Adrian Mateljan

EPCOT

Sunday 24th May 2009 - Epcot

Day one saw us off to Epcot - the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow - the largest of the Disney World parks. We left early to catch the morning “Magic Hour” - where the park opens an hour earlier for people staying in Disney World accommadation.

First up, Future World starting with Spaceship Earth (which you can see the outside of in the photo.) A relaxing ride through history portrayed by animatronics and narrated by (because we chose UK as our home, I’m sure) Judi Dench. This first part was interesting, but not awe inspiring. The second part, however, was a riot. Using the interactive display we had the chance to predict the future by nominating areas of interest to us. This resulted in a cartoon presentation of what the future might be like, complete with cut outs of our heads (from a previously taken photo near the start) which was hilarious.

We then moved on to the Test Track, a simulated vehicle test course. This ride got off to a slow and somewhat lame start (testing suspension, breaking - with and without ABS, extremes of temperature and handling) but the “speed test” at the end made for an exhilarating finale.

Next up was Mission: Space, a simulated journey from Earth to Mars. We chose the advanced training (orange track) - of course - for the full experience. This was quite cool. Unfortunately the confined space and centripetal forces (to simulate taking off, acceleration, landing etc) unsettled Lou for the rest of the morning.

Taking a rest we ended up buying hats from one of the Disney “Mouse Gear” stores and walking around Innoventions where we picked up our Kim Possible “Team Possible” mission - more on that later.

Next stop was the Univerity of Energy - which was fun. The ride itself was very impressive (the whole “cinema” moved) as was the prehistoric area at the start. Afterwards we had a brief walk through the butterly garden.

By this time we were starting to get hungry so we entered the World Showcase. Our Kim Possible “Team Possible” mission required us to rendevous in Norway, so we skipped Mexico. The mission was a bit more convoluted than we had expected and had us moving all over Norway looking for Camille Leon. While fun to start with, complete with Kimmunicator and assistance from Wade, Kim and Ron, it did start to get old pretty fast. Hence we did not take up the option for further missions. We were ravenous by now - and so continued on past Germany, Italy and the American Adventure to have lunch at Japan at Teppan Edo, teppanyaki style - which was very good.

After lunch we browsed the stores and bazaars of Japan and Morocco before visiting a patisserie in France (too much mousse!) and stopping for Lou to smell the scent gardens. We skipped the United Kingdom and continued on to Canada to watch O Canada! which was more a tourism infomercial than anything else - but still managed to be entertaining. The 360 degree cinema was not enough to convince Lou that we didn’t need to revisit Canada sometime in the future…

Back to Future World and Honey, I Shrank the Audience - which I think we saw five years ago in Disneyland, Anaheim. Unfortunately the 3D was mostly fuzzy (bad glasses?) and the pre-show was blatant Kodak advertising which I thought was unnecessary. Otherwise entertaining.

By this time we were getting pretty tired on our feet, so The Seas With Nemo and Friends, while nothing special, gave us a chance to sit down. We also sat in on Turtle Talk With Crush, which was awesome. Watching Crush interact with the kids in the audience - asking and answering questions - has to be seen to be believed.

We finished up by visiting the Sea Base Alpha Gift Shop where we picked up a mug and shirt (for Lou) with the seagulls from Finding Nemo chanting Mine! Mine! Mine! before heading back to the resort. In the end we missed a number of the attractions - Soarin’ because we had done this five years ago at Disney’s California Adventure, Anaheim. Maelstrom (in Norway) and the American Adventure due to lack of planning. We also didn’t stay long enough for the IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth fireworks - so we have a number of things to see should we return.

Being completely exhausted, we ordered in pizza and, with the intention of not missing anything the following day, I planned out our day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios…

To be continued…

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.