Florida Vacation - Day 3

EPCOT

We loved EPCOT.  LOVED it!

As I did every night before we went to a park, I always checked our fast passes and to see if any new ones were available.   Since we stayed off site we could not reserve our fast pass options right away and some of our must do's were already full.  Things  seemed to change daily so it was always worth taking a peek.   To my utter surprise and disbelief - there was an opening for Soarin!!!   Mind you, everything I had read indicated that it was going to be closed during our visit, so to say I was beyond excited when I checked the EPCOT website and saw that it was open is an understatement.  I promptly moved around all of our other fastpasses to make room.  It was so worth the hassle.  

 The ride was amazing!  

 

 We started the day with Mission: SPACE and I was happy to see that there were 2 ride options.  Matt & Maxwell picked the more intense, of course, and Kaylee & I went with the less intense option.  We got right in with our fast passes and made it to our "training" positions, at which time we got our mission and warnings.  Kaylee started to panic.  We left.  I knew we would eventually find Matt & Maxwell, so we made our way to the Advanced Training lab.  We had a blast!!  We were able to assist astronauts with training and repair missions.  Eventually Matt & Maxwell came out and the 4 of us got to be the astronauts during the simulation. 

Kaylee took her job very seriously.  :)

 Next up was Under the Sea - Journey of the Little Mermaid.  Kaylee was super excited it was open as it was closed for renovations when we were in California.  Matt & I were pumped that we found another ride that him and I could ride together.  ;)

We then spent time exploring about half of the World Showcase before heading back for our fastpasses at Soarin and Spaceship Earth.  

 

Canada

Matt & I had fish and chips (and a lager for Matt) from the United Kingdom while the kids had ham & cheese croissants and chocolate mousse from France for lunch.

After lunch, we watched the most amazing street show called Serveur Amusant.  Such a fun show to watch and the men in the show were amazing!

The kids were enthralled.  See that little green stand in the background?  It had the most amazing frozen adult beverages - frozen wine and some delicious fruity vodka slush.  I may have stopped twice....

 

The kids didn't even notice the duck when they first sat down.

Spaceship Earth!

Crazy eyes Mom!   (Not to mention sweaty)

 Project Tomorrow

Way harder than it looks!

The kids typically opted to not stand in line character meet & greets -- so our pictures of the characters are always with other random people.   :)

No trip to Germany is complete without a pretzel and beer.   Success!

We had dinner reservations at Via Napoli Ristorante e Pizzeria.   Which was a recommendation from a friend who had posted a picture of their pizza.  This was our one big dinner reservation while at DisneyWorld (we normally ate a quick service style places because we were never too hungry nor did we want to spend the time for long meals) and we went all out.   Maxwell really enjoys calamari so we started with that for an appetizer.  It was delicious!  Amazing how seafood tastes so much better when you are not in the middle of the country.  The kids each ordered a personal sized pizza and Matt & I ordered one to split.  So much pizza.  So much awesomeness.  Well worth every penny and carb involved.  The timing was perfect also because about 5 minutes before our reservation it started to rain.  Not just rain but down pour....people were soaked within seconds! 

After dinner, we finished exploring about the World Showcase and then found our places for the nightly show over the lake.   It was a beautiful evening.  We tried taking a few pictures but they didn't really turn out.  It was an amazing show of lights, lasers and fireworks.

So pretty when it is lit up at night.

Our only regret (but that isn't the right word) is that we missed Test Track.  When we were in the area in the morning the line was crazy long so we decided to keep an eye on the wait time.    Later in the afternoon, when the wait wasn't horrible (only about an hour) we didn't have time before our dinner reservation.  Then the rain started and it was closed for the rest of the night.