Were they included with the brunch?
They sure were! They had a bloody mary bar, that was an extra charge but all you could drink mimosa’s were included 
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Thanks!
We were at MK that day too! That storm was crazy! We had shelter in POTC because that ride was also down. It was a great day, though! Love your pictures of the fireworks. My view wasn’t as great. My trip report will be coming…as soon as I can organize my pictures. 
How wonderful that you could still have a good time with the buckets of rain. I’m sorry so many rides were down, but I still see some pretty happy smiles on your faces… congrats on weathering the weather!
Did they have many savory snacks at the dessert party? We were planning on skipping dinner that night but just eating sweets makes even me a little queasy.
Yes, there were some savory snacks (not that you could tell from my plate 
)! They have the cheeseburger egg rolls, an artichoke dip with crackers, and cheese cubes.
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I don’t know if they do it every year, but the year we went for F&G my then DS4.5 and DD3 LOVED the playgrounds they had up specifically for the festival. And they got to love the passport as well, although we didn’t get it stamped at any food booths. Just used it to check off the topiaries we got photos in front of.
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They did still have the playground - it was amazing! Too bad they don’t have something like that year round
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Day 4
We had to check-in for our Gardens of the World tour at 8:45 am so we got a Lyft at 8:20 and arrived right on time. We had brought our own earbuds to use and it worked great. We are both germaphobes so we were glad we could use our own 
The tour started in Future World and we were able to get better pictures of Pluto and Goofy without as many people in them than we did on our first day there. Even though park opening was 9, there were still so few people around (most were making a b-line for Frozen or Soarin and not stopping to smell the roses lol).
Goofy is 14 feet tall and is assembled from three pieces!
We learned that there are two plantings during the festival, about halfway through they switch out the spring plantings for the summer plantings. They do most of this work overnight and in the early morning hours before the park opens. The first planting in this bed has 60,000 beds (4-inch bedding plants) and the second planting has 40,000 beds. There are a total of 140 floating gardens. Each year in Epcot there are 3 million beds planted!
Our next stop was the Butterfly house. We had missed this on our first day in Epcot so I was glad we got a chance to see it now. The butterfly garden has 15 species of Florida butterflies so if any escape, they are in their natural habitat.
Love my buddy Figment!
We totally missed Chip and Dale the first day we were here
Next, we headed into World Showcase to see each country. We took tons of photos, everything was just so pretty!
Mexico had a beautiful tropical garden pathway that included these orchids.
Next Stop - Norway
Next we got back into the part of World Showcase which wasn’t open to visitors yet and the beautiful gardens of China. The dragon is 20 feet long.
I LOVED the pandas!!
Germany - never seen it this empty, it was great!
This was one of my favorites in Italy. Italy also had the most potted flowers of all of the countries, 600!
We stopped in the America Pavilion for about 20-25 min to learn more about how they build the topiaries and the different types. Our guide was really knowledgeable.
Beautiful Bonsai
The tour wrapped up after a stroll through the UK tea gardens. We grabbed a frozen violet lemonade and dole whip before heading to AK.
All in all, this was a great tour. I don’t think I would do it again because it probably doesn’t change much but it was perfect to learn about the gardens and see all of the topiaries in each country without hundreds of people around. Well worth the price and a must do if you love flowers!
We lucked out again with buses and there was an AK bus that pulled up just as we were getting to the bus stop.
We ate at Flame Tree BBQ, one of our favorites (love mobile order!). I just love the Pulled Pork with Mac & Cheese and the Salted Caramel Apple Crisp cupcake is the best.
We saw the Timon and Rafiki dance party and also saw Kevin walking by.
It was crazy crowded and crazy hot but we had FOP FP+ so off we headed to Pandora, taking pics along the way, of course. I love the beauty of this park even if it feels like it’s the surface of the sun.
Pandora!
After FOP, we headed towards Africa and passed the Otter Grotto. I love otters! They were really hard to see and kept hanging out close to the far wall behind some rocks but we finally were able to spot them.
We came along these cuties - Cotton Top Tamarin, they were so adorable!
We had every intention of going to try to see the new baby gorilla but got sidetracked with the call of a dole whip, it was perfect for the heat. I really wanted to try to cupcake but was still full from lunch.
We continued our way back to Dinoland for our next FP - Dinosaur. This was another first, neither of us had been on this ride before. I had heard it can be kind of jerky and was worried but it really didn’t bother me too much.
