As is the case on way too many mornings at Disney, we were awake extremely early, and by 7:30am we had already taken a Lyft over to the Polynesian hotel.

Every time we step into this lobby, we talk about how much we would love to stay here one day – it’ll happen someday!

Of course we were heading to a breakfast reservation at Kona Cafe, one of Luke’s favourite breakfast places on Disney property. Our reservation was at 7:45am (maybe one day we’ll sleep in while at Disney…). We checked in, and had another great meal here (click here to read all about it!).

After finishing up our meal, we headed out to the monorail. We rarely travel via monorail – but we do enjoy it! We were heading to Epcot, and this method of transportation was amazing – I loved the view of the Flower and Garden Festival as the monorail circled the park on its way to the station.

Before long, we found ourselves through the security check, and scanned into the park. I love Epcot so much, and we planned on spending quite a bit of time in this park on this trip, so we were not in any rush and took the time to soak up the atmosphere.

Of course I quickly spotted a photopass photographer, and made Luke stop for pictures with me. On our first trip, he grumbled about this a bit, but by this point he accepts it, knows how happy it makes me and will actually point out short photopass lines – I married a great one <3

Oh yes – today’s outfit! My pants are from the Disney line at Hot Topic, my shirt is the Rose Gold spirit jersey from the parks, and my hat was found at the Character Outlet on Vineland (originally sold in the parks). Luke skipped the Disney clothes and just wore his Mickey hat (which was purchased in the parks).

We made our way through the park, stopping to check out the topiaries as we went. I think I managed to snap a picture of every single one of them in the park throughout the course of our trip….

Since we were headed to Future World East, we decided to make a quick pit stop at MouseGears so I could grab my Annual Passholder magnet (based on the date, it was the Daisy one) – which I was very excited about! They scanned my AP, which let them know I had not received a Pluto one either – but they still had some left so I left with both!

As an out-of-country Annual Passholder, I have never received the AP magnet in the mail (despite having multiple AP’s over the past few years), and I can’t exactly stop in to the park every single time they release a new magnet – so I treasure these things! So, now you can understand my extreme disappointment/anger when I returned home, and found my Pluto magnet had been stolen from my checked bag. I had the two magnets stuck together, inside a pocket accessible only from the inside of my bag – Daisy was still there but no Pluto to be found anywhere, and a slip from TSA stating they had opened my bag. I’m sorry, but if it just “fell out”, they would have both been gone – I know for a fact they were stuck to one another. I contacted MCO and filed a missing claim, but of course nothing ever came of it. I also reached out to Disney and basically got a “sucks to be you” response. I wasn’t the only one on the Epic trip who had an item go missing from a checked bag either – so yes I am accusing someone who works at the MCO airport of stealing items and more than likely reselling them for profit on Ebay (these magnets are handed out for free – last I checked there are dozens of them listed on Ebay for $15 and up (plus $20-$30 in shipping costs to Canada). I know next time, any AP magnet will be going straight into my carry-on bag. Rant over.

But, back to May 3, 2019 before I knew one would go missing. I left the store so excited, and shared this picture on my social media before tucking them safely into Luke’s backpack.

Here is what our fastpass plans looked like for the day (and yes, that 3:30 one was timed intentionally to line up with the approximate time we’d be leaving the park, so we could hop on Spaceship Earth as we walked past it – and of course our plans are always subject to change haha) –

I stopped to snap a picture of this topiary before heading over to our first Fastpass:

We had timed it so we were towards the end of our fastpass window for Mission Space, allowing us to travel around the Earth on the green side of the motion simulator before walking straight over to our second fastpass on Test Track. We really don’t love Test Track (we’ve been to Disneyland multiple times, Radiator Springs racers is FAR superior) – but we do enjoy building the most ridiculous vehicle possible haha.