Day 5: Just Keep Waiting

Yesterday we took on Disney Hollywood Studios. It seems to be easily the smallest of the four parks, yet we spent over 12 hours there and still didn't get to do all of the things we would have liked to. The problem with the Studios is that there are a lot of shows, few rides, and when it is crowded like it was yesterday, it is hard to do either one.

Toy Story Mania being brand new, we knew that was where we needed to go first. The FastPass line was crazy long, so we just went ahead and got in the line for the ride. The ride is a set of 3D midway arcade games like a shooting gallery, balloon darts and the like. When we finally got on the ride, our car started acting up after about two rounds of arcade games and we ended up just sitting for the rest of the time. They were ready for us when we got back to unload and pulled us off to the side and got us back on the ride right away. Second time through went with no hitch and the kids (and Steve and I) enjoyed it thoroughly. By the time we got out, believe it or not, we were already too late for any of the 11 a.m. shows (and we got to the park before 9:30). We headed over to the Muppet Vision 3D show and enjoyed that before we went to Pizza Planet for an early lunch.

The kids and I stood in line for them to get their faces painted and Steve went to check out the situation at the Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show. He suggested we go on over there, but the kids and I didn't want to get out of the line we were in. After they finished with their faces, the stunt show was FULL! That venue holds something like 5,000 people and we were still 10 minutes prior to the show and it was FULL! I'm telling you, the place was crazy crowded.
We moved on to the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular and got in (we had tried this one earlier in the day and had been turned away). The show was fun and we all enjoyed the "extra" who turned out to be a stunt actor. I thought something was up when he was consistently not paying attention to direction and when the stunt lady started to beat him up, I knew for sure he wasn't just an audience member.We had early dinner reservations at Hollywood & Vine, so we decided to take it easy for a while and let the kids relax. We thought we could go to the Great Movie Ride, but that wait was an hour so we just sat in the shade and let the kids play on their DS's. We hadn't brought those with us any other day and we were smart to bring them yesterday with all the down time we had.

Hollywood & Vine's buffett was fantastic. I don't know what more to say about that. We had a Fantasmic dinner package, so we got special passes to get in to the 8:30 show with the meal. Even with that, we were told to arrive at the venue for that at 7:30.

We did a little bit of shopping in the stores and went to the Beauty and the Beast stage show. Then we headed to Fantasmic for an amazing laser show filled with fountains (water was used as a screen for the laser light show) and Disney characters.
Funny story: we had been talking about trying to get on Tower of Terror after the show. Lizzie was up for it. After a loud cannon or gun shot in Fantasmic, she got up, stood in front of her daddy and said, "I don't want to go on the Tower of Terror." We just laughed and laughed at that.

After so many hours there, alot of which we spent just sitting doing nothing, we still didn't see many of the things we wanted to like The American Idol Experience and I didn't get a chance to ride the Tower of Terror or the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster.

Labels: disney

posted by Terri Milstead @ 6:19 AM Comments: 0