We woke up a little later than planned on this day, but it wasn’t too terrible. After waking up, we got ready, ate a few of the snacks from our stash in our room (thank you Amazon order that we shipped direct to the hotel!) and then headed out. We didn’t have to wait long for our bus, and the ride itself was fairly short. It wasn’t long before we were pulling up to Epcot – the only park we hadn’t been in yet! We arrived shortly before 10am, so almost an hour after rope drop, and the security line was crazy long! It was moving, and the wait really wasn’t too bad. Luke once again was selected for additional screening (by the end of the trip, he just headed to the metal detectors on his own without being asked, since this was now the third day in a row he was selected haha) We honestly didn’t mind, anything to help keep the parks safer!

After entering the park, we were met with this beautiful sight:

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We didn’t stop for any Photopass pictures, since we were running short on time for our first FastPass. We started heading towards Future World East. It took quite a bit longer than usual to get there, due to the marathon which was going through the park. At this point, most of the runners looked like people who were used to doing this, the people who had run a marathon or two (or fifty) in the past. It was really amazing how organized Disney is with the entire thing, the way they would corral the park visitors into one section, then change the race course ever so slightly and then move park visitors to the next section. It’s hard to explain, but it was very impressive! We didn’t mind the extra time it took to get to our first Fast Pass at all, we enjoyed watching the race and clapping our encouragement for the people who were nearing the end of a full marathon.

Once we were given the go-ahead to cross into Future World East, we hopped into the Fast Pass for Test Track (we made it with a few minutes to spare!). We didn’t have to wait very long before we were standing in front of a screen designing our own vehicle. For some reason, I didn’t think to take a picture of the monstrosity we created – just know that it was our goal to make it as ugly as possible haha…Shortly after that we boarded the back row of a blue car.

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This ride is basically the same as Radiator Springs at Disney California Adventure – and we ended up in the exact same seats in the car as we did on our April 2015 trip to California haha –

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Yes, I took a picture of the preview screen haha, we didn’t buy any of our on-ride photos from either of our first two trips to Disneyland.

Test Track is fun, and the ability to design your own car at Epcot is really neat, but I think I prefer DL’s version more. The ride just fits so well with the Cars theme, and the dark part of the ride is phenomenal! At Epcot you’re just taking turns and dealing with road conditions, at DCA you’re avoiding Mack and tipping tractors with Mater, etc. I also love the first open-air part of Radiator Springs when you’re slowly driving along the waterfall is really awesome too! Test Track is definitely a can’t miss ride for me at Epcot, but the overall theming does pale in comparison to DCA’s Radiator Springs.

After looking around at the different cars and stuff for a few minutes we decided to start heading over towards Fast Pass #2. We had time, so we stopped along the way to do a little shopping at Mouse Gear. Luke found these awesome Wall-E and Eve coffee mugs he had to have (it’s his favourite movie) so we bought those and had them shipped back to our hotel (again, I LOVE this option when staying on site). Note – not my picture, taken from a google search.

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The marathon was still in full swing, so we again had a chance to watch and cheer on the participants. By this point the people running by were just ordinary people doing an extraordinary thing, not the seasoned veterans of marathon running we had saw earlier. From where we were watching, they only had a little over a mile to go before finishing the race, so some people looked to be in excruciating pain. These people had been running for hours at this point, they were limping and bleeding, but they were still going and they were forcing smiles for the hundreds of people cheering them on. I had never been that close to the finish line of a marathon as the everyday people went by (I’ve gone to Luke’s races before, but he’s using only running 10km, so by the time we leave it’s still only the elite athletes finishing the full marathon). It was really powerful stuff to witness.

When we got to Fast Pass #2 for Spaceship Earth, there was only a 10 minute wait in the standby line. With our Fastpasses we walked onto the ride. I did enjoy this ride, but I’ll admit neither one of us were paying super close attention. We were both still thinking about watching those marathon runners. While were we looking around after getting off the ride, Luke told me that he was really inspired by watching the marathon for a few minutes, and as of that moment he realized it was something he wanted to do. He completed a half marathon a few years ago, but that was his ultimate goal at the time and afterwards he scaled back and has been doing 10km races since then (with a few 5km’s in there as well). He also decided that he wants his first ever full marathon to be a runDisney event (which is more than fine with me!). He started discussing timelines – he was able to comfortably run a 10km a few days earlier, so that was his base. He decided to aim to run a half marathon in early 2017 (at the time, we were thinking Star Wars weekend or Tinker Bell weekend at Disneyland, this has since been changed to WDW Marathon Weekend) and then come back to Florida in January 2018 so he could run a full. I was really excited about this – we hadn’t even come home yet and we had already decided on a return date! (PS: Luke is actually going to be running a half marathon in January 2017 during Marathon weekend, and we’re both also signed up for the 5km.

After this, we realized we were both a little hungry. We knew we wanted a quick service option, so we went to Sunshine Seasons. This place is great! The menu was much larger than I thought it was going to be, and we had no trouble finding things that sounded great! It also was not busy at all – and we were there right at lunch time (around 12:30). My review can be found here.

From where we were sitting, we could see that there was no line for Living With the Land, so we walked straight onto that. Ever since we bought our house I have been in love with gardening, so I really enjoyed this ride and found it quite interesting! I think I’d like to do the Behind the Seeds tour at some point in my life. (I apologize if my pictures are out of order)

Next: More Epcot