Trip Log:

  Started off the morning heading for Everything Pop for breakfast and then the plan was to catch a bus over to EPCOT.  The EPCOT line was long so we instead hopped a bus over to the Magic Kingdom then the resort monorail to the TTC and another monorail over to EPCOT.  We went over and grabbed Fastpasses for Soarin’ and road Living with the Land.  After the boat ride we headed out to World Showcase and visited Canada and viewed O Canada.  It was now approaching lunch time so we headed across Future World and grabbed Fastpasses for Test Track and Mission Space.  Then we split up and two headed back to the Land for lunch and the other two to the Electric Umbrella for lunch then we met up at the Land and road Soarin’.  After Soarin’ we again split up and two of us headed for Mission Space and the other two to roam World Showcase.  After Mission Space we used our Fastpass and road Test Track then headed out to World Showcase walking past Mexico, Norway, China, and meeting up with our group near the trains and Germany.  Next stop Italy and then we headed for the American Adventure to listen to the Voices of Liberty.  After their brief concert we headed for Japan and a little cover since it was starting to drizzle.  Once the shower passed we continued walking around the lagoon taking some more pictures along the way.  We ended up back in Future World and headed for Universe of Energy since it was the only pavilion we had not visited this trip.  Then we circled around and walked back through Canada and the UK on our way to the International Gateway.  We exited the park and walked over to the Boardwalk, stopping in the lobby to see their holiday display then we continued on and around to the Yacht Club, again stopping to see their display and ending in the Beach Club.  It was almost 6:00pm and time for dinner at Yachtsman Steakhouse.  After dinner we headed back for EPCOT and made another round of World Showcase stopping in France, Morocco, the American Adventure, Italy, Germany and Norway (we skipped China and Mexico this time around).   After we finished our loop we headed for Future World and the Seas, followed by a walk past Test Track and Mission Space before queuing up along World Showcase Lagoon for Illuminations.  Once the finale shells had exploded we bee-lined it to the front of the park and the Pop Century bus to head back, pack up, and call it a night.

Thoughts & Observations:

• Today was our EPCOT day. We spent the entire day there, I cannot remember the last time I spent a full day without park hopping.. it just happened that we had several things on our "to-see" list so we stayed around. We did have a couple hours to kill before dinner and after dinner but it was not worth going somewhere else. The stretch from after dinner till Illuminations was on the long side and we were really wishing the show was at 9pm still, that extra half hour took forever it seemed.
  
  
• Recently the Listen to the Land boat ride has been changed. There is no longer a live narrator on board, you listen to a pre-recorded spiel and there is no longer Fastpass for this attraction. I think this goes a long way toward uniformity but I always thought the personal touch of having a live CM on board was better. I wish they would have brought back more of the original score/sound track.
  
  
• Several months ago Mission Space started offering two versions of the attraction. An orange team and a green team. One with the spinning (more intense) one without. I road the less intense version and I found it an ok attraction. I thought the ride itself was really smooth and slick. The storyline was ok. I talked with my brother who has now ridden both and he enjoys the "thrill version" better, he says its just not that strong of attraction to begin with but the G-forces were interesting to experience once (he road the other version with me this time and showed no interest in the extreme version again). The lines for both were short all week we just never stopped until today.
  
  
• I hope the experiment of using Photopass on Test Track is paying off. I think its a great idea all around and hope other attractions follow suit.
  
  
• Parts of World Showcase were taken over by birds in the afternoon. We wanted to go down along the lagoon for pictures, in the area right over the bridge from the International Gateway before you get to France but there were so many birds, and worse bird droppings, that the area was not good to be in. We overheard several other guests saying similar things. I thought overall this trip the bird population is a little out of control. The two worst places were this one and Frontierland in the Magic Kingdom.
  
  
• We ate Dinner at the Yachtsman Steakhouse, which is my favorite restaurant. The steaks were incredible as usual, but I found the service lacking a bit. For starters it was a bit slower and less attentive than usual and our waiter even had someone helping him, and they were not that full or busy either. Secondly I think there were several instances where a language barrier slowed the service or made it not up to par. One area that bugged me a bit was one member of our group wanted hot tea (since it was cold outside). The waiter asked what kind and he said regular old Lipton tea. The waiter said they did not have that but he would bring something close. We knew it was not exactly what he wanted when the waiter showed up with a tea press but we went with it. It was such a small glass he asked for some more and the waiter brought out another serving. We gathered by the way the waiter talked they charged for each, but he really wanted tea and the first cup was so small so he figured it would not be too much, probably a couple bucks a cup like most soft drinks, coffee, etc... The bill came and guess how much two cups of tea cost... twelve dollars ... yep six dollars a cup. By even Disney and Yachtsman standards that seemed high considering the waiter should have picked up on the fact that he wanted a plain boring cup of tea when he said regular Lipton and I thought he should have at least warned him or made sure that he knew what he was ordering. And to top it off he said the tea he had been drinking at Pop Century (using our mug which only cost $11.99 with unlimited refills for the trip) was better (well maybe the same at worst/best).
  

Pedometer Information for the day:

* Note: The second pedometer was worn by someone else in our group, not sure why his numbers are so dramatically different than mine, we walked nearly the same places, or at least within 5-10% I would estimate but the numbers were double to triple for mine for some reason..

Enough with the text.. onto the pictures

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