Hiya Everybody!
So, now it's Thursday, the last full day of our fabulous trip
We had a great day planned, starting with EPCOT and ending with dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, The Flying Fish.
We had another lovely breakfast in the Atrium Club and then headed down to the monorail for our trip to the TTC and EPCOT. The monorail ride between the TTC and EPCOT is one of my favorites in WDW. I always feel so futuristic on the monorail - the ride is so smooth and pleasant, it's really more than just a way to get from one place to another! Here's Frank & Tink on the way to EPCOT:
Of course, every good Disneyholic knows that EPCOT stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, but we have found over the years that the Disney CMs have come up with their own meanings for the acronym.
Every
Person
Comes
Out Tired.
Every
Paycheck
Comes
On
Thursday (for CMs
) How about it? Have you heard any other variations on EPCOT???
For the first time this week, the weather looked a little threatening, but we dressed accordingly and hoped for the best. We arrived at EPCOT just after the rope drop and the crowds didn't look too bad. Of course, we made a beeline for our favorite attraction in EPCOT, Soarin'. We decided to head right to the Standby line, and bypass the Fast Pass. This turned out to be a pretty good strategy - we walked right through most of the queue and ended up stopping in the long, high hallway, just before you turn off to the ride. We ended up waiting about 20 minutes, which seemed to past pretty quickly. I just LOVE the pre-show with Patrick Warburton, especially when he takes the Mickey ears (these beauties!) away from one of the guests!
We ALWAYS ask for the highest row, even if we have to wait. (The longest you would have to wait is one cycle of the ride, plus loading/unloading time, normally not more than about 10 minutes.) Also, if you are afraid of heights, this is not where you want to be - you probably want to ask for the lowest level. The reasons we like the top the best is: 1) You don't have any feet dangling above you, like you do on the middle and lower levels (this can be exacerbated if you have a freakishly tall person with freakishly long legs sitting above you.) 2) It REALLY makes you feel like you are flying! Just when you thought this ride couldn't get any better, there's one more thing you can do to enhance the experience: TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES! Now, the CMs will ask you to take off your shoes and leave them on the floor in front of you, if you are wearing loosen fitting sandals or shoes. This is so that no one below gets bonked in the head with a falling shoe. However, anyone can take off their shoes, which I highly recommend.
There's just something being about barefoot that adds to the enjoyment of this ride - it really makes me feel more like I'm flying (flying is the secret super-power I have always wished for)
I also left Tink with my shoes, since she was not tall enough to ride. One of the CMs picked her up and moved her to a place on the side where she could see better. And off we went! I just love this ride - the only problem with it is that it's not long enough! I always feel that I need to pick up my feet when we go over the mountains and that my toes are going to hit the water when we go over the fly fisherman.
The best part is ending up at
Disneyland - this is the closest I've ever gotten to it
We finally came back down to earth, picked up Tink and headed over to our 2nd favorite ride, Test Track.
On the way over to TT, I stopped to take a picture of the wait times that day:
The Standby Time for Test Track was listed at 20 minutes, but I don't think it was actually that long. We walked through the entire queue without stopping and went right into a pre-show room. (For those of you who care, we've noticed that the guy in the pre-show is John Michael Higgins, who's appeared in several Christopher Guest movies and several episodes of Arrested Development.) We left the pre-show and had a short wait for a car. Luckily, we got the front row (I HATE sitting in the back, even in a real car) and we headed out for our test. I do love the loops around the track at the end, even if some people think that the car doesn't go fast enough (you know who you are). We walked through the car display at the end, realizing that many of the gas guzzlers are probably on their way out! Last chance to sit in a Humvee anyone???
Now it was time to head over to the World Showcase. Along the way, we noticed the new banners for the new theme, Celebrate You:
A shot of the World Showcase Lagoon:
First stop, Canada, since neither of us had seen the 'new' movie (OK, so it opened 2 years ago) with Martin Short:
I think that Canada has one of the prettiest pavilions in Epcot, with lots of beautiful gardens, nooks and crannies. We had a short wait for the film, which was very is a very enjoyable Circle-Vision 360° movie called 'Oh Canada' (hey, just like the anthem - even I can remember that!).
