Now, this had never been our favorite park. I was there in ’94, shortly after it opened, and we took the kids in ’06, basically just to meet Woody and Jessie and to eat at Pizza Planet. However, our hopes were set pretty high, with the additions of Toy Story Mania, The Block Party Bash (Pixar Parade), The High School Musical Pep Rally, Narnia, and the Mike and Sully Character Greeting… We also planned to hit a couple of stage shows, since the kids are now more familiar with many Disney movies than they were two years ago…
We went to the Little Mermaid show first. It was fun, but it was basically just a condensed retelling of the story. We liked the special effects, though. It is always great when you can get rained on indoors…
Strike 1 was the line for Toy Story Mania… 90 minutes! And all of the fast passes for the entire day were gone within an hour of the park opening! Strike 2 was Narnia… no strollers allowed (which is difficult with 4 small kids), so I opted to stay out with Ian… and Grace, who refused to wait in a line. Eventually, I did convince Grace to wait in the very short line to meet Prince Caspian, which she did… begrudgingly… because I told her the only other option was to go sit in the street and wait for Daddy and the boys to emerge from the Narnia attraction. When they did just that, they were less than pleased. Seth’s direct quote was, “that was a waste of time”, and Phil was irritated, because they had shown several video clips that were way too intense for Caleb, and besides that, they gave away the whole story line… and we haven’t seen the movie yet! Strike 3 was The Block Party Bash… which took forever to get to us (we thought we were at the beginning of the parade route, but we were at the end), and then the characters just kind of passed us, even though they did a lot of dancing in the street and interacting with the audience before they got to us… If you’re counting, we should have struck out by now… but I guess we were hitting a lot of foul balls… because… Strike 4 was the Star Tours simulator that Phil rode on a fast pass while we were waiting for the parade. He said it was just OK. And, Strike 5 was our inability to find Mike and Sully anywhere. And, Strike 6 was that the High School Musical Pep Rally has switched to HSM3, so we didn’t know the songs, since we haven’t seen the movie, and we decided to just pass on it altogether. Strike 7… Stunt Spectacular was closed. Strike 8… Backlot Tour involved walking without a stroller (we skipped this). Strike 9… Muppet Show now has various shady jokes. Need I go on? Probably not. However… Strike 10… While we were eating our very yummy dinner at Pizza Planet, we realized that the last Beauty and the Beast show was about to begin (so we skipped that, too)… Strike 11… It was so crowded in the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Movie Set Adventure that I was more worried about losing my kids due to excessive people than their shrunken size…
Around 6:30, we headed over to the stadium where Fantasmic takes place and decided to take our chances, even though we knew it might be too much for the kids… which it probably was… BUT… it was amazing! And here our lousy day at Hollywood Studios took a turn for the better! I was simply blown away by the show! I mean it was really… really… really great… magical as only Disney can do it! The villains were pretty… well… villainous… but we all walked away very pleased with the show. As a side note… It is very difficult to start a wave with only six people… especially when four of them do not know how to do the wave… but it can be done…
Since it was getting late, we hoped we would find a shorter line for Toy Story mania… and we did! The wait was now only 80 minutes… uh… did I just write, “80 minutes”? Yep… that’s right! And, since I am an idiot, I decided it would work for me to stand in line for that long with Seth, Grace, and Caleb, while Ian slept in the stroller and Phil sat with him, charging the battery of his video camera in a secluded outlet plug that he found on an outside wall at the park! Phil also made a short detour through the exit doors of the ride to bring me my camera… which I forgot… even though I knew I would have time for plenty of pics. during my almost hour and a half wait! In the end, it was a fantastic ride… well worth the wait, although I was afraid I might lose my mind by the end with three wiggly… whining… completely exhausted children!
Fantasmic and Toy Story mania definitely saved the day! As it turns out, there are a few things we would like to return to Hollywood Studios for, if time allows (namely the character appearances that we missed), but on future trips, I’m not real convinced we need to go there unless there are some major changes to the park. It all made for a good story though…
We left Hollywood Studios about an hour after it closed for the night... imagine that!
Lisa
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