Tuesday, February 21, 2023- Disney Resort Hopping- Day 3

      Before we came, Abby said she wanted to wave to Minnie and give her a kiss, so we knew that we had to try to find a way for her to see her.  Back in April, we tried dinner at Chef Mickey's in the Contemporary Resort, where the characters come out to greet you while you are eating.  We didn't like the food that they served for dinner, but we said we'd be willing to try breakfast.  It wasn't easy getting reservations, and for several days before we came, Scott kept checking and refreshing the My Disney Experience app on the phone to see if any spots opened up, and he managed to snag a reservation for 9:55 this morning.

     This morning, because we have a reservation for breakfast, we can use our own car instead of relying on Disney busses.  As we were waiting for our table, Abby was very excited to watch the monorails passing through, and we figured we'd end up riding one today anyway.

     Once we were seated, Minnie was the first one to come see us.  She picked up Abby's stuffed Minnie that she bought last night and made it dance before Abby had even realized what was happening.  She did get a kiss from Minnie and we hadn't even been served yet.

     Mickey Mouse himself was the next to come over.  He put out his hand to Abby as if to say "Gimme five."  Abby looked at it for a moment, picked up one of the coins that she had been playing with on the table, and placed it in his big white-gloved hand.  Abby has been trained well.  She knows that the Mouse wants your money!    Actually, he thought it was cute and he laughed.  He then slid three of the coins around that she had and used a quarter and two pennies to make a little Mickey head. That's what Abby is looking at in the picture below.   (We're not saying he's got an ego, but if he sees more than three circles, he has to make it all about him!)  Before he left ended up giving Abby a handful of stickers.  She liked that.

     As we expected, the food at breakfast was very good, but there was sooooo much of it.  The food is served "family style" and is brought out in big help-yourself servings.  First, there was biscuits and gravy, doughnut-type fritters bigger than Tim bits that had cinnamon sugar on them, yogurt with blueberries, and a large bowl of fruit with grapes, watermelon, pineapple, and muskmelon.  After that came a big skillet of scrambled eggs, a whole lot of bacon, some sausages, and some brisket.  There was a whole plate of Mickey waffles, and another plate of pancakes.  We ordered some extra whipped cream for Abby to dip her pancake in.  There were two bowls of some cheesy potatoes that were very good.  There also was some banana-bread-stuffed French toast.  It was a lot of food and we were certainly full when we finished.  It seemed a shame to leave so much uneaten, actually.  It's hard to say that we ate our money's worth, given how expensive the experience is, but we can certainly say we ate our fill. 

     It is hectic to try to eat as the characters are coning around, but we were last in the sequence of tables, so at least we got to prepare for exactly when they got to us.  Donald Duck was next.  He liked that one of Abby's stickers was of him.  Abby had seemed to be a little overwhelmed by everything, but she was eating a little bit between the character visits.  By the time Pluto and Goofy came around, she was ready to get up and give them each a hug.

     Abby was excited to ride the escalators.  That's fun at Disney for a three-year old.  So while Mommy paid for breakfast, she and Daddy rode them several times.  After such a large breakfast we were all moving a little slowly and needed some time to let our food digest.  We looked through the gift shops and then sat in the lounge chairs by the windows that face the Magic Kingdom.  Eventually, we went up to ride the monorail once around the lagoon.  It probably wasn't necessary at that point, because Abby had gotten her fill of excitement for the time being and was now more interested in watching YouTube for kids on Mom's phone again.  Before we left, Scott got a Schöfferhofer Hefeweizen, much like last night's only this one was grapefruit.  

     We decided the best plan of action was to go back to the hotel and let Abby swim and hopefully take a nap.  Our room at the All-Star Music Resort seems to be further away from everything.  The smaller pool is called the Piano Pool and is shaped like one.  It also has a Little Mermaid statue by it for some reason.  The Piano Pool is relatively close to us and Abby loved getting in it with Mom.  She is getting very confident with her swim vest, and made friends to play with again, like she seems to everywhere.  Scott, meanwhile, went to the larger guitar pool near the front of the resort.  It has statues of the Three Caballeros in its center and also has the pool bar, where Scott got an IPA called Key West.  He also strolled over to All-Star Sports to get a Miller Lite, even though he had a beer there on the first night.  When he got back to the Piano Pool, Abby and Mommy were playing with a very large game of Connect Four.  Abby didn't really care about the game, but she liked playing with the rings.  Abby had wanted to go back into the pool,  but we managed to get her to the hotel room and tried to get her calm enough to take a nap. 

     It was after 3:00 when she finally went to sleep and then she slept for more than 3 hours.  We were continually revising our plans downward in order to let her sleep.  We had originally talked about going to the shopping at Disney Springs but we wanted to do it in the daytime in order to not face the evening crowds.  We haven't even gone to a park and we're pretty much done with being around crowds.  After we ruled out Disney Springs, we considered a couple of other options, ultimately deciding on driving to the Animal Kingdom Lodge.  

     We knew that at Animal Kingdom Lodge, you can often see giraffes, zebras and other animals, and since we enjoyed a nice outdoor breakfast there last April, we wanted to eat there again.  We didn't have dinner reservations, which could have kept them from letting us in where they check our IDs as we entered the lot, but they did let us in anyway.   Unfortunately, it was dark before we even arrived, there so we didn't end up seeing any animals.  We did see the moon, Venus and Jupiter lined up beautifully in a purple evening sky, though.  We entered the impressive Jambo House and went to the Nara for the quick service food.  We had pulled pork sandwiches and Abby got a pizza, but the nice part was we got to eat outside.  Scott wanted to get a Safari Amber at the pool bar, but since they were out, he had to get an Old Elephant Foot IPA.  At least the names were cool.  We went out to the savannah overlook out back, but except for a few sleepy pelicans, there weren't any animals to be seen.  We had heard that there are night vision goggles that can be borrowed, but we didn't inquire about them  Instead, we sat on a bench and enjoyed some tantalizing peeks into what the savannah-view rooms are like.  When we went to the gift shop, Abby was having a hard time, like three-year-olds sometimes do.  It's always hard to call it a night on the last night of the Disney trip, but it seemed we really needed to.  We drove back to the All-Star Music resort and went back to our room.