December 27, 2018
[-- Trip Index --]

Today was our 9th day in WDW, and after a bit of a late evening last night with MK fireworks, we didn't rush too much in the morning. We had a simple breakfast in the apartment, and headed to Epcot around 8:30.

Never get tired of driving under these gates!


We were all admiring the topiaries on the way in.


And my mom took some photos of me and Michael in front of Spaceship Earth:


Next up was a pee stop while Myla snacked in the stroller.



And then we headed to our first FP, for Turtle Talk With Crush at 9:30. We'd be spending part of this park day with my brother and his family too, but since we knew from previous experience that they're always running late, we had agreed to just meet up at the ride, instead of at the park entrance, so Myla didn't have to spend as long waiting around. We headed over to the Seas Pavillion, noting that it felt WAY less busy than the previous day in MK!



My mom was wearing the Dory themed top I'd gotten for her, so we had to get some photos of that too, of course!



And as they were posing, out of nowhere a familiar little blonde boy stormed up and threw himself in my mom's arms lol - my brother and his fam had arrived!



The kids were super happy to see each other again. We went in for Turtle Talk - this was cute, but a bit difficult with Jesse. He doesn't like sitting still, and most importantly, he doesn't speak English (he's Dutch). So he didn't understand what was going on, and didn't want to ask any questions because he couldn't understand what everyone was saying. Our daughter Myla *does* speak English (we're raising her bi-lingual as I'm Dutch, my husband is Northern Irish, and we currently live in the Netherlands), so this made a big difference - she was listening and engaged. This ended up being a bit of recurring theme with Jesse - any shows or experiences with talking, he got confused or annoyed at not being able to understand, which only made his patience for such things less than it already was!

Luckily the experience didn't last too long, and soon enough we were done and the kids were watching the manatees in the aquarium:


Everyone loved the aquarium, and the rest of the family was all amazed there even was such a big aquarium inside the park! We soon headed back outside for the FP entrance for Nemo, our next ride.


The CM at this ride was really funny - as we were heading in, he started whistling and shouting, notifying everyone that "WE FOUND NEMO!" on account of Myla's dress haha. We ended up hearing that joke about half a dozen more times during the day lol.

Everyone enjoyed Nemo, and we spent more time in the aquarium afterwards, while also having snacks and baby Nina getting a bottle.



Such a great place for the kids - Myla and Jesse loved this equally and did a fair bit of running around spotting different fish.

Our last FP for the day was at noon, to meet Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy at the Epcot character spot. All 3 kids love the characters, even Nina has never shown any fear of them, so there was a lot of excitement in the short queue, and we got some lovely family photos:









It was a bit chaotic too, because although we wanted to keep family pictures of our separate families, the kids kept running back and forth, so we ended up with a fair few photos like this lol:

Oh well - that's life with 2 2-year-olds in your party haha! This was such a good value of a FP for us though, 3 characters in one go and very happy kids!

After this we decided to split up. Steven and Ramona wanted to hit World Showcase and find more characters for Jesse to meet (they ended up doing Donald, Snow White, Jasmine, and Alice too that afternoon!), while we were hungry and wanted to go get lunch at Liberty Inn and have a leisurely stroll around World Showcase. My mom especially was tired already, the amount of park days were catching up with her, and she wasn't up for chasing more meet n greets. In retrospect, this was the downside of staying offsite. If we'd stayed onsite, I know she would have taken the bus to the hotel and just relaxed in the afternoon, allowing us to do a bit more. But since we were off-site and here with the car, she was kind of stuck with us, and changed our plans to just a stroll and food for the afternoon.








My mom LOVED seeing more of World Showcase. We didn't actually go into any of the pavillions, as she was tired and we were all hungry, but even walking around like this she enjoyed! Myla had a nap in the stroller, and I did mobile ordering for Liberty Inn. The food was super yummy:


Really nice burgers and salads! After a long break sitting down, we continued around World Showcase:






and we actually ended up running into my brother and family again in Mexico haha! After our lap of World Showcase, my mom was exhausted, so we headed home around 2PM. Back at the apartment, Myla got playtime in the bath, and I genuinely can't remember what we did for dinner - I think maybe that was the night we got take-out pizza delivered? All together, a fun day with a bit of a slower pace than the past few days. Crowds in Epcot were honestly not bad at all, compared to the past few and next few days!

Sounds like another lovely day and the Nemo dress is fantastic.

Lovely day and great outfits. Loving the Moana ones as well as Nemo. 2 of my favourite Disney films 😁