Tuesday (8/7) was our day at Epcot, and it has become the traditional highlight of our Disney World vacations for me. Why? Because the World Showcase is home to restaurants highlighting cuisines from around the world, and the top restaurant, in my opinion, is Monsieur Paul in the France Pavilion. (It used to be Bistro de Paris.) Every time we go to Epcot, I make a reservation well in advance to have dinner at Monsieur Paul.
Of course, dinner is at the end of the day, and we had rides (and lunch) to enjoy before then. Epcot didn’t have morning Extra Magic Hours this day, so we entered with the regular crowd and made a beeline for Test Track, which is probably the most popular ride at Epcot for teens and adults. I was unable to get a FastPass+ for this ride, so it was important that we get there early in order to ride as a family. Otherwise, if we waited later in the day, we’d have to wait a long time (60+ minutes) together, or ride separately in the Single Rider line. I wanted to ride as a family.
We designed our virtual cars beforehand and enjoyed the ride, and then afterward the boys continued designing virtual cars while I checked out the Chevrolets. Then, while the boys continued enjoying the post-ride exhibits and while Hsuan got W something to eat, I went to Guest Relations to add another day to our five days in the parks. With the two additional days at Disney World due to the initial delay in the PSP launch, Hsuan, the boys, and I had discussed whether we would want to spend the extra days solely at the resort or spend some additional time at the parks. In the end, we decided that we’d spend Thursday at KSC, since W hadn’t been there since the STEREO launch, and we’d use Friday as a day to catch anything in the parks we might have missed. We wouldn’t spend the entire days at KSC or the parks on Thursday and Friday, so we could enjoy the pool at the resort as well. (Plus, I needed to rest before driving from Orlando to KSC after midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning.)
Our next ride was Mission: Space, for which we had a FastPass+. Since J is older, we decided to go on the Orange Team (more intense; spinning centrifuge) version of the ride. I was unaware of the changes that had been implemented since the last time we rode it. It looks like Gina Torres replaced Gary Sinise as capcom, and the introductory videos seem to be at higher resolution (hi-def vs. standard?). Although I really didn’t notice at the time, the Mars mission video during the ride has also been remastered at higher resolution, and I also found out later that the Green Team (less intense) now has an additional option of a mission to earth. I got some GoPro video during the ride, and I guess the in-ride video does look nice.
Our lunch reservation was at the San Angel Inn restaurant, inside the Mexico Pavilion’s pyramid. We often have Japanese for lunch at Epcot, but having recently travelled to Japan, we wanted something else. I had tried to get a reservation for lunch at the Hacienda de San Angel, but there was no availability even weeks before for lunch at that time. I’d have preferred the Hacienda, but we used to eat at San Angel before the Hacienda was built, so it was okay. I had a chili relleno dish for lunch, but I forgot what Hsuan and the boys had.
Interestingly, the lobby in the pyramid had exhibits related to the Pixar movie Coco, which was nice to see.
After lunch, we rode Spaceship Earth (FastPass+; it’s the educational history of information ride in the geodesic sphere at Epcot), and then we killed time at The Seas with Nemo and Friends, staying the cool, less-humid indoors watching the fish and dolphins in the aquariums.
We passed through Journey into the Imagination with Figment on the way back to World Showcase. That ride needs some serious updates, almost as bad as Innoventions, which is no longer open.
We took the boat across the World Showcase lagoon, and when we landed in the Morocco Pavilion, I heard the familiar sound of Taiko drumming coming from the Japan Pavilion. Those performances are always a favorite of mine, so I walked there and took a little video before our dinner at Monsieur Paul.
Dinner at Monsieur Paul is always an experience — calm, relaxed ambience, elegant service, and exquisite food beautifully presented. And, of course, it’s the most expensive meal we eat at Disney World, but overall, we find it worth the price.
