Trip Report If you can see the floor, there's room for more- COMPLETED!

Let's see, I figured, I'd at least start updating about the road to Disney since, I'm sure once we actually get to Disney, my brain will explode and I'll forget all about this stuff...

So let's start:

Preface: Who are JZSquared?

I posted my pre-trip report way back in the Stone-age, so to save you all a trip, I'll just reintroduce myself [er ourselves?] to you?

Hi my name is Lyssa.... I'm not a robot without emotions, I'm not what you see... SORRY, 80S ROCK STUCK IN MY HEAD AFTER LISTENING TO IT FOR EIGHT HOURS STRAIGHT.

My better half [though personally I think that's debatable] is Justin.

We're both teachers from Houston, Texas. I teach special ed preschool [I have mainly autistic students] and Justin teaches the other end of the spectrum.... He teaches AP Computer Science and Calculus BC in high school.

This is us:

[though currently my hair is bright Cheshire Cat fuchsia...]

Since we're both teachers, we're really limited in when we can actually visit the world. We're basically limited to school breaks and summer breaks AKA when everybody else in the US also visits Disney, so it's going to be mad crowded whenever we go. We decided to join the craziest of the crazies and travel to Disney during the most-crowded time of year, New Year's Eve... I mean we could've gone over the summer, I suppose, but winter weather > summer weather, especially since it seems Florida is going through a big of a cold front [it is currently 43 degrees in Milton, Florida], which makes me happy [my NJ blood craves the cold... Justin's thin Texas blood, not so much.]

We also decided to road trip there because we both really don't like flying even though it's supposedly one of the safest things you can do... but we also really like road trips and seeing the US [our honeymoon was a road trip up the west coast, and down through the center of the US, so we hit Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Parks] and when we worked out the finances, really flying and driving were about the same price, so we decided to drive to Disney instead, plus that gives me the leniency to buy as many Starbucks mugs as I want and not have to worry about stuffing them in luggage and flying them back in a cargo hold of a plane.

Anyways, welcome to our trip, I hope you enjoy following along. Expect it to be corny and cheesy, hopefully entertaining though [This is my first trip report]!

 

[Lyssa]

Chapter Five: And we're rolling, rolling, rolling on a river

I hated the movie Avatar.

I saw it on Valentine's Day, with a friend, and we saw it in IMAX, and I actually had to leave before the movie ended because the movie was making me sick and giving me a migraine.

I did eventually finish the movie, and I still hated it.

That being said,I still went to Pandora with an open-mind, and the pictures all made it look so pretty.

The line for Flight of Passage was so long that while walking to Pandora, we actually had to be rerouted to another entrance. The standby wait for FoP was three-hundred something minutes.

The line for Na'Vi River Journey wasn't really much better... I think it was something like 120 minutes.

I do give Pandora this, it really is a visually splendid place.

[I swear this looks like Treebeard from Lord of the Rings about to wreck some havoc on Orcs]

Now what to say about Na'Vi River Journey? I wish the 120 minutes I wasted waiting on that line could be given back to me. Though, at one point, a couple in front of gave up on waiting, and the cast member, who was working the line, jokingly said to us "That's three less minutes off your wait," which I suppose would make it 117 minutes, we waited.

The queue itself was visually stunning, and for some reason I took like 100 pictures of this lamp, so I must've really liked this lamp.

The sort of represented some sort of time-line? I don't quite remember the description of it aside from it being some sort of time-net, which totally sounds like something that belongs on Doctor Who. Though I don't think the fan was invented on Pandora, nor do I think the Na'vi would have had any interest in a ceiling fan.

The wait said 120 minutes, but I swear it was much longer. We even missed our KS fast pass and I couldn't rebook it because there were none left, so I guess it was a good thing that we had ridden it earlier.

I played a lot of gameboy on that line. My fire emblem awakening team was seriously almost where I wanted them to be by the time we finished that ride.

Eventually we got on the ride.

This is my ONLY picture from the ride that actually came out.

My verdict: DO NOT WAIT LONGER THAN MAYBE 30 MINUTES FOR THIS RIDE, maybe even fifteen.

