First - the good news - the trip video is finished!!
I love making these but man, do they become a big undertaking. As soon as it is done 'processing' and uploading I will link to it here.
Alright, so I left off on the morning of Saturday, August 23. The date was important on this day because we had planned for months to spend the day at Hollywood Studios, and the announcement of the Villains Unleashed hard ticket event that night kind of put a damper on things. My first reaction was to want to spend the day at Epcot instead because I thought the park might be swarmed with people who otherwise would go elsewhere that day. And I was bummed about this, because we already had FP+ and ADRs booked. In fact, it turned out the opposite way. HS became a recommended park during the first part of the day because the crowds without hard tickets were going elsewhere.
I debated buying Villains tickets for about 0.02 seconds. I think we already give the Mouse enough of our money, we're not super huge fans of any of the Villains, and my kids can't stay up that late. We were out.
We did stay with our HS plan for the day, though. The only real bummer about it was that they took away the morning EMH that had been scheduled. Oh well… we got to sleep in a bit. Also, I was pretty excited about going to see the Frozen stuff, so I wanted to do a HS day early on in our Crescent Lake stay so that if we absolutely loved any part of it, we could make a point of going back again.
Breakfast came from the Boardwalk Bakery. Great place!!
We walked over to HS and were there for rope drop. The lines were pretty long. We headed right up Hollywood Blvd and toward Toy Story Mania. I guess we were still thinking in our old pre-Frozen mindset. We got there and there was a 50 minute wait. What!!!! No thanks, we had a FP+ window opening at 9:30 anyway; we'd just hoped to fit in a second ride. Instead, we poked around in Wandering Oaken's until our window opened. I hadn't realized that it was right next door to TSMM.
We got this shot taken outside on the street...
And this one once we were inside…
We also did all the Aurasma magic shots that you can take yourself, but I wasn't that impressed with them. They were finicky to make work and are too low of a resolution to print anyway.
I felt badly for the CMs who were wearing multiple layers of woollen sweaters and turtlenecks, but the AC was blasting. When our FP+ window opened we went over to TSMM and rode that.
Liam made a friend out on the street:
Then we split up for a bit. Liam wanted to use a FP+ for Rockn Roller Coaster, another first for him. Mallory of course wanted no part of that. Chad went with Liam and I think the ride photo speaks for itself:
Another one-and-done for Liam.
I took Mallory over to meet Sofia, since she is a big fan:
We also fit in the Voyage of the Little Mermaid - walked up right as the theatre doors were closing.
By then it was nearly 11 a.m., and my biggest must-do of the day was to watch the Royal Welcome. We staked out a spot across from the American Idol steps. It was a great place to watch from, but there was no shade. There were people sitting at the tables nearby, which had umbrellas, but they were several feet back from the lines on the ground that indicate the parade routes. I was not about to trust that someone would not jump in front of me at the last minute if I sat there. I put the kids in the shade for a few minutes and staked out the spot in the sun. It was broiling, stinking hot, what would be the hottest day of the trip. There would not be a stage show as part of the Royal Welcome, because the stage was done up with the Villains set rather than the normal Frozen set, but one of the CMs on the parade route commented that even if that hadn't been the case, they would not have stopped to perform the welcome because it was too hot for the CMs in the fur and winter costumes to be out in the sun for that long.
The parade was really quick, less than ten minutes for sure.
The CMs at Wandering Oaken's suddenly seemed to have it pretty good.
Fur!
In August!
In Florida!
We got to see the Frozen princesses for the first time though, so it was worth it in the end. I guess.
The boys had found us right before the parade started and watched it with us, and then with the four of us together again, we did Muppet Vision and Star Tours - Mallory was not impressed with this one, but not deathly afraid of it, either.
We stopped back in at Wandering Oaken's again, and bought a Christmas tree ornament and a few snacks from this case to enjoy later on that afternoon:
And then it was time for our lunch ADR at 50s Prime Time Diner. I just love this place - the decor, the waitstaff shenanigans, the meat loaf - all of it.
Whoops, I've hit the photo limit. Have I really been rambling on for that long? To be continued...
I would love to get one, just don't know if I would ever have time to edit the footage. We were there around the same time, Aug 23-30.
I am dying!
, looks like you all had an amazing time. 
