If you’ve ever wondered what to do in Orlando when your plans to sunbathe are torpedoed by UK-style weather, stick around!
We both slept OK but were of course awake around 5am. A quick look at some weather apps and out of the window confirmed that the weather today was going to be crap, so the plan was to go to Disney Springs and hopefully get all the gift shopping we always leave to the last minute done nice and early.
Once the hour was more reasonable we headed down to the free breakfast buffet. It is very decent for a freebie and served us well all holiday.
It was proper grim outside.
It was better than this looked. The buffet included breads, bagels, cereals, fruit, a waffle station and a full hot buffet.
We finished around 8am and by 8.30 we were headed for Disney Springs where of course bugger all would be open yet. Indeed Lime Garage, our usual choice, was not open and we had to park in Orange. We then had to hang around for a bit at security until 9am until we were let in, but only after Louise got pulled by security. In front of us was a wedding party, planning to get wed somewhere at Disney Springs and the security checks they were going through may have lasted longer than their marriage. They had boxes of all sorts of stuff that had to be gone through one by one.
Once inside, it was understandably quiet at this time.
We wandered down to House of Blues….
and around the back of it, along the waterfront.
It was lovely just to be here and wander about having the place pretty much to ourselves. I don’t think we had ever walked down this bit of the Springs by the water and we just soaked up the view for quite a while. We slowly made our way down to the other end of the Springs to kill time until most of the stores opened at 10am.
We were sending the girls endless photos, whether they wanted them or not!
We timed it perfectly to arrive at World of Disney at 9.59 and the doors opened literally as we arrived.
As we did all the CMs were lined up clapping us in.
We bought a gift for Emily and a pen for Louise’s job (honestly!). It was an extra wide, chubby pen as clearly she is very used to how that sort of thing feels in her hand.
We continued to wander all the usual stores, such as Trend D and the Coop, dodging the now heavy rain. We invested in a brolly. I’d been asked by a blog reader to look out for a specific calendar and on this, our first try of many, it was sold out!
We were also on a mission to find an Ily Stitch doll for a friend of Louise’s (no, I’d never heard of them either) and World of Disney didn’t have any of those either! Not the most fruitful shopping expedition.
We had a sit down in the covered bit near Chicken George and Facetimed Rebecca for a bit.
Having not much else to do, we drove to Target to see if they had one of these dolls, but of course, they did not. We picked up some bits and that may sound like a quick thing to do, but as you may know, any trip to Target is measured in days. With that done we headed back to the hotel as I had a call of nature to attend to.
It was mid-afternoon by now and we were both knackered so decided to have a nap and relax for a bit. This inevitably turned into a good few hours of not doing a lot and we were so tired that we decided just to grab a Pizza Hut pizza from the shop in the hotel for tea and watch some telly. The weather was still very grim and was not encouraging us to go out anywhere.
Bedtime was embarrassingly early.
We do better than today from here on in, I promise.
Till the next time…..
Mkingdon's Blog 
Thanks for this! I have managed to totally miss the name of your hotel. Where is it you stayed? It sounds like a good choice.
Drury Plaza. 👍
It was a miserable first few days weather wise wasn’t it? My sisters first trip with us and it was a real shame the weather was dull and wet.