Good Trip Report, Day Three: Yes, We CAN Do It All!
Guess where we went the morning of our second full day at WDW?
Correctumundo, we went to Epcot! We had a great time, too, and stuck to Futureworld. Boy, was this hard for me, being a World Showcase lover!!! First, we took a spin on Spaceship Earth, which in spite of the simplified narration, is still one of my favorite attractions. I'm a big fan of Dame Judi Densch so I enjoy this ride because she's the narrator. From there, we hustled over to the Land to get fast passes for Soarin', another of my favorites! While there, we rode Listen to the Land, and I must say, I do NOT like the canned narration. Also, I didn't see the Mickey-shaped pumpkins this year! I had been telling my niece about them, and when we were done she asked me about them. We were both a little bummed. Waiting for LttL though, we got to look at that great mural with all the sayings on it, and I snapped two of my favorites:
After that, a little bit of a, um, misunderstanding between my sister and me resulted in us spending a considerable amount of time at the Seas. We did not ride the Nemo ride there, because the line was hideously long. Rather, we just spent a lot of time watching the fish, dolphins, sharks, rays, and manatees doing their swimming thing.
This guy is my favorite to watch:
After that we headed back to Land for lunch. I love the selection here, probably one of the best QS locations in all of the World, but some of the food we got wasn't that great. Kids took massive M&M cookies for dessert (yum!) and I forget what I had but I know I only liked half of it. I got food from the Asian-inspired area. Oh, the escalators in Land were broken, so it was up and down steps the four (!!!) times we went into this building. Oh, joy...
I'm usually not such a stairs wimp but I am not in good physical shape, I didn't get any chance at all to walk much before our trip, and I was still feeling the tired effects of the previous two days. I soldiered on, along with Jeff...
Next we visited our favorite purple dragon:
Jeff and Meghan like these pictures, especially the second one, where they're giving me their "creepy" smiles. I think they're technically horrible but they like the combination of the blurry background and sharp faces. Whatever. Here they are:
Im-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-gi-naaaaaaaaa-tion!
Outside, a photo of our four kiddos. Meghan is in the middle of the big kids, and she's 17 (18 in December). Ellie is 14 and taller than her sister. Christian is 12 (he's my nephew) and he's almost as tall as Meghan. This does not make Meghan happy!!!
And then there's Kate, who will be 7 in November. She's like her big cousin and short for her age.
Here's my cutie-pitootie niece, Kate:
From there, the kids and my sister decided to go on the orange side of Mission Space. I wasn't interested in that owing to my motion sickness and getting-old-ness, and the green side isn't that exciting to me. So Jeff, Mom, and I all sat and hung around outside. It was VERY hot in Epcot this morning (and pretty much every day) so we looked for some shade. After that, we headed to Club Cool to try Beverly and other beverages. Here are our Beverly faces:
Meghan:
My mom:
Jeff
:
Me:
I actually didn't think it was that bad - it wasn't like Robitussin or anything - but I don't think I would ask for some with my meal.
Ellie refused to try the Beverly. So I just got obnoxious and took her picture drinking something else:
The kids really liked the lemon-lime drink from Israel. They drank quite a bit of it. A lot of people loved that you could come into Club Cool and just try the beverages for no charge - one lady was obviously very surprised by it! Nice that Coke lets people do this. We had fun trying all the drinks.
Now it was time to use our fast passes at Soarin' so we did that. I could ride that thing 100 times and not get tired of it!!! The fragrance misters didn't have the orange scent this time, though, so that was a bummer. Jeff is fearful of heights, so he didn't really enjoy it like the rest of us. Even though he knew it was just a picture, the images make him nervous anyway.
Next we headed to Edy's for some ice cream. Jeff and Meghan bypassed this because we were going to 'Ohana for dinner and they didn't want to spoil their dinner. My stepdad made our ADR's for around 5:30 pm and so we didn't really want to eat a big snack in the afternoon since we'd be eating dinner within a couple hours. So Jeff and Meghan headed over to Mouseworks to do some shopping.
At this point, we left Epcot to go to 'Ohana for dinner - the meal we were most looking forward to!
Now there are some of you who have yet to try 'Ohana
and you really need to! The food is served "family style" with some salad, wings and fried pot-stickers for appetizers, broccoli and noodles along with skewers and skewers and skewers of open-grilled beef, pork, chicken, and shell-on shrimp, and bread pudding with ice cream and caramel sauce for dessert. I will say this, though. In Jan 2010, we ate here, and had an AMAZING meal. Everything was DELICIOUS. This time we didn't think it was as spectacular. The food was still quite good, but the service this trip was really bad. The table beside ours had a little boy who asked for a grilled cheese instead of the usual fare and waited at least a half-hour for the sandwich. Ellie was surprised and said she could have made a sandwich for him in 1/10 of the time!
And the chicken was pretty dry. I don't know if I would shell out the $$ for this restaurant without being on the dining plan. Here are a few photos:
My sister and her kiddos in front of the waterfall in the Poly
Christian took the camera from my sister and was trying to figure out how it worked. He would periodically take a surprise photo, look at it, and then look at all the buttons on the camera to try to do a better job. He made a funny face while doing this:
Battle of the cameras!!!
My mom and stepdad:
Sister and Jeff:
Kate, chewing her straw and wrestling the camera from Christian:
Meghan, with a special "message" from Papa:
Ellie, being affectionately "tagged" by Christian (they share the same birthday, just two years apart, and are usually inseparable):
I don't know what was so funny. Every time my sister and I get together, we laugh our fool heads off over stupid stuff:
Ellie doesn't believe me that she's pretty. I think she doesn't know anything.
Mom's looking at the bread pudding and wondering how she's going to have room to eat anything else. The beef and shrimp were DELICIOUS.
They do a program and call people up who are celebrating birthdays or anniversaries. Jeff and I were there just a few days before our third anniversary and were the only couple celebrating. So we got a Hawaiian serenade.
Here's a shot of the grill:
At this point, Mom, Paul, Stephanie, and Kate headed back to the condo, while Jeff and I took the big kids on a whirlwind tour of the MK. Stay tuned for that!