Disney Day 3 – Hollywood Studios

6 March 2012

For Disney Day 3 we tackled Hollywood Studios all day. We didn’t realize everywhere cool gets booked for reservations way in advance, so we booked the SciFi Diner for Tuesday and ate at our hotel food court. We should have done that earlier since there’s a reusable cup for free refills during your entire stay…yummy hot chocolate and iced teas!

After rechecking in to switch reservations but stay in the sane room, plus bus ride, we got to Hollywood Studios around 1:30. As we were on our way to Fast Pass Star Tours, it was only a few minutes until the Indy stunt show was starting so we were able to sit in the back. Those were quite the explosions! We could feel the heat all the way in the back!

We got our Fast Pass for Star Tours then started looking for other attractions we could do in the meanwhile, but they all had long waits already. Toy Story Mania was already out of Fast Passes and a 120 minute wait! Muppets 3D was only 10 minute wait so we headed for that, enjoying the hilarious spoof movie posters outside the building. The movie is the same as in CA but still funny. We found Pizza Planet food and arcade, and yes there were toy claw machines with aliens inside! Hahaha…We also found the San Francisco back lot, complete with accurate road signs.

Since we till had time until Star Tours, we took the Walt Disney walk-through exhibit with movie One Man’s Dream. The animatronics inside Lincoln were amazing, I spotted the Dipmobile model from Roger Rabbit, plus we found the art and description for the new Fantasyland area we had seen under construction.

In our wanderings we found the Jack mother lode at the villain shop! A lot more seletion than inside the Magic Kingdom! Jules bought stuff, and I bought 2 purple shirts and a hat and changed in to the sequin tank the next restroom we found! it was time for some food again, but my “mac and cheese truffle oil gourmet hot dog” also had bacon so overwhelmed any truffle that might have been there. Tasty though. Unfortunately waiting in our food line and eating at a table, we missed last Beauty & the Beast stage show for the day. It was only 5:45 but no Fast Passes left for anything, so we stood in line for the Tower of Terror well over an hour since just as we got up to load, our elevator broke and had to wait to be fixed. The decor is the same, but there is more Twilight Zone theming inside the ride itself. No sunset photos today since it was when we were stuck inside the Tower waiting, but we did get to see it as we were falling down the Tower!

We finally got to Star Tours and the refresh is very cool. It randomizes where you go on the ride, and we went to Hoth, then through ring debris and inside the Death Star. I don’t think the 3D glasses did much though, and the Muppets 3D was better. Maybe my eyes didn’t like them? When we tilted too much, if you tilted your head at all instead of staying straight in with the screen, you could see the 3D banding colors. Definitely fun!

After some more fun shopping, it was time to get a seat for the final Fantasmic show, some grabbed some cocoa & coffee as we went in. After standing for the past two nights while watching lightshows, we were very glad we could sit down this time! The Lion King and Pocahontas bits were different, but the rest was like Disneyland. great show projected on the water screen, flame pots, fireworks, and live action!

Now it was Extra Magic Hours again so we were hoping for the park to thin out, but since it was only 9pm, plenty of families were still around. The roller coaster line was still long, so we tried everything else first. The Great Movie Ride is cute, a little hard for me to hear the live people vs the loud soundtrack, but I had to try to take photos in Munchkinland!

That was longer thank we thought, so we caught the Little Mermaid show at 10pm instead. Undersea theatre indeed…we did get wet in the mist! Ariel sang great and had a fantastic costume, and the dancing fish were adorable puppets with the puppeteers all dressed in black so completely invisible. After that we headed for Toy Story, hoping some kids had pooped out by then. We got in line at 10:25 but it took all the way until the park closed at 11 before our ride was over so no coaster time. The Toy Story atmosphere was worth it though! It was all built of giant toys like old Tinkertoys and Scrabble board for a roof, all sorts of cards, blocks and dominos, including Viewmaster discs including vintage Tomorrowland with the giant eye through the microscope that I remember from my first trip to Disneyland when I was 6 years old! The ride itself is a ride-through 3D shooting arcade that was a lot of fun, and I slightly beat Jules with a score of 140700, nowhere near my Buzz Blasters score. Thankfully we got on the first bus load home that wasn’t too long a wait, so we were in time for a snack in the food court along with a free refill before they closed at midnight.

Trying to plan for our last two Disney days, I was complaining that my favorite Haunted Mansion Holiday graphic was on the back of the shirt. Luckily I keep my pocketknife with scissors in my suitcase, so I was able to do some late-night hotel crafting to transform my shirt into what I wanted to wear! That will be Tuesday’s shirt for our SciFi diner late lunch and hopefully the roller coaster, then I’ll bring my Lion King shirt to change into when we head for the Animal Kingdom later.