Moana's Journey of Water and Podcast Updates

In this weeks' episode, Jared talks about the new Moana Journey of Water exhibit at EPCOT and gives updates on the Podcast. 

Transcript

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On this week's episode of A Dryer Dose of Disney, Jared tells us about the new Journey of Water exhibit at EPCOT. Intro Music Welcome to this week's episode of a Dryer dose of Disney. I'm your host, Jared dryer. And today we are going to be taking you back to Epcot to talk about Moana's journey of water, the new exhibit there, and we just had the privilege of going to Epcot for the holiday festival and checking it out just a couple of weeks ago. So we definitely want to tell you all about the new exhibit over there at Epcot, but before we dive in a few things that I do want to go over, just some general stuff first, wherever you're listening to us, whether it's in the podcast or you're on YouTube. Go ahead and click that subscribe button. That way. You're going to get this content delivered to you as we release these episodes. And then if you have any tips or tricks that saved you money from the dryer dose of Disney, we encourage you to support us over at Patreon. You can find that link down in the podcast description below. And through those donations, you keep this podcast going. And in fact, we have our biggest Disney tip or trick ever out there right now at our top tier. And trust me, when I say it's the best ever tip or trick I've ever seen in my life. And it's a great way to skip a lot of lines. You're definitely going to want to go check that out. And then with a dryer dose of Disney, we have our, I can do this all day tips of the day. And we've got a great one for you on this episode today at the end. But we've got a lot of really cool merchandise out there that has our logo on it. For the, I can do this all day and we love to wear that stuff to the parks. We get a lot of comments on it because it's got the captain America shield and then the Disney castle in the middle. And it says I can do this all day. And a lot of people love it. And whenever we go to the park, we see a surge in sales, on our Etsy page over the next couple of weeks. So you're definitely going to want to go check that out. That is also in the link down below. But before we go into this episode with a lot of detail, I do want to say we are running out of ideas. We have almost 80 episodes out there right now. With the best tips and tricks for Disney and universal that we know of. And we've covered everything from food to rope drop strategies, to what to bring and how to save money. And we are at the point now where we're running out of ideas. And in fact, a lot of our strategies haven't changed. And if they do, we will update those episodes accordingly. But because they haven't changed, there's not a lot of updates that we can do right now. So we are asking for you, our listeners to give us some ideas of what you want to hear about. You can find us over on Facebook at a dryer dose of Disney, and you can give us some recommendations there. We would love to hear them. And of course, if you have a great ideas, we're going to be doing episodes on them and we will mention you in our episode. So definitely contribute to us over there on Facebook. But because of that, because we're running out of ideas, it would not surprise me if we start having some blank weeks meaning we've had episodes every single week since we started a year and a half ago. And in fact, the episodes that we have got queued up right now will take us into February. But after that, I would imagine that we're not going to have any episodes for a small period of time. Until we're able to get some new material or some new topics to talk about. Now we've been to Disney land and Disney world so many times, and we've covered all the cool information about those parks, where to stay and how to save money. That now we've decided we want to start going international. So we've been talking as a family. How do we travel international to Tokyo, to Paris? To Hong Kong and Shanghai and go see those parks as well. And so we're trying to budget that into our next couple of years here for us as a family and trying to figure out when can we go to these parks and spend a good amount of time in some of these foreign countries and really get to understand their culture and then get to see how Disney interacts with that culture. We are planning on doing that. We of course will have a lot of episodes for each one of those when we go and we'll cover everything from how we planned it. So if you're going to plan an international trip like that you can listen to those episodes will tell you what airline we flew, where we flew out of, because in our research, we've already started to find that if you fly from coastal cities, it's a lot less expensive than if you fly from Denver, which is where we live. So I will give you all those tips and tricks as well as where we stay and how we got around. That town and what we saw because like in Paris, Disney does tours out there as well. So there's a lot of really cool ways to see. The community and the culture that these large cities are in. And so we'll be doing all that and then we'll give you reviews on all of it. So we'll take you through not only how we got there, but then of course, we'll talk about the Disney park and what we loved and the cool different rides that we saw. We'll talk about the foods, of course, as always, we'll talk about the merchandise. We'll talk about where we stayed and then we'll talk about the city when the cool things that we did in the city there as well. So lots of cool episodes coming, but because we can't do these, obviously. Back to back and week to week. We will be spreading those out throughout the next year or two. And then you'll get a different group of episodes as we get back from each of these foreign destinations. Now of course, as Disney continues to grow and mature, and then we know Universal's going to be doing epic universe here in 2025. We will be popping into those parks as well, or going on the new rides. And we will give you some updates with those as well. And I love to always review the new restaurants. So we did Woody's Roundup barbecue a couple months ago, and we've covered almost every