The Final Day

I've come at last to the fourth and final full day of my vacation. Yes, it took me longer to recount the trip on my blog than it took to actually do. We packed that much into the time we had, I'd say. I'd also ask you to forgive the indulgence here; writing all this was probably more for me than for my blog readers, I must confess. I want to remember every last moment of this trip, and getting most of them down in pixels here on the blog will be a great way for me to go back and relive it whenever I want.

We began our final day at Epcot, a park at Walt Disney World that neither of us had visited before. For the benefit of any of you planning your own Disney vacation, they may say Epcot opens at one time, but it kinda-sorta doesn't. The rides right near the front open at one time; the "World Showcase" loop around the park (along with all the restaurants and themed gift shops) opens at another, later time. You can make that work if you plan for it, but don't go there hungry first thing in the morning like we did.

Spaceship Earth. This is the signature ride of Epcot, the one inside that giant silver golf ball and the first thing you come to when you get through the door. As the signature ride, it's probably mandatory that every Epcot visitor should ride it. That said, don't do it first just because you get to it first. My experience was that there's never more than a 5-minute wait for it, while other more worthy rides built up long queues indeed. We should have waited to do this on our way out the door, I think; you should too.

As for the ride itself? Well, it's a Haunted Mansion style slow ride through a series of dioramas, but without whatever "special sauce" that made me find the Haunted Mansion so enjoyable. But it's not all bad. Judi Dench does the ride narration in its current incarnation, and there's a fun bit at the end where you become basically a Terrance & Phillip style character in a crude little cartoon. Pose for your picture at the beginning carefully for maximum effect.

Test Track. This is an interesting roller coaster themed around the idea that you're a living test subject in an automobile testing lab. (Side note: this is where I learned about the word "jounce," that I mentioned a few posts back.) You ride in a car that looks more or less like a car. You go over bumpy terrain, brake quickly, accelerate quickly, and are exposed to heat (besides just going outside) and cold. It's a well conceived, different kind of roller coaster. Thumbs up.

Mission: SPACE. Gary Sinise, looking fresh from the set of Apollo 13 (and he probably was) is your guide in a motion simulator experience that has you traveling to Mars. There are two levels of intensity to the ride. The one we did was the more intense (and naturally, the longer wait). It was a neat ride with several exciting moments. The rocket launch experience, though much shorter than the real thing, was rather convincing. I'm sure real astronauts would quibble, but it met my expectations well enough.

But... there are a lot of air effects used on this ride. And I was apparently just the right height that these were all directed right into my eyes. I totally would have put on sunglasses mid-ride, had I not stowed them dutifully in the pocket before me before it all started. (And the way you're harnessed in, that pocket was completely inaccessible.) Blast after blast of air straight in my eyes had me bawling by the end of the ride, like I'd found out the Earth had been destroyed while I was on the way to Mars, and everyone I know and love had been lost in one fell swoop.

So, bad experience on what really is a pretty neat ride.

World Showcase. This isn't really one ride, but rather the giant circuit around the park where you pass through areas themed after different countries. Canada gives way to the UK, then France, Japan, Italy, so on, and so on. There are attractions throughout this part of the park, but they all appeared to be very much of the "stand (maybe sit) and watch a show" variety. So we skipped by all that, instead enjoying the scenery and stopping in at various "foreign" shops, mostly for unusual and authentic foreign candy that had been shipped in. We ate lunch at a French restaurant with a great lobster bisque. Later, we got the most amazing caramel squares ever from a place in "Germany."

I'd say that this area of the park is worth walking through if you're already there, but probably isn't anything to actually draw you to Epcot otherwise.

Captain EO and Soarin'. Actually, we skipped both these rides. Personally, I had no interest in Captain EO, the 3D film starring Michael Jackson. I didn't realize at the time that this attraction from the 1980s had been absent from the park for over a decade, and was only recently returned due to public demand after Jackson's death. If I'd known? Well, I still probably wouldn't have wanted to see it. Your mileage may vary.

Soarin', on the other hand, totally would have made the cut. It's apparently a hang gliding simulator ride of some kind. But here's where we made the mistake of riding Spaceship Earth first just because it was the nearest thing to the door. We should have gone straight to Soarin'. By the time we did make it there, there was a 30 minute wait. Not too bad, except that we'd skipped breakfast and were both way too hungry to wait. By the time we circled back, the wait was up to 110 minutes.

We decided instead to exercise our "park hopper" option and head over to another park, Disney Hollywood Studios. Really, there were only three rides we had any interest in there, the rest seeming firmly in the "watch a show" vein. But that was enough to warrant the visit.

Star Tours. This recently remodeled motion simulator ride imagines you on a passenger flight in the Star Wars universe, with C-3PO as your pilot. It's a far less exciting ride than Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, and the Spider-Man ride. It probably even falls shy of the Simpsons Ride. But it is Star Wars, and there is still some sponge of love I have for that that George Lucas hasn't yet managed to wring out. So put me in a podrace, fly me through a Death Star superstructure, and take me through hyperspace? Yeah, I'm there. And you should be too.

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. This is a "shoot you up a tower and freefall down" right in the model of the Doctor Doom ride over at Universal. But there is a twist. First, you're taken on a short "elevator ride" from a "haunted hotel" and into "The Twilight Zone." The ride is predominately indoors. You only see the outside world when a window briefly opens for a second or two just before your freefall begins. I found that all to be a neat idea on paper, but not so thrilling in execution. I respect the attempt to do the tower ride differently, but the fact is it's just not as scary when you can't actually see it the entire time. Basically, this is the Space Mountain of tower rides.

Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. This ride (which somehow features Aerosmith) was the third thing and final thing we wanted to do in Hollywood Studios. But we arrived to face a 70 minute wait. On day one of the trip, we'd have probably been all over that without reservation. But let's face it... the trip was winding to a close. We'd been outside in the sun all day on the one day it actually didn't rain in Orlando during our stay. So we decided instead to go back to the hotel and briefly regroup.

For those very savvy about Walt Disney World, yes, we skipped Animal Kingdom altogether. I understand there is one roller coaster there (Expedition Everest) that might just be the best in Florida. But otherwise, the park sounded like a glorified zoo. And I had no interest in watching a bunch of animals as unhappy about being in the sun as I was. Maybe if there's a "next Orlando trip." Maybe.

Instead, after recharging for a bit at our hotel, we decided to close down the trip as we'd began it -- by returning to Islands of Adventure. Orlando even had the decency to cool off considerably for us as the evening came. We ate dinner in the Wizarding World section of the park, rode Forbidden Journey one more time, and got in second trips on the Dragon Challenge, Hulk, and Doctor Doom rides (all with no waiting) before really and truly closing the book on our vacation.

To make a long story short (too late), it was an amazing vacation with amazing company.

Congratulations, reader, on reaching the end of the journey. You can now expect a return to my regular blathering about movies, television, and what-not. (Hooray?)