from shopping to Spaceship Earth
Spaceship Earth is probably on the rides I remember best from going to Epcot with my grandparents. My grandpa really liked this ride a lot and I vividly remembered most of the scenes from the ride.
I always thought it was really cool how you got to ride in the “giant golf ball.”
Though I married a math teacher and he told me Epcot is actually a geodesic sphere. If you look up Spaceship Earth on Wikipedia, this is the more technical description of what it is [and the one Justin prefers “Geometrically, Spaceship Earth is derived from the Class 2 geodesic polyhedron with frequency of division equal to 8. Each face of the polyhedron is divided into three isosceles triangles to form each point. In theory, there are 11,520 total isosceles triangles forming 3840 points. In reality, some of those triangles are partially or fully nonexistent due to supports and doors; there are actually only 11,324 silvered facets, with 954 partial or full flat triangular panels”
[That was the only clear picture I got from the ride…]
Anyways this ride is the same as I remembered, and completely awesome. It’s such a classic. Justin also enjoyed it a lot.
Our future was interesting:
[I’m pretty sure it mixed Justin and me up… One I would never be doing math just because, two I look awful in orange]
[Justin looks like he’s trying to get the attention of an Uber driver]
It’s good to know that Disney and the Jetson’s share the same ideas about vehicles of the future.
[I hope in the future I’m coordinated enough to be able to surf]
[I like the pretend this is the future of the kindle, so instead of just reading, you’re fully immersed in a book, virtually, at least]
After Spaceship Earth, it was off to Mission Space:
I’m a baby, we rode the green side of Mission Space.
I was very impressed with the pamphlets they had you read before the ride so you were fully aware of the side effects that might occur from riding that ride.
I had never ridden Mission Space before, at all, in any shape or form, as the ride opened at Epcot long after I had visited it last. The ride was okay? I didn’t really enjoy it. I wouldn’t say it was a bad ride, Justin really enjoyed it, and has hinted at wanting to ride the orange version, though I have informed him that he will be riding that one alone! It’s just not my thing? I love roller coasters and crazy rides, but even the green version of MS made me sort of nauseous and sick, though I did enjoy the cute little girl in our spaceship, who was riding with her dad, and really thought the ride was real, and was making sure we all did our jobs as the ride progressed. I was the pilot, and Justin was the navigator.
I think when Justin and I have kids, if we’re lucky enough to have kids [long story sort, I had uterine cancer in 2014, they caught it early, but I needed a full hysterectomy to prevent it from spreading, so we’re unable to have kids, we have a frozen embryo that we created before the surgery, but only one out of the ten embryos made it to blastocyst form to be frozen, so we really only have one chance to have a biological child] one of the best parts of Disney will being able to see Disney from behind their eyes and how in love with all the magic they are 
and I can’t wait for that because seeing the pure happiness and joy within all the children’s eyes, who we saw at Disney, just made me so happy that they were experiencing the magic.
After MS, it was time to start traveling around the world in way less than 80 days.
We started at Mexico.
We walked on to Gran Fiesta Tour.
I remember riding the Gran Fiesta with my nana because she loved the ride. So I guess I enjoyed it for nostalgia’s sake?
I don’t remember enough about the ride from riding it when I was little to really say much about it.
Though a quick google search tells me it used to be a ride called “El Rio de Tiempo” or The River of Time, and that ride was more focused on Mexico’s history, so I think that’s probably the version I had seen.
It was basically a shorter and Mexican themed It’s a Small World. It’s a good time waster, but I don’t think I would wait more than 10 minutes for it.
After Mexico, we continued our trek around the world.
Chapter 14: Around the World in less than 40 days
Next up was Norway, home of Frozen Ever After, which already had like an 80 minute wait, even in cold and rainy weather.
Justin and I were pretty hungry by then since we hadn’t eaten anything since our breakfast. We stopped by the bakery in Norway, Kringla Bakeri og Kafé, to have a quick snack:
Justin had some sort of chocolate almond covered pretzel.
I had a piece of the school bread. It was delicious. The bread was sweet. The vanilla cream and coconuts were diving. 5/5, would totally eat again, and now I can add it to DW snacks I fantasize about when I’m at home. That list also includes Dole Whip.
We sat for a little while, at the quaint little covered area behind the bakery, and ate while we watched the rain and tried to warm up with coffee with too much cream and sugar in it [because that’s the way we both like it].
We had awhile before our FEA fast pass, so when we were finished eating, we continued to travel around the world.
Next up was China:
We went in and watched The Reflections of China video to try to escape the rain for a little while.
We both got a little teary-eyed for Texas when they mentioned the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival in Harbin, China. Every year, Moody Gardens, which is this tourist trap in Galveston that we both love, flies in ice carves from Harbin China, and they have their own mini-themed ice festival there in a 9 degree tent… This year’s theme was “Rainforest” [the real THIS YEAR theme will be “from pole to pole, and we’re totally going]
We both enjoyed the movie, we like learning about new places. Though I think it’d be more awesome if they could find a way to put seats in there, and maybe have the seats move with the theater… but it being a 360 degree movie, I am unsure how they would accomplish that.
So in conclusion, very informative and well done movie with beautiful cinematography, but not a good place to go if you want to relax your tired feet and legs.
After China was Germany:
Snow White was signing autographs in Germany, and I felt bad for her because it was raining and it was pretty cold, and the poor princess looked like she was freezing. She didn’t even have a very long line probably because it was so miserable outside, and only Justin and I were crazy enough to wander the world showcase in the freezing cold and rain.
I enjoyed looking at the model train village, but there was no train running. But I still enjoyed how detailed the village was.
I also enjoyed the Christmas decorations that were still being displayed.
Next up was Italy:
don’t really have much to say about Italy. It had some pretty parts, but it didn’t wow me or anything.
Interestingly enough, when reading on Wikipedia to remind myself about where we were in Epcot, especially because Imgur doesn’t load my photos in the order I try to upload them in, there were all these dark-rides or just rides, in general, that were originally considered for Phase II of Epcot, which never happened.
Italy was supposed to have a gondola-themed dark ride and Germany was supposed to have a ride along the Rhine River, but those plans were canceled. Epcot would have been such a different park had it had more rides like that, and I kind of wish those rides had happened.
Next up was the American Adventure:
[we were very wet and sort of cold]
Justin and I didn’t stop and see The American Adventure though because we had to head back to Norway for our FEA fast pass.
Of course, when we got there, FEA was down and off-line. After assuring everyone that their fast passes would be active for the rest of the day [because god help the rage of parents, whose children did not get to ride FEA due to technological difficulties!] , we shrugged, and decided to continue traveling around the world.
We didn’t go back to American Adventure for some reason…. Instead we started at Japan.