Facebook Album | Zooomr Album – EPCOT, Animal Kingdom
After the fun at Universal it was time to enter the magic of Walt Disney. We did not start with the parks, but Brett took us on the tour of resorts. We started with Polynesian Resort and as name suggests, its based on tropical rainforest style. It has a artificial white sand beach with the exact settings to give a full experience. We took Monorail (Yes, Disney has a full fledged monorail system) to go to Grand Floridian Resort. This hotel is based on the Victorian theme and is on the other end of the lake (Seven seas lagoon). This was a very beautiful hotel and we were mesmerized by its grandness. Next stop of monorail was Contemporary Resort, this is one of the oldest Disney hotels and has a lot of mosaics on walls. Monorail runs through this building. Next we went to Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, this is the place where our friends used to work. Since he had worked at two of the parks and one resort, he knows almost everything possible about Disney World. It was a great time, knowing those small details, walking through shortcuts that people do not know usually and finding out how things works at Disney.
Disney’s Grand Victorian Resort
Animal Kingdom was our next destination. As soon as we enter we see the famous tree from Lion King (The Tree of Life). This is not just the tree, roots of the tree hold a theater we can watch a 3D movie based on the movie Bug’s Life. First destination was DinoLand USA – we went for the Dinosaur which is a dark ride based on a story on Dinosaurs and how the extinct because of a meteor. Now, I don’t remember that ride, so definitely it would not be as exciting. Next destination was Chester and Hester’s Dino-Rama, this is designed as sort of carnival, this was a first and the last ride Jamie did which had a ‘drop’.
At this point, I was praising Disney for having such great attention to detail and the whole experience, but the next ride was going to take the experience to a whole new level. We moved to Asia zone of Animal Kingdom and started with Expedition Everest, this was the most fun ride I had at Disney. Entrance of the ride itself was amazing, exactly like an Indian mountain village. Every single piece was designed in the exact way, according to Brett, the house was built in India and then transported to DisneyWorld. The ride is fun, because its a train track till the top and then we encounter a broken track because of yeti and it goes backwards, then forward and backward for long time. Moving in-out of tunnel, backward and forward gave an awesome experience. We did that ride twice and then started exploring Asia. The setup is of an Indian Village – Anandpur and I could feel, it was done with perfection. Shop names written in Hindi, restaurant menu, broken roads, half constructed temple – I could feel home and I count that as Disney’s success. We them moved to Asian zoo and that was beginning of new adventure. David tried to enactment of Homer Simpson doing ‘Boring! Boring!’ got him into trouble from a zoo keeper and then Wes’ light whistling made him a federal offender for ‘harassing endangered species’.
We moved on to African Safari and that was fun. The safari (actually just a ride) was done very well, one does never realizes that it was a ride. We go around in a open bus with a lots of animals all around, but the trenches and walls are concealed nicely that it gives us an illusion of open jungle. But a careful observation of how deer, lions, zebra can all live in a very small open jungle, will give you a clue. It was 4 PM and was time for African parade. The parade was very good, a nice blend of animal and Disney creatures with good music and fun atmosphere can cheer anyone up.
African Parade
We were dead tired after walking all day, after all Animal Kingdom is the world’s largest Disney park (in area, 500 acres). We went for Finding Nemo – The Musical, this is the best musical I have seen in my life. The characters, music, props – they all were designed with perfection and stage was designed in a way to take us to a dream world of underwater. It was such a beautiful show that we all our tiredness was gone.
We moved to the next theme park, EPCOT – Disney’s park dedicated to international culture and technology of the future. EPCOT stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow and as it says, there are various attractions from different countries bundled together to form the “country”. We went ahead and moved to China, Norway, Mexico, Japan, France, Morocco and many more countries. Attractions include the ride, animatronics, restaurants etc from the countries. Moving on, we went to watch the American History show. It covered the main points of history and was pretty interesting.
It was 9 PM and was time for the fireworks. Everyone gathers around the lake and there was a big ball which floats on the water, it forms the shape of globe and we see a lot of different videos playing, along with them there are fireworks all around. This was the fireworks I had seen till that day (yep, I am going to change my opinion in next blog).
Fireworks at EPCOT
Next day, we started with EPCOT again. This time instead of visiting countries we did the rides. The Spaceship Earth reminds me of Infy, the outside structure is similar as Mysore’s Multiplex. This was a fun ride, where we travel through the technological changes – from ice age to space age. Then we did Mission Space, the most intense ride of our tour. This is based on the space simulation and enough G forces are produced to feel weightlessness. This ride was so intense that Disney have two versions of it, Green ride- a stripped down version of Orange ride. Imagine this ride as a centrifuge, but you have no idea you are inside one. I thought the feeling of weightlessness would be great, but it wasn’t. We did Orange and our opinion afterwards was, we should have done Green. This proved another point, none from our group is capable of space missions.
We did few more rides and finally ended up at Test Track. This is a ride developed by GM to showcase the testing they do with car. We went in a “car” and were experimented on with crash test, weather test, brake test (ABS, non-ABS), suspension etc. It was a fun ride. We moved to Hollywood Studios next, but that is the next blog.
