Spring Break Disney-venture: Day 5

We got up extra early on Friday to exit the boat before the main body of passengers. We had one goal: to arrive at Epcot before it opened. We almost made it. We entered from the back, hoping to ride the new Ratatouille ride in France, but we failed a second time; the ride was down (as it was intermittently throughout the day, so we never did ride it).

Thinking of Cat in Italy

The Frozen ride was the first a several that we thought Sydney would enjoy...
and she definitely didn't. (This picture was taken at the beginning, before she freaked out.)

I feel like the Frozen gift shop has a lot of Tangled (Snuggly Duckling) vibes.

We enjoyed the air conditioning in the Three Caballeros ride, then found
the musical birds outside in topiary form (for the annual flower and garden show).

Before we went on "Soarin' Around the World," Jack wanted a recreation of the below picture...

...from 5 years earlier.

The Genie+ system was a great way to be able to ride on a few of the most popular rides,
but since the time slots available were always in the distant future, it made it a little tricky
to time everything just right. Periodically throughout the day, we found ourselves with
awkward chunks of time when we weren't due for another Genie+ ride but we didn't have
enough time to walk to a different area of the park and wait in another line. This was one of
those times. We had lots of time to eat treats, and real food.

We rode the brand-new "Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind" ride and it was super cool -
like Space Mountain combined with Universal's "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey" ride.

Let's gooooo!

The gift shops have so many fun movie-specific items.

We also rode "The Seas with Nemo and Friends" and had fun at "Turtle Talk with Crush."

Hanging out with Chum

And Bruce

And more people with Bruce

Obligatory picture with the Epcot ball (Spaceship Earth) before heading out.

And one last view of the ball with The Family Madrigal. (There were tons of these
topiary/flower displays all over the park - I told myself not to photograph every single one,
though it was tempting to do just that.)

From Epcot we went to Animal Kingdom!

Why does Jack pose like that?

I guess it's possible he gets it from me.

Our first time riding "Dinosaurs."

The Kilimanjaro Safari ride is always cool. This time we saw the Circle
of Life IRL - but I wasn't quick enough to get photographic evidence.

The longest line we waited in all day (somewhere north of an hour) was also our last ride of
the day - "Avatar Flight of Passage." We tried and tried to talk the kids out of it
but they would not be deterred. By this time, Amy and Sydney had retired for the night.

At least there were cool things to look at toward the end of the queue.
(In the picture Jack is holding one of Luke's souvenirs: a Na'vi spear thing
he picked out of the gift shop in record time because we literally only had a few
minutes before they were going to shut the line down since the park was closing.

We entertained ourselves in line by playing "Movie in a Minute" and other games.
I'd forgotten how cool that ride is, though. We loved it.

We lucked out by finding a shuttle driver who was willing to take us back to our hotel.
We were worn out!