Our park for the day? Disney's Hollywood Studios! Despite trips to Disney World since my first trip as a child, I hadn't been to this park since my first trip. Frankly, it just didn't interest me much. But there was finally an attraction that made me want to visit.
As soon as we got into the park, we headed for that attraction, Toy Story's Midway Mania. Unfortunately, everybody else in the park was headed that way too. I knew we needed to get Fast Passes ASAP if we wanted a chance to ride it without standing in line for 2 hours.
This is what happens when you take your camera out for the first time in the Florida humidity. You get foggy pictures. See that line on the right? That's the line for Fast Passes. It moved fairly quickly and we did manage to get a couple Fast Passes before they were gone.
After getting our Fast Passes, we tried to figure out what to do next. There weren't many attractions we were interested in, but we needed to do something until it was time to use our Fast Passes and that was several hours away.
We ended up checking out One Man's Dream. It's a great exhibit full of artifacts and history from Walt Disney's life and the beginnings of the Disney company.
We eventually moved on to ride The Great Movie Ride before heading to the Streets of America section of the park.
We did the Muppet*Vision 3D show which was cute and pretty funny. I grew up on the Muppets, so I love them.
I even took a picture with one of my favorite Muppets, Miss Piggy.
We basically just wandered around the park looking for things to do to occupy our time until we could use our Fast Passes.
This is over by Indiana Jones Stunt show. Notice the sign that says Warning Do
We decided to go on the Studio Backlot Tour. I remembered this from my childhood trip and I was interested in seeing all the cool backlot stuff again. I ended up being disappointed. Most of the stuff I remembered was gone and the tour was a lot shorter. We only saw a few interesting things on the tour.
We got to drive through costume and materials building and see the costume cast members at work.
We also got to see Walt Disney's airplane.
After the tour, we were exited through an exhibit about the 50 Greatest villains. We decided that it was time for lunch.
A lot of other people were also eating lunch, so every food place was busy, but we were hungry and didn't really have anything else to do, so we got in line at Toy Story Pizza Planet. When I was researching for our trip, the general consensus seemed to be that if you had to eat at Hollywood Studios, this was the best counter service restaurant. And we do love pizza, so it was an easy choice for us.
We both got an individual pepperoni pizza. They were very good!
We did some more wandering around while waiting for our Fast Pass time after lunch. It was nearly time now!
Finally, it was time!!
This was definitely the most crowded area of the park and there's only one attraction back there.
I love the theming with all the toys.
Finally! The Fast Passes were gone and the standby line was at 100 minutes, which is the highest the clock goes.
It's a 3D ride, so you get to wear these nifty glasses.
After all the hype and waiting was it worth it? YES! It was a great ride and I was really sad that I couldn't turn around and ride it again. I kind of wish we had just waited in the stand-by line afterward. It's not like we had anything else to do.
Our scores. I had fewer points, but better accuracy.
After the ride, we consulted the map and show guide, but decided we were done at this park. We would have liked to see the stunt shows, but they weren't scheduled for awhile and we were really tired of trying to find something to do. We decided to head back to the Lodge and hit up the pool.
When we got back to the Lodge, however, it was time for the daily rain shower. Usually, these don't last very long, so we were going to wait it out in the room and then go to the pool. But it never did let up before dinner time, so we didn't make it to the pool that day.
I sat on the balcony and watched the rain for awhile, then read in the room. Good thing I brought a bunch of books to read by the pool.
Eventually, we headed to dinner at Downtown Disney. This time we went to Wolfgang Puck Express. It's hybrid of counter service and table service. You order at a counter, get your drink, and find a table and then a waiter brings your meal to you. They are also supposed to get you drink refills, but it never seems to happen for me.
We got to chatting with the guy taking our order about weddings since he saw our Just Married buttons. He ended up giving us a discount on our meal. Sweet!
I got the Crispy Chicken Strips and Fries. I'm not sure why they insist on garnishing the plate with so much stuff there, it's not a salad, but way more than a garnish. These were pretty good and I liked the seasoning on the fries.
M got the Chicken Caesar Salad. Big surprise. I think in the end, this was his favorite version that he had.
After dinner, we went to Walmart for some more supplies.
Most importantly, this:
I LOVE this ice cream. It was always in my freezer when I lived in Florida. Sadly, it's only available in the south, so whenever I get far enough south, I have to have it.
We also decided to walk around the Lodge a bit and take some pictures. Turns out, not the greatest idea when it's dark.
Here's the lobby at night. And for some reason, I never took pictures during the day. I'm a genius.
Eventually, it was time for bed. We had another busy day in store for tomorrow.
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