Christmas Vacation: Epcot Center

We had a very fun, very full day at Epcot our first full day back in Orlando.  Our whole family had reservations to eat breakfast with the princesses at Akershus, a restaurant in Norway at the World Showcase, before the park even opened.  We worked our way to the restaurant, enjoyed the delicious food served by a waitress from Norway (who told us it was colder in Orlando that day than it was in Norway), and loved meeting Belle, Ariel, Snow Whit, Aurora, and Cinderella.

A quick photo stop in Mexico before we arrived in Norway.
Only at Epcot!

The Frozen ride was just outside of our restaurant and the wait was only about 20 minutes so we hurried over there to ride before our first FastPass reservation.  We were so excited to ride our first Disney ride, and I love how Disney World makes the waiting areas part of the attraction with characters, sets, music and dialogue playing on speakers, etc., so the wait is easier to handle.

After Frozen, we hurried over to Future World for our first FastPass ride, Soarin'.  This was definitely one of my top 5 favorite rides of the whole trip.  You sit on seats that lift you up and make you feel like you're hang gliding over the most beautiful scenes on earth: the South Pacific, The Eiffel Tower, the pyramids in Egypt, the Himalayas, and on and on.  It was absolutely gorgeous.

Then it was over to The Living Seas for Turtle Talk with Crush, where Crush talks to the audience and asks them questions.  Eliza was the first one to get to talk to Crush, which was really fun.  She suspected a cast member was behind the scenes doing the talking for Crush, but I'm pretty sure it was actually Crush from Finding Nemo and he's working a gig at Disney World during Australia's chilly winter months.  We may never know who's right.

After that we went to The Seas with Nemo & Friends, and looked for Nemo.  Thank goodness Marlin and Dory were there to help!  They had some cool aquariums and other sea-related exhibits in that area and the kids loved getting to explore before we left for the next adventure.  (At this point we were the only family to stay at Epcot, while the rest of the group went to other parks or back to the hotel for some rest.)

The next ride was the longest line we had of all three days at the parks: Misson: Space.  There are two options for this ride, to travel to Earth or to travel to Mars.  We chose Mars because it was supposed to be a closer simulation of an actual rocket launch, and I thought the kids would enjoy that.  Well, the kids did enjoy it, but the adults did not.  It took a few days for my stomach to completely settle after this ride!  (To give you an idea of how intense it is, they had barf bags stashed in the ride itself.)  The gift shop at the end of the ride had lots of cool space stuff and both boys ended up buying themselves a toy rocket.

Showing off our healthy waiting-in-line snacks.

After that we took a little break from rides and met some cool characters, and were able to fist bump Baymax and try to cheer up Sadness.  Then we watched a few Pixar Shorts in 3D, which was even more fun than I thought it would be.

Then we met up with Andy and Amy again so we could all ride on the monorail, but just as we were leaving and walking past Spaceship Earth, the ride, which had been closed most of the day, opened up and we jumped in line and were riding within a few minutes.  Love it when that happens.  THEN we had a relaxing ride on the monorail, enjoying the views and the shelter from the cold.

Then Andy and Amy took Sawyer back to the hotel to go to bed and we kept partying.  First, we took a family picture at the entrance when we re-entered.  Then Ben and the kids really wanted to go on Test Track and we hoped that if we waited until shortly before the park closed, the line would be really short.  So we killed time by walking back over to Norway to meet Anna and Elsa, then Ben took the kids to Test Track (which still ended up being a pretty long line) while I strolled through the World Showcase, picked up some very late dinner for everyone in France, and watched IllumiNations.  The park closed at 9:00 that night and it was about 9:30 before Ben and the kids had finished their last ride and we were able to walk to the bus stop to get back to the resort.  Then we waited for another 20 minutes for the bus to come, so we were all quite tired by the time we were on our way to the hotel.  What a day!