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| The new kids splash zone at pool |
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| Entrance to pool area |
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| Kids' park |
The resort is quite charming with its New Orleans' influence: cobble stone roads, cast iron water fountains, beautiful courtyards, old style street lamps. It was really nice to take it all in especially when the resort was so quiet. here are a few more shots my son took.
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| What a cute street name! |
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| Cast iron fountains |
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| Such pretty details lining the cobble stone road |
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| Jogging path along the river |
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| Love those views on the river |
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| My little photographer enjoying his morning session with his mommy! |
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| Pretty vegetation around the grounds |
A good hour had gone by and so we decided to head back to our room to see if the rest of the family was awake. On the way, we crossed paths with my dad who was going to the food court for his morning coffee. My parents still had to buy their tickets for the parks so I told him to do so as soon as possible so that I could book FastPasses for them.
Back at the room, my husband and youngest son were eating breakfast in front of the TV and we joined them. After breakfast I dressed the boys and tried to match up my parents FP to ours using my iPad. We were now all set for our day at Hollywood Studios.
We got to the park a little after opening and made our way to the rides I had reserved. We had a FP for the
Hollywood Tower of Terror and my parents, who don't like thrill rides, had a FP for
The Great Movie Ride. We had our phones so would meet up after the rides by texting each other.
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| Yay, Hollywood Studios! |
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| Our first stop! |
Honestly, I was not that thrilled that we were starting our day with Hollywood Tower. I ended walking all the way through the haunted hotel and at the last minute decided to bail on my husband and kids. I just did not feel up to loosing my breakfast so early in the day. I had already done HTT several times before so I knew exactly what it entailed. My parents on the other hand had a nice less thrilling experience on the
Great Movie Ride. I should have gone with them.
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| Hotel built in 1917AD |
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| Lobby |
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| Another angle of the Lobby |
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| My husband and my kids are int the second row on the left. |
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| My parents in front of the Chinese Theater |
We met up and went to see if we could get the kids into the Jedi Training Academie. We got in line next to the Indiana Jones theatre. The line was long and by the time we got to the counter, they only had place for 6:30PM. We decided it was too late in the day since I had a reservation for Sci-fi Dine in at that time. That was another problem, my dinner reservation was made months ago and was only for 4 people and I needed to go to the restaurant to see if we could get 2 more added to the reservation. The restaurant, however could not guarantee anything until later at the time of check-in so I decided to cancel the reservation so that we could have dinner with my parents somewhere else.
Now, it was time for our next FP,
Toy Story Mania. I was able to snag the same FP time for my parents. I know very surprising because of its popularity. I guess we were just lucky. On the way there, my kids saw some children getting their faces painted at these face painting booths located in Pixar Place and begged us to get it done. I told them we would do it after the ride. The problem was that once we got out, there was a line up of kids waiting to get they faces painted. The kids whined a little but let it go as we made our way to Star Tours which was our next FastPass. As we rounded the corner we saw another face painting booth with no line up so I wasted no time. It cost me $18 for ea. kid which I found a little expensive considering it only took the artists 5 min. to complete. The kids got to choose the face of their choice off a panel of faces. Of course they both chose Star Wars inspired faces.
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| The little one getting his face painted |
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| The oldest chose to get the "Darth Maul" face |
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| The finished product |
With the kids happy, now it was off to
Star Tours. Again, I was able to get the same FP time for my parents as us which was great, since my dad is a huge
Star Wars fan and absolutely loved sharing this experience with his grand-sons. We all loved this ride and found the new scenes from the "Force Awakens" to be quite impressive.
As soon as we walked out of the ride we entered the
Star Wars gift shop. Of course, the grand-parents decided they wanted to spoil their grand-kids and get them each the souvenir of their choosing. My oldest chose the most expensive gift: a "build-your-own" double sided light sabre. My youngest choose a much more reasonable gift: a "build-your-own" droid. Because they both chose to build their own toys which required a lot of assembly, we were in the store a good 45 min.
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| The double sided lightsaber |
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| Can be taken apart to make two lightsabres |
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| The build your own droid |
By the time we got out, it was time for lunch. We had reserved
50's Prime Time Cafe for lunch which is a cute 1950's themed cafe with interactive and playful waiters. The restaurant is made to look like a 1950's home with a living room, bar, kitchen and dining room (or should I say multiple dining rooms). There are even black and white TVs playing old reruns of
Leave it to Beaver or
I love Lucy.
We quickly checked in and asked if my dad could charge his scooter anywhere. They had a plug right outside in the stroller parking and so he was able to do so while we ate. We did not want a repeat of yesterday when his scooter ran out half way through the day.
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| 50's Prime Time Cafe |
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| Waiting for our table in the restaurants "living room" |
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| Bar area |
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| Waiting area made to looks like a living room |
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| Us in the "The "kitchen" with one of the waitresses |
We were serve by a sweet waitress whom we had to call "Mom". The concept here is that all the waiters are "family" and you might get a warning to "eat all you vegetables" or "keep your elbows off the table". My dad found that one particularly funny. She took our drink order and we waited for the chef to come out to our table for the allergies. The chef was amazing, making my son a dairy-free milkshake and dairy-free fried chicken for myself, while my oldest got a nut-free sundae for dessert.
We all enjoyed our meal particularly my parents who stated that they would definitely come back here. It was also not bad on the wallet which made it even better.