It just was not worth the wait. It's basically a Na'Vi Pirates of the Caribbean, only it's starring the Shaman of Songs instead of Johnny Depp. The coolest part was probably the Shaman of Songs. But the ride itself was only maybe 3 minutes long, and while it's sort of visually appealing, you can have the same visual appeal, if you just walk in Pandora, at night. The ride just wasn't anything special. It was super short, and I waited over two hours for it, and it just was not worth it to me. I just had no interest in the ride. There was no story, and by the time I got on the ride, I was just ed I had waited for two hours, and the ride was nothing special, at all. I didn't feel emotionally invested in it, I wasn't impressed with anything.

And that has NOTHING to do with my lack of love for Avatar because I loved Flight of Passage. Def choose a FoP fastpass over Na'Vi River Journey, that's two hours you could be spending on good rides, instead of waiting for a boat ride that looks like it belongs on a black light poster in a college dorm room.

That's just my opinion though, I'm not trying to offend anyone, just giving my two-cents. After all I absolutely love Journey into Imagination, and I'm sure people feel the way about that ride that I did about Na'Vi River Journey.

After the boat ride of disappointment, I was thirsty [maybe from waiting in line for over two hours]. Justin and I decided to try some of the Pandora themed drinks from Pongu Pongu Lounge.

[This looks like a sad transformer to me]

I got the Night Blossom and Justin got the Mo’Ara Margarita.

First of all, I consider myself to be a Boba connoisseur, and I am sad to say that this boba was unlike any other boba and not in a good way. It basically popped in your mouth, sort of like gusher's fruit snacks, if anyone remembers those, and I really like chewy boba.

But boba woes aside, I enjoyed my Night Blossom. It sort of tasted like rainbow sherbet. I like rainbow sherbet. Justin enjoyed his margarita too, but he said it wasn't very strong.

While sipping my wannabe unicorn frappuccino, I got this notification on my phone:

Well, I guess it was good thing I wasn't planning on going there.

Then it was onwards to Dinoland for our fast pass for Dinosaur...

 

[Lyssa]

Following along on your adventure. I'm the one that sings in the car in our family...turning off the radio isn't a guarantee for me to stop.

Me too I literally walk around my house singing, and work... luckily I'm a pre-k teacher, so people sort of just look the other way.

Some beautiful photos!!!

Thank you

 

[KatieLVT]

I have seen about 1,063 pictures of the floating mountains online, and this is the first time I've realized that they do, indeed, look like Treebeard! Ha! Great observation, from one nerd to another!

 

[Lyssa]

Chapter Six: I think I lost my magic band!

So we hurried along our merrily little way towards Dinoland, stopping to admire Christmas scenery along the way:

As well as regular every-day scenery.

[This looks like it belongs on Tatooine]

We were a little bit early, so we did some shopping.

I bought the Disney Cat pin collection, as well as one for my cat sitter, who is as crazy of a cat lady as I am, and a new lanyard, that was Christmas themed since I figured it was probably the only time I could get one like it. It was green and it had bells and it was awesome. Now if only I knew where my Alice in Wonderland lanyard from Disneyland went, so I could move over my pins to the new one.

I also needed to finish my cup full of Boba left over from my night blossom and Justin's Mo’Ara Margarita. Yes, you read that right, I had an entire cup full of Boba.

Then it was back to Dinosaur:

The ride was still good a second time.

As we got off the ride, I got a text on my phone stating our room was ready. We were in the 50s section of Pop Culture, Second Building, Second Floor, Room 37 [or 2237 for short]. I was a little disappointed we didn't get one of the refurbished rooms, but really, we hardly spent any time in our room during the trip, it was just a bed to crash on, and it was fine.

We were leaving Dinoland, when we got stopped by another research cast member, and I was answering her questions, and she asked to scan my magic band... when... well my magic band was gone!

We backtracked our steps around Dinosaur, but didn't see anything, I was pretty sure it fell out on the ride, and it probably got crushed, so we headed to guest services to see what could be done because there was no way I was missing my Flight of Passage fast pass.

