A day off

Temps hit the 80s today, perfect for a day by the pool. Today was a planned “down-day” after 3 park days in a row. Our legs are getting stronger. While Nole and I both hurt from the neck down when we laid in bed last night, we woke up feeling pretty good.

We started out the day with sleeping in a bit, eating pancakes and French toast, and packing up the room. It’s moving day! We’re leaving our Disney resort for a Universal resort. Before we left, we swam in the pool at All Star Music, our home for the past few days.

Esme really wanted a picture with the Three Caballeros since the first day so we made sure that happened.

Nova and Esme made a friend in the pool and her mom and I chatted for a while. They’re frequent travelers and this is their third trip to Disney this year, and they live states-away from here! They also happen to be lovers of Wisconsin and visit there every summer as a family.

We were sad to leave our new friend but they had plans to get to today too. Nole did a little laundry while we swam and when that was finished, we grabbed lunch at the hotel. We kept our swimsuits on because after an Uber to our next hotel called Stella Nova, we hung out at their pool until our room was ready. Stella Nova is one of Universal’s new value line hotels. They opened in January of 2025. Although they have done some updates since then, All Star Music has been open since 1994. We were really wowed by the look of this hotel. Here are a couple of professional photos I found online.

They have a bar called “Nova”.

We liked the pool here. First of all, they have a hot tub (our last hotel did not). It’s not super hot but I enjoyed it anyway. They also have complementary pool toys…

…although Nova was not happy about all the bites in them. We did find some later that were practically bite-free.

Esme’s hair was floating!

Esme made a call to her cousin Alaina. She’s getting to that age where it’s harder to travel because she misses her friends! She’s in the distance below, making her private phone call.

Meanwhile, Nova rested and wondered if our room would ever be ready. It was still more than an hour before official check in time but lucky for her, our room was ready just after this picture was taken and she and Nole went to collect our bags from luggage services before going up to the room. Esme finished her call and went up shortly after. I stayed to soak up more sun and read while I waited for a grocery order to be delivered.

We got two rotisserie chickens this time and a salad. I ate a lot of chicken, we all did, but we still had chicken and the entire salad leftover. We packed it up into the mini fridge though and will eat that later. We got some more snacks to take to the park since we were getting low on some favorites. We also ate 6 eggs and a loaf and half of bread already on this trip so we stocked up on those too. I bought one drink cup plan that we can use at the parks and refill all day ($22 for the first day and $13 for each day after) so I didn’t buy any more drinks. We will bring extra cups along to share the drink plan. We can refill every 10 minutes with soda or slushies. Yum!

After an early dinner and a rest, I wanted to go to City Walk, Universal’s shopping and nightlife district. Disney has one too, called Disney Springs but we didn’t make it over there.

Disney Springs has a store with all things lefty that I forgot about until we were already at Universal. Darn! Esme would have liked to check that out but most items are available on Amazon so it’s probably not worth the $35 cab ride back over there. A lot of things are hard to use for lefties that one never thinks about. Of course there are scissors but even knives, vegetable peelers, glass measuring cups, manual can openers, rulers and many other tools are made for right handed people.

Anyway, we hopped on a shuttle to City Walk. We looked at the shops, had a treat, and walked around a bit.