Travel

Epcot In A Heatwave

Let me preface this post by saying that Florida heat and Idaho heat? Not even close to the same beast! 102 in Idaho is hot and miserable, but mildly tolerable. The same 102 in Florida with around 50% humidity? UGH!!!!!!!

Tuesday finds us at Epcot. It’s hot & miserable, the crowds are pretty big and some crazy person picked the largest park to do on the first day. (Whoops…)

Epcot is HUGE!!! Holy cow – there is no way in the world we’re going to get through everything we want to do here in this crazy heat, but we’ll do what we can.

Lots of pictures of the amazing topiaries. We’re here during the International Flower & Garden Festival and my husband is such a nerd about plants and flowers – he’s loving this! It’s beautiful for sure.

Our first ride (which we have a Fast Pass for) is Soarin' so off to “Future World West” we go! After we got off that one, we made a beeline for our second Fast Pass, The Seas with Nemo & Friends. The Manatees and the Coral Reefs in the Nemo area were really awesome!

After that ride, we did a few other things in that area of the park and waited in line for a crazy long time to meet Baymax. When the kids were about 5th or 6th in wait line, it was time for Baymax to take a 30 minute break. UGH!!!!!! It was at that moment that I fully grasped why some families choose to use their Fast Pass options to do character meets. If you have a child that just HAS to meet a character, it might be worth booking the Fast Pass for it. That was super frustrating, but it happens.

Picking Fast Pass options at Epcot is overly complicated. Options are done in tiers so there’s no way you’ll get Fast Passes to all of the ones you really want, but after standing in a few of those lines I’m still grateful for the ones we had. That being said, we weren’t too far away from the allotted time for our next Fast Pass so it was time to head towards World Showcase.

We had a little bit of time so we took our time to appreciate the topiaries and the magnificent flowers everywhere. I can only imagine how much time and work goes into making everything look so perfect! We stopped for drinks and donuts from a food cart along the way (ehhh…not the greatest) and we got to meet Daisy Duck. (Apparently she’s a coffee drinker too! Ha ha!)

On the way to Norway, we spent some time in Mexico. I loved that portion of World Showcase! The music, the costumes, the Mariachi Cobre with Coco dancing in the streets – so much fun! Then we went into the pyramid of El Castillo. What we didn’t realize is what a completely immersive, vibrant Mexican street scene was kept secret in there! It was absolutely other-worldly. We escaped into there out of curiosity and for the air conditioning, but discovered a beautiful escape. The Three Caballeros ride was a well done ride reminiscent of many of Disney’s Dark Water rides too.

After begrudgingly heading back out into the heat, we made our way to Norway and our last Fast Pass: Frozen Ever After. (Yes, I’m sure you can imagine how super excited my 12 & 13 year old boys were at this one, but I didn’t give them a choice!) This was one of those moments when I was so happy we had a Fast Pass – that line was insane! If you have any inkling at all that this is a ride you’ll want to do, get a Fast Pass. No way would I have stood in that line otherwise. It was a lot of fun and very well done.

After this ride, we have a family meeting to re-evaluate the rest of our plans. The plan was to keep going around World Showcase then go back and finish in Future World East. There was no way – it was too dang hot and humid. The hope was that we would do part of it, go back to the resort and rest a little, then come back.

So off to Future World East and Spaceship Earth, Mission Space & Test Track it was! The kids had a blast, but I was, admittedly, kind of an “old fart” and didn’t do everything with them. Not only was I miserable from the heat and humidity, but my new shoes were not working out so well. (My feet had to have been swollen when I bought them and as I wore them, they stretched out and by the end of the day would be easily a size too big.) The kids had a great time and I loved seeing all of the amazing things in that corner of the park.

The kids weren’t thrilled we were going back to the hotel, but by the time we got there and got some food in us and relaxed a little, it was obvious we weren’t going back. We were all over-heated, sunburned and suffering from heat exhaustion. We had reservations that night for dinner and to watch Illuminations, but I called Disney and told them what had happened and we just didn’t have it in us to go back. They were so nice about canceling our reservations and they didn’t have to be. We were well past the time to cancel, but they canceled and refunded the money for the reservations. That was a pretty great surprise.

That evening consisted of hanging out at the pool (after the sun went down), food at the resort and watching movies in the air conditioning. Not the end to the day we’d envisioned, but it was a great day regardless.

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