Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

I went to EPCOT today for the first time since the Flower and Garden Festival ended, so the state of the landscaping was the second biggest surprise of the day. The first will have to wait until the end of the post, but it became quite clear that this festival puts quite a toll on the grass of EPCOT as many areas appeared to be in need of resodding. Elsewhere around the resort today, Snow White's Scary Adventures entered it's final day of operation and will be closing for the last time in a few short hours. Meanwhile, Disney's Pop Century Legendary Years resort opened today, delighting guests with rooms themed after 1950's car culture. Now, on to pictures from Epcot!

This turtle has a lot more room to move around now that all the floating baskets from F&G are gone.

The site of the butterfly house is looking a little rough.

Water is still functioning properly in Canada, flowing from the top of objects to the bottom.

Aww yeah, check out that train barreling down the tracks.

The railroad area is also no longer hosting the F&G festival either. Goodbye tiny Mater topiary. You will be...missed?

Around here is when I overhead a young boy, about ten or so, asking his mother what German beer tastes like. The mother's response was "It's like regular beer but it's for adults." Oh, EPCOT.

Doing my best to make the Fountain of Nations + SpaceShip Earth view look nicer with an idea I definitely didn't steal from Tom Bricker.

Playing around under SpaceShip Earth, I assume people were looking at me weirdly but I didn't notice.

Trippy

Now at the beginning of this blog I mentioned that the landscaping at EPCOT was only the second biggest surprise of the day. The biggest one is coming up quite soon. There's been a lot of talk about Disney's NextGen project lately, with small construction boxes showing up outside various attractions to prepare them for all the crazy upgrades coming along. Well, I happened to notice one of those now infamous boxes today while I was at EPCOT and I haven't seen anyone else anywhere report on it yet. I'm not sure how it will be integrated yet, possibly FastPass, maybe some interactive thing where stuff lights up, I really don't know. But anyway, here it is: Leave A Legacy is going NextGen!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Up Close at the Carousel of Progress

I regret taking these photos, they're going to haunt me for a while to come. Please proceed with caution...

It's Another Photo Update!

Let's get to it!

And we'll somehow start at the very back of the park where something seems off...

Perhaps these fountains are off, hmm...yes... I think they are.

Imagination was particularly bright today.

Spaceship Earth, watching me from across the park.

I see you peeking at me, Spaceship Earth!

Then I saw some fish and got distracted.

Let's put the propeller on whisper mode for a closer look.

Just hanging out, not a care in the world.

Yo

I thought I saw a spot on my lens to the left of the center jet but it turned out to just be a helicopter.  It's always a helicopter.

The fountain appears to be suffering from a weak stream.

I am inexplicably obsessed with finding new ways to photograph this particular spot.

Thought I'd try doing a panning shot of the monorail and I don't think it came out too bad.

Oh crap, it's watching me again!

This was the emptiest I had seen this area in a while so I thought I'd take advantage of it.

I went up the monorail ramp to try getting a little elevation for this photo. What I wound up getting was questioned by a security guard because I later went down the entrance ramp and that's all backwards!

And now we're off to DHS where we start off with everyone's favorite toilet paper tree. Side note: Are there any others?

Eisner be praised, the Splash fountain is back!

It's back!

This fire hydrant appeared to be leaking, better move in for a closer look.

Well that certainly does look like a leak.

Okay, enough of that.

Did I mention that the Splash fountain is back?

Gonzo hanging out at the Splash fountain!

Row, row, row your boat, gently round the Splash fountain.

Okay, serious question: What's the deal with this?

Gertie letting off some steam.

IT'S THE EYE OF THE GEEEERTIIIIEEEE

Orange You Glad I Made a Photo Update?

I've always said There's no better way to start off a photo update than with a pun. and I'm not about to apologize for it. Now after all the interesting stuff going on in the world of the world wide web in the past 24 hours, I'm sure plenty of people are wondering what's been going on in the Magic Kingdom, and that's fair. Who isn't curious about that? Lucky for you, I have answers. Oh man do I have answers. Let me tell you about those answers, all the answers I have. I have so many answers that I am the Radio Shack of Jeopardy contestants. I have a lot of R/C cars and nobody understands how I'm still around. Wait, that's not right. What was I doing? Oh, right, photo update.

And that's it. That is literally the only thing that happened in the entire Magic Kingdom today. You should have seen the line at City Hall when people found out none of the rides were operating!