Guest Services had a huge line. I think it took us forty minutes just to get to a cast member, but at least they had a pretty Christmas tree.

The cast members checked to see if my magic band had been handed in, it hadn't. But they did say they could give me a card to use as a fast-pass, and my resort would replace the band for free, so we did that.

Walking back towards the park, we saw some birds:

We had maybe an hour or so to kill before our Flight of Passage FP, and all the rides except Kali Rapids had insane waits... And since it was barely 60 degrees and you pretty much get drenched on KR, we didn't really want to ride that since we had no changes of clothes and weren't returning to Pop till after dinner, so we skipped that.

Justin noticed Nemo was about to start, so we decided to kill time by watching Finding Nemo: The Musical

The show was very cute. Justin was especially impressed with the actress who played Dory since she basically had to do flips in the air and sing, at the same time. I know I couldn't do that. I can barely walk on two feet without falling, or walk in a straight line without tripping or walking into something. I'm a klutz.

We still had a little bit of time to kill after Nemo, so we watched the monkeys:

We also saw It's Tough to be a Bug. That show was interesting, though I don't think I would take a small child to see it. Sure they warn you that it may be frightening to a young child to see it, but hardly anyone listened to that, and there were a lot of little children crying and screaming throughout the show. It was a good time to kill time regardless.

We STILL had more time to kill and like I said, wait times for rides were ABSOLUTELY FREAKING INSANE, so we decided to wander towards the Tree of Life and explore the area around that.

 

[Lyssa]

I have seen about 1,063 pictures of the floating mountains online, and this is the first time I've realized that they do, indeed, look like Treebeard! Ha! Great observation, from one nerd to another!

Hehe thank you it's nice to have my nerdiness appreciated LOL

 

[Lyssa]

Chapter 7: Our Flight of Passage

Justin and I enjoyed exploring the area around The Tree of Life, the carvings were so detailed [and in a way it totally reminded me of the Iifa Tree from Final Fantasy IX], and there was literally nobody there. We even saw Flick walking around the area for photo oppourtunities, but not a single person wanted to even pose with him. I sort of felt bad for him.

In a way, it was sort of like a scavenger hunt, there were so many different carvings of animals, and they were everywhere, some were out in the open and easy to spot, others were more hidden and subdued. The Tree of Life is just so beautiful.

Finally it was time for Flight of Passage, it was just starting to get dark, so Pandora was starting to glow, and I knew it would be dark by time we got off the ride.

Even with a Fast Pass, we still had to wait about twenty minutes or so, though that was way better than waiting three hundred something minutes or whatever the wait was by then. I heard the queue is really cool for the ride, but I really didn't want to wait three hundred minutes just to take three thousand pictures. Hopefully, when we go back to Disney, in like two years, when Pixar Land and Star Wars Land are open, Pandora won't be nearly as popular as it is now, and there won't be a three-hundred minute wait for the ride, so I can see it.

There was a man and a little boy in our FP group. I don't think the boy was his son, but they obviously knew each other well. While we were getting prepped for our avatar [I won't say much more because I don't want to spoil things, don't worry], the narrator of the ride, tells everyone that they need to move around to be detected so they can be linked to their avatar, and the little boy just really believed in the magic, and really thought that he [and his male companion] needed to move around to get the ride to work, and he kept on urging his companion to move or the ride wouldn't work, and the companion wasn't very into it or playing along, but still, I hope when I eventually have a kid and bring them to Disney, they believe in the Disney magic as much as this boy did. It was such a heart-warming moment for my very cold heart.

Anyhow the ride was awesome, though we had to wear these weird visor things for the 3d to work, and the visors were really awkwardly shaped, and I thought it was going to fall off on the ride because it seemed way to big for my head, but it did stay on. The ride was probably one of the best ones I rode during the trip. Even J liked it, though he was far more interested in observing the ride vehicles during the ride instead of riding the ride like a normal person, but alas, that's what I get for marrying a nerd, who's also an engineer.

Anyhow, I highly recommend that ride!

