Beryl, Breakdowns, Beauty and the Bates family - Day Two

[Nimbus]

Previously...
Pre-Trip
Day One - The Journey There

Day Two - Saturday 26th May 2012 - Epcot

After a rather noisy night in the hotel - the walls weren't well soundproofed and the pipework was a bit noisy (how dare other people have showers at 11pm!) - we got up early, as expected. It was around 5:30am when we surfaced and slowly got ready for the day. But first things first - we switched on the kettle because we knew it would take an hour to boil. So, once we'd had a cup of tea and woken up a little, we went down to breakfast just after 7am.

Like the last couple of hotels we've stayed at, the Homewood Suites provided a complimentary buffet breakfast. All you could eat scrambled eggs, sausages, toast, bagels, those small potato cube things, coffee and fruit juice. There were even a couple of waffle makers but, not having seen or used one of these before, we skipped those this morning.

The night before we'd booked the 8 o'clock bus to Disney so that we could get to Epcot at about rope drop. Epcot was the only park recommended for this day and we guessed it would still be busy because this weekend was Memorial Weekend. So after a nice, leisurely breakfast we waited at the front of the hotel for our shuttle bus.

Now, last time (at the Hawthorn Suites) the shuttle buses were a bit of a sore point. The buses themselves looked liked they were going to fall apart and they'd often be full after going to a number of different hotels on the way. However, the shuttle buses from the Homewood Suites were much better.

We got on the bus at just after 8am whilst the driver went to get a cup of coffee from our hotel. We were the only ones on the bus. The bus then went to just Embassy Suites across Int'l Drive before heading off to Epcot. It took just 20 minutes from leaving our hotel to getting to stop number 42 at Epcot's bus drop-off area - and we didn't have to pay for parking or get the little trolley from the car park to the entrance.

BTW, here's a piccy of the place where the bus parked every time:



Yes, I took a picture of the bus car park (bus lot). It's the same place that's used by a number of resort buses.

From there we headed through the bag check area and to the entrance. There was a biggish crowd waiting (by which I mean there were a lot of people not that the people were big) as I think you can see in this photo:



We joined a queue waiting for the turnstiles to open. At 8:45am, there was a brief announcement welcoming us all to Epcot, a few paper streamers were blasted into the sky above us, and then they started letting in the mass of people.

Of course, once inside, everyone started heading towards the Land. We however stopped for a while to get Daisy's autograph and her picture:



She was just inside the entrance and to the right. After that, we joined the crowds and headed for Soarin'. Once at the entrance in the Land pavilion, we obtained some fastpasses with a return time of about 10:30am onwards. This was at 9am (they let us into the park just after 8:45am, remember?). Because the standby queue had a short time, we also decided to go and queue up and do the ride now. This turned out to be a fortuitous idea... but we'll get to that later.

After waiting 15 to 20 mins we rode on Soarin' but sadly on row 3 at the back. So we saw all the other people's dangling feet. But we did smell the pine trees and the oranges! It's quite a good ride but I still think the scene transitions are a bit abrupt.

We then wandered over to Living with the Land. The queue here moved quite quickly and I can only assume they now have many more boats to fill with people. I remember the queue used to move a lot slower years ago. Again, it's an decent little boat ride that goes out into the greenhouse at the back of the Land pavilion so you get to see what weird and wonderful things Epcot is growing. Plus it's a chance to rest your legs! We also went to see the Circle of Life mini-movie upstairs. The music and film are good, but it's just seems a little ironic that it preaches the evils of how much energy and resources humans waste whilst you're sat in a theme park consuming lots of energy and resources. Talking of going upstairs, the stairs - especially when the escalators weren't working - tended to be a bit of a bottleneck in the busy Land.

By this time, we felt in the need of a break. So we got some drinks from the Sunshine Seasons food court and sat down. It was about 10:30 by now and I decided to head to Mission Space to get some fastpasses first before we headed onto Soarin' again. So off I trot not quite appreciating how far away Mission Space was from the Land, especially now the park had started to get busier and the day hotter. Of course, when I got there... well, there was good news and bad news. The bad news was that they weren't doing fastpasses for the ride. The good news was that the reason they weren't issuing FPs was because there was only a 5-minute wait. So I walked back to the Land, sweating as I went. Yep, it was hot.

I rejoined the others and we entered the fastpass queue for Soarin'. For some reason though, even the queue for Soarin' was massive. This wasn't going to be particularly 'fast'. Then we discovered the reason - over the tannoy a CM announced that the ride had broken down and they didn't know how long it would take to fix it. This was the first of our breakdowns.

Anyway, we waited for a while, shuffling up the long queue every now and again when other people ahead of us decided to leave. But after another similar announcement we decided to give up and left the queue. It might have taken them another hour or more to fix and the fastpass queue was going to take 30mins anyway. On the way out I noticed that the posted standby wait time was 200 minutes!

