I recently went to EPCOT on August, 7th with my friend. It really was an awesome time. I will say though, one thing almost made it unbearable and that was the god-awful heat!
But... We basically did every single attraction within the park excluding Reflections of China, Turtle Talk and Impressions de France. So here's how our day went!
We got to the park gate at 8:45, and immediately went to Soarin'. I would have personally just skipped it, but my friend's never been. So as we start walking to Soarin', it seems like every other single person walking into the park was doing the exact same thing. The line ended up being a 20 minute wait despite getting there as early as possible, which, was honestly pretty good considering the amount of time this attraction usually has. The line piled up massively behind us. One thing I noticed while waiting in line was a bunch of dust over-head throughout the queue... I'm not one for complaining about these little things, but normally, I never even wait more than 5 minutes to ride something. So I ended up looking around and the ceiling area could be dusted. Mainly on those white white plastic light fixture in the blue queue hall.
After we got done with Soarin', we headed over to ride Living with the Land which thankfully was a walk-on.
Somebody must have not been sitting still during the ride because an announcer kept interrupting the tour with "please stay seated with everything inside the vehicle" blah blah, this happened about 4 times and it really disrupts that calm feeling the attraction usually gives you when it echoes so loudly in each room. We skipped the Circle of Life film to save when we run out of energy and need a nap.
Our next destination was Journey into Imagination with Figment!! (Yea. Judge me.) Of course, it was a walk-on. But honestly, everything in the ride was in the best shape compared to a majority of everything else at Epcot. The sound was great, the Figment AAs looked good, it was honestly a pretty good experience. And on top of that, my friend and I really enjoyed the ride. I'm starting to think that the ride isn't as bad as it's made out to be.. Like Stitch. It just replaced a much more superb ride. Although the middle-addition does seem a bit boring, this ride was very pleasing with the only broken effect being one of the skunk smell blowers never stopped blowing and an old lady that was in front of it the whole time did not enjoy the smell for it's 15 seconds.. We then walked next door to Captain EO. It also was in the best shape over everything else in Epcot. My friend said that it was very weird and made absolutely no sense, but he LOVED it. He admitted it being his 3rd favorite thing at Epcot. Also, imagination was apparently a 30 minute wait later on in the day according to the sign outside the door. My only conclusion for that being a tour group must have wanted to ride.
After EO, we set off on our World Showcase adventure. I was thinking about actually enjoying the views, but it was way too scorching hot for us to barely make it to each attraction after the other. Our first stop was at Mexico. Rode the 3-cabelleros ride. It's still pretty amusing and can hold your attention. That's about it.
Our next stop being Norway. Headed our way over to Maelstrom. As soon as we sat down in the boat at the loading dock, the ride stopped and was put on hold for some reason. We got there just in time, because the line started to pile up as we waited for the ride to get moving again. It took about 5 minutes, which felt like a looong 5 minutes. After Maelstrom, we walked through the theater that was playing the Norway advertisement. The doors were open, and the film was playing, nobody was watching it. Seems like a waste of space. Should put a good film in there.
Our next trip was to go see The American Adventure. We got there pretty early at about around 12:15, the show didn't start until 12:30...?? I think. So we went next door to the restaurant to get some ice cream. I honestly never knew there was a counter service restaurant inside the AA pavilion. Huh. After our ice cream, we went back to the lobby, went upstairs and listened to the man explain how it's a stunning audio animatronic show featured in their magnificent 1,000 seat theater to the 30 of us who were ready to take a break from the heat. The show obviously still looks superb.. I will complain one thing though.. Maybe it's just the style of the show? But I can't understand the words sometimes, like it sounds fuzzy. It does fit with the theming of the show. But yea, it's in great shape. I think my buddy was bored, but I enjoyed it.
We then headed over to one of Japan's shops.. Did not expect to find Poke'mon at Disney World!
