Events of Tuesday, January 11, 2011

                It’s our two-hundredth day! And it’s 1/11/11! The first way we celebrated this milestone was by eating breakfast outside at our lovely picnic table in our lovely campground in the lovely warm weather of Florida. Of course, this is extremely special, because it means that we only have to make our beds like normal beds, rather than transform them into our couch and dining room, and then back into beds tonight.

                Following such a bizarre breakfast, we readied ourselves for a second day at Epcot, caught the campground bus to the outpost station, and then caught another bus to Epcot. Upon arriving, we headed first to one of the most popular rides in the park, Mission: SPACE, hoping to ride before the crowds arrived. We took the Orange ride for a more intense journey into space, complete with extreme G forces and antigravity. It was quite close to a real experience! Afterwards, we hurried through the arcade-like area, promising each other we’d come back here later to play with these spaceship toys.

                Instead, we whizzed through the non-existent line for Test Track, a huge car commercial for General Motors, but also a very fun experience. We played the role of “crash dummies” in a series of tests that all cars go through before going on the market. We went up, down, over bumps and through walls, through hot and cold, and all of this awesomely fast! Apparently, it’s the longest, fastest attraction in Disney history!

                After Test Track, we returned to the Advanced Training Lab, the arcade game room between Mission: SPACE and the gift shop. We played a team competition game involving two spaceships racing to an unknown destination in the universe; the two times we played it, the team the Taylors were on, sadly, lost. In another video game, we played the role of a rescue astronaut on Mars trying to save four stranded astronauts from a dust storm.

                Subsequent to spending way too much time playing video games in Disney World, we walked to IMAGINATION! There, we found a lovely spot to eat our packed lunch, by some really cool jumping fountains. The water from these fountains hopped from ring to ring, more like a jumping worm than a bunch of liquid.

                Finished with lunch, we next took in a 3D film that followed Captain EO (played by Michael Jackson) and his crew on a mission to rescue the planet through the gift of music, dance, and light. Afterwards, Mom apologized profusely for making us endure that experience, in her quest to experience everything in the park.

                Next was our “Journey Into Imagination with Figment”, a cute kiddie ride through a scientific tour of the five senses, invaded by Figment, a cute little purple dinosaur with an exceptionally creative imagination. This was followed by ImageWorks, and then on to RE-IMAGINED! Spaceship Earth! Here, we saw ourselves in the future (literally) as we rode, played, created, competed, and explored inside Epcot’s iconic silver globe. We temporarily got stuck in this ride, but only for a second. Daddy and Lindsey accidentally chose to take this interactive tour in French!

                We spent the next several hours inside Innoventions East and West, two separate buildings with many individual attractions inside. At Sum of All Thrills, we got to design our own roller coaster ride and then “ride” it in a virtual reality simulator. We also got into some friendly family competition with “Where’s the Fire?”, an interactive exhibit about fire safety.

                My favorite part of Innoventions, presented by Waste Management, taught us through an interactive, multi-step game about how our waste is managed. First, we took a quiz that calculated the amount of trash our family generated in a one-year period. That number of pounds of trash was digitally stored in a miniature garbage truck, which we then took to a sorting station and sorted out our recycling. Next, we burned the remaining waste in a furnace to provide energy for many households. Finally, the unusable part of it was used as landfill to build something useful for the community. As a lover of recycling (which has been a challenging part of this trip), I so thoroughly enjoyed this attraction that I did it twice!

                After Innoventions, we walked through Canada, the UK, and France to get to Morocco, where we had reservations for dinner at Restaurant Marrakesh. While we waited for our table, we watched a belly dancer dressed in blue perform outdoors. Once seated inside a sultan's palace setting, we saw another belly dancer dressed in red, while trying to determine which tasty North Mediterranean cuisine we most wanted to sample.

                For appetizers, we chose beef brewat rolls, chicken bastilla, jasmina salad, a Morocco salad of green peppers, tomatoes, marinated olives, carrots, potatoes and cucumbers, and a Mediterranean salad of falafel, sundried tomatoes, hummus, roasted eggplant puree and tabouleh. This stuff was truly exotic, so flavorful, and nothing at all like anything else.

                For our entrees, we decided on Couscous M'Rouzia Fassi (braised beef served with caramelized onions, raisins, honey, almonds and eggs), Shish Kebab (grilled tenderloin of beef served with hummus), Roast Lamb Meshoui (a Moroccan traditional dish - a roasted lamb shank in natural juice served with couscous), and Mogador Fish Tagine (marinated fish with olives, lemon confit, potatoes, green peppers and chermula sauce).

                For dessert, we feasted on bastilla (crispy leaves of pastry topped with vanilla cream and sprinkled with toasted almonds), Marrakesh Delight (fresh fruit salad topped with mint ice cream, toasted almonds and orange blossom water), and Moroccan Symphony (assorted Moroccan baklava). After dessert, as the second belly dancer returned, this time in yellow, our Moroccan waiter, El Mehdi, wrote our names in Arabian on the paper table covering as free souvenirs. It was a fantastic celebration of our two-hundredth day of this journey.

                The baklava we received for dessert was miniscule, so we went to a nearby café and ordered a big triangular chunk of the stuff for Mom. (Surprisingly, chocoholic Mom loves baklava more than any other non-chocolate dessert.)

                Next, we went to France for a fantastic spot for viewing the show performed nightly at Epcot, IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth. This amazing show featured breathtaking fireworks, brilliant bursts of fire, laser light effects, dramatic fountain barges, a thrilling musical score and the world's first spherical video display system—the 350,0000-pound Earth Globe. It was an inspirational nighttime spectacular, and a great way to celebrate our two-hundredth day of this trip.

                After the night show, we hurried across the park, boarded the bus, and headed back to the campground. Once at the outpost, we boarded another bus that dropped us off across the road from our campground. From there, we walked back to the RV and headed to bed.