Wednesday, December 26, 2012

EPCOT's 30th Anniversary

October 1 was EPCOT's 30th Anniversary, it was just luck that I was here for that since I planned this trip before I knew. The two days before I had kinda worn myself out a bit so I decided to sleep in this morning. Aside from the exhaustion I really wanted to be there for Illuminations.

When I got into the park I got my Fast Pass for Soarin and then went on line for limited edition merchandise, it was a 3 hour line. Thankfully, most of it was in the shade. At the end of the line were pins, t-shirts and that was pretty much it by the time I got there. The only thing I would have bought that I missed were the Vinylmations, thought it would have been a nice addition to my nephew's collection, but he probably wouldn't have appreciated since he's 13.



In the afternoon I attended a 30th Anniversary talk with Marty Sklar it was a very interesting talk for even just a casual fan of Disney, he had a lot of great history on the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow and Disney in general. I'll share two intersting facts. Some of the pavillions that didn't happen were - Africa and Iran. Iran, that would have been akward, though the images looked really cool. The park entrance was almost in the middle of Future World and World Showcase, which actually kinda makes more sense. But ultimately it came down to the agreements they had made with the CEO's of the future world pavilions that forced them to stick with the entrance where it is.

Illuminations had a a special 30th Anniversary tag at the end. It wasn't like the Christmas tag where there is talking guiding it, it was just a FABULOUS fireworks display. Rumor before was that it was supposed to be better then the 4th of July tag, which I've never seen. I have to say, it had some neat features with fireworks going across the water, but the finale was possibly the best fireworks finale I've seen and I've seen the Macy's 4th of July fireworks from right in front of the barge which was impressive.