Revitalized!

Luke and Ali slept for over 5 hours this afternoon and woke up full of jokes and laughs.  No more lips.  Great!  We had an ice cream and then headed off to Epcot for supper (er... I know it's the wrong way around but re-established peace needed to be celebrated!) 

The fireworks display was fabulous.  Epcot has a green earth theme about it and, central to the fireworks display, was this seemingly suspended earth above the lake.

After supper, we could take advantage of Extra Magic Hours.  My one planning slip up has been to not use these properly.  Anyway - we headed off to Soarin',  In the queue, they had this volley ball game where the people in the queue could jump up to push the balls up.  Further up the ramp, this changed to a flight game where the crowds opposite the different screens all had to lean left and lean right to fly like a bird and race the other screens. 

Soarin' was fabulous.  There were 3 giant ski lifts that carried 11 people each and the lift was raised up above the ground so that our feet were dangling and there was a monster Imax-like screen in front of us that projected images of soaring... above the Golden Gate Bridge, above some PG golf course (Libs - you'll know which one), above the sea waves - swooping down to some surfers, above canyons, city lights ... etc etc.  When we go back to Epcot tomorrow, we're going to rush to Soarin' to do it again.

On the way out, the pavement was lighted up in various funky patterns:

Here's Ali and Luke holding up the weight of the Epcot ball:

We went inside there for a ride called 'Spaceship Earth' which is a ride up to the top of the ball showing the evolution of information from cave painting to the internet.  It finished with a 'create your own future' program on the way back down which Ali loved.  At the beginning of the ride, our photographs had been taken and these photos were used in the customised future video.  Very clever.

After the ride, there were some computer games to play - driving a car simulator, placing bones and organs on a body and this one shown below where Ali and Luke had to supply the power to a city.

While they were playing the game, I looked at the time and it was after 23:30.  The park closed at 23:00.  When we were leaving, I asked one of the cast members why they hadn't asked us to leave and ushered us out and he said, "We just don't".  They really are completely non-pushy.  All they want is for us to have a great holiday - whatever it takes.  Quite incredible. 

We stopped of at the hotel restaurant and bought some fruit and a Twix.  Luke, back on form, shoved the Twix in his cuff and said, "I've still got a couple of Twix up my sleeve!"