Day 6 - EPCOT!

Woke up this morning after a LATE night the night visiting with family. We all slept in a bit and didn't get rolling until 10am, which was okay because a. we knew today's plan was to go to Epcot Center and b. we knew that as resort guests, we would get 'Extra Magic Hours' for Epcot today that meant we could go there until midnight if we wanted to.

We didn't get rolling on the bus until 11:30 and I think we hit Epcot just after noon. I remember that the bus driver this morning was pretty funny ("gate to go home is Gate Six...that's 2 times 3, or 6 times 1, or 8 minus 2...Gate 6!"). The first thing we did was to get a cart for Gabe to ride in (these things are worth their weight in gold). For $15/day, you -cannot- go wrong with a kid cart at Disney. We took a lot of photos at the front of Epcot's 'big ball' and under it and all around it really. :)

Our first stop was to head to "The Land". We wanted to ride "Soaring", a virtual hang gliding experience that was supposed to be pretty spectacular. Because I'd heard that the lines for this could be long, I wasn't surprised to see that the line was 70 minutes long when we got there, but we went in anyway. This turned out to be a good time to go actually; when we left the line was like an hour-and-a-half long. We stood in line for a long time there, but they have huge screens along the walkway where everyone in the line can 'play' various games (it uses an outline of everyone to 'do' various things.) One game, we all flapped our wings in unison and leaned back and forth to glide a bird through a race. Ours was winning until right at the end and we ended up coming in a close second place. :) There were other little games like this that really helped pass the time.

Soaring was a pretty cool experience. Basically, they take everyone in seats and hang them in front of a huge panoramic screen where you're shown a beautiful first-person view of various hang-gliding scenes. You fly low over water, and can feel the cool mountain air. You fly over a California orange grove and can smell the oranges. You fly up around a beautiful waterfall and over the ocean and near the Golden Gate bridge and generally all around the San Francisco Bay area. On updrafts, your seats tilt and sway and generally make you feel like you are totally flying. At the end, you fly over Walt Disney World, over the Magic Kingdom, and even over Cinderella's Castle, where Tinkerbell herself comes out to do a quick fly-by. It was really cool and Gabe LOVED it.

After Soaring, we were starving, so we hit the restaurant in The Land for some grub. We considered going to some other exhibits there, but in the end, we felt we'd spent enough time in that building for a while and headed out.

Gabe wanted to go to the big ball and go inside it, so we headed over to Spaceship Earth. I'm so glad we did! This ride had almost no line and what line there was moved super fast! It was a blast of a ride and totally updated from when I was there as a kid. There was a lot of computer interaction and we even got a cool little movie about how our future would be based on our own preferences and interests.

We next went into the Innoventions hall, where Gabe played with some music-making (huge) robots, played with a firetruck, and generally checked out lots of cool inventions and hands-on tech toys. We saw that it was starting to look a little stormy, and we knew that it could cut loose at any time, so we headed to "The Seas", to experience "The Seas with Nemo & Friends". The line for this ride was basically non-existent. We strolled pretty much right up to our 'clam'. The Nemo ride was a fun one with lots of interaction from everyone from Finding Nemo. It exists right in the middle of the aquarium area and we all spent the next couple of hours looking at fish, dolphins, crabs, divers, etc. Gabe colored some cool dolphin cut-outs at a kid's craft station and we generally had a blast taking photos and looking at sea life. Outside, it continued to rain in a downpour that started just as we were parking the kid cart outside before the Nemo ride. Eventually, we felt we'd been inside long enough and decided to buy ponchos and brave the rain, no matter what. So we bought some Disney ponchos and suited up and went out in the deluge.

The rain kept going as we made our way to the Imagination Pavilion, where we took a cool ride into the imagination (Journey Into The Imagination with Figment). Figment, a little dragon, and, and John Cleese of Monty Python fame, led us on a somewhat psychedelic ride, complete with upside down houses and all sorts of fantastical stuff. It let out at a Kodak-sponsored photography exhibit, where we could take photos of ourselves and play with them, etc. We were starting to get hungry again and though we knew most restaurants in 'big circle of nations' thing would be reserved, we decided to take a walk in the rain and check it out anyway.

It was basically a long walk in the rain though like 10 different countries. :) We didn't really stop and take in anything, it was just too much work and we were too hungry and exhausted. In the end, after that whole walk, we basically just bought two margaritas in "Mexico" from a stand and called it a World Tour. :)

We did, on the way out, stop at an -enormous- Disney store where we got some souvenirs. I bought a cheap Mickey Mouse watch in the Animal Kingdom and that got me thinking that a -nice- Disney watch would make a cool heirloom-type souvenir, so I got one there. I wasn't sure it was the one for me though, and I ended up leaving it in the box until I could visit Downtown Disney to compare their watch selection with those from Epcot.

After our shopping spree, we headed out. It was around 9pm as we were walking out and the fireworks were going off over the lake. At this point, though we were tempted to take in the fireworks and the rain had basically stopped, we were all just completely exhausted and still hungry and decided to hit an early bus back and get some dinner at a resort restaurant.

The bus ride was nice. Everyone was at the fireworks. We got back and got a little dressed up, thinking we could just hop down to the restaurant in our resort, but it was closed and the only other place nearby that was open was apparently a cafe-style place in Jambo house, about a 10 minute walk away. We were all ready to stop walking for the day, so we went back up to our room and had some leftovers and basically are passing out now.

Disney is a tiring place, even for grown-ups. :) All-in-all, we all had a great day and braved the adverse weather with ponchos and smiles.