Pupletts in Sweden: USA - Part 7

EPCOT stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Originally it was to be a self-contained community running off sustainable energy and focuses on advances in technology, education and the world.

The Park was dominated by the giant geodesic sphere (or golf ball) that formed the Spaceship Earth ride. It was then divided into two Future Worlds (East and West), a Showcase Plaza and then the World Showcase, which featured Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, America, Japan, Morocco, France, United Kingdom and Canada.

There were some cool rides in the park and we ended up skipping a few as we were keen to get back to Magic Kingdom. The kids were a bit bored by the World Showcase but did enjoy the Test Track ride and designing a future on Spaceship Earth (particularly when their future involved Cameron breaking his arm and getting better by drinking hot soup.)

EPCOT

Holding the sphere up

EPCOT Map

Entrance

View of the sphere from outside the park

The tilted pillars around the side of the area allowed people to pay to have a photo displayed as part of "Leave a Legacy"

The base of the sphere

Future World East
Future World East held quite a few rides, including the Spaceship Earth ride and a couple of thrill rides, including the Test Track.

Spaceship Earth
This ride was located inside the sphere and was a slow dark ride through history - showing from cavemen to modern civilization and then potential for the future.

Ride entrance under the sphere (you can see the sign in the previous photo to give an idea of location - the glass pillar is to the left of this shot)

The queue to get in

Close up of the surface of the sphere - it almost looked animated

Mission Space
This ride was a centrifuge simulating space flight with two settings - green for easy and orange for hard. The line was too long for us to get on, but the outside design was pretty cool:

Mission Space

Test Track
This ride allowed riders to select a car with specific specifications (power, efficiency, control etc) and then ran through a track that simulated testing all of these - such as speed, cornering and rapid stopping. After each obstacle it gave a score for each car based on its statistics. The outside section where power was tested was pretty fast. The queue for the ride was huge so we went on as single riders instead of a group and instead of a 70minute wait, we got on in 10minutes. It did mean that we have three seperate ride photos. Of course the photo is taken just as the car heads outside and while it looks dark on the picture, these were taken about 3pm and it was super bright and glarey - hence the closed and squinted eyes.

Keir and Tomas

Cameron

Alana and Kristine

Others
There were several other rides we skipped in this area due to lack of time - Ellen's Energy Adventure (a 45minute show discussing power generation past, present and future) and we briefly visited the Innoventions and Project Tomorrow exhibit and game halls.

Future World West
There were a couple of shows here such as the finding Nemo and Talk with Crush ride we didn't do and the Soarin' hang-glider simulator was closed. In the end we went on the Figment ride and entered the character spot to meet with Tomas' favourite characters from Inside Out.

Waterfall and the glass pyramids of the Figment ride

Journey into Imagination with Figment
This was a slow moving ride that dealt with the five senses and was narrated by Eric Idle and a purple dragon named Figment. Overall it was entertaining and a good way to cool off and slow down for a bit.

The glass pyramids marked the ride

Figment

Character Spot
The line for the Inside Out characters didn't seem too long, but it took us almost an hour to get in to see them. But it was worth it. Tomas loved getting his photo taken with Sadness and Joy and we got 32 photos taken.

In the line - the kids with the memory balls

Tom meets Joy

Alana meets Sadness

All of us

Alana, Sadness and Joy

Cameron, Sadness and Joy

Meeting the characters (Cameron was acting as Sadness)

The kids, Joy and Sadness

Tomas, Joy and Sadness

Tomas meets Sadness

Tomas, Sadness and Joy

Kris also snapped a few shows of Baymax from Big Hero 6, but the line to meet him was too long:

Baymax

Showcase Plaza
This was the main area leading onto the World Showcase and overlooking the lake. The main feature was an impressive fountain:

The fountain

World Showcase

This section was a series of small areas set up as regions of the world. Each area was staffed with cast members who originated from that country and they had food, demonstrations, shops and exhibits in each area: