Meltdown

This morning we went to Epcot.  It's the flower festival at Epcot at the moment.

We went to Chevrolet's "Test Track" ride and I'm going to tell you all about it.  We got there early so we only queued for about 10 mins or so before getting into the queue inside the building.  The queue line was decorated with cars and designs by Chevrolet so it was interesting to look at everything while we were waiting.  The final bit of the queueing was a white model of a car with a television screen interviewing people.  One little girl said, "My ideal car would be decorated like an aligator..." and the white car was decorated as an aligator by projecting a very funky image on the model.  It was really cool.  When we got closer to the front of the queue,  a cast member checked our guest keys because we were going to need it to design our own car!  So as I mentioned in a previous post, these rides have "pre-shows" and the Test Track pre-ride was to design our own car!   A group of about 30 of us were led into a room which had 4 rows of giant touch screen pcs:

 

Luke got to design a car!

 

 

This is his car:

 

 

Once done, we boarded the car we'd designed (well... not really...  we boarded the ride):

 

 

And went for the ride of our lives:

 

 

Afterwards, in the post-ride we could see how our car did compared to the other cars in our group of 30 designs:

 

 

We could also then create an advert for our car - our car drove on the moon!

 

It was fabulous.

 

After Test Track, I asked Luke to go and get us some Fast Passes for Soaring while Ali and I waited for him.

 

 

Then we went to "Mission: Space". 

 

 

 

We did this ride twice - the tame version first and then the more hectic one. Again, the pre-ride was brilliant.  I particularly liked the space costumes that all the cast members were wearing.  We got inside a rocket that propelled us to Mars (we were in hypersleep, so the journey felt like it only took a couple of seconds).  The tame version was cool and the hectic version was absolutely amazing.  The g-force sensation in my stomach reminded me of the zero-g flight that I was lucky enough to do in Russia in 2002.  I loved it and was completely intrigued about how they managed to do it because we were all just sitting in a closed up box.  Ali didn't like it at all... but she did it!!!

 

The post-ride for this ride was really great.  We had to play a game in a big group of people which was divided into 2 teams and each team had a team of engineers that solved problems on the ISS and a team of astronauts who fixed the problems.  It was really clever and I loved it.

 

Then the meltdown occurred.  Lippy laggy grumpy... oh dear!  Just too much fun.  So I marched the kids off to the bus, got back to the hotel, fed them with a steak salad and chocolate chip cookie and told them that I was going back to Hollywood Studios to watch the Little Mermaid and they had to stay in the hotel.  No TV and no PC.  They could swim (but it's very cold today) and wonder around the hotel, or read a book.  But my instruction was that they needed to switch off and recharge. 

 

I headed off on my own back to HS and the Little Mermaid was fantastic.  We were in a ship wreck in the wind and the rain (yes - it was windy and wet in the theatre).  And then we sank underwater.  A bunch of very colourful fishy puppets (about 30 of them) sand 'Under the Sea" and then the little mermaid (a real mermaid - I kid you not) appeared on a rock on stage and sang a mermaidy song.  The show was only about 20 minutes long but it was well worth the trip out there.  After the Little Mermaid, I went on "The Great Movie Ride" which was 25 minutes on a massive big ride car with sets and special effects from some great American movies: Alien, The Wizard of Oz, Tarzan... etc.  I enjoyed it, but I was glad that the kids weren't with me - they would have found it boring.

 

I came back to our room and opened the door and both Luke and Ali are fast asleep in bed.  I think I might have knackered them!!!  I'm going to let them have a good sleep and we'll head off back to Epcot at 8pm tonight to see the fireworks and then 2 hours of Extra Magic Hours which will be great because the parks are really crowded and we'll be able to see some of the more popular things without having to queue for too long.  So tonight's going to be another late one.  Tomorrow's our last day in Disney World and I want to make sure that we've finished all of Epcot and, if it's warmer tomorrow, we'll go to Typhoon Lagoon in the afternoon.