Walkabout The World - A Disney Podcast - Kicking off the New Year At Epcot With Host Jeremy

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

Hello Travelers and happy new year! This week join host Jeremy and his wife Heather for a peaceful walkabout through Disney's Epcot Center. We listen to the fountain, take an in-depth tour of the new World Celebration gardens area (spoiler alert - we really like it), walk through The Journey of Water, ride Living with the Land, and end up back at the park entrance where we end with the Space Ship Earth lighting ceremony/beacon of magic.    As always, use good listening devices as we always record in 4 channel surround sound. We hope you enjoy the episode and thanks so much for following along!   If you like what we do, consider joining our crew on Patreon. These wonderful people help us keep the microphones crisp and the servers warm at night.   Visit us a walkabouttheworld.com - find links to all the things - attraction episodes, Insta accounts of all the hosts, and even how to buy your own Walkabout shirt!   Look us up at @WalkaboutWDW on Instagram and drop us a note to say hi.   You can now also drop us at line at [e-mail]. Say hi, tell us how you found us, and give us some suggestions on things you'd love to hear. Please consider giving us a rating and review wherever you listen - it really helps.   Walkabout The World is a weekly Disney podcast, always recorded on property at Walt Disney World or Disneyland Resort with the simple goal of making you feel like you are in the middle of the magic.

Hey there! And hello travelers! Welcome back to Walk About the World, and welcome back to Epcot Center. For the first time in a long time, my buddy is with me. Hello, Heather. Hi, everybody. Kind of digging the music. Trying to decide if this is new stuff or not. I'm not sure.

But regardless, we're here on a gorgeous central floor today. It's about 70 degrees. Spaceship Earth directly in front of us. And we're just going to soak up a little bit of Epcot goodness today. Take it slow. Nice, nice slow and peaceful Epcot Rome you with me let's go let's chill by the fountain a minute, shall we? Ravnig I'm going to take a picture of the The Røde Røde Ravnig I'm going to go back to the beach. All right, we are nearing the end of the Spaceship Earth building and the beginning of the brand new area.

And to the right is the Journey of Water. Connections Cafe, Eatery, and all that stuff is to the left. And Dreamers Point straight ahead. Kampung Kampung the details josh i know you've you've recently been over here but i this is the first time i'm seeing the uh what is this world world something i can't even remember. The details are incredible. Lots of sloping and winding seated concrete

path, not pathways, but concrete seating areas. Here's one that is made of sliced pieces of timber joined together side by side. And kind of like Batuu the concrete here looks a bit rough and some of the very nice edges sometimes deteriorate into like little crumbled areas and I just find these details incredible.

To our right over here are the large structures that kind of look like the base of a tree. They look like aged rusted metal, which is a fantastic detail here by the Imagineering Department. Incidentally, Daisy's over here meeting. Heather, first thoughts? A lot of plants. A lot of plants, for sure. It needs a little bit of water, maybe. Actually, I think it probably does.

Yeah, for those of us that miss the Fountain of Nations, the lack of water is kind of obvious. Some fountains here, like even small little bubbling things would be nice. Because that almost looks like a fountain right there, but I think it's just a big flower bed. Yeah, the new planter is Fountain of Nations-ish, but also no water. I'm guessing these pillars right here light up at night. They do, yeah. But it's very peaceful and here on a windy day all of the grasses and trees

blowing in the wind it's really nice and chill i like a i like a non-hectic epcot place this is definitely a place over here to get away from the crowd and just relax a little bit agreed let's let's continue We passed Walt up on Dreamers Point. As soon as you enter this from the top level, there's a long line for him, as there should be. But we didn't go over there yet. I love the openness. You can just walk straight through here now. You can go straight through to creations and connections. It's all connected finally. And we have now located the spot that I wanted to check out

that now will become basically where I live and it is an area of seating and trees over to the west right against what was and probably will be Communicore West but loads of tables and seating and and places to plug your stuff in and i'm looking at a gorgeous round table seating area that wraps a magnolia tree and this is going to be me with a laptop in the near future i can tell you that i like that there's like bar height seats and regular seats and benches a bunch of different types of seating. Yeah, that's a really good point. There's loads of places just to set on like little concrete curbs, but also lower tables to eat at and also higher long stone slabs with bar height seats that you could, I mean, you could eat, you could do whatever you want, but they look really cool for like bringing a laptop over or some homework or whatever. I know it's Disney, but still, I'm local, I think these things.

