Hollywood Studios

We woke up on our first full day feeling much better.  At least, Ryan and I were.  Rob was just starting to get sick and Anne was only on day 3 of her antibiotics so she was still a little cranky.  Luckily we had a light day planned for Hollywood Studios.  But our first stop was the BX at SOG for some cold medicine for Rob.  Once he was fully medicated, we hopped on the bus to head to the park!

You may remember from my pre-trip report for the cancelled trip that we had a lot of firsts planned.  To start with, this was our first Disney Trip since I got my Cricut.  And you know what that means?  Matching shirts!  Since Hollywood Studios has a lot of Star Wars stuff, I made these beauties.  

I love these shirts, but we realized at the end of the day that they only work when we are together.  If, say, Rob has to go to the front desk of the hotel by himself, it looks like he is a know it all.  And if I'm alone, it kinda looks I love everyone.  

​I didn't get a good photo of the shirts I made for the kids.  Ryan's had Buzz Lightyear and Anne's had a pink cowboy hat (to represent Woody from Toy Story).  Both shirts said "You've Got a Friend in Me" with arrows that pointed at each other.  Very cute, and these were actually executed by a friend of mine who has way more Cricut skill than I do.  

We usually skip Hollywood Studios because there isn't enough for us to do there to justify a full day.  But a certain little girl is alllll about Frozen right now, and they have a Frozen sing-a-long show that made it worth adding to the plan this trip.  

There have been a ton of changes since we were last at the Studios.  The car stunt show is gone and so is the giant sorcerer's hat.  They've closed the Great Movie Ride and One Man's Dream, two of our favorite attractions.  They've added some Star Wars stuff and will soon add a ton of Toy Story stuff, like a slinky dog roller coaster.  So maybe on the next trip we will come back to see the new stuff.  We did really enjoy the things we were able to do this trip.

Our first attraction was Disney Junior Live on Stage!  This show is right in our wheelhouse.  The kids love all things Disney Junior and this show promised to have them singing and dancing along with their favorite characters.  

Know before you go: at this show you sit on the floor. Young children WILL stand up and dance around you.

The set is a giant storybook and it opens up as Mickey, Donald, Daisy, and Goofy seek the help of Sophia, Jake and other Disney Junior characters to make a special party for Minnie Mouse.  Unfortunately this is as much as I can tell you about the show, because they experienced technical difficulty after the first song.  I thought 200 preschoolers were going to mutiny!

Luckily there was a meet and greet with Sophia the First happening right outside, we hopped into the line and our two perked right up.  

After meeting Sophia, we encountered some Storm Troopers.  Disney has really doubled down on Star Wars to bring boys to their parks.  The Studios have added what they call March of the First Order, and it was kinda neat, and kinda annoying.  Every hour there is a cadre of Storm Troopers that march down the main thoroughfare, into a courtyard, and are inspected by the silver Storm Trooper (does she have a name?).  After the inspection, she dismisses the Troopers to patrol the park.  You are guaranteed to interact with these guys if you spend any time here.  Pretty cool.

The annoying part is that they do this exact same show, every hour. And the park isn't big.  So you will here the show 4-5 times while you are at the Studios.  The novelty wore off for me.  Oh, and those patrolling Storm Troopers?  If your kid is afraid of them then be prepared to find new routes everywhere you need to go.  I speak from experience.

Side note: Ryan loves to learn about animals and their natural defenses.  It's common for him to ask "what's a lion's defense? What's a caterpillar's defense?" etc etc.  Once it occurred to him that the Storm Troopers were defending this park, he wanted to know what each park's defense was.  Every day as we walked around he would say, "Oh, Epcot's defense is all this water, its a natural barrier."  Very cute.

Once we were cleared by the Storm Troopers, we had a FastPass+ to get to.  If you aren't familiar, FastPass+ is a reservation to ride an attraction at a certain time.  It allows you to skip the line, although sometimes you still have a small wait to load onto the ride.  A good FastPass+ strategy will save you hours in line (and make you the hero of the vacation).  

This first FastPass+ was for For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration.  This was highly anticipated by our group and it did NOT disappoint.  We got great seats in the middle of the theatre and waited about 10 minutes for the show to start.  

During the show, two narrators take you through the history of Arendelle, which is  just an excuse to belt the songs from the movie at the top of your lungs.  I was lucky enough to be sitting next to Anne, and we really "let it go."  This show is a must do if you have a little Frozen lover in your group.

Up next, lunch!  I had booked us lunch at one of our favorite sit-down restaurants in WDW, The 50's Primetime Cafe.  We love the kitschy 50's decor, being harassed by the wait staff, and the food!

