Carnival Sunshine Trip Journal: Part 3 – Epcotfeatured
We spend a lot of time in Florida. We often refer to it as our second home.
At one point in time, when Stephanie and I were both young, it was – when the winter would hit in Chicago, Mom would take Stephanie and I down to Florida, where grandma would be waiting in Boca Raton and together, we’d wait out the winters with strolls around the condo complex, trolley rides to Boca Town Center and daily pool visits.
So between the early childhood winter birding and the frequent pre/post cruise visits, we know Florida pretty well. And we knew when we checked the weather forecast for our day in Epcot, we were in for a wonky day.
The day we came in, the highs were in the mid-80s. The day we spent in Magic Kingdom was in the upper 70s. The day we’d embark on the Sunshine, it would be in the mid-70s. But the day we were in Epcot? The highs were forecasted for the upper 40s and lower 50s.
That’s not a typo. The temps in Central Florida matched the temps we had in Chicago the weekend before we flew in. Needless to say, as we were heading off on a southern Caribbean cruise that would take us mere miles off the coast of South America, cold weather clothing didn’t make it into our suitcases. The weather forecast before we left wasn’t entirely accurate – we had been expecting mid-60s on the day. We improvised and picked up some sweaters the evening before when we were out running some pre-cruise errands.
But the uncommonly cold weather served as a precursor to an equally uncommon day. The day began just fine – we were up early, we grabbed our Disney gear and hopped in the car to drive the 20 minutes to Epcot from our resort in Champion’s Gate. We made it to the park 15 minutes before it opened, but that wasn’t nearly enough buffer time to park and get to the gate – the Epcot parking lots are wide and vast.
Another early morning at the Omni. Vacation what?
Good morning, Epcot!
Security was a nightmare. Hundreds of people were pooled into two three-lane checkpoints, and it took us nearly a half hour just to get to the first check point, just in time for them to open up three more lanes to the back half of the line. It happens. It sucks, but it happens. To make myself feel better, I reminded Stephanie of the dozens of times we get to the TSA check point at O’Hare and get directed away from a line dozens of people deep into a new line with no wait. The universe has to balance it out at some point, right? And better on a leisurely Disney day than when we’re running for a flight. Or a cruise ship.
We finally made it into the park, originally intending to make a run for Test Track. The new Fast Pass Plus system only allows you to book Test Track or Soarin’ (or the Frozen ride, if that’s your thing), but you can’t get passes to all three. We opted for Soarin’, so we wanted to try to get on Test Track as soon as we got into the park, but by the time we got into the park, we only had a half hour left in our Fast Pass window for Soarin’, so we put the speeding cars on pause to head off to The Land pavilion.
I’m pretty sure this is the most layers I’ve ever worn in Florida
The Land is one of my favorite pavilions!
To the credit of the current Fast Pass Plus system, it truly had been (in our experience) a fast track to the rides – much quicker than the old Fast Pass system seemed to be. But it also seemed to create a larger issue with queues by limiting the number of Fast Passes you could get per day on days where the park was at capacity. More on this in a bit.
Ready to board my flight!
This was our first time on Soarin’ since the ride was redone to soar over the world instead of limiting its scope to just California landmarks. I’ll always have a special fondness for the California version (and for that moment when you smell the citrus as you glide over the orange groves), but this new worldly version was just magnificent, fueling the wanderlust that always bubbles over in my heart and making me want to book a trip to China ASAP (…and Brazil. Egypt. Monument Valley. Oh, and back to Switzerland, too. The good news was the trip to Germany was already booked, so we could check that one off the to-do list).
I was approaching hangry status by the time we got off the ride, so we grabbed a quick breakfast at Sunshine Seasons before hopping on Living with the Land, which had went from walk on status when we arrived at the pavilion to forming a short queue. If our day at Magic Kingdom had been any indication, we needed to get in as many rides as we could, as early as we could.
Sunshine Seasons is always a favorite to grab a quick meal in Future World
Living with the Land
After we floated past farming innovation techniques of the mid-2000s (not a complaint – I enjoy the nostalgia factor!), we hopped over to the next pavilion to The Seas with Nemo, which showed a 15 minute wait but was really more like 25. We’d always walked right through the queue, so the stop and go gave us more time than we needed to enjoy the attention to detail in the underwater grotto that made up the queue.
Next in the How-Many-Pics-Can-I-Take-of-Spaceship-Earth-in-a-Day series
The Seas pavilion
We took a few minutes to watch the manatees enjoy their breakfast of romaine lettuce while we plotted out our next move, but that’s kind of where it all went downhill really fast. It wasn’t even 10:00 am and every major attraction had a wait of at least 45 minutes (Living with the Land) and up to two hours (Test Track). The queues were longer than the park had even been open for.
The manatees were too cute!
Spaceship Earth was showing a 50 minute wait, and I was hoping it wasn’t accurate so we headed that way. The wait times aren’t always a reliable indicator of actual line wait – the way they measure wait times is flawed because it’s based on when a single person actually makes it through the line from start to end, and we’ve noticed that long line times turn enough people away to reduce the wait time. Waiting 50 minutes for Spaceship Earth seemed absolutely absurd to me, but we had no where else to be and nothing else to do.
The line crawled. It wrapped around one side of the attraction, then the other, and then made for an intricate maze in the middle. By the time we could see the traditional queue entrance, it was showing a 70 minute wait, but we’d already spent so much time in line that we didn’t want it to go to waste.