Instead we decided to finally leave the Land and stroll over to Mission Space. I was slightly worried that the queue would've dramatically increased since I'd last looked but, thankfully, it was still down as 5 minutes. This was for the green, "less intense" version. The orange version had a wait of 10 minutes. For us the ride was pretty much walk on. We chose our assignments (I wanted to be Engineer!) and were soon off to Mars! Every time we seem to crash though. You'd think that by now they would've fixed that. Plus, the 3-month hypersleep meant that we'd missed our return flight back home to the UK. Pity.

After that, we tried to find the Club Cool place that dispenses free coke but failed (we found it later). Giving up for now, we decided to head into the other half of Epcot and journey around World Showcase. To many, this is just a pointless leg-tiring expanse of park lacking any decent rides but I kind of enjoy it - though it is tiring to walk around it.

First we marched on over to Mexico...



Hannah got a Duffy-on-a-stick here, obtained her first stamp and began colouring it in. She decided she'd colour a bit of Duffy at each Kidcot station around the world as we went. This year, the CMs also drew a little flag of their country on the back of the Duffy, just to add to the excitement.

In Mexico we gazed at the glass ornaments and other stalls and did the "Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros" ride. It's like a Mexican "it's a small world" but with shorter queues.

Back out of the dark and airconditioned Mexico pavilion, Norway was next. Where, as we entered a building, a Viking attacked!



Don't worry, it's just a dressed up dummy inside that wooden Stave church in the Norway section. We also wanted to go on the Maelstrom ride (just, well, because it's there) but the queue was out of the building. And, for some reason, the FPs machines weren't working. The standby wait time said just 25 minutes but it looked longer than that. So, after Hannah coloured in a bit more of Duffy and got her Norway stamp, we carried on...

...Into China, where Hannah spotted some panda bushes:



We also looked in the large shop there, which had quite a lot of cute panda related things. And, of course, Hannah did a little more of her Duffy bear and got her stamp and name written in Chinese (apparently she's "Squiggle Dash Curvy line" in chinese). We briefly considered eating here in China but, for some reason, decided to continue on.

Next was that Outpost area, which sort of vaguely represents Africa (or something). It was gone lunchtime by now, so we grabbed some hotdogs and 'chips' (= crisps) to eat at this place:



For some reason the service here was very slow and we had to wait ages for our hotdogs. There was no indoor seating either - in fact there wasn't much seating generally - so we parked our bottoms on some seats at a table across the pathway. There were some bongo drums nearby so we sat and listened to kids and somewhat tipsy folk drinking their way around the World bash away on the drums. BTW, it was hot today and not much of a breeze so it would be been more pleasant somewhere airconned.

Once we had eaten, we wandered on towards Germany (not much there) and Italy, where we saw these women singing and dancing and trying to get the hot and sweaty crowd to join in.



Italy looks very nice but there's not much there other than some restaurants. I'm sure they're good but we'd just eaten.

Next we came to the American part of the World Showcase. I was hot and a bit tired by now so wanted to sit down somewhere. We first tried the Liberty Inn but then decided to go and watch the American Adventure indoor show. I think I got this mixed up with the Hall of Presidents at MK because it was different to how I remembered it. The animatronics were very impressive - they were so good that Hannah couldn't work out whether they were real people or not. She was so impressed by this show that she fell asleep!

Afterwards, it was onwards to Japan, one of my favourite parts of the World Showcase. We like the shop there. Plus the gallery/museumy room at the back was a wonderful place to sit for a while - it was very cool and quiet. The drummers were there again at the front of Japan - they always seem to be there!

Morocco was next and then France, where we Hannah and I decided to get a big ice-cream each. Michelle helped the two of us out. We sat and watched a man balancing on a tower of chairs whilst racing to keep the ice cream from melting into puddles on the floor. I think we mostly succeeded. Then Hannah went and met Marie (from the Aristocats?):



As we continued on towards the UK, I took a shot of the International Gateway bit between France and the UK (perhaps they should call this the Channel?). I'm not sure why. This is the other entrance into Epcot if you're staying in a nearby resort - or you can get the boat to hop to Hollywood Studios.



In the not-very-convincing-looking UK pavilion, we went to get the penultimate stamp for Hannah's Duffy-on-a-stick and saw Tigger and Pooh. These had to be the best characters we saw on our whole holiday. They were messing around, trying to tickle Hannah and made my daughter giggle so much!



There was a band playing in the bandstand in the gardens area as well. We listened to them for a short while before carrying on towards Canada. Here, we trekked through the perilous mountains to view the waterfall (Ooo!) and Hannah finished off her Duffy (aaah!), getting a high-five from the CM for obtaining all the stamps.

