EPCOT and 1st performance

 Well, everyone got some sleep last night!  Maybe not a lot of it, but at least we all had beds!

We were up and having a yummy breakfast at the hotel by 7:30 this morning.

I'm sure we could have all slept the whole day through, but we have important things to do today!

Mr. M gave all the chaperones the day's instructions, then held a meeting with the whole group.

 The first thing we did was get on the bus to go in a backstage Disney Performing Arts entrance at EPCOT.  We had our official group photo taken in a lovely spot outside the Italy pavilion.

Joyce and Stacy were really funny while Stacy was having a FaceTime conversation with her doggy back home!

After the photo, we got back on the bus and were driven around to the official entrance to come into the park with everyone else.

Today, I gave all my girls their meal cards and just made them promise me they would eat. (I trust them.) This way, they wouldn't have to wait on me to meet them with their cards, and they could just eat when they found time.

We're at EPCOT!

EPCOT is such a pretty place, and even prettier at the moment because the Flower and Garden Festival is happening right now. 

There are beautiful character topiaries all over the park! 

And so many beautiful flowers!

Basically as soon as we got into the park, the band students had to meet to go backstage and get ready for their performance.

I had a while "to myself" before the performance time, so I walked through the butterfly tent. 

I didn't see many live butterflies, but there was a nice exhibit of cocoons and flowers.

I met up with Dawn, Shannon, and Reece in the aquarium, and we met up with the Tanya, Shaun, and Faith at The Land.  It's such an informative and innovative place!

We made our way towards the stage at Melody Gardens where the band would perform, and found lots of Ridgeview folks there for the performance!

Our kids were the first performance of the day.

It's hard to see the kids behind their music stands, but they looked pretty good.

This was, of course, a great place to perform.  The acoustics were great, and although the kids were not used to being mic/amplified quite like this, they played very well!

This is a playlist of their performance.

Annah loved performing at Disney World!

I didn't ride it this time, but love seeing the monorail!

After the performance, I told all my kids they were on their own and let them hang around EPCOT doing whatever they most wanted to do for the day.  I hung out with Dawn and Shannon and Reece for a bit.

Then Shannon and Reece split off and we girls shared some lunch at Mexico!

We had a nice spot in the sunshine, and lots of our group stopped to chat with us as they passed. Annah and her friends found lunch in the China pavilion, then she and Lauren went to find rides.

We found our friend Mick checking out the steins in the Germany shop.

Dawn treated us both to strawberry kaki-gori in Japan. It made me feel like a kid--it's basically shave ice with condensed milk on top.  It was really yummy.

We stopped to listen to one of the Voices of Liberty shows.  They are fantastic!!!

Found a little lizard friend

We walked all the way around the "world"--or at least all the way around the lake. It was such a beautiful day!

Dawn and I went on Spaceship Earth together.

In the early evening, the kids were to meet up to go to their Disney Performing Arts workshops.  Only directors and students were allowed to go, but about an hour before they had to meet, I was invited to go along to the choir workshop. I was very happy to get to watch the kids learn from a Disney performer.

For the Disney Sings workshop, we went to Saratoga Springs resort, into a building that houses an amazing auditorium/recording studio.  We weren't allowed to take our phones in for photos or recording, but it was a great experience for the kids.  They learned about what opportunities there are for a vocal performance career with Disney, how to prepare, and rehearsed and recorded 2 songs and sound affects that were put with actual scenes from the Disney movie, Tangled.  They really enjoyed the entire 2 1/2 hour workshop, and the band reported that their workshop was fantastic too.

We returned to EPCOT just in time to catch their nighttime fireworks show, Illuminations.

What a fantastic day!