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| Pretty cool surroundings! |
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| Mom and my husband enjoying their drinks |
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| Mmmm, vanilla milkshake! |
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A little bit of everything:
fried chicken, pot roast, mashed potatoes and steamed veggies |
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| Allergy free sundae |
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| The whole family |
After lunch we decided to go and see the
Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. It was a fun show for the whole family and definitely a good selection after lunch (no stomach jerking rides, thank you!) The kids loved the stunts and the pyrotechnics display.
After a quick potty stop, my son had noticed that his makeup had gotten all smudged during lunch and started to cry. I calmed him down and told him we would try to fix it. So we found another makeup station close by and asked if they could reapply his makeup. As per "Disney policy" they happily agreed and made my son a really happy little boy. Disaster averted!
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| Disney artist reapplying makeup to my son |
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| My son with reapplied makeup, looking good! |
We were all feeling a little tired so I then suggested that we head to the
Honey I Shrunk the Kids Playground. We walked down to
The Street of America took a few pics and entered the playground. The kids played around while the adult took sat in a corner to relax a bit. After a half hour, my parents decided they would head back to the resort for a nap. The kids wanted to stay in the park so we said we would join up with them later for dinner.
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| Playing in the oversized playground |
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| Taking a break while the kids played |
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| Riding on a giant ant |
After my parents left, we walk toward the animation courtyard to see the
Voyage of the Little Mermaid. It is a cute musical number that the kids always enjoy no matter how old they get. Once we got to the courtyard we saw stormtroopers walking around giving orders to the "citizens". They were kind of imposing and scary, not friendly at all, but I guess that is what real storm trooper would be like. When I took a picture of one of them, he looked at me like he was about to point that lazer gun at me and take me down. The boys really found this amusing.
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| "stand back citizen" |
We decided to do one last ride before heading back to the resort. Guess what ride the boys chose to do, yup, a family favourite: Start Tours! We were lucky to get a completely different scene combination from this morning and the little one even got selected as the "rebel spy". He was so happy. As we walked out the kids begged us to go on it one more time. Since the wait time was only 5 min. we gave in and went for another ride.
We headed back to the resort to meet up with my parents. When we got there, my parents, who had taken a nap, had just woken up. We discussed what we wanted to do for dinner and agreed to head to downtown Disney again. My dad however, did not want to wait a long time for a table and since we had no reservations, I suggested we eat a Wolf Gang Puck Express, I had never teen there but I had read tons of great reviews on the place. With that settled, we all got ready for our night out. I cleaned the makeup off my kids' faces, we showered and got changed into warmer clothes. Once ready we headed to the boat dock. We did not get onto the first boat because there were so many people with scooters waiting. Luckily, we did get onto the second boat which came 5 min. after the other left.
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| waiting for the boat to Disney Springs |
Wolf Gang Puck Express was right near the boat drop off and we found it fairly quickly. We went inside ordered our meals and went to sit outside with our table number. The food came out 15 min later piping hot and very plentiful.
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| Menu at the counter |
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| Waiting for our meal |
I had ordered an asian salad called Chinois Chicken which was spectacular. I originally was going to share it with my husband but he had wanted a different salad. I am so glad he did not want to share. I ate the whole thing to myself, yum, yum! It had huge pieces of chicken, on a napa cabbage salad with cashews. The ginger sesame dressing was so good! My husband had the Baby Spinach and Quinoa Salad which he must have liked since he cleaned his plate. My mom ordered a margherita pizza which she shared with her grandson. Thank goodness because that pizza was huge! We ordered mac and cheese for the oldest kid and his portion was so big he had trouble finishing it. My dad had ordered a butternut squash soup to start and cheese ravioli in a tomato rosé sauce which were, in his opinion, both excellent. He also did not finish his pasta dish so my husband did his best to help. Unfortunately I did not take any pics of the food because we were just too hungry and forgot all about documenting our meal. It was by far, our best meal at Disney and was really affordable too. Definitely recommend this one!
After filling our tummies we walked around Disney Springs checking out the shops. We went into a Christmas Store and found some pretty cute souvenirs.
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| Jingle Bells, Mickey Smells! |
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| Love the play on words! |
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| Walking around Disney Springs |
The kids wanted to go to the Lego Store. Of course my parents set out to spoil them again by buying them some pretty cool Lego sets. The kids had a blast with the virtual 3D screens found throughout the store. You can point your Lego Box in front of the camera and the screen portrays your Lego creation all built in 3D. Pretty cool.
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| Photo op with the hulk! |
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| My son showing me how it works |
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| See the 3D space craft on the screen to show what is in the box. |
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| Lego sculpture outside the store |
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| Grandma with her happy grandson after receiving a cool Lego set |
We walked around some more and decided to stop at Goofy's Candy Co. to get the little one a special treat. There was so much to choose from but he went straight to the pre made treats. He choose an Olaf marshmallow treat. The older one did not go in because of his nut allergy so we promised him some beignets back at the resort.
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| So hard to choose! |
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| My Olaf marshmallow treat in a baggy for safe keeping. |
We let him eat half and saved the rest for the next day. It was getting really late and we decided to call it a night. My parents were flying out first thing in the morning and had to leave the resort at 5:00AM and we had a breakfast reservation at Tusker House at 8:30AM at Animal Kingdom. We headed back to the resort and said our goodbyes. The kids were a little sad that their grandparents were leaving but happy that still had so many fun days ahead.
Up Next, Day 5: Animal Kingdom.
Read about the rest of my trip here:
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