Epcot

Today was a really wonderful day at Epcot. Epcot is an interesting park because there is quite a lot of construction happening in order to get ready for WDW's 50th Anniversary Celebration next year. It's also the least popular of the parks, especially during COVID because they don't really have anything new in the last few years. This meant really great conditions for us because we waited a grand total of 45 minutes to get on rides for the entire day. 

We arrived to the park early again (in fact, we got to parking an hour early which was when Hollywood Studios parking opened yesterday, but were still turned away and ended up doing a driving tour of the Magic Kingdom hotels). Around 10:30 we were able to get in line for parking and get into the park shortly thereafter. We decided to Rope Drop Test Track because that tends to be one of the longest rides of the day. This was an excellent choice. It's such a fun ride and we both really enjoyed it. 

After Test Track we spent the next few hours in Future World. We rode Soarin' Around the World. This ride is the same as in Disneyland and is one of our favorites. However, it was a little hard to watch this year because we had trips planned to two of the scenes in the ride that we had to cancel. In fact, we would be in Africa right now if it weren't for COVID. When the Africa scene started, I got a little choked up wishing that we were there. That being said, we are having a terrific time in Disney World and definitely made lemonade out of lemons. 

After Soarin' we went to Living with the Land. This was also an interesting ride through some of the Disney green houses. We remembered this from last time and thoroughly enjoyed it. Our next stop was the Sea with Nemo and Friends. This ride is OK, but it ends at an aquarium, which was really interesting. We were able to see manatees, dolphins, tons of fish, coral, and a few sharks. Although it's interesting, I do wonder how ethical it is to keep dolphins and manatees in tanks. The Manatees were huge! They are such gentle creatures and I would love to be able to see some in the wild sometime. I definitely want to do more research to determine if keeping these animals in tanks is actually OK (and unfortunately, I'm guessing that it isn't). 

Our next stop was Spaceship Earth. This is a pretty great ride that definitely needs some additional work. Epcot was actually planning on closing the ride earlier this year and doing some much needed upgrades. Due to COVID that didn't happen, but hopefully it happens in the near future. Other than the 10 minutes we waited for Test Track early in the morning, we walked onto every other ride. After Spaceship Earth we headed to the World Showcase, which is my favorite part of Epcot. 

The countries in Epcot are so detailed and fun to see, especially because we have been to several in real life! We started in Mexico, which Eric commented actually felt like a market in Mexico. They have a boat ride featuring Donald Duck, which we waited for 10 minutes for. The short lines were so incredible this trip, and was definitely one of the reasons we wanted to come. We were pretty hungry at this point, so we did a full circle of the World Showcase stopping at the Food & Wine booths picking food that we wanted to try. We really enjoy when Epcot and Disney California Adventure have food booths! 

After we had eaten and were satisfied we wandered the rest of the countries. Norway was the next stop, but there was a relatively long line for Frozen Ever After, so we decided we would skip that and come back later. My favorite country was Morocco. We didn't spend any time there the last time we went to Epcot, so this was a really fun surprise for me. They had a bazaar set up that really reminded me of bazaars that we have visited in other countries with Arab influence. They also had Islamic type art, which is so fascinating. I really love Arab art and architecture and the different flavors that we have seen in different countries. They had a shirt that said "Habibi" on it and I told Eric about when I was in Jerusalem our arab guides would always say "Yallah Habibi" or "Yallah Habib." This means "Let's Go beloved/my dear/my darling/any other term of endearment)." It was fun to see that on a shirt since it was something we were so frequently referred to as students. 

We really enjoyed wandering the shops and hanging out in the different countries. We found a gold Disney Ferris Wheel that we fell in love with in the Germany gift shop that we had to return to buy before leaving the park for the day. It's similar to a carousel we bought at Tokyo Disney last year. It was also fun to see caricatures of sites that we have seen in real live including the Temple of Heaven in China, Stephen Slaying the Dragon in Germany, the Doge's Palace and Bell Tower in Italy, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the pyramids in Mexico, and the Itsukushima Shrine in Japan. We miss traveling the world, but it's fun to be able to experience a small piece of it within Disney World. We absolutely loved exploring each of the countries in the World Showcase. Normally each of the countries is staffed by people from the actual countries, however, due to COVID it was mainly American cast members. There were also quite a few shops that were closed due to COVID. That being said, it was still really fun to be there and we are looking forward to our next visit where we can interact with people from other countries as well. 

We ate dinner at Via Napoli in the Italy Pavilion. This had really great garlic bread and pizza. They import the flour from Italy and the pizza is definitely made in the Italian style. It reminded us of the pizza we ate when we were in Italy a few years ago. The food was excellent. After dinner we went back to Germany to purchase the Ferris Wheel. We then got in line at Frozen Ever After where we waited about 20 minutes. This is such a great ride with fabulous animatronics. We really loved it. We had time for one more ride on Test Track before the park closed. We walked out under the giant ball and talked about what a great day we had in Epcot. We have really loved this trip to Disney World. We headed back to our hotel and enjoyed the warm evening on our balcony. Before falling asleep we turned on the TV and caught the premier of this season of Dancing With the Stars. We probably wouldn't have kept watching, but we saw Carol Baskin was in the cast and we stuck around the watch her dance the paso doble. It was entertaining.