Yesterday we hopped from park to park, making the most of the really lovely weather and seeing some new attractions not yet visited. My finger was still very red and swollen and I wanted the medic who had treated it at the water park to see it again, so that was definitely going to be a stop.
But.. we began in Epcot and spent the morning there. Despite crowd predictions, it was quite quiet and all the more pleasant for that. The Epcot Flower and Garden Festival starts on March 5th and whilst the displays and landscaping is not yet complete, quite a lot is on display and the park looked truly beautiful. Whoever designs and plants the borders and features is very, very good.
We included in our attractions a tour of the areas of Epcot where Disney works with the Dept. of Agriculture on experimental farming and food production. You ride through parts of the area on small boats and it is explained how they use 100% organic methods and are experimenting with various techniques like vertical growing and innovative fish farming including using fish and vegetables to help each other grow: the fish water is filtered through the vegetable soil and the waste removed which fertilises the soil and cleans the water. Tons of vegetables and fruit plus fish and seafood is produced in this way for the park every year.
We also enjoyed the new Ratatouille adventure ride in the French Pavilion where you sit in a car shaped like a rat, wearing 3D glasses and are taken on a virtual reality ride through the restaurant kitchen at “rat level” darting under work surfaces and through the skirting board etc. It was really amusing and enjoyable and it made me think of our friend Sheila who might not have liked it, although of course, these were nice gourmet rats!!!
When we finished up, we drove round to Blizzard Beach and spent some hours there. I went back to see the medic and she advised that I seemed to be having a bad reaction to the sting (you can say that again!) and gave me a strong anti-histamine tablet. She did say that if I saw the redness spreading up the finger though that I should go to a doctor at once. In fact, within about an hour the redness did start to fade. Today is is noticeably less inflamed and red. I have taken more anti-histamine today. Anyway, had a most relaxing afternoon there mainly drifting around the Lazy River.
Left there at 4pm and drove to the Magic Kingdom park. We arrived just in time to see the little 515pm parade of Disney characters down Main Street. As a treat I went into the ice cream parlour there and got two ice creams and we ate them sitting on the curb watching the little parade go by. After that we walked around soaking up the atmosphere. We went on the paddle steamer around a big water course pertaining to be “The Rivers of America” which was fun and we also went back in to see the Country Bears show.
We also stopped for a while to listen to an amazing pianist playing oldies on the piano at Casey’s Corner restaurant. He was really good. Played completely without music whether he was playing his choice or something an audience member asked for.
Our main reason for coming there in the evening though was to see the Happily Ever After Firework and FX show played on and around Cinderella’s Castle at 8pm. We somehow managed to get ourselves an amazing position up against some railings in the little central park in front of the castle. This was good because as well as giving a good clear view, we had the railings to lean against and sort of sit on for short periods.
We have seen a similar show here before in 2022 but this one was the best we have ever seen. The fireworks were as tremendous as usual. That was a given. But they have absolutely perfected the way they totally change the appearance of the castle with projections and lighting special effects, even getting parts of it appearing to move in the air…. it’s just stupendous. I had got talking to a lady next to me and she’d not seen the show before or anything like it and was just expecting fireworks. It absolutely doubled my pleasure seeing her utter amazement at the castle transformations and the magic of the whole thing. One little detail they still do which was there 50 years ago when it WAS just fireworks is that very near the end a young local gymnast flies along a wire from the top turret of the castle to an unseen spot behind Main Street as Tinkerbell. This was especially good last night as she was much better lit than I’ve seen before. I have captured it on one of the video clips but as usual apologies for the sometimes iffy quality. We were so glad we went into see it. Lovely end to an evening.
