Part 5-
Hollywood Studios: Barely a Half Day Park!
We woke up bright and early to get to rope drop at Hollywood Studios. We managed to get to the bus stop right as the bus for Hollywood Studios was leaving and the cast member was doing a last call for passengers. The bus wasn't full at all, I think most people were headed to the Magic Kingdom that morning.
Looking back this is probably the park I took the least amount of outdoor pictures in. Which is fitting since we spent so little time there, but for trip report purposes it's not ideal! So apologies in advance for the text to picture ratio being a little off!
Our FPs for the day were Rock n Roller Coaster, Star Tours, and the Little Mermaid show. The plan was to rope drop Toy Story and avoid the Tower of Terror at all costs- we both have a deep, deep hatred for freefall rides. I did the
Disneyland version once and promised myself I would never do it again. I'll get on just about any roller coaster in the world without hesitation- my best friend lives right by Six Flags over Texas and I love every single coaster there. Again, absolutely no fear. I love drops, I love loops, I love speed, but there's something about a drop when it feels like the ground is just coming out from under you that I HAAAATE. So, anyway, the Tower of Terror was definitely NOT on the menu for the day
We had no problem getting to the park and bag check was quick. We proceeded with the masses to the hub (what's it even called at Hollywood Studios?) and then my inability to understand maps got the best of us. When the ropes dropped we headed with the crowds and thought we were waking toward Toy Story, but ended up at Rock n Roller Coaster! I'm not sure how it happened, because I had looked at the map on the app and thought we were going the right way. So we had to backtrack a little bit and try to figure out where Toy Story really was- I must say that Hollywood Studios isn't laid out very well. Can you already tell that I wasn't a big fan of this park? I'll try not to be toooo biased but yeesh.... It's not the best. We could've easily have left this park by noon if it wasn't for our Sci Fi ADR.
Thankfully my bad navigation skills didn't hurt us too bad, and we probably only waited 15 minutes if even that for Toy Story, which I thought was great. We rarely do this ride in California Adventure because the wait is always crazy, there's no FastPass (or at least there wasn't in 2014, I think there is now) and we'd much rather ride California Screamin' which is right next door. But with Hollywood Studios having so few rides, I decided we should check it out. The queue is definitely better than the California version, and the ride was a lot of fun!
Here's our scores- I was player 2
I'm not the greatest at games like these because I have terrible aim. I blame my astigmatism, but I'm sure it's actually because I'm not very good
We got off the ride and for a second planned on doing the Woody and Buzz meet and greet- until we saw the wait time was 50 minutes. Yeeah.... Had to skip that one, no offense Woody and Buzz! I'm not even that big of a Toy Story fan (Monsters Inc is the best Pixar movie imo....) so we moved on.
On the way back over to Rock n Roller Coaster we stopped in to One Man's Dream to check that out and to meet Starlord and Baby Groot. There was basically no wait!
Here I think I was saying "Awwww he's so cute" or something to that effect about Baby Groot.
And here's our group picture! This meet and greet was fun, Starlord wanted to know where to get the best icecream on earth, I said he should go to Coldstone.... Before stopping myself and wondering if they even had Coldstones in Florida.
We encountered a Pluto meet and greet on the walk over to the Launch Bay and decided to stop for a picture:
We then headed to the Launch Bay. We're not big Star Wars fans but we knew enough to have fun. For some reason I always enjoy Star Wars stuff at Disney, but pretty much never any other time. The meet and greet lines weren't long but we had a deadline of making it to our Rock n Roller Coaster FP so we ruled out meeting BB-8 and decided on Chewbacca and Kylo Ren.
The line for Kylo Ren was the longest, but they had storm troopers come around and bug people about being part of the resistance, which was fun. I wasn't sure what to expect from this meet and greet because he's such a not friendly character but it was fun! He's definitely intimidating, and even though I
knew he wasn't real I still got nervous!
Here I am asking him why he killed his dad. He wasn't pleased, and the cast member was like "oh.... that's not wise".
But he still agreed to pose for another pic with us, doing his weird hand thing- can he do force things? I don't really remember the movie..... My lack of Star Wars knowledge is showing, I know
After that we headed over to Chewbacca, who was much more cuddly:
We told him goodbye and then headed over to Rock n Roller Coaster, right at the end of our FP window. On our first day we got to most of our FPs right as they started, and as silly as it may sound it didn't click with me for a while that we had the whole hour and didn't need to rush there right away.
On the way, even though we were starting to be short on time, we stopped to watch the star wars parade thing:
Later on we saw a little bit of the one with Vader, and we happened to be walking behind it when the flame throwers went "BOOM!". I didn't know it was coming so it scared the crap out of me!