After the ride dumped us out in a gift shop because that's what every big ride at Disney does, Pandora was all lit up.

I didn't get many pictures because it was so crowded, and I could barely walk around because of the hoards of people, but I tried to get some even though I'm sure everyone here has seen thousands of pictures of Pandora at night already.

I will say this though, it's a lot cooler in person than it is in any photograph I have ever seen.

[and I apologize for the quality of my pictures, I'm still learning about night and ride photography]

We decided to leave AK after that because we had an ADR to make, and we had to get to a different resort to get to that reservation and we really had no idea, where we were going, so we wanted to give ourselves enough time to get there since it was very likely we'd get lost... spoiler alert: We did

To be continued....

[though here's a pic of the AK tree all lit up that I took on our way out]

 

[Lyssa]

Chapter 8: Beaches and Cream is where?

I'm from NJ, and we have the shore in NJ, and the shore has all sorts of beaches and ice cream places... so sure enough Beaches and Cream is at the Boardwalk, right?

So we hopped on the bus to Boardwalk, and I was totally convinced Beaches & Cream was there, in my NJ-addled brains, it made perfect sense to me.

The Christmas tree at the Boardwalk was very pretty:

And I liked the Gingerbread Boardwalk too:

We walked outside and I really liked how the resort was really reminiscent of the Wildwood shore.

There was even a Margarita place right on the Boardwalk like if I was at Seaside Heights or something.

But I didn't see Beaches or Cream anywhere.

From Boardwalk, however, the party at Epcot was SOOOOO loud that we could hear all the music from right outside the resort. It sounded like a good time, but also like a crowded time.

I saw a cast member selling ears and I tried to get the light-up New Year's Ears, but she didn't have them, and said they were in the parks, but I didn't see anyone selling them in AK either. I asked her where Beaches & Cream was and she told me it was at The Beach Club... uh duh, I should've figured that out... I mean Beaches & Cream... Yacht & Beach Club resort? BRAIN YOU FAILED ME!

So we had to walk all the way over here:

We eventually walked to The Beach Club, but we couldn't find Beaches & Cream, even with a map. We were wandering all over, around Stormalong Bay, in the resort [loved the Gingerbread Carousel!], we even used google maps, they all failed us, eventually we found it about an hour later, after J re-observed the map.

At Beaches & Cream, we experienced a tiny bit of Disney Magic... they had a cancellation and were able to seat us about an hour earlier than our reservation was for, which was amazing because we were exhausted.

I have a life-threatening allergy. I'm allergic to tree-nuts. I'm fine with peanuts and coconuts, but almonds and walnuts, if I ingest them will murder me. I had noted this allergy in all my meal reservations. As an adult, I know what I can eat, so it's not as big of a deal to me, I can order off of a regular menu if I want and I know exactly what I need to avoid and what's okay.

Beaches & Cream is the only place of all of our ADRS that actually noted I had an allergy and even gave me an allergy free menu. All of other ADRs, even though it was noted in the reservation, completely disregarded the fact I had an allergy, didn't bring it up, offer me an allergy free menu or anything. Like I said, as an adult, it's not a big deal to me, but to a family with children with severe allergies, I don't, think it would be very cool, if their child's allergy was just ignored.

Anyhow Justin LOVED Beaches & Cream, he says when we come back [and I love that he says "when we come back"], that and BoG are the only two dining experiences that he wishes to do again. To this day, he talks about how amazing the patty melt he had was amazing and even better than Whataburger, and well to a Texan, Whataburger is a scared thing, to say something is better than Whataburger, you can imagine it must have been amazing.

Justin started his meal off with an adult S'Mores milkshake that he said was so delicious that he didn't even taste any booze within it.

I had a sprite with cherry, basically a Shirley Temple, yes I am an adult!

This was Justin's amazing patty melt.

I had a tuna sandwich, which was good, I had been craving tuna for awhile.

Their fries were amazing. I normally don't really like french fries [yes I am a freak], but these tasted amazing, and were probably some of the best french fries I've had in awhile.

Justin had a sundae with mint chocolate chip ice cream and hot fudge for desert.

