Day 11 - Friday the 13th - Part 1 - Last Day Blues
It was time to sing the "last day blues", as Friday was our final day in the parks. Couldn't believe our awesome vacation was coming to an end. Oh well, let's not dwell on it, and let's go have some fun instead!!!
We weren't sure how we wanted to plan the morning part of our last day, but we knew that we wanted to finished the day off with a bang at the Magic Kingdom, so we had previously booked FP+ Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train for that evening. (We had wanted to experience 7DMT at night in the dark.)
My parents had planned to visit EPCOT that morning, so we decided to tag along with them in their mini van.
We arrived a couple minute after they opened at 9am, and the lines to get were pretty long. No worries, we've been to EPCOT a couple times already this week. This is just icing on the cake!
Gotta soak it in, this is the last time that we'll be here for probably two years at least (we are doing
Disneyland next summer instead of WDW.)
I love this photo of Buddy and Princess.
We didn't have Fast Passes for any rides that morning, and we weren't in a rush to get in a line for Soarin' or Test Track. So we decided to start with some treats from Starbucks and then some shopping in Mouse Gears.
I don't really remember what everyone got, but I had a half iced tea/half lemonade. It was just OK.
And then we headed past the fountain over to Mouse Gears. (We had another one of those 20% off coupons from the back of a QS receipt that we thought we'd put to good use.)
Stephanie wanted to look at the Vera Bradley Disney bags. She thought that she wanted to pick up a backpack, so we looked at them trying to find the best placement of Mickey and Minnie on fabric.
After a few minutes of looking, that bag directly in front of her caught her eye. She wasn't initially interested in another purse (as she already has some Disney bags from other brands.) But... after taking a closer look, she decided that's what she wanted. Cool bag!
After my parents finished looking around, they decided to move on with their plans for the day. (I think they went to meet up with Cassie and her family.)
We spent a little while longer... I ended up getting a t-shirt, and pickle got a couple Frozen action figures. And we got a shirt for my dad as a thank you present.
Time to check out...
Stephanie had agreed to let Pickle play in the fountains in between Future World and the World Showcase for a little while. But first, a photo of our lovely Princess...
Pickle had a blast getting wet!
Our next item on the agenda was to stop over at the old Odyssey building. The World Cup was just starting, and they had converted the building into "World Cup Central". They put national flags on the Windows outside, and then decorated the inside with a World Cup theme. And then they played the soccer games on giant screens inside. This was the first time that they did something like this, and the first time that I had been inside the Odyssey building since the late 80's. We aren't soccer fans, but we wanted to go check it out just for the unique experience.
If you have no idea what the Odyssey building is, it's basically the old/unused building between Test Track and Mexico.
A close up of some the flags.
We heard that they served food inside, and it was about 11:00am, so we thought maybe we'd just eat lunch there.
They were supposed to open at 11am, but they were running late getting everything all set inside. So we waited a few minutes, and then it started raining.
Having a nice comfy place to hang out while the rain passed turned out to be great!
When you first enter, they had a standings board on the wall.
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And then inside the main area, they had mostly table-based seating, but there were some leather sofas up front.
We were the first ones inside, so we went straight for the sofas! Yahoo!
Dude, this was really nice! It felt a little odd, though. Maybe a little too calm/posh for being inside a theme park... After we grabbed a spot, Stephanie went up to see what food options they had.
It turns out that it was mostly snacks, so she came back with popcorn and a super pretzel (to tide us over until we had a more traditional lunch.)
So we relaxed and watched the action on the big screen for a while. Checking every few minutes to see if the rain let up. But, it never did.
So we donned our rain gear and decided to head over to Mexico for lunch.
We decided to stop at the La Cantina de San Angel for lunch. Everyone but Stephanie and Buddy had already eaten there on this trip, but it was close and required the least amount of walking through the rain, so it was a no brainer.
All of the outside covered seating was full. We wondered where we would sit, until I notice the door just to the right of the service windows that said additional seating inside. It turns out that this was a back entrance to the San Angel Inn Restaurante... and that they use the inside seating as double duty during the day when the main restaurant isn't open.
It wasn't obvious to us that this was available, and it wasn't obvious to others as there weren't too many people inside. I felt bad that there were so many people fighting for seats outside in the wind and rain, when there was ample cozy seating inside... but I wasn't going to waste too much time convincing everyone to come inside.
Check out these cool lights. Such a cozy atmosphere in here. Another hidden gem!!
The kids picked out a nice window seat looking out onto the lake.
And they had fun goofing off while we waiting for Stephanie to come back with the food.
Stephanie and I split the beef tacos.
Very tasty! I think that I enjoyed this a little more than the chicken tacos earlier in the week.
I don't know why, but I didn't get any photos of what the kids ate. If I recall correctly, but Buddy and Pickle had the chicken tenders and Princess had chicken tacos.
All and all, it was a nice lunch. This isn't even close to being one of my favorite QS in restaurants in WDW (to be honest I'd be happier at something like a Chipotle), but wow, did we score on getting a nice place inside and away from the wind and rain!!!
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