[KarenWDWCP]

Day 3 - Our first full Disney day!

We woke up around 7:00. Ok, the wake up call was for 7:00 but I was up at 6:15. I was too excited to sleep any longer. I got up and showered, etc and we were all up and out by 8:00 or so. We went to the Marketplace to grab some breakfast.

I have to say that my one complaint with the Beach Club was the Marketplace area. I knew it would not be a food court like the moderates have, but I really didn't realize how on top of the food part, the gift shop part is. It was strange. I really didn't like the design of the place. I can't imagine it would have been that hard for them to really split the food part from the Shop part, but I guess they know what they are doing more than I do. We just got some pastries, coffee and juice this morning as we were eating at Le Cellier at 2:50. I had a chocolate croissant which was delicious! We ate in the very small seating area outside which was really nice and a pretty spot to sit.

Our first stop after breakfast was EPCOT so we walked over there and suddenly I realized that THIS was why people are willing to pay so much for the Beach Club - location, location, location! It was great just walking over there. We walked through the gates and over to the Future World side. The plan had been to get FPs for Soarin but the posted wait time was only 20 minutes. Since it is a bit of a haul to get all the way in to Soarin inside the Land, we figured we would probably actually save time by waiting the 20 minutes rather than getting the FPs, leaving and then coming all the way back when our time came up. This was a good decision as the wait was decidedly LESS than 20 minutes which was nice.

My dad had chickened out on Soarin twice before (once in California Adventure when he actually came all the way into the theater and then said he didn't want to do it and once in WDW when we got to the line and he bailed). He rides all the thrill rides but has a weird thing with Soarin. He had a bad experience with motion sickness and just feeling strange after riding Back to the Future at Universal several years ago and is now a little leary of movie/simulator type rides. We had tried to tell him that Soarin was not at all like that but he was never convinced in the past. This time he pushed through and rode it and loved it! I was so glad because we knew he would like it if he just got on it.