Unfortunately, Off Kilter was playing until later on, so we headed over to the UK. Of course, I needed to head into the shops to pick up a highly recommended Cadbury bar - here's Tink posing with it:
Thanks, Karen, it was a yummy as you said!
Now we needed to pick up speed and head over to our 12:00 ressie at Tokyo Dining. This was a monumental lunch for both of us, so much so that it will be covered in it's own report, immediately following this one.
After lunch, we noticed that the sky was getting darker and darker, so we decided to breeze through the rest of the countries, since Tink had never been here before. She did a nice job of explaining in her TR:
My EPCOT ADVENTURE
Here's a shot of Tink hanging out with some German bears:
We stopped in Norway for a little dessert and ended up with this chocolately pretzel thingy:
It was very yummy, except for the fact that some raisins had hitched a ride inside! Blech! However, once I performed a raisinectomy, it tasted just fine.
We finished up in the World Showcase and decided to finish off with a round of shopping at Mouse Gears. However, for the first time in the HISTORY of Epcot, I didn't make any purchases here, opting instead for the use of my 10% discount at World of Disney the following day. Believe me, this took a lot of restraint!
We headed for the monorail, trying to beat the nasty weather that looked about ready to clobber us at any second. We made it safely to the monorail terminal and there was actually a monorail waiting! However, I noticed that we were the only ones standing there and I asked the CM if we could wait for the next monorail so we could ride up front? He said sure, just go sit down on that bench over there. Oh boy, was I excited!!!
The ride between Epcot and the TTC is the 2nd longest in WDW and we were going to ride up front! (The ride from TTC to Epcot is slightly longer because the monorail loops through the park to turn around and enter the station). Shortly before the next train arrived, a 13 year old kid and his 10 year old brother (grandpa in tow) elbowed their way to the front of the line and asked if they could ride up front. The CM told them there were only 2 seats left, so they quickly blew off grandpa and told him he would have to ride in the back - nice kids! When the gate opened, we realized it wouldn't be a good idea to stand in their way, so we let them go first. The funny thing was, grandpa tried to push past us and follow the kids into the front. Oh, yeah, like that was really going to happen! Especially since we had been waiting since the last monorail. He was no match for my elbows, and the CM grabbed him just as he was trying to follow us into the front.
Even though our driver was in a bad mood (apparently she was late taking her break) the ride proved to be everything we hoped! Right after we pulled out of the station it started to pour rain and it was actually very cool to see the rain from this viewpoint. I asked the driver how fast the monorail could go (there was a previous discussion on the BOB thread, with a lot of different answers) and she said 40 MPH. I asked her how fast we were going at this point and she said 40 MPH. She gave us monorail pilot licenses, which I had never seen before, even though this was not the first time we rode up front.
Tink got to try out the driver's seat:
Some other random shots:
We pass another monorail:
The monorail ride home was just the icing on the cake of another great morning! When we got back to the TTC, we changed to the resort line and found another monorail parked on the 'express' track in the Polynesian station. Turned out that monorail was broken down, so they were routing everyone to the resort monorail. When we got to MK, we had lots of poor soaked people that had gotten caught without their raingear. Fortunately for us, we got off at the next stop, The Contemporary, dry as a bone and headed up to the Atrium Club to see what goodies awaited us today!
Dinner at The Flying Fish tonight!
Thanks for reading!
).
We had some little ones in with us and they all seemed to like it.
) I had steered clear of sushi, even when it became all the rage, because let's face it, it's raw fish! Blech! Or so I thought... A little over a year ago, I was in San Diego dining with a friend and he said "let's get some sushi!" I panicked since I had no idea what to order. He ordered stuff that he thought I'd like and I closed my eyes, took a leap of faith and allowed myself to be fed barbecued eel. Oh boy, was that good!!! I was shocked!!! OMG, I ate sushi and I liked it! I tried some tuna and I liked that too! I was excited that I could now eat sushi like everyone else!
We looked at the menu for awhile and finally asked the waitress to explain a few things to us. We finally put a stake in the ground and ordered: Frank asked for Miso soup and we decided on some Shrimp and Yellowtail Nigiri as well as some Tuna Rolls and Salmon Rolls. The waitress didn't start laughing at us, so we figured we did OK. I knew we were OK when the food arrived. First the Nigiri:
