I have NEVER battled (on any pet site), because it has never appealed to me, but I really want to give it a go to keep up with this plot... Yes, I'm about a week behind, but I want to catch up. Anyway - that's besides the point.

All my pets were Starving/Depressed, and thus could not battle, so I put them all into Lakeview Resort as I thought this would be the fastest way to get them all fed and happy. I have 14 pets - that would take a loooong time to do manually! This was about 30 minutes ago and I have not seen any change in their food/happiness levels yet. My question is this: how long does this typically take to get them to a point where I can battle with them?

I'm not sure how long the resort takes to make your pets fully happy and bloated. But if you're in a hurry to battle, you can feed your pet manually (there's lots of pumpkins in the donation center), and play with it (or give it a minion). You don't have to feed/play with all your pets to battle, just pick one (or a few if you want) pet to be your battle pet. It's easier (and cheaper) to train this way as well

I think you only need to feed it one thing (ie as long as it's not "Starving") and play with it one time for it to be able to battle.

I don't know about playing, but you can feed it 9 things I believe, for it to go from "Starving" to "Bloated"

It takes about an hour for it to register. :3 The different 'levels' of the Resort are differentiated by how many times an hour the pet is fed and played with. It takes an hour for them to click that the pet's been played with and fed.

And minions are also in the donation center, or a super cheap Blanoir will keep your pets happy even without being played with.

- The resort has been glitchy lately. I'm not sure if it's been fixed yet, but that could be the issue.

Thanks for all the help everybody! I beat each of the battle challengers 5 times over! ^-^