whew!
day three. we were pretty much dragging at this point. we got out the door around 8 or 9, rode two buses, and rolled into the park with what seemed like the entire state of florida. derek waited in the bag search line with all of our stuff, while the kids and i walked (a very long way) to the norway section of epcot, to line up for all things frozen. the wait time for the anna and elsa meet and greet and for the frozen ever after ride were about the same, 35 minutes, so we hopped in the meet and greet line.
it was definitely longer than 35 minutes. all the meet and greets have a line outside that you can see and gauge. then you get inside, to the decorated part, which is cool, but there’s a whole lotta line in there too. anyhooo. we liked the cool stuff in anna and elsa’s “house” and waiting for our favorite princesses of all time was worth it.
the princesses pretty much stay entirely in character. so anna was all chatty and sort of airheaded and asked a million questions, to which my girls stared back at her awkwardly. then, she remembered that they were there for a photo and one was snapped and we moved on to elsa.
elsa, the ice queen, wasn’t very warm and snuggly. she was proper and sort of cold before posing with a typical elsa stance. all lidbom girls were pretty happy with it. and. as you might surmise, isaac “enjoyed” it from afar.
another fun thing. while we were waiting for derek, we had a communication glitch and he ended up trying to meet us at the ride next door, and then having to ride it all alone. and then dropping his bracelet on the ride, resulting in us getting memory maker photos of every person to ride in that car until we were able to get back over there and get the bracelet. 🙂
the frozen ever after ride was pretty awesome. (isaac even rode it with us). the wait was FOREVER though. thankfully, we had picked up some figurines in the shop outside of the anna and elsa meeting and hazel made a few friends near us in line and they were happy to play as they scooted along. the waiting area, like all other disney rides was full of cool stuff to distract us as well. the actual ride was a boat ride full of animatronic and videos from the movie and had a pretty cool backwards drop down a “waterfall” that angered one or more lidkids. 🙂 but getting good pics was impossible in the darkness. thankfully, the good folks at disney got one for us.
after we completed our nordic adventures, we started back towards front of epcot. we stopped in “mexico” at this fun frida kahlo photo booth, because we couldn’t pass up a good unibrow. also, anna is a big fan of strong historical women and has read a lot about frida.
we also popped into a little building in the mexico area, where there was a fake little plaza set up, with disney themed mexico memorabilia. having been to real places similar to this, we weren’t all that interested in the fake representation. but. there was some cool coco stuff, which is one of our favorite disney movies. ok, well maybe just me.
we we made our way to the “soarin’ around the world,” which we had a fast pass for, we saw that the line to meet baymax was short and that we could maybe squeeze that in first. i totally thought isaac would be all in on this one, but again he declined. we love baymax, that big squishy lovable robot. derek even gave him a (falalalalala) fist bump which was poorly captured by the photographer and myself.
and then, it was time for soarin’… i was hopeful that isaac would go for this one, but he chose to sit it out. basically, you are strapped into a row of seats and when the ride starts, you lift a bit and move forward into a concave screen with high resolution projected images, making it seem like you’re flying in all sorts of cool places in the world. wind blows at you and smells are even piped in, and a few times i forgot that i was just on a ride, only like 4 feet off the ground.
we soared over waterfalls, canyons, mountains, famous landmarks and through disney, but one of the coolest scenes was running with these elephants in what i assume was africa. as we swooped over them, wind blew at us and the smells of dirt and grass made us feel like we were actually there.
on our way to another fastpass adventure, we spotted wreck it ralph and vanellope von schweetz, so we hopped in line to meet them, before being informed that ralph would be leaving before we got to the front. so, the only shot i got of him was sans lidkids….
when i we got to the front, hazel chickened out a bit. i think she was not a huge fan of vanellope’s big plastic head and unchanging facial expression. anna was willing to give a snuggle though. (and hazel eventually warmed up and gave a very quick and apprehensive hug, not captured on digital media).
after meeting vanellope, we made our way over to the living seas pavilion, where we would go on a sort of disappointing ride with nemo and then hit up the turtle talk with crush. the talk stressed isaac out, because it crush was calling on people in the crowd and none of my kids like to be the center of attention. but it was very well done and informative.
before we moved on, we got our commemorative photos with nemo and dory. isaac even joined us!!!
smiles. 
fish faces.
and then. another character meet and greet. this time, it was sadness and joy from inside out. sadness actually sort of made me sad, just looking at her. hazel was a little shy, you know, with the unchanging facial expressions and all.
this was one of our favorites, because they actually took a bit of time to interact with us some. i tried to cheer up sadness, but i guess that’s an impossible task. anna shared a moment with joy.
but my favorite part, was when joy strolled over to harass isaac, who was playing his nintendo ds. she tried to cajole him over to be in the photo, but he was not interested. and he was a little grumpy/embarrassed with all the attention. i’m so glad the photographer snapped a shot of it.
our final activity of the day was the test track. we designed our own cars. derek and isaac made something a bit more sleek and probably more performance oriented, while the girls went with, well, this:
then we rode around the test track a bit, which was cool and exhilarating, but slightly cheesy. and i wasn’t a fan of the seat belt situation (lap belts only in the middle).
anyhoooo. we did all that we came to do and decided to make this a short day. on our way out, we got all of our obligatory family photos with the big iconic epcot globe thing.
we were back at the camper in time for (cheap) dinner. and an early bedtime. and we rested up and planned for our last hurrah at disney….
Good stuff, Sarah.