Wednesday May 1st 2024

Today was a slow day without a lot of accomplishment. It felt much warmer today even though the actual temperature was about the same as yesterday. There wasn’t as much wind and the sun never found a cloud to hide behind.

Yesterday’s blog entry was rushed and included mostly pictures. In this entry I will include a few more pictures from yesterday’s visit to EPCOT and describe a few of the things I did and saw. Overall it was one of my more relaxed and enjoyable visits to EPCOT in awhile.

EPCOT wasn’t as busy as it has been on recent visits. There were still a lot of people there, but lines were much shorter. In fact, I had a solo ride through the Living with the Land green houses. I sat in the front row of a two boat flotilla with no one else in either boat. It was a timing fluke. There was almost a full pair of boats in front and behind me. Another first that was kind of fun. I also was able to walk right onto Spaceship Earth and the Three Caballeros in the Mexico pavilion.

Every night during the International Flower and Garden Festival a concert is held in three sets at the American Gardens theater. Friday through Monday the performance is by a nationally know group. Often it is the remnants of a popular group from the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s. During the week tribute bands and groups from the Orlando area perform. On Tuesday night it was an Orlando based Country/Southern Rock band called Southbound playing. They were OK, but could benefit from better technical support. Whoever was adjusting sound levels didn’t do them any favors. The drums drowned out everything. Even during a song featuring the fiddle in the band, you couldn’t hear the fiddle. Keep in mind I know nothing about music, I just thought it was wrong.

The Butterfly tent setup for the festival was really packed with butterflies in the late afternoon. I usually see butterflies hiding from people of the back sides of the plants near the tent walls and on the tent walls themselves. Yesterday, in addition to the usual places, butterflies were all over the place. There were plenty of them flying around, landing on blossoms, landing on little kids posing as statues to encourage them to stop by and dive bombing adults trying to walk through the exhibit. They were plentiful enough that it was easy to find butterflies stopped on blossoms for picture taking.

For the evening fireworks in the World Showcase lagoon I kept walking around the World Showcase stopping here and there to take a picture or two. Once again the lower crowd level made this possible. The lagoon shore was only line with people a few rows deep. The walkways were empty. I’ve been there when the walkways remained jam packed throughout the fireworks display. On this visit it was easy to pause behind the stationary watchers whenever a good part of the display started.