So, I think I'm going to check out the parks this or some near-future weekend. My husband's coworker has been going pretty much every day since they reopened and is texting me constantly to tell me how empty it is. I told him if he makes us a park reservation for a weekend, I'll *think* about going with him. My husband said he'd be okay with me going, but we'll see if I actually follow through with it...I do think it's a good idea for me to go before my planned trip with my dad in October, so I can fairly assess if I think it's safe. Right now I know lots of people who are going, but I feel like as a pretty cautious person I need to see it for myself, otherwise I feel weird just being mad at Disney for opening. If I do go, I'll post about my experience here.
Other than that things are quiet here. I wanted to participate in a vaccine trial, but DH indicated he'd be really uncomfortable with that, so I didn't sign up and I'm regretting it a little. I was excited to be able to play a small role in helping us get back to normal. Anyway, onto the last update!
Day 6, Part 4: See You (Not so) Real Soon...
I forgot to mention a really important detail in the last chapter, probably because I neglected to put it in my notes. One of the reasons I ultimately decided to go back to Epcot for the fireworks was because I snagged a Fastpass for myself and Dad. If Rebekah had come with us, we could have taken advantage of the wheelchair viewing area, but since she wanted to stay in the room, I thought the Fastpass might be a good idea, because we wouldn’t have to scramble for a spot, and we could watch them from somewhere fairly uncrowded and as close as possible to the park exit. I’ve never used a Fastpass for fireworks before, and I can’t say it’s typically a good use of a Fastpass slot, but in this particular case, it was a good move.
We drove to Epcot and parked. I put April in her stroller with the car seat attachment, rather than wearing her like we’d been doing for the majority of the trip. I wanted to be able to keep her as covered as possible, which I did with a receiving blanket. She was a little grumpy, but once we got walking, she calmed down.
We still had some time before we had to check in for our Fastpass, so we took a detour to the Odyssey building, as I hadn’t yet gotten to see the Epcot Experience and I wanted to check it out.
There were parts of the Epcot renovations I was excited about, and parts I wasn’t. I’m very skeptical of the new fireworks show HarmonioUS, as it doesn’t seem to fit well with the Epcot theme. And while I like Mary Poppins, I wasn’t too sure about the Mary Poppins ride/attraction (which has apparently been scrapped?) since I heard it was going to be themed to the new movie, which I didn’t care for. But I am excited for Ratatouille, the Moana exhibit, and most of the other changes and additions. Overall, I think it’s good that Epcot is getting the refresh it so desperately needs, and I hope they take the time to do it right instead of rushing it on a limited budget with the COVID issues.
We stayed in the model area until the video had gone through one loop. It’s a really neat room with a model that shows you the proposed changes, with projection mapping to highlight the areas as the video covers them. In the other rooms, we saw posters for vintage, existing, and upcoming Epcot attractions, and I had to take a picture of the Cranium Command poster (if you’ve read my September report, you may recall I went as Buzzy for the Halloween party!). I also took a selfie as that’s my favorite theme park attraction ever.
Then it was time to check in for our Fastpass. It took a bit of time to find the right entrance, but soon enough we were in the Fastpass area and had a good spot to view the fireworks.
We had about a half hour until the show was due to start. I took the opportunity to feed April, and rest my feet a bit. It was a pretty spread out area, which was nice.
Soon enough, the show started. I was so happy to get to share April’s first fireworks show with her. I wish it had been Illuminations, but at least it was still in my favorite park. I was worried she would be upset by the fireworks, but she was a real trooper and seemed halfway between indifferent to mildly interested, lol. I think the lights were really interesting to her and she’s never seemed that scared of loud noises. On the 4th of July we had some neighbors setting off fireworks, and our dog was way more scared of them than her.
I loved singing along to the songs. Epcot attraction songs are some of my favorite songs that Disney has produced. I routinely sing her the themes from Horizons, Journey Into Imagination, and the Land pavilion at home, but these are songs that don’t get a lot of love from present-day Disney, so to be able to sing them to her during a fireworks show was really, really special. I wish this could be the permanent show but with more impressive effects, because while I loved the soundtrack, I wasn’t really blown away by everything else about the show. The Illuminations fireworks always filled me with such strong emotions with the way the soundtrack and effects came together, and this definitely didn’t elicit the same feelings.
But am I still glad we went? Yes. Absolutely. Definitely worth it, even if just for the extra time in the parks.
Anyway, enough waxing poetic. The show ended and we started to shuffle out. One thing I dislike about basically any nighttime show at Disney is how long it takes to exit the park after, and with the added construction projects at Epcot, it seemed to take an eternity to get out. I was glad we took the stroller for April, since it seemed to afford us a bit of extra space to move through the crowd without rubbing too many elbows. For those of you who haven’t been to Epcot since construction started, there is basically no option to just walk straight from the World Showcase Lagoon to Spaceship Earth and then the exit. It’s a crazy maze of construction walls, and you’re never quite sure how far you are from the end, especially with all the other people around you.
During the walk, Dad and I discussed his planned trip for the end of April. He was going to attend a conference in Orlando the same weekend that I was going to be running the Star Wars half (which I had done zero training for thus far). He was also planning on bringing my uncle, who has not visited me in Florida since I moved here 10 years ago. Something always seems to come up that he can’t come down, but now finally he had confirmed tickets and plans. The plan was for me to hang out with my uncle on weekday evenings while my dad was still in the conference, and then on the weekend I would stay over in their hotel room and they would watch April while I ran the half.
Well, spoilers, but none of that ended up happening, of course. The half marathon and the conference both got cancelled, as did their flights. So my uncle still has not come to visit me in Florida. I almost think he engineered the pandemic to avoid traveling, lol. But I will say once I realized that the race was probably going to be cancelled, I lost all motivation to train for it. So I guess it’s good, for me at least, that it didn’t happen. I don’t know what I was thinking when I signed up, and I think my dad and uncle would have been pretty miserable watching April that early, because she was still not sleeping independently by the end of April (she is now though, thank goodness!). I would really like to run it one day, though. I’m not the biggest Star Wars fan but the course looks really cool.
Anyway, we finally made it out of the park, to the parking lot, and back to my car. I loaded April into her car seat and we said our goodbyes. It wasn’t too emotional, as we still thought we would see each other the following month. Ugh!
After that, Dad headed back to the front of the park to take the monorail over to the Poly, and I went home. On my way, I picked up some Taco Bell for me and DH, since he hadn’t eaten dinner at all and I was still hungry after dinner at Kona several hours before. Soon after I got home, DH did too, and we had a nice reunion.
I have to admit, even though it was a hard decision to cut my trip short by an evening, it was the right call. It was nice to come home around the same time DH got done with work and just spend the evening together as a family, instead of hustling to get everything in the car come morning. I kept in touch with Dad and Rebekah until they went to bed and again the next morning when they left to make sure they got home safely.
And with that, another Disney trip is in the books. Wow!
I’ll make one final post to wrap-up with my thoughts and talk about our tentative plans for the fall trip as they currently stand. And if any other major changes to that trip are made, I’ll post it here instead of starting a whole new thread, since I don’t think I have enough info to warrant a whole PTR.
Your daughter has really grown - she's adorable!
