An Instagrammable and Dole Whippy 4th of July Trip Report!**UPDATED 3/4


On the way out of the Backlot Tour I passed the Backlot Express bar. I really wanted the stoplight margarita but they didn't have that anymore. Instead I just chose the Golden frozen margarita. This was actually really good! It wasn't too boozey which was good for me and it was just very refreshing and not too sweet.



After my refreshing drink Corey wanted a refreshing drink. So we went to that frozen slushie stand by the Main Street of HS.



He really loved this!

My toe was really hurting at this point from my blister so I went to the first aid to see if they had anything that could help me. While I was there someone else was there for blisters too. Must be a very common thing. They didn't have any numbing cream but just gave me more bandaids.

Because you only live once (YOLO) Corey and I went to Starring Rolls after this!! He really wanted a red velvet cupcake and we have never had one!





It was pretty good, not amazing but good. I really liked the cream cheese frosting in the middle. You can tell that it is a little darker.

Since we could finally check off this cupcake from our list it was time for our next thing- The Beauty and The Beast musical!





It was a nice show but I didn't think this Belle was very good. She didn't sound like Belle and her voice was kind of lackluster.











Corey had a crush on the pink bimbette!! He thought she was pretty which she was!








Corey and I love chip!!!























All in all- a great show! Glad to have seen it again.



 
I'm in :) I'm also a HUGE fan of instagramming (Especially in Disney!) I'm a very big fan of Linda's photos. She actually mentioned she use to live in a town not far from where I currently live so I thought that was really cool!
 
Haha, I love the challenge of a flag photo too! Nice job!

Wow, that's a pretty expensive lunch. Such a shame it wasn't great.

Ha, so cool that Disney decided to recycle the MU topiaries. :laughing:

Red Velvet cupcake is on my do do list as I've never had one either.
 

You and Corey are so photogenic. DH and I usually look so miserable from the heat in our pics. :rotfl:


Not related to this trip, but I was reading one of your past TRs when you mentioned your employer. My grandfather worked for the same company for most of his career before he passed away many years ago. We NEVER had coke in our house growing up even after he passed away. He took brand loyalty very seriously. :goodvibes
 
Hi Rachel! I remember your Boardwalk Bakery lunch update on the live dining thread and the fact that salad wasn't good at all. I can't believe that I was right across from BW and never made it to the bakery this last trip. Shameful!

Ouch! Sorry about the blister on your toe. I carry band aids with me but thought I've read somewhere here that the first aid stations may have moleskin as well. Your note about numbing cream - that would be great. :thumbsup2

I agree with Ashley, you and Corey are so photogenic. Even in the heat you look adorable. :)
 
What a nice DHS morning. I love your picture with Mike and Sulley, and the one of just the two of them is so cute! When I look at those angry eyes t-shirts, I can just hear her saying that she is packing his angry eyes lol I love those movies!
Mike and Sulley are adorable! Haha, i love those movies too! They are one of my favs.

What a disappointing lunch experience! That is quite a bit of money to not enjoy what you get for it. The salad really looks good, but it's too bad that it didn't taste as good as it looked. Do you think you will go back to either of those places in the future and try something different?
The salad did look good, I just didn't care for the dressing. Plus, it was really stupid of me to order the losbter roll and salad. I guess I was thinking it was a side salad. I do think I will definitely be back!!

OMG, I would have been so upset if the animator can over and corrected my drawing! That just seems like it was overstepping the boundaries. What if he did that to someone who was so happy about his/her drawing and his correcting it made the person feel horrible?!? I think about my past drawings and would be upset if someone did that to me! Yeah, they're not perfect, but that's why I signed MY name to them!

Boo to not having a great meal at the Boardwalk. The lobster roll looks good, but you'd think the desserts would live up the hype too! I can't imagine the heat helping you enjoy your food either.
Yes, it was weird that he started correcting it. And I was happy about it! I got over it pretty quickly but it was just a little weird. They definitely looked better than they tasted but I want to go back and try more, maybe the cheesecake brownie!

Between the two of you that was a very expensive lunch. The lobster roll does look really good, but the salad just look like a salad. Nothing special at all and it stinks to have to waste food.

What really shocks me is that the desserts were not good. Bummer.

I love the picture of the flag off the back of the boat. That is one of my favorite pictures to take. It turned out great!
Definitely was expensive! Oh well, we were in disney where everything is expensive:lmao: I made poor choices! The salted caramel was better though.

the lobster roll looks really good!! i want to try that sometime. i have never been to boardwalk at all. that stinks about the rest of your food, though.
The lobster roll was delicious!!! You do need to venture to the boardwalk. It is really a neat area.

