Disney Vacation- Epcot

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I just realized I have been ridiculously lazy about posting my all the pictures and the rest of the Disney vacations‘ stuff. So I am going to try to post as many pictures as I can from Epcot, before I get too bored. The rest will probably come another day.

However, one thing I will say about Epcot is that if you don’t do anything else, you HAVE TO RIDE SOARIN! It is the most amazing ride, your seats rise and move but everything else takes place on screen. You really feel like you are flying over all these different places, complete with smells.

Here is what allearsnet has to say about it:The unforgettable experience combines cinematic artistry and state-of-the-art motion base technology. You are literally lifted 40 feet inside a giant projection screen dome and completely surrounded with the beauty and wonder of the state of California as their elevated theater seats take them on a scenic tour over the Golden Gate Bridge, the Redwood forests, Napa Valley, Yosemite and more. The free-flight experience intensifies as guests feel the sweeping winds and smell fragrant orange blossoms and pine trees around them. I should also say that you are seatbelted in but they recommend to take off flip flops before the ride starts. You tilt a lot of different directions. We went on Soarin at least five or six times. You have to use a Fastpass or your wait is crazy at most times of the day.

Soarin is located in the Land Pavilion, along with the ride Living With the Land. It might be boring for kids, but we thought it was interesting. You ride a very slow moving boat through different time periods (ice age, etc) and then finally to present day. We got a halfway decent self portrait of the two of us on the ride- that’s the hard thing about traveling with only two people- most of your pictures are just one of you!

It shows how people have gotten food at different times in history. The current time period includes a huge greenhouse with a lot of different growing methods. The sign on this pumpkin says “Earning My Ears.”

We ate at the Garden Grill Restaurant. This is one of the meals that was included in our dining plan. It’s about $30 a person for lunch, but it is a character dining experience in a slowly rotating restaurant. During part of the rotation you can look out and see different exhibits from Living With the Land. We did this on our first day in Orlando and it was fun to meet all the characters right away. We were also starving, and the food was amazingly good. It is an all you can eat, family-style meal.

Something fun that we did was riding on Segways. They are those two wheeled personal transport machines. Here, we have them in the Science Center for the workers. At Epcot you can go on two different Segway tours, so as soon as Jonathon saw that i knew we would have to make the time to do a ride on them! The people are really good about showing you how to use them, and you practice first on a little obstacle course.

We spent some time the first evening we were there, just walking around and visiting all the different countries. There are whole areas of the park dedicated to different countries around the world. It’s really neat, because the theming is so real, the people who work there are from those countries, they each have a restaurant and shops and musicians and everything. We stopped to eat in France at the Boulangerie Paitisserie. We got some really puffy chocolate and cream pastries, and we did some wine tasting and tried perfumes. In this picture, Jonathon is sitting at the table where we ate our pastries. The lake is behind him.

The view across the lake

Another couple offered to take our picture in Japan. I was so bummed that it turned out blurry!

I wanted to eat in the Japanese restaurant, Teppan Edo, but it was insanely busy. I am not a fan of sushi but the other stuff all smelled really good. I had to settle for shopping, and we sat and ate lemon slushies in front of this pagoda.