When the line doesn’t move, we take pictures
70 minutes. For Spaceship Earth. You can’t make this stuff up.
It went on, moving a step or three every few minutes, which is never a good sign on a constantly loading ride. We made it through the one side of the queue, and then the other, and then as we were getting to that home stretch of that middle section of the queue, just as we were listening in on a family question a cast member on the logic of the Fast Pass to regular rider ratio (at the moment, they were listing 100 Fast Pass riders for every stand by party, so the party of two in front of them would go, and then 100 Fast Pass riders would be permitted to enter before their family of seven could), the ride shut down. And not like a momentary we-will-be-moving-again-soon kind of thing – they evacuated the ride, the queue and weren’t confident it would be up and running any time soon.
I’m getting twitchy just remembering the crowds
To say we were frustrated was an understatement. It was two hours just completely wasted. And I tried to quell Stephanie’s frustrations by reminding her that two hours spent in a line at Disney World was better than two hours at her desk at work, but when I overheard a cast member tell a family that they could go complain to someone who wasn’t her, I just kind of lost it. Not actually lost it. I don’t really lose it. But I grabbed Mom and Stephanie and went straight to Guest Services. I’m a firm believer in manners and kindness and directing feedback (and frustration) to the appropriate place. It’s no one’s fault the ride broke. That happens. And terrible cast members? That’s an unfortunate fact of life kind of thing, too. But I wasn’t going to let two hours of our day be for literally nothing. So we politely explained to the guest services agent that we had spent two hours waiting for a ride before being turned away and were immediately given Fast Passes to ride Spaceship Earth later in the day (whenever we wanted, no time constraint, assuming the ride went back up) and an additional Fast Pass for Spaceship Earth, Journey into the Imagination, The Seas with Nemo or Mission Space. And that made us feel a little better – two hours for two rides kind of evens out. We left guest services just as a fight was breaking out behind us about line cutting.
At least it was a beautiful day!
I didn’t think it could get worse than Magic Kingdom the day before, but it was, on every level. The park was packed and the guest to space ratio was uncomfortable at best. Epcot has less rides than Magic Kingdom, too, which helped us understand why the queues were so long. With Spaceship Earth still down, we headed out of Future World into World Showcase. It was still crowded, but at least we could explore the pavilions.
World Showcase, take me away!
We couldn’t escape the hoards of fellow tourists no matter where we went
I’ve always loved World Showcase. For years, it was the closest I could get to many of these countries, and now having visited many of them, I have a new appreciation for the theming, the décor, the shopping, all of it. And even though the holiday season was just about over, the Holiday’s Around the World exhibit was still going strong, with each pavilion offering food and drink options unique to their country during the holidays a la Food and Wine Festival.
So we started at Mexico (where the line for the Gran Fiesta Tour wrapped around the pavilion – a first, I’m sure) and spent the entire afternoon winding our way through all of the countries until we ended at Canada. We snacked, we shopped, we snapped pictures and even though it was crowded, we saw and did so much that it felt more productive than standing in never ending lines.
The Mexico pavilion
Point me towards the tequila, por favor
The Norway pavilion
A snack box from Kringla Bakeri Og Kafe
The China pavilion
The snacks they sell in the China pavilion are so interesting!
The Germany pavilion
By the end of it, we’d walked nearly seven miles, realizing that the cupcakes at Karamell Kuche weren’t nearly as good as we remembered, marveled at how Epcot’s version of the Trevi Fountain is so far from how it actually is, contemplated how we could sneak a return trip in to Switzerland over a plate of cheese fondue and ended back in Future World.
Our much anticipated Karamell Kuche cupcakes didn’t quite live up to how we remembered them
World Showcase
The Italy pavilion
The Morocco pavilion
Nothing better on a cool day than some warm cheese fondue!
This was our first visit to Epcot since we’d traveled to Paris, and it was amazing to understand how on point the theming is
Spaceship Earth was back up and running, but the Fast Pass line still extended beyond the attraction, extending down towards Guest Services. Mom gave me the you-aren’t-really-going-to-make-us-do-this look until we realized that, unlike the morning, this line was actually moving and even though the line looked daunting, it took no more than 15 minutes before we were on the ride. The line was even shorter when we left, so we used our bonus Fast Pass for one last ride.
Lets try this one more time
We made it! Stephanie was still less than amused
We were tired and sore as we stumbled out of the park, wondering if we could take the tram to our parking lot. The driver said walking would be quicker and I’m sure it would have been if we hadn’t (in true fashion) gotten lost and walked exactly two parking lots beyond where our actual lot was.
A day. We had a day.
We left the park around 5:00 pm, this time with no actual intention of returning later in the evening. It was still cold and we were burned out on disappointment. We knew the winter break period between Christmas and New Years would be bad, but I don’t think any of us realized it would be this bad. We’d survived Memorial Day trips, August visits, even mid-December visits had never treated us poorly. But this was so much worse than we had ever thought it could be. It’s unfathomable to consider you could spend a day in one of these parks and really only get on four or five rides (and that’s if you plan it right). We’ll visit Disney again. We still love Disney. But I don’t think we’ll ever be back during the winter break weeks.
I think we need a break, Epcot. Just for a little while so I can forget this visit
Dinner options at our resort were limited, so we grabbed a quick dinner at a Pei Wei on our way back to Champion’s Gate before settling in with a Game of Thrones marathon and suitcase (re)packing. A new day would bring not only a new year, but a new home for the next eight days: we were heading off on the Carnival Sunshine!
