12 Days at Disney Trip Report - Feb 2019 - Day Two
EPCOT and the Magic Kingdom
Woke up at 7:00 am ish after sleeping like babies. The bedding at the Polynesian is lovely, and I was on the pullout! When I got the bed later in the vacation, it was like a cloud.
We walked over to the TTC (so convenient!) and headed to EPCOT by 8:00. Were in line for the soft open by 8:30, and were let in about about 8:50. We headed directly to Soarin' and walked on. This is easily one of the favorites for all of us, so we ride it whenever we can.
Had a FastPass for Mission: Space at 9:15. Based on a scary experience last time on orange team (my mother almost blacked out from the G's), we rode green team. Still a great ride on green team. Our crew of 2 was joined by 2 kids from another family who were well behaved crewmates. I had a lot of fun referring to them as their proper crew titles throughout the experience.
After Mission: Space, we walked over to Boulangerie Pattisserie Les Halles in the France pavilion and had some breakfasty snacks. We shared Tartine au Fromage, a chocolate mousse tart, and an elephant ear, and two iced cappucinos on a little bistro table outside. It was a beautiful EPCOT morning, about 70 degrees and sunny.
Breakfast from Boulangerie Pattisserie Les Halles
Our next FastPass was Spaceship Earth at 10:45, followed by another FastPass for Soarin' at 11:15. Like I said, we ride Soarin' as often as we can. It nearing the dreaded noon hour when crowds start coming in, it was our time to get out, so we stopped quickly at Club Cool to sample the Coke products, and then Art of Disney on our way out.
It is so nice to take the monorail back to the TTC and then just walk to your resort from EPCOT. The monorail lines are almost non-existent and so much closer than the bus lines. This is when I collected our remaining groceries in the lobby.
We tend to chill in our room between about noon and 3 or 3:30 pm as we find this is the most dreadful time to be in the parks due to the heat and the midday crowds, so we just relaxed for a bit in our room. We had ADRs for Afternoon Tea at the Grand Floridian for 4:00, so at about 3:30, we left our room and took a lovely walk along the beaches over to the Grand Floridian. There we had the Cheshire tea, and were able to catch Cinderella and Prince Charming do a little dance in the lobby. Apparently this is a daily thing over at the Grand Floridian. Anyway, tea was absolutely lovely. If you like a traditional tea, I recommend this.
Unfortunately, the skies had opened up while we were sipping our tea, and so it was a steady rain by the time we got on the monorail again to head back to the Polynesian. We needed to head back because we had done a bit of shopping at Basin at the Grand Floridian and didn't want to carry bags of bath bombs around all night.
By about 6:00 or so, we were headed back, on the monorail again, to the Magic Kingdom. We were pleased upon arrival to see absolute droves of people rushing from the park because of the rain. Although rain can be unpleasant, especially as it was steady this night, it has the wonderful silver lining of driving crowds out. The wait time for 7 Dwarves Mine Train said 30 minutes, so we headed there, but upon arrival it said 40. Apparently this is a threshold for us, because we decided "nah" and headed to another ride. Our next thought was Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, but as we realized we were ducking under awnings and such to clean my glasses of rain every few minutes, we realized that Big Thunder Mountain in rain like this would also not be very pleasant, so we instead went to Haunted Mansion which was a walk on.
I had gotten another FastPass for Splash Mountain at 7:00 pm and since it's already a wet ride, we figured the rain couldn't stop us, and we rode that. By the time that was done, everything was wet, but the rain had eased up considerably, so Happily Ever After was still on.
We got a nice spot on Main Street to watch Happily Ever After. Because of the rain, the crowds were delightfully sparse and it was a perfect showing. Right after, we were able to exit the park painlessly and get right on a waiting monorail to our resort. Again, being able to get on the monorail times like this is priceless.
Got back to the resort and some strange, loud, music was playing, and it dawned on us that it was the electrical water pageant. I didn't even have to go down to the beach because we found a balcony at the end of our hallway from which we had a great view, so I watched it from there.
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