Yikes on the lunch prices for you both! It's too bad some of it wasn't great.

I hate eating when it's so hot, I would have snuck my food into the nearest place with AC.

Love the Mike and Sully meet!
I should have ate in the AC. It would make it much more enjoyable! I don't know where I would have gone though.

I love the Boardwalk and I am so excited to be staying there NEXT MONTH! :cool1:

Isn't always great when you get a new scene on Star Tours?

Nice pictures from the Backlot tour. I love that opening scene. It really is very funny!
Jealous that you are staying there next month! I so need to join DVC. Plus I want to go to Disney at halloween time and Food and Wine Fest. That will be so nice to be so close to Epcot during the festival.

I'm in :) I'm also a HUGE fan of instagramming (Especially in Disney!) I'm a very big fan of Linda's photos. She actually mentioned she use to live in a town not far from where I currently live so I thought that was really cool!
That is funny that you know who Linda is! She is super nice. Instagramming is the best in disney. There is so much to share!!

Haha, I love the challenge of a flag photo too! Nice job!

Wow, that's a pretty expensive lunch. Such a shame it wasn't great.

Ha, so cool that Disney decided to recycle the MU topiaries. :laughing:

Red Velvet cupcake is on my do do list as I've never had one either.
I remember your flag photo challenge! The red velvet cupcake was a nice to try cupcake. I won't get it again but I enjoyed trying it.

Thanks for your trip reports.

I love your pictures!
Thank you so much for reading!!
You and Corey are so photogenic. DH and I usually look so miserable from the heat in our pics. :rotfl:


Not related to this trip, but I was reading one of your past TRs when you mentioned your employer. My grandfather worked for the same company for most of his career before he passed away many years ago. We NEVER had coke in our house growing up even after he passed away. He took brand loyalty very seriously. :goodvibes
Aw thanks for that but I still felt like poop! That is funny about your grandfather! I wonder what he did for the company? I really enjoy the company. They are serious about not drinking coke!:rotfl:

Hi Rachel! I remember your Boardwalk Bakery lunch update on the live dining thread and the fact that salad wasn't good at all. I can't believe that I was right across from BW and never made it to the bakery this last trip. Shameful!

Ouch! Sorry about the blister on your toe. I carry band aids with me but thought I've read somewhere here that the first aid stations may have moleskin as well. Your note about numbing cream - that would be great. :thumbsup2

I agree with Ashley, you and Corey are so photogenic. Even in the heat you look adorable. :)
Hi! I hope your foot has already begun healing. It needs to be 100% in December or else we will have to get you a scooter!!! I can't believe you never made it either! Haha, I want to try breakfast there. Good to know about the moleskin although I don't really even know what that does.

Thanks for the photogenic comment!! Hopefully I will look different in December- in a better way. Just joined weight watchers, it is tough so far!
 

After the musical it was time for us to use our fastpasses again for Toy Story Mania.

I took a picture of the stage first.



We had to wait again so I made Corey take a picture with one of my favorite characters- Lotso! Even though he is a mean bear he is so cute and cuddly, and the fact that he smells like strawberries is amazing!



After this we had a little bit more time to kill so we went to see Muppet Vision! We don't do this every trip so I figured we would see it.







Of course we had some tour groups in our row who stopped in the middle! Hmmpph!

The show was cute. I totally forgot that it was themed around 4th of July with all of this patriotic stuff so that was really fitting!

When we got out we decided it was time to eat. Corey wanted to get Backlot Express.

I present: Corey's favorite disney counter service out of all parks



The buffalo nuggets!

Yum, they are good!

We saw this little fella chillin on the window!



Next it was time for my lunch. I really just wanted something light so I chose Min and Bills.

By the way- the clouds were really coming. I was hoping the rain would hold up.





Corey got a milkshake from Min & Bills, which is more like a frosty.



I got the pretzel dog with mustard. It was really weird how they did this. They put the pretzel roll on a machine shaped like a hot dog to hollow the bun out. Then they squirted mustard in it and stuffed the hot dog in it!

I thought I would like this because it said dijon mustard but I didn't like it because it was just regular mustard and I am not a big mustard fan. It was pretty gross. The pretzel was yummy though!



I got some chips too which were good.

After this we had more time to kill(wow we were really running out of things to do) so we decided to see Little Mermaid show.





We contemplated it for a while because the wait was pretty long but we forged ahead and got in line.



We finally made it into the room.





Wow, it was a huge stampede when the doors opened. We were pretty far up in the room but somehow ended up in one of the last seats?

I present: The Voyage of the Little Mermaid!













I loved their fake kiss at the end.