single restaurant over at Disney Springs or the Disney parks. And we absolutely love all the food there. So as new things pop up, we will be covering those like we are today. With Moana's journey of water. So just know that you're going to see some breaks now going forward, just because we're out of ideas. But of course, if you give us some we'll fill in those breaks and make sure that we get those episodes out to you. As I was saying, a few weeks ago, we went to Epcot. We just flew out for the weekend. We stayed at our condo and we did one day at Epcot just to go see the holiday festival and to go visit the new Moana's journey of water. And it was a really cool experience. I will say, this is the busiest I've ever seen Epcot yet in my entire life. And I will say that it was. Just wall to wall people throughout the entire park. The wait times were astronomically long. And like I said, the busiest I've ever seen the park and we were talking about it throughout the day because we love going to Epcot and we've never seen it busy like that. And the only thing we could figure is so many of the annual passes, including ours are blocked out during the actual holiday. So during a later December, Around the Christmas holiday that there's really only a couple of weeks. You can see the holiday festival with an annual pass. And that is at the very beginning of December when we went. And of course we went on a weekend. So all the locals who have an annual pass, that's the only time that they can go see the holiday festival. So we believe that's probably what contributed to the high attendance levels. In, especially in early December when kids aren't at a school but it was slammed at the park that day. So it was the busiest we've ever seen it, the lines throughout the world showcase when you're going to all the different. Places to eat. were through the full queues and sometimes out of the queues. And we've been through every single festival over there. And usually you have one or two people in each of the lines. For all the food things. But this time there were 20 to 30 in line in front of us and it took sometimes 20 to 30 minutes to get through those lines. So very busy day, but we had a wonderful time. We did get to see the candlelight vigil at the end of the day. We got to do all the rides throughout the park. We just really enjoyed ourselves there. And we got to see journey of water. Now I am going to give a specific call out that we did, of course, guardians of the galaxy cosmic rewind. And we got my favorite song, which is Gloria Estefan's conga, and it's the fastest song out of the lineup in there. And it's just a ton of fun. So my daughter and I were dancing on the car as we went through the cosmic rewind ride and it was just a great time. So we absolutely loved it. We got to see all the fun rides and do all the cool stuff that we normally do. Plus we had all the cool sweets and treats from the holiday festival. And if you listened to that episode that they have different versions of Santa Claus in the world showcase. We did get to stop and listen to a lot of those different stories. And that was a lot of fun as well. And also, it was incredibly hot being at the beginning of December. The day we went, it was 85 degrees out in high humidity. So it felt very similar to when we're there during the summer. And it. It was hot and sweaty, like normal down in Orlando. So a lot of fun, but we really enjoyed ourselves. And like I said, we did get to see the journey of water. So let's talk about Moana's journey of water. This is the newest exhibit in the celebration section of the park. And if you're not familiar with the lands of the park, obviously of the world showcase, that's really easy to understand where the world showcases, but celebration is in the dead center of the front part of the park. So behind spaceship earth. And this used to be a huge pavilion, obviously that you could walk through and cut through to get to the opposite rides over there. And it's been walled up for a long time. So that's the celebration area and they've added Moana's journey of water there. Now, when we got there, I pulled it up on the, my Disney experience app. It's a walkthrough experience, so you're not going to have to wait in line. It's very quick to get through. But when I pulled it up, I was shocked at how small on the map it was considering that celebration section has been walled up and they've been doing construction for well over a year now. And we thought the Moana's journey of water. We take up the majority of the area in the celebration section and it didn't. It was actually a much smaller part of that section of the park, and it was actually pretty quick to walk through. It only took us about 15 or 20 minutes to get through. And we stopped and read all the signs along the way, because we wanted to see how to interact with the exhibit. So it was a lot of fun. It's a great experience. Like I said, it takes you about 15 or 20 minutes to get through. But being Epcot. Epcot is all about education and the experimental prototype community of tomorrow. And they want to teach you about things about tomorrow. And this is not any different, meaning that when you go through this exhibit, they're going to be taking you through the water's journey as it goes from the sky. And it turns into rain, goes to streams, goes to wetlands, goes to Springs, goes to rivers, goes to lakes, and then to the ocean and a whole bunch of other interactive places there as well. So as you walk through it, it's very, self-explanatory. They're going to take you through that water cycle, and they're going to educate you on how water moves through the land. And it's really a cool learning experience, not just for kids but adults alike, but it's also very interactive as you're going through it. So each of those little spots are going to not only teach you something, but they're going to have something interactive that you can play with. Now of course being the journey of water, there is an opportunity to get wet here if you want to, but there's also an opportunity to stay dry. So don't think when you're going through this, that you have to get wet because you certainly don't. And I don't like getting wet. As a matter of fact, we tried to Dodge the rain in Orlando, as much as we can. We