Ahhh! Our first day back at Disney World after a year and a half! We had to start off at our favorite park – EPCOT!
Despite getting in so late the night before, we were all eager to get started, so we were up and ready way before park opening and even had time to run to the Pop Century food court for a quick breakfast. We usually don’t get breakfast everyday, but will get something there a few times during our trips as a tradition.
Right now, they’re doing mobile ordering there as well, so it was pretty handy to have everyone decide what they wanted while they were still getting ready and place our mobile order from our room, then hit the “I’m Here” button as we were leaving so that the food was ready to be picked up by the time we got there. Luckily our room was pretty central this time, right by the main pool and the main building where the food court is, so it was a quick walk over there. The food there is pretty good, we like it.
After breakfast, we were excited to take the Skyliner, which is accessible at the back of the resort behind the main pool area. We specifically requested a room near the Skyliner stop this trip since we knew we wanted to take it fairly often.
So here’s a tip for you, if you know that you want to be near a certain area of the resort, you can put in a request to have a certain building or be near a certain area before your arrival and they will try their best to accommodate you.
The Skyliner has become one of our favorite modes of transportation at Disney. It is so fast to get around in them, and there’s usually never a long line like they have for the buses sometimes.
So, off on the Skyliner we went to our favorite park, EPCOT!
The Skyliner drops you off at the EPCOT stop near the back, International Gateway, entrance of the park by the countries. But that’s perfect for us because the World Showcase countries are our favorite part of the park.
Note: there is a Guest Relations window by this entrance too if you need to do anything with tickets.
Scanning into the parks is so much faster nowadays. They’ve eliminated the bag check in lieu of new x-ray machines, where you don’t have to take anything out anymore, unless it is obviously metal like an umbrella. In that case just take it out and hold it in front of you so the security person can see what it obviously is and you can just still walk through with everything else in your bag. You don’t even have to take it off you. So much faster than the old bag check! And then when you scan in your magic band, they’re not doing the fingerprint part anymore either, so you just have to do the scan part which is also much faster.
Once we finally got in, we took a moment to just soak it all in. We’re finally back! Goosebumps! Of course we also had to commemorate it with our first PhotoPass picture on the nearby bridge with France in the background. If you’ve been there before, you know the one I mean. There’s always a PhotoPass person there.
It was almost time for our first early lunch reservation at Via Napoli in Italy, So we started on our leisurely stroll in that direction. The Flower and Garden Festival is currently going on, so there are many food booths in front of each country as well, and we definitely want to try a bunch of those, so we took note of some menu items as we walked by. However, we had to resist for now since we knew Via Napoli was coming up and that’s one of our favorites.
Via Napoli was delicious as usual. Many people also concur that they have one of the best pizzas at Disney. So of course, we got a margarita pizza, as well as some fried calamari and caprese salad this time, with the tiramisu for dessert. All very delicious!!
Right outside the Italy pavilion, they recently opened a gelateria, so of course, we also had to get a cup of gelato to try it out! Research for you, of course! LoL. We shared a cup of dark cherry gelato and that was really good. We liked it. There were many other flavors and other forms of gelato in shakes and cones, etc, that you could get too. Though, there’s also really good ice cream in the France pavilion so you would have to get both and compare for yourself.
As we started walking around, a sudden hurricane blew in! Well, maybe it didn’t officially register as a hurricane, but it sure felt like one! Afternoon storms are pretty common this time of year in Florida, so we knew they were possibilities and had our ponchos, but this one just started with no warning. It didn’t even do the thing where it started drizzling gradually for a bit before turning into full rain. It just all of a sudden turned dark and a heavy downpour started with strong winds and the loudest cracks of thunder and lightning I’ve ever heard. It felt like they were right over us. We ducked into the overhang covers in the America pavilion building when it started.
This didn’t look to be one of those 10 minute afternoon storms, so we decided to place a mobile order for the new Regal Eagle BBQ restaurant at the American pavilion just so we could get inside to sit down a while. We were standing right next to the door for it, but, because of social distancing right now, they are not letting people just go into the quick service restaurants without a mobile order.
