When I left off in my last Disney post, we had spent the morning at Hollywood Studios and took a break back at the hotel while Gabbie had dance practice. We spent a long time waiting for her to get back from her practice as somehow our group was the last one to be transported back to the hotel! Once Gabbie got back, we had some dinner in our room, and then headed over to Epcot for the evening.
Besides the fact that I really like going to Epcot in the evening, one reason we decided to go there on our first evening was because of Fast Passes. While you are allowed to book 3 Fast Passes per day, at Epcot you can only choose 1 from the top tier rides – Frozen Ever After, Soarin’, and Test Track – and we love all 3! So I got a Fast Pass for Frozen on the first evening at 8:30 PM and one for Soarin’ the following day. That just left Test Track without a Fast Pass. But we didn’t end up having to wait for any of those rides and some of us even rode some of them multiple times – read on to find out how!
We couldn’t resist making some phone calls in the UK before making our way to Mexico.
I love the various cultural items sold in each pavilion, but the Mexican items are some of my favorites.
We hopped on to the Gran Fiesta Tour ride, which we tend to just call “Mexico”!
I took this picture and then looked at the screen and saw a hidden Mickey!
After that ride, we thought we might have time to ride Test Track before our Fast Pass for Frozen. I had seen a family waiting in the Rockin’ Roller Coaster single rider line that morning and suggested we try that, as the single rider line is a lot shorter than the stand by line and you have to be above 7 to ride alone – we would wait in line together, but would be separated for the actual ride. The cars hold a certain amount of people and when the whole car isn’t filled by one party, they add another rider from the single rider line. Surprisingly enough, Simon actually agree that he’d be fine riding by himself, so that’s what we did! We all basically got on at the same time, just in separate ride vehicles. When my car went outside for the fast part of the ride, I saw the most beautiful sunset over Spaceship Earth! That was the best part of the ride for me!
When we came back outside, I was able to get this picture as we hurried back to Norway for our Fast Pass.
I was a fan of the Norway ride before it turned into a Frozen ride, but I just love the ride now! It’s so beautifully themed and cute. Even though we had Fast Passes, the line was a little slow, but definitely faster than it would have been without the Fast Passes!
We finished up on that ride and hurried outside just in time to catch Illuminations. Although last time we were in Disney I was a fan of the Illuminations show, this time I decided it’s about time Epcot replace it. It’s been the same show for almost 20 years! However, we normally watch it from near the International Gateway, and we did have a better view from near Norway!
After the fireworks, we thought hey, the Magic Kingdom is still open, why don’t we head over there for some more fun? I’ll tell you why! My feet were killing me. We walked to the front of Epcot and waited for the Monorail, but then realized it only brings you to the Ticket and Transportation Center, so once we got there we’d have to change to yet another Monorail to actually get to the Magic Kingdom. And no one was too sad to change our plans at that point and get on a Lyft back to the hotel.
However, we did get to see Spaceship Earth lit up at night – my favorite!
So, we were at Epcot from 7:00-9:30 PM and rode Mexico, Test Track, and Frozen, plus watched the fireworks. That day, I walked a total of 8 miles, the most in one day on the trip!
Like I mentioned, we got to repeat some of the most popular rides, but that happened on our full day at Epcot – come back next week to see what we repeated and to see what else we did at Epcot!