carry our ponchos with us. And like that with this exhibit, you get the chance to walk through and interact and do all the cool things. And you can avoid getting wet. Now, if you want to, or of course, if the little kids are eager about getting wet they do have a lot of opportunities for them to get splashed. They have a couple of those little splash pad areas where the kids can run as the Springs of water shoot up from the ground, or maybe it's rain from the sky. And they can run through that and get soaking wet if they want totally up to you. If you want to let your kids do that, but you are able to stay dry as you go through this exhibit as well. Like I said, it's very interactive. So think seven dwarfs mine train because they have a lot of similar elements where you can play in the streams of water. It'll make sounds, it'll make noise. And it's just a ton of fun now, as we went through it, and I'm not going to spoil and tell you every single interactive things you could do, but I'm going to tell you my favorite one was the ocean. There's a cool place where you can raise your arms and you can make waves crash into rocks and water splash. Like it's hitting the rocks. And the more people you get involved, the bigger the wave and the bigger the splash. And that was awesome. We had eight people in a row, all moving in unison together to make this huge splash. And it was really cool. So there's a lot of really cool, interactive things through, there. And then towards the end and a couple of parts through you get to see Ti Fiti. Which is the goddess from the Moana movie that had the heart of the ocean stolen from her. And there's some great photo ops as you go through this land. Of course, you've got the, my Disney photo pass in front of Ti Fiti that's going to be your best option and we use that as well. And again, in my tips and tricks video, we talk about, you only need to pay for one photo pass. Don't put it on everyone's ticket. My wife has it. So we use that. We got some great pictures there in front of Ti Fiti as well. But it was just a lot of fun to go through this exhibit. I'm going to encourage you. You're going to want to go through this during the day, as well as during the night. The experience is very similar, but the lighting and the way it looks is very different. This is in comparison to like Pandora over at animal kingdom. So if you've been to animal kingdom and you've seen the Pandora land and road flight of passage, if you rope dropped it, you're going to see it during the day. And obviously when it's lit up, it looks really cool. Being just the full hallelujah mountains and all that. Very similar to that. You've got some great rock work and some great sculptures, and even you've got hidden characters built into the rocks, and those are much easier to find during the day when it's fully lit and you're able to walk through and see that we had a great time trying to find all the hidden characters and they are tough. But if you have a kid that loves a challenge or loves to find them, let them know that there's hidden characters throughout all the rock work here, and they are difficult to find, but obviously during the day, much easier since it's fully lit and you're able to see all the rock textures that are out there. So definitely you're going to want to check it out. But then at night they light it up similar to Pandora, with a lot of different fluorescents. They make the water glow, especially as the water is jumping or moving around. And that's really cool to see. Definitely. You're going to want to check it out at both during the day, as well as during the night, that's a ton of fun. And then for our, I can do this all day tip of the day. Like I said, this is a shorter episode, obviously it's a shorter experience, a shorter exhibit there. But our, I can do this all day tip of the day. Is to talk about when you're walking through here, there was something that wasn't easily noticeable. That makes a big difference on your experience. And that is everywhere that you can interact with the water. They have a signs on the ground that have a little water splash on it. As you look at those, you're going to notice some of them are colored in with blue and some of them are not the ones that are blue are areas where you could potentially get wet. And the ones that aren't are obviously areas that you're going to stay dry. So as I walked around and I noticed this, they don't have anything really. Pointing to this or what not. So it was just an intuition when you watched it. You could watch people in front of the blue ones as they waved their hands and it splashed, they would possibly get wet. And then the people that did it on the ones that weren't blue didn't. So I picked up on this pretty quick. It's a great way for you to know then obviously if you don't want to get wet, how to interact without getting wet. But pay attention to the ground. I saw a lot of people as we walked through, they weren't paying attention. They walked up and they would raise their hand or wave them around, like they're supposed to, and they would get splashed. And, I don't mean they're not getting soaked. It's not splash mountain. They're not getting a whole wave of water on them. But they would have a sprinkle of water hit them. And that may not have been what they wanted because you could see them react to it. So do pay attention to what's on the ground. It's, like I said, pretty self-explanatory and it's pretty intuitive to know where to interact. But that is a key difference is the ones that are colored blue versus the ones that aren't. So with that we hope that you're having a very magical week as you're planning your next Disney or universal vacation. We do want to keep this podcast going. We will keep this podcast going. It will be available for you. But those episodes may start having gaps between them as we are looking for new materials to cover. So again, find a silver on Facebook, give us some ideas of what you would like to hear more about, and we'll be sure to cover those as we start planning our episodes for these international parks and traveling around the world to see what Disney's done in different cities around the world. So with that, we'll talk to you guys next time. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Exit Music,