Kathleen Desmarais

Last week my family took a much needed day off and went to Epcot in Orlando for “Homeschool Days.” On this day every year Disney offers a reduced rate to home schoolers and provides a short educational program (meeting employees of Epcot from different countries). We arrived too late for the educational part, but we had a great (and educational) time anyway. The park is a lot less crowded this time of the year so there were little lines (thank goodness because it was COLD). I love Epoct! It is my favorite of all the Disney parks. There are no great roller coasters. (Except the evil ride called Mission Space on which people have died and I will not let me kids go on no matter how hard they beg, and beg they did.) The rides are all pretty lame, but Grace (1) could ride on just about every one of them, I love the country exhibits, the great food, the beautiful gardens, and the fireworks are fabulous. My favorite part was seeing the new exhibit at the China pavillion. They had artifacts from the Qin Dynasty and small scale replicas of the Terracotta warriors. Shi Huangdi, the great Qin Dynasty ruler, was buried with 8000 life-size terracotta warriors. Each warrior had a weapon and all their faces and facial expressions were different! I can’t even image how they managed to do this. There must have been people who worked on these most of their lives, waiting for the emperor to die (he ruled for 20 years). Chris is studying ancient China in Ancients (level two), so I guess this would be a field trip for him.

Charlie (7) really enjoyed the Norway exhibit and the Viking ride. This was my favorite ride when I was a kid, so it was quite nostalgic that he enjoyed it as well. It is still the same–your boat feeling like it’s really going over the falls, trolls, Vikings, offshore oil drilling, and all–I just love it!

Why don’t we take more time for days like this?