Day Four: EPCOT Center

Day Four of our Spring Break trip was spent at Disney's EPCOT Center. We were at near-exhaustion from three full days of previous fun, but still managed to have a super day. We watched The Seas with Nemo and Friends, spent some time in the Imagination! Pavilion, and experienced three of our all-time favorite rides here.

The first was Mission: SPACE, a motion simulator ride that is as close as you can get to blasting off into space without leaving Earth. It realistically mimics what an astronaut might experience during a space flight to Mars. Each member of our astronaut team had a role in a daring cosmic mission dodging meteors and navigating nebulae. After the attraction, we visited the Mission: SPACE Advanced Training Lab, an interactive play space where we competed in Mission: SPACE Race, an arcade-style game.

Our second favorite ride was Soarin', a multisensory attraction that simulates a peaceful hang-gliding flight over California, in free flight from 40 feet in the air while surrounded by scenic panoramas including the Golden Gate Bridge, Malibu and LA. You could feel the breeze on your face, smell the oranges as you soared over an orchard, and felt like you were truly hang-gliding. This was a big hit with the whole family.

A close third-place favorite (even after waiting in line for 2 hourse and 10 minutes) was Test Track, a high-speed vehicle-simulation ride where we were able to test our mettle in one of Disney's longest and fastest rides. We stepped into the 6-seat vehicle and rode along as it undergoes the safety and quality tests that General Motors performs on every prototype it manufactures.

The ride is a 5-minute, nearly one-mile auto escapade where you ascend steep terrain that's 3 stories high, then let loose downhill, blasting across a bumpy road and roaring through 50-degree banked curves and hair-pin turns that test suspension and brakes at speeds up to 60 miles per hour. Then you feel yourself zoom into the environmental chamber to endure the extreme heat and cold tests—at temperatures that are 100 degrees apart. Then, we had to see if our vehicle could withstand corrosion when robots mist water upon it. Finally, we faced the challenge of avoiding a crash barrier… just in the nick of time.