Nataliya and Seth's Orlando Vacation

We woke up and went to the Marriott Horizons timeshare demo. They promised it would be a 90-minute demonstration, but it was more like 2+ hours. Still, the demonstration was nice and the timeshare was beautiful, but it wasn't for us. I told the salesperson that it would be great if we had kids, but that I was having competency issues and that possibility was in doubt. The salesperson got her manager. Then I asked if they had any hotels or timeshares in Ukraine, since we'd most likely go there to visit Nataliya's friends and family. They finally gave up and we walked out of there with our 75 mouse dollars.

With mouse dollars in hand, we headed to Epcot, excited to really start our vacation. We got to the gave, voucher in hand and I handed it to the woman in the ticket booth. When she eyed the voucher over carefully, I started to get nervous. When she pointed out that the voucher clearly said, "Please present your vouchers and photo identification upon check-in at your Orlando hotel front desk to receive your Park Hopper® PLUS tickets, I was really upset with myself. I usually pride myself on my attention to detail and I totally messed up.

So we went back to the hotel, picked up the tickets, and returned to Epcot. Once finally inside, we headed to the more popular rides to get our Fast Pass.

Disney's Fastpass® is a way to reserve your place on a preferred line. We got the Fast Pass for Mission: Space, since it was one of the newer and more popular rides. The pass said to come back between 2:10 PM and 3:10 PM. While we waited, we went to see a few other attractions.

While waiting, we went on Test Track, a ride where you're test driving a GM car. When you got off the ride, it was like big commercial for GM, filled with current and future models of GM vehicles. Then we went to Innovations, a display of past and current ideas. Inside, we visited the house of tomorrow, including a door lock by the entrance that scans your fingerprint to allow entry, and a wonderful jacuzzi with its own plasama tv built right inside! (I hope Nataliya was taking notes on her holiday shopping guide!)

By this time, we went back to Mission: Space. This ride was incredible. This was one of those rides that screws with your perception by moving the cabin in a confined area while showing you a movie on a screen. In this one, you're on a space vessel headed to Mars. However, you do pull a few Gs because they use centrifigal force by spinning you around, similar to a ferris wheel spinning on its side. It does feel like you're pulling a few Gs. Very cool!

From there, we headed to Journey Into Imagination With Figment and Imageworks: The Kodak "What if" Labs. We followed this with a tour through the living body at Body Wars where you're shrunk down to microscopic size and sent on a simple field trip to examine how white blood cells attack an invading splinter... but it goes terribly wrong... After this ride, however, we had our fill of rides for the day.

Then we spotted a movie playing outside the Body Wars ride, called The Making of Me. Curious how Disney would present this to kids, we went inside to see. It was a silly movie, hosted by Martin Short, but not too bad considering the subject matter.

Then we headed to the countries, which Disney calls "Cultural Journeys". We pretty much walked through the whole thing, only stopping a few times. The boat ride in Mexico, El Rio del Tiempo (The River of Time) was very nice where you ride past a volcano, nagging merchants, and the people dining in the Mexican restaurant. It felt like a spin-off of the "it's a small world" ride, but not as long and not as painful. I hadn't subjected that ride to Nataliya yet.

Another country of note was China with its Reflections of China movie. Inside, you're standing in the round theater as you're presented with images of China that surround the theater. Surrounded by 360°, the views presented int his movie are spectacular and impressive.

A side note - we chose November for a couple of reasons - for one, it's one of the slowest times of the year in Orlando. Second, it's one of the driest months in that area. Lastly, Epcot holds its (8th) Annual Food and Wine Festival wine-tasting around the lagoon, by the countries. I had been excited to do the wine tasting, but was disappointed that they not only charge you to taste all the wines, but they charge a bundle! The best deal was in the Australian area, so we tried a few wines before heading out.

By this point, we were pretty hungry and we stopped in the Germany pavilion for a snack. We stopped to listen to some musical entertainmen, also. Before we left, a couple of workers there jumped in the picture while Nataliya took our picture!

Afterwards, we headed to Morocco for dinner at Restaurant Marrakesh (which consisted of three appetizers) while listening to Moroccan music and watching a belly dancer. Being Disney, several kids went near the belly dancer and tried mimic her moves as happy parents watched.

We had to kill some time before the fireworks presentation, so we went to France and watched a cooking presentation. Afterwards, we went for hot beverages at a French cafe, followed by a five-screen movie, Impressions de France. (It was at this point, however, that Nataliya noticed that her necklace, a gift from me in early 2002, was not on her neck.)

We then went to the lagoon to watch the fireworks and laser show, IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth which was very impressive and very well done. (No wonder they charge so much for admission to this park!)

Afte the show, we ran out of the park and put in a report for Nataliya's missing chain. They said we'd call if they found it. Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel room. Much to Nataliya's surprise and relief, her necklace was caught under her shirt. The chain itself was broken, but at least it was there! I tried to call back Epcot to tell them that we found the chain, but since they didn't answer, I just hung up. (They probably still have that report on file...)

We later headed to Pleasure Island. This is the "adult" area that Disney offers adults who want to go our and visit any (or all) of the clubs that they offer. They had a live band outside and the clubs were kind of cool, but it was not crowded in any of them, partyly because it was a Sunday and partly because it was not the busy season. Regardless, we had a good time, drank a little and relaxed until the bars started closing at around 2 AM. At this point, we decided to call it a night and we headed back to the hotel for some sleep. Tomorrow was gearing up to be a very long day and we needed to get a few hours of sleep.