The Little Trip That Could - Disney Day 5

Friday was our dedicated resort day.  Carter and I definitely needed a break after days on our feet, and Jacob wanted a full family resort day.  He'd had a ton more resort time this trip than last year, which was his goal, but it was nice to have a family day.  

The plan was to head to Port Orleans to get him gluten-free Mickey waffles.  Unfortunately, I woke up around 6am with a bit of stomach distress.  Nothing horrible, but I had to get up and use the bathroom, at which point I realized that the spicy chicken I had eaten the prior night was making a rather spicy and uncomfortable exit.  It just left me feeling a bit off, and after that I went back to bed for a couple hours since I was still super tired from three straight resort days.  

Well, by the time I got up and ready and we got moving, it was a little before 10am.  I saw this giant lizard on the way to the bus stop.

I took this picture too.  I loved the colors of these flowers.  It reminded me of my hydrangea, but with crazy tie-die colors.  My app tells me it's a flame of the woods, a species of West Indian Jasmine.  

Luckily, the boats were finally back up and running.  It wouldn't have felt like a trip without a boat ride!  It's hard to tell if they're faster than the buses, but it's definitely more pleasant.  

Little did we know that at this moment we had just passed by our future final night room at Saratoga Springs, right behind us!

This was a rare sight--if you look close you can see people on the top of the balloon!  I have no idea what they were doing up there, but it did not look safe to me!

Unfortunately, it ultimately took us an hour to get to Port Orleans, at which point I realized breakfast ended at 11am.  Nooooo.  Jacob was so mad, and his disappointment and hunger combined to create the ultimate "hangry" moment.  He was refusing to eat anything, but was claiming he was so hungry he was going to be sick.  The rest of us got whatever food we could find as we were starving as well.  I apologized repeatedly but it didn't matter because I had messed up and it was done.  I tried to remind him that I actually had an excuse for running late because I didn't feel well...unlike last year where I asked for us to get an early start every park day and Jacob made zero effort to make it happen.  So now that the shoe was on the other foot and something was important to him, why was I all of a sudden a jerk for not feeling well and not realizing breakfast ended at 11?  Eventually Craig convinced him to settle for some chicken fingers, and suddenly he was all chipper and happy again.  But I was honestly still in a terrible mood because I am so freaking sick of being blamed for ruining every vacation.  I can do everything else right and prevent dozens of other issues, but I mess up one thing and get berated for it, every time.  It's exhausting and I'm honestly over it.  I was so annoyed I didn't even think to get beignets to bring back with us.  Boo.

On the way back to the resort, we had a funny moment.  We were on the boat heading from Port Orleans to Disney Springs and we were coming alongside a golf hole.  We saw a group teeing off, and a rather large, wildly bearded guy came up to the tee.  He waggled for a full 30 seconds before swinging the club, and then promptly hit the ball probably no more than 150 yards way off to the right, directly into the Sassagoula River and right between our boat and another one about 3-4 boat lengths behind us!  He totally would have hit our boat if we were running about 20-30 seconds behind!  Oops.

We went back to our room and changed and packed up to head to the pool.  It was still a nice day for at least the next few hours before the daily dose of rain, so we figured we'd enjoy it while it lasted.  I probably should have done the slide a few more times, but I was tired and I was trying to give my feet a bit of a break.  I had one sore spot on my baby toe that was trying to blister.  It was still so much better than last year when I had half a dozen problem areas.  My new sandals were a godsend and I was a bit more proactive with the moleskin and bandaids, not to mention a couple rounds of hot tubs and ibuprofen!  Eventually the boys went to play basketball for a while and I just rested in my chair while the dark clouds tried to roll in.

I had a couple lizard buddies on the next chair.  You may need to zoom in to see them, but as long as they stayed on their side, we were good!

While they were playing basketball, Carter hit a half court shot!

We ended up walking back to the villa , and I took a quick detour on the golf cart path to snap a picture of the adorable Mickey head tees on the course!

The clouds were getting pretty threatening by this point and a storm was imminent.  I took some time to sit out on the patio and start thanking everyone for the birthday wishes the previous day.  They were wonderful, but it took forever!  But I had a nice spot to do it, at least!

Eventually the rain did come, and boy, was it a doozy!  I think we got more rain in a couple hours than we did from the entire hurricane.  I saw totals around two inches for the hurricane, and when the flood warnings came out from this storm, it was saying that over 2.5 inches had fallen, with another possible inch coming.  

And, of course, it all came during dinner time.  It was coming down so hard for so long, and it seemed pretty much impossible to go out, even in ponchos, to head to Disney Springs to eat.  We were really hoping to get back there for some final souvenir shopping, particularly for Carter and me.  Since we couldn't find a shirt to match Craig and Jacob's, we were hoping to get back to the store with the biggest variety of cheap shirts where you get a discount on two.  I decided I was better off getting a youth large shirt for myself so we could get the deal, but the store we checked in Magic Kingdom didn't have what I wanted.  So we really wanted to get back there but it was not looking good!  

Before we had a problem on our hands, we decided to order in via Grubhub or Doordash, but MAN, were they expensive.  We really need to do better with room food, and this was yet another moment where a car would have been huge.  We could have gone out and bought any dinner we wanted in all of Orlando, without the crazy $25+ upcharge.  We hesitated and tried to think of any other solution.  Ultimately we could have tried to get to Disney Springs via bus, and while the food might have been better for around the same price, it wouldn't have been any cheaper and could have been really frustrating to battle the rain.  So, we sucked it up and ordered, waited quite a while, and of course the meal was missing Carter's drink and chips.  Ugh.  Most expensive Firehouse Subs EVER.

Fortunately the rain finally slowed down and we were able to get to Disney Springs.  Since I have a lot of day pictures of the Lego dragon, I did a night one this time.
 

We went to the gluten-free bakery again, the Lego store, World of Disney (where Carter and I got our shirts, yay!), and a couple other stores.  We didn't stay long because it was already pretty late.  When we got back, we ended up taking the selfie that didn't work out as well last time, partly because I was mad we didn't get a family picture by that point in the trip.  We hadn't gotten one this time either and we were out of full family park days, so it wasn't looking great again.  But we did a bit better this time...

The walk back to the villa was so peaceful.  I love looking back toward the hospitality house.  The lights and water are just so lovely.

I was rather sad this was our last night at Old Key West.  The next morning we were switching resorts, off to a new one for the first time ever!  Both of our previous trips had been at Old Key West only, and Craig and I were offsite previous to that.  This time, once we had finally scheduled our flights, Craig went back to reserve the room and the last day was unavailable at Old Key West.  We had the tough choice of where to go--Animal Kingdom's Kidani Village was tempting for something totally different--but we decided on Saratoga Springs.  It's Craig's mom's favorite and it was still close to food at Disney Springs and Port Orleans, not to mention that they had two pools with slides!  We were originally hoping that Saturday could have been a resort day so we had time to explore and enjoy it, but I think four straight park days would have been a lot so Saturday was EPCOT day for Carter and me while the boys could do their own thing between the two resorts.  We headed back for one last sleep before the big move, and one last park day for Carter and me!