Epic Day at EPCOT

We woke up to a visit from the Shades of Green peacocks.  Seriously, where else in Disney do you get to see peacocks right out your window?

Luckily, the three Schneiders who had been sick were feeling much better this morning.  Just in time too, because Rob was starting to feel crappy.  But there was no time for sickness, so we dosed him up with vitamin C and cold medicine.  We had a breakfast reservation to get to!  When we rescheduled our trip, one of the ADRs I was able to grab was a pre-park opening breakfast with Mickey at EPCOT.  

Pre-park opening ADRs are great for families like ours.  We are awake anyway, so it isn't that hard for us to get to a park at 8am, enter before everyone else and have breakfast out of the way before people enter the park.  It's also a great way to snag a photo of your family without a ton of other people in it!

SoG is a quick walk to the Polynesian and the monorail. If EPCOT is your destination, however, you can walk through the Poly to the Transportation and Ticketing Center.  At the TTC you can board a monorail to take you to EPCOT.  I suppose you could also take the monorail around to the TTC, but it's a lot quicker to walk.

One change since our last visit: you now have to go through security at the TTC (and at all resorts) before you board the monorail.  I had not factored that into our travel plans to make our ADR on time so I was feeling stressed.  A fellow passenger on the monorail who was staying at the Poly reassured me that when we got to EPCOT there was a separate entrance for people getting off the monorail, meaning we wouldn't have to go through EPCOT security.  

Ryan needs his coffee.

When the monorail arrived at EPCOT I found out that guy didn't know what he was talking about and we were stuck in a LOOOONG security line to get into the park.  Grrr.  I hate running late more than anything in the world.  Once we got through security, we found the line for early entrance to the park and we were in!  

We are pretty baller, so Tinkerbell was there to greet us.

Official photo accomplished, we booked it over the The Land pavilion for our breakfast with the Main Mouse!

I see Mickey!

This was a new restaurant for us.  If you aren't familiar, the Garden Grill is a rotating restaurant and it turns through the attraction Living with the Land.  LwtL is one of our favorite rides. I was looking forward to seeing part of it from another perspective.  Plus, you get to meet Mickey in his farmer clothes!

Rotating through the attraction.

Once we were seated, our waitress came and took our drink order.  She also brought our pan of gooey-gooey cinnamon rolls.  This was almost like a cinnamon roll monkey bread, because of the way it pulled apart.  It was delicious.  I guess I should mention that Garden Grill is an all-you-care-to-eat restaurant.  Unlike a buffet, it is a set menu.  First the cinnamon rolls, then a family size skillet of eggs, breakfast meats, and Mickey waffles.  

Cinnamon rolls in place, the characters began to roll in.  We met Chip, Pluto, Dale, and the Big Cheese. 

The character meeting process took about 20 minutes.  This is where I have a major critique of this experience.  While we were waiting for the characters, all we had to eat was the cinnamon rolls.  Perhaps it's my fault, we normally eat breakfast at 8am, our reservation was at 8:30 and we were 5 minutes late.  It was probably 8:45 before we were sitting down.  We were hungry!  The cinnamon rolls were good, but we all started to feel a sugar rush.  Plus, there were long periods of time between the characters.  It would have been nice to eat our breakfast while we were waiting.

Once all the characters had visited, our waitress brought our skillet and disappeared again.  There was no butter, so Rob and the kids were waiting to start their waffles (I just ate them without butter, with syrup you can't even tell).  It took about 10 minutes for her to resurface with the check and we finally asked for our butter.  

The bottom line: the food was ok, skillet was nothing special but the cinnamon rolls were great; character interaction was great, and we love seeing Mickey in his overalls; location and atmosphere were neat.  But due to the slow process, I don't think we will do this meal again.

Bellies stuffed, it was time to ride some rides!  First on the plan was Soarin'.  For those unfamiliar, Soarin' is an attraction where you hang glide while watching a giant iMax movie.  This would be the kids' first time to ride  and the first ride for Rob and I with the new movie.  It used to be Soarin' over California, now you soar over the entire world.  

We didn't have a FastPass+ for it because the FastPass+ system in EPCOT is tiered.  This means you can only have a FP+ for Soarin OR Frozen Ever After.  The line for FEA usually tops an hour, so I chose that FP+.   We were out of breakfast at 9:30 and the wait for Soarin' was only 20 minutes.  Nice!  The kids looooved this ride.  I was afraid they would be, well, afraid.  But the dangling feet didn't scare them at all.  

The new film for this ride takes you all over the world.  We saw animals in the arctic, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramids, and a few other places.  It was so neat to hear my kids shouting out their names.  But for those who remember the old film, I found the jump cuts between the locations to be a bit rough.  Also, they used to have scents in the ride, like you glided over an orange orchard and you could smell the trees.  That's gone and I missed it.

