It’s bonus vacation day! I was awake earlyish, so I did check in for tomorrow’s flight, spending the money to upgrade us to seats at the very front of the plane (row 3), to give us a better chance of getting off the plane in time to get to the next flight, since JetBlue had booked us in row 26, and we would have approximately 15 minutes from gate arrival to door closure of the next flight to make it to the next plane.
Eventually Nick was awake too. We headed for breakfast about 8 where we encountered…an entire softball team that felt the juice dispensers (that also dispensed water) were the appropriate place to fill their water bottles.
Breakfast this morning included Mickey waffles and I took that as a sign that moving to Disney for tonight was the right choice! Breakfast was pretty tasty and I spent the time texting mom about all of the snow they had already received at home. Did I mention it was sunny and would be in the upper 80s here again today?
Once we’d eaten, we headed back to the room to pack. This was a process with all of those souvenir cups, but it got done, and we checked out of the hotel about 9:30. It was an easy drive over to Disney, and after a VERY chaotic stop at Speedway near the Boardwalk to fuel up the rental car (shh) so that we wouldn’t have to deal with that at 3 am, we arrived at Art of Animation about 10 am.
Arrival here was everything you’d expect from Disney. The guy at the guard shack was friendly and pleasant. We parked and dragged our luggage over to luggage services so our deodorant wouldn’t melt in the trunk of the car. As we approached luggage services, a couple of front desk CMs greeted us, and Vaughan quickly got on his iPad and started checking on our room situation (even though I’d done online check in and gotten the “your room isn’t ready yet” text as I pulled away from the guard shack). He joked with us, found an issue with Nick’s MagicBand due to him trying to create an account for himself when I told him to add the app to his phone to facilitate Guardians of the Galaxy Virtual Queue snagging, fixed that, got us set up with a paper map of the resort, and walked us over to luggage services. He got himself a cast compliment in the app. None of what he did was requested, but it definitely got the day started off on the right foot.
We stored our luggage and headed for the buses, where we walked right onto a fairly full bus to the Magic Kingdom. It was standing room only (people…10:30 am is NOT early for the parks). The ride passed quickly enough, and pretty soon we were headed through security. I snapped a picture near the entrance, took a picture of a multi-generational family, complete with the inevitable pregnant aunt that had to hold her barely there belly just for the picture to make the family picture all about her, and then it was off to the boat dock.
By the time we reached the boat dock, I had a text that our room was ready, which was nice. I had the next couple hours planned out, but it was nice to know we wouldn’t be “homeless” when we were ready for a break later. It was going to be another hot day, and hotel room air conditioning is always nice.
We didn’t have to wait all that long before we were boarding a boat to the Wilderness Lodge. It was a good day for a boat ride, and some picture taking. Did I mention they were getting a foot of snow at home today?
The ride to the Wilderness Lodge was great. It’s such a pleasant ride. I will say that the seats on the boats at Universal were WAY more comfortable than the seats on this particular boat!
When we got to the Wilderness Lodge, we did a bit of picture taking before heading inside to sit in that grand lobby for a few minutes.
Once we were ready for lunch, we headed for Geyser Point. It was pretty soon after opening, so we were seated immediately. Sadly, we were seated on the resort side of the restaurant, so we didn’t have a view of the lake, but it was still nice to be eating at an open air restaurant on a warm day, knowing it was snowing like crazy at home.
Lunch here was great. We both had the bison cheeseburger. Nick had the black cherry mule and I had the huckleberry punch. Service was great, food and drinks were great, and this is such a comfortable place to have lunch. We both enjoyed it.
Once we had eaten, we headed for the bus stop. We waited less than 10 minutes for a bus to Disney Springs. It was an uneventful trip over there. Once there, we headed straight for World of Disney, which was hopping. Oh, Saturdays at Disney Springs… It didn’t take me long though to find the t-shirt I’d seen at Epcot on Thursday, and pretty soon, the shirt and a couple bottles of water were in my possession.
