WDW July 2018 Recap: Day 4, Wednesday July 4th - Disney Springs & Epcot
Wednesday morning. Finally, we got to sleep in … we slept until 8. Although since we hadn’t gone to bed until 3 … it was really the same 5 hours we got every other night. It was just a different five hours.
Anyway. Plan for the day was breakfast and light shopping at Disney Springs, followed by an afternoon at Epcot, ending with the 4th of July post-Illumination fireworks.
We took our time getting ready in the morning, then headed out to the buses and grabbed a bus to Disney Springs. This was our first time at Disney Springs since they changed where the buses stop and that’s basically a hard no from us. It took approximately 45 hours to walk from where the bus dropped us off to our first stop. I like the old bus stop better. Let’s change it back.
After walking for several hours (I may be exaggerating slightly), we made it to
Erin McKenna Bakery, where we pickup up two cupcakes for breakfast. Beth’s selection was the Blondie Cupcake, and I went for the Vanilla Brownie Cupcake. We shared them both, but spoiler alert: Beth made the better selection. Not that the vanilla brownie cupcake was bad, but man that blondie cupcake was delicious. Anyway … after grabbing our cupcakes, we went to
Ghirardelli to get iced coffee, and then sat down inside Ghirardelli and ate the aforementioned cupcakes.
Once we finished breakfast, it was time to shop. We went to
World of Disney, which has always been my favorite store at Downtown Disney/Disney Springs, and … no. Just no. That place was all wrong. Remember that magical place full of rooms and rooms of Disney stuff that nobody really needed? Where every new room brought you more wonder and joy (and sometimes confusion)?
That’s all gone. It’s now an open space that has pretty much nothing and is barely even worth visiting. Not a fan. We also made stops at
Pin Traders and
Marketplace Co-Op (where I looked at the dresses and skirts and was not tempted to buy any at all! … mostly because I know I’d never wear them since they don’t have pockets), but after the World of Disney fiasco, we were kind of bummed out and nothing was super exciting.
(Side Note: If I ever do end up moving, which is a stress for another day, someone’s gonna have to take away my credit card in January or I will just totally stock my new kitchen with the things they sell at Marketplace Co-Op … because that was the only good store we visited all morning)
We finally decided that we were done with Disney Springs and took a bus back to our hotel, where we caught another bus going to …
Before we could take that picture, we had to deal with everyone’s favorite part of Florida in July … the rain. Torrential downpour as soon as we got off the bus. We huddled under some shelter by the bathrooms, and put on our ponchos (which we had remembered to pack that day) while waiting for it to get a little bit lighter.
Eventually we made our way into Epcot, and since we didn’t see any PhotoPass photographers out by the giant golf ball, we made our way to our first character meet and greet of the day,
Joy and Sadness. The M&G area was cute, with lots of memories all over the walls, but it was a long wait and we were not huge fans of that. Eventually we got to the front of the line and saw …
Just Joy. No Sadness. The only sadness there was our feelings about this. Sadness is basically my spirit emotion, so I really wanted to meet her. Not cool. After that disappointment, I went to go get myself more coffee, and then joined Beth in line for
Baymax.
Next up was our first FP+ of the day,
Soarin’ Around the World. I had heard that some people reported distortion in the video, especially when sitting on the sides, so I planned to request a seat in the middle section … but we were cranky and hungry, so we just sat wherever they put us, which ended up being the side. I definitely noticed some distortion, and Beth mentioned that there wasn’t really much of a storyline – it just jumped from one city to the next, and not always in an order that made sense to us. We both shared the opinion that there was not enough
Disneyland. Not a fan. Would not necessarily waste a FP+ on again.
Anyway … once we got back from our trip around the world, we sat down to eat lunch (tuna and veggie chips), and then made our way to our next FP+ …
The Seas with Nemo and Friends. Spoiler alert: we found Nemo.
Next on our agenda was another character M&G we were very excited about. We had heard that there would be characters wearing patriotic attire in the American Adventure Pavilion, and after consulting the times guide, we saw that their appearance would be ending at 4:20, so we hustled over there (it was a little before 4 at this point). We got there, and … the line was closed. It had been closed since 3. Because 4:20 meant that nobody got to meet them after 4:20, not that you had to be in line by 4:20 to meet them. Grr.
*Mini-Rant*
I wish there was some consistency here. Sometimes when there’s a listed time for a character, the end time is when the character’s last set begins. Other times it’s when the last set ends. I wish there was some consistency here so that I knew when I had to show up to meet a character. I’d be fine with the line closing at 3 if I knew that consistently the last time listed for a character is when they meet their last guest. But since I’ve gotten in line for the last set at an end time listed for a character … there’s clearly no consistency. And I’m not a fan.
