Wednesday October 25th 2023

I returned to Disney’s EPCOT today to continue Monday’s visit. The weather wasn’t as nice, but everything else went better than Monday. It was a generally cloudy and windy day. A couple of very brief fast moving and light showers occurred during the day. I ducked into the Beauty and the Beast Singalong show in the France pavilion to escape the only rain shower while I was at EPCOT. It was a fun little show that I have never seen before, so the rain did me a favor. I might go again if I get caught in the rain.

My goal was to watch the night time fireworks show EPCOT Forever. It will be replaced in early December by a new show. I wanted to see the current show at least once or twice again before then. The fireworks show starts at 9PM, so I planned to arrive late in the afternoon and stay until after the show. I got there a little early at 3:30PM to still be fresh and energized for the 9PM show. Another hour before getting started would have been better.

The crowds were much smaller today. My parking space was closer to the park than Monday even though I arrived four plus hours later. The second and third tier rides were practically a walk on. The big draws like Test Track, Frozen Ever After and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure all had typical long waits greater than an hour. I road Spaceship Earth and Soarin over California soon after I arrived with very little wait. The new Journey of Water Inspired by Moana walk through attraction wasn’t as busy. I was able to play with the water without having to compete with the kids. All of that only took about an hour and a half. I still had four hours before the fireworks started.

To pass some time I attended the first Eat to the Beat concert performance of the night. The half hour set performed by a local band called Sound Up was interesting, but not enough that I wanted to attend the second or third sets. I only recognized a couple of the cover songs performed. Some expensive theme park food killed another half hour. Now I was down to two and a half hours of time to kill.

A lot of wandering around the park looking at various things and various odd people followed. I watched several of the Beacon light shows on Spaceship Earth. These shows are a very positive addition to the park at night. They were introduced for the fiftieth anniversary and have continued at EPCOT ever since. Finally, I spent some time with the fish in the aquarium inside the Living Seas building.

The fireworks show was worth the wait. It is a short show at ten minutes, but it has a lot of big shells and good music. Unfortunately, I was using my cell phone for a camera today. My standalone cameras take better pictures of fireworks. Maybe I can figure out some settings changes to make the cell phone take better fireworks pictures.