Disney's Hollywood Studios - Day 2 and 6

Hollywood Studios!  Now this place was more Drew and Mason's speed I think.  It wasn't my favorite, and if we had the trip to do over we probably could have gotten away with only spending one day in this particular park, but it did have its bright spots.  The first one being Toy Story Midway Mania.  That is the most popular ride in the park so of course it is the ride we rope-dropped both mornings.  Throughout the day the line was always at least an hour long wait.  No thanks!  The Rock 'n' Roller Coaster was also a pretty good ride.  It took off so fast even I could feel it in my stomach and rides usually don't get to me like that.  I think Mason had the record for rides on that one.  We all rode it the first time except for Bree who was too short and Darcy who was too scared.  The second day we had fast passes and I can't remember how it all worked out but Mason rode quite a few times.  He's probably the best on rides after me.  With Paul, Drew, and Bree at the bottom.  I was proud of Paul though, he rode everything but the Tea Cups, with the help of his buddy dramamine.  Whatever gets you through!  I went on the Tower of Terror by myself while Paul waited with the kids and then he and Mason went.  That was one of my favorites too.  The drops were so much fun!  Darcy avoided it the first day but on the second day she actually rode it twice with me.  We used Drew and Bree's wristbands to get in again on their fast passes.  Darcy was pretty proud of herself, as was I!

We also rode the Star Tours ride a couple times over both days, The Great Movie Ride, Muppet Vision 3D, Voyage of the Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, Lights, Motor, Action! Extreme Stunt Show, Disney Junior Live on Stage, Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage, and the best show of all - For the First Time in Forever:  A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration. It was soooooo good!  There were a couple of narrators on stage and they would do their little jokes and tell the Frozen story and then we would all get to sing along to the songs from the movie.  It was so good!  Just singing at the top of your voice and no one cares cuz they are doing the same thing.  Unless your name is Mason and then you are just sitting in the chair with a surly look on your face, wishing it was over because at any second you are going to burst into song and you don't want us to see you.  There was even "snow" at the end (soap suds).  It was so much fun.  The little girls and I loved it.  Luckily we got to do that twice too.

The first day we ate lunch at Mama Melrose's Ristorante Italiano.  That was excellent of course.  We got preferred seating tickets to the Fantasmic show later that night by eating there.  Dinner was at the ABC Commissary.  Usually our snacks were either bottles of pop or ice cream sandwiches.  A couple times it was cotton candy, popcorn, or a muffin.  Fantasmic was a neat show on an island with us in the grandstands on the other side.  It told Disney stories, and characters would go by in boats while the action was taking place on the island.  Every one of their live shows was excellent.  It was just astounding to me first, how many employees the Disney World park system must have.  I couldn't even hazzard a guess.  And second, how much money was running in and out of that place.  We paid a ton of money for entertainment, and they paid a ton of money to keep us entertained.  Amazing place!

Funny story, and maybe you had to be there to get it, but like I said, we were rope droppers and we stopped for nothing as we race walked our way to the first ride of the morning.  Well the first morning we were in this park, its day four of our vacation of walking miles and miles non-stop, Mason all of a sudden yelled, "OW!  I think I just popped out my hip!"  He was totally stopped, couldn't move, so I stopped with him.  I tried to get Paul to stop but there was nothing short of his own death that would have made him slow his race to the ride!  I was laughing so hard at the absurdity of the situation and I was probably a little punch drunk at the time from lack of sleep, heat and humidity, and days of herculean efforts, but I found it hysterical.  I pulled Mason along with me as he's limping and whimpering to the ride.  I was laughing so hard in line trying to explain to Paul what happened that I was crying.  It still makes be laugh.  Are we having fun yet!?

The second day we spent in this park, Nov. 18th, we ate lunch at Pizza Planet from Toy Story.  The kids finally found some food they liked!  It was really good and also tons of fun to be there.  For dinner we ate at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant.  We sat in tables supposed to look like cars, and watched old Sci-Fi movie clips on the big screen, like we were at a drive-in theater.  The things this place comes up with!  It was a fun place to eat.   After dinner we walked through the Streets of America which were completely covered in Christmas lights. I've never seen so many!   It was beautiful!

As huge Once Upon a Time fans, we were so excited to see Mr Gold's Pawn shop and a poster advertising the show.  We were hoping to find some merchandise but no such luck.  We still had a great time in the park.  Here are a few more pictures of our days in Hollywood Studios.