Next, went over to O' Canada. The holding-hallway, like Soarin's queue, needs a massive dusting. (sorry, I didn't get a picture of the dust. d The film is still very entertaining. Martin Short is still awesome there! And the old narrator, unbelievably funny! CX "WELL! Maybe I'll just go to the France pavilion where they APPRECIATE an invisible narrator!" Yessss.. Made my day o-o
That marked the end of our WS tour and we continued over to Ellen's Energy Adventure! This was about maybeeee... 2 or 2:30? Reading on these forums about how nobody usually goes to this attraction, and that soooo many people take naps on this ride, I was relatively shocked to find out that it was honestly about half full. And I didn't see anyone napping except for a big guy who looked he we was about to pass out from heat exhaustion. The pre-show ran fine, the audio was good, film seem fastly-choppy. Ellen looked retro. But it ran well. While I don't recall any guys laughing, or any belly laughs out of the audience, I heard a good bit of giggles at Ellen's jokes. So the humor is definitely still there, and the film wouldn't look outdated if basically the props were changed and new film projectors installed. The ride ran smoothly, and with our luck of rides shutting down, I'm frankly surprised it didn't emergency stop as well. A few things T'd me off during this ride though.. The dino-snake that attacks Ellen in the Dinorama scene, the mouth moved but the entire body was stable. In my 2010 trip I remember it not moving at all, so I'm happy they at least fixed the mouth. I shall call it, "disco-snake." -bows- In the second theater, the audio was honestly pretty soft compared to the first theater. There's this tiny box of light on the left screen that distracts me when it's supposed to be dark on that side, which I also noticed in 2010. Also, the worst thing, is the projector on the left side. I was closest to it on the second to the back row, and it was LOUD! Like, annoyingly distractingly loud. Another thing, as we were going into the dino-rama scene, as I said i was on the second to the back row, a cast member shined a flash light around the first theater. Then the entire area room lights turned on. I thought the ride was about to stop. After about 2 minutes, they turned off again. Kinda distracting. In the second theater, the cast member that sits behind the desk I guess switched out with another. The problem? The room is nearly completely pitch-black. And out of no where, I door burst out a giant white-rectangle and completely ruined the atmosphere for half a minute. I swear this ride would run perfectly fine if they didn't have to mess it up. Why couldn't the cast member switch out AFTER the vehicles moved out? But, one person asked for capacity on the ride. 7 "boats" in the theater, the one in the middle stayed stationary. 5 "boats" filled completely, the one I was in filled about 1/4th.
Finally done talking about Ellen and the problems it did have, we went to grab a macaroni-cheeseburger at the electric umbrella. Despite the 11 dollar charge, it was pretty good. We went to club cool, there is absolutely no soda left that tastes good whatsoever. It was disgusting! (my opinion d I couldn't reach over the wall for that construction area. So sorry I couldn't get a picture of that area.
So we then headed over to The Seas with Nemo & Friends ride. While I do enjoy this ride, it also become very, very, overly annoying. Reason: The ride stopped about 3 times, with crush explaining that it'll begin moving again soon. While less annoying than the please sit down recording for LwtL, it still disrupted the ride. But, I preferred Crush disrupting the ride because every time it stopped, you had to listen to the characters repeat two lines over and over again about 5 times. With that said, the ride would be perfectly fine to me if it just wouldn't stop!
But it did make for a hilarious ending when the starfish was telling us "take me with you! All they do is sing!! I mean, it's a good song but they just keep singing it over and overandoverandover and OOOVERR!!" so I gotta a big laugh out of that! (X We then walked around the aquarium. I normally just leave the pavilion after the ride, but since I had my friend I thought i'd explore. It's really a very beautiful, relaxing aquarium. Even with all the noise going on around me, I felt relaxed in there for some reason.
Afterwards, we saw Dale chasing after a squirrel. That was amusing..
Our fastpasses for Test Track was up, and guess what? Just guess. WIIILLDDD guess. A bunch of clouds are up and there's "lightning within 7 miles of the attraction" so it was closed until 8:00 P.M. We were exhausted anyways so we sat on a park bench until our Fastpasses for Mission: Space was available 7:30.
We head over to M:S to do the less intense ride, because my friend wasn't feeling good from the heat. Nobody payed any attention during the pre-show. There was a lot of talking. Pretty annoying. The ride itself ran smoothly. But I totally did not want to touch that handle. Do they even clean that thing? The buttons looked scratched and worn out. They need to put some new stickers on those buttons and re-paint the handle. And there were no barf bags left. They need to keep those in stock. The ride was still fun though.
