Where’s the Fire?

We decided to take advantage of Megan’s free passes to Disney before her internship ends, and drove up to Orlando to see her this weekend.  As we approached  Disney’s Epcot Center, we passed billowing cascades of smoke on the edge of the Disney property. We wondered  what was burning, then  continued on.

First, we had to drop off Megan at the employee or ‘crew’ gate so she could go get her Disney ID, which she’d left at the office. We couldn’t park there, so when Megan came back, we had to leave Epcot, then find our way back in through the main entrance. Since Megan doesn’t usually drive that route, we got turned around and missed the entrance.

We ended up back even closer to the fire, which had grown larger, with great billowing dark clouds of smoke that obscured the sky. Several choppers hovered overhead.   We found a place to turn around, and went past the fire again before finding the right entrance and making our way to the parking lot.

Once inside the Epcot Center, we headed for the closest building with air conditioning. We’d been walking about twenty minutes in 90 degree heat and were ready to cool off. The building was called ‘Innoventions’ – a fake word combining innovation and invention. It’s a pavilion and interactive play space about technology for kids.

When we reached the first exhibit, we were startled by a synchronicity. In bold red colors, the title of the exhibit read: Where’s the fire?

Well, we knew the answer to that one. We’d seen it several times, while we were asking ourselves, “Where’s the Epcot Center?”

Megan had never been in that particular building so she was as surprised as we were by the exhibit’s name. Later, we spent half an hour with a couple of dolphins in a private tour of the enormous Living Seas Aquarium, courtesy of Megan and two trainers. It was a fantastic experience and we marveled at the intelligence of the two sleek mammals.

We  were delayed leaving when we had trouble finding a restaurant in Epcot that wasn’t fully booked for dinner. That delay turned out to be a good thing; if we had left directly, we would’ve found ourselves on a long detour because the highway leading back to downtown Orlando was closed. The reason: heavy smoke from the 15-acre brush fire that we’d seen earlier.

But by the time we finished our fish and chips in the British pavilion of the Around the World section of Epcot, the smoke had mostly cleared and the highway was re-opened. As we drove away, it occurred to us that Epcot, which is all about the future, doesn’t have any exhibits that feature the possibility of expanded mental abilities, including telepathy, clairvoyance,  precognition, or other psi abilities. It’s more about hands-on technology than mind-on hi tech tools.

But in spite of that, we had found synchronicity within minutes of stepping into Epcot.