Resort Day- Wednesday, February 19, 2025

      We needed to sleep in today and planned a day to take it slower.  After we slowly got up this morning, Julie, Scott and Abby got breakfast at the hotel.  It was cooler and overcast this morning, but nice enough to eat our breakfast outdoors, facing the pool.  The breakfasts here are basic but good, with eggs, bacon, sausages and waffles.   We were looking forward to a morning like this.  (At other places, the waffles are Mickey waffles, but here at Art of Animation, they are round waffles with pictures of the characters from one of the four movies featured here.)

    After breakfast, Abby really wanted to go swimming and play here at the resort.  She went back into the Big Blue Pool with the Finding Nemo decorations and quickly made a new set of friends to play with.  They were a little older than her and she cried when they got a little rough, but generally had a really good time.  Since it was a little cool, it was mostly kids in the pool, while many of the adults watched from chairs around the perimeter, like we did.   We weaned her away from the pool by directing her attention to the splash pad nearby again, and from there, to the playground that is adjacent to that.  All of them are Nemo themed, with fish and coral shapes to everything.

    Eventually, we were ready to continue on with other things.  Scott took Abby's wet stuff back to the room and said goodbye to Emma.  Today needed to be a workday for her, so she could free up time to go to the Magic Kingdom with us tomorrow.  Among other things, she had an online test that she had to take.  We left her alone and went on to other resorts.

     We took the Skyliner to Hollywood Studios again and from there we got on a bus to Disney's Animal Kingdom lodge.  It is one of our favorite places to eat breakfast, and the original plan was to have breakfast there, but Abby wanted to swim, so we made a substitution.  Instead of breakfast, we would eat lunch there instead.  We went through the African themed lobby and down to the pool level.  There are tables there for the restaurant called The Mara.  We found a table in the section we like, and Julie used the mobile order option on the phone app to order our lunches.  While we were waiting, Scott and Abby went to the nearby playground where she had played when she was here when she was two.  They saw flamingos as they walked to it and even saw a giraffe in the distance.  After a short play, they went back to the table.  Mom soon joined them with lunch.  Julie surprised Scott by ordering herself a cocktail- a passion fruit, orange, and guava frozen slushy with vodka.  She drank about half of it, which is a lot for her.  Scott finished it. 

    As we thought we were wrapping up lunch, Scott took the refillable cups to get more Diet Coke and and started to look for the men's room.  He was turned back by Disney people who said they weren't letting people in the building because a fire alarm was going off.  We saw the kitchen crew and people who worked at the restaurant exit the building and we heard the fire trucks come, though since we were in the back of the building we didn't see them.  We waited for a while to see what would happen, and we figured we really weren't going anywhere at that point.  Scott went to the pool bar to get Julie a Powerade.  When he returned, the building had reopened.  We picked up our stuff and started to leave.  Abby, of course, wanted to revisit the playground, and Dad had previously told her that we could after lunch.  She was moving a little slower than she was before though.  The sun had been out for a while now and the temperature was around 80.  Instead of climbing as much, she set up a "celery and cucumber" stand and sold sticks as pretend celery and cucumber.  Her cheeks were getting pink, though, so we decided to try to get to a cooler spot.

    On our way to the lobby, we passed the flamingos again, and we could see several giraffes in the distance.  We found a nice overlook near the hotel building that let us see them closely.  There was a mother, a younger one, and several others that were strolling and feeding.  We watched these big animals for a few minutes, but Abby also liked seeing the little ones that were closer to us.  These were the little lizards that are so common in Florida.  Once she started looking for them, we found at least three.  We then went into the Animal Kingdom Lodge itself and looked for the lobby.  We got a little turned around and went down several halls of guest rooms before we found it.  We sat for a few minutes in the big spacious lobby and cooled down among the African decorations.