I had cookies and cream ice cream with fudge and peanut butter.

They were delicious.

After we ate, we were exhausted, and we really didn't want to be to near the parks at midnight, anyways.

We walked to the bus area and decided we'd hop on the first bus we saw to any park and catch a bus back to Pop from there.

The first bus was a MK bus, so we took that to the park, and then went to Pop. The bus back to Pop was really crowded. We had to stand and there were huge crowds of people.

First we went to the main building, where there was another pretty tree:

I got my magic band replaced by a very nice cast-member and she also gave us Happy Anniversary buttons since it was our 7th anniversary.

It was finally time to check out our room.

Like I mentioned, we had an original room, not an refurbished one in the 50s section.

Beds were comfy.

A sink is a sink.

The shower took awhile to get hot, but other than that, it wasn't too bad.

We had a nice view outside of our room.

As soon as we got into the room, it was probably around ten pm, I changed into my pajamas, and I fell asleep almost right away. The last thing I remember was telling J to stop texting so loudly because I was trying to sleep.

I completely slept through the Ball drop and everything....

When I woke up the next morning, it was 2018.

 

[Bullseye1967]

Great TR so far! Following along.

 

[LadyBelle]

We walked outside and I really liked how the resort was really reminiscent of the Wildwood shore.

Now I must go there because my grandfather was from Wildwood.

 

[Lyssa]

Now I must go there because my grandfather was from Wildwood.

I miss Wildwood so much. I used to go there every summer.... then I moved to Texas :/ Galveston just isn't Wildwood

Great TR so far! Following along.

Thank you for following

 

[Lyssa]

Chapter 9: Test Track... The best ride we didn't ride

When I woke up it was already 2018.... oops... Oh well, it's not like I haven't seen the ball drop before.

Today was Epcot day. Epcot is my favorite park in all of the world.

I have a lot of really happy memories of going there with my nana and my late papa. They loved walking around the world showcase. My nana especially loved Mexico. During World War II, when the Nazi's started rounding up Jews, my nana was living in Russia. She was sent to the US on a boat to try to escape the war, but the US had already capped their Russian quota, so my nana wound up growing up in Mexico. It was during the Korean War, when my papa, who was medic for the army, was stationed in Mexico, my nana was also a doctor in Mexico, and she met my papa at a hospital, and they got married almost immediately.

Every year my nana and late papa would take me to Disney World up until I was about 12. Since my nana had grown up in Mexico, being in the world showcase reminded her of home, a bit, so she just really loved it there.

So I was SUPER SUPER EXCITED to go to Mexico and relive happy memories of my grandparents. Out of all the parks, I would say Epcot has the most memories for me.

Anyhow, Justin and I got up, checked the temperature, and saw it was going to be pretty cold and rainy. No complaints from me. I was hoping the weather would keep people away from the parks all week, and I would definitely say that for the most part it did.

We bundled up and stopped over at the Food Court to get some breakfast before going to the park.

I don't eat bacon. It isn't a kosher thing. My parents were never kosher though my nana and papa were. My nana especially. She had a separate set of plates for dairy and for meat. She never has ever mixed dairy and meat in her entire life. But my parents love bacon. I just don't like it, maybe I'm weird, but to me it's a texture and grease thing.

Anyhow, the breakfast sandwiches at Pop all had bacon in it, but the people working there were kind enough to make me a custom sandwich that was just egg and cheese.

It was a pretty good breakfast sandwich as breakfast sandwiches go, and then we bought the resort refillable mugs and got some coffee and it was time to go to Epcot.

The bus basically pulled up as we left the Everything Pop store.

Eventually we arrived at Epcot.

It started raining right as we pulled up to Epcot on the bus. It wasn't a hard rain or anything, just a light drizzle.

[That big and beautiful golf ball]

[The Christmas greenery was very cute]

Justin and I had decided to rope drop Test Track because we wanted to get an FP for Frozen Ever After, and we figured we could rope drop Test Track and do single rider.

So sure enough we walked over to Test Track, the single rider line only had about a ten minute wait, and we went inside and were playing around with the things that let you design your own car, when a family comes down from where the ride was and told us TT was closed due to weather.

