Epcot part 1

Our fourth and final day at Disneyworld was Epcot day.

Here's the big "Golf Ball" that everybody recognizes as Epcot. It's actually the ride Spaceship Earth. For fun I'll toss out a random trivia fact: Some of the animatronic characters on the ride are re-uses of the molds for the animatronic Hall of Presidents faces. So if you look closely, you might recognize some of the faces but in different hair and costumes.

Not-so-early morning at the bus stop. There's some sunglasses left here. Was this on purpose, or a mistake? It was a cloudy day so no need for them anyway.

Ho hum, waiting for the bus. If you didn't know, there's a clock thing to tell you if there's enough time to say, run your sunglasses back to the room rather than ditch them.

Epcot is like, the future! Here's a giant art wall under the golf ball. You think one day the park will look like this? There's the sphere in the middle.

We went into the expensive art store. Here's some Hipster Mickey Ears complete with hipster expensive price tag. Is this whole thing art for that price, or is it just Mickey Ears on the hipster crocheted hat?

How are you supposed to pack this in your luggage? The art pieces were nice but I guess you have to carry this onto the airplane just like this. Good luck getting it back to your home.

It was Food and Wine Festival time. Which is very common for Epcot. And absolutely packs the park with a crazy amount of drunk Florida locals. Just so you know.

We decided to take the boat across, the World Showcase lake was swarming with people walking around sampling the foods and wines.

After a quick lunch in France, we stopped into the Japanese store. Pika Pika! This Pikachu is not telling us we are geeks, we are welcome here. The new Pokemon: Sword and Shield games just released but no new merch yet for the new pokemon.

This Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia is a gold-covered book in a classic NES game sleeve. So if you have any idea why this is super cool, congratulations on your video game history knowledge.

Being such big anime fans, it's always fun to check out this store to see if the merchandise is mostly "popular" stuff or if it includes stuff from shows that you might not expect. Always a little disappointing to find out that yeah, it's mostly popular stuff.

I don't think I've ever seen Cinnamoroll before. This little puppy is adorable! Yeah I looked it up. It's a puppy.

Gaining in popularity, we are already fans of Aggretsuko. It was fun to see a display for it.

That ninja cat looks so relaxed. It's part of it's strategy for you to not take it seriously. Then,... BAM! Watch out.

What is that wall scroll even about? It was so confusing I had to get a picture of it. Is that a code? Gimme paw, roll over, sit.

Perhaps I took a few too many pictures in the Japan gift shop. We didn't really browse all of the other countries in the World Showcase because of all of the Wine and Food Festival crowds.

Always like the view out of this window. We had to wait a minute to get a clear picture without people walking on that bridge, so you know sometimes it's a little awkward getting these pictures.

This little solar-powered bobblehead was shaking her head back and forth like "mmm, mmm oh no you didn't girlfriend." it was pretty funny.

Shin Chan! This popular show only seems to get candy merchandise. As much as he likes this show, my friend got an unexpected heart-punch from seeing this. Associated memories seem like so long ago but also like yesterday.

 Okay these adorable tiny Samurai are cheering him up a bit. And we realize we're probably spending too much time looking around here.

 My friend remembers a long time ago in Busch Gardens Williamsburg they had a medieval sword shop that, as a kid, he thought was the coolest thing ever. Back then, the swords were just hanging on the walls and not behind glass displays.

 Realizing we've been here for too long already, we still popped into the "Kawaii Museum" where they try to explain the Japanese fascination with cute everything. Just snapped a picture of this display to compare to last time and see if anything has been updated. Pretty sure we took a similar picture before.

Could you imagine road construction barriers like this in America? Cute Rabbits? Seriously? Also, extra cameo by uniformed Rilakkuma in the corner there.

 Okay out of Japan and moving on. This train set is in the Germany area. It was looking like it might rain, so the train was not running. Do you think anybody ever went all "Godzilla" on this town? That's everybody's daydream as they check out this place.