Day 6 - Part 2 - December 22th, 2009
When I left off, we were waiting to be seated for our ADR at Sci-Fi Diner. We didnt have to wait long to be seated in our car.
James and Haley sat in the front seat, followed by Christopher and myself in the middle seat, and my mom and Ashley sat in the last seat. My mom and Christopher were in the only ones using the dining plan here. My mom was on the deluxe dining plan, and Christopher had slept through our dinner at Le Cellier so he still had a credit to use.
My mom had a salad appetizer and then ordered the ribs for her dinner. I tried to talk the kids into hamburgers, but none of them would go for it. So all three ordered the cheese pizza with apples. James and I had already decided to order milkshakes to share with the kids, so we went ahead and ordered Ashley her own. She was in 7th heaven! That kid can take down a milkshake!
James and I both ordered the hamburger and fries along with chocolate milkshakes.
After ordering we settled in with our shakes to watch the shows. It was so much fun! We noticed another waitress taking some pictures of the car next to us, so when our waitress came back we asked her to take one of us. She got a few cute pictures of us!!
I know this place gets really mixed reviews, but we really enjoyed it. Our food was really good and we loved watching the clips while we were eating. For dessert, the kids all had sundaes. I cant remember what my mom had. She probably had fruit. She had that a lot during the trip for dessert. James and I skipped dessert since we were paying out-of-pocket.
Christopher was surprised here with a cool glow in the dark cup filled with caramel corn and a lightning McQueen glow clip for his birthday. He was thrilled with his gifts. We went ahead and bought the girls each a glow Tinkerbell clip. They loved them. In fact, they are still favorites here at home.
After lunch we checked in with the other families. They had all finished up lunch before us. Im not sure Ive mentioned it before, but mother is the slowest eater! Desi and Jason were taking their girls on Tower of Tower through the standby line while my aunt and uncle watched little Will. Derrick and Jennifer were just finishing up seeing Mater and Lightning McQueen. We told them we were headed over to get fast passes for Star Tours. Derrick and Jennifer said they would head our way. Did I mention this park was packed! I was amazed by the amount of people! Seriously, it was if people were everywhere. All of the walkways were just packed with people. In the future, I will take a non-recommended park by TGM very seriously! This was probably the busiest day we encountered! While we were waiting for them we took a few pictures outside of Star Tours. Christopher is a big Star Wars fan so he loved all the scenery!
I'm not sure why I don't have any pictures of Haley here. Unless she was in one of her moods.
Christopher was very excited about riding Star Tours. This one also has a height requirement, but other than that first day we hadnt had any problem with getting him on any of the rides. He was measured and re-measured at each ride, but he consistently made it on. Just barely.
After Derrick and his family showed up we went ahead and got Star Tours fast passes. After that we were looking for something to do. Our next fast pass set for Toy Story Mania wasnt up for a few more hours. So we went to see Muppets 3D.
We have seen this before, but Im not sure the kids remembered it from our last visit. It was cute and the kids enjoyed it. After that we headed for the Backlot Tour. It had about a 30-minute wait, but we needed to kill some time before TSM and everything was swamped. We didnt make it to this one on our 07 trip. So this was the first time for the kids. We enjoyed it. Not a must-do, but something we enjoyed seeing. With all the shows here, Im not sure if we will make it here next time. But with the terrible crowds today the waits for the shows and the rides were incredible!
When we got off the tour, it was time to use our fast passes. We made our way over to Toy Story Mania and made it through the fast pass queue. As always on this ride, we had a great time! Once we were off, we decided to grab some dinner. I had hoped to make it over to Fairfax Fare for dinner. I knew it was across the park, but I had hopes that the BBQ would be good. We have tried a lot of places at DHS and havent had much luck with the counter service places. We usually eat at Toy Story Pizza Planet, but with my moms lactose intolerance it was out for us today. Unfortunately, the kids were starving and I was out-voted!
We ended up stopping at the first place we saw. We ended up at Studio Catering Company. It looks like their menu has changed since we were there in December. Which has to be good, because the food we had was terrible! And that doesnt do it justice. James and I had the hot dogs with chili and it was the worst tasting thing I have ever head. We only had a few bites, before we decided it inedible! I know all three of our kids had the macaroni and cheese and they didnt make it through most of their meals either. They came with applesauce, that my kids dont eat and a cookie. The other choice here for kids was peanut butter and jelly and since Haley has a peanut allergy that was an option for us.
After eating the minimal amount to hold us over, we headed off for the Osborne Lights. Wow! We had seen them before on our honeymoon, but I had forgotten just how beautiful they are. I wish we had spent more time here. We walked down the street and waiting for a few photo pass pictures, but I wish we had spent more time looking at all the details. It is so beautiful.
After leaving the lights, we headed towards Star Tours to use our fast passes. My mom gets motion sickness easily so she decided to wait this one out. Jennifer stayed with her and kept Jacob. The rest of us headed off for a trip to Endor. The fast pass line moved quickly! This was one of the few times during this trip and we got a lot of comments from the standby line on our cutting in the fast pass line. I just ignored it. The standby line was really long for it and I know that the fast passes for most of the rides had been used up early today, but I think the main problem is most people have know idea about how to use the fast pass system. We only had to stop for a minute for Christopher to be measured before we were loading into our ride vehicle. I think Ive mentioned before that Derricks boys are chicken hearts; well Tyler thought it was fun, but Joey was visibly shaken by Star Tours. My three loved and would have gone again if the line had been shorter. We headed back to meet up with my mom and Jennifer.
After talking about it a bit, it was decided that James and Derrick would take my girls to Tower of Terror and use our fast passes. I knew there was no way my mom would ride it. Jennifer and the boys didnt want to ride it. And I was worried it would scare my chicken heart Christopher too badly. Derrick had never ridden it before so he was excited to have someone to ride with.
Jennifer decided to take the boys shopping while my mom and I took Christopher to go get her birthday fun card. It took us a while and we had to go to several different places, before we ended up in the right place, but she was finally able to get her birthday gift card. We picked up my purchases from earlier in the day and headed back up the street towards TOT and sat down on a bench to wait for the rest of the group. As we were waiting, we heard an announcement that the park hours would be extended by an hour.
Pretty soon James and Derrick and the girls were headed back towards us. Ashley has ridden TOT before and she is our thrill ride girl so she enjoyed it. Haley had not been tall enough on our last trip and has a tendency to scare easily and I could tell she was shaken. She said she liked it, that she wouldnt ride it again, and that Daddy had promised her ice cream for being so brave.
James and Derrick had hopes of riding Rockin Rollercoaster, but the rest of the group was pretty tired so they decided to skip it. We said our goodbyes. Derrick and his family were flying home the next evening and were spending the day on their own. Desi and her family had already left the park. They had a very early flight the next morning and ME was scheduled to pick them up at ASM at 3 a.m.
and my aunt and uncle were headed out the next morning for the drive back to Texas.
We only had to wait a few minutes for a bus and we were on our way home. We all took quick showers and then fell into bed. The goal tomorrow was rope-drop at Magic Kingdom. Would we make it?
I'm not sure what we will do next time.
Yikes about the horrible meal at Studio Catering! 
Your photopass pics at Osborne Lights are beautiful! 
I have no idea who the character is, though!