We were both hot and kind of tired so we sat down for a while and caught Donald’s Dino-bash (I think that is what it is called). It was super cute to see chip and dale dressed like dinosaurs! Pluto and Goofy also appeared.
We had EE FP for about 40 min later so we started to head over to Asia but I saw a line for a meet and greet with Donald and I had to do it! Luckily, we were the last people to get in line before they closed it, I was so happy (DH, not so much lol). Again, to the people who think if you don’t have kids you can’t enjoy Disney…look at my face, I was so happy
Now we headed over to Asia for our EE FP. I had seen where EE was hit by lightning and closed this morning so I was worried that we would lose yet another FP but it was now open. This was the only day we were able to use all three of our initially booked FP!!
After EE, We walked the Discovery trail and then found a lovely quiet spot to sit and enjoy the Tree of Life.
We still had a little bit of time before our ROL dessert party so we walked over to do the Mickey and Minnie M&G. The posted time was 35 minutes but we were in and out in only 15.
We headed over to the dessert party. This was another first, we have never seen Rivers of Light. Each previous trip we would be too tired by the end of the day and head back to the hotel. So, I was excited to finally see it.
The dessert party was nice. There were three tiers of seating/standing. The top tier had high tables you could lean against (no chairs). The middle level had more high tables and this is where the desserts and drinks were. Then the lowest level had the normal bench seating but the first few rows were reserved strictly for dessert party attendees. We arrived around 8:00 for the 8:45 ROL show.
The desserts consisted of typical sweet items such as cookies, chai tea flavored dessert, push pops, edible flower pot…etc. But also some more savory items like cheese, nuts, and various fresh fruits. Having been to all of the other dessert parties, I would say this spread was lighter than the others. There weren’t a lot of heavy, super sweet items, which was kind of nice.
View of the food area from the seats below.
I know there are some who do not care for ROL but I have to say, I thought it was stunning. The lights, the floats, the lasers and water…it was so moving. I absolutely, thoroughly enjoyed it. It was mesmerizing.
After the show ended, we sat there for a while just in awe of what we had just seen and let the crowds thin out before heading back to the front of the park. As we were leaving the dessert party area, it looked like they had just put out a bunch more desserts and they said we should feel free to take as many as we wanted with us! We caught this shot of EE all lit up
We saw the Tree of Life awakenings - I had never seen this before either and it was also beautiful.
As we were leaving we debated doing a Lyft or just doing the bus. We weren’t sure where the Lyft pick up was and my feet were killing me so we opted to do the bus. Big mistake. Huge mistake. This was by far our longest wait for a bus the entire trip - I think it was at least 35 min and we had to wait for a second bus. There were two screaming kids the entire way, it was packed…from now on, when we are tired at the end of the night, we will do a Lyft. Always. 21,000 steps and we were exhausted. Tomorrow was another early morning for the Star Wars Guided Tour and our last park day 
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Stunning pictures! Love how colorful everything looks.
Thank you! I get such joy in looking at these pictures. I truly loved Rivers of Light so much, I can’t believe I waited this long to see it!
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I’m glad to see that you loved Rivers of Light. It doesn’t seem to get a lot of love, and I love seeing the shows. Thank you for the trip report. I can’t wait to read about the rest of your trip. Amazing pictures! I have a Samsung S9+. Hopefully I can get some pictures close to as good as yours during my trip in October.
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I love that they use natives! Thanks for sharing! Also, great pictures - you got some really beautiful shots.
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Where at EPCOT is the butterfly house located? I’m really looking forward to that. Thank you for the beautiful photos.
Perfect! Thank you. We come in through IG so that can be one of my first stops.
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It was a place I could have stayed longer. Be sure to look closely to find all of the stages of the butterfly from larvae to caterpillar to butterfly, it was neat to try to spot them in the plants, hidden away (and I probably wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the guide telling us about them!)
