Thursday, July 4, 2013

Florida - EPCOT Center - 6/11/2013

The EPCOT bus was the first one to show up at the hotel, so that is where we went today.  EPCOT has always been my favorite attraction at Disney World.  It has more to offer for adults, particularly the science oriented exhibits.  I have been to EPCOT several times since the mid-1980's.  A couple of visits have been associated with business events that were held at one of the Disney resorts and a couple of times with Scott on summer vacation when he was about the same age as Tyler and Petra are today.

Now, the most stunning thing to me is that fact that everything still looks like it did in the 80's.  They keep everything perfectly maintained and spotless, but everything is old and, in many cases, out of date.  I don't think the kids particularly noticed because you are overwhelmed on your first visit and even the old stuff is pretty neat.  EPCOT is a acronym for  "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow".  For EPCOT, tomorrow was 1983.

Here are some daytime photos from our room at the Buena Vista Palace Hotel.





The Geodesic Sphere is the iconic symbol for EPCOT.





Inside the Sphere is the "Spaceship Earth" ride sponsored by Siemens.


You travel through the ride on little cars that take you past dioramas of mankind's past leading up to the future.  The future on this ride is 1983.  I was very eager to see how they have applied new technology like laser's and holograms to keep the ride updated.....but they haven't.....really disappointing.  The entrance fee is pretty stiff so I feel a little cheated that they don't use any of the money to keep things fresh.
 







Something that was fresh was the Storm Ready exhibit that provided education on all kinds of severe weather events.


The Universe of Energy is another of my favorite rides.  It is spectacular with all the dinosaurs and multimedia presentations.  Nothing new here but the host and the video that accompanies the other displays in on the ride.  Ellen DeGeneres is entertaining as the host in the video.



Petra still enjoys a good cartoon character hug.


The water flowers at the Chinese exhibit were beautiful.  Here is a Lotus ready to bloom.  It was raining while we were there and you can see the water collecting on the leaves.






Inside the Chinese pagoda...the ceiling was spectacular.



Disney has it's own Chinese Terra Cotta Warriors guarding the pagoda.











The Norwegian village had the earth covered roofs that you see in Scandinavian countries.





Sigrid enjoyed the German village and even found a Disney employee in one of the shops that was German.  They spoke in German for several minutes and both had a good time and no doubt treated the other park visitors to added German ambiance.


After we left EPCOT, we rode the Monorails to the Polynesian Resort and had some Dole Pineapple flavored ice cream.


 Tomorrow, we will be at the beach.

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