Trip Log:

Started off the morning heading down to the French Quarter for breakfast and then hopped a bus over to EPCOT. Walked out to Soarin and grabbed a Fastpass. It was around 10:30am and our return time was for 5:40pm, by 11:30 all Fastpasses for the day were gone. We then roamed around Innoventions for a while and then decided to head over to Animal Kingdom to see what was going on there. Grabbed a Fastpass for the Safari (it was around noon) and the return time was 3:30. Ate lunch at Pizzarfari and then had to run an errand to a business center to get something printed, so headed over to the Contemporary to check out the construction and get our print out. After roaming around the resort took the monorail to the TTC and then the Ferry to the Magic Kingdom. Hiked down Main Street and managed to beat the parade out to Liberty Square. Grabbed a snack at Sleepy Hollow and watched the parade from there. Next up the Hall of Presidents at 3:30 and then out of the park and onto the express monorail to the TTC. Once there walked down the ramp and over to the bus area and walked right onto a bus that took us back to the Animal Kingdom. We walked out to Africa and caught the last three floats of the parade and then used our Fastpass for the Safari. After the Safari we roamed around a bit and grabbed a snack at Pizzafari before heading for the bus and back to EPCOT. Walked out to the Land and road Soarin then the Listen to the Land boat ride. Next up a ride on Journey into Imagination and then we headed back to the parks entrance and hopped a monorail over to the TTC and then the express monorail to the Magic Kingdom. Spectromagic was just about to start so we took the train out to Frontierland and then walked along the River and into Liberty Square. Continued on to Fantasyland and circled into Tomorrowland. Decided to backtrack at this point and hopped on Small World since there was no wait and then bee lined over to Adventureland and road Pirates. Made it out to Main Street with a couple minutes to spare before Wishes started. As the show was going on roamed around the street and ended up near the end by the finale then headed to the bus stop and back to the Riverside to call it an evening and watch the USC vs. UNC game... go Trojans!!! (Too bad they lost...)

Thoughts & Observations:

• The parks felt crowded today and the Fastpass return times were quite distant for many of the big attractions. We ended up hopping from park to park to hit a couple attractions we wanted and to try and avoid some of the crowds (this is not the wisest of strategies since a good chunk of your day is spent moving from park to park, but for us it made sense and we really had nothing we wanted/needed to see/do).

• We needed to receive a document and print it out so we headed over to the Contemporary Resorts Business center and found the Cast Members there very helpful and great to chat with (even though the one was an LSU fan we will not hold that against her). We were able to quickly get what we needed and it was the first time in a while that I had been to that part of the resort, I always forget how many breakout rooms they have, as you walk around you cannot help but notice them all. If anyone is curious I have a listing of all the business center hours and rates (its basically the convention resorts have a center).

• Our timing was perfect (and extremely lucky) that we were up on the balcony looking over the Contemporary construction and got to see the last free standing portion of the North Wing knocked down (you will see pictures in the update). The area is mostly clear now except for a small portion in the middle and the final area they just knocked down (I would guess in a few days after this everything will be gone). It looks like quite a bit of land has been cleared and it will be interesting to see if the building that gets built is the large tower that surfaced several months ago on an architects website and was labeled Contemporary Vacation Club, this quickly disappeared, within the same day if I remember right. Our friends over at Screamscape have the pictures: http://www.screamscape.com/html/walt_disney_world_resort.htm (Scroll about half way down the page)

• It was great to see the applause still at the Hall of Presidents for our current president and several of his predecessors, seems the audience was quite partisan, which was a good change after being in California on the left coast...

• I was extremely disappointed with how Soarin' was being run. First off the Fastpasses for this attraction are gone within the first hour or two of the parks opening on most days, which speaks for its demand. But guests using Fastpass are now cheated out of the experience quite a bit. They make you enter through the exit, so you miss the buildup and the set up story and even the pre-flight safety spiel. Instead CMs escort you into the theater and tell you the info. I am hoping this was just a test, because if this is the normal operation its extremely disappointing and the CMs running it were completely disorganized. Another side effect is the theater was not completely full which meant people in the standby line could have easily been added to fill in the seats. I believe they were running one theater for Standby and one for Fastpass, and I would assume they had the standby line wrapping into the old return line space, but I could not tell.
  
  

Pedometer Information for the day:

Enough with the text.. onto the pictures

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