Disney Day 4 - A Rest Day (Sort of)

We definitely needed a rest and resort day on Thursday after two busy park days.  I wasn't sure my body would last through another park day without one!  We had a slow morning after our late Magic Kingdom night and slowly worked our way out--Craig and Jacob to the Saratoga Springs basketball court again, and Carter and me to our resort's tennis court.  Carter desperately wanted to play tennis and despite the heat, we gave it a shot.  The first ball I hit bounced right over the fence...oops!  Luckily I was able to retrieve it by sticking the racket under the fence and dragging it to the point I could reach with my hand!  We were sweating like crazy almost immediately but we did our best to play for a while.  We had a hard time getting good volleys going, but it was fun to try.  A few minutes in we got a call that the guys were on their way back already because it was so hot.  We wrapped up tennis a little while later and went right to the pool! 

The main pool is lovely.  The water is pleasantly warm and the waterslide is awesome.  

We headed for the slide almost immediately after finding some chairs.  Between the tennis and going up the waterslide steps over and over again, I'm pretty sure I hit my Apple Watch's exercise goal pretty darn quickly that day!  The slide is actually quite fun, even for an adult.  It swirls around and around and shoots you out pretty good!  We must have gone down about 20 times!  By the end the walk up was starting to get to me, but the ride down never got old!

Here's Carter's exit...

Up until this point I hadn't really seen a lot of the grumpy, overtired kids that Disney is famous for, since kids are out of their routines, missing naps, hot, hungry and bored (in line, at least).  But at the pool we encountered the most frustrating kid.  He was probably three, maybe a young four, and he was doing the slide alone.  His mom was just in the pool waiting for him.  I don't know if she was afraid of sending him down without being at the bottom (but really, just go first) or if she just didn't want to do the slide.  She was a bit overweight so maybe she couldn't do the stairs or thought she was too big?  Regardless, I don't think she went up with him at all because at one point (for reasons I'll explain in a minute) I heard the lifeguard explaining the light system to her after he came down directly on Carter's heels.  There's a pair of lights at the top.  When someone goes down, it stays red until they exit the slide.  When it turns to green, it's safe to slide.  This kid would NOT follow the rules.  He constantly went down without waiting for green, he turned himself backward by the first turn at least a few times, he cut in line, and one time he was walking along the top of the slide, slipped on to his butt, and once again ended up backward.  The misbehavior happened repeatedly and he could have really hurt himself.  The kid just would not listen to any of us, and at one point when he came down right after me (I saw him push off as I went around the first turn), I told his mom he still wasn't following the lights.  She gave him a talking to, which seemed to work for a few runs, but he was back at it shortly after.  I just wished the mom would have come up with him once or twice to teach him the proper rules, but either that never happened or the kid was just a menace.  As difficult as Jacob was last time, I think he at least understood the importance of doing it safely, so I know even tough kids can get it.  It really got on my nerves after a while.  

Craig and Jacob finally joined us at the pool after their boat ride back from the other resort.  I needed a rest from those darn stairs, so I let them all slide together for a while as I enjoyed my chair.  I was getting a little nervous about the weather and it was getting to be a late lunch time considering our plans, so after probably 15-20 minutes we wrapped up and headed back to the villa to change and get ready.  

We rode the boat over to Disney Springs and picked up a boat to Port Orleans French Quarter, our lunch destination. 
   

Boat dock at Old Key West

Port Orleans became a must-do when I saw on the Disney Facebook group I was following that they had gluten-free beignets!  Someone did a post on the Mickey beignets there, and another person commented letting everyone know that they had gluten-free ones too!  I was SO excited!  

Just as we got off the boat, they once again shut down for thunderstorms in the area, so we got lucky.  Port Orleans had a nice vibe.  Sort of similar to Old Key West in many ways, but it felt a bit more fun.  Old Key West is very muted, but Port Orleans had a bit more spice.  We headed for the main building which had a food court with good gluten-free options.  The ceiling decorations were so colorful and definitely my style!
 

Lunch was very good--I had jambalaya, Craig had salmon, Jacob had roasted chicken, and Carter had a burger--and then we ordered our beignets.  They came in sets of three and were really reasonably priced.  Jacob loved his, and so did we!

The regular gluten ones were Mickey-shaped!  The chocolate sauce was so amazing with it.  They just melted in your mouth.

Jacob ate all of his, but the three of us shared one and Carter and I split the other two for breakfast on a couple other mornings.  They were so incredibly good, even left over!

Since we weren't sure about the boats running with storms in the area, we headed by bus to EPCOT so we could ride the monorail.  I doubt Jacob remembered it and Carter definitely didn't, so I thought it might be fun and a nice little scenic ride.  I also wanted to do the newer Skyliner on this trip, but with the weather threatening I wasn't sure that was wise to attempt.  I didn't realize that there were actually two monorail circuits, so we ended up on the EPCOT one, which was neat because it goes in the park and you get a glimpse of all the pavilions, but I sort of wanted to do the one that goes through the resorts too, since I hadn't done that one since I was a little kid.  But I couldn't figure out where that was, nor did I think my family would be up for another quest to find it.

As I said, I wanted to ride the Skyliner, too, and I knew there was a stop at EPCOT, but I realized it was at a different park of the park and I didn't think there was a way to get there from where we were, so that would have to wait for another day.  So, we hopped back on the bus and went back to the resort.

By that time the weather was really threatening, so we couldn't go back to the pool or do anything else fun that night.  We had planned on ordering in from an outside restaurant for delivery, but then Craig napped late.  I felt bad waking him up and it shifted our timeline and everything sort of went to crap from there.  Craig and Jacob ordered from Firehouse Subs, but Carter's and my Popeye's order had to be canceled (like a half hour in) because they were out of a couple things.  Side note: I love their food but their management sucks--the same thing happened to me at home a couple weeks ago, which was why we were trying again, only to have the same thing happen.  Most other options were either closing soon or going to take forever.  Eventually we could only settle on a Wawa order (who knew they were in Florida?) so we could get some extra snacks as well.  Carter ate leftovers from the previous night (he had a giant footlong chili cheese hot dog) and I had a Wawa pretzel and some leftover fancy BBQ chips from our second night's dinner.  It was a bit of a mess but we definitely needed the down time.  We did enjoy watching this silly game show called "Generation Gap" that had a lot of ridiculous answers and left a toddler to pick the bonus prize for the family--either a brand new SUV or a cool Little Tikes dinosaur ride-on...and of course he picked the toy!  We definitely got a few laughs out of that.  

It still felt like a shame to not take better advantage of the pool or other amenities, especially since we knew the next day would be a full one and the weather could screw us over again for our last chance for resort time on Saturday evening.  Jacob's patience with the go-go-go was waning and I knew we had to do what we could to keep him happy.  I couldn't do much for the next day except once again send the boys off early, but I was holding out hope for our last day that we could do a little more non-park activity as a family.  But first...EPCOT awaited!