There’s something to said about the weather here in Florida – it’s never right. Well, at least the forecasts. Or maybe its my fault that I chose Kissimmee for the weather forecast location instead of choosing one of the Disney properties. Weather cells apparently are VERY localized here. The weather for the day was calling for basically rain all day including thunder and lightning. Uh-huh. Sure sure. At this point we’ve basically given up on planning too far in advance. With Alex being sick on Monday and the fact that is was supposed to rain all day yesterday (I’m writing this first thing Wednesday morning) the first plan was going to be hang out at the villa all day. However when we got up the weather wasn’t bad at all and they were now saying that it wasn’t going to pour until about 3. Alex was feeling great so we decided that we’d hit up Epcot as most of the attractions are all indoors there so the only rain exposure would be walking to and from buildings. I had wanted to watch Epcot’s nightly fireworks show Illuminations but if the weather didn’t cooperate oh well. So off we go to Epcot. This was our first trip directly from the villa and travel time was all of about 10 minutes. Can’t complain about that. Get into Epcot and parked close enough that we didn’t even need to ride the tram to the front gate.
Once inside we headed first for Spaceship Earth – the ride that takes place up and inside the giant ball. I was happily impressed that Alex was engrossed by it and Ryan was also paying attention. We then went and got a Fast Pass for GM Test Track. Other rides we checked out were The Seas With Nemo and Friends and Journey Into Imagination with Figment. The boys liked both of those, especially seeing the dolphins. We had lunch at Electric Umbrella and then made our way over to Test Track. Alex was apprehensive about it but ended up loving it. It should go without saying that Ryan absolutely loved it!
So it rolled up on about 2:30 and we had pretty much done everything. Alex wanted to go to the Turtle Talk session with Crush so we headed back to ‘The Seas’ and caught that show. Let me tell you dude, it was totally righteous! Kids and parents alike all had a great time! You may have noticed that I didn’t list a lot of rides. Well…that’s because we didn’t do any others. I’m sure that there’s a specific demographic that Epcot is absolutely ideal for. A family of four with two young’uns isn’t it. Kids don’t care about flowers, they don’t care about green ecofriendly houses (although I thought that was cool), most don’t care about the various pavillions. Test Track? Sure. Nemo? Sure. Although, as we went through the queuing area for the Nemo ride I couldn’t help but wonder exactly how many people they were ever expecting to line up for that ride. The queue area, even in it’s absolute shortest configuration still took a good two minutes walking non-stop. While Epcot was busy there were no significant waits for any of the rides we chose to do.
Okay, 2:30 and we’re done. Let’s hop on the monorail and venture over to The Magic Kingdom and start to work our way through there. I figured that we’d get through a couple of the areas before calling it a day and that very well could have been what happened…except…for our friend Dana. Dana is the mom of some of the kids that Alex and Ryan go to school with. She recommended that we obtain a doctor’s note stating that Alex doesn’t handle lines very well and visit guest relations. They may give us a “Guest Assistance Card” which, in theory, provides quiet places to wait. In practice…well that’s a whole other story. That little card has more power than The Doctor’s Psychic Paper (Doctor Who TV show reference there). If the ride is a FastPass ride you go up to the FastPass entrance, show this card and they wave you through the FastPass line. It’s like Magic! In the Magic Kingdom! I suppose if one has to find any benefit from your child requiring daily medication this is it! Anyway, thanks to this card we were able to get through long lineups quite quickly and made it through all the rides in Adventureland, Frontierland, Liberty Square and started in on Fantasyland. Now we did skip a *couple* of the rides/attractions in those areas – like the somewhat boring Tom Sawyer’s Island. But we did pretty much every other ride. Now, remember above where I said Epcot was busy but the lines weren’t too bad? Magic Kingdom was INSANELY busy. People were lined up 20 deep just to buy ice cream! Still, other than FastPass rides the longest wait we had was about 10 minutes. So it’s about 6:30 and the kids are saying they aren’t that hungry but I was and Nikki kinda was so we found a place in Fantasyland called Pinocchio Village Haus that served up flatbread pizzas. Ate some food and relaxed for a bit. Feet = SORE. But we weren’t done!!!
We leave Magic Kingdom and hop on the monorail back over to Epcot. The weather is threatening but at this point I’m really hoping we’ll see the fireworks show. We get to the gates at Epcot and I ask the guy if the fireworks are still happening. His response was “you’re not from around here are you?” and went on to say that short of LITERAL hurricane weather the fireworks shows happen. Sweet. In we go. It’s about 8:10 and the show starts at 9:00 so we have a bit of time to sit and wait. It was a tough 50 minutes for Alex but our four new foul friends, Bill, Sam, Albert and Charles. These four ducks were hanging out by where we were waiting for the show and were looking for food. I dug up a few potato chips and Alex and I both fed them to the ducks. Ducks like BBQ Ruffles. Who knew? Soon enough it was 9:00 and the show started. Alex thought it was great but wasn’t quite ready to concede that it was worth the wait. We got back to the car and we weren’t even out of the Disney property and Ryan was out like a light. So that was day four – Tuesday, April 30th. So far the trip has been amazing!
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