 

Disney World - Magic Kingdom Days 1, 4, and 7

 \This is where we
stayed at Disney World.  The All Star Sports Hotel, the Basketball division. We had two adjoining rooms so everyone would have a bed to sleep in.  It was nice to have that extra room to put all our stuff too.   We were so excited to see we were in room 2319!  That's the code on Monsters Inc. for when an employee is contaminated by a human object.  We thought it was hilarious we happened to be given such a significant room number.  Since we stayed on site at DW, we were able to take advantage of the free meal plan they offer at certain times of the year.  We upgraded the package for a few bucks and ended up with a Quick Service, a Table Service, and a snack a day, every day, per person.  That was a lot of food!  We ate Cocoa Puffs and Frosted Flakes in the morning in our hotel room and then usually the quick service was lunch.  There was so much food left over from just lunch that at first we would try to take it with us to eat later, but the table service dinner was even huger with tons more food and we soon realized we would never be able to eat any of the leftovers.  I felt horrible leaving so much food behind.  Then we all had a snack we were supposed to get in by the end of the day also.  We were constantly stuffed but we walked it off.  I had big plans to have huge numbers of steps per day logged on my Fit-Bit, but of course my charger was in my purse which was stolen so I only was able to track 3 days till it died.  Each of those days we were over 20,000 steps for the day.  That was a good enough excuse for me to eat all that amazing food!  I don't consider myself a foodie, but I sure did enjoy the many different types of food we ate.  The kids were not quite as impressed.  Especially Drew, she is very picky and I'm not sure she ever ingested much more than the bottomless chocolate milk.  She was considered an adult so she got large meals which Mason usually ate because his kid-sized meals weren't enough.  However it worked out, it was amazing food!

When Bree talks about Disney World, this is what she means.  Magic Kingdom.  Our first day at DW was spent here.  Paul did an amazing job of signing us up for excellent Fast-Passes, and then we rope-dropped every morning so it was essentially like have four Fast-Passes a day.  We would rope-drop the most popular ride of the park so we could miss that line.  At Magic Kingdom that ride is the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.  It was a pretty good ride but not nearly the crazy factor the Universal Studios rides had. It was much more Bree's speed.  In fact, she says that was her favorite ride.  We bought the picture package where we could have our picture taken by any of the DW photographers on the street and they would scan our wrist band and it would magically show up in our account somewhere.  That was cool because we got all the pictures they take on the rides and they made an awesome video of us on the Seven Dwarf's ride.  Hopefully is works on here.  We each got to choose our own band color and these worked as our room key, our fast passes were electronically connected so we just scanned them at the rides, and we could also use them to charge things to our room.  DW sure knows how to make it easy on people.  Almost too easy when it comes to spending money.

That first day at Magic Kingdom we stuffed in as much as we possibly could.  But I messed up Paul's meticulous planning almost right off the bat.  He had our time completely planned out, thanks to an awesome app he found.  Each night he would email me a copy of our itinerary so I would also know what was supposed to be happening for the next 15 hours.  I loved it! I think we were supposed to go to Space Mountain after the mine but the Tea Cups are right next to the mine so I made a detour to stop there.  I'm not surprised they weren't on the itinerary, Paul hates the spinning rides.  But you can't go to a Disney park without riding the Tea Cups!  Thankfully that quick detour didn't throw off the rest of our day, and Paul didn't let it bother him too much, outwardly.   Later he admitted he was annoyed that I had already ruined his plans :)  We made it to Space Mountain which Bree totally hated.  She was crying when she got off that one too.  Poor baby.  She didn't like being in the dark like that.  I think the rest of us loved it but I'm not sure you can tell by the look on some of our faces.

Bree found these ears the morning of the first day.  She saw them at a kiosk, grabbed them and ran over to me, without paying.  Oops!  Everything else had been "free" at DW, why not these?  We went back and payed and they were just the perfect set of ears for Miss Bree.  Darcy found Frozen ears and Drew went with the classic Minnie ears with a bow.  Such cuties.  They wore them almost constantly the whole time we were in the parks.  I caught Mason at the hotel with Bree's ears on and got a picture.  I'll use it on him as blackmail later.

That day we also rode Dumbo, the race track, Big Thunder Mountain, Buzz Lightyear Spaceranger Spin, People Mover, Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, Barnstormer, the Carrousel, Pirates of the Caribbean, Hall of Presidents, Its a Small World, Splash Mountain, Journey of the Little Mermaid, and the Haunted Mansion, where Darcy hid her face and bawled the whole way through, starting at the line outside.  I'm a wuss when it comes to scary and that place isn't even scary.  She just talked herself into it being horrible.  Bree was overly brave the whole time just to show her sister what a ninny she was being.  We ate our dinner that day at the Crystal Palace.  It was a buffet of amazing food and the Winnie the Pooh characters visited us at our table.

