Disney Recap, Day 2: Epcot!

Welp.  Sorry for the delay here.  Holiday season and all.  However, I am charging ahead with my Disney recap, because although many of the finer details from the trip are already fading from my memory, I really really really want to record it for you all and for myself.  So I'll do my best to remember as much as I can here, with the disclaimer that some of it may be incorrect information at this point.  Mmmmkay?

So our first FastPass for Epcot was for The Seas with Nemo and Friends.  We had a slightly later start to the morning which was nice, but of course we still got up with enough time to hit up the breakfast buffet before we left.

(we paused for a photo op by the souvenir truck at the resort on our way to catch the Epcot bus)

We arrived at Epcot around 9:30 that morning and, after a quick family photo op

we made our way to the Finding Nemo ride.

This was another one of J's favorite rides-- any time she got to ride in a seashell, she was just over the moon.  The giant aquarium after getting off the ride was also a big hit.

We had to wait a bit for our next FastPass on Test Track, so we decided to head on over to Journey Into Imagination and ride with Figment to pass the time.

Another super fun ride for the girls!  J did have a couple of scary moments due to unexpected explosions and loud noises, but she got over it pretty quickly.  We all had lots of fun in the "What If" Labs too, after exiting the ride.

At that point we headed over to The Land.  I can't remember exactly why-- I think we wanted to check the wait time for Soarin', since we hadn't been able to score a FastPass for that very popular ride.  Or it might have been that we were getting hungry enough for lunch at that point-- we had received a tip from a random breakfast buffet employee at our resort that the quick service lunch at The Land was not to be missed.  At any rate, the line for Soarin' was 90 minutes so we decided to opt out of that one.

Well, the tip turned out to be the best tip EVER.  Thank you, random breakfast buffet employee, whoever you were!  With our quick service meal plan we had been subsisting on mostly fried food and salads where we could find them.  Not so at The Land Pavilion.  The quick service meals ranged from veggie stir fry to rotisserie meats with home-cooked veggies to hearty vegetable stews to salads and sandwiches.  I had an extremely hard time deciding what to get but I finally settled on sesame-encrusted tuna served over an asian noodle salad-- without a doubt one of the best meals I ate at the parks.  I wish I had gotten a picture of it; I think everyone in our group was so busy scarfing delicious food that nobody took any pictures of this part of the day, haha!

Side note: In anticipation of the amount of walking we would need the girls to do (Epcot is HUGE) I asked M if he would run back to the park entrance and rent us a stroller.  He ran that errand while we were all eating and it proved very useful later in the day.

After our tummies were fully satisfied, we headed over to Test Track for our next FastPass.  Grandma very graciously agreed to stay with C who didn't want to ride, in addition to an un-napped J who was, again, becoming very saucy by that point in the day.

There had been a few rain showers off and on that day, and Test Track doesn't run in the rain.  Wouldn't you know it, we were feet away from getting on the ride when they shut it down due to a rain shower.  We waited probably half an hour to see if it would start back up, then opted out with the consolation prize of another universal FastPass.  We figured we could come back later in the day and re-try.

We exited the ride and met Grandma, who had ducked into the Test Track gift shop with J and C to avoid the rain.  From there we split up and some headed to Mission Space for the third FastPass, while others of us (myself included) who wanted to avoid the nausea factor of Mission Space headed back to The Land for the Living with the Land boat ride.

As we were walking and Miss J was acting as saucy as ever, I thought ahead to our dinner reservation at 5 PM that night and I knew that it would be absolutely miserable for all of us if she didn't get some kind of nap.  So at the last minute I asked if Piper, Tati, Grandma and Aunt Beth wouldn't mind riding The Land with C while I did some laps around the park with J in the stroller.  They graciously agreed to this plan, and as I suspected, J zonked out within about ten steps of strolling.

Oh, did I mention that on the day we very first arrived at the resort, she was so excited and running towards the pool and took a huge face plant on the concrete and tore up her knee in a major way?  Poor girl.  She really was quite the trooper on this trip.

Annnnyyyway... a sleeping toddler plus alone time for Mama means... you guessed it:

Starbucks drinks count as snacks on your pre-paid meal plan??  Yes, please.  I remember this as being one of the most relaxing moments of the trip... sitting in the warm sunshine, sipping iced coffee, watching happy people bustling around me, enjoying the view of Spaceship Earth, and knowing that my kiddos were having a blast and my baby was getting the rest she needed.  Nothing better.

I texted the girls riding The Land to let them know where I was and they joined me, some of them getting Starbucks of their own and Aunt Beth valiantly strapping a tired little C to her back in the Ergo.

We have the best family, I tell you.

In other news, these lucky girls scored some serious snackage too while they waited for us after getting off Mission Space.

From there it was off to Test Track again in hopes that it was running and we could burn our Universal FastPass.  It was and we did!

Designing our own cars was super fun, but laughing at the Uncles' ridiculous car creations was funner.

"I (can) drive sixty-fiiiiiiiiive"

It was about 3:45 when we got off Test Track.  Having tried to walk through the crowds of the Food and Wine Festival going on in the World Showcase back when I was trying to get J to sleep, I suggested we begin the walk to Germany for our Beirgarten reservation.  It wasn't until 5 PM but my hunch was it might take us close to an hour to thread our way through all the people and get over there.

So we began walking, enjoying the view along the way.  It was such a gorgeous day!

I thought I would check the wait times to meet Anna and Elsa over in Norway, but of course the lines were like 60 minutes each, so... ain't nobody got time fo dat.  However, we did make a spur of the moment decision to "duck" in to Mexico and ride the Three Caballeros ride!  Another nostalgic favorite!

So much fun! We enjoyed the gift shops for a bit afterwards too.

Then it was on to Germany!

Oh my, but this meal was up there among my most favorite parts of the trip.

The food was delicious, the drinks were outstanding, the oom-pah music was delightful

the Alpine Horn was mind-blowing

and ohhh such fun dancing the night away.

J still talks about this dance party frequently.  She'll just say, "Remember the chicken dance?" and we all know exactly what she's talking about, and we kind of want to cry because we would all like to live those moments again.  In fact, J did cry... bitterly... when the band took a break and we had to leave the dance floor.

So, after we were adequately stuffed and sweaty from dancing and joyful from our marvelous time, we departed.  My awesome brother Zach had scored us some Spaceship Earth FastPasses since I absolutely refused to leave the park without riding that one.  It's in my top three Disney rides, I think.  The earliest FastPass we could get was 8:45 PM, so even after partying hard for a while at dinner we still had some time to kill.  So we took a stroll over to the America Pavilion at World Showcase and decided to take in The American Adventure (also one of my faves).

A blurry pic of C enjoying the fountain outside the theater at America was all we got, I guess!

But the show was sufficiently uplifting, nobody fell asleep (which often happens to me when I sit in a cozy warm theater after lots of staying up late and walking around parks), and my sister and I sang along with every word.  Hard to top that.

But then we made our way over to Spaceship Earth and did a pretty good job topping that!  I thoroughly enjoyed the ride while J, despite her most valiant efforts, slowly slumped over next to me and was asleep on my shoulder by the end of the ride.  Wish I had taken a picture of that one.

The big girls wanted to stay for the fireworks (IllumiNations) at 10, but since the littles were just done we again solicited the help of our awesome family who supervised N and L so that we could head back to the resort with an exhausted C and a sleeping J.

We thought it would be funny to pose for the camera as we left making our most exhausted faces ever.  ;-}

It was so much fun seeing the pictures of the big girls enjoying the fireworks later.

It was a late night back to the resort for everyone, but what a magical day!