    We went to the buses with the idea that we might try the Fort Wilderness Lodge and campground next, but as we were waiting for the bus, we decided it might be better if we went to our hotel again and rest a bit.   We knew it was a good decision when even Abby asked if we could go to the hotel and take a nap.  She fell asleep on the bus to Hollywood Studios where we had to catch the Skyliner again. 

    At just about the time that we got to the end of the Skyliner line and arrived at Art of Animation, the humidity that we'd been feeling all day finally opened up into the rain that had been expected.  We had a long way to go to our room, though.  The buildings at Art of Animation (and probably at its sister resort, Pop Century) are basically the same designs as the ones at the All Star Resorts, with just the decorations and statues changed at each resort.  That also means that the Art of Animation has the same problem that those other resorts do, namely that your room could potentially be a very long way from the main building.  Even though we had arrived at Art of Animation we still had a long way to go.  Julie and Abby broke out the cheap but effective plastic rain ponchos that Julie had been carrying and used them to take the most direct route to our room.  Scott, without a poncho, made his way to the main building first in order to pick up some drinks for us.  That meant he still had a long way to go before getting to the room.  He was quite wet when he arrived and had to take off the Donald Duck shirt that he had been saving to wear this day.  "This is my happy face!"  it appropriately says. 

    Once we got to the room, we were surprised to see that Emma was not there.  She had gotten enough of her work done that she wanted to take a break.  She tried texting us to ask where we were, but we didn't see the texts come in.  So about 2:00, she decided to go to the Disney Springs shopping area.  She half expected to find us there, but even if she didn't she wanted to do a little shopping.  She got some lunch and she also got some Disney pins, some Wonderland tea and a big tea cup.  She had been out in the rain too, but said she didn't mind it and was dancing in it when everyone else was running inside or putting on ponchos.  That what she says anyway.

    Abby slept for at least an hour, and we woke her up about 6:00.   Scott had used the time to catch up on yesterday's blog.  Emma got back and we decided to go to dinner together.  Our first thought was to go to the nearby Pop Century resort, which we've never been to, but the rain was still coming down.  We threw the ponchos on-- Scott too, this time-- and just went to the Landscape of Flavors in the Art of Animation's main building.  We've got snack credits on our dining plan that we haven't used up yet, so Emma got a peach cobbler for a desert and Julie and Abby got a mermaid's tail cupcake with a white chocolate mermaid's tail on top.   We had told Abby the same rule that we used with her older sisters at Disney: We don't shop until the end of the day.  She wanted to be able to shop after dinner so we went to the big gift shop in our resort.  She ended up buying a small play set that had a house and figures of Anna, Elsa and Olaf.  She probably has every size figure of Anna and Elsa that they make, from Barbie-sized right on down to these.  But it was her choice and was excited about it.  She had actually seen the same set yesterday at Epcot, but we didn't really shop with her at the end of the day then.  

    At this point, Julie and Abby went back to the room to rest.  Emma wanted to go back to Disney Springs for more shopping.  Scott decided to go along with her.  They took the bus and went to a lot of the regular favorite stores.  The big World of Disney store was the first stop, but Emma had already looked around a lot there this afternoon, so they didn't stay long.  Scott found the Marketplace Co-op which has some more unusual Disney items.  They went to the Pin Traders and the Christmas store as well as the Art of Disney.  We strolled around a little and Scott tried to find a place that might sell batteries for his hearing aids, but didn't have any luck.  They ended up taking the bus back and arrived back at the room a little before 10:00.

    Tomorrow is the Magic Kingdom, so it's going to be a full day.  We had a lot of discussions amongst us about how Abby might react to certain rides, given what we know from Epcot yesterday.  We'll have to see how things go. 

    By the way, Brian and Jenny are now in Florida, not too far from us.  It is the Blue Jays first week of Spring Training and Brian is there with a press pass.  Before we left home, we had texted him to ask them if they'd want to get together with us today, but because they brought their dogs, they didn't think that they'd be able to.  We weren't able to go to them because we're relying on Disney transportation while we are here.