Everyone will be shocked to read that I slept until about 7:40 am. By this point, Nick was airborne and already well on his way to Florida. I had a slow start but eventually headed to the food court for breakfast. I had a very balanced breakfast of a yogurt parfait and a side of hashbrowns, and got the text from Nick that he’d landed in Orlando while I was eating.
Once I’d finished eating, and texted Nick his directions to Mears, I headed out to do some picture taking around the resort. This really is a beautiful, peaceful resort. French Quarter is definitely still my preferred moderate, but I’d stay here again in a heartbeat.
I finished my lap around the resort, went back to the room for a bit to enjoy the AC (cold front is moving out!), and then worked my way over to the tower to wait for Nick to arrive. His bus was doing the exact opposite order of what my bus had done, so it was taking him a bit longer to get here than it had taken me, but at this point he was on property. I filled my refillable mug and did a bit more picture taking along the way.
Shortly after getting to the airport transportation bus stop, a Mears bus pulled up and several people got off of it, but Nick wasn’t one of them. Uh oh…did he forget what resort we are staying at and get off the bus at the All Stars?!
I panic texted Nick and found out that he was on a different bus, just passing Blizzard Beach. So I settled down and his bus rolled in about 3 minutes later.
We greeted each other and headed inside, Nick saying almost immediately, “thank god we aren’t staying at the All Stars!”. He then told me the drop off area at the various All Star resorts the bus had stopped at had been total chaos, complete with the bus driver honking at people so that he could get through to the bus stop. Apparently even just pulling up to Coronado was more peaceful (which I can see). He was like “I really don’t think I’m an All Star person anymore”.
Noted!
We made our way over to the room, stopping so he could fill his mug along the way. Once at the room, he changed clothes and organized way more than I ever do, and then shortly after that, we were at the bus stop, ready to get his vacation started.
I don’t think we waited very long and then we were on a bus to the Magic Kingdom. Nick was also pleasantly surprised by how quick the process was to get through this resort on a bus, compared to when we stayed at Old Key West. We enjoyed the air conditioning, caught up on my adventures from the night before, and mobile ordered lunch.
When we got to the Magic Kingdom, Nick was pretty happy to see just how close to the front of the park the Coronado bus stop was. We headed through security and then headed for the monorail.
It was a quick trip over to the Contemporary. I marked our mobile order at Contempo Cafe as “I’m here” and we wandered through the stores while we waited for the “order is ready” alert. The notification arrived a few minutes after we’d finished wandering the stores, so we headed over to Contempo, where we found our order bagged in to go boxes, on a set of shelves. We grabbed our food and some utensils and filled our mugs, and found a table to eat at. Nick had gotten chicken fingers, I’d gotten chili cheese fries. I also had gotten a dole whip cupcake for later. The food was good, the location was convenient.
After we’d eaten lunch, we headed for the monorail. I think we got right on a loading one. It’s dole whip time! We took the monorail to the Polynesian, and headed straight to Pineapple Lanai, where I was disappointed to see that the Halloween dole whip situation that the Disney Blog had said was supposed to be introduced here a week earlier was not yet a thing. But I quickly pivoted. Nick and I both got pineapple floats…mine with vanilla, his with swirl, and took them inside to eat in the lobby. Obviously, we thoroughly enjoyed.
Floats consumed, we headed back to the monorail, and took that back over to Magic Kingdom, where we took some pumpkin pictures on our way to the bus stop. While at the bus stop we found the winner of the cutest bus wrap award.
A bus came along eventually (honestly, it wasn’t all that long), and then it was an uneventful trip back to Coronado, where Nick napped and I went to the pool for a bit.
After a relaxing afternoon, we got ready for dinner, probably a little after 5. The commute to dinner was really challenging tonight! We headed out the front of our building, crossed a bridge, and we were at our destination: Three Bridges! This was a new restaurant for us both, and one I’d wanted to eat at for awhile. We were seated immediately.
Dinner here was honestly the best meal we have had on property. The flavors and quality were fantastic, the service was great, and the atmosphere was really laid back. We will be back! To drink, I had the seasonal mojito, which was a watermelon mojito. Super refreshing! Nick had a cold brew old fashioned, which he said is his new favorite drink. To eat, Nick had the steak frites and I had the house burger. All was excellent!
After a fantastic dinner, we went back to the room to get ready for an evening out and about, then headed for the bus stop. A bus came along within probably 10 minutes or so, and we got to Disney Springs pretty soon after that. We roamed the stores for awhile, before checking out the line situation at Swirls on the Water. That was nuts, so we headed for Vivoli Gelato. Nick got the key lime tiramisu and I got the POG sorbetto. Mine was great. His was not very key limey.
Then we headed to the Columbia store because Nick had decided the hat he’d brought wasn’t going to work well for August in Disney. We are big Columbia fans (I actually just achieved Titanium level in their rewards program for this year…whatever that means), so we (correctly) figured we could find him a useful hat there. We were correct, and as an added bonus, between my teacher discount (10% off every day) and a reward I had built up, he paid about $10 for his new hat. SCORE.
From here it was time to head for the West Side. We walked ALL THE WAY to the West Side of Disney Springs, basically down to Cirque du Soleil. Here we entered the viewing area (shortly after 8 PM) for the 9:00 showing of Dreams that Soar, the drone show that was in Disney Springs this summer. We walked almost all the way to the end of the viewing area, because I had read that at the end of the show, they have everyone exit out from the same spot behind Starbucks. So by walking down to the area basically behind Starbucks, we were going to be some of the first out of the viewing area. This was a great strategy. It was obvious that most people grabbed a spot close to the entrance to the viewing area, so our area was completely uncrowded with basically no one around us until about 15 minutes before show time. Because it’s such a narrow stretch of sidewalk, the viewing area that was taped off really could only be 2-3 deep where we were, which was also nice. So, it was a relatively uncrowded experience by Disney nighttime show standards.
Dreams that Soar was incredible. It was only about 10 minutes long, but it was awesome. I really hope that at some point, a show like that will become a permanent thing (maybe over in that stadium that sits unused in Animal Kingdom…).
As soon as the show ended, we headed for the exit. It was a little wild trying to cross traffic near the front of Starbucks, but we made it. We walked towards the Orange garage, and then headed to the bus from there, since I’d already discovered that the Coronado bus stop was in the second section of buses. We were on a bus before the people that viewed Dreams that Soar from near House of Blues probably ever even made it to the exit of the viewing area. The bus filled up, and it was an uneventful ride back to Coronado, where we crashed for the night. We had another busy vacation day ahead of us tomorrow!
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