Disney Day 1: Travel and Epcot

Our first day of Disney FINALLY arrived.  B and I were so excited!!  C would have been excited if she had fully understood.  And let’s just say the hubs was along for the ride.  So at 5:50 a.m. B was in our room waking us up and announcing that we needed to take a link off of our Disney countdown chain.  Needless to say, it was out of bed and time to get ready to go for me.   

After showering, packing the last few items, and getting the house clean (just in case the realtors want to show it while we are gone), we were pulling out of the driveway by 8:00 a.m.  I had packed lunches for us to eat on the way so we would not have to stop—but we still had to stop a couple of times for bathroom breaks and gas.

That is actually a story in and of itself.  Even after the countless hours of research that I had done before this trip, something that was not really mentioned was the presence of toll roads.  Fortunately, I saw it on a map a few weeks before we left, so I grabbed a roll of quarters and felt like I was ready to face the tolls.  What we didn’t think about was the fact that once we got on this rather long toll road, there was nothing—really, nothing—for miles and miles.  And we were almost out of gas.  So we finally found a gas station, filled up (for $0.20 per gallon more than if we had filled up in Georgia) and hit the road.  This caused us to pay more in tolls than we should have, but that was minor glitch.  However, the control freak, trip planning side of my personality did not like a glitch.  DISNEY TIP #1:  Be prepared to pay tolls and fill your gas tank before you enter Florida—even if you only need to get a quarter of a tank.  If only I had seen all the glitches to come.  Now don’t get me wrong—we had a GREAT time on our vacation, but there were several things that were, um, let’s just say unexpected.  But back to the trip.

We arrived at the Pop Century Resort around 1:30, threw our bags in our room, and headed to the bus for Epcot.  I knew that there was not as much there for my toddler-aged kids, so it would be an easy half-day park.  We got there around 2:00 and headed straight for The Seas with Nemo and Friends.  That was also when we saw the rain coming.  So we parked the stroller among the myriad of other strollers and covered it in a clear plastic shower curtain liner (from Wal-Mart) and clipped it to the stroller with some plastic clips I found at the Dollar Tree.  DISNEY TIP #2 and #3:  Tie a brightly colored ribbon to the handle of your stroller.  It makes it so much easier to find your stroller among the hoards.  Pack a clear shower curtain and some clips in your stroller bag in case of rain.

We loved the whole Nemo experience—the ride, the aquarium, Turtle Talk with Crush, Bruce's Sub Hub, the whole ball of wax.  And the nice part is that it was inside, so we could avoid the rain.  When we got back out, our stroller had been moved (another reason to tie an identifying item on your stroller) so once we found it, we headed to The Land pavilion.  We would have loved to have ridden Soarin’ but the line was nearly 2 hours long and they were out of FastPasses, so we skipped it and headed to the Living with the Land ride.  This is a skippable ride, but it was nice to get out of the rain and see the really interesting gardens they have.  After that, we decided to walk the World Showcase.  In the rain.  With hungry kids.  Not our best idea.  We started in Mexico, rode the Three Cabelleros ride, and headed on around the World Showcase.  The kids started asking for food, so we started looking for a good snack.  We had the dining plan (DISNEY TIP #4:  Get the dining plan!) so we were looking for something that qualified as a snack credit.   We arrived at the America Pavilion and stopped at the Fife and Drum snack stand.  I used 2 snack credits to get a huge chocolate chip cookie and a cream cheese pretzel.  Now, I didn’t get any of the cookie (the kids shared it) but oh . . . em . . . gee, that cream cheese pretzel was AMAZING.  I have been longing for another one ever since we got home!  But I noticed when we got our receipt that it said we had used 3 snack credits instead of just 2.  I was pretty upset  because I assumed that the pretzel had been 2 credit.  It took another five countries worth of walking for me to realize that we had actually be charged for the cookie and TWO pretzels instead of just 1.  During this walk, we stopped in Morocco to meet Aladdin and Princess Jasmine, but the cast member told us the line was closed.  Between the rain, the pretzel incident and this, I was starting to get a little down.  Once we finished our rainy walk around the World Showcase, we headed around again to correct the mistake at Fife and Drum and get back our snack credit back.  They were very nice and returned the snack credit to our dining plan account.

We headed back to Future World for a ride on Spaceship Earth, and then it was time for our reservation at Coral Reef.  This is a neat restaurant built right into the aquarium at The Seas with Nemo and Friend pavilion.  I told the hostess that we were willing to wait for a table right at the aquarium and that is just what we got.  But it was on the end and didn’t really get us a great view.  And because it was on the end, none of the really unique animals (like sharks and sea turtles) swam by.  This was mildly disappointing for me, but the kids—especially B—really enjoyed it.  And our meals was very good--in spite of the mixed reviews I read about the food.

(Someone would only make silly faces for the camera!)

 By the time the meal was over, the kids were pretty pooped, so we headed for the buses.  We were able to see a few of the Illuminations fireworks from the bus.  We got back to the room, the kids crashed, the hubs went for a run, and I prepared for the next day.  We had a big day ahead of us—Magic Kingdom, here we come!