January 4, 2017 – Part Two​

After dropping off our runDisney merchandise (and our awesome new sneakers), and packing up a park bag, we headed back out to the bus stop. I loved how close it was to our room – I’m sure I’ll mention that a lot in this trip report! We didn’t have to wait too long before our bus pulled up and we were finally off to our first park – Epcot!​

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Once we reached the park, we had to stop by a ticket booth to activate our tickets – we had purchased 7-day tickets using the Canadian discount, so we needed to show our passports to prove we were Canadian citizens. This was very easy, and it wasn’t too long before we were heading over and tapping our Magicbands to enter the park ​

We stopped for our first photopass pictures of the trip -​

Before I start posting too many pictures of myself, I feel like I need to explain something. You’ll notice in some of my pictures that my hair is insanely messy, or I’m wearing scarves, or you can see a bit of a rash on my face/neck. I started noticing problems with my skin shortly before leaving on this trip, and right after I returned to Canada from this trip, I ended up on a round of antibiotics due to how bad my skin was. It’s all due to psoriasis – an auto-immune disease that leads to abnormal skin. It’s mainly focused on my scalp, so it was sometimes really difficult to brush my hair – and by the end of the trip I just gave up due to how painful it was. So, I apologize now for the terrible hair you will see in this trip report, but I wasn’t going to let anything bring my trip down (if you read my 2016 trip report, you know I also have Crohn’s disease and it did take me down and out for a day on that trip – I did have zero issues with that disease on this trip though – so win?).​

And now, back to the trip report…

My mom was currently in New Brunswick visiting my grandmother, who has been hospitalized for months now, so I decided to Facetime them so they could see some of the park We started walking while Facetiming until we reached the Starbucks. The one thing Luke told me he really wanted to get on this trip was the Starbucks “You Are Here” mugs that they make for each park, so he headed in to buy his first one These things are really nice, and are quite large.

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While he was in Starbucks, I said my goodbyes to my mom and Nanny, with promises to Facetime them again the next day. When Luke came out, he had also made the decision to order drinks for us both – a Berry Hibiscus Refresher for me and some fancy iced coffee for him. Apparently we were both thirsty, since we had our drinks polished off by the time we reached Norway for our first Fastpass (and first ride) of the trip – Frozen Ever After!​

The line for this was insanely long, no way would I wait 105 minutes for any ride!​

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The Fastpass line was long, but it was moving fairly quickly. We were right behind a family with a teenage girl who was snapchatting EVERYTHING. Seriously, why do you need to take 4 million pictures of the wall, or your feet, or you making weird faces while in line? Ugh, anyways… we finally made it to the front of the line and were placed into the front row of a boat. My pictures aren’t the greatest, but I didn’t feel like pulling my real camera out of my bag, so these were all taken with my iPhone.​

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We also had no idea there was an on-ride photo, since I had refused to do much research on the ride (I wanted it to be a surprise ), so that’s why we look so stunned in the picture hahaha…​

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As for the ride – I’m one of those people who LOVED Frozen, so I loved this. I know there’s a lot of complaints about it being in Norway, and not really fitting with the original Epcot theme. My first time to Epcot was in 2016, so I never had a chance to ride Maelstrom. I personally have no issues with Disney adding more of their own characters to the park.

We noticed that the wait time to meet Anna and Elsa wasn’t terrible, it was listed as being only 20 minutes so we got into line for our first character meet of the trip (and surprisingly, the first face characters we’ve ever met!). The wait time was pretty much exact, and 20 minutes later we were led into a room to meet the sisters. They were so much fun, really in character. They were very intrigued by Luke’s tshirt, and decided that Gerald was an anterless reindeer . One of the character handlers in the room was extremely friendly, and very bubbly – she made up a song on the spot about Gerald the anterless reindeer (sung to the tune of Rudolph) and sang it to us.​

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The thing in Luke’s hand is what we decided to get autographed – it was the sleeve from a record that was released as a Record Store Day limited edition release in 2016. It ended up getting pretty beat up by the end of the trip, but I love how it turned out!​

Next: Epcot Part Two