A Plan is only the basis for change – Day 5: TSM Frenzy

[WiganTony]

Day 5 (04 Aug 12) – TSM Frenzy

Trip Intro/Index here.

As we had all woken up early this moening, we took advantage of EMH at HS. We arrived a few minutes after 8:00am, and immediately went to get Fastpasses for TSM, which gave us a return time of 09:15 – maybe a sign of the times, as back in 2010, we were being given return times of late morning at the same time.

We managed a quick ride on Aerosmith (5 mins wait), but then our 20 minute wait record was somewhat dented by a 30 minute wait for Tower of Terror. We then returned to TSm to use our Fastpass, and on exiting, obtained another FP with a time slot from 1:50pm which fitted in with our plans to visit to Lights, Cars, Action at 1:20pm.

A quick visit to Voyage of the Little Mermaid was then followed by a ride on the Studio Backlot Tour, then hot-footing over to catch the 11:30 Inidana Jones performance. On exiting, we found ourselves at Backlot Express, so took advantage to have lunch. A turkey sandwich, hot veg sandwich and chicken nuggets used up 3 CS credits, with the server letting us substitute bottles of water for the desserts.

The headed over to the Lights, Motors, Action show, which this year we managed to see in full without it being cancelled by storms!! Leaving this show, we then had time to stroll back to TSM where we noticed the FP returns were now 9:15pm, and as we were eating at the Beach Club, thought we would snag some in case we wanted to return to HS later.

On this note, we left HS (around 3:00pm), and made a quick detour to Walmart for some grocery and medical essentials. After a rest, we set off for the Beach Club for our 7:30pm ADR at the Captain’s Grille. We arrived 15 mins early, but were shown in straight away. We had visited back in 2010 and really enjoyed this restaurant, hence us revisiting again. Mains were the NY Strip, Snow Crab Legs, and a Ribeye, with cheesecake, the chocolate hazelnut cake and an ice cream for dessert. The food was very good, as indeed was our server. Cost would have been $122, but we used 3TS credits and left a $21 tip.

As it was only 8:45pm, we decided to drive over to HS, and we had an almost walk-on ride on Tower of Terror, used our Fastpass on TSM (3 times in a day!!), then joined the queue for the 10:30pm Fantasmic showing. In passing, we had booked the Mama Melrose Fantasmic package for later in the week, but decided to try and watch earlier if we could in case of bad weather. The 10:30pm show was only around 50% full, so well worth choosing this show to avoid the queues for the earlier show.

With that, it as a late exit from HS, and back to the room at OKW for our early-ish start at Animal Kingdom tomorrow.