Disney World Trip January 2020- Part 4

Hi everyone! Today’s post will be the final recap of our trip to Disney World. If you missed my previous Disney World posts you can find the links to those here:

Disney World Trip January 2020- Part 1

Disney World Trip January 2020- Part 2

Disney World Trip January 2020- Part 3

In those posts I covered our trip to Magic Kingdom, an afternoon at Ft. Wilderness, dinner at Storybook Dining, our Hollywood Studios day,  and our trip to Animal Kingdom.

 

My last recap ended with Day 4, so this one will begin with…

Day 5

After two back-to-back park days, we were tired and in need of a lazy morning. So we slept in, and I grabbed breakfast to go from the quick service spot at Animal Kingdom Lodge called The Mara. We got a little bit of everything- eggs, sausage, bacon, potatoes, and of course, Mickey waffles. My favorite thing was this side dish that comes with the breakfast platter. It’s called Pap and Chakalaka, and it’s basically grits with this spicy tomato stew on top. It’s an African dish, so it’s super flavorful and SO good…. and Chakalaka is fun to say! One of the many things I love about Animal Kingdom Lodge, is the variety and uniqueness of the food offered at the restaurants there.

We ate our breakfast and enjoyed looking at the animals from our balcony:

Then we got ready for the day and hopped on the bus for Disney Springs. We didn’t have much planned for the day, other than some shopping and eating. We really just enjoy walking around Disney Springs and looking in the different stores. Our tradition is to make our first stop the Daily Poutine so my husband can get one of his favorite meals:

Traditional Poutine! French fries, brown gravy, and cheese curds, with a Canadian beer on the side. Yum! We shared an order and then walked over to the Lego store so Cooper could look around. He didn’t find anything he wanted to spend his souvenir money on, so we left and spent the next hour or so popping into different stores.

After walking a bit we came across Chicken Guy, and I had to stop to try it out. This is Guy Fieri’s restaurant and I had heard that the food was great- plus Cooper is a big fan of chicken tenders, so I knew he’d eat there. We grabbed a table outside and I went in to order. The menu is fairly small- you can click HERE to check it out. I ordered the chicken tenders and my sauce choices. There are over 20 dipping sauces so this wasn’t an easy decision! Then I went back outside and they brought out our food shortly after.

The chicken tenders were great- good flavor, whole pieces of chicken breast, with a light crispy breading. The sauces though…left a lot to be desired. We shared 6 sauces between the 3 of us, and we didn’t love any of them. I thought they were all sort of bland. I love Guy Fieri, and I think I just had high expectations, and it was a bit of a let down. Cooper was happy though! He ate really well and then posed for some pictures.

Next we decided to go on an adventure! We walked over to the Boathouse and bought tickets to ride in an Amphicar!! We’ve wanted to do this for years, but every time we have a Disney Springs day, it’s too chilly to go out on the water. This time we had beautiful, warm weather, so we took advantage of it!

They took pictures of us before we boarded:

Isn’t this little “car” the cutest? I was so happy that we got to ride in this blue one.

We boarded our Amphicar and were ready to go!

It was such a weird sensation when the car drove into the water! It felt like a scene out of a movie or something! It definite goes against your natural instincts. Once we were out on the water, it was super fun!

We picked the perfect time to go out on the water. The sun was just beginning to set.

Doesn’t that picture look like a postcard?? Disney Springs is a beautiful place.

Our Amphicar trip lasted about 20 minutes. We drove all along the waterfront and had a great time. I took a short video of the beginning of our ride:

 

Our Captains name was Andrew and he was so great! He was really nice and friendly, and he didn’t seem to mind all the questions I had for him.

We loved this experience and highly recommend it! Ask for Andrew if he’s working when you go 🙂

Next it was time for our dinner reservation at T-REX! We ate here on our first trip in 2017, and Cooper really wanted to go again. This was a hard decision to make, because there are so many amazing restaurants in Disney Springs…but ultimately I went with T-REX because I know this dinosaur-obsessed stage of Cooper’s wont last long.

We took some pictures out front:

Can you tell he was excited? 🙂

This restaurant is like a Rainforest Cafe, but with dinosaurs instead of jungle animals. Every 20 minutes or so, there is a “meteor shower” inside the restaurant and the dinosaurs move, make noise, there are flashing streaks of light, etc. It’s a great concept! The front of the restaurant has a little store filled with all sorts of dino goodies.

We snapped a few pictures while we waited for our table:

We ended up sitting in on the edge of the “underwater” section, and the dinosaur section. We weren’t super hungry since we’d been munching all day, so we ordered Cooper the kids mac and cheese, a big pretzel with dipping sauces, and we each had a bowl of french onion soup. You can take a look at the menu by clicking HERE.

We ate our food and then Cooper and I walked around and explored the restaurant a bit. There’s so much to see!

