Today I woke up attempting to get into the virtual queue for Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, but unlike my last attempt today I was successful. That meant that Tara and I had to get hustling to get out of the house and on the road in order to make it to the park before our boarding group was called. Unfortunately for us, I'm kind of an idiot, and forgot two of the most important things for our visit - our MagicBands. Since our old plastic annual passes are so old, they would do us no good. Thankfully we were stuck in traffic on our way to I-75, so we hadn't made it very far and were able to return home to get them.

Traffic was heavy this morning, with work traffic heavy along I-4 on a Friday. Of course our boarding group was called while we were still on the expressway, before the park even officially opened (this, I will never understand). By the time we made it to Epcot, parked, made it through security and the gate, our return time for Guardians had technically passed. Thankfully when we tried to scan our bands at the ride, we were still allowed in. We loved the ride - as always - and even got to listen to "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears, one of Tara's favorites. This ride is so great that its a shame that you can only ride it once a day!

After leaving the Xandar pavilion, we headed over to Cuisine Classique, a food booth in World Discovery, to try the Beef Wellington, which was served with mushroom duxelles, prosciutto and puff pastry with a red wine demi-glace. We both agreed that the beef wellington was tasty enough, but it was the garlic mashed potatoes (that were included in the description) that Tara really loved. They were indeed good, but would have been much better if they were warm.

From there we crossed the park to World Nature, to take in the Journey of Water, Inspired by Moana walk-thru attraction. While we enjoyed the experience, there isn't a ton here to draw a visitor back often. I do want to visit again sometime after dark, as I read that it is quite different at night. Since we were already in World Nature, we decided to sit down to watch the Turtle Talk with Crush show, where we both got a few good laughs.

While we were close we thought about taking in Soarin', but the wait was longer than we wanted to endure, so we instead headed off to World Showcase to walk around the world. We made a stop at Gourmet Landscapes, a food booth in the Canada pavilion, to get a drink for Tara before we grabbed lunch. She had wanted to try out the Frozen Scotch Cocktail, which was a drink made with scotch and herbal tea garnished with a chocolate nail. Tara really enjoyed the drink, though neither of us were overly wowed by the nail. We decided to grab the fish and chips from the Yorkshire County Fish Shop in the United Kingdom pavilion. We found a table outside of the Rose & Crown overlooking the water to sit and enjoy our meal. As always, we enjoyed the food, but we probably should have split one meal, as we were both too stuffed to sample anything else that we wanted throughout the day!

We wandered through a few of the countries as we made our walk, including in France, Morocco, Germany, and Japan before we stopped in the China pavilion to watch the Reflections of China show. We also headed into the Mexico pavilion to take a ride on Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros.

After completing our walk around the world, we headed off to The Land in World Nature to give Tara a tour of California on Soarin', as the show currently playing is still Soarin' Over California. Although interesting, she too was disappointed with the transition between locations. Far more interesting than the actual ride was who Tara & I rode with - 43 15-year old girls from Argentina (two full rows of 15 girls, plus our row of 13 of the girls, plus Tara & I on the end - boy, did I feel out of place!), who were on a tour and visiting their first park today. We found them quite humorous thanks to their reactions during the ride. While we were in The Land building, we decided to end our day in the park on one of Tara's favorite Epcot rides - Living with the Land! As always, this was an enjoyable and relaxing way to wrap up a great day!

As you'll see below, we headed over to Disney Springs after leaving the park today...

While we were there we also swung by the Lego Store to browse, but we were able to refrain from buying anything, as hard as that was for me!

After we wrapped up our shopping, we made the drive home, stopping at McDonalds in Davenport to get ourselves a shake to enjoy on the way before grabbing some Little Ceasars in town to eat for dinner. After that, it was time to hit the hay. All in all, I had an amazing time doing something I love with the one I love. Thank you, Tara, for my special day, and I am already looking forward to the next time!