October Trip Report - Day 1

October 13, 2014

Where would one start a trip to WDW for the International Food and Wine Festival, except in EPCOT? So naturally, that is where we will spend our first day.

Before we arrive at EPCOT, I get a message from a friend from high school who tells me that her son - who is on the WDW College Program - is at the entrance and I should say hi to him. However, as we go through the entrance, I look but he is not to be seen.

We arrive about 10:00 AM - we don't get to parks very early anymore - and will be meeting our daughter here at 11:00 so she can partake of some of the offerings at Food and Wine before she needs to be at work this afternoon. When we arrive, my wife does what she always does when we get into the park, and heads into The Art of Disney. I, on the other hand, stay outside to take some photos, including the one of Spaceship Earth which you see above.

When she is done we follow our (her) usual routine and stop at the pin station where she always finds a pin or two to purchase. From there we head towards - where else - Mouse Gears. As we arrive there, I get another message from my friend that her son - who had been on a break - was now back at the entrance, so I tell my wife to take her time in the store and I will meet her when she comes out. I go back to the entrance area where I do find the young man this time. I introduce myself to him (he was expecting me) and we have a nice chat. He is doing his second CP semester with the hope that when it is over he can get a full time position (he had been offered PT in the past) and get himself a place to live down here ... somewhat similar to what my own daughter had done.

Back to Mouse Gears where I gather my wife and head over to The Land where we will meet our daughter, and then use our FastPass+'s for Soarin' before heading off to World Showcase for our first taste of this year's Food and Wine Festival.

Although it is supposed to cool down a bit later in the week, today is another of those very hot Central Florida days, you know, a typical day at Walt Disney World.

We start with a short journey to the booths to the right before starting our counter-clockwise journey. Between the heat and my daughter's work schedule, it's around 1:00 when we decide to head back into World Showcase. We still have a few FastPasses to use, so we say goodbye to our daughter while we head to Test Track, our next FastPass on the schedule.

Once that is done, we have a bit of a wait until our Spaceship Earth FastPass is due, but since my wife is using a scooter, we decided to just go ahead and go through the wheelchair procedure, and not wait until our FastPass window.

That done, we head back to the bus and Pop Century, where we have some dinner at the food court before heading back to our nicely air conditioned room to relax and prepare for the next day which we will be spending at Disney's Hollywood Studios.