2018-01-01: New Year’s Day at Epcot

We woke up to some much colder weather this morning. It was rainy and around 45F or 7C which is much colder than we were prepared for. 2018 was not starting off very good weather-wise. We got dressed and headed down to the Contempo Cafe in the hotel for some breakfast. After breakfast, we headed to the monorail and headed to Epcot. There are two monorail lines. One that serves a few of the resorts and Magic Kingdom, and another that goes to Epcot. So, we had to change monorails at the Ticket and Transportation Center. About 10 minutes later, we arrived at Epcot.

The line to get into Epcot was a lot larger than we expected. There was a security station with metal detectors and bag check stations. Going to the Magic Kingdom, we go through a similar security station in the hotel before we board the monorail, or along the walkway between the hotel and Magic Kingdom. We assumed we had already gone through security when we boarded the monorail, but since we switched lines at the ticket center, we had to go through security aarough the line and made our way into the park at around 9:15am.

The first sight you see is the Spaceship Earth dome which is impressive. It’s an 18 storey geodesic dome. There was a popular ride called Test Track that we didn’t have a FastPass for so we headed over there first. It’s a ride where you get to design a car and then take a test drive on a test track. When we arrived at the ride, they informed us that due to the weather the ride was temporarily closed. They can’t run the test track while it’s raining. We decided to give it a try later in the day once the rain had stopped.

We headed next door to the Mission: Space ride instead. It was about time for our FastPass at that ride. We had to wait a couple of minutes once we arrived before we could enter, but we were quickly on our way onto the ride. It was a pretty awesome ride! They simulate a launch of a rocket with you as the pilot, commander, engineer, or navigator as you travel to Mars. You could definitely feel the G-forces during the launch and the descent to Mars. We all really enjoyed it except for Linda. The G-forces didn’t agree with her and she was feeling queasy afterwards. When you exit the ride, you enter an exhibit with different activities related to the ride you could play with.

We continued on our way and entered the Innoventions building. They had a science experiment show called SpectacuLab, a mural you could paint with digital paintbrushes, and an activity where you can make different colours by changing the red, green, and blue colour levels. The kids were called up on stage during the SpectacuLab show to help with a couple of the experiments.

Once we were done at Innoventions, we headed to Spaceship Earth to use our second FastPass for the day. This ride takes you on a journey through time and how technology changed the world throughout time. It started with the cavemen learning to work together, talked about language and writing, through to computers and space travel.

We left Spaceship Earth and headed to The Seas building. We hopped on a ride called The Seas with Nemo & Friends. It was a cute little ride where you followed Nemo and his friends around as Nemo hid from his father. After the ride, you enter an exhibit with an aquarium and information on a variety of sea life.

After exploring the Seas building, we headed next door to The Land building. We grabbed a bite to eat at the Sunshine Seasons restaurant in the building before jumping on the Living with the Land ride. This ride talks about the Earth and how we need to help take care of our planet. It shows how badly we polluted in the past and how we now know that it hurts the Earth and are working to be more in harmony with the planet. It took us on a tour of the Disney greenhouse where they grow their own vegetables and plants for the restaurants in the parks. They also have a aquariums where they farm the fish they serve in the restaurants. They are trying out several different greenhouse methods for research purposes to see which methods work better. After getting off that ride, we headed across the atrium to Soarin’ which was our last FastPass for the day. Soarin’ loads you into a big glider with about 20 of your fellow guests. It raises you into the air and using a large video screen, you soar over some of the world’s sights such as the Great Wall of China, Iguazu Falls, the pyramids of egypt, the Taj Mahal, and the plains of Africa. They pumped scents in at certain points as well so you could smell the dirt in Africa as the elephants tossed it in the air for example. It was really cool. Once we left Soarin’, we saw a video with Simba, Timon, and Pumba about taking care of the planet before heading to the next building. Jim had another conference call so he headed back to the hotel at this point.

We entered the Imagination! building. We hopped on a ride called “Journey into Imagination with Figment”. It tooks us a tour of a lab where an imaginary dragon called Figment is set loose and causes all sorts of problems. He encourages everyone to use their imagination and takes us through a couple of areas where his imagination has run wild. We travel through an upside down house and he messes up the scents room so we end up smelling skunk which was just great. It was a pretty fun ride. Afterwards, they had a play area with a few activities to let you use your imagination.

We left the Imagination! building and headed towards the World Showcase where they have pavilions showcasing different parts of the world. By this time we were all quite cold and very tired of the wet weather. The rain was only supposed to stick around for the morning and it was still with us in the late afternoon. We started with the Mexican pavilion where they showcase the day of the dead and had a bunch of stuff from the new Coco movie. Next was the Norway pavilion where they talk a lot about Frozen and the inspiration for the movie. We continued on to China and caught the end of the Chinese Acrobats show. We couldn’t see very well. They usually do the show outdoors, but it was too cold so they were doing it in the pavilion. The next pavilion was Germany. They had a huge store that we explored that had all kinds of interesting items like Swarovski crystals, German beer, Werther’s caramels, and beer steins.

At this point, we were getting close to our dinner reservation at one of the restaurants in the park. We quickly walked by the pavilions for Italy, USA, Japan, Morocco, France, and the UK. The last pavilion was Canada which we had to check out. It was very Quebec and Rocky Mountains oriented. We watched a short movie in the round that was narrated by Martin Short. He took us on a quick tour of the country and cracked some jokes along the way. After leaving the movie, we made our way to the Coral Reef restaurant which is in the Sea building we visited earlier. Jim joined us again at the restaurant at 7:00pm. There were some issues with the monorail system in the afternoon and it took him an hour to return to the hotel. When he came back to Epcot, the line to enter the monorail at the hotel was lined up all the way down the stairs so he decided to take a cab instead of waiting another hour or so to board the monorail back.

The restaurant was very busy and we waited about 15 minutes before our table was ready. The restaurant is set up on about three tiered levels facing a large aquarium. The aquarium has a variety of fish, sharks, stingrays, and turtles swimming around. It is a seafood restaurant. The adults all had the seafood scampi and the kids had fish and chips. The service was slow, but the food was quite tasty. We didn’t get out of the restaurant until 8:30pm. We made our way to the monorail station and took the monorail back to the hotel. Once back at the hotel, we called it a night.