We had no idea when TT was going to reopen and we didn't really feel like wasting time just sitting there in the boring queue, so we decided to high-tail it to Soarin'.

Apparently every else had the same idea because Justin said there was quite a mob behind us of people heading towards The Land as we were, but still, we beat the mob and headed onwards to Soarin'.

Needless to say, however, we never actually got to ride TT while we were there. It eventually did reopen, but the wait was horrendous every time I looked at it, and we even thought about park-hopping back to Epcot just to ride it throughout the trip, but same thing, that rides wait is insane, and it wasn't worth our time to wait about 80 minutes or more for probably a five minute ride.

Anyhow, Justin and I had ridden the original Soarin' at Disneyland back in 2015, which I'm glad we did since they changed it shortly afterwards. I'm not sure what I think about Soarin' Around the World.

Justin likes the new one because of the variety of locations, but he did miss flying over Yosemite National Park.

I think I liked the old one better too because it holds memories for us. When we went to Disneyland, it was during our huge road trip from Texas to California, with a lot National Parks and things along the way, so a lot of the places in Soarin' Over California were places we had driven to and seen, so I guess Soarin' Over California holds more personal meanings for me. But the new Soarin' wasn't bad, I just think I prefer the old one.

After Soarin, The Land was right there, and The Land had no wait, so we figured we would ride that next.

 

[Lyssa]

Chapter Ten: This is the best selfie lighting!

[That as an actual quote from the mouth of the people in the back of our boat]

This post is really just a lot of Living with The Land Spam.

I liked all the cute little touches like the Christmas stockings from the cast members and such.

I liked Living with the Land. I don't remember it at all, so I don't even know if I rode it when I was younger. It was cool to see all the different things that Disney was growing, and I loved all the little holiday touches throughout the ride.

Justin found it interesting because it was "education turned into a ride." He also liked the fact there was no wait and he could sit on his butt for awhile. But overall, it wasn't his sort of ride.

[Spoiler alert: Justin stated Epcot was his least favorite park out of all of them. Lame.]

After Living Through The Land, we had a fast pass to catch [and no it wasn't Frozen].

 

[12in12]

Thank you for sharing your grandparents story, it was very sweet. How lucky you are to have such great memories of them and that they shared their history with you.
You don't like bacon??? Oh well, nobody is perfect

 

[Lyssa]

Thank you for sharing your grandparents story, it was very sweet. How lucky you are to have such great memories of them and that they shared their history with you.
You don't like bacon??? Oh well, nobody is perfect

You're very welcome. When I was in high school, we had to interview our grandparents to get our family history as a project, and I think it was the most meaningful thing I did in high school. Both my grandparents have such fascinating histories. I only wish that I had had a recorder at the time so I could've recorded their stories, but at least they're in my head and I can pass them on.

And yes... I'm a freak... I just don't like bacon LOL, I've accepted that title for many years

 

[fractal]

Catching up - agree on your Navi River opinion. 30 minutes at the most. Love that you took the time to explore the Tree of Life and love all the pics!
FoP is awesome.
I grew up spending my summers working at my parents' restaurant in Wildwood Crest. I could see a Mack's Pizza at Disney's Boardwalk...or maybe not.

for future reference, you could have taken a Friendship boat from Boardwalk area to Yacht/Beach Club Lighthouse, and saved yourself a lot of walking. Your meal at Beach's and Cream has me drooling!

 

[Swissmiss]

Team Pineapple

Love your Tree of Life photos!

 

[Lyssa]

atching up - agree on your Navi River opinion. 30 minutes at the most. Love that you took the time to explore the Tree of Life and love all the pics!
FoP is awesome.
I grew up spending my summers working at my parents' restaurant in Wildwood Crest. I could see a Mack's Pizza at Disney's Boardwalk...or maybe not.

for future reference, you could have taken a Friendship boat from Boardwalk area to Yacht/Beach Club Lighthouse, and saved yourself a lot of walking. Your meal at Beach's and Cream has me drooling!