We then went over to ride SUM of all thrills, just to pass time. It was about a 20 minute wait. It was awesome! We also went right across from there to try out habit heroes. I didn't know anything about it, and it was an interactive kiddie video-game basically. It was me, my friend, a little kid and his mom. That was it. It was basically deserted right across from the all-popular SoaT attraction. But oh my god, it was FUN!!! Shocked? Haha we had a lot of fun with HH it was very amusing! We then went to play "Where's the Fire?" My all time favorite Innoventions interactive game. Our team won. I remember a while ago, my sister and I got "dream passes" for playing it.. That luck didn't come this year sadly.
We then headed over to Spaceship Earth. It was great. As usual. I did notice those black curtains hiding those props on the ground to my right from that "SSE lights on tour" picture thread. In the middle of our "welcome to the future" video, guess what? The ride stopped, and we were interrupted by a "You will return to the future momentarily" narration. That bugged me because our video was going so hilariously amusing!
We finally head over to use our TT fastpass right after M:S and.... Ohh my god. Standby reach 140 minutes. Single rider reached up to 90 minutes. And fastpass was backed up WAAAAAY far back. I wish I got a picture. But Fastpass took us 30 minutes. I can't even freaking imagine being in line for standby when it took us that long to get through FASTpass! That was awful! While I wasn't too excited about the new overlay for Test Track, I will say that it honestly looked a lot better in person than it did on Youtube. I still preferred the old theming, but is it just me, or was the ride actually faster on those turns? The ride was basically the same with an overlay of blue lights. It ran fine.
We barely had enough time to make it to watch Illuminations after TT. We stood over next to the restaurant in Mexico. It was amazing! The globe portion of the show though, meh.
Overall we had an awesome trip. Despite all the heat, crowds were not a problem for us. I will say thanks to you guys for notifying me about getting fast passes online. Because Mission: Space, Test Track and Soarin' had all ran out right at park opening.
But... We basically did every single attraction within the park excluding Reflections of China, Turtle Talk and Impressions de France. So here's how our day went!
We got to the park gate at 8:45, and immediately went to Soarin'. I would have personally just skipped it, but my friend's never been. So as we start walking to Soarin', it seems like every other single person walking into the park was doing the exact same thing. The line ended up being a 20 minute wait despite getting there as early as possible, which, was honestly pretty good considering the amount of time this attraction usually has. The line piled up massively behind us. One thing I noticed while waiting in line was a bunch of dust over-head throughout the queue... I'm not one for complaining about these little things, but normally, I never even wait more than 5 minutes to ride something. So I ended up looking around and the ceiling area could be dusted. Mainly on those white white plastic light fixture in the blue queue hall.
After we got done with Soarin', we headed over to ride Living with the Land which thankfully was a walk-on.
Somebody must have not been sitting still during the ride because an announcer kept interrupting the tour with "please stay seated with everything inside the vehicle" blah blah, this happened about 4 times and it really disrupts that calm feeling the attraction usually gives you when it echoes so loudly in each room. We skipped the Circle of Life film to save when we run out of energy and need a nap.Our next destination was Journey into Imagination with Figment!! (Yea. Judge me.) Of course, it was a walk-on. But honestly, everything in the ride was in the best shape compared to a majority of everything else at Epcot. The sound was great, the Figment AAs looked good, it was honestly a pretty good experience. And on top of that, my friend and I really enjoyed the ride. I'm starting to think that the ride isn't as bad as it's made out to be.. Like Stitch. It just replaced a much more superb ride. Although the middle-addition does seem a bit boring, this ride was very pleasing with the only broken effect being one of the skunk smell blowers never stopped blowing and an old lady that was in front of it the whole time did not enjoy the smell for it's 15 seconds.. We then walked next door to Captain EO. It also was in the best shape over everything else in Epcot. My friend said that it was very weird and made absolutely no sense, but he LOVED it. He admitted it being his 3rd favorite thing at Epcot. Also, imagination was apparently a 30 minute wait later on in the day according to the sign outside the door. My only conclusion for that being a tour group must have wanted to ride.
