Out came the bird - yes, THAT bird.

I just love me some Epcot.  It really is my favorite park in the Disney Compound.  There is just so much to see and do while you are there.  I could spend a whole week exploring the different areas.

On our second day in Epcot we kicked off our adventures by riding Spaceship Earth, the ride that is inside the iconic giant Epcot ball.  This is a slow ride that brings to light the limited resources on the planet and how we can best work together to preserve them and still flourish ourselves in the process.

You ride on this ride in pairs, so I linked up with five year old Esther.  We climbed in our little car and shut the door, then turned to enter the dark abyss in front of us.

Spaceship Earth begins with a steady incline as you travel to the top of the ball.  Unlike most rides where they take your picture, on SE you actually have some warning (about five seconds) that a camera is about to capture your expression, so I immediately turned to Esther to prep her to throw up a gang sign and put on her "tough girl" face.  Her face was spot on.  Her hand ended up raised in some sort of  thrusting position that made her vaguely resemble one of the Hitler youth.   Which? Was better than what ended up happening to me.

In my haste to prepare Esther, I did not have time to fully commit to any gang sign myself. But the camera did capture me perfectly mid-pose with my "tough girl" face and my fingers contorted under my chin.  And it just so happens that my fingers ended up contorting with only one sticking up. Yep. The middle one.  Epcot captured me sitting next to my five year old and flipping off the camera.  On Spaceship Earth.  In Epcot.  A Disney park.

I rule at parenting.

It gets better.  The end of the ride is an interactive game where you design your own individualized future world.  The use the cropped photos they took to show you living in this world.  So Esther and I got to watch a thirty second clip of our very own Hitler Youth and her "Eff You" Mama riding bikes and growing their own food because we are compassionate about the world.

When you exit the ride everyone's pictures are on a giant screen in the middle of the room.  Each picture zooms to the part of the world you are from and then fades away.  This is how I ended up explaining to my mother-in-law why I flipping off the camera while next to me Esther saluted Hitler. Thankfully (or sadly) she knows me, so this all made perfect sense to her.

So, the moral of the story is:  You know how on airplanes, when the oxygen masks fall you are always supposed to secure your own before you help a child?  This is just like that.  Secure your own gang sign before you help a child secure hers. The rest of humanity will thank you.