Awake this morning at 6am, that's more like it! Caught up with the overnight antics of Dorian, she keeps slowing down and building in strength, when we first arrived, she was due to hit over the weekend, now they are saying Monday night/Tuesday.
The plan for today is Epcot, in hindsight going on a Sunday during food and wine was probably a bad idea but we like to do all four parks in the first four days and HS is open at 6am for on site guests tomorrow, so Epcot had to be today.
We arrived at 8:30, I know that the bag check area is small but for the number of guests arriving its far too small and it feels like you are packed in like sardines waiting to get through security, plus it was a hot one today!
We stopped for the obligatory photos in front of Spaceship Earth, the photographer was struggling quite a lot in the heat and the sweat was dripping off him, he was also quite elderly and didn't speak to us, just grunted. I really don't think that he should have been out there in the heat, one of the younger photographers came over to make sure that he was ok, he mumbled that he was and shooed her away, I did feel quite sorry for him.
Popped into Gateway gifts and picked up some Farewell Illuminations ears that I had been lusting after, John also picked up some new sunglasses. We also picked up a food and wine passport and made a mental note of what we would like to sample.
We had a test track FP at 9.30 so headed over, I love this ride so much, just the feeling as you go around the outdoor track at high speed.
It was 10am and we both realised that we were hungry, I was hoping to hold out and not eat so that we could snack around the world but we ended up going to Sunshine Seasons for a 'small' QS breakfast which didn't turn out to be that small. It tasted a lot better than it actually looks here. The French toast was a nice addition. We also have a booking for Le Cellier later so we need to make sure that we are hungry for dinner.
We hopped on the Nemo ride, then sat in the Turtle Talk with Crush, this is so amusing, especially when the kids ask obscure questions. We spent some time in the aquarium and quite a bit of time watching the manatees and then managed to catch the Jammitors show.
The world showcase was now in full swing and we started in Mexico just after midday, the ideal drink to cool me down was a delicious Margarita slushy, three different flavours to choose from, if you can't choose as I couldn't, have all three at once. Strawberry, lime and mango, this went down rather well. We paid OOP for this.
We wandered around the world showcase for a couple of hours, I wonder how many times the Norway troll has been photographed! Years ago, one of our kids headbutted the troll's nose by accident after posing for a photo, I expect that has happened a few times as well!
I love the areas around China and Japan, the China shop does sometimes remind me of a giant QD store! We had a look around the Culture of Cute exhibition and found a rather adorable kettle! We also watched the candy floss flower being created in the Chinese pavilion.
We had been sending lots of WhatsApp messages and photos back to family in the uk keeping them up to date with our travels and our adult niece had us in fits of laughter by trying to recreate Disney rides and sending us the videos. Splash mountain was the funniest which involved her partner throwing a jug of water over her!
Epcot was so busy now, we've been spoilt by having really quiet parks. There were also quite a lot of large groups of people who looked a little worse for wear, I had been warned that weekends are not a good idea when the food and wine festival is on.
We escaped the crowds and sat in the cool for a while and watched the Voices of Liberty, they were brilliant and gave me goose bumps on a few occasions. It was just after three by now and we still hadn't managed to sample any food and wine offerings, dinner was at five so we have certainly failed today. We have planned a few trips to Epcot so hopefully we won't miss out on anything.
We arrived at Le Cellier for our
ADR booking at 5.20, we were hungry now as hadn't eaten anything since our breakfast and I was really looking forward to this. We swapped our desert to have the Canadian cheese soup as a starter instead. This was divine! The pretzel rolls were warm and the salted butter came with maple sugar.
I adore Canadian ice Wine so treated myself to the Ice wine flight, if you like sweet wine I highly recommend this, it's a dessert wine made from grades that are frozen on the vine, all three were delicious but my favourite will always be the Inniskillin Vidal.
We both had the Fillet Mignon, we asked for rare and it was cooked perfectly, oh my, this was delicious, you cant rush it, it has to be eaten slowly so that you can savour the taste.
Le Cellier is a small restaurant and you are quite close to other tables but we had an early booking and it wasn't busy so we had a good experience here.
We sat and watched the Blueberry Grass band playing near the Canada Pavillion for a while then went off to find a bench to watch illuminations from. I absolutely love illuminations, I love the story, the music and the memories that it holds for us. I'm gutted that it is ending but thankful that I get to see it one last time. Tonight is the only night that I had scheduled illuminations in so I was feeling quite emotional before it started!
We sat on a bench near the railings just before Canada and thought that this would be a good spot, but I was wrong. Everyone seemed to pack into this tiny walkway and half of the people there had been drinking all day. As it was dark I switched on the lights on my illuminations ears and stood up from the bench to watch my final illuminations.
I then got a tap on my shoulder by a woman and was asked to turn the lights off as they are blinding her. I took them off instead and carried on trying to watch over the noise and the heads and I could feel myself getting upset, I was also telling myself that I was being absolutely ridiculous! How can a firework show and light up ears make me upset, pull yourself together woman!
Once it was over and the Kelly Coffey 'We Go On' song came on I just burst into tears, I couldn't talk for about 10 minutes without crying, I laugh now but I was genuinely so upset over such a trivial thing! Oh dear...
I had a word with myself and yes we can come back and see Illuminations again before we go, it's a show, it's not the end of the world. I think it was a culmination of events, I love Epcot but today was so hot and busy, everyone seemed to be drunk and then the illuminations 'disaster' tipped me over the emotional edge.
We took a slow walk back to the bus stop, grabbed a large coffee from the Mara at AKL and set the alarm for an extra early start tomorrow as we are off to Galaxies Edge!
I expected more steps again today, my phone tells me we walked 17,135.