Disney Day 5: Double Dipping

Our plan for day 5 was to try not to use up all our energy walking to and from rides. Papercup Mixmaster has a brilliant plan: We will take the Magic Kingdom train to Frontier Land. It leaves from the front gate, there is no line, and Wuggie Norple is spontaneously invited to be a Junior conductor! He gets to stand at the back of the caboose and make announcements over the loudspeaker.

We start our morning at Frontier Land with Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which Wuggie Norple simply hates. We catch some of the rides in Fantasy Land, like Dumbo, and the Mickey 3d show. We were disappointed that we never found that hidden Mickey in the Pooh ride, even on repeat visits. It is crazy crowded, because many schools are on break, and all the young kids come to Disney World to see Fantasy Land. But this is to be a short day, as we have lunch reservations at the Wilderness Hotel, and get to take another boat ride. The Wilderness Lodge pool is so beautiful it makes us want to hurry home to OUR hotel pool, which we do. It is great to have an afternoon floating around and reading in the sun and the breeze that always seems to run over our lagoon.

The plan is to head to Epcot at night for dinner. Apparently this is everyone's idea. It seems that Epcot is the food court of Disney world. We stop first to ride Mission Space again, and find that all the fast passes are completely gone for Test Track for the day. The line backs up all the way out to the soda stand. We head right to the World Showcase. There is live music everywhere (though Exploding Poptart sadly notes that we missed the Chinese acrobats). We don't have reservations, but enjoy "Japan" as we wait for our table. We are so exhausted and hot by the time we get seated that we are a little chagrined to be seated around a hot grill. It seems this is a restaurant like in our own home tomn where they will grill dinner right in front of you. But we are not in the mood for a show next to a heat source. We just want white rice and AC.

The food is of course delicious, and eventually we are rested enough to appreciate that. We decide to take the long walk around the circle to see at least a little of the "whole world" with our final destination to be Mission Space. No matter what the wait is for Mission Space, we will brave the lines, because it is Wuggie's favorite. It is a long walk, especially since we want to walk back to the World Showcase for fireworks. But Wuggie is so happy, it's worth it. We find a bridge not too far from the World Showcase that is off the beaten path, and sit on a bench where we can't see the show floating on the lake, but can see way more than from our hotel beach.

Poor Wuggie is overcome with sadness. He realizes it will be a long time before he can come back to Epcot again. We sit in a big family hug as the fireworks show finishes. We let the tremendous post-show surge of humanity pass us by and sit together in our oasis. We decide we are not quite done having fun, and go to claim our extra hours wrist bands for resort guests. Are we up to one more ride? Yes. We choose Spaceship Earth. Really it's a pretty goofy old-school look at the history of the world complete with animatronics. But Wuggie Loves it. It is cool to be inside the geodesic dome, and look at a sky filled with faux stars, to ride backwards in the dark, and most importantly to design our own video, in which cut outs of our faces star in the movie of our future. Afterwards we are let out into an arcade of science-based games. Eric and Nick find a cool game about energy consumption and distribution. Wuggie Norple is almost giddy. It is his new favorite. When asked why he says"because we got to make our future."

Exploding Pop Tart encourages us to get home while we still feel good and save some energy for our last day. We go right to bed.