Monday morning saw us off to a shaky start. Indeed... a 9:00 am shuttle departure is just too late unless all goes perfectly! Issues included the shuttle being too full, traffic backed up outside of Hollywood Studios due to an accident, and line ups at the Epcot main gate and through the rest of the visit. I felt wore out before I even got started! There were indeed a lot of visitors on the move not knowing where they were headed... us included! In reality... I guess one can't be naive enough to think he/she can go to Disney and not see others!!! My bad...

All that in mind, Epcot is really a pretty fascinating place. We managed to get a few Fast Passes and coasted through several rides including; Mission: Space / TestTrack / Innoventions / Soarin' / Spaceship Earth. Mission: Space was pretty cool... We did the rookie " Green" version which we gathered from signage wasn't as "jostling". Of note, Soarin' was really well done and all of us went on the flight. Basically, it is a hang-gliding experience over California. Around the golf course, over a carrier deck, through the orange groves, along the coast. Neat ride. Used sight, motion and even smell to make it feel real. We also started dabbling in the Fast Pass and used several during the day. We focused more on using them as the week moved on, as inevitably the urge of the kids moved from viewing in the parks to participating and taking in the rides (nastier the better).

We also enjoyed our walk around and through the World Pavilions. Our first stop, naturally, was Canada. We stopped for the 360 degree film narrated by Martin Short. I always like these things... think I saw my first in 1981 in Calgary. We had our sights (and tummies) set on some English style Fish & Chips in the Great Britain area but the line-ups were crazy. Janie and Eileen hunkered down in the line though, and came out with a great lunch, eaten in a beautiful setting overlooking the lake.

After our lunch we continued around the lake and caught a very good busker routine at the entrance to the French offering... A chair "balancer" who was half a dozen seats up! Really, we bobbed in and out of many regions crawling around fountains in the Morocco pavilion, enjoying Japan through a "Taiko Drumming" demonstration, and even sourcing some Gelato (no, not as good as the real deal) at the Italian Pavilion.

So... although not totally as planned, we got to experience Epcot and did enjoy much of what this park has to offer. As the sun began to set we bid the park adieu... wanting to see the fire works (which our guide book said was excellent) scheduled for later in the evening but all knowing that we'd be asleep long before the first candle was lit!!!