Day 2, Part 1: A Morning with Character at Hollywood Studios
After our marathon day 1 Magic Kingdom extravaganza, it's a wonder we managed to get up and get ready to rope drop Hollywood Studios. But, we did. We caught the bus with no problems, and by 8:30 we were off the bus and about to undergo the awful, no good, very bad walk from the Pop Century temporary bus drop off to the main gate of the park. I think by now they have the new bus stops open- which is a good thing, because the walk was BRUTAL and a not-so-fun way to start the day.
The ghostly looking skyliner cars were whirling by. They moved much quicker than I thought they would. Gotta say though, they're a big thumbs down for me. Putting the air conditioning debate aside, I have a very irrational fear of any sort of sky based transport.... Ski lifts, gondolas, sky buckets, the chair lift ride at the local zoo, anything suspended on a wire dangling me mercilessly off the ground is a no go. ESPECIALLY when you're going over water. Nope. Nope. NOPE. I’ve seen some speculation that bus service at Pop will go away to areas the skyliner serves…. I hope that’s not the case because I’d love to stay there again, and I’d hate to feel shoehorned in to taking the super scary skyliner.
So, anyway, back to the trip:
Bag check was busy but the lines moved quickly. Soon enough we were scanned in and in the park.
We weren't interested in being anywhere near the mad dash to Slinky Dog, and knew that Rock n Roller Coaster would have a much smaller crowd first thing in the am, so we hung back and didn't try to fight our way through the crowd. It wasn't long before everyone started moving, and we veered right while the masses went to Andy's backyard. Compared to the cattle call of ropedropping Space Mountain, rope dropping RNRC was much calmer. We walked at a leisurely pace and waited maybe 5, 10 minutes max before we were loaded into our super stretch limo.
Hard to tell from this pic, but this train was half empty. There was nobody coming behind us so I had time to stand and watch the launch, which never gets old.
This is the part where I'd share our ride photo.... But, when we exited into the giftshop we were greeted by totally powered down monitors. The pictures never hit our magic bands either, so I'm assuming the whole system was down. Bummer. But, it wouldn't be our last high speed race through LA. In fact, we returned twice that same day (spoiler alert).
On the way out, we stopped to rock on for a photopass session:
And we spotted another photographer just a few steps away, so we took some fun Tower of Terror shots:
The scream photo is pretty much an accurate depiction of how we both feel about that ride.... I'll get on pretty much any roller coaster, but I do NOT do drop rides. I did the tower once, emphasis ONCE, back before they rethemed it in DCA and I promised myself I would never do it again. My sister did it once when we were little, at the urging of our dad (it didn't work for me, I was 18 when I finally allowed myself to be co-orced into riding) and she hated it too. So needless to say we weren't checking in to the Hollywood tower hotel at any point during this trip!
We also had a fun cameo from Tinkerbell:
When we reached the hub, we found - surprise surprise - another photopass opportunity.
These pics took HOURS to show up in
MDE. When I finally saw them, I forgot we had even taken them.
We had some time before our second fastpass at Midway Mania, so we decided to go meet some characters. We headed over to the animation courtyard, but nobody was meeting yet. So we went in to launch bay, which was somewhat of a ghost town.
We started off by meeting Chewbaca:
*Insert Wookie noise here*
And then we met BB8:
Then we went back outside and met Pluto!
Group hug!
Since we're a bit outside the age range of the Disney Junior characters that met next to Pluto, we decided that our character spree would continue with Olaf:
Somewhere in the midst of all this I found out that Midway Mania was down, and our fastpass was now good for anything. Rather than wait for it to come back online and brave the crowd of people trying to use their anytime fastpass, we decided to use it for something else. Since we had another HS day planned, plus after hours on the horizon, so it wasn't a huge deal if we didn't do everything at once. Ah, the luxuries of having 7 park days.
Since HS is light on attractions, it just made sense to use our anytime FP on another RNRC ride. We timed it so we could use the anytime FP and then our actual FP one after the other, which added up to 3 rides before noon! (See, another 3!)
But first, we stopped to meet Goofy:
Then, it was time to live out our groupie fantasies and follow Aerosmith on tour:
We made it a goal to do Wakanda Forever on each of the roller coasters. The frame kind of ruins it though....
The next time around, we decided to be unimpressed:
Which is a very hard face to hold when you're being launched so fast!
Since we once again had time to kill before our Star Tours FP, we decided to eat an early lunch at Backlot Express, since it's so close. We mobile ordered, which worked out great, because the lines were already pretty long.
Our lunch was uneventful and not worth photographing. I think we both had chicken fingers.
The only thing of note was a group of Stormtroopers who came by on patrol as we were waiting for our food:
Once we finished eating, we went outside to watch the Jedi training academy. The kids are sooooo cute in their little robes. Didn't take any pics though, because they weren't my kids and that's kind of weird. Just take my word for it.
Then it was finally time for our Star Tours flight. Neither of us are really Star Wars fans, but Star Tours is one of my favorite rides. It's a lot of fun, the queue is fun, and the line is usually pretty reasonable.
After that, we were pretty much done with Hollywood Studios. It was a warm day, and we didn't feel like dealing with the crowds anymore. So, we decided to take a much-needed mid-day break, the first of many. After going so hard on our first park day, we embraced the "show up in the morning, chill in the afternoon, come back at night" model. Again, the wonders of having 7 park days.
I'll pick up there in the next update. See you then! As always, thanks for reading
Love your TR and you wasted no time in getting a lot done!
. I have had it for years (RRMS), am thankful as well for the insurance victories, and man have I gotten used to needles.
. My beautiful wife actually went back to school and became a RN, but it doesn't make the shots any better. Keep up the fight - you've got this!
Looks like the people behind you were in on it - they look pretty relaxed too!
