Day 16 -- Orlando, Florida
Friday 7/13/2001
Excursion: Disney's Epcot Center
We did not want to push another early bird special so we slept a bit longer. We did not use the air conditioning over night because it felt cool enough, although it turned out to be a border case. We slept well. I went out with Lilly for a morning run along the exercise path that start near the Marina. Unlike most other bike trails of concrete, this one is asphalt and not as hard on your legs. Quite nice, but already getting warm.
We prepared crepes (thin pancakes) for breakfast at the trailer and ate outside. Isabella found a friend her age next door when she was feeding the birds. Only problem was that the girl was ending her stay at the campground this morning. Oh, well. The leftover maple syrup that Vincent left tastes really good, especially when it is cold. The kids asked where we'd put the Nutella, and did not realize that Vincent had brought his own over... Sometimes they take a lot of things for granted. We learned that the weather was going to be mixed like yesterday, with showers towards the afternoon. We packed our ponchos this time. Perhaps it would help keep the rain away from us! After some thinking we decided to visit the Epcot center today. We wrapped our things up and left the trailer just before 10am.
Dark clouds move in over Epcot as we arrive - they did not discourage us
You just take a local Disney bus from our camping loop to the mono-rail and then go one station to the Epcot center. The mono-rail ride was nice. The train did not have much people in it when we rode. It took less than 10 minutes with the train to get to Epcot. As we were getting off, we could see that dark clouds were heading our way. We hoped that they would go around Epcot.
As we walked in, they had a guest performance with artists dressed up as statues and performing interesting acrobatics. We looked until it finished. We then walked over to the ring of international displays. That ring, which is quite large, contains pavilions of places such as France, Mexico, Italy, Morocco, etc. We stopped at most of them. They also had a thing for the kids where they prepared masks on sticks and then got stamps and attachments from each pavilion they visited. The kids liked that, although Lilly had to do some of the legwork towards the end. We had a few sprinkles of rain, but it did not pour like it did yesterday at Magic Kingdom.
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Epcot is more than a full day of exploration. We had to hurry up towards the end of the pavilions because we also wanted to visit a few other things before heading home. In particular, we wanted to try out the Test Track. That area is marked as offering a Fast Pass and I walked ahead to get tickets for all of us. Turns out, however, that they had disabled the Fast Pass for the later half of the day; we should really have gotten those tickets early on in the morning instead. It looks like a very fun and fast ride. The line was about 1 1/2 hour. We did not have that energy to spare so we started to walk out of Epcot. The kids could not help but to play with a few water fountains, as it was rather warm outside (still).
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In the end the kids also wanted to visit the Cold place near the big fountain in the center. That was an excellent choice to end the day at Epcot. Remember that we're leaving the muggy outside, mid 80s (30C) at least, for a cold tunnel with ice and frost being sprayed on you. Very cold. But at the end of the tunnel is a Coca Cola pavilion where you can try out assorted aperitifs from various countries around the globe. Some of them were incredibly sweet, while others were bitter (like the one from Italy). The kids got a nice sugar boost from that and it helped us get back home with the mono-rail and bus. Karl took off his sneakers on the train and his feet looked like prunes (from all the water he'd walked through in the fountains) and he had several blisters. He said they did not hurt, but we should probably not try to do something tough tomorrow.
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Even though we thought the kids were completely dead from the day's events, they still wanted to stop at the playground as we walked back to our campsite. Lilly started to prepare dinner as I caught up with the diary a bit. The kids came back, one by one, and had to go to the bathroom "really bad". We bbq:d some meat and cajun sausages for dinner. It was nice and warm outside with a light overcast. A few ducks walked by our trailer, apparently checking out if we had some food to throw to them. When I did not throw anything for a few minutes, they continued their stroll over to the next trailer. After dinner Karl and Lilly walked over to the campfire program, while Erik and Isabella worked on dishes and settings the beds.