On Thursday of competition week I woke up at 7 am without an alarm. I decided to go to the fitness center at the hotel and work out. It was a pretty nice fitness room, but unfortunately there were no mats that I could put on the floor to do my usual leg exercises. I did some arm exercises with hand weights and some leg machines. Not the best workout ever, but at least I got one in.

When I returned to the room Andrew was just getting ready to leave for work, so I said goodbye to him and then worked until Madeline awoke. I was happy that she had a day to sleep in, because she had a super early call time the next day. After she woke and got ready, we took an Uber to Disney Springs for a day of shopping. It was extremely hot there, and I was glad I’d put on a sun hat. We started at the Christmas store, the Lego store, and the huge Disney store, then walked down toward what I think of as the “farther” part of Disney Springs. Back when it was Downtown Disney I think that part had a special name, but I’m not sure it does anymore.

It was so hot we decided to grab a small lunch so we could have some time in air conditioning. We went to a place called Paddlefish, that was on a boat or at least a building that looked like a boat. The food was fine, but the highlight of the lunch for me were the WikiStix creations Madeline made while we waited for our food.

After lunch, the two best stores we visited were the M&Ms store, where Madeline made custom M&Ms, and the Coca Cola store. I was telling her how in the 80s everyone wanted to wear Coke merchandise with their Gap jeans and their Air Jordans. Not that I had any of those things! We got her a cute zippered sweatshirt just as it was time to meet Andrew for an early dinner.

We ate at a place called CityWorks because I had made reservations there. It had an extensive beer menu and cheeseburgers for Madeline, so it seemed like a good idea. We had good food and good service. After dinner we shopped a little more, but unfortunately the one store we really wanted to go to — a hat store where Andrew had bought a great hat in 2022 but lost to strong winds on our New Year’s cruise — was closed until July 1, the day we were leaving Orlando. Boo.

Back at the hotel, Madeline relaxed in the room while Andrew and I went to the adult pool. It was much less horrible than the main pool. Since we’d split a small dinner at CityWorks, we were hungry again and stopped at Fast Break, outdoor by the bar area, for a little something. We got fried cheese curds — a weird thing to see in Florida — and a couple beers.

When we got back to the room I took a look at her costumes for the next day and decide to get the iron out. One costume, for O Fortuna, included an underskirt that was pretty wrinkly. Since the routine involved a lot of throwing the skirt around, I wanted it to look good. It was a long skirt that went all the way to the floor and was very full. It took me nearly an hour to iron it!

We called it a night early, because I had to set a 4:45 am alarm for Friday for an early call time. Also, sorry I didn’t take very many pictures on this day. It was too hot!