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Day 5
This morning was the earliest morning of our trip, we had to be at DHS by 7:45 for the Star Wars Guided Tour so we headed to the main lobby around 7:15 and opted to catch a Lyft, arriving right around 7:45. I was slightly surprised at what appeared to be some disorganization as we arrived. There was no separate line for PPO Breakfasts or Tours. We had to stand in line with everyone else and we were pretty far back. I asked a CM about this and they said they would be letting everyone in shortly and pointed where we should go for the tour. It was just odd because we didn’t get through the tap styles until close to 8 and we were originally told to meet the tour at 7:45. Once they opened things, we headed to where the tour guides were and signed in. They gave us a lanyard that had our name on the front and a Auerbesh translation key on the back. We also got the audio devices and once again used our own earbuds. We also got a menu for Backlot Express so that we could pick out what we wanted for lunch. I ordered the Cuban sandwich and DH ordered the Backlot Burger.
We still had a few minutes to wait for the tour to start and DH woke up with a sore throat so we headed to first aid and they were great. He got some cold medicine and we were back before the tour started.
Our group had almost 40 people in it, a little larger than what they told me the size would be when I called (they said 20) but there were two guides and it wasn’t too hard to keep up. Having the listening devices helped so even if you were in the back of the pack, you didn’t really feel like you were missing anything.
We started down Hollywood Blvd and passed the RD crowd
It was nice to see the Chinese Theater without people around - I just love empty parks!!
Not Star Wars related but I had never noticed this statue before
The first stop was Star Tours. We were the first group to ride and when we first entered the queue, it was eerily quiet. They hadn’t turned any of the audio on yet. We also got to see the ride vehicle with the lights on and we saw the room that it is housed in and learned a little bit about how the ride works. That was pretty cool
By the time we exited the ride, the park had opened so it was starting to get more crowded. We headed over to the launch bay for photo ops with Kylo Ren, BB8 and Chewy. We didn’t have to wait for any of these, other than for the people in our own group to go. We walked through the launch bay and learned more about the exhibits, things I never would have known if someone wasn’t telling us!
When we were at Launch Bay for DAH, we noticed they were selling Galaxy’s Edge apparel just for passholders so of course, we bought shirts and wore them today.
Throughout the tour we also saw the two Star Wars related films: Path of the Jedi, a behind the scenes look at the making of the movies (I don’t remember the name of that movie) and we also looked at the model for Galaxy’s Edge.
After the meet and greet we headed back up towards the front of the park so that we could march with the First Order. I have to admit, this was pretty darn cool!
No pictures of this since I was live streaming and DH was recording video. We marched down Hollywood Blvd and then got front row seating for the show.
I thought we would stay for Star Wars: A Galaxy Far Far away show but we didn’t, we headed to Backlot Express for lunch.
We had a reserved area just for our group and picked up our swag from the tour. I was surprised at how well I liked the Cuban, pleasantly surprised. The stormtroopers made an appearance and interacted with each table. We got our lightsaber churros and then headed back out.
Next is when we saw the Galaxy’s Edge model and then we went back out and got front row viewing for Star Wars A Galaxy Far, Far Away. There was a woman who got into our group who wasn’t on our tour and the tour guides politely asked her to move back so that we could see. I was pleased that they really did try to keep the exclusive viewing area just for the people who paid for the tour.
By now, it was nearing 1:00 and our last stop was to view some of the hand prints of various Star Wars actors in front of the theater. Samuel L Jackson, Mark Hammil, and George Lucas are among them.
At this point, if you didn’t have kids who were participating in Jedi Training, we were free to go. They told us that our tour included VIP viewing for the Galactic Spectacular and to come back around 8:00 with our lanyard to be let into the area.
At this point, we decided to look in a few of the stores for a pin that DH was looking for. We were both kind of dragging and decided to skip our Star tours FP since we did it already this morning. We opted to head back to the hotel for a break and return for our ToT FP that was at 4:00. On our way out, we saw some of the gondolas unwrapped
When we got back to the room, I saw the dreaded Tragical Express envelope
We had a short rest at the hotel and I started organizing all of our purchases and realized we did not have room for everything and we would need to buy another suitcase. Too many popcorn buckets!! So, we walked up to the gift shop and the suitcase I had eyed earlier (a carry-on size) had been sold. So we ended up buying the full-size suitcase, we do need an extra one anyway and this one was super cute!
We headed back to DHS around 4:00 and headed to ToT. Surprise - it was down. I had lost track of how many rides we lost because they were down. We did get an anytime FP but there wasn’t really much else we wanted to ride. So, we headed back to TSL to do our SDD FP - the skies were getting cloudy and Dark Skies indicated rain would be starting soon. Thankfully, we made it on SDD and just as we got off, it started raining. At least we got to use that FP before the rain came.
