Starting from the time we pulled in, I was struck by many of the details that Disney doesn’t let slide. For example, we pulled into Fort Wilderness and pulled to a security booth and Trista at the bench right behind me and visible to the security guard, who immediately looked up to her and said, “Well, Hello Princess!” This was to be the case most of the places that we went during our stay.
I finished the work that I had due at 2am and slept quick and when we woke up this morning Levi already had his Mickey hat on with his PJs. He was ready to roll! We grabbed a quick bite and got dressed and headed out to Epcot. I took a picture of the kids in their Mickey gear before we headed out. Levi was adamant about one thing. “I don’t want to meet any princesses! Just MOUSES!”
We made the short walk up to the bus stop and there was another couple there. My kids immediately engaged the woman in conversation (she didn’t seem to mind) and before I knew it, my kids were eating strawberries out of her cup! I told them to stop and she said, “It really is fine, happy to share!” I don’t know how they do it, it is a good thing that they are cute and apparently other people think so, too. (watch for this theme over our time in Disney, it’s pretty cute).
Right after we entered the park, we were able to meet Pluto. Trista LOVES dogs, so this was pretty exciting!
We got to Epcot very shortly after they opened. At this point we had only one meal and one fast past reservation (took us four days to really get the hang of it). We had a fast pass at 10 something and had heard that Test Track was really cool, but often had long waits and no fast passes were available. The app said it had a 40-minute wait, so we headed over there for our first ride. We had no idea what it was about or what to expect, but as we told the kids, we are going to do as much as we can, we are going to try to avoid long waits, just know that we will have fun with whatever we do, whenever we do it. We walked through the line that had all kinds of cool stuff about how they design cars at Chevrolet. The kids kept asking, “Is this the ride?”
“No, this is the line!”
Finally, we were ushered into a room that had touch screens and 2-3 people assigned to a touch screen. Levi and I had one and John and Trista had another and we had four minutes to design our own car. It was cool, you started out drawing a line as the rough shape and then it easily walked you through shape and size and tires and colors and bling and accessories. Levi made a big, mean, red truck and Trista made a tiny little purple car covered in sparkles. The kids again kept asking, “Is this the ride?”
“Um. We don’t really know. It keeps saying we are going to test drive our cars, but we have no idea what that means.”
Eventually, another set of doors opened, and we got into a ride car. This was probably the first “real” ride that Levi has been big enough to go on. The ride really was about testing out a car, we skidded on ice, swerved to avoid an oncoming truck, tested acceleration through the enclosed part of the ride before busting outside into a full-on roller coaster. When we got on, Levi sat down, and we pulled down the lap bar and he sat with his hands folded – fingers interlaced – in his lap, exactly the way you would want a 4-year-old boy to sit in a church pew. What is funny about this, is he kept this pose the entire time, even when we were on the roller coaster part, his hair was blowing, his head was flying around the curves, he was giggling and his hands were still perfectly folded in his lap! This became Levi’s ride pose and he sat this way on every ride, every time, until he caught on to holding your hands up on roller coasters, then it was hands folded in lap or hands in the air!
From there we made our way over to Soarin’, the ride we had a fast pass for. In this ride, you sit in a seat and it comes up off the ground and you fly all around the world into a big omnimax screen. They have a breeze blowing to make it feel authentic and they even blow in very subtle scents, like grass when you fly over Africa and spices when you fly through an Indian marketplace. The kids loved it until the very end, you fly into fireworks and Levi grabbed onto me. This ride was so realistic, he thought we were going to get burned by the fireworks!
At this point, it was time for lunch. We had not yet activated our meal plan and were completely clueless about the whole thing. Also, we had heard that Disney is the best place to be gluten free, but the menu boards we saw showed a lot of pizza and pasta and sandwiches.
Now, remember when we arrived, and we got all of those cheesy buttons. We decided to wear them and we were sure glad we did. Not only was it fun to have people wish the kids a Happy Birthday and us a Happy Anniversary everywhere we went (we even encountered a couple celebrating 63 years of marriage!), but the best pin of all was the magical orange pin. It says, ‘First Visit’. Oh, the magic this pin holds. You can ask all the stupid questions you want and people are so patient and helpful all because of the magical orange pin! (You even get some free stuff, too) We found an employee and asked her all of our questions and she answered them. She suggested the ‘Grill’ would be a good place to find gluten free options. The kids knew what they wanted, and it was right next to the grill. John walked up first to the grill and said, “I can’t have gluten, can you please tell me what I can have here?”
The lady said, “Everything! Everything at this station is gluten free!” *bliss*
John had salmon with a chutney and cheesy gluten free grits and I had a thick, juicy pork chop with barbecue sauce, sautéed green beans and mashed potatoes. This is Disney’s idea of “quick service”. Amazing. (Despite some frustrations with the dining plan that later arose, it really was awesome).
John stayed with Levi and I stayed with Trista, the boys went to pay, and Trista and I were filling drinks. I looked at John, who was balancing a tray full of food and drink, and he was looking around urgently because he lost Levi. We are standing in a pretty wide-open food court and there aren’t a lot of places to hide, but Levi is gone. Luckily, I had a slightly different vantage point and was able to locate Levi quickly. Can you find Levi?
