Day 2 of the Disney excursion began bright and early. We met up with Jerry and Linda in the little hotel café around 8:15 for a light breakfast of doughnuts and bananas. Then, we caught our shuttle around 8:30 for the ride to Epcot. After a quick stop at Hollywood Studios, we made it to our destination by 8:50, just in time for the park’s 9am opening.
As soon as we got into the park, we did what most tourists do and posed for pictures in front of the giant, silver ball. I have to say that every time I see the structure up close, it’s quite breathtaking. And with that, we decided to go ahead and ride Spaceship Earth inside the ball because there was literally no wait. The thing I love about rides like this are the animatronics. The creators basically make realistic scenes with mechanized puppets that both resemble and act human. In this particular ride, the action being depicted follows the history or invention from the cave man to the present and eventually into the future. However, when they get to the topic of the future, each “car” of guests takes a personalized quiz to determine what kind of future lifestyle they will have. Then, they play back a little movie with your heads superimposed onto these little animated bodies. Once you leave the ride, you can pull up your movie at a portal and email it to yourself. Once again, Disney always finds a way to outdo itself. I love it!
Next, we decided to head over to The Living World to get Fast Passes for Soarin’. From my last visit in March 2008, this was probably the ride with by far the longest wait in all of Epcot. Our ride was scheduled for about 12:30 or so, so we had some time to kill since it was only about 10am. Then, we decided to tackle one of the more popular rides called Test Track. After about an hour and a half of waiting, we were almost ready to go through the boarding turnstile when we were informed it was pouring down rain, thundering and lightning, and they had to shut down the ride until it passed. When you are waiting in a building with no windows and loud music, you have no idea what’s going on out there. Fortunately, the rainstorm was typical of the Florida climate and ended after about 10 minutes. So, we were able to board the ride, and by the time we got to the outdoor speed track portion, the sun had begun to emerge again.
In all, that ride did take some wind out of our sails, so we decided to head back to The Living World because it was getting close to boarding time for Soarin.’ And thank God for those passes; it just would not have made sense to wait that long for a second ride in a row since it could potentially take up another large chunk of our day. The ride took us through several well-known areas of California by way of a simulated hang-glider such as: San Francisco, Redwood forests, Wine Country, orange groves (with scents), and Big Sur. Linda was a little apprehensive because she’s afraid of heights, but I think she really enjoyed it. Afterwards, we decided to check out a short film called Circle of Life that uses the characters of The Lion King to stress the importance of caring and preserving the environment.
By the time we finished all of these activities, it was well after 1pm, and we were ready to move on to the World Showcase. We also figured it would be a good opportunity to get some lunch, as it had been several hours since breakfast. We quickly breezed through Canada and the United Kingdom without finding a satisfactory place to eat that didn’t have more than an hour wait. So, we continued on to France and put our names in at Les Chef de France that appeared like it would have pretty quick service. In the meantime, Justin went to a few other countries further along that might have something of interest. But, he returned fairly quickly since the next country was Morocco. Also, while we were waiting we went into a few of the French shops, and I was able to get my picture taken with Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. She told me she liked my dress, but she probably says that to all the little girls!
After about 30 minutes, we were seated. Our waiter was literally from France near Dijon, I believe. I ordered a glass of Chenin Blanc, a cup of lobster bisque and the Quiche Lorraine (a very traditional French dish with ham and cheese) alongside a salad of mixed greens. While we were waiting for our meals to arrive, a woman came around from table to table with a little serving platter that housed Remy from Ratatouille. He would move his little arms, head and tail as the hostess spoke to him. It was really adorable, and especially fun to watch when he showed up at tables with children. Once our food arrived, I devoured as much as I could. But, I definitely didn’t even come close to finishing my quiche. It was delicious, but also very rich. As usual, I probably could have done without the soup, as the Disney restaurants never seem to hold back on their portion sizes.
After lunch, we wandered through some of the markets of Morocco and went through the massive Mitsukoshi Department Store in Japan. I was very tempted to buy one of the beautiful serving plates or tea sets in Japan, but it was difficult to tell how marked up the prices were and if I might be able to find the same thing elsewhere for less. Next, we skipped right on through the United States, since we’re all pretty familiar with that country. In Italy, we again checked out a few of the shops, I had Justin snap a picture of me in front of the David fountain (a much smaller replica) and we bought some chocolate gelato. Still being quite full from lunch, I wasn’t able to eat very much.
After Italy was of Germany, where everyone momentarily got separated. They have a lot of specialty shops with some really interesting and expensive things to look at such as a crystal shop with different figurines and a Christmas shop with lots of ornaments. We eventually reconnected, however, and moved along to China to take pictures in front of the pagodas. We also walked through an exhibit that depicted artifacts and art from the warriors of ancient China. We breezed through Norway pretty quickly because the ride, Maelstrom, had about a 40 minute wait, and it was nearly 4pm in the afternoon. We were through waiting for the day. In Mexico, there was no wait for the ride called Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros, so we hopped right on. It sort of reminded me of a Mexican version of It’s a Small World with some looped animation thrown in of Donald Duck and the other two Caballeros. When we left the ride, we also got to see a few minutes of the resident mariachi band playing.
After the final country of the World Showcase, we decided to start heading to the park exit. I requested to make one more stop at a gift shop on the way out because I wanted some kind of souvenir from our visit. After looking at every imaginable trinket and clothing item, I settled on a silver Xmas ornament that resembled the Mickey Mouse ears. Very simple and tasteful.
We made it back to the parking lot just in time to catch the 4:50 shuttle. Once we got back to our hotel, we retrieved our vehicle and were on the road by 5:30. I have to admit that I did doze a little bit on the way back to Sarasota. There were also some more patches of rain, and some pretty fierce looking storms out along the coast from Tampa down to Sarasota. We finally made it back to the condo by about 7:30, and figured that it would be a good night to cook dinner, maybe play some Wizard and lay low. We ended up having a delicious salad of Boston lettuce, shrimp, hard-boiled egg, tomatoes, mushrooms and a creamy Dijon, mayonnaise and lemon infused dressing. Besides that, we raided the fridge of some other leftovers and had some wings. We relaxed with our wine and played a game of wizard following dinner. But by about 10:30, I could hardly keep my eyes open any longer after an exhilarating but exhausting two days of constant activity.
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