My memories of Epcot were that it was hot, big, and boring. There were just a lot of movies and not many rides to go on. After this trip its one of my favorite parks after growing up a bit and after they’ve increased the amount of rides in the park now.
After a rough day before it was nice to get a good night’s sleep and have enough time to prepare for the full day in the park ahead of us. You have to be prepared for every type of weather when you visit Florida and day two proved it to be true as we work up to rain, and not even hot humid rain but actual cold rain. We were prepared with a a stroller cover for the kids and umbrellas for us. The rain also made the majority of people to take their time in the morning because once we arrived to the park it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. It also happened to be the day before the opening of the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival so the whole park was in full bloom and decorated with topiaries throughout the park.
Our first stop in the morning was to grab some breakfast in the France pavilion. What surprised us most was that everyone working there was actually from France with a full on French accent. We ordered an assortment of pastries, quiche, and of course coffee from Les Halles Boulangerie Patisserie which were all delicious.
Once our bellies were full we started exploring and found out most of the countries had their princesses roaming around so it was time to break out the autograph book and start finding them all and with the low crowds we could take our time to interact with the characters. We found Belle in France, Jasmin in Morocco, Mulan in China, Anna & Elsa in Norway and Alice in United Kingdom.
We were lucky enough to score Fast Passes for the Frozen Ever After which is still the hardest fast pass to get and i understand why as its Frozen and its a pretty fun boat ride. Without a fast pass you can find yourself waiting for two hours for a five minute ride.
Towards later in the afternoon we had already rushed through all the different countries and started back around again taking our time exploring, eating and more importantly drinking. We got some great maple popcorn from Canada and purchased a wine password so we could get multiple pours from France, Italy and Germany.
For dinner we had reservation at Via Napoli which is another super popular place to eat. There was a line out the door and they were turning away walk-ins who were looking for a last minute place to eat. For us it was the perfect time to sit down, relax and enjoy some pretty good pizza, and pasta. The place is huge with lots of tables inside and out, and the wait stuff does an admirable job keeping everything running smoothly. We started off the meal with the arancini, got the kids some spaghetti and pizza, the Branzino for our main course, and the Ruota di Carretto for dessert.
To finish off the night we were trying to watch IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth, but Alice didn’t like the pyrotechnics used in the show so left and went on Frozen Ever After again since everyone was at the lake watching the show. We finished off the night by going on Spaceship Earth which is the iconic silver geodesic polyhedron in the front of the park. I don’t remember much from the ride back in ’88 but it definitely hasn’t changed if any since then.