 
We went back to the Magic Kingdom on Nov. 16th for another full day of fun.  This was a miserably hot day so we tried to find some places to keep cool.  That took us to the Tiki Room and the Country Bear Jamboree.  Both were horrible, outdated, animatronic junk shows but at least they were air conditioned!  That morning we were able to get into the park at a special entrance because we had reservations for breakfast at Cinderella's Castle!  Its what Bree had been looking forward to for months!  It was fun to be one of the only ones in the park, heading toward the castle, and then turning around to see the massive flood of people behind us as they opened the gates.  The breakfast was amazing!  We had pictures taken with Cinderella, Snow White, Ariel, Jasmine, and Aurora, my favorite princess growing up.  It was totally magical!  We were also able to convince Mason to finally pose for a picture with a princess!

We also visited the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House, Tam Sawyer's Island, We had our picture taken with Mickey Mouse, Bree and Darcy both had small parts in the production of Enchanted Tales with Belle (Bree was Mrs. Potts, and Darcy was the horse, Philippe), and we rerode the Pirates of the Caribbean, Seven Dwarfs ride, and Splash Mountain.  We ate our lunch at the Pecos Bill Cafe which was of course delicious.  That evening we found ourselves a spot in the main circle in front of Cinderella's castle to watch the festivities.  They started out with a parade and street party where Bree and Darcy were shaking their money makers on the street while Drew and Mason did their best to try to disappear.  They may have been just a tad too old to enjoy the magic of this particular park.  You either need to be under 8 or over 30 I think to really appreciate it.  After the street party there was a Frozen Holiday Wish show at the castle.  After that we had front row seats to the Electrical Parade and then the Wishes Nighttime Spectacular.  That was so cool.  They did so many beautiful things with the castle.  It was a nice evening, just relaxing and being entertained.  Magic Kingdom was the all around favorite park at Disney World of probably just about all of us.  It had all the character rides and places associated with fairy tales.  It is a fun, fun place!  It was so hard to leave!  I'll leave the last half day we spent there for the last post on our trip.

Universal Studios

  Universal Studios was the first park on our trip.  Paul had done the research and it worked out that historically crowd-wise, the first 2 days of the trip would be better suited for Universal Studios with Disney World next.  That was fine with Drew and I!  Universal Studios, more specifically The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, was our favorite part of the trip.  As huge Harry Potter fans (I've read the series 8 times, Drew is almost done with her 2nd time) we were absolutely in awe of the place.  It was as if we were transported to the "real" Hogwarts, Hogsmead, and Diagon Alley.  It was so perfect!  It was everything a HP fan could ever dream of.  We were in heaven as we sipped our frozen Butterbeer on the streets of Hogsmead.  Not so much with the pumpkin juice though, that was some weird stuff.  Let me backtrack a second and say that we stayed at a Universal hotel, the Cabana Bay Beach Resort, so we were able to get early entrance passes to the Islands of Adventure half of the park both mornings.  Which was perfect because that meant Hogwarts and the best ride of all, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.  It started in the Hogwarts castle so each morning we got in line early and then "rope-dropped" so we could get to Hogwarts and get on the ride without having to wait an hour in line.  It was so worth it.  I was up at 6am pretty much the entire vacation.  That's how we do it, no sleeping in or resting when we are on vacation!  So both mornings we raced to ride the Forbidden Journey.  It was so good.  Bree was too short to ride, and Darcy was too scared to ride, but US has a great child-swap deal so Paul and I were able to do all the rides the kids didn't want to do with minimal waiting time.  Drew and Mason were also able to go again with the next parent so they doubled up on a few rides.  I guess that was their payment for not being able to use the stroller like Bree and Darcy.  We rented a double stroller from a service in Orlando and it was such a blessing.  Not only did it hold all our souvenirs, but it held Bree and Darcy almost 100% of the time.  That wasn't the original plan but when you are racing hundreds of other people to be at the front of the line, waiting for little legs to catch up just won't do.  Paul used that stroller to blaze a trail through stragglers and get us through quickly.  The rest of us just followed along behind as he parted the crowds for us.  Drew and Mason complained daily about how unfair it was for the girls to get to ride but I'd rather walk than have to stare at a bunch of strangers' butts all day.

