Day 2 - No Park Day (Continued)
I always enjoy the boat ride from Riverside to Disney Springs. We stopped at French Quarter along the way to pick up some more guests, then headed along our way.
Once we got to DS, we went through security and made our first stop at the Christmas store. We always get a Christmas ornament for every trip, with the year on it. We liked a couple, but ultimately decided to wait until June when our entire crew is there. This was a shorter trip without everyone, so we felt like June was the better trip to represent with an ornament.
After that, we headed into the Disney Co-Op store. I again looked for my shirt, but no luck. After that we headed to the World of Disney. This store is always so chaotic, and I honestly don't love it. It really doesn't have anything unique. It's the same as everywhere else on property. That's my biggest complaint about merchandise... every store has essentially the same items. I wish they'd be more unique to their location and offer a bigger variety. There have been years that I don't like the lineups at all and don't buy anything. I guess that saves me money, but when I'm at Disney, I'm willing to spend!
I did spot my shirt at the World of Disney, but it didn't have my size. Shocker, shocker. And it was on a rack that said the shirt was not available in any other sizes. At that point, I had accepted the fact that I wouldn't find the shirt in my size, and I'd have to hope they had restocked it for our June trip. It happened to a shirt I was looking for last year. They only had the very smallest and very biggest sizes, but nothing that would fit me. Ultimately, I never got that other shirt last year, but they had it this year all over the place. However, I didn't like it as much this year, so I didn't get it.
After the World of Disney, we headed towards the Lego Store. My mom went in, as my brother and SIL enjoy Legos, but she didn't end up getting anything for them. While she was in there, my dad and I went to Uniqlo, because my dad forgot his belt at home. So he snagged a new one.
After that, we were deciding what to do for supper. It was about 3pm, so we hadn't eaten since 10:30. We weren't really hungry, but we knew we needed to eat later on. We started looking at dining reservations, and there were some available at DS, but we didn't want to just kill time there for another couple hours until suppertime. So we ended up heading back to the boat. Once we got to the boat launch, the Riverside boat wasn't there. But the French Quarter one was, and we decided to take that and then walk back over to Riverside. And that was a good decision.
We got to French Quarter and went to explore the main building a little bit. We stopped in the gift shop first. I like their gift shop. It's small, but it offered more unique merchandise than many of the stores we had seen. And guess what??? They had the shirt in my size! Of all the places on property I had looked over the past 24 hours, it was the tiny little shop at French Quarter. I guess the smaller amount of guests helped out. I believe I got the last in my size. So it ended up being good luck that the Riverside boat wasn't there, and we decided to take the French Quarter boat instead.
We then looked through the lobby and food court, then walked back to Riverside. We stopped at Fulton's General Store, which is Riverside's gift shop. Normally we really like this store, but it again had all the generic merchandise that we had seen everywhere else. We didn't feel like it had a great selection this time, and thought French Quarter's was better, despite it being about a third of the size.
We walked back to our room, and realized we still had not figured out what we were doing for supper. We looked at dining reservations again, but couldn't do anything in parks since we didn't have tickets. We also didn't want to do a lot of bus transfers again. We felt like we've been doing nothing but riding buses and taking transportation around property, so we wanted something easy. The best options were eating at the food court or Rainforest Cafe at Animal Kingdom. We opted for Rainforest Cafe. I know, it's not the best food, but we went for it. So for the third time in two days, we took a bus to AK.
We got there and had to wait a little bit before we were seated. It was pretty busy and chaotic at the check in table. The hostess said she'd let us in early if we gave her a good Google review. She said that to about half the people who were checking in, so we didn't give her a review. We didn't love how she was doing that. It was apparent that she was not employed by Disney.
Once we got to our table, we ordered the cheese curds as an appetizer. As Wisconsinite, the cheese curds were a little disappointing. We can get much better ones pretty much everywhere we go up here. It came with some onion strings, which were very good. My mom and I got burgers. They were decent, but they lacked seasoning. My dad got the lasagna, and he said it was good. Ultimately, it was a lot more expensive than the quality warranted, but you're paying for the experience and ambiance. And we haven't been to a Rainforest Cafe in years, so we don't regret it.
After our meal, we just missed the bus back to Riverside. However, another one came about 15 minutes later, and we were on our way. On the bus ride back, a bunch of us near each other figured out all of our home states connect in the Midwest. There was Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, and North Dakota. Pretty cool. We were able to help a mom and her family figure out what bus stop to get to, as this was their first time at Riverside. They normally stay at the Poly with her parent's DVC points, but they were coming without them this trip.
We got off at the main building and went for dessert at the food court. I got the Thumper carrot cake for Easter. It was pretty good, and I'm not a big carrot cake person.
We then walked back to our room for the night.
Up next... Day 3!
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