Thank you Though I still have a lot of work to do on photography

I love Mack's Pizza I would always eat there whenever we went. Their Broccoli and White Cheese pizza is still my favorite all time pizza.

And the walking wasn't too bad But that's good to know

Team Pineapple

Love your Tree of Life photos!

Thank you

 

[Lyssa]

Chapter 11: Just Keep Swimming

Sorry for the delay! Justin and I went up to San Antonio for Pax South and I didn't bring my laptop or any other computer, just immersed myself in the nerdiness.

Moving on.

Our fast pass was for Nemo & Friends.

I don't really have anything to say about the ride. I did try to take pictures on the ride, and they were pretty awful, but other than that, it was a very cute ride There was really no wait and no justification to use a Fast Pass for it, but there was nothing else worth replacing our FP with either, so we just went with it.

After riding Nemo, we decided to check out the aquarium.

So the following is just aquarium spam

It's a lionfish. All of my students know exactly what a lionfish is because I read them Mister Seahorse by Eric Carl, last year, and that was one of the vocabulary words we had from that book and they haven't forgotten it either, when we were doing letter L, a few weeks back, one of my favorite students shouted out "LION FISH BEGINS WITH LETTER L" and was very proud of himself for remembering it

[Hi Mr. Seahorse!!!!!]

[Manatees are so adorable, I caught one in the middle of eating]

[Now this I would call a school of fish!]

[I think I found Nemo's missing brothers and sisters, perhaps Marlon Jr is somewhere in there]

I told Justin that you can actually snorkel in the tank for an exorbitant amount of money that we'll probably never have. He was still interested. He said perhaps one day.

When we finished looking at the aquarium, it was really pouring outside, a lot of people were trying to find shelter from the rain, but we didn't really care much, we were already sort of wet from before, our coats were both waterproof, so we carried on and headed onwards to...

 

[Lyssa]

Chapter Twelve: One Little Spark....

It's time for...

Our Journey Into Imagination.

I didn't really know how to describe this ride to Justin. I told him it was very special and would probably make more sense under the influence of certain other substances... like perhaps.. well USE YOUR IMAGINATION!

Needless to say, I LOVE ME SOME FIGMENT!

I vaguely remember the original ride, and I apparently liked it so much that my grandparents had bought me a stuffed Figment that I have to this very day.

I never rode the cursed second version and from what I understand, I really didn't miss much, which means I rode the original version back in the day, but I really don't remember it at all, so this was all new to me.

There was no line for Figment, at all, so we literally just walked through the queue and were on the ride in minutes/

[Justin was greatly amused by that because he likes anything that sort of looks like math whether it's real math or fake math like the math Jack used to try to figure out Christmas in Nightmare Before Christmas. In fact, Justin was so fascinated by that part, that he once made me pause the movie, so he could see if any of the math vaguely resembled calculus, which is what he teaches]

I wish it really smelled like vanilla cinnamon coffee... I think there needs to be coffee infusers...

[from far away it looked like a tuxedo?]

[I'd live there]

IT'S LIKE THE FIGMENT VERSION OF IT'S A SMALL WORLD!!!

there's a world of hearing, and a world of sight, there's a world of smell, and a world of skunks, there's so much that we share that it's time we're aware, it's Figment's World after all...

After Figment's Ride, I totally made an awesome pink Figment at the interactive part at the end, but it never emailed to me even though I sent it to myself, so I AM BUMMED.... I had to resist buying every Figment themed thing there.....

It was still raining, but on the bright side, Starbucks had no line, so we went to Starbucks, I got an iced upside down soy caramel macchiato because I AM THAT BASIC, and YES I DRINK ICED DRINKS IN FORTY DEGREE WEATHER WHEN IT'S RAINING and of course my Epcot mug, and I was happy to be able to send that back to Pop because carrying mugs around all day is really annoying, and I always worry it'll break if I set my bag down wrong on a ride or something...

Then we did a little shopping. I bought a mini Cheshire cat stuffed animal key chain sort of thing for my backpack, and my awesome Christmas ears:

which I probably could only wear about thirty minutes because the wind started picking up and literally blew them off my head because walking under Spaceship Earth is like walking through a wind tunnel... so into my bag they went for their own safety.

