Friday, March 19, 2010

Day Four-Holywood Studios

February 21, 2010

Today we visited Holywood Studios. I had done reading on the attractions the night before and Shiloh and I had marked up a map and planned out a stradegy for park opening. I felt like we needed a stradegy if we were going to get to ride the new 3D Toy Story ride. I read a lot of things that talked about how everyone rushes to this ride at opening and they do it because if you don't you won't have another chance to ride it. The line becomes long and the fastpasses get all used up early. We made it to the park before opening (this was a first) and waited (like sardines) with everyone else until they opened the gates. I had map in hand and when they opened we walked straight toward the Toy Story ride. There was a man with a large video camera set up yelling to the crowd as we passed "Everyone look as if you are very excited to ride on Toy Story Mania, like you can not wait to get there!" As the people passed and heard him they really pumped up the energy thinking they were helping to film a commercial or something. Me included. But just a split second after we passed by I realize everyone is already acting this way and the camera was most likley a prop used to point out the obvious. For fun of course. Anyway we reached THE LINE. There were actually cast members directing people which way to walk, where to park strollers,go left to stand in line to ride, go right to stand in the get a fast pass and so on. We made a split second decision to stand in line to ride as we saw the fast pass come back times head into the afternoon. But just like all lines at Disney we didn't stop walking. They had green army men "directing" the crowd as well and were mostly meant for our entertainment however the line moved so quickly that we didn't get much time to stand and watch them. I didn't even have time to snap a photo of them before we were inside and inside Andy's room. We waited in line about twenty minutes which was the maximun wait time we experienced for any ride our entire visit. I think maybe it was the time of the year? However I guess our stradegy worked to our advantge. We were entertained in line the entire time by giant game pieces and a giant Mr. Potato head telling jokes to the crowd that we hardly noticed any wait at all.











Once we came off the ride and compared scores (Shiloh beat me) we saw there was no line outside the building and decided to ride again. This time we only had to wait about ten minutes and this time I was sure I would beat Shiloh's score cause he took Silas in his lap. I was free to shoot as fast as I could and really bump up the score at the end on the bonus round. Shiloh beat me again. I picture Silas asking "Daddy I wanna shoot" and Shiloh saying "Not right now I have to beat Mommy!" but I know this isn't true because when Silas rode with me he just wanted to watch. He didn't care about pulling the string that would shoot the gun. I can see now why everyone rushes to this ride. It was fun. ;)

I'm sure we would've kept riding over and over but we had places to go! Next door was the Prince Caspian attraction and we thought we may get to meet him. We watched a film and them got to see some of the props and costumes from the movie. When we asked the lady about the Prince she said he didn't work there anymore. Cecily was upset. In tears upset. So we went back inside the film area and snapped a photo with Aslan's stone table instead. I knew it was too dark to turn out great but Cecily was really upset and that seemed to make it better.





Next we spent some time meeting these characters you may recognize. Cecily was a little intimidated by Mr. Incredible and Frozone. I'm not sure why but she wasn't having her picture taken next to these giant headed people.







One of the things I most looked foward to at HS was the Beauty and the Beast show. I knew the girls would really like it. It's like all the best parts of the movie(the songs) live on stage. They did like it and couldn't stop thinking about why the little girl who was chosen to receive a felt rose from the prince at the end of the show was any more of a "special guest" than they were. I assured them it was because she was in the front row and nothing more but they weren't so sure.









Next stop Star Wars Simulator. Silas was too small for this ride so we tried out the child swap system. Shiloh took the girls and we simply told the man at the begining of the line that we wanted to use child swap. He gave us a ticket and Shiloh went ahead. When they came out Clara felt sick and didn't want to ride again so I took Cecily straight to the front of the line with our ticket. The only line we had to wait in was the handicap line. I like this system. The kids get to ride twice and wait only once! When we got a little smarter we combined the fast pass with the child swap and rode twice with almost no wait. But you can only use a fast pass one at a time. So if you are waiting for your turn to come around on fast pass on one ride you can't get another one until the first one is done.

These buildings aren't real they are just painted on and made to look 3D.





We made sure to stay till park closing because we wanted to watch Fantasmic. It's a water/laser show that Mickey conducts and you have a chance to see all the characters in one place. We went to the earlier showing that started at 7:30 and while in line to get in I saw the Hollywood Tower of Terror. I told Shiloh he should ride it and although the girls were tall enough it is kind of a scary ride. He went to ride alone and I parked the stroller and found seats. We had a while to wait for the show to start but they played music to entertain us. When a song from the Little Mermaid came on Cecily just stood up in the bleachers and started dancing. I don't know where she learned her moves but she was quite good. Clara soon joined her and I got our the video camera. I hate that it's so dark but maybe you can see a little. After that one song they wouldn't dance anymore. I guess they were moved by it!




We basically did all the attractions at HS but I guess we chose not the get the camera out because the next photos are of us leaving. Sad. Well we still had three days of parking around ahead of us!



When we got on the bus to go back to the resort a group of high energy teenagers got on with us. It turned out that they were also staying at Fort Wilderness and so transfered to the next but with us. When Silas started acting grumpy they started talking to him. One girl asked what his name was and I told her. Then they were asking him all kinds of questions. They asked if he saw Mickey Mouse and all of a sudden Mickey's voice came on the loud speaker saying "I hope you saw me Silas cause I certainly saw you!" Then "Mickey" giggled. It was our bus driver of course but the girls kept saying "We heard Mickey talk to Silas!" I think it's impossible to go to Disney and not have some little experience like this. Everyone calls the girls princess and Silas pirate. You might walk by someone and they will blow pixie dust on you. Which is mickey mouse head confetti. Or like when we were waiting for Aurora to come back to sign autographs and they decided to move the spot where she was greeting kids, the lady came and got our family and took us to the head of the line in a secret back door because she knew we were waiting. Everyone one is so friendly. Shiloh and I talked about stratagies the bosses used to make sure the employees act like they are just working to have a job and we thought they must have secret shoppers. People who walk around pretending to be on vacation but are there to check out attitudes. I don't know how else to accomplish this. I didn't see one bad attitude. Not like when you go to six flags. What do you think?

p.s. spell check won't work so sorry if you notice typos.

3 comments:

CAB said...

If you're not still exhausted from this trip, I don't know how! Whew!

We just saw UP recently - had y'all seen it before the trip? Our crew REALLLY liked it...so much that I bought it the last time we were at Target. I know, crazy Mama.

Abbie said...

Wow, thats alot of writing lol...I looked at all the pics and I will be back to read all your Disney posts...I am trying to catch up on blogs!! I haven't been on blogger for a while....

Abbie said...

yay I am finally caught up now! Your pics are great for the camera flash to not be working! I was going to ask what camera you took because the pics are so good! I can totally understand how Clara and Cecily felt when they didnt get the rose at the Beauty and the Beast show...I always felt like that at like Sea World when they would get a "volenteer" from the audience...why couldn't it ever be ME? haha ;)

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