Part 7: Wednesday, January 11 - Hollywood Studios and Epcot
The morning of the 11th was a little sad for us. We were going to be checking out of the Caribbean Beach Resort. Our trip wasn't over but, for budget reasons, we were staying the final three nights of our honeymoon at another hotel, heading to the Baymont Inn and Suites, nominally in Celebration (but in reality in Kissimmee). Checkout was bittersweet as we tried to find all of our stuff -- I'm normally a light packer but I had a whole other bag with my running gear to be prepared for any weather/eventuality. Luckily we had done the online checkin/checkout so we didn't have to go to the Customs House. We loaded the car with our bags and headed towards Hollywood studios. The parking (since we had scoped out the route and the parking lot the night before) was a breeze and we hopped aboard the tram for the gates.
We made it for rope drop and our goal today was to get to Rock n' Roller Coaster first before we settled into our day. We had FP+s for Toy Story, Tower of Terror and Star Tours. In many ways, we needn't have really bothered because lines were not a problem but it's nice to know that you won't have to stand for too long.
The line for RnR Coaster was about 20 minutes when we arrived but it was quickly updated to about 45 minutes. Still, we got on the ride in about 25-30 minutes and we really enjoyed the theming of it. As a musician myself, I've spent plenty of time in recording studios and it was kinda neat to walk into a studio environment. It was also cool, at one point in the queue, to hear music as it if was coming from behind a closed studio door. The ride itself was pretty great. Since we were wrapping up our Disney park tour, we were sort of ramping up the thrill rides towards the Universal standard and, in retrospect, RnR Coaster is pretty competitive, but short. My wife was a little apprehensive about the loops and inversions but because the ride is indoors and dark (with some things to look at), it caused her fewer problems than Space Mountain did.
We had some time to kill before our Tower of Terror FP+ and took a walk towards the main square. My wife was hungry so we went into Starring Rolls and found the Butterfinger Cupcake to our liking. Holy moly. That thing was big, sugary and very satisfying! Fortunately, there were two of us eating it because I don't think it was meant for a single human.
We also caught part of the March of the First Order which was interesting although it's certainly not the best parade there is at WDW.
Then, it was the Tower of Terror! Our CM was very creepy in putting us in the elevator/ride vehicle telling us that "you should have taken the stairs" as the doors closed (I don't know if this is part of the script but it was sufficiently creepy and hilarious at the same time). This ride really was thrilling! It was really cool to be able to see out of the tower to the whole park and the multiple drops were unpredictable. My wife really loved it -- she seems to do better with the drop rides than I do while I do better with the coasters and inversions. Either way, it was definitely a highlight.
After ToT, I think we went to see the Great Movie Ride. The CMs were a little "off" - meaning that the female one had a very inconsistent accent and really didn't seem all that into it. I probably wouldn't ride it again and, after reading that it's going to be removed, I'm not really all that bummed.
We went to the Toy Story Movie Mania ride and we had a blast shooting our little guns at the targets. While I had a respectable score, we certainly were destroyed by other players nearby.
We went to see the Muppets 3-D and enjoyed the show although there are definitely stronger entries in Disney's array of 3-D theatre-based attractions. Then, we saw the Indiana Jones stunt show and I was amazed when my wife confessed that she hadn't seen any of the movies. Gasp. Well, since getting home, we've been rectifying that and have gotten through the first two (with the third being my favourite). We got there right as the show was starting and were seated in the front row all the way to the right side. We could see the stunt guys getting ready to come on stage and it was a cool show, particularly how they could set up with three different sets in such a short period of time. I thought there could have been more "how did they do that" explanation but I guess they want to keep people engaged with explosions and stuff instead of showing the air bags where the stunt folks jumped and things like that.
We headed to Star Tours after Indy and I enjoyed the ride. To me it felt a little like a lot of some of the other rides although it was still fun. It was quite possible that fatigue was hitting me at this point. Still, we enjoyed the ride and then went for lunch. My wife got a gigantic burger (with brisket on it too) and we were well fed after our little break. We walked around, seeing some of the other attractions like One Man's Dream (although we didn't see the film) and the Little Mermaid show. I enjoyed the Festival of the Lion King and the Finding Nemo musical at AK more than Little Mermaid. Mainly, this show was just a rehashing of the movie without any real innovation (other than getting sprinkled). At some point during the day, I had realized that I lost my "Happily Ever After" button. My instinct was that it came off on the Rock n' Roller Coaster.
