Visiting Epcot - Walt Disney World Day 4 Part 1

Our last day...LAST. DAY! I have to be honest, I love Minnesota and Peru, but being back at Disney World, it's definitely my other happy place and I wasn't quite ready to leave the next day. I was determined to enjoy this day. That's all there was to it!

This actually turned out to be a great day to use our review tickets that we were given by Walt Disney World. We knew we were going to be starting our day at Epcot, but it was our ONE day to do Park Hopping. I wasn't super sold on doing much at Epcot. Sound familiar to my thoughts for Hollywood Studios? lol I knew I wanted to do Mission: Space. That was about it. I clearly remembered it from all those years ago. I also wanted to eat a pastry from France. Fred wanted to do the Test Track. Snoozefest for me, but I agreed to go since it's not just about me on these trips! hahahaha

So, here's the thing. If you get to Epcot at 9am, you're probably going to get great parking! We were literally at the front entrance to Epcot. That was so awesome! We got into the park and definitely did the obligatory family photo in front of Spaceship Earth.

We headed to Mission: Space because my plan was to get the rides out of the way and head on to Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. Ok, I had NO idea that there were TWO rides now. I remember when it opened because it was new in August 2003 and we were there in January 2004. That feeling of being shot over the moon? SO cool. I guess they've changed it up so you can have an intense mission or a more family friendly one. I had no idea, but thankfully we got the more intense one! I love G-forces, especially when my feet are planted on terra firma!

Now here's where thing changed for me at Epcot. First, I remember it being a LOT bigger 13+ yrs ago. I have no idea why. We headed over to see Elsa and Anna in Norway. That went very quickly! It was fun to see both of them at once. We also went to ride Frozen Ever After. The wait right away in the morning was 45 minutes. We overheard one of the gals who works there that if people didn't ride now that in half an hour the ride would be up to 70 minutes and would stay that way for the rest of the day. So. We went. That was definitely a fun little ride. Just beware your bum will get a bit wet.

Ok, so finally we started heading towards France because...beignets! Unfortunately, Fred is distracted by Mexican food, and I'm distracted by all the shops where I could possibly trade pins, and then I'm distracted by United Kingdom! Fred grabbed some fish & chips while the kids and I looked through the shops. Oh my word, I'm SO ready to go to England now! I ended up buying a ring, but I'm actually bummed I didn't buy a tea cup that said, "Mrs. Always Right" and a Diana Memorial Scarf.

We finally made it to France and had a lunch of pastries! Not bad, and I tried to get my youngest to talk French to the gal who was waiting on us. No luck, although she spoke French to him. I think when we were in Norway I realized that all of the people who work at the countries are actually FROM that country. I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes.

From there we walked through most of the rest of the countries. Japan was cool! They had an assortment of some of the craziest looking packaged food and they had a ton of super cute plates and cups (all in mini size) on sale. Yes people...ON SALE...at Disney World! Turns out, Epcot was a place I had wished I had more time to explore. We never made it to Germany. Next time we're going to have to eat our way through all of the countries!

We headed to The Land Pavillion to check out Soarin'. That was a fun ride we all enjoyed. The guys rode the Living with the Land ride. Brieanne and I headed to Future World to see Joy & Sadness and Baymax. We ended up leaving the Joy & Sadness line because it wasn't moving at all. I love that they spend time having fun with the families, but the line lasted too long. Other people ended up leaving the line as well. We went over to see Baymax, and I think they'd gone through 5 lines of people in the amount of time it took us to move about 4 families with Joy &a Sadness.

I was hungry by the time we were done seeing the characters and it was about an hour before we had to send Brieanne to her airplane. We went back to The Land Pavillion to grab some grub. We ate at Sunshine Seasons which was just a quick service cafeteria full of a variety of foods. A gal who was cleaning off her table showed me her pins while we were eating and told me that she had 4 other boards of pins! I was so excited. I ended up exchanging one pin. Have I told you how hard it is to trade pins? lol

Around 5pm Fred called an Uber for my daughter to take to the airport. Believe it or not, there's at least one car waiting to take people somewhere. They must make a mint at these parks! Sadly we said goodbye and headed up to grab the monorail to head to Magic Kingdom.

The FastPasses I'd get for Epcot:

Epcot: Frozen Ever After, RELAUNCHED! Mission: Space, and Soarin'