 

  Hogsmead is where Drew purchased most of her souvenirs.  She bought an interactive wand where she could use it at certain spots to perform magic.  She had to say the right incantation and flick of the wand to make magic happen.  It worked!  Mason also got a wand, the Elder wand, the most powerful wand in the wizarding world.  Go big or go home, huh Mase?!  We rode Flight of the Hippogriff twice which was a Bree sized roller coaster, I rode the Dragon Challenge which is a roller coaster where your legs are free and you're held in your seat by a chest harness.  It was awesome.  My kids tried to convince me not to do it but those are my favorite rides.  We hung out in Hogsmead for quite a while the first day and then explored the rest of Islands of Adventure. 

  Universal Studio's rides are more intense than Disney World's so Drew, Mason, and I appreciated them more I think.  Lots of them were motion simulation rides where you really didn't go anywhere but you were wearing 3-D glasses which made you feel like you were a part of the action and your seat was moving around even though you weren't really going far. That being said, we went on the Jurassic Park ride which was actually moving with a big water drop at the end.  That was a really good one and the water felt good because it was so blasting hot there.  A week before Thanksgiving and it was in the high 80's!  Pretty much miserable with all that humidity too.  We did one ride in Dr Seuss Landing but it was so wussy we moved on to a different part of the park.  We rode on the Spiderman ride which was one of the 3-D rides.  It was pretty good.  We also did Poseidon's Fury, where Bree bawled the entire time.  She was such a trooper.  We kept dragging her on rides, telling her it wasn't going to be scary, then she would freak and out and be bawling at the end, and then believe me the next time I told her the ride we were going on wasn't going to be scary.  What a terrible mom, I know, but I wanted her to experience it all!  Only a couple of the rides turned out to be horrible for her.  That's a number I can live with!  Drew, Mason, Paul, and Darcy rode a couple of really wet rides while Bree and I just watched and stayed dry.  They got completely soaked on Popeye and Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges.  Even their shoes were soaked and we had quite the time trying to dry them before the next morning.

 

  That afternoon we rode the Hogwarts's Express from Hogsmead to Diagon Alley.  Heaven again!  It was so cool to see Gringott's bank and the Weasley's joke shop.  It was just so much fun to be there.  We kind of hung out and explored, walked the streets and shops, went back out into "London" where we found Stan Shunpike and the Knight Bus, and Drew tried calling the Ministry of Magic from the phone booth.  Unfortunately they told her they weren't accepting visitors at that time.  The whole place was perfect.  So much fun!  And did I mention how much we loved the butterbeer?  So, so good!  I think we bought 4 of them over both days.  Expensive but worth it!  We went back to the hotel after that and got in the one and only swim of the entire trip.  We didn't have any sort of meal plan for US so we ate once in the park and then had KFC on the way back to the hotel.  I had Mason's OSU string backpack full of Goldfish snacks, among other things  on my back the entire trip so I don't think we ever starved at US but we didn't eat like we did at DW!  More on that later.

  The second day, Thursday, Nov 12th, we rope-dropped again and rode the Hogwarts ride.  We rode the Hogwarts Express back over to Diagon Alley and rode the Escape From Gringotts.  That was one of those 3-D rides too.  It was pretty good.  Even Bree had fun I think.  It was so hard to leave the Harry Potter World without spending a billion galleons, though Drew came pretty close I think.
  We explored the rest of Universal Studios where we found some pretty good rides, and some stinkers.  Like the Shrek thing.  Skip it if you ever go.  Also the Minions ride had a long wait and it wasn't all that awesome either.  I think our longest wait at US was to get on the Transformers ride.  That one was really good.  Another 3-D but it was awesome.  We also rode the Simpsons, Men in Black, E.T., and Paul and I did the child swap on the Mummy ride.  None of the kids were brave enough to try it.  The ride was fun but the special effects were a bit scary.  We also saw a short show of how they create the horror movies with lots of blood and guts and monsters.  Perfect for little kids.  Or not.  Luckily it wasn't too graphic I guess.  We totally enjoyed Universal Studios.  It was hard to say goodbye to Harry Potter world.  I'm pretty sure Drew was dreaming of it the entire time we were at Disney World.  I would go back there in a heartbeat.  That night we moved ourselves over to our Hotel at Disney World to start a new adventure there the next day.  The little girls were so excited!  But I'll leave that for my next post.