Up on Friday bright and early with no alarm clock. This internal alarm clock really bugs me on vacay!
We decided to head to Hollywood Studios/MGM. I really wanted to ride Toy Story Mania, and of course Tower of Terror. So off we go.
Geez, can't they add a people mover through the halls of YC??? Have I mentioned the halls are loooooong!
But first a quick stop at the gift shop. I need a t-shirt from YC, cause they're so cute and nautical, and $35!!! Nah, don't need a t-shirt that bad. But we start chatting up the CM there and start talking pins.
Now Jeff and I became pin trading geeks on this trip. So the CM tells me that at 9am they put out a pin board for trading. Well since it's only 8:45, and we have no need to get to any rope drops this trip, we'll just walk around a bit - cause we don't do enough walking in the parks.....
We are mostly just collecting the CM pins and trying to complete diffrent sets. We had fun doing it, but spent way too much money on pins for trading this trip. Way more than my t-shirt, that is still hanging on a rack in the YC gift shop...
So once we do a little trading, we're off to catch the boat to MGM. I know it's now Hollywood Studios, but it's still MGM to me. Deal with it.
Have I mentioned how cool it is that we've now hit 3 parks and only taken one bus? Have I mentioned how awesome is the location of YC? Consider it mentioned. Again.
After a quick stop and the Swan and Mahi Mahi, we could see the park in the distance!
I really like MGM. Each time I'm here, I think I like it a little more. But it can't be experienced in a day. Not if you want to enjoy it. I guess it could be done... theoretically (there's my thesaurus word for today), but it would be way too stressful to try to see it all.
So once we got inside the gates, we headed straight for TSM - now it's only about 10am by now, and already the fast passes are for 2:10! We didn't plan on staying that late!!!
We are starving so we head to Starring Rolls for a little breakfast with our snack credits. The place is packed to the gills (Nemo reference) and only one cashier. Seriously, we waited about 30 minutes, then had to sit on a wall to eat. Looked like everyone was waiting for their TSM fast passes to come up!!!
After we finished our breakfast, we wandered down toward ToT and RnRC, but we made our way through all the shops, looking for pins. This is where Jeff decided to start humming the theme to Mission Impossible every time he spotted a CM wearing a lanyard. Needless to say, it got old after about, oh, 10 minutes. But it lasted the rest of the trip!
We stopped at the DVC booth to chat with the CM who was wearing and Ohio State Buckeyes pin - as I discreetly perused (another thesaurus word for the day) the literature. Jeff knew what I was up to so he quickly made his trade and grabbed me by the arm and punted me right down the street.
That's how afraid he is of DVC. He knows that if he stops and actually talks to someone about it, or takes a tour, he's sold. He'll be writing a check and offering a second blank check just in case the ink fades on the first one. That's how much a sucker he is for Disney, but he won't admit it.
After I picked myself up off the pavement, and longingly looked back over my shoulder at the DVC booth, Jeff was halfway to ToT. The standby line was only 20 minutes, but once we got into line, it wasn't moving. Looks like they only had one side open, so we got out of line and worked our way over to RnRC.
The last time I rode this was in 2006 when we had to baby swap. I hated it. I couldn't catch my breath after the inital takeoff and I hated it. Yet here I was in line again. I just wasn't going to get worked up over it this time. It would be different cause I was riding with Jeff. Not some hunky stranger sitting next to me. Not that I noticed him. At all.
So I tried to focus on everything except my impending death at the hands of Aerosmith. And I was doing a great job. Until the CM directed us to "Row 1." Say what???
Since I've already made a short story long, let's suffice it to say that I loved it this time!!! I forced myself to breathe as soon as I was shot out of the cannon, and I sang along with Steven Tyler the whole way. Loved loved loved it!!!!
By now it's only like 11:30 and we still have nearly 3 hours until our fast pass time! So we head off to lunch. We decided to go to the ABC Commisary, on the other side of the park, take a look at the menu, and high tail it out of there. We ended up at the Backlot Express. No food porn here. Just sandwiches and burgers. Nothing to write home about, which explains why none of you received letters from me on this day....
We ate a loooong lunch. Kept checking our watches, and finally ventured all the way back to ToT. Grabbed fast passes for that, then just wandered around some more. More pin trading. More Mission Impossible. More punting me past the DVC counter.
I can't even begin to tell you how much back tracking we did today. But we just weren't feeling any of the attractions today. So we watched street performers. And watched people.
Have any of you ever noticed that Disney is basically the Happiest Wal-Mart on Earth? You know how you go to Wal-mart, but while you're there you don't see anyone else like you? You know that everyone shops there, but it seems like you're the only "normal" one in the store while you're there.
Yeah. The same crowd was at Disney last week. So we decided to sit on a bench and find the best fashion statement we could find.
Sadly, I did not take photos of these.
Goth girl in the shortest of short skin tight denim dress, with a slit up to, well, you know where. And stilletos. Naturally. Cause that is perfect park footwear.
Middle aged mom wearing low rise jeans, with tight white tank top, and granny panties. So the panties were showing through the shirt. Vogue.
There were more. But I'll save them for later. I'm sure when I head to
Walmart this week I'll be reminded....
Our Tower of Terror fast passes were about up now, and it's only a little after 1:00. So we took a quick tour of the Hollywood Hotel, lost our tummies, and finally began the trek toward TSM.
They have completely remodeled this whole area, and it looks great, but it is a bit congested....
We literally stood around for about 20 minutes, waiting for our time to come up. As we made our way into the Fast Pass line, I heard a woman in front of us say to the CM, "Oh, I didn't realize...." and then she turned around and winked at her husband. Guess she thought she could use those later FPs at the wrong time. BUSTED!!!!
This was a FUN FUN FUN ride!!!! The queuing is great, and it totally lived up to the hype in my opinion.
Imagine Buzz Lightyear's Spaceranger Spin meets Donald's Philharmagic. It's an arcade type shoot em up, with all 3D graphics, and a few surprises thrown in for fun!
And, I whooped Jeff's butt, which made it even better! Can you say 95,000 to 90,000???
FINALLY, we can go to our happy place again. Yes, Epcot!!!
So we rush to get to the front of the park, head toward the boat dock (cause we ain't takin no stinkin buses!!!!), and the boat is closing it's doors - Jeff grabs me and drags me in a full out sprint toward the boat. As I'm trying to keep up I hear the music from Chariots of Fire playing in the background. No, it was not in my head. It was seriously playing around the entrance gates. In fact, once I heard that I really think that I started running in slow motion. Seriously.
When I got down the ramp, I said to the CM, "How funny that Chariots of Fire music was playing as we were running." He looked at me like I had two heads. Maybe he was just in awe that I could actually run in slow motion. That must be it.
We were so antsy to get back to Epcot, cause we had a snack mission to complete, that we didn't even wait for the boat to take us all the way to the Epcot dock. We hopped out at BC/YC and walked over to the IG. Cause once again, we just didn't feel like we had walked enough in the parks....
In through the entrance, and off to grab a FP for Soarin. Yup, we'd been to Epcot already and hadn't ridden Soarin, what's up with that???
Time out, Ally's bleeding, back later....
YUCK!!!!
I did grab a card though and I'm gonna look for it online for Christmas. 
I can't control myself. And of course Jeff can't control his rolling eyes when I do this! 
I agree
right? WRONG!!! These were obviously premade and refrigerated, then heated right before serving. Extremely disappointed!
Never have had it before but have seen enough pictures on this board to know I'll probably love it!
