Rhonda Horinski & Family - December 2008

The Horinka Family - Disney Christmas
Day 4 – Monday, December 22 - Epcot
Cast of Characters: Rhonda, 44 years young, single mother of 3 awesome punks and lover of all things Disney, Sharon, 19 year old DD, Morgan, 16 year old DD, and Payton, 12 year old DS.

Today is Epcot day, and as I am letting this be the kids' trip, I have agreed that we will not do World Showcase, because it is "boring". Whatever. Your loss, kids.

We arrived at 8:30 and the turnstiles opened promptly at 9:00. Morgan and Payton headed to the land pavilion to secure our Soarin' FPs while Sharon and I headed to The Seas. Sharon started having problems yesterday with her right shin. Her left leg has been totally fine, but she has been complaining about her right shin, so I suspect it's a shin splint issue. We're all hoping it will work itself out as she gets her "Disney legs". After waiting about 20 minutes for Morgan and Payton, I head over to The Land and see Morgan just now securing the FPs. The FP machine was down when they first got there, so the line was building and building. She finally got them at 9:20 and we all headed back to meet Sharon at The Seas to watch Turtle Talk with Crush. I thought it was best to come first thing in the morning as there were no lines, and this turned out to be a great thing as when we were back near the pavilion later, the lines were quite long! This is the first time any of us have done Turtle Talk with Crush and it was totally and completely awesome! I'm still in awe over the technology that allows for such a personalized experience. Payton was sitting with the girls and me when a CM came over and asked if he'd like to sit on the floor with the rest of the "kids". He'll be 13 on January 19, so he was a little insulted, but sat on the floor anyway. In the end, he was glad that he did. After Crush, we rode The Seas with Nemo and Friends and then headed over to The Land for breakfast at Sunshine Seasons. After we ate, we secured another set of FPs for Soarin' and then rode Soarin' with the first set we had secured. Awesome as always! I just love the smells when flying over the ocean and the orange groves! We then moved over to The Imagination Pavilion and did Honey I Shrunk the Audience before moving to the other side of the park for Ellen's Energy Adventure. This was down when we were last here in August 2006, so the kids were glad to see it this time. It's such a nice attraction. Great sitting time! I love it for the nice break. After the ride, we headed over and got FPs for Test Track and then headed to the dreaded and boring World Showcase as we had lunch reservations at Restaurant Akershus for the Princess Storybook Dining, Morgan's meal choice for the trip. Before eating, we did ride the Gran Fiesta Tour in Mexico and took the standard "hat" pictures in Mexico, Norway, China and the African Outpost and beer stein photos in Germany. While in China, we saw Mulan, who is my oldest DDs favorite. Since there was no line, we had our photo taken with her. We then went back to Norway for our 2:30 lunch reservations. We had our pre-meal photo taken with Belle (my personal favorite!). The meal was much better then I expected, and we were able to meet Aurora, Jasmine, Ariel, and Cinderella! I was quite surprised to see Cindy there! We left the restaurant around 3:40 and headed back to Future World to secure FPs for Mission: Space but they were gone for the day. We went ahead and left the park for our afternoon break.

The girls went to Downtown Disney while Payton and I returned to the resort. I picked up packages and did some pin trading with the CMs while Payton relaxed on a hammock by the beach. He and I left for Epcot at 5:30. The girls were going to meet us there at 6:00. I knew they would be late and really needed them there by 6:30, so I told them 6:00. Payton and I got the Epcot at 6:00 and rode Spaceship Earth and had some photo pass photos done in front of Spaceship Earth while we waited for the girls. They arrived from Downtown Disney (via bus to Polynesian and then Monorail to Epcot) and we headed over to The Land to use our previously acquired FPs for Soarin'. We then came back to the other side and did a bit of drinking at Club Cool before heading to Mission:Space for a green (less intense) ride as it had a 10-minute wait and the orange (more intense) side had a 40 minute wait. I promised Payton that when we came back to Epcot on our last day, we would ride the green side. It was kind of cool to do the orange side as I now see that there really isn't THAT much difference between the intensity of the two sides. After the ride, we headed over to Test Track to use our FPs there, after which we all rode Spaceship Earth, send the photos to our e-mail and then left the park at 8:30 for a late counter-service dinner at Caribbean Beach. Early night tonight as we are doing Disney Studios tomorrow and there will be no afternoon break.

The girls surprised me back in the room. They had gone to DTD to get me some presents as a thank you for taking them to Disney for Christmas. I got a really cool Beauty and the Beast mug and a set of stick-figure-in-Mickey-hats decals of all of us (including Dylan the Dawg) to put on my car when we returned home. What a lovely surprise!

Tomorrow – Disney Studios

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