Captain_Oblivious
DIS Dad #257, Galactic Salad Dodger
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2008
- Messages
- 13,442
Chapter 5: The Moon Ain’t As Big As That Pizza Pie
Up to this point, we’d been moving slowly around Epcot as a large group of 8 people. My mother has been dealing with a foot injury for a long time now, and it has been very slow to heal, so she was forced to rent a scooter to get around the parks. This had the effect of forcing us to move a little more slowly than normal.
Once our ride on Spaceship Earth was complete, it was time to split up. My parents had their own dining reservation to get to, and then they would be off to visit my brother and his family, who had arrived that day and were spending a few hours in the Magic Kingdom. Meanwhile, the six of us were also splitting up. The big kids and I had a Fastpass for Mission: Space. Julie is not fond of motion simulators. More to the point, she is not fond of throwing up, so she was going to take Drew on the Nemo ride. He seemed happy with that idea.
It was all fun and games until Julie fed Drew to a shark. Honestly, I can’t let her go more than five minutes without supervision.
The big kids and I were on the other side of Epcot, ready to see the newest version of Mission: Space. Along the way, we saw the construction walls up for the new Guardians of the Galaxy roller coaster. You can barely see a piece of the building here, but I’ll have a better shot in a later update. That ride is going to be absolutely massive.
We’d always enjoyed Mission: Space on our previous trips. In the eternal Orange Team vs. Green Team debate, my family is decidedly on the Green Team, which means we are a bunch of lame-o’s. The kids might be willing to try the Orange side, but we’re all a little apprehensive about it considering this ride is the only one at Disney with vomit bags provided. I have heard many stories of visitors who ruined their Epcot day by riding the orange side. At my advanced age, I even struggle to handle the spinning teacups without needing some recovery time afterwards. So, Green Team it is. That way, none of us leaves anything Orange in the bags on the ride.
This was never a problem on the old version, as the ride was exactly the same on each side. There was some stray comment about it being a training mission, but it was easy to fool yourself into imagining you were on a mission to Mars. I always had a lot of fun giving the Navigator crap about flying us into a meteor shower.
In the new version, the Orange Team gets to fly to Mars while the Green Team is sent on a training mission to orbit the earth. You still serve the same functions (pilot, navigator, etc.) depending on the seat you are assigned and your skill at pressing a button when it lights up is still put to the test. But I’m sorry to report that once again, we left the ride disappointed. The orbit around the earth is not nearly as inspiring as the old flight to Mars. You go through the same launch sequence as before, but then the trip basically amounts to a series of points of light on the earth indicating you’re passing by a city you’ve heard of before. Even the attempt to make it exciting (a storm pops up over your landing site) doesn’t register, because it’s hard to swallow the idea that you would take off in perfect weather and then a few hours later you’d be forced to land in the middle of a hurricane that absolutely no one saw coming.
It almost feels like Disney is penalizing you for choosing the less intense version of the ride, like you’re getting a pat on the head and told to go back to your seat at the kiddie table. Just like Soarin’, we felt the new version wasn’t as fun as the old one.
I feel like a Grumpy Old Man now. Oh, wait—I am one.
Or maybe I’m a country singer. Hey, how many country singers does it take to change a light bulb?
Five—one to change the bulb and four to sing about how much they miss the old one.
We met with Julie and Drew over at Club Cool. There we were able to at least take solace in the fact that some pleasures never change, and one of those pleasures is watching other people get their first taste of Beverly, because we all enjoy the suffering of others.
Beverly has a storied history among the DIS Dads—the word “Beverly” was bestowed the honor of being our favorite substitute curse word here on the boards in order to keep our conversations family-friendly. This should give you a window into the type of profound, lofty conversation that takes place in the DIS Dads thread.
I know what you’re thinking: What a crock of Beverly.
Back in the days of yesteryear when I had the time to run a contest as part of a cheap gimmick to get people to read my Trip Reports, I had asked readers to come up with an advertising slogan for Beverly, and the results were hilarious. There are a lot of creative people here on the boards.
Beverly Slogans
We all had fun trying the various flavors available, but the main thing you want to know is how Drew enjoyed the Beverly. Here is the reaction:
I think he knew something was up, since we were all watching him and had the cameras trained. So I do think there’s some mugging for the camera going on here. Still, he didn’t want a second cup.
