November 4 – 14, 2020 day 5 – Should have been Wine and Dine races

Sunday 11/8/20

As mentioned last evening we had decided not to race this morning with the girls’ injuries, and Robyn wanted to try to get a Rise boarding group which would happen right as we were in the middle of the race. So no alarm was needed again with EPCOT’s late opening and Heather driving. Stephen met us four for breakfast and we all enjoyed the time together. After hugs goodbye, we got to the EPCOT parking booths at 10:00, just a bit before they opened them up. We were right near the front. Thank you for driving Heather! This put us in line for Test Track by 10:30, with the line just inside the building. It moved rather quickly. Oh I do miss building our own SIM car! We were on TT by 10:45 and done before official park opening at 11:00! The girls needed to hit up the restroom so Ryan and I tried to get to the Frozen Ever After line but they had cut it off for being too long. So we all decided to go to the Land Pavilion and ride Soarin and Living With the Land. On the way back we saw the Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto cavalcade! We wound up getting in line for Soarin at 11:20 which we knew would put us a little behind the curve. It was about a 40 minute wait before we were Soarin Around the World! The time really flew though with how much we all love to talk and enjoy each other’s company. There were so many people in the pavilion that we had to go up to go down to get on Living With the Land. The line at 12:15 was posted at 20 minutes but it wound up only being 8 minutes! We got a picture of Laura’s house for her and I found so many Hidden Mickey’s that I hadn’t before! I knew about the main ones, but there are so many more, little ones, ones you don’t know anything about until you see them.

We decided to split for a bit after that to have some couple time. We made our way over to Yorkshire County Fish Shoppe for some delicious, freshly out of the fire fish and chips. Oh my that is so good! We ate in the mask relaxation zone next to the Shoppe by the water. We saw Alice outside the Tea Caddy in UK! Then we headed up to America in no hurry where we watched Mariachi Cobre perform a bit. They sounded so great in the American Gardens Theatre! After that we went back to France to catch the new Beauty and the Beast sing along in France. It was so fun and cute! We really enjoyed it! We really like Impressions de France too, but this was good to see. Audience participation helps a lot too and we had a good one! We got a croissant and chocolate mousse from the bakery and sat in the alley by the shops enjoying the atmosphere. It was really nice to slow down a bit! We decided to stay on that side of World Showcase for now and go to Canada to see the new Canada Far and Wide. Well, these two are no Martin Short for sure! It was still a good show, but I don’t think anyone will top Martin Short. No fault of theirs. They tried, but it just didn’t live up to the old show. We went on to Figment where Heather and Ryan happened to be in line also! They were a fair bit ahead of us though. Even though the line was well outside the building it was less than 10 minutes before we were riding with that loveable purple dragon! Then we saw Joy on the lawn between Imagination and Land after we got off! Since we were over there we went to the Seas with Nemo with absolutely no wait. I got to see my manatees floating and eating (my kind of life!) and quite a few of the tanks with fish and other creatures. It wasn’t very crowded in there at all! We met up with Heather and Ryan for Spaceship Earth about 4:30, it had a 30 minute posted wait. It was actually 10! We made sure to thank the Phoenicians too! We all browsed the hopefully temporary Mouse Gear, boy do I miss the regular one! After browsing we picked up some donut holes with chocolate drizzle for breakfast the next morning. Then they showed us the EPCOT Experience. Wow, that was really cool! We headed up to Italy for Via Napoli pizza window pizza. Fresh, hot pepperoni pizza with a view of Spaceship Earth across the World Showcase Lagoon. It doesn’t get much better than that! After dinner we all stayed together and Heather and Ryan made their purchases in Germany and it was starting to sprinkle as we were walking our way back around WS. So we all got photopass pictures at Spaceship Earth and headed out. It was starting to rain more than sprinkle, we left the park at 7:30 and were home by 8:00! I think both Heather’s ankle and Kathy’s foot were feeling it by then with EPCOT being a lot of walking. It was another great day!

Steps: 26,047
Miles: 11.73