That Floating Feeling

Hi! Danny and Arianna here to tell you all about the ups and downs (literally) of our day here at Epcot and Hollywood Studios.

We started the day with a behind-the-scenes tour of Epcot, which is actually an acronym for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. We are definitely pros in the field of backstage touring by now, so the familiar Walt Disney history wasn't the focus of this tour. Instead, we went with Julie, our guide, to learn about the specific attractions at Epcot. For example, we learned about the history of Soarin', including an interesting anecdote about how the imagineers came up with the design for the ride, and even got to skip a two hour wait and go straight to the front row of the ride!

But by far the coolest part of our backstage tour today was - of course - the hidden passages leading to exclusive, uncharted rooms. Walt Disney himself had an apartment in Disneyland, and Disney continues to rent out some very exclusive guest spaces at Epcot. We got to see the Mission Space private lounge, currently sponsored by HP, and also the private upstairs room located in The Seas. The room in the Seas, used for wedding receptions and other fancy events, was incredible; it had a window looking directly into the second largest aquarium in the United States, which houses one particular sea turtle that was especially interested in the colorful tourists in the human tank. Most of our group also enjoyed a lovely painting of some manatees that was displayed in this fantastic hidden space. Unfortunately, we can't show you a picture of these rooms, so here's a picture of some manatees instead.

After our hang gliding/walking tour came to an end, we were given exclusive all-access reservations to view the IllumiNations fireworks show tomorrow night. The excitement continued as we made use of the ferry boats to head over to Hollywood Studios and straight toward the Tower of Terror and Rock'n'Rollercoaster. We had originally planned to collect data using the single rider line on Epcot's TestTrack, but the once-sunny skies had other ideas (the ride was closed due to lightning in the area). So we pooled our resources to collect data for our project on the single rider line of Rock'n'Rollercoaster, an indoor attraction where the team was able to gather a lot of data.

Teams also continued our throughput data analysis project on the Tower of Terror using a process similar to that used for the Kali River Rapids. However, today's data collection included the golden opportunity to ride these crazy elevators ourselves after an hour of counting the hundreds of people riding and screaming up and down through the fifth dimension.

We were able to get some great data while also getting some new photo ideas from a few of our team members who counted the guests in the ride photos. They had the chance to sneak a peek at a few of the best ones during their analysis in the basement of this famous hotel.

Some of our group stayed to watch the Star Wars fireworks special, but only after one last fierce 3D Toy Story Mania competition. Rest assured, the 3D glasses you wear on this ride are 100% spotless, thanks to the massive cleaning operations we saw earlier today on our tour in Epcot. Scores were close, and we have certainly been improving! Others ventured back to the hotel to catch some well-deserved sleep after such an exhilarating day.