Day Off/Disney Springs

Sunday was the 5th day of our trip.  After three park days in a row, we were ready for a day off!  And after a late night at Fantasmic the night before, we were ready to sleep in.  And after checking into a new resort late the night before, we were ready to do some exploring.

Our plan for the day was to sleep in, swim, look around the resort, meet my aunt, uncle and cousins at Disney Springs, and relax!  I think we were pretty successful at all of those things.

Audrey was up around 8:15 (which is sleeping in a lot for her!), but Isla was still sleeping.  So Daniel and Audrey snuck out of the room to do some exploring and to hopefully let Isla sleep as long as possible.  Isla woke up shortly after they left, but it gave Daniel and Audrey time to walk to the cafe in El Centro and get doughnuts and to stop and build a little sand castle on the beach!

After that, we went to the pool.  But I think I posted all of those pictures in my earlier Coronado Springs post!

12:00 pm-- We got on a bus to go to Disney Springs, where we were going to meet my family for lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express. 

Disney Springs (formerly Downtown Disney) recently got a makeover and a huge new addition, which is basically an upscale outdoor shopping mall. Here's a pic I snapped as we were walking through the new Town Center section.

It was great to be able to catch up with Todd, Debbie, Rachel and Kyle over a yummy lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express!  We were having so much fun chatting, that we really didn't take any pictures.  Even Isla was talking everyone's ear off.  I'm not sure if that is due to all the progress Isla has made or due to Aunt Debbie's persistence in reaching out to Isla and making sure she can keep the title of "favorite aunt" with the great nieces!  Daniel did get a couple of pictures of Isla talking to Todd and Debbie and showing them all of our Disney pics.

We have a tradition of taking a picture with this Donald and Daisy in the Disney Pin store.  This is the 4th time for Audrey to pose in this spot.  Donald and Daisy haven't changed a bit, but Audrey sure has!

 Only the second time for Isla to pose, as she wasn't born yet in 2011 and she couldn't stand up yet in 2012.  She wasn't a huge fan of the picture in 2014, but this year...she was all about it!  Hooray!!

Then Isla walked to the other side of the store and wanted to pose with Mickey and Minnie.  OKAY!

The one thing I wanted to do at Disney Springs was try out the Cupcake ATM at the Sprinkles cupcake shop.  My girls are such big fans of cupcakes, I thought they would think it was really cool to get a cupcake from a machine.  Well, we didn't look closely enough at the map, and in the new Disney Springs area, we got a little lost!  We did some extra walking, and I think the girls were worn out by the time we got there!  That made the Cupcake ATM experience a little underwhelming.  But still, how often can you say that you got a cupcake from a Cupcake ATM?  We weren't really hungry, so we saved the cupcake til we got back to the resort.

We said our goodbyes to the Webb family, and then made a pit stop at the World of Disney store.  The girls each had $20 to spend on a souvenir.  So why not throw them into the world's largest Disney store and tell them to pick something?  That sounds like fun, doesn't?  So many choices!  The good news is that $20 didn't really buy all that much in the store, so that limited their choices quite a bit!

The store is insane.  It has multiple rooms and just about every Disney item that you could dream of.

The girls finally decided on music boxes.  But then they had to pick which one!  They both ended up with Frozen music boxes in the end.

This is Audrey being spit on by Stitch in front of the World of Disney store.

There was a small Zootopia display, and the girls wanted their picture taken here.

The skies and the radar were looking ominous, so we decided it was time to get to the bus stop and get back to the resort.  Here's where you can learn from our mistake!  The map I had said that there was a bus stop in the Marketplace section and a new bus stop in the Town Center area.  The bus that took us there dropped us off in the Town Center, but my understanding was that the bus stop at Marketplace was also an option.  We were a little closer to the Marketplace, so we walked to that bus stop.  Only to find a sign that told us we needed to use the Town Center bus stop, on the opposite side of the place!  I was so annoyed, and wish I would have known better.  Now, I do...and so do you!

We did make it to the bus stop with only a few sprinkles of rain on us.  The girls spent the whole bus ride playing their Frozen music boxes over and over again.

 It was about 4:00 when we got back to the resort.  We finally got to try our cupcake!  Unfortunately, it wasn't the cupcake we ordered.  The girls had picked  a strawberry cupcake with strawberry icing, but we ended up with a banana cupcake with strawberry icing.  It was okay, but they were disappointed that it was the wrong kind.  So maybe a cupcake ATM isn't so great after all!

Before we left on our trip, a couple at church had given us lanyards and Disney trading pins for the girls.  I kept forgetting about them, but finally gave them to the girls that night.  They immediately started trading them with each other and were excited to be able to trade with cast members on our last two days in the parks.

The pins were great fun!  Until Isla stepped on one that had fallen off a lanyard.  And got it stuck in her foot!  Yikes!!  It wasn't stuck that bad, and I could get it out, but it was very traumatic for Isla.  She refused to walk or put weight on her foot for the rest of the night.

So we sent Daniel and Audrey to get us dinner from the food court (Pepper Market, not a good experience!), while Isla and I cuddled up and watched Toy Story.

And that brings us to the end of our day!  We put the girls to bed at about 8:30, while Daniel and I stayed up and studied the weather forecast.  Tropical Storm Collin was predicted to hit the next day, and the weather forecasters were full of all sorts of dire predictions.  We finally decided to just stick with our plans and go for it, rain or shine!

Up next:  Our day at Epcot