Posts Tagged With: Walt Disney World

Orlando, Jan. 15, 2019

Spaceship Earth at Epcot Saturday late afternoon

This first trip of 2019 is a two-week period, entirely in the Orlando area. It is a combination of things: celebrating Chris’ 70th birthday, an opportunity to spend time with each daughter and her family, a winter break, and taking advantage of some great Delta air fares and lodging deals.

This first half of our trip is primarily at the Marriott Cyprus Harbour, a time share location where we were able to purchase excess capacity for a two bedroom suite. However, our first night was at a Marriott Springhill Suites. As we checked in there, we encountered large number of groups of teenagers. Small groups of 6-10 kids were wearing colorful matching hoodies with each group adorned in an amazing variety of individualized colors. At first, it seemed they might be in Orlando for a music, band, or gymnastics event. But as we looked closer and talked to staff, the teenagers and chaperones were from Colombia and were celebrating their 15th birthday.

We had encountered this on one other trip to Orlando. There is a big business in packaging tours for teenagers from South America for this rite of passage. Searching on-line, one can observe a variety of locations offered by tour operators; our ability to describe the tours is limited by our lack of Spanish.

The groups were well-behaved and seemed to be having a great time. We were wary about breakfast the next morning since the hotel has signs suggesting that one eat breakfast early, that the breakfast area is jammed after 8:15 AM. The breakfast area seats about 130 with multiple food serving areas to help handle the crush. We took their advice and were down there by 6:45 AM. There was no problem for us.

Other than experiencing several of the major theme attractions with our guests, we have no major plans for this trip. I know, very unlike us. The Orange County Historical Museum was a smaller museum that we had not previously visited so we made that our one visit for the day. It is located in downtown Orlando in the old courthouse building, solid but uninspiring architecture.

The museum was “blessed” with several school groups visiting that day; we worked our way around them as we explored. A notable new fact for us was the Florida Cracker cattle, a critically endangered domestic cattle breed dating back to the cattle brought over by the Spaniards. The cracker has several traits that helped it adapt here; heat tolerant and resistant to parasites. True crackers are relatively rare, they have been cross-bred to develop larger sizes and more meat. The Texas longhorn are one variety of cattle that traces its genetic roots back to the Florida cracker,

Florida is still a major cattle producing state, ranking 18th in 2018 statistics. (The exhibit must be outdated. The exhibit stated Florida is in the top ten cattle producing states.) The Mormon church owns a 300,000 acre ranch here, one of Florida’s largest. The exhibits documented the rise and continual cattle growing history of the state; including that the whip used here “cracks” over the cattle to direct them. The land is soft and full of scrub brush, unlike the open plains of Texas. The whip takes the place of the lasso.

Of course there is a display concerning citrus growing. This is Orange County, the center of orange growing in Florida, although numerous winter freezes and urban development have vastly shrunk the acreage under crop production. Florida is still number two in oranges, with one-third the amount grown in Brazil. China is a new competitor, not far behind Florida. On our way to the museum, we took secondary roads. On those roads we came across Dr. Phillips named schools, street, and neighborhoods. At the museum, it was explained that Dr.Phillips was the world’s largest citrus grower from 1920 to 1954. He innovated with crop dusting, elimination of the metallic taste in canned juice, and new marketing techniques.

Of course, raising crops does no good without being able to transport your product to market. The museum documents how, like many other states, the advancement from river transportation to railroads dramatically increased Florida’s opportunities to add population and to ship citrus and meat products to northern states.

The major impetus to growth in the Orlando area was not Walt Disney, but Martin Marietta which added a 2,700 employee plant in 1957 and by 1987 had 15,000 employees in the area. They began a movement by other technology companies to the area. When Disney came looking for land in the 1960s, he was able to amass enough parcels to create a large tract empty and still cheap. He purchased 27,000 acres; Disneyland in California operates on less than 300 acres. As they say, the rest is history.

Lake Eola in downtown Orlando

Chris and I walked around Lake Eola in downtown Orlando and had lunch at a local brewery. For a large town of 275,000 people in a metropolitan area of 2.7 million, the downtown was pretty quiet. A Gravely tractor commercial being filmed alongside the lake was the main generator of interest.

Thursday night we checked in to the Marriott Cypress Harbour, a very nice timeshare property. Our first night, they had a Hawaiian band playing for two hours which we enjoyed. Deb and Rebecca joined us Friday night. Saturday was our first day at Disney, visiting Epcot. Our travel planning has been aided by the “Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World” and “Touring Plans”. Their predictions of crowd levels and customized touring plans has allowed us to optimize our time. The biggest hassle was the traffic. There are four marathons scheduled throughout the year on Disney property, we experienced one of them.

On Friday, we made a practice run to Epcot to make sure we knew the route for our early morning arrival at Epcot on Saturday. We made it; all the way to the parking lot pay gate where we had to explain we did not want to pay, just turn around and head back. They let us without a hassle. But no mention from them, from the Disney web site, the marathon web site, or anywhere else we could see that gave advance notice of the best way to manage the traffic Saturday morning. The detour routes marked on Saturday were more designed to get you to the Magic Kingdom. A helpful guard at Fort Wilderness campground got us pointed in the correct direction. We still arrived early and found out that Test Track, one of the main attractions and an attraction for which we were unable to get FastPass+ for, opened early. We headed to Test Track, got on the ride without any lines and thus began the day. Overall the day was less crowded than expected and we encountered few waits of any significance.

Biergarten restaurant in Epcot

Our dinner was at the Biergarten in the Germany Pavilion. The buffet meal was tasty with plenty of options. As a side benefit, we had dinner while the German band was playing.

Epcot Future World was disappointing to me in that several of the original attractions have been closed with no replacement, thus you observe these large buildings just empty and deserted. In Epcot World Showcase, several of the dramatic movies of countries were outdated. Minor disappointments but given the dollars one gives Disney, you hope for continual renewal of the attractions. Rebecca, however, who had not been to Epcot in over 20 years, liked the looks-it reminded her of its appearance when she first came, sort of a walk down memory lane.

Morocco pavilion in Epcot

I see no need to give a blow-by-blow description of the day, either you have been to Disney World or you have not. If you have, my detailed description would be a poor substitute. If you have not, my description would have to go on forever to properly give it justice. Overall, it was an enjoyable day.

Ed and Chris
Orlando
January 15, 2019 (Happy Birthday Chris)