Epcot again, part 3

 One last batch of pictures from Epcot for this final day of our trip.

China! It's so much fun to walk through these areas in the World Showcase. It's like getting to visit these far-away places without the hassle of actually having to travel there. That's too much paperwork, or something. This is much easier.

It's not like this is an actual ancient building. They had to re-create them. But it feels very authentic. Check out that domed ceiling!

Mulan! You can do a whole Disney trip around getting character photos and autographs, but right now I'll just sneak a picture of her with some random other people.

It was funny that we were aimlessly wandering around, and entered this large room, and the doors closed. We were kind of... trapped? It was a cool history video presentation, with giant screens 360 degrees all around the huge place. There were no seats but had odd railings to lean against. It was cool to see even though we wandered into it completely by accident.

It exited into the giant gift shop. Rub the Buddha belly! For luck, right? Is that how it works? Sorry for violating your personal space Buddha. May I please rub your belly?

Laughed out loud at this... what?! Since when are frogs on motorcycles a "China" thing? Such a very strange thing to see in the gift shop in China. 

Here we go. Sparkle-eyes purple panda bear. Very Chinese.

This panda shirt made me laugh, too. It's a simple sort of silly, yet cool.

I'm a fan of random blind box art figures, and these were pretty cute. But I passed. There's a shop in the mall in New Jerey that has this kind of thing. Still got the picture though.

Very funny to see the Chinese Lays Potato Chips bags with "Texas Grilled BBQ Flavor"! Yee-haw! Even in China, they know Texas has the best barbeque! You would not expect that, would you?

Yeah, THIS is what I expected from Chinese potato chips. Spicy Crayfish and Roasted Garlic Oyster. Ergh, my friend who cannot eat seafood is getting ill just by reading those flavor names. I mean, if you have to eat Spicy Crayfish, you might as well eat the potato chip version of it.

China dresses for your pets! The stuffed dog is for display purposes. It was a better picture than the rack of outfits.

That's a very "European"-looking Dragon, but it looks like it's holding that sword like a rockstar would hold a guitar. So I'm all cool with Rockstar Dragon here.

Good luck getting those on the airplane for your trip back home! Actually, we drove down here this time, so technically we would not have had to deal with that.

Lily pads! So peaceful.

Topiary panda bears. Are those Disney characters? Or did they just do regular pandas for the China theme? The other areas have actual characters.

Germany! There's a German area in Busch Gardens Williamsburg, so we've been all around a bunch of cool German buildings a lot already. Still nice seeing the styles again.

There's a nice fancy crystal shop in Germany. Here's a Spaceship Earth dome priced at $79,000. Hey, billionaires need souvenirs, too.

Every little princess, and little princess-at-heart, needs to get a tiara. How else are you going to feel like a princess as you walk around Disney World?

I'm a fan of Tinkerbell, but not THAT much of a fan. Some other people might be.

More cute outfits for Minnie Mouse. I wonder if each country area had a similar Minnie. It would be not-cool if you tried to collect them all and realized a few places did not have a Minnie in an themed outfit.

I was not going to take another picture of the model railroad track, since I remember taking pictures of this before. But if you look closely, you can see a small lizard on the roof of that building. Which makes it LOOK like a GIANT lizard! AHH!!

Not exactly what you picture in your head when you think "Italy" is it? This is a more modern but still old style Italy. We made sure to peek into the countries as we walked around the lake.

Neptune! In Virginia Beach there's a much bigger statue of him, but still neat to see him and say "whut up!" Also, I found out that those fish next to him are ancient Roman "dolphins," so the fish I thought were carp at the Swan and Dolphin hotel were actually those carp-looking things. At least they are consistent with the old carp dolphins.

My friend has a fun memory about a diner reservation and how he managed to run around the lake to get to Via Napoli in time to keep it. It was a lot longer distance than he thought, but he made it, and held the table until his friend got there. The pizza was amazing, it was totally worth the exhaustion. We didn't eat there today, but it's a nice story to share as we walked past.

The Art of Disney store has been moved to the America area in the World Showcase. It used to be near the entrance of Epcot by Spaceship Earth, we asked employees and they told us it's here now. It's a neat unique place among the many Disney gift shops.

I know all of Disney stuff is "art" but this is like... "art" of the art. If that makes any sense. These are not the normal versions of the stuff.

There's very fancy elaborate art dolls that are a step above what you'd normally expect in a toy store. You can play with them like normal dolls, but that's not the point of it.

The outfits and stuff are a lot more detailed. And also, the prices are a lot more... detailed, too.

Art! By official "Disney Artists"! This is the perfect type of souvenir except it might be a little awkward to pack in your luggage.

Murder! Once again, I'll tell the anecdote about the characters in the movie Brave, with the Scottish accents, sound like they are saying "Murder" whenever they say her name, Merida. So it's fun for us to shout "MURDER!" when we see her.

I'm glad Encanto was as popular as it was. I mean, it's a really cute movie with all kinds of good characters. Nobody even noticed Mirabel was wearing Harry Potter glasses the whole movie.

Picture of a nice picture. I could have taken a lot more of these, there's lots of nice pictures in here.

Eating popcorn gives my friend a headache the next morning, but he still likes it, and this funny Chip and Dale. Could you imagine napping in a giant bed of popcorn!?

It's the whole Saturday morning! If you don't know what that means, you're too young.

It's like a steampunk Belle. That tracks, she's a steampunk-ish kind of character anyway.

More wacky art figures. They look like wacky drawings, but in 3D.

Tinkerbell is not about to let you have this bottle. I think. I don't remember if this is a scene from a thing she's been in.

I want to say something about green topiary Tiana and how it's kind of like half-frog but I can't figure out how to say it. I mean, the other princess topiaries are green, too, but Tiana turns into a green frog.

The Moroccan restuaraunt was closed, we had thought about going there just to eat among cool scenery. Not knowing what "Moroccan Food" was like, I grabbed a picture of this other restaruant's menu so we could have an idea of what we would have been in for. Certainly not like anything we'd normally eat, but I think I might have been okay trying some of this.

If you check back a few days ago, we waited in line for the Ratatouille ride and it had broke down, twice, and we did not get to ride it. When a ride breaks down, they give you a free "Lightning Lane" pass, but it's only good for that one day. On the way out of Epcot, we decided to ask if they'd be nice enough to let us ride, even though that was a couple days ago. We would have been totally fine if they said "no" because... we know "the rules," and did chose to pass on it that night and watch the fireworks instead. But, as you can probably tell by this picture, they said "sure!" and let us in! It's such a simple thing to let a couple people ride a ride, but I still feel like... Yay Disney Magic! Thank you so much! And yes, the ride was awesome! You really feel like a little mouse running around a restaurant.