In which we do our first day at Epcot

Epcot Center (which it will always be to me), is almost a two-day park. It’s not that we expect to do everything in it, since some of the things aren’t on even my lightest of hit lists, but we’ll do most of it, with lots of leisure for roaming and eating and the like. It’s that kind of park. You have to hit a few of the attractions hard and fast, or get FastPasses, but mostly you can take it as it comes. There’s never a line for the Japanese department store, for instance. For that matter, there’s hardly ever lines for any of the attractions except Soarin’, Test Track and Mission Space. Come to think of it, the longest line is probably the one to avoid watching the Norway movie, although maybe Frozen now means that this poor little film is getting at least some love.

We’ll start our first Epcot day at rope drop, with the traditional trip over to Test Track to kick things off. I haven’t been on this one since they updated it; apparently you now pick out certain aspects of your car to make it somewhat Tron-ish. Whatever. After that, there’s this thing called the Sum of All Thrills, where you create your own virtual roller coaster ride. It’s in one of the Innovention places (are they still called Innoventions?). Then Mission Space, the wimpy side, since when O’C went on the non-wimpy side many years ago it shook his brain loose in his skull and he’s never recovered, and then over to the Land for its various attractions, which should get us to lunch or so. I’m figuring a FP for Soarin’ and Space and some other random thing for this day. Lunch will probably be at Morocco, and on the countries side of the lake we’ll do Morocco, Canada (which is mostly a movie about how everybody you think is from the USA is actually not, although you wouldn’t mind sending a few of them back) and the UK. I want to catch the various shows that I can in any of these. They have musicians and traveling players and so forth. Which should get us through to mid-afternoon, at which one might attack another round of miniature golf, or if the spirit doesn’t move one toward the tiny links, maybe a shot back to the hotel for a little rest and swimming before dinner at Raglan Road, very high-toned Irish food with music and dancers, and finally the Cirque de Soleil show, La Nouba.

According to the countdown, there’s 87 days to go. If you’ve been following it, there’s been a lot of hoo-ha over the opening of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Ride, which has been eclipsed by even more hoo-ha over the opening of Diagon Alley. Goblins vs Dwarfs? The Wicked Witch vs Voldemort? In a way, I feel sort of sorry that Disney is putting up a D ticket against a Super-E down the road. So it goes. They could have had Harry if they had really wanted him. Instead they’re creating an Avatar land of some sort for the far distant future, although ground has been broken. Avatar? Why not? Of course, building the full Star Wars land, which you know will happen some day, is the killer. Not yet, though.

Sigh.