After spending 4 full days away from Adam and Noah, I made it home last night to get Noah in bed. While I'm disappointed that I missed his first Independance Day, I will most likely miss many more, being a military musician. Our work trip went fairly well and was pretty painless, minus the overwhelming time I spent with my frenemy, Medela.
Now that I'm home, I've spent a lot of the day checking out well established Disney blog sites. My favorite, the food blog, always leads me to other sites and today, I found one dedicated to EPCOT. I love Epcot. I've discovered new foods and drinks all around the world and enjoy the slower pace of the park. More interestingly, I found a site dedicated to what EPCOT was supposed to be, including a 24 minute video that Walt Disney himself made only 1 month before his death.
Watching all this made me realize just how innoventive Walt Disney was and how much more the park could/should have been. In part, it makes me wonder if Celebration (a suburb of Orlando created by the Disney Co. to be an ideal living community, though sadly is no longer connected with WDW), was intended to be more like the original vision of EPCOT. I highly recommended any other Disney-phile to check out the video if you haven't seen it - just imagine - commuting from work to school on the WED-way (people movers, TTA). I'm in!
One comment I've always heard from people traveling to WDW is that they're going to skip EPCOT because it's not for kids. While I understand this thought, I whole-heartedly disagree! Though many of the rides and "educational" areas are in desparate need of updating, there are several attractions for the whole family to enjoy.
1. Soarin' - one of my favorite rides in the whole resort. It's a must see, but also a fast pass-must. The lines are still, several years later, consistently around an hour or more. Our plan is to either ride it first or get a fast pass for later. This year, we let Mellie watch Noah - that's when he met Mickey - and we ran and made it on the second "flight" of the day. You're basically parasailing across California and it's simply stunning.
2. Test Track/Mission Space - both good once, but I will never ride Mission Space again (woah with the motion sickness) and Test Track could use a good Cars themed update.
3. Turtle Talk with Crush - This amazing attraction actually lets children talk to Crush, the sea turtle from Nemo. After the last show, I heard a girl telling her mom "Crush talked to me! I couldn't believe he didn't know what a hospital was!" Very, very cute. I'm looking forward to our first trip when Noah can sit on the floor with the older kids and ask Crush a question.
Noah (and Piper) enjoyed watching Nemo and friends in the Nemo ride and dancing along with Figment.
They now have a Kim Possible (is that still on?) themed scavenger hunt around the parks for the kids probably 8 and up. I've seen a few kids running around with cell phones having fun while looking for clues.
As for the babies, well, they're sort of just along for the ride, so what better place than traveling the world by stroller. We didn't do much shopping, but we had fun checking out all the different restaurants and drinks. I think we'll eventually drink/eat in every country - this last trip we added Germany to our list - in January we'll add Canada (Le Cellier is calling my name).
I'm not sure I said much, but I hope this encourages more to check out Epcot. Or maybe not.. I like not having to fight such bad crowds!
Have a magical day :)
~Jenn
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