from that one. Its a dome that you stand in the middle of and they play a movie all around you. Its interesting thats for sure.... but id avoid this if you get the least bit sick. After we headed for some lunch and we wanted to check out the Antarctica ride but the line was about 45 minutes long. This was my only huge complaint from SeaWorld. My sister is in a wheelchair and we are used to having difficulties with things. She couldnt go on this ride and neither could my elderly grandmother but they were not allowed to bypass the ride line. There was no way my grandma was standing for 45 minutes in line and she was disappointed because she really loves penguins. I can understand not letting regular people past whether they want to ride or not but there should be some exception for a wheelchair that cannot ride at all.


Anyways back on topic.... And an amusing story.... After lunch we had to pass by the Jourey to Atlantis to get to the Dolphin Show which was our next stop. DD1 and DH decided to take my Dad on the ride (he likes medium thrill rides... so a little more crazy than I am but not much) and originally DD2 says no way no how I dont want to go.... this is perfectly fine by me. Been there done that I dont need to go again. At the last second DD2 decides she does want to go on with everyone so off we go. We get on the ride... head up up up and DROP... as we head up for the second part I say to her "Do you like it?" and she goes "No not really".... I almost died. OMG kid why did you drag me on this again then! Oye Kids.

Anyways! We headed to the Dolphin show.

Really good show! And again Ive seen dolphin shows (Ive been to Marine Land in Canada... its much like sea world) but the rest of my family hadnt and they really liked it. It was a good family activity

We went from the show to feed the Sea lions and Seals.

And to the Sea lion show which was really cute. The kids liked it alot actually.

Then we headed to see and feed the sharks.

and then we took a looonnnngggg walk around the park. We stopped to see the orcas quickly... i still feel a little weird about it even though i dont completely agree Blackfish is still pretty fresh in my mind... but thats not a debate for here.

and then the other half of our group left and the 4 of us finished off with DH and DD1 going back on the Manta and DD2 and I went to feed the sting rays...omg so fun! They were crazy! We could have spent an hour there easily! We left the park around 530 and headed back to our house before our ADR. This was the ADR i was MOST looking forward to and it did not disappoint. We had an 830 reservation at O'hana at the polynesian. If you havent been there... Go. i mean get in your car and drive there right now! It is AMAZING. I cannot stress that enough. All 8 of us loved it although i was pretty sure i was going to explode by the end I was so full. I would go back there every single time. I was too interested in the food to take picture though which is a major regret.

We got to watch the end of wishes and the electric water show (cant remember what its called) while we were there as well which was amazing. I dont think we got home til almost 11pm and we had another early day the next day but oh it was worth it

 

[momabaarjo]

Looks like a wonderful day at Sea World...and everyone that wanted to ride got to ride. The dolphins just make me smile everytime...I wonder if they are really as happy as they look. As for Blackfish...well everyone has an agenda...I am still going to enjoy the parks.

Ohana...what a great way to end the day. Now I am hungry!

 

[laekia]

Looks like a wonderful day at Sea World...and everyone that wanted to ride got to ride. The dolphins just make me smile everytime...I wonder if they are really as happy as they look. As for Blackfish...well everyone has an agenda...I am still going to enjoy the parks.

Ohana...what a great way to end the day. Now I am hungry!

It was fun to experience once that's for sure I'm not sure we would ever go again... Maybe someday but it was a good day!

And o'hana..... Omg. I was warned that that place is amazing and they didn't lie!! It might be my favourite restaurant ever.

 

[laekia]

The day for Epcot arrived pretty dreary and foggy. Seaworld the day before had been really good, and topping it off with O’Hana had been amazing! Before the start of the trip I was really excited about Epcot and I was really looking forward to it. The weather didn’t seem to be cooperating very well but we had expected poor weather at some point so we weren’t really concerned.

We left bright and early as usual and arrived at the park at about 830. Opening was 9. As soon as we got to the parking lot I knew my well laid plans were going to be very wrong for this day. Now let me explain… Everything up until this point had been going surprisingly well… very little problems, and I mean at best some minor squabbling between the kids if we were waiting. This is amazing for us lol our kids do not always get along… actually they rarely get along…. And with one being an almost teenager I usually want to strangle her a few times a day. So when I say that up until this point life was great Im not pretending, but I am very cautiously optimistic for the rest of the trip.
So we arrive at Epcot and there are already thousands of people…. 30 min before park opening…. On a Friday…. And Im going….. what the heck?! I consulted trip planners and guides before we left like they were the holy grail because to top off our sometimes dysfunctional family I have an anxiety disorder that is made much worse by large crowds. Anyone who is laughing hysterically at why I would ever attempt Disney probably should be (Actually 99% of the time I was fine which was surprising… there was more than enough to distract me from all the people) So I see all these people and it dawns on me…. Princess half marathon. See I hadn’t factored this into my well laid plans, mostly because a) I thought it was on the Saturday b) I didn’t realize what a big deal it was and c) I thought it was at magic kingdom or something and not Epcot. Well…. Major mistake. The princess half marathon had some sort of starting, day before, something or other going on that day….. Swell. Okay well…. Maybe they aren’t actually coming into the park?.... yeah wishful thinking.



So we head in as the park opens and make the age old decision…. Test track or Soarin’. We all wanted to do both but DD2 and I wanted to do Soarin’ more so we speed walked over there. It was insane. I liken the opening of Epcot to a somewhat well controlled stampede. We got to Soarin’ and it was maybe a 10 minute wait. The ride was cute, I would do it again. DD2 LOVED it.. she would have spent all day there I think. The other 2 were indifferent at this point.