As we wandered out of the World Showcase area, we noticed something being constructed along a walkway just before the entrance to the Future World area. There we saw this being shaped:



It's a sandsculpture of Disney/Pixar's latest movie - Brave (coming to a cinema near you soon). The sculpture was excellent - very detailed and much larger than that picture shows. Unfortunately, there was a woman trying to take a picture of it and she stood right across the other side of the pathway, taking ages whilst tutting and complaining every time someone walked into her view. Well, next time lady, either take the photo more quickly or don't stand where people have to walk in front of you to get past!

They were building other Brave related stuff around here but we couldn't see it... yet. So, you'll have to wait until a later part of this trippy for a 'review' of that.

At this point, Hannah wanted to go and see Duffy Bear, Mickey's own teddy. So, via a couple of shops near the lagoon, we wandered over to see the Duffster and get his autograph, even though we already have it from 2010. I don't think he had a long queue...



On walking back into Future World, we finally found Club Cool. I can report that the floor was still sticky in here and the drinks you can try were still fizzy. Mezzo Mix may be my favourite - probably because it's the most like regular Coke. Club Cool can be found to the right of the big impressive fountain in Future World, with your back to the Big Ball and the entrance...



You can see it on the right in the above photo.

With bubbles in our stomachs, we went on Mission Space again - the green version because the orange version was not a good idea at this point. Again, it was a walk on (and the more intense version was just a 5 or 10 min wait). It's surprising that Maelstrom had a 30 min wait or so and yet Mission Space was just 5 minutes.

Hunger called and, as it was early evening by now, we decided to have some dinner in the Electric Umbrella. I had the angus burger, Michelle had the caesar chicken salad and Hannah had the chicken wrap. My burger was quite nice but nothing special. We did notice that Disney's quick service restaurants were a lot quieter at tea time than at lunch - although the service tended to be a bit slow.

After eating, we browsed through the shops and then went on the wonderful Spaceship Earth. Well, you have to. It's the iconic ride at Epcot. And, by this time, the queue was short (though, shockingly, there was a queue!). We also did some of the activities at the end of the ride, such as the reaction game and the energy shuffle board thing. I think Hannah and I put too much energy into playing this because by the end we were pooped. Then again, it was about 8 o'clock by this point and it had been a long day - we'd been here for over 11 hours - and it was only our first full day.

Our shuttle bus back to the hotel was due at half eight so we stumbled to the exit and to the number 42 bus stop. Before 8:30pm the bus had arrived and we got on - there were very few other people onboard so we easily got a seat. The bus back was reasonably quick as well (and easier than driving). Within 30 minutes we were back at the hotel, after dropping off at Floridays on the very southern part of International Drive. I think Hannah had fallen asleep so we had to wake her as we entered the hotel at about 9pm. Although it wasn't late, we were still tired, jetlagged and therefore decided to retire for the day.

Today, we'd only really managed to do the Land Pavilion and the World Showcase areas of Epcot. Another trip to this park was therefore on the cards to do the rest of Future World and Soarin' again (assuming it didn't breakdown again).

Food Score: 5/10. The hotdog and burger were ok but nothing special.

Favourite Attraction: Probably 'Mission Space'.

Next…
Day Three – Swimming and Shopping

[RachelM]

Sounds like a good day. I have yet to find club cool, on a mission of it this year though.

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by RachelM

Sounds like a good day. I have yet to find club cool, on a mission of it this year though.

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As mentioned above, after you've entered the park and gone around the Big Ball (Spaceship Earth) keep going straight up the middle of Future World until to reach the big fountain. Then head around the right-hand side of this and Club Cool is about there.

I always get confused which side its on!

[Juliemack]

Definitely my kind of day, love to just stroll round World Showcase wandering in and out of the shops/attractions...we would have hopped across to HS probably somewhere in the middle

[Guest]

Sounds like you had a lovely full first day, i love walking round Epcot but it is so tiring you all must have fell into bed after 11hrs on your first full day

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by pip123

Sounds like you had a lovely full first day, i love walking round Epcot but it is so tiring you all must have fell into bed after 11hrs on your first full day

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I should point out there was quite of bit of sitting down involved. But, yes, it was a longer day than we really should have done. All our days at Disney were a bit too long (my own fault because I always wanted to get the earlier bus).

For us, World Showcase takes quite a long time to get around. We spent more than 5 hours looking around there and that was without doing many of the 'shows' and attractions there.

[mick]

Good day had by all

[Guest]

Wow you packed a lot in on your first day.We love the ride in mexico always come of it saying lets go back to mexico next year then we end up booking florida again.
Claire

[anniebee65]

Busy, busy day, but a good un! We love spaceship earth too

[nickymouse66]

Great report so far! Looking forward to the rest of it

We love EPCOT