Day 5 of our winter break vacation was all about Epcot. This park had me a bit nervous because I knew how freaking large it was. And we only had one day to make the most of it. Animal Kingdom might be technically bigger, but when it comes to actual walking paths and getting around, Epcot is bigger. At least in my opinion. With the attractions spread apart the way they are and then having the park split into two parts, it's just huge.
And now there is a lot of construction in the way and things are blocked off and you have to walk all around it - causing longer walking distances.
We once again purchased Genie+ for our day. This time though, Doug and I decided to tag team getting lightning lane reservations. We both had the Disney app and our accounts are linked. Due to the popularity of new Guardians of Galaxy ride and with it not having a standby line (virtual queue reservations only) and with the Ratatouille ride being so popular as well, we wanted to make sure we were going to be covered. Right at 7AM, I was going to go for the individual lightning lane reservations for Guardians and Doug was going to get the regular lightning lane reservations for the Ratatouille ride. I grabbed the individual lightning lane for early in the morning, and Doug got Ratatouille for 1:30PM. He immediately then tried to see if we could even get into the virtual queue for Guardians (allowing us to possibly getting to ride it twice), but all the slots were already gone. Like 3 minutes later. I'm telling you - this whole Genie+/virtual queue thing is just insane.
Being at a Magic Kingdom hotel, we were able to get on the MK monorail and then transfer to the Epcot monorail to get to the park. Epcot is the latest opening park, so it opened at 9AM and early entry was 8:30AM. That was nice!
Briana had told me months before going to Disney that she wanted to
DisneyBound. I wanted her to be comfortable navigating the park, so I helped her put together an outfit that looked cute but was also easy to walk and ride rides in. She wanted to dress as Esmeralda from Hercules.
She looked very cute...
Views from the monorail...
The above picture is the construction of the new Moana section of the park.
We arrived at Epcot...
We took a couple of quick photos in front of Spaceship Earth and then started booking it to our destination...
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out strategy for Epcot. I had hope to ride every ride we wanted to during our visit.
This is how our day went...
Test Track
Guardians Of The Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind
Spaceship Earth
Living With The Land
Coral Reef Restaurant
Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
Soarin’ Around The World
Journey Into Imagination With Figment
*Back To Hotel Break*
Le Chef’s France Restaurant
World Showcase (Shopping)
Gran Fiesta Tour With Three Caballeros (Mexico)
In the end, we rode a lot of rides and were quite successful. But I was not able to get us on the Frozen ride.
Why? Because during this crazy, overly crowded week - we had to make some difficult choices. This being one of them. We were good to go with Guardians and Ratatouille. The next two most popular rides are Frozen and Test Track. We needed to early entry one of them. Frozen is a bit more popular than Test Track, but they both have very long standby lines during the day - and into evening - and lightning lanes eventually sell out. I originally decided on Frozen and that is where we headed. But, I knew Briana really, really, really wanted to do Test Track. We were almost to Frozen and I decided to change it up. I said let's do Test Track first and Bri was so happy.
It took about 10 minutes to get to the pre-show (where you design your car). There was an employee suggesting people hop in the single rider line with no wait, but if you do that, you skip the designing part and Bri didn't want to do that. Plus, your party doesn't ride together...
"Test Track"...
Designing the car...
On the ride, Doug was acting silly with Briana (he is seriously not scared on this ride) and of course, the camera snapped him in a crazy pose once again...
He was seriously getting frustrated with how these cameras kept catching him. LOL!
Good times!!
The whole Test Track experience took us about 25 minutes or so and by the time we got out, the standby for the Frozen ride was like 90 minutes long. We had a reservations for Guardians, so that wasn't going to work. We couldn't get a second lightning lane reservation until 11:00AM (two hours after park opening) because we were already booked for Ratatouille. I hoped with having to wait for a lightning lane opportunity we could eventually snag a good time, but it never happened. I even thought about waiting in the standby line later in the day, but the line continued to be incredibly long until the park closed.
I would have liked to have ridden Frozen, but I don't regret my choice. Bri was so happy doing Test Track that I was fine skipping it.
We had a little time before Guardians and we were trying to decide what to do. I really wanted to ride Soarin' and Doug suggested Mission Space. The times on our apps showed they were both doable. We chose Soarin' (we probably should have gone with Mission Space). By the time we walked over to Land Pavilion, the freaking standby time for Soarin' jumped from 20 minutes to 60 minutes again. Very frustrating.
We decided to just head over to "Guardians Of The Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind" ride (Wonders of Xandar Pavilion)...
Yes, this is a rollercoaster ride. I read as much as I could about it with trying to spoil it for myself. I did read there weren't any drops and it was very fast but pretty smooth. And I read it was totally worth doing. I was super nervous, but I took the plunge anyway - and I am SO glad I did. It was freaking AWESOME! Bri said it was her favorite ride of the whole trip.
There is a pre-show...
And then you get on the ride...
Doug sat in the front row with Bri. I sat next to a man on his own. I warned him that I yell a lot on rollercoasters and he just laughed and said it was fine.
This ride whips you around forward, backward, rotates - the whole shebang. There are no big drops and it is surprisingly smooth for how fast it goes. Smoother than Space Mountain. As you are flying and spinning through dark space, you are also serenaded by an 80's tune (there are 6 that are in rotation). We got "Conga" for our ride. It was pretty hilarious to be "hurling through space" listening to Gloria Estefan.
You can see me and Bri and our hair whipping around...
The guy next to me was just chill and smiling. Seriously - I never look that good in a capture!
When we got off the ride, my equilibrium was a bit off. No wonder - I was rotating in the dark all over the place. I was ok, but I did feel kind of rocky for a few minutes.
It was so good though. Really good.
After riding a crazy rollercoaster, it was time to take things down a notch. I needed a quieter, gentler ride. The standby line for "Spaceship Earth" wasn't too bad, so we went on that ride next...
We had a lunch reservation for the Coral Reef Restaurant for 11:45AM, but we still had enough time for one more ride before then.
Walking over to the The Land Pavilion...
Next up was "Living With The Land"...
While we stood in the standby line, it was time to book our our next lightning lane reservation. Soarin' was the one of the rides I really wanted to go on, so we grabbed reservations for around 2PM. Nice!
"Living With The Land" (one of my favorites)...
It was then finally time to head to lunch at the Coral Reef Restaurant in The Seas Pavilion...
Part 2 of our Epcot day - next...
Day 5 of our winter break vacation was all about Epcot. This park had me a bit nervous because I knew how freaking large it was. And we only had one day to make the most of it. Animal Kingdom might be technically bigger, but when it comes to actual walking paths and getting around, Epcot is bigger. At least in my opinion. With the attractions spread apart the way they are and then having the park split into two parts, it's just huge.
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