Hollywood Studios

Hollywood Studios

This was the day the kids had been looking forward to for the entire trip! Riley remembered the Tower of Terror from our last trip, and he was SO looking forward to riding it again.

But what we didn't plan on were the crowds! Holy Moley that park was crazy! I guess because it was a Saturday and Christmas break had officially begun, it was a madhouse. We got there early (not quite rope drop, but still pretty early) and had done what our planner recommended, ran straight to Toy Story Midway Mania to get our Fast Passes, and it's a good thing we did, they were time stamped for 8:30 that night!

We had an early lunch planned at the Sci Fi Diner, we ate there last time and the kids enjoyed it, so we decided to give it another try. You sit in these "cars" that are all inside, facing a giant movie screen, and it looks like a big drive in theater. They play old alien movies and cartoons on the big screen too, mostly black and white. It's a lot of fun.

And this was where we had our first melt down of the trip. We had done really well up till this point, but I guess the long days finally caught up with us, and the kids were getting into it. It took a little while to sit and talk things out, but then we were finally ready to get about our day. First we got some FP's for Star Tours, the new and improved ride, then we went to the Lights! Camera! Action! Stunt Show. I thought at first it was a "Cars" themed thing only, and it was a little bit, but they had cars doing stunts, giant explosions, people catching on fire, it was really neat and the kids liked it a lot.

After that we tried to do the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground, but it had a long line, so we skipped it and headed to the Muppet Show. Now, I *love* the Muppets, but Riley is indifferent and Regan HATES them with a passion. I have no idea why and it's my mission in life to sway her to my side. This was step one. It's a cute movie, and I think she liked it. Success!

We tried to finish up everything on one side of the park because I knew once we got to the Tower of Terror and Rockin' Roller Coaster, there would be no going back to the rest of the park! And sure enough, we finally headed that way and it was so crowded, still. There were 90-110 minute waits for each ride. Well, David and I told the kids to go ahead and line up for Tower of Terror, we would just sit and wait, we got FP's for it, well, the kids got in line, and someone handed them 2 FP's so they were able to ride it right away, they were so thrilled! Then they got in the single rider line for Rockin' Roller Coaster, and were able to ride that one pretty quick too, so we all decided to do the single rider line for that, and when we were done with that, our FP's for Tower of Terror were up, so we got to walk on to that one also. Do we know how to work it or what?!

By then it was dinner time, so we booked it back to the 50's Prime Time Cafe. I had heard a lot about this place and was really excited to try it out. It is like stepping back in time to the Leave it to Beaver Show or something. Everything looks like it came from the 50's, old black and white TV's at each table, the decor is all 50's, it's hilarious. The waitresses are supposed to like "mom" and fuss at you for putting your elbows on the table, tell you to take your hat off, etc. but our waitress didn't seem to be in on the game. The waitress at the table next to us though, she was a hoot and those people were loving her. The food was decent, but it was taking forever and by that point, I just wanted to get out of there.

We still had our Toy Story passes, so we headed there, via the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights! That was really cool, there are lights on EVERYTHING and they dance to music and it was really neat to see. We were kind of in a hurry, and it was again, super crowded, so we didn't linger, just made our way down the street, and over to Toy Story.

And surprisingly, Toy Story (unlike Soarin') lived up to its hype! It was a great ride! You get to shoot things along the way and try to get a higher score than the other people in your car. It was like being IN Andy's room, everything is huge so you feel like a little toy. It was really cute, and the lines were LONG, i was so glad we got our FP early!

And then we headed back. By this time the park was closing anyway, so we just made our way back to the hotel. The plan was to come back the next morning since we had a late flight home. We got back to our hotel and decided since it was our last night, we hit up the pool and hot tub one last time. But, there were a million high school kids swarming around so we didn't stay long (we're getting old).