Right next to lunch was a ride that we could see had no wait, so we decided to get right on it. I really don’t remember what it was called, but it was the most boring ride ever. It talked about all of the produce that Disney grows, and you ride through the greenhouses, you can even sign up to go on an in-depth tour of the whole process. At least the boat ride was air conditioned and made for a nice nap. There were some really cool plants to see, but I definitely would not stand in a line for this one. At one point they talked about the Gobi Desert and Trista and I had just been looking at that for a social studies project and it was a nice tie in.
After that, we made our way over to Mission Space, we had to do the green (easy) mission because Levi wasn’t tall enough for the other one. Short wait and each person got assigned a job, Navigator, Commander, Pilot, Engineer and were assigned buttons to push. This ride was so fun and Trista REALLY wanted to do the yellow mission. Despite all the warnings and chances to opt out, I agreed to do it with her and the boys did green again. Not gonna lie, yellow was no joke and I am not as young as I once was! Trista wanted to go again, I said, “Nope” and John said, “Two greens was all I can manage!”
I promise not to detail every ride, here are the highlights from the rest of the day:
There is a place where you can sample sodas from around the world, it is air conditioned and kind of fun. Some were tasty, some were nasty, but it was still cool. Because of our celebration pins, they told us we could get free slushes, which we went back later to claim.
We had a lot of fun over in the area where they had Nemo – Trista loved squawking with the sea gulls! Turtle Talk was really funny (and air conditioned – Thanks, Beth!) We even saw Manatees!
Epcot is really about eating your way around the world, it is a long walk that makes a big loop and it is all outside. Somehow, John and I both always thought that Epcot was much more of an inside thing. It is not and the ‘feels like’ temp according to our weather apps was 103, aka center of hell. Given the weather and the fact that walking around seeing all of the things that we can’t eat isn’t fun, we pretty much skipped all that nonsense. We did walk far enough to get to the Frozen ride. OY. It felt like it was about 6 miles around this loop and it had a 70-minute wait (this was not one of those times when they overestimated the wait time). It was a fun ride, but if it weren’t for Trista, it wouldn’t have been worth the wait.
We headed back for our slushes and met Daisy along the way.
When we got back toward the center of things, there was a dance party happening with Nick and Judy from Zootopia. The kids jumped right in and were having a hard time following the dance steps. John, the luckiest man on earth because my phone wouldn’t do video, jumped right in and danced with the kids!
We grabbed our slushes and headed over to the ride in the big Epcot globe on our way out. On this ride, there are mannequins talking about how communication has evolved from hieroglyphics to modern internet and everything in between. Levi rode most of this ride, in his ride pose, facing his lap. I asked him why he wasn’t looking at the things and he said, “Because I don’t like them.”
I kind of have a thing with dolls. I hate them. I hate Barbies and baby dolls with hard plastic faces. Hate them a lot. I don’t mind the mannequins and things that they have at Disney – although I would never have such a thing in my house. Apparently, I have passed this on to my kids and they have sort of grouped some of the Disney things into this category. Stay tuned for the small world ride in a couple of days…
At Fort Wilderness, there is a campfire sing-along and s’mores every night with Chip and Dale. I apparently struggle with this and more than once have been caught saying, “They have s’mores with Chippendales.” There is absolutely no difference in the pronunciation of Chip and Dale and Chippendale, but suddenly, when I say it and add and s, it becomes inappropriate! I casually said it on the phone, totally unaware, and my mom said, “Uhhhhh. What kind of campfire show are you taking my grandchildren to?”
“OOPS! Chip and DALE! Fuzzy woodland creatures!”
Chip and Dale. Chip and Dale. Practice with me, Chip and Dale!
It was still unbearably hot, we had managed to get to our RV and quickly scarf down a quick bite of food and run over to the campfire. It was a nice sing along, despite the weather, and they called all the birthday kids up and sang to them – which was cool. The kids got to meet Chip, but not Dale (this saga continues on a future day and does not have a happy ending) and enjoyed a quick smore.
On the way back, we stopped into the shop to pick up our resort cups that allow us to fill drinks anywhere in any resort. They had four colors – red, blue, purple and pink. Our bracelet colors were – Levi – Red, Trista – Blue, Tonya – Purple and John – Gray. Now look back at the cup choices and see how this plays out. Trista didn’t want John to get stuck with pink, so she took purple, I took pink and John got blue. We were so messed up on whose cup was whose the rest of the trip, but were still glad we had different colors. At one point we encountered a newlywed couple who both wanted blue. They were traveling with some other family who said, “Their choice, they have to live with it.” The husband admitted it had gotten confusing and they decided to write their first initial on the lid. Problem was, hers was ‘M’ and his was ‘W’!
We put the kids to bed (not hard) and then I looked through the pictures that were taken in our Memory Maker plan. As I was scrolling, I came across a voicemail from Mickey and Minnie! It said they were so glad we had stopped by to meet them at Epcot and that it was their favorite part of the day. They also said Happy Birthday! It was fun to play it for the kids the next morning!
Unfortunately, in looking through our pictures, I discovered there was a scandal afoot. It is always the unsuspecting, devoted wife. I never saw this coming!