We moved on to the World Showcase, where the goal was to let Drew try out some of the Agent P spy missions. These had changed slightly since our last visit in that we could now use our own phones to play the game. On the plus side, I didn’t have to spend time getting the crappy flip-phone from a kiosk. On the down side, this was a good way to use up my battery and data (since the park wi-fi can be spotty).
I think the spy missions themselves are great. If I were here just with Julie or the big kids, I wouldn’t spend any time doing the missions at all. But to a little kid’s eyes, it really transforms the World Showcase from a boring series of restaurants and shops to a fun scavenger hunt. I remain impressed at the ways the Imagineers hid so many parts of the game in plain sight. Drew really had a great time with it, and we were just content to follow him around and watch his reactions as he set off the various surprises.
I’ve always like the interior of the Mexico Pavilion.
There was no spy mission in Norway, but we moseyed around anyway. We’d gotten Drew one of the little Kidcot passports and he was enjoying getting stamps from the cast members in each country.
Somehow, he got the idea in his head that hit would be funny to pick the big troll’s nose. I don’t know where he comes up with this stuff. Anyway, I’m pretty sure no one has ever thought of that one before.
And no visit to Disney World is complete without the requisite Gift Shop Sword Fight®.
We had a relatively early dinner reservation that day. This was the plan most days—for one thing, PB&J doesn’t keep you full very long. And two, we like to beat the rush to the restaurants—like I keep saying, the plan is all about efficiency and minimizing the waits everywhere we go. It looked like Drew was going to be a little while doing the spy mission in China, so Sarah and I left to go check in at Via Napoli.
The standard 4:00 p.m. Florida rain shower was a little late that day, but the skies were threatening.
Sarah and I got checked in, and the rest of the family arrived shortly after. They hadn’t actually finished the China mission—the connection had gotten lost on the phone. So they’d given up and tried to beat the rain. I took the stroller and managed to clear a tiny space under an awning outside the restaurant. My apologies to whoever owned the other stroller I shoved out of the way and into the plaza.
It didn’t take long to get seated. Here’s the obligatory wood-fired oven shot:
And it didn’t take long after that for Drew to pass out. There’s no exhaustion like Disney exhaustion. In any case, it was nice of him to give us a place to hang our hats.
Julie and I can’t eat as much as we used to. Ok, that’s not really true. We can, but we can’t hide it like we used to. However, the kids more than make up for our calorie consumption at this point, so we ordered a large pepperoni and a “mezzo metro” cheese pizza.
Our server insisted on taking a “before and after” photo of us to commemorate the fact that we are pigs. We made pretty short work of the pizzas. We liked the pepperoni better than the cheese, except for the two of us who won’t eat pepperoni on pizza.
I like Via Napoli a lot. It’s the best pizza in Disney World, which I know isn’t saying much. But it tastes great to us and is one of the more affordable ways for us to feed six with a sit-down meal at Disney. Thumbs-up all around from our crew.
The 4:00 rainstorm had come and gone, and the awning had thankfully shielded the stroller from the worst of it. However, it looked like more storms were on the way, so we’d be spending the evening dodging raindrops. We went back to China to finish the spy mission there. We barely finished the mission before the rain started again, so we ducked inside the building in China. I found one of the only electrical outlets in Disney World and plugged in my phone charger since Drew had run the battery down to Mostly Dead. The rest of the family took a seat to watch an indoor version of the acrobat show.
We found a series of displays on Shanghai Disneyland, since Disney never misses an opportunity to cross-promote.
They had a model of the ride vehicle for the Tron coaster. I can’t wait to ride this one when it opens in the Magic Kingdom. It looks so cool!
They also had a display on the Pirates ride in Shanghai, which @Flossbolna said was hands-down the best ride in the park. I’d love to see that one in person, too. I’ve watched it on YouTube, and it looks amazing.
A Shanghai park map:
It was still raining, so they moved a Mulan meet-and-greet indoors. We thought this would be a great opportunity for Drew to get another autograph for his book. Drew was less-than-enthused, and decided to give us another memorable family photo.
He perked up once we got to Germany. Beer will do that for you.
I’m just kidding! Wearing stupid hats is what does the trick, of course.
We made it as far as the American Pavilion (in other words, as far from the exit as possible) before another rain shower hit and we took refuge in the gift shop. We didn’t think Drew would sit through the American Adventure at that point, so we just waited out the shower. When we left, we were rewarded with a double rainbow for our troubles.
At this point, we were out of ideas for activities. Test Track had been closed for the rain. Most of the other rides had wait times above 30 minutes. Amazingly, I found a Fastpass available for Soarin’ later, but no one really had much interest in riding it again. Kind of sad, really.
