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2024 Recap Part 1 - Festival of the Arts, Droid Depot, & Camp Dolphin!

Writer's picture: Beth HortonBeth Horton

Updated: Jan 19

Happy New Year, my friends! We're making a resolution this year to spend less (WAY LESS) time on social media this year, and we're going to take it old school with blogs and newsletters. I thought I'd start with a round up of our 2024 travels! January 2024 started out with a quick trip to Orlando for Epcot's Festival of the Arts, our favorite festival for shopping for original artwork, as well as eating lots of artistic treats! On this trip, we stayed at the Walt Disney World Swan Resort for the convenience of getting to and from Epcot & Hollywood Studios via Friendship Boat. We squeezed a lot of "firsts" into this trip, starting with La Creperie de Paris, which I LOVED! Writing this in January 2025, I'm a bit annoyed with myself for not eating there last month when we were in Epcot again.


Lilly agreed to test out Camp Dolphin, which is a great drop-off kid club available to anyone staying in the area, for a fee. Lilly had fun doing crafts and playing games with the staff, while Francis and I went to dinner at Kimonos and got a drink at AbracadaBAR. This was a low-crowd time of year, so Lilly was the only kid. This made me a little nervous, especially because the area of the hotel where the club is located feels remote, and it took awhile for the staff to answer the door. On one hand, I was nervous about her being the only kid, but on the other hand, it does seem very secure. I'd probably recommend this to families/groups with more than one kid where the adults want to go out to dinner in the Epcot area, but it's not ideal for an only child.

Back at Epcot, some of the artistic treats we tried on this trip! They are all very "for the 'Gram" but none of them were particularly memorable a year later. I will say that the "cookie palette" with the paintbrush is something Lilly has gotten on two different trips and as far as she is concerned, it was dreamed up by Paul Bocuse himself. She talks about nothing other than that one giant cookie.


Lilly also FINALLY got to build a droid at Hollywood Studios on this trip! She and I often travel without Francis, and I made her wait for a trip where he could come with us. That gave her plenty of time to save up her money, and it was everything they hoped for! I'm really glad we waited for that to be a daddy/daughter experience. HOT TIP: I highly recommend the R2 unit for kids over the BB unit. The droids turn themselves off to save battery, and the BB unit has to be opened up to turn it back on, which is difficult for kids to do. There's a fun play area outside of Droid Depot that lets you test out a droid if you don't have your own, or bring your new droid to interact with others.


Most of our Orlando trips are short, only 2-3 days, but as you can see, we manage to pack in a lot of food & fun! Easy to do when Orlando is a quick 2 hour flight from St Louis, and the Orlando airport is so easy to navigate, has lots of transportation options for getting to and from resorts, and has one of the best USOs to hang out at when we have a late night return flight. Ready to plan your next theme park visit? You can use my quote form or use the email link at the top of the page!

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