Day 2 at Hollywood Studios: Are We Actually Permanent Guests in the Hollywood Tower Hotel?
Plans for the Day:
ADRs: Boma 9:50; 50s Prime Time Café 5:15
FP+: ToT 1:05; Star Tours 2:55; RnRC 4:20
Once we’d finished up with our multiple rides on RnRC, we hit our FP+ for ToT again before doing a little shopping and grabbing a snack. We did a little shopping in the Villains in Vogue store. Chris is a big fan of Jafar and Maleficent and I always think this store has some neat stuff in terms of clothes. We still didn’t really feel like buying much yet though. I prefer to sort of survey the parks once and pick out some favorites before actually coming back through and buying something! We headed empty-handed (for now) to the ABC Commissary and just split a burger since we would be eating at Prime Time Café in just a couple hours. The burger was just enough to satisfy us, and now we could head for our FP+ for Star Tours. I’m a really big fan of Star Wars, and have been ever since I was little! We came to Disney in 1998 after Episode I came out and I remember being really excited to ride Star Tours. I was 9, ok, don’t fault me for liking Episode I then! I’ve since learned better.
We hopped on quickly with our FP, though there wasn’t too much of a wait. I had ridden Star Tours when we came for our long weekend back in 2012. I remembered being somewhat motion sick then, but just thought I was having an off day. NOPE. As soon as the ride started this time I thought “oh dear god, make it stop.” I honestly couldn’t even tell you which scene we had since I just spent the whole time telling myself “you’re fine, you’re not going to get sick.” Thankfully it is a fairly short ride. It makes me sad because I’d really love to ride it multiple times and see all the different scenes. I don’t know what it is about it, other 3D experiences don’t bother me, and even Mission Space doesn’t bother me! Unfortunately, I will definitely not be riding Star Tours again in the future. No pictures from back there. Apparently we were just kind of cruising through haha.
Once we were done with Star Tours, we hoofed it back across the park to check out the Beauty and the Beast show! I’m hard-pressed to pick just one favorite Disney movie, but Beauty and the Beast would probably be close just in terms of musical numbers. I have to say, I really enjoyed this show. I’m usually not a real big fan of shows, which I may have mentioned earlier, but I thought this was very well done. The singing and dancing was all excellent!
By the time we’d made it through the store, it was time for us to use our next FP+, which was RnRC! I feel like I might be repeating myself in this trip report... Can you tell we’re fans of thrill rides? I never say no to roller coaster, even if we’ve already ridden it back to back earlier in the day! I promise future days will have more variety. To be far though, there really aren’t THAT many “big” rides in Hollywood Studios.
Once we got off RnRC, it was 5:00 and we hustled over to 50s Prime Time Café for our 5:15 ADR. It was just starting to sprinkle when we walked into the restaurant, and ended up downpouring while we were eating, so I was thankful we did an early dinner! I had eaten at 50s Prime Time on my trip 10 years ago and remembered enjoying it then. We had a phenomenal waitress then who was really great with my young nephew, and I remember loving the theming. I have to say, I still love the theming! My grandma lived in the same house from 1959 until 2010 without ever changing a thing, so the décor in the restaurant looked pretty familiar to me haha.
We only sat down for a minute before hearing “X kids, come on, dinner’s ready!” and heading back to our table. We had a nice waiter who was good with the theming while not being over the top for a pair of adults on their honeymoon. We had a large table with about 5 kids and three couples at the table next to us though, and got to watch him “torment” them a little, so that was fun. I was pretty happy with my meal, thought I sort of wish I’d ordered something different. I got the fried herb and garlic cheese in raspberry sauce for my appetizer and really liked that. Chris got the iceberg wedge and that was fine. I ordered the fish of the day for my meal with potato hash and broccolini. I can’t complain about it, there was nothing wrong with it, I just kind of wished I’d ordered what Chris got—the fried chicken! That was really delicious and was a huge amount of food.
For dessert, Chris got a milkshake and I went with the brownie sundae. I really, really wanted a milkshake, but I recently began to suspect that I might be a little lactose intolerant. I don’t seem to be bothered by a serving of ice cream or cheese, but I had drank a milkshake shortly before the wedding and felt AWFUL. I didn’t care to repeat the feeling in Disney World, so I just decided to steer clear to be on the safe side. Instead I got this GINORMOUS sundae
The picture really doesn’t do it justice. Anyone who has eaten here knows this thing is huge. It barely looked like I’d made a dent in it even though I ate a significant portion of the brownie.