After EO, we set off on our World Showcase adventure. I was thinking about actually enjoying the views, but it was way too scorching hot for us to barely make it to each attraction after the other. Our first stop was at Mexico. Rode the 3-cabelleros ride. It's still pretty amusing and can hold your attention. That's about it.
Our next stop being Norway. Headed our way over to Maelstrom. As soon as we sat down in the boat at the loading dock, the ride stopped and was put on hold for some reason. We got there just in time, because the line started to pile up as we waited for the ride to get moving again. It took about 5 minutes, which felt like a looong 5 minutes. After Maelstrom, we walked through the theater that was playing the Norway advertisement. The doors were open, and the film was playing, nobody was watching it. Seems like a waste of space. Should put a good film in there.
Our next trip was to go see The American Adventure. We got there pretty early at about around 12:15, the show didn't start until 12:30...?? I think. So we went next door to the restaurant to get some ice cream. I honestly never knew there was a counter service restaurant inside the AA pavilion. Huh. After our ice cream, we went back to the lobby, went upstairs and listened to the man explain how it's a stunning audio animatronic show featured in their magnificent 1,000 seat theater to the 30 of us who were ready to take a break from the heat. The show obviously still looks superb.. I will complain one thing though.. Maybe it's just the style of the show? But I can't understand the words sometimes, like it sounds fuzzy. It does fit with the theming of the show. But yea, it's in great shape. I think my buddy was bored, but I enjoyed it.
We then headed over to one of Japan's shops.. Did not expect to find Poke'mon at Disney World!
Next, went over to O' Canada. The holding-hallway, like Soarin's queue, needs a massive dusting. (sorry, I didn't get a picture of the dust. d
The film is still very entertaining. Martin Short is still awesome there! And the old narrator, unbelievably funny! CX "WELL! Maybe I'll just go to the France pavilion where they APPRECIATE an invisible narrator!" Yessss.. Made my day o-oThat marked the end of our WS tour and we continued over to Ellen's Energy Adventure! This was about maybeeee... 2 or 2:30? Reading on these forums about how nobody usually goes to this attraction, and that soooo many people take naps on this ride, I was relatively shocked to find out that it was honestly about half full. And I didn't see anyone napping except for a big guy who looked he we was about to pass out from heat exhaustion. The pre-show ran fine, the audio was good, film seem fastly-choppy. Ellen looked retro. But it ran well. While I don't recall any guys laughing, or any belly laughs out of the audience, I heard a good bit of giggles at Ellen's jokes. So the humor is definitely still there, and the film wouldn't look outdated if basically the props were changed and new film projectors installed. The ride ran smoothly, and with our luck of rides shutting down, I'm frankly surprised it didn't emergency stop as well. A few things T'd me off during this ride though.. The dino-snake that attacks Ellen in the Dinorama scene, the mouth moved but the entire body was stable. In my 2010 trip I remember it not moving at all, so I'm happy they at least fixed the mouth. I shall call it, "disco-snake." -bows- In the second theater, the audio was honestly pretty soft compared to the first theater. There's this tiny box of light on the left screen that distracts me when it's supposed to be dark on that side, which I also noticed in 2010. Also, the worst thing, is the projector on the left side. I was closest to it on the second to the back row, and it was LOUD! Like, annoyingly distractingly loud. Another thing, as we were going into the dino-rama scene, as I said i was on the second to the back row, a cast member shined a flash light around the first theater. Then the entire area room lights turned on. I thought the ride was about to stop. After about 2 minutes, they turned off again. Kinda distracting. In the second theater, the cast member that sits behind the desk I guess switched out with another. The problem? The room is nearly completely pitch-black. And out of no where, I door burst out a giant white-rectangle and completely ruined the atmosphere for half a minute. I swear this ride would run perfectly fine if they didn't have to mess it up. Why couldn't the cast member switch out AFTER the vehicles moved out? But, one person asked for capacity on the ride. 7 "boats" in the theater, the one in the middle stayed stationary. 5 "boats" filled completely, the one I was in filled about 1/4th.