Since it was the end of the day for us at Hollywood Studios, we stopped into guest services on the way out, getting a replacement "Happily Ever After" button. We even got a sharpie this time to write "Just Married" on it and we both took the opportunity to embellish our button. We left the park, headed to the car and drove over to Epcot.
Parking at Epcot was a breeze and we got into the tram towards the gate. Getting inside the park again was nice for me, after having been so exhausted the last time. We had been looking at the wait times for Frozen Ever After and decided that an hour was too much time to give up. In addition, we had a 7pm ADR at Biergarten and I wanted to see the show at the American Adventure. At this point, my feet were killing me and an hour standing in line for FEA was not my idea of a good time.
We stopped at Club Cool, which we had totally missed the first time we were there in December 2014. It's amazing what a little reading does and we went in and tried all of the sodas. Interestingly, I didn't think Beverly was horrible (although I had been warned). To me, it had a grapefruit-y bitterness rather than a really unpleasant bitterness. That said, I wouldn't be importing any Beverly from Italy any time soon.
We walked around the World Showcase, enjoying the ambiance. We wanted to use up some of our snack rations from the dining plan and stopped by the bakery in France. Unfortunately, neither of us were particularly hungry (especially with a dinner reservation a little over an hour away) and kept walking through, passing by Morocco, and looking through the Japan museum display.
We always enjoy these little exhibitions and feel that the fact that we can learn something in addition to being entertained is always more value for our dollar. We got to America and checked out the little exhibition there before going into the show. My wife had a hard time staying awake but I found the presentation to be very interesting (in addition to being a fantastic opportunity to getting of my feet). From America, it wasn't far to Germany to get our dinner!
I was looking forward to this since we made our reservations a few months before. I lived in Germany for a year (in addition to several other trips there) and had the occasion to venturing to a popular beer hall in Berlin that was modeled, like Biergarten, after the Bavarian beer halls. I think I freaked out our waiter by speaking to him and ordering our drinks in German but he continued to talk to me
auf Deutsch the rest of our visit. I had a 1/2 liter beer (although others at our table were drinking more, but I was driving) and I had a chance to enjoy a dark wheat beer that I loved while in Germany. Unfortunately, I still wasn't all that hungry, so I grazed more than gorged at the buffet. I love sauerkraut and sausages, so I was in heaven but all of the food that I sampled was great and their strudel was excellent. We also enjoyed the band who sang the "Ein Prosit" song to get everyone drinking (which I knew from my beer hall days in Germany).
After dinner, we moseyed slowly (due to the excess of food) around the World Showcase, stopping in China to see their film but not before some acrobats performed. They were pretty impressive and featured a vase balancing fellow, a couple who did daredevil spins and lifts on roller skates and a fellow who did some acrobatics balancing on ever growing piles of chairs. The film was fun and we also got a chance to see the
Disneyland Shanghai presentation in the China pavilion.
By that time, it was time for Illuminations! It was, of course, spectacular although maybe not quite as magical as it had been on Christmas Day two years prior. Still, it was a great way to end our night.
To end our Disney stay, we decided to head back to Old Port Royale and cash in the rest of our snacks for use over the next couple of days at Universal Orlando. We filled our Rapid Fill Mugs and picked up a whole whack of snacks. It was pretty amazing that, despite not spending money on food, we actually only used seven of our 16 snacks (2 per day per person for four days) over the course of our stay. We grabbed a couple of the Mickey marshmallow treats, a couple of apples, a couple of egg containers (protein!) a couple of bags of chips and something else I can't remember. We grabbed a to-go bag and took our haul to the car and from there to our new hotel.
Honestly, the new hotel had a very nice lobby and rooms but otherwise it wasn't much took at. Still, with a fridge and free breakfast, we felt we were getting our money's worth. Our Disneymoon had ended but we still had two days at Universal Orlando before we would head back north.