Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…

Lo, there shall come at long last an actual Disney Theme Park in this saga! Well, for one of us, anyway.

DAY TWO: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2023.

One of us had been looking forward to this day. Once again Anne and I would have to go our separate ways for the first several hours. Her company’s itinerary began generously with a magical breakfast buffet. Unfortunately magic came with a price: they’d have to spend the day’s first half legitimizing the “business trip” concept with mandatory meetings, workshops, team-building exercises, product updates, and other numbing duties that could kill a readership dead. I’ll spare you the same way she kindly spared me.

We’d have all of Thursday to spend together, but Wednesday morning we plus-ones were ordered to bug off and go make our own plans. I’d asked myself months ago: what’s something I could do alone that Anne might not be jealous about missing? The answer came to me in seconds: EPCOT. All throughout our childhoods, since its opening in 1981 it’d been badmouthed as the black sheep of the Disney Theme Park empire, until 1992 when Euro Disney came along to take the heat off it. We’d heard The Simpsons mock EPCOT (“Awww, it’s even boring to fly over!”), as did my son, who’d gotten to visit it with his mom’s family when he was 8 and came home underwhelmed. We were definitely not wasting our precious Thursday quality time on it.

My alone-time was a different story. I couldn’t help feeling inquisitive about it. Why the backlash? Nobody talks trash like that about Disney’s Animal Kingdom (especially after they added the Avatar ride in 2017). Clearly I ought to see EPCOT and judge for myself. Like, for science. What’s the worst that could happen?

Admittedly my first guess was “I could be mistaken for a stalker.” I’d never visited a theme park alone. Sure, I’ve been to more than a few since age 4, the first time my family ever took me to Kings Island in Ohio, but who pays an extravagant price to wander a theme park alone? Do a lot of guys do this? Would I stick out among the happy families and cliques? Consider how many fat, bearded, white dudes regularly turn into bullies, brutes, pervs, or internet trolls on any given American day. (This is something I think about every single time we meet an actress at a comic-con, where I try to present as harmlessly as possible, sometimes even pitching my voice up a little, in a humble act of Midwest code-switching. I don’t like the idea of being lumped in.) Would Mouse Security spot me sticking out, profile me and surveil me extra closely just in case? Or could I just, y’know, relax?

After wishing Anne well and praying the Lord would deliver her from ennui, I adjourned to the monorail station, where I seemed two mere counterclockwise stops away from the Transportation and Ticket Center, the hub where I’d need to transfer to the dedicated EPCOT monorail. That day I learned the monorails around the Disney resort grounds only rode clockwise, necessitating I go nearly a full lap ’round. To be fair, that only took ten minutes, but I wanted to be in official Disney World now now now. After I disembarked at the TTC, I bounced nervously in place while waiting seven whole minutes for the next car to EPCOT. The subsequent four-mile ride took forever according to the impatient child inside me. I wished I’d had someone with me so I could ask over and over again, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

Eventually, we were there yet.

I took the lead photo as I approached the front gates ten minutes before 9, just as cast members were dismantling the daily early-entry perk signage for Disney Resort guests like me. I was sad to have wasted that perk, but it was my own fault for not parting from Anne sooner and/or beginning my preparations at 4 a.m. Worse still, I’d decided to skip breakfast at the Grand Floridian after noting the EPCOT map’s numerous opportunities for grazing throughout the day. Their prevalence came in handy later, but I might’ve rethought my strategy if anyone had told me none of their concessions would open till 11. The discomfort of escalating hunger wasn’t fun.

On the bright side, I took about ten minutes to stop feeling self-conscious about going stag. At first I consciously tried to look cheery on the outside rather than lonely or anxious, and hoped I didn’t look predatory. That’s challenging sometimes when you’re born with resting ogre face, which runs in the family. My skittishness faded as I got comfy, got into the Disney World spirit, and came to realize, more so than any other theme park I’ve seen, EPCOT is basically one big outdoor shopping mall (or “lifestyle center”, if you prefer that euphemism). I’ve done malls alone plenty of times. This was just an old-fashioned mall, except the motorized kiddie rides cost more than a quarter and there’re no cool book or record stores.

Also, they had museum exhibits sprinkled here and there for educational purposes. Remember back in the ’90s when the U.S. government required a certain percentage of Saturday morning cartoons to be spoon-fed after-school lessons that felt like small-screen home detention? I was reminded of that. But now I’m 51 and sometimes I love me some museum exhibits — more so than thrill rides, frankly. It didn’t help that I can be prone to motion sickness (longtime MCC fans may or may not recall the 2003 Six Flags incident) and had forgotten my Dramamine back at our room.