We left Soarin’, stopped to apply some bandaids that had come off, checked out Sunshine Seasons I think it was and decided to check out the living with the land ride. It was actually really neat, and surprisingly the kids enjoyed looking at the different things they were growing. We left the building after and we ended up going to the under the sea with nemo ride or whatever its called. Again cute… good one time ride for us. We aren’t huge fans of nemo and its really a little kids ride but it was fun to do once.

We left, still searching for a fast pass thing. And headed to Figment and Captain Eo…. My kids were horrified by figment. They really did not like it at all. And Captain Eo was good to do once. I felt like I should be wearing leg warmers and a side pony…. Ahh the 80s. We stopped at a Meet and Greet for Chip and Dale! Love those guys!

So I decided we better get serious about the FP+ or we were going to get nothing (famous last words). We Finally found one but the line was 239823829 people long… and across the way what did we see? A character meet and greet? Interesting. We find out that its Mickey, Minnie and Goofy and I suddenly had some very excited children. So the wait time was supposed to be 30 min and I said oh what the heck lets do it anyways. We waited for MAYBE 10… im pretty sure it was more like 5. It was great actually.

The rest of our group showed up shortly after, and we finally got to check the fast passes…. Test track was gone which was no surprise so we did Mission Space, Maelstrom and…. I honestly cannot remember what the 3rd choice was. Something random I guess. The rest of the group decided to go through the character meet and greet again with the girls. DH and I took advantage of the 10 min by ourselves to visit starbucks It was both strange and nice to be alone for a few minutes even if it was short! After we headed to Mission Space for our fast pass time, and checked out the wait for test track…. 60 minutes  It was 60+ minutes all day unfortunately but not surprisingly. Soarin’ was just as busy all day long. Mission Space however was a hit. I was super nervous about doing Orange (and I freaked out the youngest…. Sigh) because none of us get motion sick at all but I had heard too many bad stories so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We got on and they mentioned the sickness bags and DD2 immediately asked where they were just in case. So we settle into our seats and Im thinking ok this isn’t so bad…. Suddenly the console in front of us totally comes towards us so its about a foot away…. Great. Thankfully the inventors of this ride are the most brilliant people ever and they made it so that cool air blows on you the whole time you are in there which makes it like 23982938298 times better. I wasn’t thrilled with the close space but it was manageable because of that air. The ride was great, another favorite of DD2. She was really sad we only did it once.


It was getting later by now… about 1pm and we decided we should find something small to eat since we had a 5pm ADR ar Biergarten. We headed to the World Pavillions and DD2 got a Phineas and Ferb quest phone thing (I have no idea what they were called but she would have done that all day too if I had let her) Her quest was in mexico and the girls had fun doing it and finding the stuff. It was actually a really fun thing for kids to do and I recommend doing at least 1 if you have time. We all went on the 3 caballeros ride while we were in Mexico which I liked a lot, but I love Donald Duck :love. We got to Norway and the girls were somewhat hopeful there would be a Frozen meet and greet. There was, but the line was 3 hours long….. yeah not going to happen sorry girls. We went on Maelstrom since our fast passes were up… it was ok, not what I was expecting though. We stopped at China and ate some egg rolls…. I do not recommend this. Not the tastiest thing ive ever eaten.

We continued along, looking at the buildings and everything along the way. We stopped and saw Snow White,

and we got to Germany around 3:30 so we decided to go past and look around while we waited. We ended up seeing a sign for a meet and greet with Jasmine and Aladdin…. DD1’s FAVORITE ever so we waited (for what seemed like forever) for them.

She was super happy so it was worth it. I was in love with all the topiaries along the way… I want some for my yard!

We headed back to Biergarten for our supper and it was surprisingly delicious! The entertainment was really good, and my grandmother actually had a really good time which was fun. It was about 630 by the time we left and we headed to look at the rest of the countries and find a good spot for the fireworks show. We stopped at Canada for a bit, but it was really rather inaccurate which was pretty disappointing. Apparently we are all aboriginal or live in the North in igloos….. *sigh* We saw Mary Poppins along the way, and I caught a glimpse of Tigger going into a building. I asked what it was and got super lucky with a Tigger meet and greet and there was NO line!!!! Tigger is one of my favorites and it was really neat seeing him interact with my kids <3

And More Topiaries!

We decided to check out the wheelchair seating for Illuminations and it was really good so myself, my mom, the girls and my sister camped out in the wheelchair section while my grandmother, dad, and DH went and found some seats on a stone wall not too far away. The show was good. I thought it was excellent at the time before I saw the other shows

By the end we were all pretty tired. I liked Epcot but I didn’t love it…. It didn’t quite meet my expectations which was probably partly because of the people and partly because it was our 4th park in a row and we were all tired. Its more of a park for people who don’t like rides as much (in my opinion) which definitely wasn’t my family. There are things we all wished we would have seen…. Like we completely missed the iconic spaceship earth that really IS Epcot…. Not sure how that happened. The girls really liked all the character meet and greets. DH would happily never go back I think lol except for test track… he was disappointed he missed that.

Back home we went.... Saturday was a day off and we were ready for it! The boys had plans to go golfing first thing and we had a date with some shopping

 

[momabaarjo]

I am sorry that your family did not like Epcot as much as you thought you would. Epcot is certainly different, in fact all the parks are very different from each other. You did get some great pictures....I love the family group shot the best in front of China.