The “ice cave” section is really neat! Everything is blue in here until the “lava” comes, then it all turns red. That area is next to the bathrooms- the doors to the men’s and women’s are marked as He-Rex and She-Rex

Isn’t that cute?

This is a great restaurant for any dinosaur lover. The food is pretty basic, but good. If your focus is on making memories with your kiddo, eat here! If your focus is having an amazing, delicious meal, go to Art Smith’s Homecomin’ 😉

After dinner, we walked around a bit more, and checked out some more shops. There is so much to see here- you could spend hours just window shopping. For a full list of the stores you can click HERE.

My two favorite places to visit are:

1. World of Disney, which is a gigantic Disney Store,

2. The Marketplace Co-Op, which has all kinds of fun Disney stuff. This is where I always find my favorite stuff.

On this trip, I picked up this diffuser oil from the Bowes Signature Candles:

This Clover World fragrance smells just like the Flight of Passage ride! If you’ve been on this ride you’ll know exactly what I mean. It’s slightly floral, really fresh, and clean smelling. I love it. They have candles, wax melts, and lots of other items. If you want to check out their website the link is HERE.

Also in the Marketplace Co-Op is the Cherry Tree Lane shop. They have a bunch of cute clothes, accessories, and purses in here. I stopped to admire this cute purse, then I got dragged away by Cooper. While I was out of sight, Cody bought it for me and surprised me with it when we left the store! So sweet ❤

Isn’t it the cutest thing?! I love it. I think it’s the perfect Springtime purse.

Our last stop was the Ghirardelli Store, and then we jumped back on a bus and returned to our resort. We love Disney Springs!

Day 6

The next morning we woke up bright and early! It was bittersweet knowing that it was our last full day in Disney World. I didn’t have time to be sad though- we were headed to Epcot!!!!!

We arrived shortly after the park opened and we couldn’t believe how empty the park was! Hooray for low crowds!

We stopped for the traditional Epcot pictures in front of Spaceship Earth ❤ I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again: I’ll never get tired of seeing this giant-silver-golf ball! I remember seeing it on television as a kid and dreaming of seeing it in person one day. It just seemed like such an impossible dream since as a child we didn’t travel. I mean seriously, we didn’t go anywhere. Traveling was just not something I experienced growing up. So to be in this place, with my husband and our child, is just an incredible feeling, and it gets me EVERY time. I just love it here.

Next, we hopped in line for Spaceship Earth. We had a FastPass for it, but we definitely didn’t need one. There was no line! I was really happy to ride Spaceship Earth one last time before they change it later this year. We love this ride as it is, but I’m hopeful that they changes they make will be good ones.

After we got off the ride we spent about a half an hour in Project Tomorrow, which is the area that you exit into after Spaceship Earth. There a a bunch of interactive games to play, and Cooper loves it here. He played the car racing game for a looong time. I’m hoping that they don’t do away with this when they update the ride, but I have a feeling it will be gone 😦

When we walked out of the Spaceship Earth building, we ran into Pluto! So of course we had to stop for a some pictures:

We continued on to our next FastPass, Test Track! Cooper really loves this one. You get to design your own race car in line, and the ride itself is super fast and fun.

This ride wrecks my hair, but it’s fun!

We continued on all the rides in the Future World area of the park. We did Mission Space, Living with the Land, Soarin’, and The Seas with Nemo and Friends. The lines were nice and short- our longest wait was 15 minutes for Soarin’, which is crazy short!

We spent a long time looking at the fish, sharks, and sea turtles in the tanks outside of the Nemo ride. We love spending time in there- and we always learn something new.

By this time we were getting hungry. We had snacked on popcorn in between riding rides, but we were ready to hit the World Showcase and get some food!

We always go left into the World Showcase section of Epcot. World Showcase is kind of a giant horseshoe shape. If you enter on the left, you start in Canada. If you enter on the right, you start in Mexico.

 

This is so true! Honestly, for me I like to start in Canada for two reasons:

1. Alcohol If we start in Canada, I’m going to start my drinking portion of the day with a Canadian beer. I love Canadian beer. I can also drink a couple and be fine. If I start in Mexico, I’m going to start my drinking portion of the day with a Margarita. I also love Margarita’s, but if I start my day with tequila….let’s just say it’s going to be a short day 😉
2. Food My husband is in the .000002% of the entire world’s population that does NOT like Mexican food. Yes, I’m aware of how crazy those words sound. Also, as you enter the Canada Pavilion, you can purchase some amazing Poutine at The Refreshment Port. Enough said.

So that is why we go left 🙂

I also happen to LOVE the Canada Pavilion! It’s seriously gorgeous. My absolute happy place is to be right here, with my two favorite people, drinking a Molson Canadian beer:

It’s just a really gorgeous Pavilion! We ate our Poutine, had a few beers, and we checked out the Canadian goodies at The Trading Post.

