Quiet day outside of the parks

[UPbeekeeper]

I normally treat my WDW vacations as turbo charged missions, where I feel like I have to do everything at light speed to get in every park experience before my last day. Although I don't really mind that pace, for our next trip (first on Disney property) I am tossing around the idea of adding an extra day to our stay and midway through the trip, use that day as a day away from the parks.

Looking for suggestions as to some fun, interesting, or relaxing things to do on that day. We will not have a car, so we want to stay within Disney transportation areas. (We will be using a taxi for 2 days to visit Universal, so I don't want another day of using a taxi.) We will be staying at either CBR or POFQ. It will be my husband and I and our 2 teens.

Some ideas I had are:

Sleeping in & then going for a nice sit down breakfast
Taking time to explore our resort and visit others
Pool time at our resort
Mini golf

We will already be doing some shopping at DTD a couple evenings, so I probably won't want to do more of that. Also, for our family, relaxing doesn't necessarily mean sitting around. We like doing things, but I'm just looking for a day with a slower pace and not running around at warp speed like we tend to do when we are in the parks.

Anyone have any interesting ideas, suggestions, or tips?

 

[Master Yoda]

Depending on the time of year you are going the water parks can be a great day off. If you get to one before opening, you can usually be done by mid afternoon which leaves time for mini-golf, a relaxing dinner and fireworks from the beach at the Poly.

 

[Plowboy]

We've been doing the "off" day for years and boy does it come in handy. We try to do a sit down breakfast (Kona Cafe or Boma), then usually poke around the hotels on the monorail loop. After that we head back to our resort, hit the pool, do some laundry and then get ready for a nice dinner.

 

[erasure fan1]

Yea we do the off day as well. We usually take a day to visit a resort that we have not been to before. We will try their food court or restaurant and then spend the afternoon swimming. Of course there are a few places you cant pool-hop so you should check first. As far as mini golf goes, there are some really nice places (if you have a car) off of 4 that are nicer than the Disney courses.

 

[Nemo14]

You might want to send the teens to their favorite park for a day, (or even a half day), and then go hae a nice leisurely lunch with the hubby

 

[foreverbelle]

A day off is one of those things that we never expected to enjoy until we did it a couple of years ago. And now we really enjoy doing it that we make it a point to schedule at least one day to just chill. Two years ago when I took my mom, we explored what the resort had to to offer. We painted pottery and made jewelery. It was so not your usual thing to do while at Disney, but at the same time is was so extremely relaxing and just made for some great times...I recommend it.

 

[eroyee]

You mentioned this, but, our favorite is exploring other resorts. You can eat at their food court for something different. They are all so different that its a fun thing to do. Especially, Wilderness Lodge.....

 

[YankeeMouse]

When we are not staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge, we visit there. Go down the corridors where the rooms are and out onto the overlooks where there are rocking chairs and enjoy the peace and quiet and watch the animals grazing and interacting. Go to main overlook, sit by the fire pit, etc.; have lunch or dinner at one of the great restaurants. We have even just gone to The Mara, the quick service restaurant for a snack. It's a real feeling of getting away from the normal commando pace of our days in the parks.

 

[Philhar-Fanatic]

We always do an off day right in the middle of our trip. We sleep in as long as possible then go down to the cafeterian and get breakfast and look around the gift shop etc. Then we go for a swim, take a nap, whatever we want. For dinner we go to DTD for Wolfgang's and cookies at Goofy's candy co. Then back to the hotel to be lazy or swim again. The whole point of our off day is to completely rejuvinate for the last half of our week!

 

[3IAlienKid]

I think the main thing is to just not plan the day out to the minute like we might normally do in the parks. Instead, just have a couple things on the agenda, and then take your time doing it. Personally, I think you can have a quiet day at a park, as long as you are not doing the commando thing and rushing from one attraction to the other, just take time to explore things you wouldn't normally do, or stop to smell the roses so to speak and just let yourself notice the details. AK or Epcot are probably the easier parks to do this at.

However if the energy of the parks is still too much, then I would definitely spend some time wandering your resort. Between your two resorts, POFQ seems a bit more quiet to me than CBR. If you've got extra cash, I think they do a horse-drawn carriage between FQ and Riverside, at least they did a while back. You could rent a watercraft or a bike at one of the resorts. One "quiet" thing I've always wanted to do is to check out the Tri-Circle D Ranch in Fort Wilderness.