Jen's January 2003 World Tour

Wednesday, January 29 - Day Five

On our previous visits to Epcot this trip, we’d focused on Future World, but despite this being now my fifth WDW trip, I still had not seen all of the films in World Showcase. Not only were we able to catch all of the different films, we were fortunate in being able to see a lot of the entertainment along the way. At Mexico, it was mariachis and we finally saw the living statue act in Italy as well as the World Showcase Players in the United Kingdom. Another visual treat was getting to see many of the barges for IllumiNations being moved into place, including the giant globe. It was neat to see the bridge go up to make room for all of the boats and gear.

We then headed to Magic Kingdom again, though we didn’t have much time before we needed to head to Boma for dinner PSs. It was just enough time to check out some of the Main Street stores. In the past, I wasn’t sure if the Cinema shop’s merchandise was actually from the different parks around the world, but, this time, I recognized the Disneyland merchandise for sale as the real thing. While I want to get to Disneyland Paris and Tokyo Disneyland someday, I tided myself over with some pens. (It’s rather interesting to see how Mickey’s face looks slightly different on each country’s souvenirs. The French Mickey has round, pupil-less eyes, while the Tokyo image is simple circles to depict his facial features.)

While we were standing on Main Street, I briefly saw the oddest thing. It was about 1 ½ hours prior to the fireworks and the sun hadn’t even set yet, but I saw some fireworks go off above the castle! I’m not sure what happened exactly!

At Boma, after having the same rotation of dishes two times, we arrived on the alternate day. I’ve decided I actually prefer that first rotation as I couldn’t quite find a soup that matched up to the chicken pepper pot, my favorite. The fish was good, but not as good as the nut crusted mahi mahi. While we were eating, I saw the man who was our server in September, on the night of my birthday, tending the section next to ours. I mentioned this to Keith, thinking that William probably wouldn’t remember us after seeing thousands of faces in the approximately four months since then. Keith called him over, and then William said that he had noticed us and thought we looked familiar! He asked if we had had a nice holiday season and said he hoped maybe he’d see us again when we come back in a couple years or so.

Oddly enough, on the journey back to our room, I saw more fireworks that weren’t on the schedule. It was well after 9PM at that point, so even IllumiNations was over with. More of that Disney magic, I guess!

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