Our drives to and from Disney World went surprisingly smooth. Bapa and Dendi let us borrow the van, Keira has become a much better traveler, and Eli loves working on his color by numbers and activity books. All in all, our 8 1/2 hours of travel time each way were relatively uneventful, thankfully.
We tried a new hotel this trip, and we love our new find. This time we stayed at Pop Century. While it's very similar to the All Star hotels that we've stayed at before, it's a little newer. Disney ironed out all the kinks and Pop Century has a bigger, more leisurely feel. The dining hall is larger and better designed, there are three pools and two water play areas for the kids, and the whole hotel complex is situated on a lake. The lake even has a path that runs along one side that made for a great nap walk destination for Keira and I. We enjoyed hanging out at the hotel so much, that we only spent two of our five full days at the parks. The other three days we spent hanging out around the hotel. The hotel was so big that I carried Keira all around in the sling, and Eli spent a lot of time, while not searching for hidden speakers, on Daddy's shoulders.
Eli and Daddy spent hours at the dining hall. They happily spread out and did all of Eli's Disney puzzles -- both new and old. For Eli's main souvenir, he chose two boxes of puzzles. Each box had four puzzles inside. One box is filled with 24-piece puzzles that Eli zoomed through himself. The other box contains 200 piece puzzles that Eli needed some assistance and guidance to complete. Eli was in heaven.
Keira and I spent a lot of time exploring. She's absolutely in love with walking. She walked all around the dining hall and adjoining store while I followed. She also loved the kiddie water fountains that we passed on our way to the dining hall. She called them "bah" or "bah--oo" (bottles) which is what she calls everything pertaining to water. To begin with she was absolutely fearless around all the fountains she found. There are two water play areas at the hotel and we also spent a lot of time at Donald's boat at the Magic Kingdom. She plunged into the water and didn't even close her eyes when the fountain squirted her in the face. By the end of our stay, she was slightly more reticent. While she continued to approach the fountains, she would be slightly tentative putting her hand in at first and tried to avoid being sprayed in the face.
We also spent a lot of time playing at the park. Everytime we passed the playground at the hotel, Keira would wiggle in the sling or my arms, point and repeat "pah" over and over again until I responded. One time, I made the mistake of going to the playground during the hottest part of the day, which was HOT (temps were in the 90's for our whole trip). When I took Keira down the slide on my lap, I burnt my legs and worried about her making contact with any part of the slide. After that, when I didn't want to make a pit stop at the park, usually because of the temperature, I took another route to the dining hall, so she hopefully wouldn't catch a glimpse of her beloved "pah". Both kids loved playing with the pebbles.
Keira walked all over the park and even tried her hand at climbing. It wasn't successful, but it was adorable nonetheless.
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