Hollywood Studios

I know, I know.  It's been just a few days since I blogged and there is still so much of the trip to blog about!  I got a little busy! Our furnace had problems, my niece had a baby, my washing machine got clogged, my house was a mess, dishes don't wash themselves (dang!), we had dance,cub scouts, homework and basically, life just got in the way. 

So, anyway, Hollywood Studios.  I have to say I liked it.  As soon as we cleared the gate, Hali found this sign and made a be-line for it!  Can you guess why?  I'll give you a hint: it's not Boston, Tokyo, Milwaukee, Orlando, or Rome.

 On the main street they had a little show going on.  It was a director and an actress, filming a scene for a silent movie.  It was hilarious!  Disney sure knows how to put on shows, no matter how small.

 You have to strike a pose when you're in Hollywood!

 We took the backlot tour and at the end you walk through a little museum of sorts.  They had costumes from movies.  Porter especially loved the costumes from Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean.

 The most popular ride at the park was Toy Story Mania.  We've been on the ride at California Adventure, but it's such a great ride, that we were willing to wait in the really long line to do it again!

 I didn't think we'd spend a lot of time getting pictures with Characters and we didn't really.  We just happened to be at the right place at the right time for the Little Einstein's.

 Scott took the two older girls to a class about learning to draw Disney characters and I took the younger two, to see a few characters that were in the same building.  Yes, he smells like strawberries!

 So before our trip, I found an iPhone app that was all about the little secret things you can find at the parks.  We had looked for one in Epcot.  It was a bowl in the China pavillion that would fill the bowl with water if you held onto it's handles.  They were remodeling and had removed it.  Dang.  Then in the Magic Kingdom, we looked for a bench outside of a restaurant with a statue of Goofy, that when you sit down, he might laugh.  Again, remodeling took it away.  Crap!  We did find this one in Hollywood studios.

 It was supposed to squirt water.  It didn't.  Stupid app.

We got the dinning plan for free, so we ate really well.  I wanted to pick restaurants that were an "experience".  This night we dined at the Sci-Fi Drive In.  We arrived soaked! It had started to really rain about 30 minutes before our reservation and the park was pretty cleared out.  But the restaurant was completly covered so it wasn't a big deal.  You sit in these old car/tables and watch old sci-fi B movies on the screen.  It was really cool!

We actually got Hali to go on the Tower of Terror.  When asked what she thought of the ride she said, " I really liked it, except for the part that you go down."  :)

There was also this really strange ride called the Great Movie Ride.  You get on this big boat thing that's not on water and you have this guide who takes you through these scenes of great classic movies.  At one point, you are in this gangster movie and an "actor" (used very loosely here) comes out and shoots your guide and takes over himself.  He was terrible!!  The gangster dude, I mean.  Bad, bad actor.  He "dies" at a later point in the ride and I almost clapped.  It was so weird. And of course, my kids loved it!

Overall, I liked the park.  There were a couple of good stunt shows, that Scott took too many pictures of, but they were entertaining.  It was a good day!