Anyway, I was super excited for Rock n Roller Coaster because I loooove roller coasters, especially the kind that launch you really fast. California Screamin' is one of my favorite rides at Disneyland and Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast is my favorite at Six Flags over Texas for that reason. My sister is less of a fan, and doesn't really like loops- but because she left the planning to me she didn't get a say in what rides we did
We didn't have a long wait with the FP and we got loaded onto one of the last trains, which i was excited about because coasters always feel so much faster in the back! We decided to do the "rock on" hand symbol in the picture:
That launch was amazing!! II seriously can't even express how much I love the feeling of being launched really fast by a roller coaster. I loved this ride so much. The loops were great, I just wish it had a big drop.
We headed over to Star Tours next, which was fun. There was a little boy in our row who was very scared and crying, and the cast member was really great in trying to reassure him that the ride wasn't that scary. She even chose him to be the rebel spy, but I don't think he noticed because he was crying and hiding his face. Luckily the ride was loud enough we couldn't hear him screaming (that sounds mean, I know).
When we left Star Tours I contemplated riding The Great Movie Ride, but the wait was like 50 minutes and based on the videos I've watched on youtube that ride isn't really worth much of a wait. It'll be interesting to see if it does get removed/redone.
Our 3rd FP was originally schedule to be for the Little Mermaid show but when I checked the app it wouldn't load- and when it did it said something like "location undefined" and if I clicked on it the app would crash. Not sure what happened there. I managed to modify it and changed it to a Muppetvision FP that started sooner. We love the muppets, and the show was ok, but I definitely wish HS had more rides so we could've booked something else as a FP. We're not really "sit and watch a show" people at Disney. I just like rides, rides and more rides! And character pictures too
Speaking of, we met Chip and Dale! They're always fun, although I can never remember which is which! So when I went up to them I just avoided saying their names.
This was right near the Mickey and Minnie meet and greet, and since we had time to kill before our lunch ADR at Sci Fi we decided to get in line. The posted wait was 20 minutes, but it was really more like 40.
We met both of them two more times on this trip- looking back, I wish we had done the meet and greet at the Animal Kingdom so we could've met them in every park. Oh, hindsight
I love that the photographer got pics of Mickey hugging us- I don't know if we didn't hug Minnie or if that photographer just didn't get those pics.
By the time we left it was about 10 minutes before our ADR, so we walked over to Sci Fi and checked in.
I had heard mixed things about Sci Fi but I thought the theming seemed really cool, so I booked it. And i was right about that! It looks so cool in person and really feels like a drive in theatre. I also loved the cute little cars you get to eat in.
I didn't take any food pictures, but we both had burgers. They were really good! Definitely better than I expected. The fries were great too. We stayed just long enough for the film clips to repeat before we got the check. Overall it was a good experience and I'd definitely book it again.
While we were eating I got us another FP for Rock n Roller Coaster, so we headed there after we left. We decided to pretend to be asleep in the picture, which is hard to do when you're being launched so fast!
While we were in the gift shop after I decided to see if I could get us one more FP, then the plan was to buy the express transportation pass and head back to the Magic Kingdom and stay there for the rest of the day and into the evening magic hour. It was only about 2:15 at this point, and originally I had us staying in HS until our 6:50 reservation at Be Our Guest.... But my sister looked at the map and said "We already did everything here" and I agreed. Since we're not really show people HS just doesn't have a lot to offer us. Once Toy Story Land and Star Wars Land are open I'm sure it'll be a different story, but for now it's barely a half day park. If we had stayed and watched the various shows it would've been a different story, but again, that's not really our touring style.
With my skills at refreshing the app I snagged us 2:30 FPs for Rock n Roller Coaster, so we left the gift shop and got right back on.
We didn't do anything special in this pic.... It's a lot harder to think of things to do when you can't really use your arms too much because of the shoulder bar.
While we were in the preshow I used my app refreshing skills again and got us 3:10 Space Mountain FPs. Once we got off the ride we walked over to the express transportation booth, which is right by RNRC, and purchased the 7 day pass. Even though we were only there for 5 days, it was cheaper to get the 7 day pass at 29 dollars a person. I gotta say I absolutely loved the express transportation! The buses were basically always empty and it saved us a TON of time.
The bus to the Magic Kingdom leaves 50 minutes after the hour, and we took this ride photo at 2:40 according to the photopass website. Right at 2:50 we were on the bus, and by 3:28 we were on Space Mountain!
I'm telling you guys, express transportation is 100% worth it!
I'll start off my next update with our afternoon/evening in the Magic Kingdom and our dinner at Be Our Guest (spoiler alert: we loved it!!)