Epcot
Memorial Day Weekend 2008
Blah, blah. It's a bad idea to go to parks Memorial Day weekend. Whatever.
One three day weekend + two stimulus checks = logic out the window.
As usual, we arrived at the park around 20 minutes early.
But since we didn't take a picture
of that, here's the tollbooth around 6pm. Whatever.
I don't know how I've never noticed the Epcot dedication
plaque before. I guess
we've always been in such a rush to get in. We're taking it easy this time
and
really looking at the finer details. Why, you ask?
We've arrived just in time to catch the back-end of the Epcot
International Flower and Garden Festival.
Word of warning, folks. There's going to be a lot of
pictures
of flowers and topiaries and all that.
We booked it straight into Spaceship Earth for two reasons:
1. We haven't been on it since the refurbishment was completed
2. It was the first Disney attraction we went on.
Heh heh. Siemens.
This is undoubtedly the 94 millionth picture like this you've
seen of Spaceship Earth.
Sorry if you've got a bunch of pentakis dedecahedrons in your hometown and this
one's boring.
The changes to Spaceship Earth seem to be, for the most part,
major improvements.
The story scenes flow together much more smoothly, and the new narration by Judi
Dench is warmer and more inviting as opposed to the Jeremy Irons version.
Jeremy Irons is kinda creepy, y'know.
I don't know what's the best part of this picture. The boots,
the leggings,
the skirt, or the outrageous 'fro?
Nope, the best part of this picture is the fact that this
whole scene wasn't here before. I'm constantly
amazed by how much stuff they've managed to cram into that giant golf ball.
My only real complaint with the new version of Spaceship Earth
is the final scene where you
find yourself in space looking up at Earth. In the previous version, this
was a little more
dramatic. It seems like the "oooooh" factor isn't there now, especially
with the
onboard audio warning you not to stand up (stupid people make me sad).
Much has been made of the on-screen thing you do on the way
back down the dome. Some
folks really seem to detest it, but I think these people have forgotten how weak
the last
half of the attraction was before the refurbishment. Believe me, it wasn't
that flippin' good
to start with, so stop bitching about how Siemens raped your childhood.
Besides. That picture is totally awesome.
Next up was the Land pavilion for our first ever ride on Soarin'.
And of course the standby line was already nearly an hour
long.
We grabbed some Fastpasses and moved over to the other attractions.
Circle of Life was pretty good, albeit preachy. For the rest of the trip,
Karen was always very responsible about putting her bottles into the recycle
bins.
(Luckily, she's back to just throwing them out the car window now. Recycling is so time-consuming)
There wasn't much of a wait for Living with the Land yet, so
we jumped onto a
boat and took a ride through this exciting, educational greenhouse tour.
Yeah, it's totally a "Karen" ride...
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