Mission accomplished, we headed for the bus stop. No need to spend more time than necessary at the Springs on a Saturday! It was a LONG walk because value resort, but we made it to the bus stop eventually, and a bus came along a few minutes later.
The ride back to Art of Animation was uneventful. When we arrived I realized Art of Animation’s bus lines have something the other value resort bus stops do not: shade. Now that’s a point in favor of that resort.
Once back at the resort, we headed over to luggage services, where we found out that our bags had already been delivered to the room. Sweet! So we posed for a picture.
Then we found the car and drove over to the parking lot closest to our building: building 9. We cleaned out the paperwork that accumulates during a trip so that the car was ready for return at oh-my-god-it’s-early o’clock tomorrow morning, and headed up to the room, 9862, on the 4th floor.
Picture taking done inside the room (and Nick slightly traumatized by the shower), I headed outside for a picture of the pool surrounded by palm trees, visible from outside our room. Mom had just sent a picture of her pool covered in snow. So, the beloved first born obviously had to respond in the most angelic way possible.
We chilled at the resort for awhile, which basically meant that once my phone was charged up and I’d cooled off, Nick stayed in the room playing games on his phone while I wandered a bit, and got the mermaid cupcake from the food court that involves pineapple filling and coconut buttercream. This was not a mistake.
Eventually discussion turned to dinner. This was fascinating. It made the most sense to me to eat somewhere on the skyliner, because why not take advantage of that amenity? Nick agreed. But, he thought the places with variety (i.e., the Caribbean Beach food court) sounded “boring” and that mac and cheese at Beach Club Marketplace sounded interesting. Eventually we decided to eat at our own food court and then ride the skyliner after just for the heck of it.
This ended up being a great choice. Dinner at the Art of Animation food court was surprisingly good. I got the tandoori chicken and Nick got the braised beef. Both were surprisingly large portions, and the food was excellent.
After dinner we headed for the skyliner. It was a quick ride to CBR where we hopped on the Epcot line. This skyliner line was shockingly slow moving and it actually took a REALLY long time to get to the Epcot station. Obviously we completely paused at the highest point between Caribbean and Riviera AND it was a bit windy so we were swinging. I didn’t love that. But, we made it, and we took a nice walk around Crescent Lake while I decided what our next move would be.
By the time we returned to the International Gateway area, it was clear that the skyliner had returned to normal operations, so we hopped on the Epcot line back over to Caribbean. We were with a friendly group…a couple from Pennsylvania, and a mother daughter duo from California. We all got to talking and when asked where in NH we live, I said “a bit northwest of Concord”. The California mother quickly recognized that from a list of state capitals and was very excited about that. I refrained from blowing her mind completely and didn’t share that I can see the gold dome of the state capital building from the parking lot of my regular grocery store. Concord is where I do most of my errands.
Back over at CBR, we hopped over to the Art of Animation line and were rewarded with our own skyliner cab for the short trip back to the resort. Once back at the resort, Nick headed for the room and I headed for the gift shop for a couple essentials, dodging people hacking up a lung in the process.
Water purchased, I returned to the room where showers were taken, luggage was packed, the alarm was set, and pictures of the luggage were taken in case it didn’t make our very short connection at JFK the next morning. And then we turned off the lovely (but not as good as it used to be) Disney resort TV music and crashed for the night. It had been a pretty perfect bonus vacation day!
Back over at CBR, we hopped over to the Art of Animation line and were rewarded with our own skyliner cab for the short trip back to the resort. Once back at the resort, Nick headed for the room and I headed for the gift shop for a couple essentials, dodging people hacking up a lung in the process.
Water purchased, I returned to the room where showers were taken, luggage was packed, the alarm was set, and pictures of the luggage were taken in case it didn’t make our very short connection at JFK the next morning. And then we turned off the lovely (but not as good as it used to be) Disney resort TV music and crashed for the night. It had been a pretty perfect bonus vacation day!
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