DiDeAd conclusion

The last day of the trip was at Epcot. We slept in this morning, agreeing to commence our adventure at 11:00 at the bus stop. It was nice to arise in a leisurely fashion for once, and to enjoy a leisurely Mickey breakfast waffle (although my recommendation for Mickey-shaped food is the ice cream sandwich from the loose vendors in the park, which are everywhere, or the tripe-on-a-bun treats, which are nowhere).

Day two of Epcot began with Spaceship Earth, which we all agreed was not its finest hour. They’ve dumbed down the narration, and eliminated the great ending. It’s not terrible, just not as good as it was. Where is Walter Cronkite when you need him? On the other hand, although we had seen Soarin’ yesterday, we popped on it again today, which made up for our reaction to Spaceship. On the last trip, the smell-o-vision seemed to be on full blast. Maybe they had cleaned out the blasters overnight or something. Whatever the reason, it was the best flight of all. Most of the day, though, was on World Showcase. A slow but excellent Japanese lunch, the various countries (despite O’C’s pooh-poohing of Norway), dropping in on shows and whatnot, shopping, movies (yes, Canada is great, and all the people who are any good in the USA are, in fact, born in Canada—we get the point, you damned furriners!), etc. I was amazed when I looked back and saw that among our travels we managed not to see the China movie, one of my favorites. It’s as it was with the other parks. We never felt rushed, never waited around much, enjoyed everything we saw, but didn’t see everything. I consider this a good thing. WDW is not a scavenger hunt where all the pieces have to be collected to win. It’s a great place to be and see and have fun, and that’s what we did.

It all culminated in Illuminations, the extravaganza over the lagoon, and it was a great way to end the trip, although to be honest, Fantasmic or Wishes would also have been great ways to end the trip. Go out with a bang, in other words. And that’s exactly what we did.

The next day we returned home. The immediate family hit Downtown Disney for a last bout of shopping (the final pins, the odd shirt), then off on the bus to the airport. And so we bade a fond farewell…

Overall take on it? It was a nutty thing to suggest in the first place, but I’m damned glad I did. It was fun, and we all enjoyed it, and mixing and matching friends and family was fine. There may be no other place on the planet where you can do this and have it work. It was fun to tweet the whole thing back, mostly to the Bronx team which hangs on O’C’s every utterance, although eventually my fingers got tired of reporting how much he was screaming in terror on Dumbo or whatever (or maybe it was vice versa) so he won the battle for the twittering hearts and minds. It did require a bit of planning and the help of a good travel agent, but it was not onerous for a WDW veteran commando, armed with experience and Unofficial Guide, to make it work. We had a good balance of parks and relaxation, big and small meals, and run to the next attraction vs amble for a while and meet up somewhere eventually. Having relatively empty parks and decent weather didn’t hurt either. In other words, you shoulda been there too. Really. You would have loved it.