Disney World Part 3

Thanks for following along on all the details of our Disney trip! Our third day at Disney was our rest day, and believe me - we needed it! The night before we stayed at Magic Kingdom super late, so we were excited to an opportunity to sleep in and enjoy the sun at the pool. Our rest day also happened to be New Year's Eve! We did this on purpose to avoid the inevitably large crowds at the parks. 

Our little fish was so excited to enjoy the pool! All Disney World resorts have life jackets available for little ones, and this one fit him perfectly. It was great to not have to pack one in the suitcase! 

We spent the morning exploring the Art of Animation resort, which is located right next to Pop Century. This resort was so fun! They had large statues of characters around the resort, areas for kids to climb on, and generally a lot more theming than the Pop Century resort. I think that the room sizes are very comparable (if not the same) as the Pop Century resort. 

Sammy and Mater! 

Sammy and Lightening McQueen! It was so fun to see all of these characters, and totally made me want to stay at Art of Animation for our next trip. 

After swimming and a little pizza by the pool, Sammy took a long nap while I got to enjoy some solo time reading at the pool. This was a heavenly couple of hours! 

We took a bus to Magic Kingdom, then took the monorail to The Contemporary Resort for our dinner reservation at Chef Mickey's. This was our first character meal, and we couldn't wait! 

While I don't have much to say about the food at Chef Mickey's, it was worth it to see Sammy's reaction to the characters! It was still fairly early in the evening at this point, so we hopped aboard the monorail to visit the gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian. Each year, the kitchen staff constructs a life-size gingerbread house. When you walk into the lobby of the Grand Floridian, it smells just like freshly baked gingerbread. Delicious! This was such a fun thing to see. 

Can you even believe how beautiful the lobby is? It's absolutely on my bucket list to stay at this gorgeous resort. 

Although it was New Year's Eve, we decided to end the night early and get back to Pop Century. We wanted to get to Animal Kingdom bright and early the next day. Happy New Year!