EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays

 Doug and I checked out of our hotel this morning in Ocala for a day in Orlando.  We had tickets for the EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays.  We hoped to be there by the 10 a.m. opening time and got there well before that.  Once we made it through the turn style, we headed straight for Test Track.  There was already a long line from those staying in the Disney hotels, so we decided to try the single rider line.  I had never done that before and was pleasantly surprised by how quick it was.  We were in and out of the ride in less than 15 minutes which was well below the 50 minute standby line.  As an extra positive, the woman that I sat beside was a lot of fun.

Our next stop was Meg's favorite ride, Gran Fiesta Tour.  We thought it was really funny that she texted us while we were on the boat to let us know that she would be "really mad if we skipped The Three Caballeros."  It was as cute as always and Doug was able to get his favorite margarita next door as soon as we got off the ride.  We spent the next several hours walking around the countries trying the festival food booths.  There were less than at the Food & Wine Festival that we attended with Brett and Cameron in October, but still plenty of food for us to try.  Some of the highlights were an eggnog donut, beef and mashed potatoes, and pastrami on rye.  Doug's favorite was the salmon latke and mine was the chocolate peppermint ice cream.

We did take a break from the food to catch more rides including Soarin', Living with the Land and Spaceship Earth.  We had tried several times to ride Frozen, but the line was well over an hour long each times.  Somehow we got lucky on our last try as it was only a 30 minute wait.  I was glad to have gotten on the ride and even happier to have a dry seat in the end.  I also did some window shopping as well while Doug was waiting in line for food and drinks.  I didn't buy anything, but they did have a lot of really cute holiday items.  We did not stay until the park closed at ten because we were both tired and we had already seen the new fireworks show, but we were there long enough to see the Christmas decorations lit up.  There weren't as many as I thought that there would be, but they were still nice.  I really enjoyed looking for the hidden Olafs throughout the countries as well.  I wished that Cameron could have been there to help me find them all.

We got to our hotel at Flamingo Crossing around 8 p.m.  Doug wanted to watch the Iowa vs. Michigan Big Ten Football Championship.  We found a small outside bar at the hotel that had it on and we enjoyed watching the Wolverines take control of the game early.  It was nice to sit down and relax for awhile as we had taken over 20,000 steps in today - exhausting, but fun.