Return to Epcot

Shannon reporting in to detail this week's Epcot visit with Neil and Ashleigh. We started the morning of July 5th (Friday) and decided it would be best to try to make our way to Soarin since none of us have ever been on it. Even though we arrived pretty early (at least for us) there was still a wait of about 90 minutes with fastpass returns at 4:15pm! Needless to say we sucked it up and hopped in line.

Soarin

The queue line is relatively bland with a few landscape paintings but not much else. However, we noticed the group behind us playing a trivia game on a phone and they looked like they were having a blast. Naturally we inquired about it. The game is called "Heads Up" and costs $0.99 in the App Store.

Here's how to play:

1. Fire up the app and chose a category.
2. Hit start and place the phone on your head with the screen facing your friends.
3. A subject appears and your friends start giving you hints.
4. If you guess right, you flip the phone down to count your guess.
5. If you don't know it, you have to keep guessing until time is up.
6. After a certain number of seconds the buzzer goes off and your score is tallied.
7. Pass the phone to the next friend and repeat!

It was good fun, but I just got too excited sometimes! I'm also pretty competitive, so that's probably half the problem.

Surprisingly we made our way through this line pretty quickly and we found ourselves boarding after only 60 minutes (vs. 90)! Moral of the story? Even though the line seemed outrageous our gamble was rewarded with a much shorter wait time, so don't let long queue times keep you from enjoying an attraction.

Onto the ride:

Soarin is a ride that takes you on a sensory simulated hang-gliding ride over many of California's feature highlights. The seats and environment are comfortable, but if you're afraid of heights this ride may not be for you.

After the ride the group agreed that it wasn't as exciting as we had hoped, but we were glad that we got to experience it at least once. I personally would have enjoyed it more if instead of California they let us fly through different Disney movies...but that's just me :).

Some things that might irritate the discriminating adventurer

• the video quality
• scene transitions
• the city scene it was very shaky

Still, overall the ride was enjoyable and Anna told us that's one of her favorites. Worst come to worst, the queue line is air conditioned and always will be a great place to seek refuge from the Florida sun.

After departing Soarin, we were greeted by our traditional Epcot rain (which happens every time we visit), but this passed in just a few minutes. Hunger struck so we decided to tour the countries and snack at the ethnic carts near each country that we had enjoyed during the Flower and Garden Festival. We traveled from country to country to discover that there were no carts! Only the permanent buildings were open and served a limited selection of just alcohol and desserts. This was a disappointing discovery and we're not sure why the food carts were closed. Since we were craving food, we stopped in China at Nine Dragons Restaurant.

Nine Dragons in China

Neil and I dined here for lunch not long ago during the Flower and Garden Festival.The entrees are filling and the prices are fair for a high-quality table service restaurant. We started with an appetizer of pot stickers, which were delicious. Then we shared the Nine Dragons Fried Rice and General Tso's Chicken entree between the 3 of us. It was all very delicious and there was very little left over when split 3 ways (this would have certainly been too much for 2).

By the time we finished lunch it was nearing 2:00pm so we had to depart in order to get Anna's birthday cake and reach Fort Wilderness in time.Fortunately there is plenty of shopping and grocery stores within a 10 minute radius of Disney and we stopped at Publix and picked up a Chocolate Lovers Delight. After that we moved on to Fort Wilderness and got there just in time. Be sure to read Anna's post about her birthday weekend!