The Epcot adventure

Florida is awash with sunshine when we land there. It is a stark contrast to New York/New Jersey and discarding the heavy wear is certainly a relief!



You can’t come to Florida and not visit Disneyland, the 80-year-old reasons, what will people think? She has done the rounds before, but memory sometimes fails, so we need to consolidate remembrances.

It’s actually far from where we are located, but we plan on adventure. We decide to take a bus ride, at six-thirty in the morning. The bus has air-conditioning and the set temperature is cold for us. We brave it as best we can, since fellow passengers are dressed for warm climes and nobody’s complaining.

It’s a five and half hours stretch with one change of bus. For the elderly it is far too long. It’s not a happy thought that we have to repeat the experience on the way back. Food and drink is banned on the bus, so there’s little to do other than watch the onboard film. Disneyland is a city in itself. The tour operators drop off passengers at the various pavilions, so the distance seems to be never-ending.

Some passengers have brought valises; they’re going to stay over. We have opted for a day’s tour and it seems a mistake. But then we hear voices raised agitatedly – a couple of the valises have been misplaced! From the conversation we realize that, in the region, Spanish is spoken far more than is English.

Eventually we’re asked to disembark at a parking lot. Remember the number painted on the ground, says the driver, and be here by six. I understand, but where’s Disneyland?

We have a bit more to go – by monorail. We find the station and mount the ramp to the rail. This is by far the best part of the journey. We have a fine aerial view of the lush green surroundings. All too soon we’re at Epcot, which we understand, is dedicated to science. Security means that everything we carry is opened and checked.

There is quite a crowd, and so the lines move slowly, ponderously at each of the pavilions. The aisles created have the queues meandering from one side to another for quite a while. It takes at least twenty minutes simply to reach the entrance. Sometimes you find that you need to wait a long time before the gates open for the next batch of visitors. For the very young and the very old the walking and the waiting can be difficult, hence the strollers and motorised chairs.

The surroundings are meticulously maintained. In fact, the plant-life have been arranged according to colour. The splashes of reds, blues, yellows makes pretty pictures to please the eye.

We’ve reached about mid-day and realize that time, for us, is short. We must condense our visit into four hours. We start with Spaceship Earth. We sit in pairs in the cars that will take us away. We find a closed circuit screen before us, that tells us the story of our future. Yes, our faces appear on cartoon characters that enact the futuristic us…

But alas! The spell is soon broken. As luck will have it, a mechanical glitch develops and we’re stranded in the dark. We’re told to stay put. But clearly the efforts to re-start the journey fail. After about half an hour of waiting and wondering we’re suddenly brought out again to the harsh reality that perhaps our spaceship failed to take off!



The 80-year-old remembers how exciting it had been the last time she visited. Science sadly, isn’t able to save the day this time! Still there is much to see and learn. Land examines the ground beneath our feet and is dedicated to human interactions with the earth. As The Diva team we participating in the exercise to ‘reduce, recycle, reuse and recover the resource from the trash we create’. We get a certificate of achievement for thinking green. We miss out on Soarin’ (waiting is 114 minutes), so head into the seaworld of Nemo and Friends.

But there are many other pavilions – country themes, like China, Mexico, and Norway that bring the culture and architecture of the region. Ellen’s (Degeneres) energy pavilion is a travel through time to how we get fuel today. There is Innoventions that shows new ways of doing things for the future, like making music simply by waving hands.

The Imagination pavilion is high on entertainment. Honey, I shrunk the audience is a 3D film you watch with special glasses. Its special effects include the illusion of rats running into the audience! The What If labs from Kodak help people’s interacting with camera technologies, large and small. But all too soon it’s time to go. Definitely to remember the next time that Disneyland is over 4000 acres in area, and it needs time to cover all that space!

Cont'd...