I ended up grabbing a Fastpass for the Illuminations viewing area later, just in case. We weren’t sure we wanted Drew to be up that late, and there were more storms coming so I wasn’t sure if the show would actually happen at all. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt.
As we made our way back towards Future World, we looked over and saw that the Anna/Elsa greeting area had only a 15-minute wait. Figuring it would never be that good again, we jumped in line. Thankfully, Drew was much more agreeable to meeting those two.
I honestly have no idea what he and Anna talked about. I may or may not have been paying attention during the process.
Elsa mostly asked him if he would like to be one of her woodcutters. Drew said yes, but I think he was just being polite since he usually has no interest whatsoever in daily chores.
Evening was approaching, as were the chances for more storms, and we had a choice of heading back to Coronado Springs or trying for one more ride. We were all struck with a thought (and that happens very rarely in our family): it hasn’t rained for a while. What if they open Test Track again?
We decided to give it a shot. Others had the same thought, and there was a line stacked up outside the building. We gave it a few minutes, and were rewarded with a loud cheer. Soon we heard cars racing around the building and knew the ride was re-opening. Woohoo!
It took us about 20 minutes to get to the car design room, and we were just about to enter when they announced that they were closing the ride again due to nearby lightning.
Well, crud. It was a nice try.
Checking the radar, it appeared a rainstorm was imminent, so we made the decision to skip Illuminations and head back. Drew obviously needed the sleep, and the rest of us had seen the show several times. As it turned out, we’d never see it again. Hopefully the new show will keep the awesome fire barge and ditch the boring spinning globe.
I would call our Epcot day successful in that we did everything we wanted to do. But it was disappointing in that some of the rides weren’t as fun this time around. If you polled the family, I think Epcot has now fallen from the cherished Favorite Park status. Jeff (@Terra Nova guy) put it nicely in his TR: right now, we like the idea of Epcot more than we like the park itself.
And this was a problem, because I’d planned another day in Epcot later in the week.
But hey, look! We got a halfway decent family photo!
Coming Up Next: Our first attempt at coordinating a group of 13 in a hot, crowded theme park. What could go wrong?
Up to this point, we’d been moving slowly around Epcot as a large group of 8 people. My mother has been dealing with a foot injury for a long time now, and it has been very slow to heal, so she was forced to rent a scooter to get around the parks. This had the effect of forcing us to move a little more slowly than normal.
Once our ride on Spaceship Earth was complete, it was time to split up. My parents had their own dining reservation to get to, and then they would be off to visit my brother and his family, who had arrived that day and were spending a few hours in the Magic Kingdom. Meanwhile, the six of us were also splitting up. The big kids and I had a Fastpass for Mission: Space. Julie is not fond of motion simulators. More to the point, she is not fond of throwing up, so she was going to take Drew on the Nemo ride. He seemed happy with that idea.
It was all fun and games until Julie fed Drew to a shark. Honestly, I can’t let her go more than five minutes without supervision.
The big kids and I were on the other side of Epcot, ready to see the newest version of Mission: Space. Along the way, we saw the construction walls up for the new Guardians of the Galaxy roller coaster. You can barely see a piece of the building here, but I’ll have a better shot in a later update. That ride is going to be absolutely massive.
We’d always enjoyed Mission: Space on our previous trips. In the eternal Orange Team vs. Green Team debate, my family is decidedly on the Green Team, which means we are a bunch of lame-o’s. The kids might be willing to try the Orange side, but we’re all a little apprehensive about it considering this ride is the only one at Disney with vomit bags provided. I have heard many stories of visitors who ruined their Epcot day by riding the orange side. At my advanced age, I even struggle to handle the spinning teacups without needing some recovery time afterwards. So, Green Team it is. That way, none of us leaves anything Orange in the bags on the ride.
This was never a problem on the old version, as the ride was exactly the same on each side. There was some stray comment about it being a training mission, but it was easy to fool yourself into imagining you were on a mission to Mars. I always had a lot of fun giving the Navigator crap about flying us into a meteor shower.
