^ Yeah, Disc 1 is just great. The greatness carries over to most of disc 2, too. It's just that when Cid takes control, the game seems to feel a bit flat because the rushed-ness of the Huge Materia quest makes it seem like filler. The spotty motivation, as discussed in this thread, doesn't help either.

I mean it's not like the game sends you off to do something only tangentially related (thinking Oeilvert and Ipsen's Castle here), but it still doesn't fit in nearly as well as the rest of the game's scenarios do. But unlike FFIX's late-game quests, it also doesn't really show the player anything new - which was what was really great about the game's pacing to begin with. Sure you get to go to the underwater reactor and into space when Cloud comes back, but the Cid bits just have you doing another stupid Fort Condor fight and playing some crap mini-game in Corel. It's just a huge hiccup in the game's pace. It doesn't really pick up again until you visit Bugenhagen and take him to the Ancient City.

But yeah, tl;dr: The Huge Materia sequence must have been the last thing that was put in the game, because it really sticks out as being kinda thrown in as filler in almost every way.