Orlando 2017 – Day 2

Day 2 – EPCOT

We agreed to leave at 8:45am and so I had set my mother’s alarm for 8am the night before. I was awake off and on from 5am and eventually got up at 7:45am and started breakfast.

My mother was in the master bedroom on the ground floor and by 8:25am, I realised I hadn’t heard her moving around. I sent Cian to knock on her door and she ran out looking like the guy from the Prodigy’s Firestarter video. Apparently, her phone had turned itself back an hour and so she thought it was only 7:25am.

Despite this, we were out of the villa and on the road by 8:40 (without me having to use my whistle) and we arrived at EPCOT by 9:15am.

The bag search took slightly longer as I need to show them the medical note for all of Fin’s medication and gluten free snacks but we were in the park and heading for our breakfast reservation by 9:30am.

We had booked a character breakfast at the Garden Grill which is a revolving restaurant in the Future World West area of the park. I had come across the restaurant after reading several gluten free blogs and everyone raved about the GF Mickey waffles and they were not wrong.

The food was amazing!

We had cinnamon muffins, the all important Mickey Waffles, bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs and hash brown barrels as well as a massive bowl of fresh fruit and juices. You could order as much as you wanted but we found that the first serving was more than enough for us all.

During the meal, Chip n Dale, Mickey and Pluto stopped alongside our table to sign autographs and pose for numerous photos much to Andrew’s delight. I have literally never seen a grown man get so excited to have pictures with Disney characters in my life!

All in all, it was fab start to our day and whilst it wasn’t cheap at $156 for 5 of us, it was worth every cent. For those people on a Disney Dining Plan or a Deluxe Dining Plan, this would be fully inclusive. You can read more about all the different types of Dining plans here.

We then queued to have our pictures taken with Mickey, Minnie and Goofy as you can’t go to Disney and not get a photo with the REAL Mickey!

After this we used our fast pass for Soarin’ where we spent the whole ride laughing at my mother who kept squealing and wiping imaginary mud from her face.

Originally, I had a further two fast passes booked for 2:45pm and 5:30pm but during the day, upon checking the app on my phone (all the parks have fantastic free WIFI), I found fast passes for Living with the Land and The Seas with Nemo at earlier times and booked these instead. This meant I used my 3 fast passes by 2pm and I could then make further selections for the rest of the day.

Tip: Whilst you can only make 3 fast pass reservations in advance, once you have used these on the day, you are free to make more, one at a time, for the rest of the day. There is a whole web page dedicated to getting the most out of your fast passes here. And whilst it is quite a complicated read, bear in mind that most non fast pass queues are in excess of 45 minutes, which means planning your day in advance will save you a LOT of time.

Living with the Land is THE most boring ride in the world and Nemo was a little young for the boys but we did them anyway and by 3pm, we had used all our fast passes and ended up getting 2 more for Pixar Movies and Spaceship Earth which meant we had utilised five in 6 hours.

In between, we also managed to fit in Frozen Ever After, Mission Space and the Donald Duck ride in Mexico before leaving the park at 6pm so all in all, a pretty successful day.

 

We then headed to Applebees near the villa for a cheap and cheerful evening meal. They have quite a good choice of gluten free items as you can see below.

After our meal, we went back to the villa where the boys played in the pool for an hour before we all headed to bed in preparation for the following day at Sea World.

Beth xx