Finally done talking about Ellen and the problems it did have, we went to grab a macaroni-cheeseburger at the electric umbrella. Despite the 11 dollar charge, it was pretty good. We went to club cool, there is absolutely no soda left that tastes good whatsoever. It was disgusting! (my opinion d
I couldn't reach over the wall for that construction area. So sorry I couldn't get a picture of that area.So we then headed over to The Seas with Nemo & Friends ride. While I do enjoy this ride, it also become very, very, overly annoying. Reason: The ride stopped about 3 times, with crush explaining that it'll begin moving again soon. While less annoying than the please sit down recording for LwtL, it still disrupted the ride. But, I preferred Crush disrupting the ride because every time it stopped, you had to listen to the characters repeat two lines over and over again about 5 times. With that said, the ride would be perfectly fine to me if it just wouldn't stop!
But it did make for a hilarious ending when the starfish was telling us "take me with you! All they do is sing!! I mean, it's a good song but they just keep singing it over and overandoverandover and OOOVERR!!" so I gotta a big laugh out of that! (X We then walked around the aquarium. I normally just leave the pavilion after the ride, but since I had my friend I thought i'd explore. It's really a very beautiful, relaxing aquarium. Even with all the noise going on around me, I felt relaxed in there for some reason.Afterwards, we saw Dale chasing after a squirrel. That was amusing..
Our fastpasses for Test Track was up, and guess what? Just guess. WIIILLDDD guess. A bunch of clouds are up and there's "lightning within 7 miles of the attraction" so it was closed until 8:00 P.M. We were exhausted anyways so we sat on a park bench until our Fastpasses for Mission: Space was available 7:30.
We head over to M:S to do the less intense ride, because my friend wasn't feeling good from the heat. Nobody payed any attention during the pre-show. There was a lot of talking. Pretty annoying. The ride itself ran smoothly. But I totally did not want to touch that handle. Do they even clean that thing? The buttons looked scratched and worn out. They need to put some new stickers on those buttons and re-paint the handle. And there were no barf bags left. They need to keep those in stock. The ride was still fun though.
We then went over to ride SUM of all thrills, just to pass time. It was about a 20 minute wait. It was awesome! We also went right across from there to try out habit heroes. I didn't know anything about it, and it was an interactive kiddie video-game basically. It was me, my friend, a little kid and his mom. That was it. It was basically deserted right across from the all-popular SoaT attraction. But oh my god, it was FUN!!! Shocked? Haha we had a lot of fun with HH it was very amusing! We then went to play "Where's the Fire?" My all time favorite Innoventions interactive game. Our team won. I remember a while ago, my sister and I got "dream passes" for playing it.. That luck didn't come this year sadly.
We then headed over to Spaceship Earth. It was great. As usual. I did notice those black curtains hiding those props on the ground to my right from that "SSE lights on tour" picture thread. In the middle of our "welcome to the future" video, guess what? The ride stopped, and we were interrupted by a "You will return to the future momentarily" narration. That bugged me because our video was going so hilariously amusing!
We finally head over to use our TT fastpass right after M:S and.... Ohh my god. Standby reach 140 minutes. Single rider reached up to 90 minutes. And fastpass was backed up WAAAAAY far back. I wish I got a picture. But Fastpass took us 30 minutes. I can't even freaking imagine being in line for standby when it took us that long to get through FASTpass! That was awful! While I wasn't too excited about the new overlay for Test Track, I will say that it honestly looked a lot better in person than it did on Youtube. I still preferred the old theming, but is it just me, or was the ride actually faster on those turns? The ride was basically the same with an overlay of blue lights. It ran fine.
We barely had enough time to make it to watch Illuminations after TT. We stood over next to the restaurant in Mexico. It was amazing! The globe portion of the show though, meh.
Overall we had an awesome trip. Despite all the heat, crowds were not a problem for us. I will say thanks to you guys for notifying me about getting fast passes online. Because Mission: Space, Test Track and Soarin' had all ran out right at park opening.
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Either way, the MDE app still said 170 for M:S a few weeks ago.