Disney/Universal 2013: Day 2

Missed Day 1?  Read about it here.

Sunday
Once again, since we only had about 6 hours to go on Sunday, we slept in as long as we could.

Growing up, my parents were big proponents of waking up early to go on road trips.  Of course, we usually went on 10-12 hour trips to visit my grandparents in NJ, so getting an early head start was necessary if you wanted to get there while it was still daylight.  We would leave at 6 AM to go on trips, sometimes even earlier.  Tim is not like my Dad in that respect.  If he has the chance to sleep in, he takes it, even if it means driving until the wee hours of the night.  Mostly I'm fine with that philosophy.  I, personally, don't like to drive on the interstate at night, but if Tim is doing the driving then I usually don't mind.  But, back to our story...

We had a continental breakfast in the hotel and left about 10 AM.  We made it to Orlando around 4 and checked into our resort, Pop Century, Disney's celebration of pop culture.  As I told Tim, this hotel is gaudier and more over the top than our last one (Port Orleans, French Quarter), but it's also cheaper :).

The hotel is divided up into buildings by decades: 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's.  We were in an 80's building with Pac-Man on the side.  It was pretty cool.  Here are some of the sculptures we passed on the way to eat every day.

Ah, the Big Wheel.  It reminded Tim of Big Wheel races he had when he was a kid.

 One day at the pool, they had big wheel races with the kids.  It was a nail bitter of girls versus boys.  Despite almost being too big for the thing, Julie helped the girls pull out a win as the anchor driver for the team.  Yay, girls!

Giant fuseball players.

 These pictures of our room were taken the morning we left so please excuse the mess.  We were trying to get everything packed up and the thought occurred to me that I hadn't taken any pictures.  So here they are.

The room wasn't overly big but it worked for us.  I do have to admit that after spending a week in the same room as all the rest of my family, I was ready for my own house again and for children being in their own rooms and for privacy.  At night, we would put the kids to bed, then drag the two chairs into the bathroom area and close the curtain.  Then Tim and I would play on our computers and whisper.  That was as private as it got, people.

I must give a shout out to the best app ever invented - White Noise Lite.  Totally awesome!  You pick your background noise (oscillating fan is our favorite) and voila, sleepy kids.  The kids would be loud and wiggly in bed until we turned that app on and, boom, they were out like a light.  Here's a little tip for you: use your child's tablet to play the white noise and you can make sure they aren't sneaking in Netflix after bedtime.

The pool outside our building.  This was the computer pool.
There was also a flower pool and a bowling pin pool at the resort.

Hard to see, but that's a stack of floppy disks at the end of the pool.
Our kids use our old ones of those to make bases for their Lego people.

The giant Walkman on the side of our building.
Feeling like your back in the 80's yet?

All the stairways were Rubix cubes.  Only one of them was solved.

After a little unpacking, we headed to one of our favorite Disney spots, Downtown Disney.  We did some shopping and ate dinner at the Wolfgang Puck Express.  It was very crowded at Downtown Disney that night, a little unnerving for me.  I was afraid of losing my kids.

Sunday lunch at Cracker Barrel on the road.

Dinner at Wolfgang Puck's in Downtown Disney.
David is showing off his new Disney pin lanyard with a Star Wars pin on it.

That was it for Sunday's entertainment.  We went back after dinner to get lots of sleep before our first day of touring began.  Stay tuned for Monday and Universal Studios.

Read about Day 3.