The Jarvii 
Today was a rest day, and by rest we had a Chef Mickey’s character breakfast reservation at 10:50am. We kind of got to sleep in, but we still had to catch a bus to Magic Kingdom by 10am. We ended up making it right in time for our reservation because our bus took longer than usual to get to Magic Kingdom. And then it is about a 10-15 minute walk from there to Contemporary Resort.
This character breakfast I think was the best overall for the kids. The characters were really great and made my toddler squeal when she met Minnie and Mickey. The kids also ate food without having to be cajoled because who can say no to Mickey Mouse waffles?
For adults, it was ok. My husband liked that there was a tofu scramble option. Just make sure to order that off right off the bat with your server, otherwise they’ll give you default normal scrambled eggs. I feel like that brisket was out of place for breakfast/brunch. And I wasn’t a fan of the cheesey hashbrown casserole thing; it’s like a loaded baked potato hashbrown. I personally wasn’t impressed, but hey we were just there for the characters.
After our brunch, our goal for my son was to take every mode of Disney transportation offered to resort guests. We have been riding the bus all week, so he was quite excited to try everything.
First, we took the monorail and hopped over to the Grand Floridian to check out the huge gingerbread house. The Grand Floridian is such a gorgeous Victorian style resort. If I had the money, I would totally stay here. It was tastefully decorated for Christmas with a huge tree across from the gingerbread house. I guess Disney knows this is a popular place to resort hop to because they had two photographers there to take pictures, one in front of the gingerbread house and the other in front of the tree.
From there we hopped back onto the monorail again to the Transportation and Ticket Center to catch the other monorail to Epcot. And here was my first mistake: I didn’t realize that the Skyliner was actually inside Epcot. Thankfully a nice cast member told us that we could catch a bus to nearby Hollywood Studios to catch the Skyliner there.
Luckily the buses drop you off right by the Skyliner for Caribbean Resort. The kids loved being high in the sky and watching the other decorated gondolas. They kept screaming about seeing different Disney characters and wanting to ride the ones with their favorites.
Once we got to Caribbean Resort another cast member directed us to the closest bus stop to get to Disney Springs. It was a bit confusing and a long walk, but we made it. And we didn’t have to wait long for the next bus either.
We arrived to a very chaotic Disney Springs. You thought the parks were busy with the crowds and the queues, freaking Disney Springs was the worse. It was probably a combination of Disney and it being so close to Black Friday perhaps? There were a ton of great sales going on (snagged me a jacket from SuperDry), but there were tons of people. I was slightly turned off by it. There was a line to get into the Lego Store, that’s how crowded it was.
We arrived a little before 3pm. Once the clock struck 3pm I joined the virtual queue to meet Santa. My group had an estimated meeting time with Santa for 8pm! Hopefully the queue moved quickly and we would still be around, but I knew we would not last till 8pm there with a toddler.
We decided to go into World of Disney, which was packed. There’s a lot of stuff here you can buy at the parks too and stuff we didn’t see at the parks. My daughter decided to spend the rest of her gift card money on a stuffie Moana to add to her collection. I ended up buying a Disney World shirt for myself.
When we left, we noticed the line to the Lego Store was a lot shorter. In the end we waited maybe 5 minutes before we were able to go inside. The store was definitely less crowded than World of Disney since the Lego folks were limiting the number of people inside. This actually made the experience of looking around a little less stressful.
My husband immediately put the kids on the wait list to build their customizable Lego mini figures–estimated wait time, 2 hours! We looked around for about 30 minutes and were actually surprised there wasn’t as many Disney related Legos. We also went to Legoland New York back in the spring, so this obviously pales in comparison to that shopping experience.
Afterwards we were beginning to get a bit hangry. My husband decided to get a tea and snack at Starbucks. I ended up buying the kids gelato because the wait for Gideon’s was 2 hours long! By the time we were done with our ice cream, Lego texted my husband to say that we were up for mini figure making!
My made our way to the exit of the Lego Store to show the worker there the text to say we could do our mini figures. He let us in and we made our way to the mini figure section. After you pay they assign you a computer. There you can design your mini figure any way you want. You can pick from a collection of their stamps, you can add text with their array of fonts, and/or you can draw whatever you want on the front and the back of your mini figure. Funny enough, they don’t have any Disney specific stamps, so my kids just typed out Disney World on their mini figures. My kids were quite creative and it took them about 20 or so minutes to finish. Once you tell the computer you are done, the Lego people load up blank mini figures into a special holder thing and a giant printer prints it out. The worker there actually told us it’s a modified poster printer. While you are waiting for your mini figure to be printed, you pick out the head, hair, and an accessory. Once the printing is complete, you build the mini figure and you’re done. It was a unique experience that the kids enjoyed doing. Definitely go there first thing before you go shopping for sure.
Once we were done with that we caught a boat back to our resort, the final mode of Disney transportation. This was actually the longest wait we had for transportation at Disney, but it’s a boat. It was quite relaxing. Unfortunately at that point it was really dark, so it was hard to see our surroundings. But definitely a cool mode of transportation my kids enjoyed. I also got a push notification that we could see Santa while we were on the boat. 🙁
Our boat dropped us off at the main part of our resort, which was convenient because we immediately went to the cafeteria to get a quick dinner. The toddler went off to bed shortly after, and the two older kids decided to have a swim in the pool since they are heated. They enjoyed going down the water slide. We did that for an hour before we called it a night.
What was billed as a rest day actually ended up being quite a tiring adventure in the end. I’m glad we got to ride the different modes of transportation. And building the mini figures was pretty cool. I probably would have skipped Disney Springs if I knew how crowded it was! I feel like we could have spent more time at our resort and enjoyed the amenities instead. You live and you learn I guess.
