Bennett family finds lots to do but too much to eat in one day at Epcot

Posted in summer fun, Things to do, Travel
by Shaun Bennett

This is the fourth in a six-part blog series detailing the Bennetts’ biennial trip to Disney World in Orlando. I’ll spend one blog entry on each of the four Disney parks, and two more on the two Universal Studios parks we visited before we hit Lake Buena Vista.

We hit the Universal Studios theme parks to begin our vacation, then hoofed it around Animal Kingdom. Next up was Epcot, which stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, a theme park split between Future World — where kids will have the most fun — and World Showcase — a group of miniaturized versions of countries all over the globe.

Dad’s pick

San Angel Inn. I have to start right off by mixing up the theme of these blogs, and picking a restaurant instead of a ride or a show. The San Angel Inn is located in the Mexico Pavilion of the World Showcase, and you can probably guess what type of cuisine is served.

This is by far my favorite Mexican restaurant ever, and not because the food is the best — although it’s as good as anywhere else I’ve been — but because the atmosphere is extremely cool. You sit on a cobblestone patio, with candle lanterns lighting the tables and walkways, while a Mariachi band plays in the distance. On one side is a gently flowing river, where boats roll by on the Gran Fiesta Tour ride and a huge Aztec pyramid looms with smoking volcanoes in the background.

This is the one dinner I look forward to the most on any of our trips South, and is the one place that I highly recommend to anyone visiting, even if Mexican isn’t your favorite food as it is mine.

Mom’s pick

Soarin’. Two trips ago, in 2005, the Land Pavilion was shut down for renovations as this amazing ride was being built. We were able to experience it in 2007, and rode it twice this time around during our visit in June.

Stephanie Bennett wears a beret and pretends to paint in France, part of the World Showcase at Epcot.

Mary raves to anyone who hasn’t been to Disney, or hasn’t been there in the past three years, about how much she loves Soarin’. The ride places you in a suspended chair that is free to rock back and forth with the motion of the monster movie screen. You’re lifted 30-40 feet in the air and then “flown” over the crevices of the Grand Canyon, orange groves in California and raging rapids of West Virginia among other scenic locations, before finally flying over Cinderella’s castle at Disneyland with a full fireworks display lighting up the night.

The thing that makes this ride unique is that fans come on to blow your hair back to give you the feeling of realism, you smell the oranges when you swoop over the groves and the evergreen scent when you zip past forests surrounding the bottom of snow-capped mountains. It’s truly one of the premier rides at Epcot.

Daughter’s pick

Mission: SPACE. Stephanie wasn’t old enough to ride this during her first three visits to Orlando, and I wasn’t sure she’d ride it again after trying it for the first time. I rode it by myself in 2005, first thing in the morning after a buffet breakfast in the Norway pavilion and barely kept my eggs and bacon down.
The ride simulates a shuttle launch and a landing on Mars, which both can test you physically as you hit several G’s during the ride’s spinning process. I wasn’t sure this type of physical test would be something my 7-year-old princess would finish with a smile.

But Disney has that knack of making things interesting for kids, and they assign four positions — pilot, navigator, commander and engineer — and each person has jobs to do during the flight and buttons to push on the navigational board when prompted.

That alone thrilled Steph, as she was the commander for our flight together and was the pilot when she went on a mission with her mother — we once again utilized the parent swap as Jacob wasn’t quite tall enough.

She rambled on for hours after the ride about her roles and the part she played in successfully getting us to Mars in one piece.

Son’s pick

Jacob seemed to enjoy many of the Epcot rides and enjoyed this one as much as the rest but this one finished with an indoor play area and tons of aquariums to watch sharks, jellyfish and sea horses.

The ride itself put you in a giant clamshell — and was one of the few that Jacob was able to ride snuggled safely between his parents — and added the animated characters from the movie “Finding Nemo” into the real-life tanks of ocean fish and animals.

Jacob shares a laugh with Dale of Chip 'n Dale at the Garden Grill restaurant at Epcot.

Inside the pavilion, the kids can run through and see the different marine life exhibits, take a picture in the jaws of Bruce, the great white shark from the movie, and have a talk with Crush, the turtle patriarch that befriended Marlin during his search for his son.

While Epcot would probably be voted the least fun park by kids, it’s still got tons for them to do and is one of the most entertaining for adults. The World Showcase is great because it offers the architecture, food staples and beers from each of the cultures — and each nation is staffed by actual citizens from the real country.

A tip we picked up that made it more fun for the kids was to buy the passport set (around $10) at the first world you start at, and the kids can stop at Kidcot stations in each world to add pieces to a mask they are given and have their passport stamped. They also have penny presses at each world, which makes a nice set if you remember to bring the change for all 11 worlds.

There are also several other great attractions, including Test Track, Honey I shrunk the Audience and the newly renovated Spaceship Earth. The one downfall, in my opinion, is there are too many great restaurants to eat at in this park. My wife loves seafood and they have a fantastic place called the Coral Reef restaurant, where one side is a 20-foot glass wall filled with ocean life and coral formations. Each world has an authentic restaurant, with a top chef of the cuisine flown in to put together the menu, and the Garden Grill in the Land pavilion is a character-based dinner inside a rotating hub. All very cool but impossible to experience unless you want to eat 10 meals throughout the day — or go back and visit every two years!

Coming next: Disney’s Hollywood Studios.