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The Florida Series 2: Epcot

Trying to get back to this now - the Eddy Guerrero post reminded me I just cast this aside.

Monday led us to Epcot for no particular reason except that I had never been there and it seemed like the place to go. We weren't able to score tickets to the Disney Halloween party (who knew Disney would sell out?), so we figured it'd be best to stay away from the Magic Kingdom on Halloween (little ones everywhere) and focus on another park.

Epcot's a little less "kid friendly" than Magic Kingdom, with a leaning towards educational fun, which is kind of a misnomer. One of the main things we were shooting for here was the interactive "Turtle Talk with Crush", a new exhibit based on Finding Nemo, which Cole loves. Naturally, this was closed for renovation, despite being plugged endlessly on the website. We figured it was until the end of October - we'd later learn that it was closed all of November too. However, if you go to the Disney site right now, you'll see it prominately displayed on the main Epcot page.

Now, with a 17 month old, our ride options are limited. Obviously, he can't go on anything with a height requirement (although we'd later learn that he was call enough for one ride), and we weren't sure how he'd react to things that might be scary or dark. And, of course, when you're on a ride, you're stuck there until it's done, so if he's in terror at the beginning of the ride, he'll be like that the whole time.

We hit the "Journey Into Imagination With Figment" ride, thinking it would be relatively safe with a cartoon, and we could sit the boy on our lap. Plus - no line. I'd hate to spend a half hour on line to get to something that he freaks out on 2 seconds in. Anyway, Figment was our test case, and it worked. Outside of a time near the end where a loud gust of air hits you (which, admittedly, comes out of nowhere and causes quite a few adults to jump), he was fine, and even with that air gust he just jumped a little and kept looking. The experience was pretty new, and he seemed fascinated by everything. More importantly, he seemed to be comfortable as long as he was on my lap and I was holding him. With Tara he was less comfortable, but for some reason he looked at me as being more secure, which was fine with me.

We were also under a time limit as well. Cole generally takes his nap around 1 or 2 PM, so the thought was to bring the boy home around 2 so he could get his nap, and then potentially come back in the evening and hit whatever we wanted to hit then. We'd never end up going back in the evening, but that's just how things worked out.

One of the main things that we ran into at Epcot were their International Pavilions. Disney was having it's International Food & Wine Festival during this time, so every country had a food shack that was offering "traditional" local fare and alcohol - the rallying cry of parents at Disney, since Epcot (and Pleasure Island) are the only places in Disney where alcohol is served. Most places offered a few wines (which I'm not crazy about) and a beer associated with the region. For many places, this beer was disappointing, since it was a common import in most places (Lowenbrau in Germany, Bass in England, Labatts in Canada, etc). Occasionally you ran into something different though (a lemon lager at the Puerto Rico stand was actually very lemony, and quite refreshing), and the snacks weren't full size dishes, encouraging you try out several, buffet-style (I only hit Japan to drop $3.25 on half a roll of spicy tuna, which was ordinary.)

The shops would have been interesting if I were a shopper - offering various objects from their native lands, if you like ethnic nicknacks, this was the place for you. While some, again, were uninspired (wow, steins in Germany?), some seemed very intreesting and thought out, like the Australia booth having a live woodworker who was carving sculptures for people to buy.

I, of course, got sucked into the Japan shop, and ended up buying a crapload (for me, at least) of Japanese snack food. They ranged from gummies I had gotten at J-List previously to odd crackers which offered no insight to what they were made of or what they might taste like (they were hard and tasted sweet, yet still tasted like something you would have gotten from a Chinese takeout place - perhaps fried in sesame oil?), to sour lemon candies that would make Atomic Warheads their bitch. No Pocky though (it just seems almost too "common"), and they wanted like $3 for a bottle of ramune, which is a bit much for 8oz of soda and a fun bottle to play with.

We ended up going twice to Epcot - Monday and Friday (the latter with my mom and Jimmy). We hit Figment a second time (with an annoyance I'll address in a future post) and took a ride on some ride in the Mexico exhibit, which was boring as anything. We also hit "Living with the Land", which was interesting from a geek standpoint (Disney's developing new ways to farm with no soil and other innovations), and Spaceship Earth, which is basically the ride inside of Epcot's big silver golf ball.

Overall? Mildly interesting, nothing earthshattering, and if it weren't for Japanese snack food, mediocre. Maybe in the future when we can hit Mission: SPACE and Test Track it'll be a little more fun.

Up next: Disney-MGM Studios.