Chapter 4: If It Ain’t Broke…
For several years now, Epcot has been my family’s favorite park. This may come as a shock to you, but I’m going to share a secret: we’re all nerds. The idea of getting a window into the next great technological advances of society always gets us excited. Plus, we love to travel, and a Disney World vacation is still ever-so-slightly less expensive than flying six people to Asia, so the World Showcase appeals to our adventurous side. Add them together, and we are the target audience for Epcot. It hits us in both of our sweet spots.
However, several of the biggest attractions had undergone changes since we’d last visited as a family. We were all curious to see the new versions of Soarin’ and Mission: Space, as well as the new Frozen ride. Would we still love Epcot as much this time around?
You know the drill by now: scarf down nutritious Pop Tarts for breakfast, drink crappy hotel room coffee, pile into the minivan, arrive at Epcot in time for Rope Drop. The plan went without a hitch. Once the park was opened, we walked with every single person who was present at Epcot at that moment over to get in the line for Test Track.
This was due to the ever-popular Tier system for Fast Passes. You can only have a FP for one of Test Track, Soarin’, or Frozen Ever After. I had been mistaken in thinking that having a FP for Test Track means you get an abbreviated car design experience, and I knew my boys would want the full show. So I had reserved FP’s for Soarin’ instead, and planned to hit Test Track first thing in the morning, which is the best the standby line would be all day. The tiers are certainly a frustration when it comes to the FP system. I do understand the idea that everyone gets a chance to ride the headliner rides. But unlike the paper FP system, where I could get multiple rides on the headliners if I was willing to go make a run for the tickets, the current system ensures that you will get one (1) and only one (1) ride on the best ride in the park each day. Unless you’re willing to stand in a 90-minute (or longer) line to ride it again, which I am not.
Some people have reported that they can get FP’s for the headliners by using their original 3, making a new FP reservation for any ride, and then immediately trying to modify that new FP. By constantly refreshing the app in the modification menu, they claim they can get FP’s for any ride to show up. My experience was that this was not the case. I couldn't get any availability on the headliners beyond what I had reserved at the 60-day window. But that could have something to do with traveling during a more crowded time of year.
It’s never a good feeling when you get in line at this spot, but fortunately they were just stacking the line before letting everyone in.
Despite our Barnstormer experience, someone was excited to ride. This was another one we’d viewed ahead of time on YouTube. Really, all we had to do was say the words “race car” and he was on board with the idea. Did we tell him how fast it went? Of course not.
As we walked through the line, though, Drew started having second thoughts. He didn’t want to go too fast. We comforted and assured him in infinite patience, by which I mean we kind of ignored him and worked on distracting him with the car design stuff along the queue. Once we reached the car design studio, all of the kids were fully engaged.
We split up to work on 3 separate computer screens. Scotty and I worked the first one, and I let him take the lead. He decided he was going to try and build the Batmobile. My only requirement was that the car use a plasma burner for an engine. Because any time you can make a car use rocket fuel, you gotta do it. Environment, Schmironment.
Sarah and Dave teamed up to build a purple sports car of some sort. No fancy name was given, but this car was so fast you couldn’t even capture it in focus on the computer screen.
And last, but certainly not least, Julie let Drew play mad scientist with his car. Ladies and gentlemen, I present….The Jetanero.
I’m not exactly sure what a “Jetanero” is, but I believe it may be a mix of a fighter plane and a chili pepper.
From there, we climbed into our test car. Drew was still a little skittish, but to his credit, he went along and didn’t make much of a fuss.
By the end of the ride, he was a big fan! Turns out going really fast is a lot of fun, even if you get the Mike Wazowski treatment in the ride photo.
So that’s two “big” rides conquered for Drew. Not too shabby. Test Track is still a great ride. Originally, I was not a fan of the change from the more straight-forward car test story to the Tron effects. I felt like the story behind the ride was lost a bit. But after riding again, I have to admit that the car design portion is a great addition and a lot of fun, and the kids had a blast with it. So overall it’s a wash for me. I think it’s the best ride in Epcot.
The kids played a while in the post-show area, where they have a lot of cool games that feature the car you just designed. Dave and Scotty have become big Formula One race fans and car geeks in general, so they were having fun checking out the various models of sports cars. Me? I went straight for the pickup truck.
We walked across Future World to the Land pavilion. I know this because it’s the next photo in my album.