So we just ordered one brisket plate to share, just so we can get in, since we had just eaten. We wanted to try this at some point anyway. It was actually really good, very tender and flavorful brisket! If you go, definitely get this! Of course, a little while after we sat down, the rain finally let up and it was bright and clear outside again, so off we went to explore more countries!
There are so many nooks and crannies to explore in each country. We usually spend hours here, for multiple days, during each trip if we can. Mexico has the Grand Fiesta Tour boat ride, Norway has the Frozen themed boat ride, Japan has the great Mitsukoshi department store where you can find many unique items (all countries have neat stores to check out), and France has great food places and will soon open a whole new section with a new Remy ride. There are alot more in the other countries too. I can’t begin to list everything. The fun is in the exploration when you get here!
Several countries have movies that showcase their country and are a great way to sit down and get in some AC. And, of course, there are many great food booths to sample items from each country during the festivals, which seem to be almost year-round nowadays. We’ll sample more of them in the coming days. We always love this section of the park.
Eventually, we made our way to the front half of the park where some more rides are. Right now, they’re doing a lot of construction over there though, so you’ll just have to follow the signs to get to your favorite rides. The usual paths may not be there anymore.
For now, we rode the Nemo ride, Mission Space, and Spaceship Earth. Soarin’ and Test Track had long lines and since FastPasses aren’t available yet, we can’t do them like usual without waiting in the long standby line. We’ll come back to these, probably at night one of these days, when the lines will hopefully be shorter.
By now, it was around 5ish pm, so we wanted to make our way over to the Magic Kingdom for the evening. We took some more pictures of the awesome festival topiaries on our way out.
Note: They’re only allowing park hopping after 2pm now, if you have tickets that allow you to hop, but they’re also providing park to park buses, which is new. It used to be that you had to go to a resort first, then take the bus there to the next park. The monorail between Epcot and the Magic Kingdom is currently not running yet, so, this bus is definitely handy.
We got on the Magic Kingdom bus in front of Epcot to head over there. Another brief storm blew in while we were waiting for the bus, but luckily we were under the covers of the bus stop so it wasn’t a big deal, and it stopped by the time we got to Magic Kingdom. Lucky!
I always get goosebumps every time I saw the Cinderella Castle down Main Street in Magic Kingdom, but this time was especially emotional. It was good to be back here finally. Take a moment to soak it in too…
After taking a million pictures, we made our way to the PeopleMover. It’s almost our tradition to go ride that first whenever we enter the park for the evening. And it had just reopened after a long period of maintenance downtime, so we had to check it out! This is one of our favorites here.
For dinner, we had a reservation at Crystal Palace. Like other previously buffet style places, they serve family style now where they bring you your food instead, but you can ask for refills. It started with a bread service and garden salad, which had awesome candied pecans. Get more just for that. LoL! Then, for the main entree, we all got the prime rib. It was delicious!! And for dessert, they bring a platter of five different little cakes. We felt that the food here is better than when it was a buffet. You don’t get as much variety, which is the fun of a buffet, but the quality is better. The characters aren’t back yet, but hopefully, soon.
Afterwards, we walked around the castle some more, but it was getting near closing time since the parks still have reduced hours. We saw that the Peter Pan ride had a 10 minute wait, which is unheard of, so we bee-lined it there. We probably haven’t ridden it since our first trip since it usually has an hour wait at least, and we didn’t want to use a FastPass for that. We usually use them on the big mountain coasters. It’s a cute ride though.
To avoid the mass exodus home on the buses to Pop, we usually call a Lyft for pickup from the Contemporary. That’s the closest resort that they can pick up from since they can’t go directly to the Magic Kingdom. It’s the only park where you can’t drive up to it for pickup/dropoff, so it’s best to do it from the Contemporary.
We had a great first day at our two favorite parks. We did a bunch of rides, ate alot of food, and just soaked in the atmosphere. It was a good start to our week!
More tomorrow…
Intro | Flying To Disney | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Flying Home
Adventures By Anne 