We were right by TSM so we walked in there since it was under cover and tapped in, thinking we would use our Anytime FP. Of course, the tapstyle turned blue, not green and I explained we were trying to use the Anytime FP but the CM said that you couldn’t use it on TSL rides. I was not happy. So many of the rides we had wanted to ride this trip had been down and I just think it is crazy that they have the limitations - I didn’t want to ride Star Tours again, ToT was still down and I wasn’t going to ride RNRC after the number that Space Mountain did on my neck. I was super polite but very deflated. The CM said he would let us through anyway. I was so happy for this little bit of pixie dust that I gave him a hug! I’m horrible at this game but I do love it!
After we finished here, it was only sprinkling a little bit so we decided we needed to eat somewhere. DH really wanted pizza and Pizzarizzo had just opened while ABC Commissary was under renovation so we mobile ordered. I got a little lost trying to find it and we ended up going down the area for the Incredibles. That is when I spotted the neighborhood bakery selling the num num cookie. DH and I have a sweet tooth and even though I had just ordered dinner, we knew we had to stop and try one of the cookies. Oh My Gosh, it was so good. It was warm, had a crispy edge but gooey middle….heaven!
We then went to Pizzarizzo to eat dinner…yeah, I ate the salad and one fourth of the pizza, I was so full! I hated wasting all of the food so we just sat and ate and talked. We didn’t really have much else we wanted to do before the fireworks and that was still 3 hours away!
I was starting to not feel well myself. I kept getting short dizzy spells and we decided to walk towards the Chinese Theater and just sit and people watch until it was time to check in for the show. But, DH was also feeling lousy with his sore throat so we called an audible and went back to the hotel. We will be back and there will be plenty of opportunities to see both the animated pre-show and the galactic spectacular. So we hailed a lyft and called it a night. We did stop in at the food court because I had been eyeing a cupcake that another liner had mentioned that was at POR. 21,000 steps and an early night.
Star Wars Guided Tour Final Thoughts - was it worth it? On the one hand, we didn’t do anything on this tour that you couldn’t do on your own (except marching with the first order). But, it was nice to get prime viewing for all of the things, the inside/background scoop on what we were seeing and being able to see the backstage of Star Tours. And realistically, I don’t think I would spend the time to watch the short films on my own, but after seeing them, I was glad we did. For the Star Wars fan and if Jedi training ever becomes hard to get again, it may be worth it to experience. And while the VIP viewing area for Galactic Spectacular is supposedly a prime viewing spot, for me, it is actually too close. I find I have to crane my neck the whole time looking up and for someone with neck problems, that isn’t the greatest. But, DH loved it and this was my valentine’s day present to him so I was glad he was happy we did it.
Tomorrow is the saddest day in the world - departure day.
Day 6
Since this is departure day, this will be short. Our original plan was to get up, finish packing, check out then take the boat to Disney Springs to do The Void and grab lunch before coming back for DME. But, since we both weren’t feeling well, we opted to sleep in instead. We have done the Void multiple times so it isn’t like that was a must do for us this trip. And we really didn’t need to eat any more - I think I gained at least 5 pounds despite all of the walking we did.
We slept in, checked out at 11 and went to get food. One last Mickey Waffle
We lounged around until it was time to head to the airport.
Final Trip Thoughts:
Despite the rain, the down rides, and the high temperatures, we had an utterly great trip! So glad we saw Flower and Garden and the rain forced us to do some out of the ordinary things that we don’t normally do. A trip of so many firsts, even after all of these years. First time staying at POR, first time at California Grill Brunch, first time (in a long time) seeing Philharmagic, riding the Liberty Belle, first time seeing the Rainy Day Cavalcade, the Muppets History, riding Dinosaur, seeing Rivers of LIght and seeing all of the flowers and topiaries of Flower and Garden.
And now, the next countdown has begun! 95 days before our weekend getaway in August (another first staying at Wilderness Lodge).
Thanks for following along and allowing me to relive and share our trip
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Thanks for sharing your trip report. I’ve enjoyed following along! The details on the Star Wars Tour are very helpful. I may just have to find a num num cookie; it looks delicious!
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Thanks for sharing this! I share your frustrations with the FP options at HS. All I really want to ride is the TSL rides and maybe 1 run of ToT.
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