Wednesday, May 25, 2005

WDW - Wednesday 5/18

Wednesday was my special day, my long-anticipated early morning (well, 9:30am - very early for me) Segway tour at Epcot! They take you into a (surprisingly small) room and spend about 45 minutes getting you used to riding a Segway... mounting/dismounting, starting/stopping, simple movements, then slaloms and ramps. Then it's out into the World Showcase for about an hour of zipping around the different country showcases! This was really, really fun and I'll recommend it to anyone. I thought the $68 price tag wasn't too unreasonable, though that's a AAA rate; I believe it's $80 without AAA so a noticeable discount.

The coolest thing about this tour is that although they do have the guest Segways regulated to a top speed of only 5-6mph, they really do give you a chance to play with them. They take you into most of the countries and around some of the coolest walking paths like through the side gardens in China, or up over the bamboo bridges in the multi-level Japan gardens. They even had us slaloming through the pillars fronting the main building in Italy... this was fun!!



The tour also gave me an excuse to do something I hadn't done in many years, show up at the park in time for the "rope drop". When the parks open each morning they let folks into the front a little early, and they have a rope (okay, more like that police tape stuff) strung across the front of (in the case of Epcot) Spaceship Earth. A busload of characters comes out on the other side of the rope and they have a big countdown with the crowd, and then Mickey cuts the rope and you're in! A small ceremony but it's really fun to be there for it.

C & The Momma slept in that morning and then we all met at Mission: Space at 3pm that afternoon. This gave me the chance to enjoy a few hours alone in World Showcase after my tour ended at 11:30am; first stop of course being the Rose & Crown pub in the united Kingdom showcase, where I was happily the first bar customer of the day... tee-heee!! Then I wandered the rest of the way around the World Showcase lagoon just enjoying being there, before heading back to the front part of the park to meet the family. I rode Mission: Space, a great ride simulating a flight to Mars, at 2:45, coming out into the play area at exactly 3pm where the family was waiting for me.

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