EPCOT

When Doug asked me to travel with him to Florida this week, I started looking for something for us to do over the weekend that I was there.  I found several spots in Sarasota and Tampa that I thought that he might be interested in trying.  After reading off a list of activities that I had found, he decided that he actually wanted to go back to Disney.  I definitely had no problem with that and set out to make reservations at Disney Springs and buying tickets for EPCOT.  

Last night we took advantage of our first reservation at Wine Bar George and this morning we headed to EPCOT first thing.  It was a little different than when we were there in May.  We arrived almost the exact same time, but there were quite a bit more people waiting in line then there was last spring.  Instead of walking straight to a ride after we made it through the turn style, we were led to a waiting area for "rope drop."  It felt strange to be in a crowd once again, but at least we were outside and made it to Test Track well before the official opening time of 11 a.m.  

After the ride, we did a tour of the countries stopping first in Mexico for a cucumber margarita.  It was a lot better than I thought it would be.  Our next stop was Norway.  We didn't think that we'd be able to ride Frozen because of the crowd, but were in and out in less than thirty minutes.  From there we headed to Germany for brats, a big pretzel and a grapefruit beer.  We then tried a Grey Goose slushy from France before we spent the afternoon riding the rest of the rides in the park - Figment, Finding Nemo, Spaceship Earth and our favorite, Soarin'.  By the time we finished it was 4 p.m. and extremely hot and humid.  We decided to take a break for the afternoon and headed back to the hotel to get out of the sun for awhile.  It was nice to relax, grab a Diet Coke, eat a snack and spend time in the air conditioning for a couple of hours.

We went back to EPCOT around 6 p.m and stopped in England first for a Bumble Bee and Welsh Dragon.  We thought about having dinner in Morocco, but decided on pizza in Italy instead.  It was very good.  I talked Doug into trying the Oreo funnel cake afterward.  We normally don't get one as there have been food booths that we have wanted to try while in EPCOT with various desserts.  This time, however, there were not booths as the park was in between the Flower & Garden Festival and the Food & Wine Festival, so we were able to try more of the staples which Doug really enjoyed.  

Once we finished touring the countries we headed to Gran Fiesta Tour and were glad to see the Three Caballeros were back in action.  We also were able to ride Soarin' one more time and take a turn on Living with the Land.  It was closed when we tried earlier in the day.  As it was well after nine when we finished, we decided to get one more beer and do some shopping until the fireworks show at ten.  Disney had just opened up these shows again on the first of July and it was nice to see it in person.  On our way back to the hotel we stopped at a newfound Speedway on property for a big pop.  Thankfully, we still had half of our Gideon's Bakery cookies for dessert waiting for us at the hotel.  That made for a great late night snack