Day 1: The Bus
We won’t talk about this. It is a boring tale and we had so little sleep that I don’t remember much. We did meet some very nice people that were with us through Fayetteville, NC and Jacksonville, but that’s about it. It honestly wasn’t as bad as we were expecting, but we will never take a bus that far again only due to the fact that we got SO little sleep.
Day 2: The Bus/Pop Century
We arrived in Orlando at about 12:30pm. A very nice gentleman from Tiffany Town cars picked us up from the bus station (which actually wasn’t nearly as scary as the Fayetteville, NC bus station… but that could be because of the masses of security guards around Orlando) and we were off to us northeasterners’ first trip to Publix for some groceries. We had previously used the dining plan with much enjoyment but decided to boycott it this year, so I had only made one lunch reservation at Trails End. We got all kinds of non-perishable food and figured we’d quickly snack our way through the parks.
Our first Florida bug
We were dropped off at Pop, quickly found our room (70s building 10) and went to take a look around and take pictures. Lots of pictures. Then we went to the food court to get our mugs (hate the design, miss the resort specific ones) some hot dogs (well one hot dog and one chili dog) and our first milkshakes of the trip (I vowed to have at least one ice cream every day and milkshakes are easiest to carry.) The picky eater in me was very disappointed to find that the new hot dog buns have some kinda seedy things in them. Unless they’ve been like that for a while and I didn’t get any hot dogs last year, which is entirely possible. But yes, I am a very picky eater and hate bread that crunches, so I ended up eating the hot dog minus the bun… and cheese fries. =) We talked about hitting the MK for Wishes, but we were SO tired that we watched one episode of
The IT Crowd while we ate and crashed.
I was frightened by his fangs. J/k I <3 you, Tramp.
LASER BUNNIES!
Day 3: Epcot
I got up early to take a shower, and went down to the food court to get coffee (they need to get real coffee in WDW for realz) and milk for cereal, and when I got back the boy was still sleeping. So I sat in bed, ate some Cinnamon Life and watched the resort WDW channel even though I 1). don’t like Stacey and 2) downloaded it from Mousebits a year ago and have it on DVD. Once Adam got up, showered and ate, we went down to catch the bus to Epcot. I gotta say, even though it was incredibly busy, we never waited more than 15 minutes for a bus, no matter where we were going to or coming from. The bus system rocks now, and I love that music plays too.
So we got to Epcot around 10:30am and started a photopass card with our first taste of the gorgeous, wandless Spaceship Earth. Then we ran (very glad I brought a knee brace to prevent the hurties before getting home) to get fastpasses for Soarin, and went over to the standby lane of Test Track. It said 20 minutes but it was really almost an hour by the time we got to the preshow. Normally I don’t care at all about waiting in line, but I wanted to make sure we got to Soarin’ in time, so I was kinda nervous. We rode Test Track (Windows Media Player wasn’t working on one of the video screens… very funny) and made it to Soarin’ with half an hour left on our Fastpass time. Yay! Soarin’ was great as always, and we rode with a family whose kids were finally tall enough to go on. The poor kids were terrified, but ended up loving the ride and wanted to go again. Very cute. The rest of the day we pretty much just wandered around and did what came up. We did everything in Future World except The Seas. I still love Ellen’s Energy Adventure even though it’s horribly outdated.
We went on Spaceship Earth 4 or 5 times. I really loved Judy Dench’s voice, but I do agree that the dumbed down version of the dialogue isn’t so great. I think if they’d kept the tone of the original script and used her voice, it would be so much better. And maybe kept the old score. I miss the old Renaissance music. The new AAs amazed both of us though. I loved how easily the scholar teaching math moves, and how the garage you go through even smells like a garage. We laughed like maniacs at the animations at the end of the ride, but both agreed that it does mess with the feeling of the rest of the ride. They should be in Project Tomorrow, not on the ride itself. I will admit though that going down backwards still scares me (the only thing I remember about my first trip as a 6 year old is being absolutely terrified of it) and the video distracted me. So that was a plus. Also, it’s good that it won’t get outdated as quickly as it usually would. But we shall miss thee, Jeremy Irons version.
We walked toward World Showcase and decided to try Beaches and Cream for lunch. That was seriously the best burger I’ve ever had in WDW. That plus a root beer float and I was in heaven. We watched three groups kill off Kitchen Sinks. It’s so cool to watch them make those. If we ever go with at least 4 people in the group, we’re definitely trying one. So we did that and enjoyed walking around the Yacht and Beach clubs.
Then we walked back to World Showcase, seeing some spectacularly horrible spiders in the trees along the way (well I kept walking very quickly after noticing them while Adam, being a man, stopped and took a closer look saying “Come back and look, they’re so gross!” and attempted to take a zoomed-in photo of one on MY poor camera… ew. I should mention that I am not arachnids' biggest fan) and went to find the spot we watched RoE from last year. It turned out to be the little bridge in Italy. So now that we knew where to go, we went off to tour the world. We rode Maelstrom for the first time and were blown away by how much we learned about Norway (that’s… that was sarcasm…) It was pretty silly. But in the shop at the end we met a very nice family who was thinking of moving out to Rhode Island from CA and we discussed the pros and cons for a bit until their kids got bored. We also did Gran Fiesta Tour, which was cute, but again we didn’t learn very much except that Donald is sorta dumb.
After wandering around for a bit, we went and claimed our spot for the IllumiNations. We met some more nice people, and we all sat around and chatted for an hour and a half before the show started. RoE was AMAZING, as usual. It’s still my favorite show in the World. We sat around for a bit before making our way out to the bus to head back and get some sleep.
I found my camera's timer.
Howdy almost-neighbor!
