Spring Trip with 3 Newbies Day 3-Epcot-Part 1

[mommy2maddi]

Cast:
Myself
DBF-Thom 1st time since he was a small child
DD-11: First trip
DD-8: First trip and my daredevil

Today was our day at Epcot. I didn't have high hopes of my DDs wanting to spend much time in this park since it is a lot of walking around and they had already experienced the thrill rides and had hopes for many more of them. We ate doughnuts in the room (thanks to the wonderful service of Garden Grocer) and hopped on a bus (which took FOREVER to arrive) to Epcot. We arrived a few minutes after park opening and made a beeline for TT since we got FP for Soarin and couldn't get one for TT as well. We waited approximately 25 minutes which wasn't too bad. I have to say I really like the new style of TT better than the old version. My DDs loved it and so did DBF. Next we decided to look around MouseGears since DBF was looking for a specific kind of gift for his son and hadn't seen it yet. He found what he wanted and we had it shipped to the room. Good day so far!
We started the walk over towards Soarin since we had a 1030 FP. I had never ridden this before and was pretty excited! We stopped to get a drink on the way since the heat was pretty overwhelming already and we were hot! We waited about 15 minutes and were seated in the front row right in the middle! This ride was SO amazing! I absolutely loved it. My boyfriend was laughing at me because I love thrill rides but have a fear of heights. I can ride them but I generally don't look if you can see how high up you are. So this ride had me gripping the bars to the point that I actually had a blister when we got off! I loved it though. It was beautiful and it was neat how you could smell the pine when you flew over the trees! I will never miss this ride again!
After Soarin we decided to get the girls a Mickey bar and head towards The Seas w/Nemo. There was only a 10 minute wait so we went on twice! Then we looked around at the aquariums. I have heard that there were dolphins in here but we never saw them. Anyone know where they are? We didn't spend much time looking for them since we had an ADR for Coral Reef at 1140.
We were seated in a great location at Coral Reef! We were at a table that was one table away from the aquariums looking out at them. Score! Too bad our waiter was a crabby man who barely said two words to any of us. Oh well... I have heard mixed reviews about Coral Reef but wanted to decide for myself. I will first say that there was another issue with my DD-11 ordering off the adult menu. There was really nothing that sounded good to her at first. I finally convinced her to try the baked pasta with lobster which she did. She actually ended up loving the pasta but wouldn't eat the lobster tail so Thom and I shared it. (It was NOT good for lobster in Florida. It was what I would expect from Red Lobster in Appleton). Oh well, she liked her food and that made me happy. I had the pan seared salmon with sweet pea risotto. It was pretty good. Can't remember what Thom had but he liked his as well. Then we got dessert. This is where my opinion of Coral Reef was confirmed. I ordered the vanilla panna cotta with key lime. It tasted great until I put my spoon in and pulled out a black curly hair. I put my spoon down and almost puked. This hair did not belong to any of us; we do not have black hair. This combined with the crabby waiter confirmed that I will never again go to Coral Reef even if the food was pretty good.
After lunch we walked around and looked at the topiaries a bit. We stopped in Club Cool to try out the different soft drinks. We liked them all, loved the raspberry cream soda one but all about puked when we tried Beverly! I can't believe someone would WANT to drink that It was fun to try them all though and it helped hydrate us after a hot day of walking.
Next we headed out of the park to go to Downtown Disney for some shopping.
To be continued...

[faline]

The dolphins only seem to be in the public areas on a limited basis. Most of the time, we do not get to see them but we have seen them once in a while.

Good start to your day except for your unfortunate lunch!

[deedee73]

Sorry you didn't have a good lunch experience. We have been fortunate to have eaten there several times and it always be good not always superb but good. I too have had trouble finding something to eat since the menu shrunk but I am experiencing that at multiple locations.