Hsuan had black sea bass for her entree, and J had the roast suckling pig. However, in addition to the older Prix Fixe menu, Monsieur Paul has a new Prix Fixe tasting menu, which W and I both had. (For mine, I had the wine pairing with each course.) Our menu included:
- An amuse of beef tartare
- A grilled octopus, with bell pepper and corn fricassee, red pepper emulsion, and micro mustard greens
- Dover sole, tagliatelles, mushrooms, and creamy sabayon
- Verbena and mint sorbet
- Veal three ways, with spinach puree, carrots with mustard, and veal jus
- Selections of French cheeses
- And dessert
My dessert was a meringue with mango and coconut sorbets, vanilla Chantilly, and exotic fruit coulis, while W had caramelized apples with shortbread, vanilla cream, green apple sorbet, and caramel sauce.
Everything was beyond delicious. My French wines — none of the names of which I remember — were all delicious and perfectly paired, including the sparkling wine for dessert. The pairings also moved my meal from stupendously expensive to monstrously expensive, but I regret nothing.
Of note was our waitress, Jessica. Yes, she was very pretty — young, blonde, tall, and slender. As with all cast members in the World Showcase, she was from the country she represented. However, as pretty as she was — and Hsuan noted that all our female servers were pretty — what really caught my attention was her accent. An elegant, delicate French accent, of course. And something else.
I have something of an ear for accents, having grown up in the South, but I also took a class in the History of the English Language at Stanford, which included the topic of the variety of American and English accents. All week at Disney, I had been hearing a lot of English accents. English tourist families on holiday at Disney World. I had been hearing that lilting, somewhat melodic intonation that English mums use with their children all week. I suppose you either get used to the sound or you get tired of it, and sometime Anglophile though I may be, I was starting to get tired of the sound. I think it was the heat and humidity that made me less patient with things I’d normally accept
Anyway, I was hearing a hint of an English accent in Jessica’s voice, alternating with her French. Something like “Was eet delicious, m’sieu? Yes? Can oye get yew yer next ontray, luv?”
Okay, nowhere near that exaggerated; when I type it out, it reads Cockney, like Eliza Doolittle. Jessica's accent (both the English and the French, for that matter) was far subtler and more delicate -- maybe received pronunciation or a muted South London? My knowledge of English accents was never encyclopedic, and it’s weaker now. And of course, accents have evolved. The fact that her English accent sounded subtle to me probably places it as received pronunciation or South London, or something in between or a melding, rather than some regional accent, e.g. northern like Lancashire.
I had to know if she had at least a connection to England. So, I glanced at her name badge and asked where she was from in France. She said she was from a small town in the south of France (drat! farther away from England!) about two hours away south of Paris and two hours away from Toulouse (I think). Tourrette? Tourrettes? Tourreilles? Something with a T, on her name badge. I don’t recall, and Apple Maps shows a zillion small towns in the South of France beginning with T.
I apologized for pressing further, and I asked “Did you spend any time in England?”
She replied, “Ah, you caught that, did you? My father’s English, and my mother’s French. But I’m almost fully Americanized now. I’ve lived here almost ten years.”
I imagined that her French accent was consciously maintained and cultivated while at work. I mentioned that I had been hearing a lot of English accents in Disney World during the past few days.
I spent the rest of the evening and part of the next day feeling pretty smug about my ear for accents.
[Yes, because her mixed French/English (plus American?) accent caught my attention, I did find it attractive. However, that’s nothing compared to the strangely sexy British school-mum accent that some flight attendants used when I flew British Airways a few years ago. That was very discomfiting.]
Our final FastPass+ was the Illuminations fireworks show, a favorite of mine at Disney not only because of the show itself but also because the FastPass+ allows truly excellent viewing. I got video.
On the way out of the park, I noted that we had barely visited the pavilions in the World Showcase, so I wanted to spend Friday catching up, but J wanted to spend the extra day at the Magic Kingdom, presumably because we wouldn’t be able to see everything at the Magic Kingdom on Wednesday.