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On the Wednesday of our week in Orlando, we met our friends Joy and John, who live in Florida, at Epcot. This was probably my least favorite of the parks (company notwithstanding). There were a few cool things to see, but I just didn't feel like it lived up to the hype people give it.
The one thing at Epcot we absolutely had to do was ride Soarin'. The wait was a bit long, so we grabbed FastPasses and moved on to Mission: SPACE. Yay, another simulator! Mission: SPACE simulates a space shuttle takeoff and landing on... um, Mars, if I remember correctly. There are two flavors of the ride... green, for wusses like me, which only tilts and shakes a bit, and orange, which makes use of a little thing called centrifugal force. The four of us rode the green version, and then Chris and John went on the orange while Joy and I found the shadiest spot we could and tried to stay cool. The boys took a while to come back and find us, and we started to wonder if they were in the restroom emptying their stomach contents, but it turned out we were just hiding a little too well.
After that, Joy and John bought us lunch (thanks again, guys!), and we missed our return time for Soarin', but we decided to try again later. John had to leave for a while to make a brief appearance at work, so the rest of us spent the afternoon exploring the World Showcase section of the park. We rode the boat rides (yay, boat rides!) in Norway and Mexico. The Mexican ride was very tame, but the one in Norway had some steep hills you slide down... at least they had nice convenient little "brace for the hill" signs at the top of each one. We visited some of the shops and made fun of the Japanese candy, and tried some interesting Japanese sodas. There wasn't much time left by the time John came back, as we had to go back to the hotel before dinner, so we just grabbed some popcorn, fed the Disney ducks (those are some chubby birds), and made our way back toward the exit. Before we left, Joy and John showed us the Leave-A-Legacy spots they had purchased when they were there for their one-year anniversary.
Our lunch reservation the next day (Thursday) was also at Epcot, so Chris and I were able to ride Soarin' first (even after sleeping in... we'd been going non-stop and completely ran out of energy). This was quite possibly my favorite ride in all of Disney World. You sit in a ski lift type of seat, which lifts you up in front of a giant IMAX screen which fills your whole field of vision. And you fly through California. Over woods, ocean, orange groves... even Disneyland. The seats gently tilt to the side to simulate turning, and back to simulate speed. And just like at Mickey's PhilharMagic, there are wind and fragrance effects, too. When you're flying over the woods you smell the pine trees, salty air when over the ocean, and oranges over the orange groves. It was funny, when we would swoop low over the land, even though we knew perfectly well it was all on a screen, we found ourselves picking up our feet to avoid hitting the trees.
(UPDATE) I'm an idiot. I forgot to link to the photos!
Next installment: Dining at Disney!
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