Day 4, Part 6
A little shopping in the IASW gift shop was in order after we got off the ride
MDD was a bit pouty that I wouldn't buy any of her birthday presents in front of her, one more day kiddo!
We had a Fastpass for Splash Mountain coming up, so we took a leisurely stroll along the newly opened Big Thunder Trail, stopping briefly to check out a couple of turtles swimming around in the water
When we got to Splash Mountain, the lines were chaos. It took a bit to even find the Fastpass line because it was insanely long, so we assumed it was part of the standby line. Nope. The actual standby line I think was well over 2 hours, and we were in the Fastpass line for around 30-35 minutes. DH had a few episodes of DuckTales saved to his phone, so the girls spent most of our time waiting watching that
Loved the lighting at this time of day!
The girls were ready for a snack, and they all wanted to go swimming (ODD was in the front of the log and got decently wet, so naturally after complaining about being wet she wanted to go back to the hotel and use the pool, lol). It was insanely crowded in the parks at this point, so grabbing some popcorn and going back to swim became the plan for the evening!
A little detour for a sour watermelon churro. I prefer the original, but it was fun to try and the girls loved it!
Taking a seat outside the Golden Horseshoe while DH waited in the line to get popcorn.
After DH returned with the popcorn, we headed back towards the hotel. As we got to main street, Fantasmic! was still going on (or maybe it was a second parade? I can't remember if there were two on the schedule that day or not) so we got to see a bit more of that as we walked along the sidewalk towards the exit.
I left my camera in the room for the rest of the evening, so no pictures for this part.
We spent about an hour at the pool before the "I'm hungry" whining started, so back to the hotel to change we went. It was close to 8 o'clock by the time we made it into Downtown Disney, and quickly found out that we'd seriously understimated how crowded it was going to be. Every place we checked had over an hour wait for a sit down restaurant. We decided we might have better luck somewhere in one of the parks, we headed to DCA to try out Smokejumpers Grill since I'd heard several good things about it from friends and her on the boards.
There was only a handful of people there, so we got in line and got our food really quickly, which was great - but the food, not so much. I'm giving them a pass for it being near the end of the day (I think we ate at close to 8:30-9pm) but it was like they had quit keeping up the condiment/topping bar a few hours earlier. Everything was really picked over, emptied out, wilted lettuce, etc. My burger wasn't even cooked in the middle, and DH's was pretty pink too but not as bad as mine. They were great and replaced my burger with a much more cooked one though. The girls all enjoyed their meals though, and I decided I'd just get something from Earl of Sandwich on our way back to the hotel. I'd probably try eating there again around lunch time, but not near the end of the day again.
After we had finished eating, we talked about going on some rides either in DCA or going back over to DL - but the girls were all pretty worn down, so it was easily decided that we'd head back to the hotel. On our way out of DCA, they were just started the fireworks, so we stopped and watched a bit of the show from the esplanade before heading back. DH took the girls ahead to the hotel while I stopped in and grabbed another quick gift for MDD at WOD that I'd seen in another shop earlier while she was with me. Another quick stop at Earl of Sandwich for a holiday turkey, and I called it a night.
Coming up! MDD"s birthday!