In the new version, the Orange Team gets to fly to Mars while the Green Team is sent on a training mission to orbit the earth. You still serve the same functions (pilot, navigator, etc.) depending on the seat you are assigned and your skill at pressing a button when it lights up is still put to the test. But I’m sorry to report that once again, we left the ride disappointed. The orbit around the earth is not nearly as inspiring as the old flight to Mars. You go through the same launch sequence as before, but then the trip basically amounts to a series of points of light on the earth indicating you’re passing by a city you’ve heard of before. Even the attempt to make it exciting (a storm pops up over your landing site) doesn’t register, because it’s hard to swallow the idea that you would take off in perfect weather and then a few hours later you’d be forced to land in the middle of a hurricane that absolutely no one saw coming.
It almost feels like Disney is penalizing you for choosing the less intense version of the ride, like you’re getting a pat on the head and told to go back to your seat at the kiddie table. Just like Soarin’, we felt the new version wasn’t as fun as the old one.
I feel like a Grumpy Old Man now. Oh, wait—I am one.
Or maybe I’m a country singer. Hey, how many country singers does it take to change a light bulb?
Five—one to change the bulb and four to sing about how much they miss the old one.
We met with Julie and Drew over at Club Cool. There we were able to at least take solace in the fact that some pleasures never change, and one of those pleasures is watching other people get their first taste of Beverly, because we all enjoy the suffering of others.
Beverly has a storied history among the DIS Dads—the word “Beverly” was bestowed the honor of being our favorite substitute curse word here on the boards in order to keep our conversations family-friendly. This should give you a window into the type of profound, lofty conversation that takes place in the DIS Dads thread.
I know what you’re thinking: What a crock of Beverly.
Back in the days of yesteryear when I had the time to run a contest as part of a cheap gimmick to get people to read my Trip Reports, I had asked readers to come up with an advertising slogan for Beverly, and the results were hilarious. There are a lot of creative people here on the boards.
Beverly Slogans
We all had fun trying the various flavors available, but the main thing you want to know is how Drew enjoyed the Beverly. Here is the reaction:
I think he knew something was up, since we were all watching him and had the cameras trained. So I do think there’s some mugging for the camera going on here. Still, he didn’t want a second cup.
We moved on to the World Showcase, where the goal was to let Drew try out some of the Agent P spy missions. These had changed slightly since our last visit in that we could now use our own phones to play the game. On the plus side, I didn’t have to spend time getting the crappy flip-phone from a kiosk. On the down side, this was a good way to use up my battery and data (since the park wi-fi can be spotty).
I think the spy missions themselves are great. If I were here just with Julie or the big kids, I wouldn’t spend any time doing the missions at all. But to a little kid’s eyes, it really transforms the World Showcase from a boring series of restaurants and shops to a fun scavenger hunt. I remain impressed at the ways the Imagineers hid so many parts of the game in plain sight. Drew really had a great time with it, and we were just content to follow him around and watch his reactions as he set off the various surprises.
I’ve always like the interior of the Mexico Pavilion.
There was no spy mission in Norway, but we moseyed around anyway. We’d gotten Drew one of the little Kidcot passports and he was enjoying getting stamps from the cast members in each country.
Somehow, he got the idea in his head that hit would be funny to pick the big troll’s nose. I don’t know where he comes up with this stuff. Anyway, I’m pretty sure no one has ever thought of that one before.
And no visit to Disney World is complete without the requisite Gift Shop Sword Fight®.
We had a relatively early dinner reservation that day. This was the plan most days—for one thing, PB&J doesn’t keep you full very long. And two, we like to beat the rush to the restaurants—like I keep saying, the plan is all about efficiency and minimizing the waits everywhere we go. It looked like Drew was going to be a little while doing the spy mission in China, so Sarah and I left to go check in at Via Napoli.
The standard 4:00 p.m. Florida rain shower was a little late that day, but the skies were threatening.
Sarah and I got checked in, and the rest of the family arrived shortly after. They hadn’t actually finished the China mission—the connection had gotten lost on the phone. So they’d given up and tried to beat the rain. I took the stroller and managed to clear a tiny space under an awning outside the restaurant. My apologies to whoever owned the other stroller I shoved out of the way and into the plaza.
It didn’t take long to get seated. Here’s the obligatory wood-fired oven shot:
And it didn’t take long after that for Drew to pass out. There’s no exhaustion like Disney exhaustion. In any case, it was nice of him to give us a place to hang our hats.
Julie and I can’t eat as much as we used to. Ok, that’s not really true. We can, but we can’t hide it like we used to. However, the kids more than make up for our calorie consumption at this point, so we ordered a large pepperoni and a “mezzo metro” cheese pizza.
