Epcot morning - 3rd August
As always, because of the time difference (UK is 5 hours ahead) we woke very early. I had booked a pre RD Garden Grill breakfast to take advantage of this! DS and I had a wander down by the river before knocking for my parents.
We were the first - and only! - ones at the bus stop at 7am, and had a private bus to Epcot. We arrived at 7.15, and were first to bag check, there wasn’t a soul in sight!
Eventually at 7.45 bag check opened, and loads of people got through before we did! But it was fine. We were a few families back at the tapstyles, and I had my first liner meet of the trip with @supercalifragilistic who was waiting to get in for a tour.
And then off to Garden Grill! We weren’t the first to arrive, maybe the 4th, but we were seated straight way for our 8.10 ADR. This was such a great meal! That cinnamon roll, omg it was what heaven would tase like if it was a food. Everything tasted lovely. We saw Mickey and Pluto really quickly, and they were fun.
But I was waiting for Chip and Dale. And we waited ages for them, it was about 8.40 when they showed up. But they were worth the wait. Dale was first, and he got really excited when he saw my shirt and kept pointing at himself and hugging me. Next came Chip, holding his nose and ushering Dale away. He got even more excited, and in addition to lots of hugs he danced with me! It was so much fun. Of course my family didn’t get pics of any of this, and the pics they did get for me are not great. But I won’t forget this amazing start to our trip!
Once the cheeky chip monks had gone, it was time for us to get to Soarin’. We were quite far back in the line because we’d waited so long for Chip and Dale, but it worked out fine because we got B1!
I know a lot of people don’t like this version of Soarin’, but I love it more every time I do it. We only did the old version twice in 2012 and honestly we weren’t big fans. But I get so excited on this one. I don’t remember exactly when we finished, but as we left the RD crowd were just arriving.
We had a FP for Test Track at 9.05, but before walking over there I checked if it was open and it was down. This left us with a dilemma. We only ride Test Track, Soarin’, Mission Space and Spaceship Earth, and we had FPs for them. We could have gone to MS and SSE early, but we were also planning to see the Pixar short film festival, and it seemed like it would be a long trek back from either of them, so we rope dropped that 
The CMs were clearly astonished to have guests so early, and we had the theatre to ourselves which was hilarious. Joe hated the films, the rest of us quite enjoyed them.
A couple of minutes after we came out, Test Track came back online so we went to use our anytime FP. We designed our cars
and were maybe 30 people back when it went down again. It was around 9.35 and we decided to stick it out for a while. People started to leave, and as they were let out we could see that it was pouring down. It wasn’t looking good, but I was reluctant to leave because when we’ve left FP lines in the past we have just lost the FP. We stuck it out till 10.05 when our Spaceship Earth FP began, and then we left. Luckily we were given another anytime FP so we still hoped to ride it later.
It really was bouncing down!
We headed for Spaceship Earth where we thanked the Phoenicians and enjoyed the vision of our future.
Next on the plan was the 11am performance of Mariachi Cobre presents the story of Coco. I love Coco! But it was still pouring down and it was a long way to walk back to Mexico if it was going to be cancelled, I wasn’t sure if it would go ahead in the rain. So we skipped it and went to Club Cool.
Joe told me he could drink Beverly now and he wouldn’t react, but I challenged him anyway. He didn’t react too much but he definitely didn’t like it!!
I still love Beverly and I was so glad it was there - it had been reported that it was gone. We tried all the flavours several times, but Beverly is always my favourite.
We still had time to kill before our 11.15 Mission Space FP, so we wandered through the rain over to Mouse Gears. I was desperate to find some ears, I have never owned any before but I had decided this trip was the right time. I saw some Ariel ears a few months ago that I thought were gorgeous, but I was open to others. Mouse Gears didn’t have the Ariel ears, and none of the others really grabbed me. There were some nice ones, but none that I thought I had to have. So I knew I would have to stick to the Ariel ones - if I could find them! And the rain had stopped when we came out!
We then headed over to Mission Space. I hate this ride!! The feeling of having your chest crushed as you take off is not one I enjoy, and the rest of it is just a bit meh.
Joe really likes it though 
When we came out, Joe played one of the games for a while, I tried to get a Space FP for the evening (unsuccessfully, I settled for Buzz because there were hardly any choices), and my dad shared his theory that the warnings before Mission Space are just theatre, Disney trying to make you think the ride is more exciting than it is. I disabused him of that notion by telling him people had died after riding it and reminding him of the presence of the barf bags!
Test Track was finally back up, so we rushed over to give it another go. The whole time we were expecting it to go down again, but we got on!
As we left, there was finally a blue sky! Hooray!! We still had a busy afternoon and evening ahead of us.
