Saturday: Epcot Center

Epcot.  Not the cool concept glossing over some kind of corporate/fascist paradise.  The educational side of Disney World.  Maybe "educational" is the better way to say it.  

It's still rather fun, if you go in accepting that you're going to pay a lot of money to visit.

Not the best sign when waiting for the bus.  This fog implies high humidity, which becomes a problem later.

 It also didn't help that there was a marathon around the park, which closed roads and screwed up traffic.  This made the shuttle bus late, meaning a longer wait.  It did eventually work out, though:

See?

The science stuff in the "world of tomorrow" is pretty cool, even if some of them have corporate sponsors that don't even try to hide their agenda.

This is from Color-topia.  Or Color-o-rama.  Color-pa-looza?  Something about color, sponsored by Glidden paint.  Color is pretty cool.  I'm pro-color.

 Later, when I talk about buying things, this is where I bought things.  I'd rather just put that all at the end.

The "The Seas" thing is run by Nemo from Little Nemo.  He has removed pretty much all the science from that section, except for the aquarium section full for animals.  Since aquariums without animals are just pools.  Anyway, huge manatee.

 And then it was basically lunch time.

Ok, so this is an odd restaurant design.  The best description is "ride with food."  There's a rotating restaurant that overlooks the "The Land" ride below.  The meal is prix fixe, with all options coming out "family style."  Since the restaurant rotates, they're timed so that you end the meal after a single revolution.

There's a decent amount of food, too.  This is for two, although I had the added benefit of a vegetarian second, allowing me to have my choice of the yummy animals.

It's full of characters, too.  Farmer Micky stopped by like 99 times.  I think we were the only ones in the place at the end, so that explains it.

Giant shortcake dessert.

Then we moved to the world tour area.  The main things to notice are that the various country pavilions are largely restaurant based, and that since this is the only place that serves alcohol, the majority of the adult only groups are kind of drunk.

Squirrel!

I'm sorry, Pooh-bear.  We need to have a discussion about this.  This kind of thing just really isn't cool anymore, so I think you should reconsider what you're doing.

Pooh was in here too, with Tigger.

Morocco.

Koi pond in Japan.

Pikachu.

I should explain the phone-based game that they have where you get a phone and do Phineas and Ferb scavenger hunt-like things with park interactions, but I'm tired, and it's more complicated that I care to cover.  Read this I guess.  We did France, Japan, and China.

Italy.

China.

And this is where things kind of fell apart.  You can tell from the pond that it's raining.  It started raining.  A lot.  A lot of rain.  Boom, rain everywhere.  This makes walking around outside less fun, so we kind of stopped the game, and tried to find inside places to be instead.

Three Caballeros ride in Mexico.  I thought that move was the propaganda one, but it was an earlier one.

 It kept raining.

And so that was Epcot.

Upon getting back to the hotel, it was pretzel time.

Pretzel power.

The things I got.

In science world there is a "health game/thing".  We did not play the extended search game, and everyone gets a rubber wrist band thing.

Wow!  Five tsum-tsum pins!  What a deal!

HOLY FUCK, TWENTY-FUCKING-SEVEN-DAMN-DOLLARS?  FUCK YOU, DISNEY!

And those aren't even that great of a selection of tsums.  There are a lot of blind-bag things.

My park ticket is Donald flavored.

I wanted a magnet for my fridge, and this one is Epcot themed and spins.

Frozen is still everywhere.  I got a pin for it.

And I had the thought that since Star Wars is everywhere too, I'd try to get a Rey pin, since she is the best character in the new movie.  That should be easy, right?

Of course not.  She's a female character, so she has less presence in products than the robot, generic storm troopers, and Captain Only-In-The-Movie-For-Five-Minutes.

She's an option in a blind-box thing, but fuck blind bags.

Eventually I found one in a pin-specific shop.  She's limited edition, I guess.

Japan had animal shaped paper clips.  So.  You know.

 Remember how it rained a lot?  It rained.  A lot.  We were in China when that happened, so:

I had to get the best umbrella ever.  I plan on using this as my office emergency umbrella from now on.