It wasn’t quite time for our Soarin’ FP yet, so we hopped in line for The Slow Boat Tour Of The Place Where We Grow All Of The Vegetables You End Up Shoving To The Side Of Your Plate And Eventually Throwing In The Trash In All Of Our Restaurants (also known as Living With The Land). We figured Drew would always be up for a boat ride. This turned out to be a great move for him due to the sheer number of Hidden Mickeys available to find along the ride. He had a lot of fun finding them and pointing them out to us.
They also had the raw ingredients for manufacturing more Jetaneros.
All joking aside, I do find the gardens fascinating. Despite being a vegetable-hater, the science side of the farming techniques is fascinating. And they grow pineapple in there, which is a Food of the Gods®.
Now it was time for Soarin’ Around The World. This was new to us—the last time we’d ridden Soarin’ (of any kind) was in 2014 in
Disneyland, when it still flew over various sites in California. We all loved Soarin’ Over California. I loved the way it gave you the rush of swooping through Yosemite canyons and over the mountains. The scenery was gorgeous, and so was the score by the
late, great Jerry Goldsmith. I thought the Imagineers had done as good a job as possible at making you feel like you were hang-gliding.
We hadn’t seen the new version yet, and based on the reviews I’d read here on the DISboards, I was a little nervous. It seemed like the majority of readers were down on the latest flight. Nevertheless, we kept an open mind. Or, in the case of Drew, a caffeinated mind.
The good news: Drew had a great time. Yet another conquest!
The bad news: we were all disappointed with the new version. I tried to think about my issues with it, and I came up with three strikes.
Strike One: the new musical score is a re-worked version of the old one, and it doesn’t flow nearly as beautifully.
Strike Two: For some reason, they opted for more CGI “surprises” jumping out of the screen at you and forgot to include the actual sensation of, you know, soaring. I had far fewer moments where I felt like I was swooping along over the scenery. Instead, each scene moved slower, making me feel like I was just hovering in place and waiting for the next poorly-animated creature to jump out at me. I preferred the sense of movement of the old ride.
Strike Three: I don’t know all of the technical aspects of filming, but I know the old version didn’t seem to have any issues with being projected on a massive curved screen. The new version, however, makes everything look bow-shaped (I’m assuming that’s unless you’re sitting dead-center in the room). It pulls you right out of any suspension of disbelief. By the time we left the ride, the kids had already re-named the Eiffel Tower as the Scoliosis Tower.
So, yeah. That was a bummer.
Still, a day in Disney beats a day most anywhere else. Here’s an obligatory monorail/pond/Spaceship Earth shot, just because I like it.
We sat outside the Land and ate our PB&J sandwiches for lunch. It was a little early because we had an early dinner reservation that day. Once we’d finished choking them down, we went inside the character greeting area in the Innoventions building. The line for Baymax didn’t look to bad, and he’s one of Julie’s favorite characters ever, so we jumped in.
I admit, I’m not much into the character greets. I hate to break this to you, but they’re actually just some random dude (or more often, dudette) in a costume. Spoiler alert.
Yes, I understand that everyone is a kid again at Disney, but still...I feel weird getting in line to "meet" a character unless my kids are with me. I mean, I don't get in line to see Santa at the mall, either. At least, not since the Coal Incident.
Character greets really depend on how good the actor is at portraying the character and being spontaneous. Some are obviously better than others. So, I don’t generally make it a priority to meet characters. But the kids have always liked interacting with them and getting their autographs. My general rule of thumb is to only get in line if the wait is 15 minutes or less.
With Baymax, there’s not a whole lot going on as far as interaction goes. But I did get him to do the fist-bump thing (“Ba-la-la-la”), and he did attempt to swallow my children whole.
From there, we moved on to our second FP of the day: Spaceship Earth.
Time for some more potential Christmas card photos. We’ll just get a nice backdrop and…
Perfect! Everyone looks so thrilled and happy and—
Sigh. Let’s move on.
I’ve always enjoyed the Big Golf Ball. I feel like it’s earned Classic Disney Dark Ride status. My only issue with it this time around was that I usually make a really stupid face (or, as
@pkondz would say, I just look normal) for the photo to be used in the cartoon later, and this time around it didn’t take my picture. So I got the generic animation. I can only assume that I was so hideous, I broke the camera.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with my handiwork from a few years ago.
Coming Up Next: We’ll try out the new version of Mission: Space. Maybe it will go over better than Soarin’? Also, Drew will try a nice palate-cleanser from Italy.