The Epcot Challenge

 

Our Epcot day was the most challenging when we visited Disney World in July.  We went during the end of magic hours entry for resort guests.  We loved the Remi ride in France and then visited the various lands.  Believe it or not, I have never done that before.  I loved the Canada and China shows.  It helped that they were in air conditioning.  We enjoyed Chai latte's in Italy.  Mistake #1 we didn't get breakfast because we weren't hungry, but that was a costly mistake. After walking all of the countries. I was surprised by the lack of rides and the amount of walking.  Not eating breakfast was catching up to us quick, but the food options seemed incredibly limited.  We enjoyed fish and chips in the UK, but were craving a location with air conditioning.

We met up with my son's family to do a rider switch for Guardians of the Galaxy while my grandson took a nap.  Mistake #2.  We wished that we would have had them wait in that line.  It said it was 75 minutes, but it seemed much longer.  We were able to escape the heat into the building very quickly, but the building itself was a vortex of constant noise making both of us nauseous.  Then there were the green shirt youth group from Italy.  They were cutting, yelling and running through the crowd.  When we finally held back just to add some separation between them and us in line, yet we were still placed on a coaster with them.  The girls in front of us were kind and polite, but the girls in front of them were disruptive and rule breaking.  The girl held her phone in her hands the entire ride even after being threatened that they would stop the ride if they saw it.   My daughter was not able to fully enjoy the ride because she was preparing to be stopped mid ride or have a phone hit her in the face while on a roller coaster.  The ride was great.  It was like a non jerky space mountain with a great sound track!  Unfortunately, our hour and a half wait to get to the coaster was far from desirable.

We did three more rides before heading back to Italy for gelato sandwiches and the the Americas for dinner and to find a place to watch the fireworks. Mistake #3 of the trip. My daughter had her heart set on a gelato sandwich that she had eaten there on her last visit in 2016. First we did not confirm it was on the dining plan. They were not. This up and extra didn't bother me, but it did make reaching our goal to squeeze all the money we could out of our dining plan a little more straining.  We had also not looked at the size of the sandwiches.  Each one was so large we could have shared one, but no we purchased 2 sight unseen and ended up unable to eat even one in total.  They were delicious, but just too much. 

No trickery, the gelato sandwiches were the size of her face.

After a little more walking we settled in the America's for a BBQ dinner. My daughter held in there for a long day considering she was exhausted, hot and didn't love fireworks.  We decided to head to the bridge at the back of the park so we would have easy access to the skyliner to watch the evening fireworks.  Mistake #4. There was a storm over by the skyliner and though it did not reach Epcot, the skyliner would be shut down for the night.  We know this because a cast member shouted it every 30 seconds 4 feet from us through out the entire fireworks show.  It added to the frustration of the long hot day. After the fireworks, we had to walk the whole length of the park to get to the buses.  I thought my daughter was going to lose it.  The best laid plans and all that.  It was a long unbearably hot walk to the front of the park.  I knew my daughter was on the edge so I tried to be quiet and walk as quickly as I was able to the buses.  She  perked up enough to take a photo at Spaceship Earth lit up for the evening.  Then it was back to the room. Christina got a very interesting call for an job interview for a epidemiologist position for the Nebraska State Department. I guess Snow White did talk with the dwarfs for a some Disney magic.  I sent my daughter ahead so she could take a shower while I stopped off and got our evening beverages.

The Disney dining plan still worked in our favor.  We spent $65 on food and $50 on beverages for a total of $110.  We spent $25 out of pocket for the mammoth sized gelato cookies.  As for steps, we came in at 22,044 steps on the surface of the sun.