Day Three: Epcot
Epcot continues to be our favorite park, particularly for DW and me. We arrived at Epcot a few minutes before opening and coming from the buses to bag check (see photo) there were only two people checking bags so the back up was pretty long. This is an awfully busy time of the year for only two people to be manning that post. The line move a little more quickly than I thought it would though.
My friend and I did the speed walk towards Soarin’ to get FPs while the rest of the group headed to Test Track. Once we got the FPs we headed to Test track and walk through the single rider line and got on a car a few minutes before our families got on theirs. Once we all rode we went back through and rode via single rider again. The stand by wait was just 20 minutes but single rider was walk-on.
We walked over to Mousegears to enjoy the air conditioning and look around until our fastpass time.
We arrived at Soarin’ a couple of minutes after our FP time and headed straight in. Once we went in to pre-flight area I requested that we be able to wait for front row seats and they honored that request. The last time I rode there were a lot of spots on the film that look like dust or debris? which bugged me. That has apparently been rectified because it was flawless this time. I really like this attraction.
We decided it was time for a snack after riding Soarin’ so we went to the Sunshine Food Fair and had some pastries, very good! It is a shame that this counter service isn’t somewhere else on property, it seems to be a great place but we are ALWAYS going to eat at one of the countries when at Epcot.
We went on the Living with the Land attraction after our snak which posted a 20 minute wait which was probably about accurate. We never did anything during our stay that was longer than a twenty minute wait, not that there weren’t longer waits than that, if it were longer we just did fastpass or didn’t do those attractions! I like this attraction as well.
We exited The Land Pavillion and headed to World Showcase. On the way it looked like Captian EO may have had a soft opening but I’m not really sure and didn’t really have an interest in seeing it. Our lunch ADR’s were for 12:30 at Teppan Edo, I had eaten there in 1999 well before the refurb and our friends had never eaten there. We arrived at 12:00 just in time to see the servers and chefs do there welcome which is pretty neat. We were seated at precisely 12:30 which was our reservation time. The only negative thing about the experience is that the exhaust fans above the grills are so loud it is very difficult to communicate with the server, cook and one another.
We split a sushi sampler appetizer which was good. DW isn’t a big sushi fan but liked it none the less. Our cook was very entertaining and knew very little English, just enough to be able to make sure he knew what everyone had ordered! I had shrimp, my wife had chicken and shrimp, DD had chicken and our friends had steak and two of them had swordfish. Everyone really enjoyed the food and it was a great experience. I have been to Japanese restaurants at home and the food is comparable but the atmosphere is much better at Teppan Edo and the place is very clean and fresh looking.
We walked through the gift shop at Japan and bought a few souvenirs and sampled some plum wine and sake. I didn’t have any but my wife and friends enjoyed the drinks which were about 25% alcohol, fairly stout! As we walked past the American Adventure the show was about to start so we all headed in. Ten minutes into the show my DW’s head was resting on my shoulder, I guess a full belly and a little wine combined with a dark theater took it’s toll!
Next we stopped at Germany and I bought my friend and me a Spaten beer, very good! It was staring to get quite hot outside, apparently there had been a shower while we had lunch and now the sun was beating down hard. We headed to Norway and go to Maelstrom as a heat diversion. While in line we noticed someone with a t-shirt that had the name of a hometown department store and struck up a conversation and find out that our friends and my DW both knew them.
We ambled our way around World Showcase and my friend stopped for another beer and his DW stopped for a margarita. I stopped at a stand at Mexico for a churro. We checked out a few stores and headed towards the fountain where I gave my camera to a Photopass photographer and she took a group photo of all of us.
We made a brief stop at Club Cool for some soft drink samples and to see if we could talk anyone into have some Beverly!
One of the things we had been looking forward to was going to Base 21, a private lounge owned by Siemans at Spaceship Earth. A friend of my DW’s son works there and had sent us a pin code to enter the VIP lounge, unfortunately I didn’t notice that it closed at 4 and it was currently 4:30! (No problem though we were able to make it back the next day and I’ll tell you about that tomorrow!)
We ride Spaceship Earth, a first for our friends and then headed to the buses back to the resort. Naps ensued, my daughter fixed pasta salad for everyone and then we did the senior portraits of her.
Day three was a great day!!
Next up:
Day Four our final day in the parks:
Blizzard Beach for the kids, AK, Epcot and MK! OH MY!!