Once I managed to extricate my now overly-stuffed body from behind the table, we decided to head to a very popular ride that neither of us had tried- Toy Story Midway Mania. Yes, can you believe it?! Neither of us had ever done this. I don’t know how or why. I think I just really didn’t know what it was, so I had never checked it out. When we got over there, the line was at about 55 minutes, but we really didn’t have anything else planned until Fantasmic at 9:00, and it was only about 6:20 at this point. We decided we may as well wait it out and see if it was really worth it.
We both loved waiting in line! Not only is it nice to wait inside in A/C, but the theming was great! Chris took a ton of pictures in line.
Also, the woman in front of us in line had these AMAZING nails that she did herself! I can barely just paint my nails a solid color on my own. I couldn’t believe it, but she did confess that she’d been a nail tech previously. Still though, that’s gotta be tough to do by yourself!
After waiting the full 55 minutes, we were finally ready to ride!
WE LOVED IT. What is it about this ride that is so addicting?! I don’t know if it’s the competitiveness of it or what, but we were hooked. I really had a great time on it and couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t gone on it before. Even though Chris beat me, I still had fun.
At this point, we still had a little over an hour until Fantasmic started. We’re not the type of people to worry about getting the best seats or anything, so we decided to do a little shopping on Hollywood Boulevard. I actually bought a couple things this time around. I purchased a new pair of sunglasses with Mickey heads on them. I had somehow managed to hold on to my last pair that I had bought on our trip in 2012 and was still wearing them! I really don’t even know how I managed this feat. I lose sunglasses all the time. I think this new pair was well-deserved!
I also bought my mom some Mickey pajamas while we were here and we bought a couple pins as well. Of course I don’t have pictures of them. I really should’ve kept up with photos of them as we bought them. Oh well.
Since we finally purchased some items that were more substantial than pins, we decided to go ahead and have them sent back to AKL for us. I’ve always loved this system, and have been really happy with how it worked. I have to say though, you’d think now that they have the magic bands that perhaps they’d figure out a way for you to just scan your magic band instead of writing out a ticket. I guess they’d still need something to go on the bag, but maybe once you scan your band it would print something for it. I don’t know, just a thought. Anyone know if Disney is working on something like this?
By the time we were done shopping, it was time to head over to Fantasmic. It was pretty crowded when we got in there, but not nuts. We just headed straight over to the fair left side where there was a lot of seating available. We probably could have found something closer to center, but I didn’t feel like fighting that battle.
Fantasmic= WOW. I had remembered enjoying it ten years ago, but couldn’t really remember what it was about other than sort of a vague good versus evil type deal. I have to say this is really one of the most phenomenal shows I’ve ever seen. Chris was very impressed as well. Plus, Sorcerer Mickey is my favorite, so I always love seeing him. We didn’t get any photos as we were just soaking in the experience, plus that’s a hard show to get pictures of with the dark, but this handy photo came with our Memory Maker! It was definitely well done all the way around though.
In our way out, we decided we’d stop by ToT and just see how long the line is. I LOVE riding ToT at night and the experience is vastly improved by the dark in my opinion. By now, the park was in EMH time, so we were stopped at the entrance to ask which hotel we were staying at. We then looked at the wait time and saw that it was 10 minutes. Heck yeah we’re getting on it!
10 minutes turned out to be “walk directly into the elevator of your choice.” There was NO ONE in there. I thought for sure a lot of people would be getting out of Fantasmic and heading straight to ToT and RnRC. It’s not like we were at the front of the exit line from Fantasmic or anything. When we got onto our elevator, there were two other people on the ride with us. I’d post the picture, but I downloaded the darn thing on my work computer! I’ll update later with the pic
So we get into our elevator with the two other people and after waiting for a couple seconds to see if anyone else is coming, we take off. So you all know how the ride goes. You get to that one part where the elevator is moving forward and there’s the scenes around you and then the star field into the elevator shaft. Well, the door opens for the elevator to travel forward into this hallway—and we FREEZE. No music. Door is just open. Total silence. It seemed like forever, but in reality it was probably only 5 seconds. But when there’s only two other people on the ride with you, it gets scary quick! We were all just like “uhhh...” into total silence haha. Finally, the ride just takes off and the music starts. For a second there, I thought we might be on the actual elevator! I know plenty of rides in Disney will freeze momentarily or so, but this was a scary time to do it in pitch black silence! We had a great ride in the dark though. I just love looking out over the park while it’s dark out.
Once we were all done, we checked the wait time for TSMM on our app and saw it was only 25 minutes, so we decided we’d go ahead and hop on it again! Chris beat me again though L Still a great ride though!
We were officially pooped by this point after a full day at the park. We hopped on the bus and headed back to AKL to get a good night’s sleep before day three at Epcot!