Are there easier ways to help my toddler leave when it's time to go?

My daughter is two and a half and just in the last two weeks she’s gone from an occasional problem saying goodbye to basically every time we go anywhere “fun” it’s a battle to get her to leave.

Examples would be places like her school playground, the park near our house, grandma’s house, the grocery store, and tonight it was a parking garage that has steps we’ve climbed to the top before. Things that used to work for us would be: saying goodbye to everything and getting her to participate, explaining when we’d be back, explaining where we were going next and why, making the next thing sound fun too, giving some sort of countdown (5 minutes, or 3 more times down the slide, etc.), or a distraction until we’re on our way.

If none of that worked, we’d take her hand and walk together, and then pick her up as a last resort. It’s not quite that formulaic, but that’s the basic idea.

None of these really seem to work right now and we end up with the full resistant crying little lady on the ground or in our arms. That’s a whole new level of upset for her. Once we get rolling, we’re back to normal and she’s a happy chatty toddler again.

From some quick searches on the internet, it sounds like this is all normal development and will pass if we stay patient and keep teaching. Hopefully by the time she’s ready for college. That’s good.

The downside is my wife is 6+ months pregnant and can’t chase and lift her as well as she normally would, so it’s becoming a bigger problem. She slipped and fell in the yard while trying to get her in the car the other day while it was raining. Our daughter didn’t want to leave and had laid down in the grass. So I’m looking for some new things to at least try.

So how do we teach, convince or even negotiate with our suddenly unreasonable and willful little friend?