Day 4: Hurray for Hollywood!
Today we were all up bright and early at 7am, and were enjoying breakfast in Dunkin Donuts by 8:15. My donut of the day was the Bavarian crème - very nice!
We arrived in Hollywood Studios and parked in the Stage parking lot. After posing for some photographs by the hat:
our immediate plan of action was to head straight for Toy Story Mania, and either ride it or get fast passes, depending on the wait time. Despite the early hour, the standby wait time was already 60 minutes, so fast passes it was. I love the theming in this area,
including the monkeys who had escaped from their barrel:
although a bit disappointed that the characters were all inside, and behind glass, which made it difficult to take photos. of them. However I imagine it is a lot more comfortable for the characters, as it must get really hot for Buzz and Woody standing outside in the Florida sun.
We headed off to Rock and Roller Coaster, and Tony, Louise and Stephen went off to visit with Aerosmith, while those of us with the wimp gene (Taryn and Dan) and the bladder issues (myself) had a look in the store and took some photographs outside the ride:
Taryn and Dan rockin out:
Taryn spent a lot of the time taking photographs of anything Aerosmith related to show her boyfriend who is a big fan of the band, including this signed photograph:
I was approached by a cast member who wanted to do a pin trade, I didn’t really want pins she had on offer, but I felt a bit mean, so I traded one of my duplicate pirates of the Caribbean pins for a pirate Minne dressed as Elizabeth Swann, with the intention of trading this for another Pirates pin at some point. However I never found anything else I wanted to trade it with and so I am stuck with the Minnie pin until next trip!
In all my visits to this ride I had never noticed this car at the entrance to the Rock and Roller Coaster area - I am even more convinced that I walk round with my eyes shut sometimes:
We then headed for Tower of Terror,
where Tony and Stephen entered the Twilight Zone, and we hung about the entrance, watching the cast members interrogating the guests and asking them if they had a reservation in really spooky voices. It's great when the cast members really get into the character at atmosphere of the rides they work on. We had a good laugh with one of the cast members when we were taking photographs of the entrance sign:
and she said we were sneakily trying to take one of her - so of course we had to then take one of her:
While waiting outside the Tower of Terror we saw the plane writing “god loves you” in the sky which Jackie (JNS) took a photo of when she was in Epcot - it’s strange to think we were both in different parks looking at the exact same thing at the exact same time - spooky!
On the way back to ride Toy Story Mania we stopped off to see One Man’s Dream - I loved this as I am really interested in Disney history and it was wonderful to hear the story of the man who was the inspiration behind everything which makes us so happy. On the way in to One Man's Dream, we encountered Dream cast members, who gave us all Year of a Million Dreams Mickey ears - which were really cute - although try as we might we couldn’t get Stephen to wear his! We saw lots of interesting exhibits in here, including a model of one of the
DCL ships in
Castaway Cay - where we were headed the very next week.
There was also a beautiful model of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle from
Disneyland Paris, but I didn’t get a decent photo due to flashback on the glass. I did take a couple of photos in here of the man who started it all:
Needless to say I emerged from One Man’s Dream with a tear in my eye and a lump in my throat - it is such a shame that such an inspirational and innovative man had his life so tragically cut short.
It was now time to ride Toy Story Mania and I must say this was amazing - we all absolutely loved it, and the 3D effects were awesome. I loved the ring toss where the green aliens fly out at you - I don’t really think we did well on the scoring, but I was too blown away by the experience of it all to really concentrate.
I would have loved to ride this again, but by the time we got off the fast passes were all ended and the wait time was 90 minutes, so we will have to wait until next time. Outside the ride we met this guy, but only Tony was brave enough to have a photo taken with him (love the ears Tony!)
We noticed that an Indiana Jones Stunt Show was due to start in half an hour, so we headed over in that direction, stopping off for a ride on the Great Movie Ride, as there was no line. This was good because we ended up in the Western scene, which I have never done before, and the girl playing the gunslinger was really authentic! We then had a welcome rest while watching the Indiana Jones show, where Indy was as heroic as ever, and once again saved the day, got the girl and put the world to rights in the space of about fifteen minutes! When the show finished we headed for lunch in the Backlot Express - one of the nice touches here was that you could get chicken strips with carrot sticks instead of fries - this made a refreshingly healthy change, as after 3 days in Orlando I was already fed up with fries! Straight after lunch the Block Party Bash parade was starting, so I headed over to watch that and film it with the camcorder, while the rest of the group boarded the shuttle to Endor, and ended up battling with the Death Star. The Block Party bash parade was based around Pixar characters and was great fun, with cast members using trampolines along the way.
We then had a wander around the Streets of America, popped over to San Fransisco:
and took a few more photos on our way around the park:
We bumped into the army man again and this time I managed to persuade everyone (except Stephen) to join in the photograph:
We then decided to go and watch the Beauty and the Beast show - this is Tony’s favourite Disney film and he always gets a bit emotional - at the end of the show he actually had a tear in his eye, although unfortunately I wasn’t quick enough to get photographic evidence. It was a lovely show and it is shows like this which capture the essence of Disney for me.
At this point we split up into 2 groups: Tony, Stephen and Louise went off to ride Tower of Terror and Rock and Roller Coaster again, while Taryn, Dan and I headed off for the Backlot Tour, with a plan to meet up in half an hour outside the Backlot Tour. When we got to the tour, it was already closed for the day, so we wandered about a bit and then went back to wait for the others. We waited, and waited and waited…….and after another half an hour we headed back towards the Tower of Terror area to see if we could find them. After about another 15 minutes we spotted them walking towards us, and it turned out they had been riding Rock and Roller coaster about 3 times as there was no wait. At this point I was a bit miffed as Taryn, Dan and I had wasted all that time just waiting and looking for the others, when if we had known they were going to be repeat riding we could have gone to see the Little Mermaid. By now we only had 45 minutes until Fantasmic, and so there was no real time for us to do anything else, so I was more than a little bit annoyed with Tony to say the very least and if there had been a divorce lawyer’s office in Hollywood Studios I may well have paid them a visit.
We wandered down to Fantasmic and managed to get some good seats towards the front. While waiting for the show , the audience were doing fast and slow versions of the mexican wave, which was quite amusing. Fantasmic was as amazing as ever, and I managed to capture the show on the camcorder, although I missed the ending as always, because Mickey is just too quick!
On the way home I ended up leaving the park on a different exit, and we ended up in the back of beyond. I managed to eventually find the way back to familiar areas, but by then it was late and we were not in the mood to eat out at a restaurant, so we just picked up some subs from Subway and headed back to the apartment for an evening meal of subs and Halloween cookies!
Tomorrow - we are off to my favourite park - Magic Kingdom!
at finding a divorce attorney's office.
sometimes !!
Laura