After Soarin' I made a rookie mistake.  Next on our plan was Living with the Land.  This is a boat ride through some scenes about agriculture and the EPCOT greenhouses.  I really wanted to ride it because this is the ride you cycle through when you eat at the Garden Grill.  The posted wait time was 20 minutes but the line looked longer than that.  We should have skipped it and headed to our FP+ at Nemo and Friends, but we didn't and ended up waiting almost 40 minutes for it.  This would be our longest wait of the whole trip, and caused us to miss the Nemo ride.  Oh well, live and learn.

At this point we were done with the Future World section of EPCOT.  There are other rides, which our kids aren't tall enough for, and other distractions, like the Innoventions Plazas, but we were on a mission to see as much of Food and Wine Festival as possible before 4pm.  You see, it was the very last day of F&W.  My online research told me the festival would start to get busy (and drunkardly) after locals started getting off work.  So it was time to eat and drink!

Perhaps I should take a minute to tell you a little more about the Food and Wine Festival.  Each Fall, EPCOT adds additional booths to the pathway around World Showcase.  These booths sell food (and wine) from additional countries around the globe.  They also have all kinds of events, like wine pairings and cooking demonstrations from celebrity chefs.  It is a real treat to experience!  

For those who have never  been, the World Showcase is a serious of countries that are in a circle around the World Showcase Lagoon.  You can either tour clockwise, and enter through Mexico, or counterclockwise and enter through Canada.  The countries are not arranged geographically, in fact, I don't know how the layout was chosen.  Anyway, we entered through Mexico because we wanted to get to Norway in time for our Frozen Ever After FP+.
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In Mexico we stopped to dance with a band. I love the "streetmosphere" that they create in World Showcase.

Here's the part where I am a terrible blogger.  I didn't take ANY pictures of the things we ate.  Not one.  I have a few pictures of wine and beer, but none of food.  If you really want to see what the food is like at the festival, head on over to The Disney Food Blog where she does a great job of photo documenting the festival.  

German beer flight, one of them was grapefruit beer, which I found gross. Also pictured, apfel strudel, bratwurst, and the schinkennudeln.

Me, drinking Prosecco.

All four of us really enjoy the world showcase.  Each country has fun stores to poke around.  There are lots of spots to sit in the shade and people watch, which Ryan especially loves to do.  People say EPCOT is boring.  I don't get that at all!  Maybe there aren't a ton of thrill rides, but for our family, that's ok!

This is in Norway, outside a gift shop. Rob and I were sitting, drinking wine and eating a snack. The kids alternated climbing around and eating.

This Viking was just standing there. Ryan thought he was the coolest.

One ride we did get to experience was Frozen Ever After in Norway.  And if I do say so, this was one of my awesome planning moments.  You see, this line is regularly more than an hour long and the FastPass+ goes fast for it.  Initially I wasn't able to get us FP+ for it.  But I checked about 20 times a day until I got the EXACT time I wanted.  Woot woot!  You see, people are always changing their plans.  People cancel trips, or get a good dining reservation, who knows why.  Anyway, if you don't get what you want initially, be persistent and you will almost always get what you want.  

We entered the FP+ line and the standby wait was 90 minutes.  We waited less than 10 and totally loved the ride.  I won't give away any spoilers, but it was great.  Maybe not worth 90 minutes in line, though.

After Frozen Ever After, we met Anna and Elsa.  This was a really cool experience, and since it was such a big part of the trip for Anne, I'm going to do a separate blog post about it.

Ride and princesses complete, we made our way around the lagoon, eating, drinking, and exploring.

Watching the water in France.

By the time we made it to Canada (the last country) it was 3:00 and really getting crowded.  You could tell the dynamics were shifting from families exploring the park to people who were just there for one last Food and Wine experience.  It was time for us to ride Spaceship Earth and head out of the park.

But first, we stopped for a photo in front of the dancing fountain.  Ladies and gentlemen,  I give you the worst vacation photo ever!

Staring directly into the sun. Not a good look for any of the Schneiders.

Yeah, that's just bad.  

Anyway, our last ride of the day was Spaceship Earth.  This is the ride inside the giant golf ball, for those unfamiliar.  We usually save this for last. Since this is the first thing you come to when you get to the park, a lot of people stop and ride it right away.  This means long lines early in the day, no wait later on.  At 4:00 I think we waited 10 minutes.  Awesome.

And that folks, was our day at EPCOT.  It was a long day and a lot of fun.  And you know when your kids look like this at 8pm your day was a success!