Day 8: Orlando to Chicago
picking this back up for a few last notes, if I can remember...
We took our time getting off the Fantasy, but we were still back in the terminal ridiculously quickly. We had 8 hours to kill until our flight. We'd gone over a lot of options, asked people on this board, etc, and finally had come up with a plan. It wasn't perfect, but it made sense at the time. I can't remember why we decided the exact combo of car rental and transportation that we did, but probably because of what was available on points.
Anyway, we took Disney transportation back to the airport. Our checked bags had been whisked away the night before, and we wouldn't see them until Chicago. We had two backpacks and one roller board with us as carry-ons. Once at the airport, we picked up a rental car (with appropriate child seats - certainly part of the reason we went with a rental car). We then headed to the Florida Mall. Our plan was to spend time at the Crayola Experience.
We got to the mall around 9:30, again having taken our time getting to the rental car. We spent the half hour until Crayola opened playing outside the entrance and then on the indoor play structures. This was fine for our 4 year old, but a little basic for our 6 year old. Plus, he was sad to be off the boat!
The Crayola experience was totally fine for the day. We left at lunch time to go to Shake Shack, which is on the other side of the enormous mall, so that took up almost an hour. We were able to leave and come back no problem. The kids did almost all the activities, though they spent the longest time in the giant play structure (where it is very hard to see your own kid, and there were some who were way too little to do it safely in there unsupervised, so I found it quite stressful to watch! the kids had a blast, however).
We called it a day about 3 hours before our flight, stopping in the gift shop to get each kid a new activity book and choose a present for a birthday party J would be attending the next morning. We could have stayed longer and still made our flight, but we were pretty much done with Crayola and the mall by then. We also got rear ended on the way back to return the car, so it was good we allowed the extra time (though it was so minor we didn't really need to do anything). We were still at our gate well before we needed to be, but the kids were content to do their activity books and sit still.
Back on the plane and home!