It was about 12:20pm by the time we did the rider swap, but the 2nd parent gets to go through the
Lightning Lane so we knew it was going to be shorter than the hour or so that Matt had to wait (I know he also rode the cars while they waited for us).
DS5 and I settled on Astro Orbiter since I'd never done it and it was nearby, and almost never has a >15 minute wait.
When we got to the "how many" CM, I could see it was one CM training in 2 'newbies' and unfortunately right as we were next to go in the elevators we heard them get the notification that lightning was in the area so we had to bail, bummer. I still haven't ridden this one!
After leaving the line, we decided we'd get lunch inside Cosmic Rays and hopefully wait out the rain. Of course I should know better by now, because what seems to ALWAYS happen to me is that the rain holds off until AFTER we've finished eating/left the covered area - and today was no exception. Matt and DD6 had joined us in no time, we ate lunch inside Cosmic Rays and then as soon as we left the heavens opened up- so we quick darted back under the covered awning of the outdoor seating area and donned our ponchos and rain jackets/switched out of our tennis shoes and into our waterproof Birks. One of our 'go to' areas in MK when it rains is Tomorrowland since they have ample (covered) stroller parking and a decent number of close-by indoor attractions, making it easier to dart from attraction to attraction with minimal down-pour. Apparently everyone had that idea though and we struggled a bit to find stroller parking!
It was 1:30pm by this point, and we decided to pop in to Monsters Inc Laugh Floor. After that show was over, the rain had already slowed down immensely so we felt safe to leave the covered stroller parking and instead made our way back to Fantasyland for what would be our last attraction of the day, Mickey's Philharmagic at the kids request.
We left the park around 2:45pm with the plan being a rest afternoon where we tackled some laundry and went swimming. Thankfully with my mom being there she was able to watch the kids & swim with them while Matt and I tag-teamed the laundry which always makes things like that go faster.
Laundry was a bit of a fiasco in the sense that half the machines weren't working, and on two separate occasions this trip, a machine charged Matt's CC without actually working - so two separate times he had to go to the front desk to get it resolved. One time they gave him his money back in cash/change (??!?!??!) and the second time they told him they would 'refund it to the room' but upon checking our charges when we got home we learned that never happened, so that was a little bit of a bummer but what can you do. At least it was only a couple bucks, but still. Fix those awful machines! The laundry room at AoA by the big pool just looks like trash with leaking machines & pool towels absorbing the water and half of them completely defunct. We did later learn that there is laundry by the Cars suites and those are (according to Matt, I never saw them) much nicer so he did use those later in the trip.
One funny thing that happened while we were doing laundry (and one of the only pictures I have from the afternoon) was that a lone baby sock got left behind and caught up in our laundry so I of course had to "awwwwwww, Matt look", making this face as well:
I do not want another baby, but I sure do miss when my babies were babies!!!! So had to take a picture of how little & cute it was:
At one point walking back to our room with a load of freshly laundered clothing, I happened to spot movement out of the corner of my eye at floor level and spotted one of those lizards inside the hallway, racing me!!
He stopped at some other poor sap's room (note the MASSIVE gap that he most definitely could fit through) so when I got to our room I quickly put a towel down at the bottom of the door to minimize our chances of having a new roommate move in against our will.
Eventually around 6pm we said our goodbyes to DD6 and grandma for mom + dad + DS5's night out! Unlike DD6, DS5 would not survive a night of walking so we brought the stroller, feeling a little silly but knowing he would be whining about his legs being tired in no time if we didn't so it was the right call.