*End Mini-Rant*
Even though we would not be meeting the American characters, I knew we’d be able to meet another great patriot … and so we went to Mexico to meet…
While we were in Mexico we went on
Gran Fiesta Tour, which actually had a line, strangely enough … but we still got to sit in the front row, which is my favorite (better pictures).
After that brief detour, our character adventure continued, as we made a quick stop back in Future World at the
Epcot Character Spot (yes, we did basically keep running back and forth between World Showcase and Future World ...but at least we stopped for gold ball pictures on the way):
We were hoping to ride Spaceship Earth and/or Test Track while in Future World, but Spaceship Earth was down (which really sucked because we had a FP+ and couldn’t use it for anything else particularly good) and the wait at Test Track was super long (even the single rider line was almost an hour). Sigh.
Since FutureWorld was such a disappointment, we made our way back to World Showcase (which was super extra crowded by this point in the afternoon) to meet one of Beth’s favorite princesses,
Snow White:
*Mini-Rant*
A few times over the course of our trip, we saw Make-A-Wish families coming up to character meets. They always stood off to the side and the CMs got them in to meet the character as quickly as possible. Based on the consistency with which it happened, I assumed this was WDW policy. When we were waiting for Snow White, a Make-A-Wish family came up to the M&G, and both the character handler and the PhotoPass Photographer basically ignored them. Finally someone figured out what was going on and they were able to meet Snow White, but … they waited way longer than they should have. Seeing this (on a day that already wasn’t going well for us) really upset us. You have a kid there who is possibly dying … I don’t care if it’s policy or not, be a good human being and let the kid (and his/her family) meet the character without having to wait. Had it gotten to the point where it was our turn to meet her and the family hadn’t gone yet, we would have said to let them go ahead of us. We really couldn’t believe the lack of awareness from the CMs … we were not happy.
*End Mini-Rant*
Next on our list was a trip to Norway to meet
Anna and Elsa at their Royal Summerhus. We were not overly impressed with the Royal Summerhus.
We were also not overly impressed with the standby line for
Frozen Ever After, which said it was a 65 minute wait, ended up being a 90 minute wait, and was actually a hot mess. There was too much empty space (that wasn’t being policed at all), there wasn’t really much to see along the queue, and while Oaken’s whatever was cute, it didn’t redeem the rest of the line. Thankfully, we made friends for part of the line (fellow New Yorkers and Slinky Dog Dash fans), so the last half of the wait wasn’t terrible. The ride itself was cute, but not worth the queue – I would not do it again without FP+.
Once we finally got out of Frozen Ever After, it was time to grab a quick snack and find a spot for Illuminations. As I’m sure most of you know, FEA dumps you into the Norway shop … which was full of people seeking shelter from the rain. Because it was raining. Again. Grr.
After learning that most of the food sold in the Norway store is actually Swedish (go figure), we put on our ponchos and made our way out when the rain seemed to be getting lighter. We didn’t have time to stop for food, so we just went to look for a good spot … and ended up getting rained on more. And more. We finally stopped near Morocco, not because we had a good spot, but because we were done walking around in the rain. We sat down and I texted my parents as we were waiting for Illuminations to begin … and waiting … and waiting … because the show was delayed and didn’t start until 9:47. Grr.
We had a little bit of an obstructed view, but Illuminations is still nice. And the fireworks at the end were fantastic. But we were a little pissed that Epcot had basically failed us all day, and that dampened our enjoyment.
Anyway … pictures: (the good ones were taken by Beth with my phone, since I was busy with the camera (which didn't catch anything good anyway) and I'm not very good at pictures anyway)
After the fireworks, we joined the mass crowd exiting the park. There were some nice “happy birthday America” projections on the giant golf ball, but I didn’t get any good pictures of those. We did stop for a set of golf ball pictures on the way out, though:
We then got on a bus and went back to the hotel, where we organized our stuff for Thursday (which was going to be another early morning) and went to bed.
Overall Thoughts on 4th of July Fireworks:
July 3rd at MK – Absolutely worth it. Must do if you’re in the area.
July 4th at Epcot – If you’ve got a park hopper, do a different park during the day and then come to Epcot a little before the fireworks just to get a spot and watch. If you don’t have a park hopper, skip. I would not do 4th of July at Epcot again (except for maybe a quick trip in for the fireworks only if the weather was decent). The fireworks were nice, but not worth the crowds and the hassle.
