After Magic Kingdom, we walked back down Main Street and made our way to the monorail.  To get from MK to Epcot, you take the monorail to the Ticket and Transportation Center, then change to the Epcot monorail.

Similar to Magic Kingdom, we have our favorites at Epcot, one of them being Soarin’ in the Land Pavilion which simulates a free flying hang glider adventure.  It is totally awesome!  I think in previous visits, we would go on this ride two or three times but it is a very popular ride so usually there is a long wait.  Knowing that, as soon as we got to Epcot, we went to get a Fast Pass with an arrival time between 6:15 (3 hours later) and 7:15 p.m. No time for multiple rides this trip!

From there we decided to take a break, have some water  and sit for a few minutes in the Sunshine Seasons cafeteria style restaurant.  The photo on the left shows hot air balloons  which hang from the ceiling of the building and over the restaurant. Quite festive.

After we felt a little rested, we went on the Living with the Land ride in the same pavilion. This is another boat ride which takes you through greenhouses and fish farms and shows how they can grow fruit and vegetables without the use of any chemicals.  The fruit and  vegetables are used at some of the restaurants at Disney.

Since we still had time to kill, we walked over to The Seas with Nemo and Friends Pavilion.  Here you board a “clamobile” and join in the quest to find Nemo – it’s a pretty cute ride!  After that, we walked around the huge aquarium and displays  and stopped to watch the manatees. You can spend hours just at this one pavilion.

From here, we went to the Captain EO attraction.  We had never been to this one – it seems that every time we were here previously it was closed. This is a 3D film that follows Captain EO and his crew on a mission to rescue the planet through the gift of music dance and light.  It was produced by George Lucas, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, stars Michael Jackson and was shown at Disney from 1986 to 1990. It recently returned in 2010 as a tribute after Michael’s death. We enjoyed it!

From there we walked back to Spaceship Earth which is inside the geodesic sphere at the entrance to Epcot.  This is a pretty cool ride as it shows advancements in the world of communication.  At the beginning, a picture is taken of each person in the Omnimover vehicle, then at the end of the ride, you answer questions using a touchscreen, it then uses the pictures to project your image into the future. Not the most flattering pictures by any means but kind of fun!

By now it’s close to 6:00 p.m. so one last visit to one of our favorites, Ellen DeGeneres’ Universe of Energy.  She and Bill Nye, the Science Guy, go back to the dinosaur era to show the history, production and conservation of energy.

Finally it’s time to return to our favorite, Soarin’! It’s one of those rides that you wish would last a lot longer than it does.  After all the waiting, it was over way too fast.

Now it’s time to return.  We took the monorail back to the Ticket and Transportation Center.  Since the monorail was pretty crowded instead of taking the monorail back to the Magic Kingdom, we decided to take the paddleboat ferry back to MK where we would then transfer to a boat back to Fort Wilderness.  The only bad part about this decision is the bugs (mosquitos?) that were everywhere in the waiting area and on the ferry.  You couldn’t even sit down they were so thick on the benches.  UGH!  I guess since it was a warm day in the low 80’s they were out in force!  How disgusting!  Guess you must get used to it.  Before then and since then we haven’t had any problems, probably because it has been cooler.

We caught the boat back to Fort Wilderness just as the fireworks at Magic Kingdom started so we were able to watch them from the water which was pretty cool. By the time that we walked back to our site, it was after 8:00 p.m., we were pretty exhausted and hungry.   Tacos for supper!

Friday was a do nothing, hang out day!

A few extra pictures…