But it's isolated, beautiful. There's some shade here, which is hard to come by. And wow, I love this little area to the west so for place making right now the spaceship earth is to my left and we are about where the fountain of nations used to be actually i think right now we would be standing in plaza ice cream um if you're old school like that i think this area is pretty much where plaza ice cream used to be or nearby and directly across from us would be mouse gears which is now connections creations area and to our right the world showcase beyond

and as i spoke to the team recently i'm nostalgic I mean who isn't I loved uh what used to be the Fountain of Nations area it was one of my favorite places but I am also going to do my best to thoroughly enjoy these new creations that the team has done and they've done a darn good job and I think because of the trees are they're not tiny they're like a what are these these are magnolias yeah they have them in the middle of the um tables and chairs and it provides shade that i didn't think we were gonna have i agree these are 20 foot tall at least magnolias so more mature trees they put in so we could have some shade it was really cool all right this is a lot of talking i'm gonna shut up we could have some shade it was really cool all right this is a

lot of talking I'm gonna shut up we could do some wandering Thank you. last bit of blabbery from me about this new area that i noticed is that just full disclosure we came in here um after two which is when the pass holders can just pop into whatever park we want. And the parking lot was packed. The line for Spaceship Earth is huge. And over here, there is nobody. There is not ten people in this whole area that could probably seat easily a hundred more than. So this is a good sign that this might continue to be a hidden gem over here. Heather just noticed a really handy, convenient... It's not a table. It's kind of like a stone slab, but it's set at the height perfectly for an ECV or a wheelchair.

Thank you, Disney. These are nice, thoughtful touches. Let's go over towards Moana area, shall we? What do you think? Let's do it. Terima kasih telah menonton Kampung Kampung The See what a good boy I'm being, not talking, just enjoying. The I'm right back right here. Kampung Kampung sweet Hooray! Who did we find in the rockwork? It's a little pig. It's Pua. Hidden in the rockwork in a little bench. Kampung Kampung Terima kasih telah menonton Ravnir Terima kasih telah menonton Stream to our left, waterfall to our right, and Te Fiti straight ahead. Beautiful, beautiful area. I'll have more to say after. All right. That was the journey of water for the first time for Heather and I. We're headed over towards the land. my overall thoughts are i love it it is beautiful it's it's peaceful i love the water

the movement it's uh very reminiscent of what they did with pandora to me and i think it's much needed here and say what you will like whether or not you think uh it's a great addition or not so but the people in there had smiles on their faces. They were laughing. They were enjoying themselves, taking photos. Seems like a hit to me. Welcome to a voyage of discovery and awareness, of the richness, the diversity, of God's rising nature, living with the man. Our journey begins as dramatic as seven changes are sweeping over the land.

The approaching storm may seem violent and destructive to us, but to nature, it's a new beginning in the cycle of life. Today, we're learning to live with the land, discovering better ways to grow food that will assure both human and environmental well-being. I'm going to be grown. and even backyard gardeners are doing their part to improve the quantity and quality of foods that we all rely upon. Together, we can continue to find more ways to increase food production and protect our precious natural environment. Only then will we truly be Living With The Land. living with the land. Thank you. hope you guys enjoyed that little hit of living with the land. We haven't done that in a while, and I know we've recorded the land a ton in the past, but if we're here, can't just not do it. And so, recorded a few snippets for you. Currently standing outside the land, looking over towards Moana,

and to our right is the World Showcase and Journey into Imagination. But while we're here, let's give a shout-out to the patrons who support us at the Beautiful Tomorrow level, shall we? That's Beck Castle, Bill and Aaron Zeese, Brian E. Grant, Debbie Jambala, Derek at Satisfactual Sign Company, Eric Steinhauer, John Hamilton, Meredith Izzo, Josh Nakano, Hannah Ginn, David Krause, Jessica Davis, and Lindsay O'Connell. Thank you all so much for supporting the show. It means a ton. Love you. Appreciate you. okay

stop Deep breath out. Thanks for joining us, by the way, on a brief little Epcot journey on a lovely central Florida day. Got to see some new stuff, hear some new stuff, ride the land, which is the best ride ever anywhere. Enjoy, oh, monorail blue coming by. Right overhead, actually. Very cool. Sun is just going down spaceship earth is just starting to be illuminated it's a little breeze in the air which is awesome because all of the Epcot pavilion flags are flying and it's just kind of nice here thank you for listening

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I'm glad you're in it with us. And as always, there's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow out there in 2024. And we will see you in one of those tomorrows on another episode of walk about the world bye everybody ¶¶ Thank you. ORGAN PLAYS Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you.