DisneyWorld and Disney Cruise - Day 6 - Bay Lake Pool, EPCOT, Garden Grill

September 2, 2013

We had a long night of dealing with Zoe last night.  She's still not adapting even though we are trying to really take it easy on this trip.  She woke up crying many times last night and it takes a really long time to get her back to sleep.  Unfortunately, she was also the first one up this morning, so she didn't get enough sleep at all.

We let everyone else sleep in and just made breakfast in the room and then headed out to the pool.  All the kids had fun splashing around and going down the slides.  That's the kiddie slide pictured below.  There is a fun big spiral slide too that Jacob, Max, and Ella went on about 20 times. 

The boys made a friend.  Jacob said that their new friend asked like 100 questions.  It's funny because Jacob and Max don't ever ask any questions.  But, I quizzed them and they actually knew a lot about him so I guess they must have actually asked some questions of their own.  By 11:15am, Zoe had already thrown her first tantrum.  She wanted to go in the "bath tub", which is what she calls the hot tub by the pool.  It was another super hot day today and the idea of getting in a hot tub sounded horrible to me.  I tried to talk her out of it which didn't work, so I told her she could go in for 5 minutes.  Well, of course, she had no interest in getting out then and I had to pick her up and take her out of the hot tub.  She threw a tantrum all the way back to the deck chair, so Kyrie took her up to the room to take a nap.  Unfortunately she never did take one, but she was at least a little rested from sitting around the room for an hour or so.
Zoe insisted on using the table as her footstool while she kicked back with her strawberries on the balcony.  Go figure! The one time I offer her a couch and a T.V. show and she won't take it!  










We spent the late afternoon and evening at EPCOT.

For people that have been to EPCOT many times, it was surprising how many firsts we had today.  To start with the kids got their first transportation trading cards from the monorail conductors.  We never knew anything about these before, but apparently they have different ones at every monorail stop and also each boat dock.  And bus stop too.  So of course the kids had to ask for them at each station.

Then, we went to Club Cool where the boys had their first taste of Beverly soda. This is a place where you can try samples of sodas from around the world and Beverly is from Italy and known as the worst tasting soda here. You can tell how they liked it:

Max also had his first ride on Mission Space.

I don't know if he liked it or not.  He said that he didn't like that he couldn't move his arms during part of the ride.  Max has really turned a corner on this trip.  He's always been reluctant to go on most rides and usually we can't get him to go on anything where he can't see exactly what it's going to be like.  But on this trip he has gone on almost everything.

The other first for the night was going to Garden Grill for dinner.

We've never eaten here before mostly because there are so many good places to eat at EPCOT.  Well tonight we finally gave it a try.  I thought it was very good.  The restaurant revolves in a circle and opens up to the Living with the Land ride which is also where a lot of the food comes from.

We had to tell the kids the restaurant was moving after about 10 minutes because they didn't even notice and it's not obvious (especially from where we were sitting) that the ride is visible on the outer rim of the restaurant.  The food was traditional American food (turkey and stuffing, beef and mashed potatoes, roasted chicken, etc), but don't let the plain menu discourage you from visiting this restaurant.  It all tested excellent.  Although it was a little weird seeing the Tilapia swimming around on the Living with the Land ride and then seeing it as one of the dishes.

This is a character meal and I would say that if you want a lot of character interaction, this is your place.  The restaurant is fairly small, so each character ended up at our table at least 3 times.

The kids loved their "Cupcake Cone" desert.

Marc forgot to mention that today is his birthday!  He chose to celebrate it at Garden Grill.  It was a good choice.  The food was fresh and yummy!  The sweet potato fries which were among the foods just brought out as kid picks were the best I ever had and I'm not a sweet potato fan.  I also tried the tilapia and it's the first fish I've ever tried that I would actually eat (but didn't because there was too much other good stuff.)

After dinner the kids had a lot of fun at Journey into Imagination with Figment.

And Zoe enjoyed taking Mommy and Zach on the Finding Nemo ride (for at least the 3rd time on this trip), while the rest of us went on Test Track.