Day Six

Saturday was our first day off, a chance to rest our poor, aching feet.  We were also looking forward to getting a chance to explore more of Disney World instead of focusing just on the parks.  We took our time getting up and headed to the pool to swim.  It was mine and Niall's first time in the pool, and we had a great time.  The boys finally went down the water slide and that quickly turned into pretty much the only thing they wanted to do in the pool.  We brought lunch back to our room for the kids so we could get dressed and so Niall could have a nap.  We also got our laundry done.  The laundry facilities were nice, though it's annoying at how much it costs to dry clothes.  We ended up bringing one load back to our room only half dry, so for a day or so we had clothes strung up all over the room drying.

After naptime, we took the boat to Downtown Disney.  The boat ride was pleasant, but the capacity of the boats is so low that it was a really long wait to board, even at a slow time of year.  Doug and I still hadn't eaten lunch yet so we grabbed sandwiches at Earl of Sandwich.  I'd heard great things about it and the food was good, but I was a little disappointed with how long it took to get our food.  After eating, we went shopping.  We hit Once Upon a Toy first, where Niall got a monorail and some Disney buses, Fiona got some Little Mermaid figure, Lachlann got a Duffy, and we all filled up a box of Mr. Potato Head pieces.  I'd read a tip to bring your own Potato Head so you don't have to waste space in the box on that, and it was a great idea.  We got a ton of unique pieces.  We headed towards the Lego store next and checked out all the impressive Lego displays.  The kids had a great time posing for pictures with them.

Dinner was at T-Rex, which was a lot of fun but also easily the loudest restaurant I've ever been in.  Fiona even used her noise-canceling headphones the whole time we were there.  Like I said, though, it was a very fun restaurant and our waitress was fantastic.  She explained how we could make the Dining Plan work so we could get the Chocolate Extinction dessert (even though we were stuffed from our meals, we wanted to get it just for the chance to see it).  It was really impressive - four huge slices of chocolate cake, eight scoops of ice cream, Butterfinger crumbles, and in the middle, a big dry-ice volcano.  Super cool.

After dinner, we actually went into the Lego Store.  The kids were in heaven, and even Doug and I had fun.  We were most impressed with the Digital Box display.  You pick a Lego set - the sign says it has to have over 250 pieces or something, but we found that not all 250+ piece sets worked.  But anyway, you pick a box and hold it in front of you while you stand in front of a video screen, and all of a sudden you see your Lego set come to life and enact a little skit on top of the box you're holding.  We all loved it.  We also looked around in World of Disney and got some souvenirs for family back home.

By that point it was dark and the dance party had started, so we found a spot and the kids had a good time dancing.  Well, all the kids except for Lachlann, who refuses to dance when anybody's watching.  But it was fun and the DJ was entertaining.  We were getting pretty tired, though, so we headed towards the dock and specifically, Goofy's Candy Company.  I had printed out coupons for the kids and stuck them in the giant gift bags of Disney stuff we gave them at Christmas, so they were really excited to go.  The candy store was overwhelming with a huge array of treats.  Everything looked delicious and we all had a hard time picking out just one thing.

It wasn't that late when we got back to our room, but we were pretty tired so after a few nibbles on our treats, we pretty much just crashed.  For a day off, we'd still been pretty busy!