Cooper wanted to do the Epcot Passport again this year, which made me so happy! It’s this little Passport book that comes with stickers for each country in World Showcase. You fill your pages with the stickers to match each country, and then you take it to the Kid-cot desk in each Pavilion. At the Kid-cot desk there will be a cast member from that country that will stamp your passport. They also do a variety of special things, like draw a picture in the book, show you how your name is written in their language, give you a fun fact about their country, etc. We even had someone sing us a song in Mandarin one year!

So anyway, we bought the Passport here at The Trading Post, but I’m pretty sure they sell them in basically every store in Epcot. They also give you a postcard at each Kid-cot station with a little bag to carry them all in.

We really like talking to all the different people from around the world. They’re usually really nice and talkative. This year we picked a question to ask each person as they signed Cooper’s Passport. Our question for all of them was “What is the food from home that you miss the most?” We heard all kinds of interesting answers!

I highly recommend visiting the Kid-cot stations! We have a lot of fun doing this together.

After Canada, we walked next door to Great Britain:

We shared a couple orders of fish and chips from Yorkshire County Fish Shop. If you like fish and chips, stop here for sure!

France was our next stop:

We always go into Les Halles Boulangerie-Patisserie which is a little shop at the back of the France Pavilion where you can get all sorts of french goodies. This trip we got a croissant, chocolate mousse, macarons, and a bacon-cheese roll. All of it was delicious!

They also always have some yummy frozen-slushie drinks on the menu at Les Vins des Chefs de France. I really like the Citron, which is a lemon flavored vodka slush.

We grabbed our food and drinks and got a spot for the Serveur Amusant show. I don’t quite know how this guy balances on these chairs, but it’s fun to watch!

After the show was over, we continued our way around World Showcase.

Morocco is so pretty-but we have yet to try any of the food or drinks from this Pavilion.

Next up was Japan:

Japan is a great Pavilion! They have an awesome candy store with all of this amazing Japanese candy. There’s also the Mitsukoshi Department Store, which is a huge shop filled with all this cool Japanese stuff! They have toys, stationary supplies, the CUTEST erasers, clothes, skincare stuff, purses, household gadgets, etc. Cooper was especially excited because he wanted to see if they had Pokemon stuff(since that’s his latest obsession), and boy did they ever!

That’s the face of a VERY happy kid! He had saved his souvenir money the entire trip in hopes of finding Pokemon stuff in the Japan Pavilion. His patience paid off!

We didn’t eat anything besides candy in Japan, but I had the Violet Sake from the sake cart near the department store and it was one of my favorite drinks from the entire trip.

We continued on through World Showcase- America, Italy, Germany, and China were up next.

We snacked on some egg rolls and chicken curry pockets in China from Joy of Tea. This was probably my least favorite snack of the day.We watched the Jeweled Dragon Acrobats show while we ate and that was pretty cool. They do these balancing acts that were pretty neat to see.

In Norway we stopped at Kringla Bakeri Og Kafe to grab some snacks to enjoy while we waited in line for the Frozen Ever After ride. I had heard how good the School Bread was here, so we tried that and a Viking Coffee. The School Bread is a roll that has a sort of soft bagel like texture, that is filled with vanilla custard, and it has a bit of toasted coconut on top. It was delicious!! The three of us could have eaten a whole tray of those things! The Viking Coffee was coffee with Bailey’s and Kamora Coffee Liquor and it was really good too.

We waited about 20 minutes for the Frozen ride. The queue is cute and there are things to entertain you while you wait:

I really like this ride- it’s a boat ride, you see all the characters from the movie. It’s not fast, but it goes backwards at one point so that’s exciting! The ride picture from this one made me laugh so hard I almost fell over:

 

The expression on my face, compared to the expression on Cody’s face, is too funny! Two people, having very different reactions to the same experience. Lol. I guess I should have ordered him a Viking Coffee too 😉

Next up was the last Pavilion in World Showcase: Mexico!! Cooper got a special postcard from the Kid-cot person for completing his travels around the World 🙂

We took pictures next to the Coco Ofrenda- it’s cool to see the images of Miguel’s ancestors appear and disappear. We are big fans of this movie ❤

Sadly, we had to skip the Three Cabelleros ride because we wanted to watch the fireworks show, and there wasn’t enough time to do both. So we found a good spot and enjoyed the Epcot Forever fireworks show. It was the perfect ending to an amazing day at Epcot ❤

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The next day we got up, packed everything, had a delicious breakfast at Boma(seriously, I can’t say enough about the food at Animal Kingdom Lodge), and went to look at the animals one last time.

Then it was time to head to the airport and fly back home 😦

We had an awesome trip, and it was so nice to spend a week together with no interruptions, no work, and no school! Just fun family time, in a beautiful setting.

I already can’t wait to go back!

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed my recap!