Epcot - Morning
I was very excited to get to Epcot to see the Flower and Garden festival for the first time! I know some people don't think there's a lot to it, but right away I was impressed with the topiaries and the brightly colored flowers found around. We made it our mission throughout the day to take a picture of every single topiary
However, we decided to start our morning in Future World, do all of that, and then head to the World Showcase for the afternoon. We went for Test Track first. I had tried the new Test Track in February, but on the fast pass line - there was almost no options that time for designing your car, you basically just picked color and if you wanted to focus on power/efficiency/etc. So this experience, of having the 3 minutes or whatever to design the car, was awesome! We had so much fun doing it and it was such an important part of the ride experience that I'm surprised they didn't have us do it last time. The ride itself is still basically the same, I enjoy it as much as I used to before the changes. You can't even see my face in the ride picture because my hair is flying in my face, haha:
Then afterward we stuck around to play with all of the extra stuff: we put our car into a commercial, drove it around a virtual track, and took our picture with it. We also took pictures with some of the actual cars there and spent some time looking at the showroom. All told we spent over an hour in Test Track!
DH and my dad wanted to do Mission: Space. I've done it before, and I enjoy it, but my mom was going to go to the festival center so I decided to go with her. Good choice, because I was glad I got to see that stuff and the boys would've been bored and complaining in there! We also passed some more topiaries on the way:
Inside the Festival center we walked around. I bought a pin (I don't collect them like some people, but I do buy one every trip that I feel represents the trip itself - so a flower and garden pin was perfect for this time!). We also got our free Garden passports! This has a list of all the booths, food, and topiaries, and you can get it stamped at each location. Throughout the day we managed to collect all of the stamps!
Once the men were done traveling to Mars we all headed over to get fastpasses from Soarin' (well, my mom didn't get a fastpass because she has a fear of heights, but the rest of us did!). While we waited we went to Nemo.
We went on the ride and then stayed for Turtle Talk with Crush. This show is so adorable and always hilarious! One little girl asked Crush, "What's your favorite bug?" and I think he was pretty taken aback by the question! He paused for a moment and then asked her, "What's your favorite bug?" She said ladybug and he said that was his favorite too. Then a few questions later a young boy raises his hand. However, he was clearly nervous and forgot his question - he stuttered for a bit and then finally blurted out, "What's your favorite bug?" It was so funny - kids provide great entertainment sometimes
We checked out the tanks at the Seas and still had some time left so we sampled sodas from Club Cool.
We went on Soarin', which was a great ride as always. My mom did Living with the Land while we were on it, which she enjoyed as well. We were pretty hungry by then, and our plan was the eat around the World at the Flower and Garden booths, so we started to head for the World Showcase. Passed some more topiaries along the way, of course:
Also stepped in the Butterfly House, which was a really nice feature!
The very first booth that we came to was Fruits by the Glass, and we got two wines to sample - mango wine and blueberry wine. Both were very good!
For detailed descriptions and pictures of the foods we tried at the Flower and Garden booths, check out my
Dining Review as I update it. I'll mention everything we tried here but put most of the pics and info over there!
Our first stop was Mexico. We tried three items from here: the Rosita Margarita, the tacos de Carnitas, and the Tostada de Jaiba (crab). Everything was good but I thought the crab tostada was amazing! Since we'd been go-go-go all day we sat at the outdoor seating area for awhile, relaxing.
We were also entertained by this bird, who kept trying to get a bit of everyone's food - and when one woman got up, he successfully took a bit of whatever she was eating!