Epcot

Wednesday, December 18th -

This is a bedhog.  You may not be familiar with the species, but please note his ability to turn sideways and occupy 95% of the bed's surface. 

Bedhogious Maximus

After getting the bedhog and others up and moving, we had breakfast in our room and hit the bus stop early.  It was apparent that the crowd levels were building by the number of people waiting for busses.  It was even more apparent when we got to the entrance.  This is 20 minutes before the park opened.

I liked the Christmas ornament globe they had hanging under the entrance.

Once they did the first family spiel, in we went.

Photo op!

And straight to Soarin'.

There was NO standby wait time, so we got in line and I pulled out my phone to change our FP+ reservation.  There really wasn't another ride I was worried about, but one of the options open to me was the Illuminations viewing area.  I chose that one (but later cancelled it when we tired out before closing time).  Just wanted to note that if you want to try for the VIP viewing area, do it first thing on the morning you want to see Illuminations and you can probably get it.

Anyway, we walked straight back to board our flight.

I snapped this pic accidentally as I was putting my phone away.  Ooops!

We were on the middle row, which means we had dangling feet in the top portion of our viewing area.  Nothing beats top row, but I've never cared enough to wait longer for it.

We haven't been on the boat ride in the Land in several years, so we decided to hop on that since there was no wait for it either.

They had attempted to decorate for the holidays, which was cute.

This was our first time without a live CM doing the talking and IMO it wasn't a big deal.  Only thing some people might miss out on is the ability to ask questions, but for me the overall experience didn't suffer a bit.

We left the Land and headed next door to Imagination. 

There never seems to be a line for that ride anymore, so it was no surprise that we walked straight on.

I happen to still enjoy this ride, so I take pictures that I probably already have somewhere. 

Then the kids played around in the Imageworks area.

I didn't remember this memory match wall game.  It's like Simon, but so big that you really need 2 or 3 people to keep up with the spots you need to hit.

 

We had fun and then decided to move to the east half of the entrance area and do those attractions before our lunch reservations at Coral Reef.

 

I like these organic-feeling Christmas trees.

It wasn't quite time for our Test Track FPs, so we headed for Mission Space instead.

 

I told them to look scared before we boarded our capsule.

 



 

They follow directions so well. 

 

Our FP window was open for Test Track, so that was our next stop.

 

This was our first time riding since they changed the look of the ride and added the "design your own car" element to the pre-ride experience.

I let Daniel design our car.  Here is what he came up with.

This was Joshua and Brad's... ummm... car-ish vehicle thing.  It looks like an angry submarine on wheels to me.

Our car design was stored on the Magic Band, so we didn't have to keep up with another card or anything.  We just scanned one band per design (Daniel did ours, Joshua did theirs) and we were off.

 

Anyone need a shot for a flyaway hair control product?