Of course EPCOT has rides, but they’re a minority percentage of the total activities on hand. First-time visitors who’re undecided what to do first can stop pondering when they realize the very first object in their way is Spaceship Earth — that iconic, 7,760-ton geodesic dome towering 18 stories over one and all. Given its prominence in every advertisement or briefest glimpses of EPCOT, it’s easy to assume Spaceship Earth all there is to EPCOT — like, you enter the gate, enter the dome, walk on the walls in zero-G, buy a T-shirt, and presto, you’re done for the day, go back to the hotel. Not quite! Spaceship Earth is a ride and you can go inside it. It’s not an impenetrable display model like Mount Rushmore.

I only had a half-day to spend at EPCOT, so I had to be judicious about which lines I braved or skipped during the time allotted. Thankfully this was only March, and Spaceship Earth’s line moved quickly.

Inside the air-conditioned geosphere, a series of Omnimover cars (read: extremely slow, leisurely roller coaster) takes riders on a scenic tour of the timeline of human civilization and milestone innovations from cave-dwelling times to EPCOT’s original, contemporaneous setting at the dawn of the home computer age. I had a two-seat row to myself as I coasted past an assortment of animatronics, dioramas, and sparkly stars — altogether a tidy runthrough of any given state history museum but on a much bigger budget, minus the real dinosaur fossils and arrowheads of disputed provenance. Working off a script that was originally written by Ray Bradbury but oft-amended since then, its recorded narrator since 2008 has been none other than Academy Award Winner Dame Judi Dench, star of such Disney classics as Home on the Range, Artemis Fowl, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. (Previous narrators in reverse order were Jeremy Irons, Walter Cronkite, and Vic Perrin, the Outer Limits guy.)

The ride should’ve taken about 15 minutes, give or take a minute, but dragged a little because our Omnimover stopped suddenly while going backwards downhill, and sat there for a few minutes of darkness that were accompanied by neither sights nor sounds and did not feel scheduled. After some time we moved on, completed our faux-time-travel journey and were then herded into an interactive kids’ science museum as an epilogue.

I did not try every station, but did pause at a control panel that would allow riders to email themselves an electronic postcard précis of the experience, with a photo of their own face (taken during the ride) pasted onto the body of a wacky PowerPoint avatar. I thought I’d downloaded the postcard for posterity and/or for sharing in this entry, but I can’t find the file now and the link has since expired. It was nonessential and my heart will go on, but it was cute in the moment.

Once outside Spaceship Earth, I spent the next 100-odd minutes wandering the grounds, browsing and doing some light shopping. On Anne’s behalf I looked around an entire shop dedicated to collector pins, which have become her thing over the past couple years. Fans of Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars can find IPs to their liking, including a plethora of Grogu (one of which I nabbed for her). I also discovered smashed-penny machines all around, which longtime MCC readers know full well are totally her jam. At first I bought her every available smashed penny I could find as consolation prizes for her morning spent on-the-clock on this sunny Florida day. After a while I had to knock it off because EPCOT has smashed-penny machines everywhere and my pockets were getting heavy.

Our next several chapters won’t necessarily come in chronological order, but rather in themed galleries that hopefully simplify my posting process. EPCOT’s southern half is divided into various territories saluting the most famous countries according to whichever EPCOT planners had the most voting power. Some areas inspired me to take so many pics that they’ll each get their own entries, while others will be space-sharing blog-roomies. As one example, please enjoy fleeting looks at EPCOT’s take on the world of France.

Chapter 10 will cover the second and third attractions I checked out, but my fourth attraction in EPCOT was located squarely and aptly in France — Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, inspired by one of Pixar’s most underrated films. In this trackless ride, guests flit around in smoothly magnetic cars through a giant-sized simulation of Gusteau’s, the restaurant where our rat hero Remy lives and surreptitiously works. At rat height the cars scurry across the floor and flee the kaiju-sized chef who chases and tries to kill any rodent-sized intruders, while various 4-D effects and occasional sudden drops liven things up even more. New dialogue accompanies all of it, courtesy of the returning voice talents of Patton Oswalt, Brad Garrett, Lou Romano, and Elemental director Peter Sohn.

I finally found an open snack stand right before I joined the line. (Our Disney World culinary experiences will be rounded up later in this series.) The wait for Remy’s ride was nearly an hour long, but worth it. I ended up sharing a car with some other dude, who seemed to be enjoying EPCOT solo like me. He kept his phone up and shooting through the entire ride, and surely posted some fun footage later minus the optical VFX that only work in person. I did no such thing; I was there to enjoy the ride for myself, so you’ll forgive me for not dedicating myself to living instantly vicariously instead of being physically and mentally present in-the-moment. ‘Twas much more fun that way…except for the sudden drops, which were really jarring without Dramamine. I’m glad my stomach forgave me, because the two of us had lots more to do.

To be continued!

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[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete major trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts. For further signs of life between entries, wave hi to me on . Thanks for reading!]