Florida Series - Epcot

Epcot is a park I have been to before with my family, many years ago, and after spending a couple of hours in there we decided it wasn’t for us and left.
This year we revisited, as it seemed like a good park for my boyfriend to visit as it is more educational (he is a chemistry graduate) and both him and my dad don’t like roller coasters. This visit completely changed our mind on Epcot, and we had a really lovely day.

The park is split into two parts, the bit at the front with all the rides, and the World Expo at the back which gives you a chance to look at different cultures and more importantly, different foods.

When we went there was also the Flower and Garden festival, which meant the park was covered with more topiarys than usual and specialty food and drink, it was lovely and has really inspired me to grow my own herb garden.

At the front of the park the main rides are: 

Soar, which simulates you flying through the sky over California. It is a nice gentle ride, but definitely not for anyone with a fear of heights, like my mum has and had to sit with her eyes closed the whole time...
Test Track, where you create your own car and go through a test track to see how well your design works. I really enjoyed this ride especially as my boyfriend I made a different car to the rest of my family and it was great seeing it perform better in the tests.
Mission Space simulates a real take off and flying to Mars. This was bit of a odd one as it simulates G Force, during the take off part you couldn’t even raise your hands, if I’m honest it made me feel a bit sick!
Spaceship Earth which is set in the iconic globe that you can see when you first enter epcot. This is a nice slow paced ride which takes you through history and how we developed technology. Despite being a bit old a rickety this is another ride I really enjoyed, and learnt quite a few new things.
The Seas with Nemo and Friends, a very young ride which takes you around the sea in a giant clam shell. Great for children.

There are a couple more rides there but we passed over them because of the long queue time and they didn’t really appeal to us.

The other part of the park, the World Expo part has many different sections, each section is based on a country, such as England or France, with buildings stylised after the country, shops that are relevant to the county and food from the country too. Going in the Werthers Originals shop in the German section was a treat!

It was also really interesting hearing so many different languages, it seems Disney has hired people from the country that they are trying to represent, so in the Norway section we actually heard people talking Norwegian!

We went for lunch in the Japanese section as I am a big lover of Japanese food and wanted something other than the American chips and burgers we always seemed to be eating. The food was not 100% authentic, but it was pretty close, and my boyfriend who has been learning Japanese got a chance to practise speaking, the cashier was very friendly and encouraging of him.

Epcot makes for a really lovely slower paced day out in Florida, with plenty to see and do. Be warned though, the park is huge so put on your most comfortable walking shoes and be prepared to spend the whole day here. If possible I would even suggest dedicating two days to the park, one to do all the rides in the front part, and one to spend in the World Expo.

I will leave you now with some more pictures of the flower and garden festival, because it is too pretty to not be seen.