Disney World : The Joy of Speed, at Epcot

After our previous exploits at Magic Kingdom my expectations weren’t high. Which is possibly why I enjoyed Epcot!  I enjoyed the fact there wasn’t as much of that tacky “theme-ing” everywhere. It was more of a basic theme park. That doesn’t make any sense does it?! What I mean is you could make your way around the park without having two ears of a mouse stuffed down your throat. There were floral displays of characters but you could easily ignore them or just look beyond, to see the pretty flowers.

EPCOT stands for the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Which in English means it’s a bit sciencey and is trying to be futuristic. We enjoyed trying a Segway (after signing a lengthy disclaimer) and took part in a recycling activity (which is a bit stupid since we recycle our rubbish for free at home 😉 There’s also an aquarium with manatees and dolphins etc, so something a bit different from the Mickey-Fest of the Magic Kingdom.

Epcot was more spacious, less busy, and had rides which I enjoyed – namely Soaring and the ride in Spaceship Earth. But the piece de resistence for me was Test Track. I LOVED this! The bit where they zoom you around at 60mph is exhilarating but not so fast or scary that you think you’re about to die. And it didn’t give me motion sickness. Thumbs up!

The ride called “Mission Space” scared me. It’s basically a spaceship simulator and helpfully, they provide a video of the more tame “green” ride and the more extreme “orange” version. I liked that, as you know what you’re letting yourself in for! I went for the green route, obviously. We were split into teams of 4 people, and everyone was given a job. I was the Commander. We had a mission briefing beforehand and I was told what I needed to do. I was really worried – what if I haven’t understood my mission correctly? What if don’t know when to push my buttons? I didn’t want to let my team down and get us all killed in imaginary “space”. As it turned out, I definitely worried too much – I was told “Commander, push your button NOW” and I pushed the massive red button in front of me. It was quite idiot-proof luckily! 🙂  I did have bad motion-sickness for about half an hour afterwards though – so I dread to think what the “orange” more extreme version of the ride would have been like!

On the other side of the lake is the World Showcase. This is basically fake versions of several countries around the world. So you’ve got your China area (complete with a fake temple), a Norway area, a Mexico area, a UK area, a France area, a Japan area, an Italy area, and even… a USA area!! Surely not?? I have friends who love this, but it’s really not my scene. I don’t understand why people from the UK would travel all the way to USA to then pretend they’re somewhere else, especially the UK! There’s cheaper ways of doing that! However, each to their own. My friends do exactly that and love it, so people obviously enjoy it. I guess it’s just a really elaborate food-court, so you can eat whatever nationality of food you want.

We had a look around World Showcase and enjoyed the fireworks at the end of the night – although half the firework display was a blur to us – we saw it while we whizzed around Test Track squealing with delight yet again 🙂At the end of the night we had “fast passes” left over so as an off-chance I asked customer services if I could swap them for a popcorn, as that was our last day in the park.  Unbelievably, they agreed. That has to be one of my top customer service experiences – not that I keep a list or anything. It was above and beyond what they needed to do, and it topped off a really fun day. Overall I would recommend Epcot, and amazingly, I would go back!!!! 🙂

Next blog: Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.

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