I also bought a snow-globe for the librarian at my school because she gets me and she's really patient with my special needs students, and I really can't say that same thing for most of the other staff, so I thought she deserved a present.

Then our FP time came for Spaceship Earth...

[to be continued... I don't mean to do shorter entries, I'm just trying to fit photos in a chronological order within the twenty photo limit per post!]

 

[Lyssa]

Chapter 13: Welcome to Your Future

from shopping to Spaceship Earth

Spaceship Earth is probably on the rides I remember best from going to Epcot with my grandparents. My grandpa really liked this ride a lot and I vividly remembered most of the scenes from the ride.

I always thought it was really cool how you got to ride in the "giant golf ball."

Though I married a math teacher and he told me Epcot is actually a geodisic spehere. If you look up Spaceship Earth on wikipedia, this is the more technical description of what it is [and the one Justin prefers "Geometrically, Spaceship Earth is derived from the Class 2 geodesic polyhedron with frequency of division equal to 8. Each face of the polyhedron is divided into three isosceles triangles to form each point. In theory, there are 11,520 total isosceles triangles forming 3840 points. In reality, some of those triangles are partially or fully nonexistent due to supports and doors; there are actually only 11,324 silvered facets, with 954 partial or full flat triangular panels"

[That was the only clear picture I got from the ride...]

Anyways this ride is the same as I remembered, and completely awesome. It's such a classic. Justin also enjoyed it a lot.

Our future was interesting:

[I'm pretty sure it mixed Justin and me up... One I would never be doing math just because, two I look awful in orange]

[Justin looks like he's trying to get the attention of an Uber driver]

It's good to know that Disney and the Jetson's share the same ideas about vehicles of the future.

[I hope in the future I'm coordinated enough to be able to surf]

[I like the pretend this is the future of the kindle, so instead of just reading, you're fully immersed in a book, virtually, at least]

After Spaceship Earth, it was off to Mission Space:

I'm a baby, we rode the green side of Mission Space.

I was very impressed with the pamphlets they had you read before the ride so you were fully aware of the side effects that might occur from riding that ride.

I had never ridden Mission Space before, at all, in any shape or form, as the ride opened at Epcot long after I had visited it last. The ride was okay? I didn't really enjoy it. I wouldn't say it was a bad ride, Justin really enjoyed it, and has hinted at wanting to ride the orange version, though I have informed him that he will be riding that one alone! It's just not my thing? I love roller coasters and crazy rides, but even the green version of MS made me sort of nauseous and sick, though I did enjoy the cute little girl in our spaceship, who was riding with her dad, and really thought the ride was real, and was making sure we all did our jobs as the ride progressed. I was the pilot, and Justin was the navigator.

I think when Justin and I have kids, if we're lucky enough to have kids [long story sort, I had uterine cancer in 2014, they caught it early, but I needed a full hysterectomy to prevent it from spreading, so we're unable to have kids, we have a frozen embryo that we created before the surgery, but only one out of the ten embryos made it to blastocyst form to be frozen, so we really only have one chance to have a biological child] one of the best parts of Disney will being able to see Disney from behind their eyes and how in love with all the magic they are and I can't wait for that because seeing the pure happiness and joy within all the children's eyes, who we saw at Disney, just made me so happy that they were experiencing the magic.


After MS, it was time to start traveling around the world in way less than 80 days.

We started at Mexico.

We walked on to Gran Fiesta Tour.

I remember riding the Gran Fiesta with my nana because she loved the ride. So I guess I enjoyed it for nostalgia's sake?

I don't remember enough about the ride from riding it when I was little to really say much about it.

Though a quick google search tells me it used to be a ride called "El Rio de Tiempo" or The River of Time, and that ride was more focused on Mexico's history, so I think that's probably the version I had seen.

It was basically a shorter and Mexican themed It's a Small World. It's a good time waster, but I don't think I would wait more than 10 minutes for it.

After Mexico, we continued our trek around the world.