I was really quite pleased with my photos! It was hard to get their faces to come out so I adjusted the exposure and got their faces to come out. This Ariel was great. She had a great voice and really sounded like her!!






 
All caught up !! Enjoying your TR and loving your photos. We just got back from our trip last night and it was sooo hot. We had fun though.

Susan
 


By this time it was dusk outside and it was starting to get dark!

And with the darkness it meant people were gathering for the fireworks. The area up by the hat with the music was basically already filled. It was so fun to just walk around in that area because they were playing lots of party music. I just wanted to dance!

After hanging out there a little bit we decided to head further down the main road to find a spot.

We stopped about here and sat down for a while.





I watched this stoplight and I didn't realize it actually changed colors!





I like this photo with the crossroads statue in the background.









It progressively got darker but we still had a while to go.



We were getting bored so we decided to get up and do something. I wanted popcorn so that was our excitement.

There was a long line at the popcorn cart and when we went up there they were all sold out so we had to wait for a fresh batch. I got one popcorn and a pop.

They told us to go aside to wait for it to pop so we did.



Then they handed us two popcorns! They thought we bought two. I didn't correct them! Haha, does that make me a bad person?? Lol..Corey was excited for his free popcorn so he had to get a pop to go with it. The line for the pop was sooo long so he found a gift shop that had a little fridge in it and he got it there.

Me with my popcorn. I was so happy. It was my first disney popcorn ever!!



Then we went back to our spots and just found a spot in the road. I sat down for the most part just right on the cement along with everyone else.

Here were the crowds. I have never seen crowds like this at Hollywood Studios. It was so fun to be a part of this because you can never really see fireworks at Hollywood Studios so it was nice to see fireworks there.



I was eavesdropping on a family behind me and it was a woman who said she had to kick someone out of her park for throwing ice cubes at a worker. Then she said the park was Discovery Cove! That is cool that she works there. There must be a lot of locals that see disney fireworks.



Close to when the fireworks were going to go off I stood back up. By that time I had finished my popcorn and it was yummy!



A few minutes before the fireworks were supposed to start, Epcot's fireworks started happening! Wow that was cool to see Epcot fireworks from there. Then Hollywood Studios fireworks started! That was neat to have two shows around you.













We liked seeing the palm trees in the background, although I wish our spot was a bit further up.

The music to this fireworks was a live band that played typical American rock music. I didn't think I would like having a live band but I really enjoyed them! They were really good and entertaining.







Corey took a lot of photos with his iphone! He was just snapping away.



The last song they played they were really hyping up. I guess Free Bird is really popular during 4th of July. But when Free Bird started playing everyone just went nuts! It really did make the finale great hearing that song.



All in all, it was a great night!!! We were just floating at the end of the night because we loved seeing the fireworks at Hollywood Studios. We were so happy and we had a great day and our trip wasn't even half over. We were also changing hotels the next day to go to Animal Kingdom Lodge!!

When I got home I had to go pay for our room charges with our gift cards so they wouldn't charge my card. It wasn't too bad paying with the gift cards because they were 50s. I was even given a carnation for 4th of July. How sweet!

We ended that night up by packing! We had a great stay at Pop Century but were excited to move to AKL!
 
What made you pick HS for fireworks instead of one of the other parks? It looks like you made a good choice. :)

I'm looking forward to your AKL report. We are going to visit it for the first time in December. After seeing so many pictures of it, I'm really curious to see what it looks like in person.
 
Loving your report, we'll be there about the same time next year so it's great reading about the crowds etc :goodvibes
 
Haha, I remembered hearing about Lotso smelling like strawberries. So last October I don't think I passed a single one without smelling it.

Mmmm Buffalo Nuggets. I've not tried, but now I must.

Those are some awesome LM photos. Wow!

I have seen video of the DHS fireworks and I think I was most impressed by the live band "syncing" with the fireworks. So impressive. The ultimate Rock and Roll pyro.

So great that you got to experience something so unique and rare.
 
Great DHS Firework photos (though I can see why you would have wanted to have been further up). Sounds like a great experience!
 
All caught up! Hooray for food pics!

I DID NOT KNOW THERE WERE BUFFALO CHICKEN NUGGETS AT WDW :eek: One of my favorite things that I ate on our DL trip in April was buffalo chicken nuggets over there, and I spent the whole trip lamenting the fact that they don't exist in WDW. But now I will 1000% be going to Backlot Express on my next Studios trip!

Great day overall - can't wait for your resort hop!
 
I'm finally caught up (I have to admit I skipped all the chatter).

I love the pictures in Mermaid...I can never get good ones in there.

The pictures at dusk at the Studios are wonderful. And great fireworks pictures too.

I love the picture of you with Lotso.
 














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