Our server insisted on taking a “before and after” photo of us to commemorate the fact that we are pigs. We made pretty short work of the pizzas. We liked the pepperoni better than the cheese, except for the two of us who won’t eat pepperoni on pizza.
I like Via Napoli a lot. It’s the best pizza in Disney World, which I know isn’t saying much. But it tastes great to us and is one of the more affordable ways for us to feed six with a sit-down meal at Disney. Thumbs-up all around from our crew.
The 4:00 rainstorm had come and gone, and the awning had thankfully shielded the stroller from the worst of it. However, it looked like more storms were on the way, so we’d be spending the evening dodging raindrops. We went back to China to finish the spy mission there. We barely finished the mission before the rain started again, so we ducked inside the building in China. I found one of the only electrical outlets in Disney World and plugged in my phone charger since Drew had run the battery down to Mostly Dead. The rest of the family took a seat to watch an indoor version of the acrobat show.
We found a series of displays on Shanghai Disneyland, since Disney never misses an opportunity to cross-promote.
They had a model of the ride vehicle for the Tron coaster. I can’t wait to ride this one when it opens in the Magic Kingdom. It looks so cool!
They also had a display on the Pirates ride in Shanghai, which @Flossbolna said was hands-down the best ride in the park. I’d love to see that one in person, too. I’ve watched it on YouTube, and it looks amazing.
A Shanghai park map:
It was still raining, so they moved a Mulan meet-and-greet indoors. We thought this would be a great opportunity for Drew to get another autograph for his book. Drew was less-than-enthused, and decided to give us another memorable family photo.
He perked up once we got to Germany. Beer will do that for you.
I’m just kidding! Wearing stupid hats is what does the trick, of course.
We made it as far as the American Pavilion (in other words, as far from the exit as possible) before another rain shower hit and we took refuge in the gift shop. We didn’t think Drew would sit through the American Adventure at that point, so we just waited out the shower. When we left, we were rewarded with a double rainbow for our troubles.
At this point, we were out of ideas for activities. Test Track had been closed for the rain. Most of the other rides had wait times above 30 minutes. Amazingly, I found a Fastpass available for Soarin’ later, but no one really had much interest in riding it again. Kind of sad, really.
I ended up grabbing a Fastpass for the Illuminations viewing area later, just in case. We weren’t sure we wanted Drew to be up that late, and there were more storms coming so I wasn’t sure if the show would actually happen at all. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt.
As we made our way back towards Future World, we looked over and saw that the Anna/Elsa greeting area had only a 15-minute wait. Figuring it would never be that good again, we jumped in line. Thankfully, Drew was much more agreeable to meeting those two.
I honestly have no idea what he and Anna talked about. I may or may not have been paying attention during the process.
Elsa mostly asked him if he would like to be one of her woodcutters. Drew said yes, but I think he was just being polite since he usually has no interest whatsoever in daily chores.
Evening was approaching, as were the chances for more storms, and we had a choice of heading back to Coronado Springs or trying for one more ride. We were all struck with a thought (and that happens very rarely in our family): it hasn’t rained for a while. What if they open Test Track again?
We decided to give it a shot. Others had the same thought, and there was a line stacked up outside the building. We gave it a few minutes, and were rewarded with a loud cheer. Soon we heard cars racing around the building and knew the ride was re-opening. Woohoo!
It took us about 20 minutes to get to the car design room, and we were just about to enter when they announced that they were closing the ride again due to nearby lightning.
Well, crud. It was a nice try.
Checking the radar, it appeared a rainstorm was imminent, so we made the decision to skip Illuminations and head back. Drew obviously needed the sleep, and the rest of us had seen the show several times. As it turned out, we’d never see it again. Hopefully the new show will keep the awesome fire barge and ditch the boring spinning globe.
I would call our Epcot day successful in that we did everything we wanted to do. But it was disappointing in that some of the rides weren’t as fun this time around. If you polled the family, I think Epcot has now fallen from the cherished Favorite Park status. Jeff (@Terra Nova guy) put it nicely in his TR: right now, we like the idea of Epcot more than we like the park itself.
And this was a problem, because I’d planned another day in Epcot later in the week.
But hey, look! We got a halfway decent family photo!
Coming Up Next: Our first attempt at coordinating a group of 13 in a hot, crowded theme park. What could go wrong?
Truth. I really noticed it on my last trip. Despite the ridiculous number of calories, I normally didn't put on weight because of all the walking. That wasn't the case last trip. Four years older. Four pounds heavier in a week. 
Yeah. That is sad.
