"October Surprise" Trip Report - Day 6
“October Surprise” (or ICOT25 Celebration) Trip Report – Day 6
Trip Dates: October 11 – October 18
Resort: All Star Music
Transportation: Southwest Airlines, then Mears Connect to resort.
The Plan:
Sunday, October 16th: Day 3 of INTERCOT 25 with EPCOT being the ‘park of the day.’ This will be followed by an ‘Evening on the Boardwalk’ starting at Boardwalk Joe’s (after HarmoniUS!) (We shall see how much energy I have by this point of the trip! LOL)
All my ‘high flying plans’ of getting up early, making the ‘extra magic half hour’ to hit the big rides fell apart almost immediately, so I am actually glad the the ‘Celebration’ events start mid-morning rather than around park opening. My alarm is still going off at 6am, but I have been slow to get moving in the mornings.
Once again, I was NOT able to get a Virtual Queue space for Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. This time because I forgot about it until well after 7am. What is wrong with my mind?
Get to EPCOT with enough time to get my ‘Tiny World’ and ‘SuperZoom’ shots in before needing to head over to The Land pavilion for the Soarin’ meet at 10:30. On the way over I see that Nemo has a 5 minute queue, so I jump right in. No sense waiting. It’s still a cute ride and it is well air conditioned!!
As I come off the ride and head over to The Land, a CM is telling people that Soarin’ has a 20 minute queue currently. Good, we should be able to meet up and get right on. WRONG! In the few minutes it takes me to walk over, the queue jumped to 45 minutes. Still have about 30 minutes until the meet up, I decide to ride Living with the Land as it is listed as 10 minutes for the queue. It was actually pretty much a walk-on.
By the time I get off and back over to Soarin’ the wait time shows 60 minutes. The gang files in and see the wait time and decide to give it a skip as many had Genie+ and/or Lightning Lane attractions that would be affected by that long a wait. There were still about a dozen of us left, so back over to Living with the Land. Yes, I just rode it, but with the group it was a whole different experience. So much fun…Jokes, quips, and smart alec comments galore!
Wandered around for a bit, just checking things out and people watching before heading over for the Club Cool Tasting meet up. I guess I wasn’t watching close enough because I completely missed the group going in. By the time I went in, they were long gone. Still did my tasting anyway. The problem I have with the drinks at Club Cool is that they are all heavily sugared and leave me with a sour stomach. I got off of sugared drinks years ago in favor of flavored waters or diet sodas.
Next up on “Your Hit Parade” is Grand Fiesta Tour in the Mexico pavilion. This time I DO see the group heading in and join up inside the pavilion. As much as I enjoy this slow boat ride looking for Donald through Mexico, I would not be disappointed with a retheme to Coco or even Encanto.
After this a smaller group headed over for a ride on Spaceship Earth. Believe it or not, it has been a few trips since I had gotten on this. Not that I don’t enjoy it, it just isn’t a ‘must do’ for me. I don’t know why. Once off the ride, it’s time for a ‘smoke break,’ so I head over to that area outside the park itself.
I get it that they jumped on board with the No Smoking thing, but could they at least give us some cover? All the smoking areas have little to no cover from either the Florida sun or any kind of precipitation. This has been a dry trip so far, but the sun has been harsh.
Now to my biggest goof up. I was looking forward to the group meet up at The American Adventure and Smokehouse Barbecue. I never check or saw the time change, so I was there at 4:15. Waited for a few minutes then went in to get a bite. Food was decent, but I have much better barbecue places at home. After I left, I didn’t even get past the America Gardens Theater when here comes John with a group for the ‘updated’ meeting time. My loss. I should have kept myself updated.
There is a pretty big gap now until the Gary’s Column Group Photo meet, so it’s a lot of walking, sitting, people watching, jumping rides if and where I can. Just before 6pm, I come up on the UK pavilion and hear the band playing. Not bad, but they tried a Thin Lizzy song and it was a fail in my opinion. Everything else they did was good though, so I was not disappointed.
Everybody who was still in the park started gathering around the column and we got ready for photos. Afterward it was time for ‘goodbyes’ as many were going their own ways, either for rides or to go watch games, and there wasn’t the desire to gather on the Boardwalk for the evening. Lots of happy, but tired and hot people sharing heartfelt thanks to John for the gathering and hoping for chances to gather like this again in the future.
I’ll recap the Celebration a little more (and more briefly) in my post trip recap, but I will say that this may have been my most enjoyable visit to date. This is a great group of very fun people!!
The group of us stay at All Star Music – Caroline, Jen, Jeff and myself – make our way to the front of the park and stop to get some pics and video of the light show on Spaceship Earth. We get there just in time for the EPCOT 40th show. There are a number of different shows every 10 -15 minutes, but I think I like this one the best. A great way to end the park day!
Tomorrow is a DHS day, but I just may wait until later in the day before even heading out. I have a lot of catching up to do!!
Stay tuned for more daily reports…