Get the Peanut Butter and Jelly Milkshake. You can thank me later.

The food here is home-cooked comfort food.  I got the fried chicken (which is generous enough to share) and Rob got the blue plate special, which was a delicious cod dish with crab meat.  I was going to order the kids one mac and cheese to share, but the waitress said it was a "tiny portion" and we should get two. I did, and was flummoxed by the two GIANT bowls of mac n cheese that came out.  Oh well, lesson learned.

Fully stuffed, we headed over to see the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular.  We had a FastPass+, but because of our lunch we arrived 5 minutes prior to the start of the show and there were no seats, so we couldn't see the show. Oh well, the milkshake was worth it.  But lesson learned: a FastPass+ does not guarantee you a seat!

It was starting to drizzle, so we went to see if Disney Junior was up and running.  Nope.  Closed for the day.  This rain forced us to seek shelter, so we decided to check out the Launch Bay.  This is a new experience for the Star Wars section of the park.  It's part store, part museum, part meet and greet facility.  If you are into Star Wars, you could probably spend hours in here looking at everything.  It was really well done.

This BB8 robot was very entertaining.

It was almost time for our Toy Story Midway Mania FastPass+, so we headed over to the Pixar Place area of the park.  There was a huge wall blocking off where the new expansion will be.  I really hope in 2 years when that part opens my kids are still into Toy Story, because it looks like it's going to be awesome.  We did get a cool photo with Cruz Ramirez from Cars 3 and we ran into one of the Army Men from Toy Story. And we pressed some pennies, of course. After spending so much time in a galaxy far, far away I was happy to get a big dose of Disney!!

Finally we got on the big ride!  The posted wait time was 90 minutes.  Thanks to our FP+ we only waited about 5 minutes to board the ride.  Toy Story Midway Mania is one of the best rides in Disney.  First, the queue is well themed and you are immersed in Andy's Room.  Everything is scaled so that you feel like you are the size of a toy.  Then you board a toy box vehicle that takes you through all these carnival style games.  Each person has there own pop gun and you compete head to head to see who can get the most points.  And since it is all digital, each section of the ride is different.  So your pop gun sends darts at one screen, then rings at the next.  Too bad the wait is always so long, I could ride this one all day.

We alternated who got to ride with Daddy. See the smile?

Stuck with mommy.

Toy Story was our last ride of the day.  We could have circled back to Indiana Jones, but there was an hour until the next show and we had seen everything already.  For us, it wasn't worth the wait.  If your family is taller or more adventurous, there are two other headline attractions: The Tower of Terror and Rock 'n ' Roller Coaster.  I dread the day our kids want to ride these.  Rob gets motion sick (except on cruises.  grr) so I will have to ride them with the kids.  I should bring dramamine.

On our way out of the park we were lucky enough to see, yet again, The March of the First Order (sarcasm).  At least this time we saw it from a different vantage point.

Ok, so now it's time to talk about Shades of Green transportation.  The resort is located a short walk from the Polynesian Resort.  This means, if you are heading to the Magic Kingdom or Epcot, you can walk to the Poly and hop on the Monorail.  Awesome!  For the other two parks, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, you ride a free SoG bus.  

These are similar to the Disney buses, with one notable exception.  They run on a schedule.  Each leaves SoG at a set time, drops people off, picks up people, and returns to the resort.  Then it waits until the set time to depart and do its loop again.  This is nice, because you know when the bus will be there and when it will leave.  But if, like us, you want to leave about 5 minutes after the bus has left, you are stuck waiting 55 minutes.  We have developed a work around.  If we miss the SoG bus, we hop on the next bus headed to the Poly and walk back to SoG.  This always gets us back faster than if we had waited for the SoG bus.

The kids wanted to swim and Rob wanted to get in the hot tub.  SoG is very strict about their no kids in the hot tub rule, not even their feet!  Anne and Ryan were happy to play in the pool.  Oh, in case you were wondering, since it was November, the weather was in the low to mid 70's.  The pools are heated, so my kids hopped right in and for most of the time had the pool to themselves.  Of course, when they got out they were freezing and acted like they were going to die. 

Anne in action.

Mommy's little freeze cat.

Mad that I made her get out for dinner.

We ended Day One with dinner at the SoG buffet with our friends, the Wendels.  Sponsoring additional rooms is another great benefit of SoG.  The service member can book a room for their family and sponsor an additional 2 rooms.  If the service member is traveling with their spouse, the spouse can sponsor another 3 rooms. We took advantage of this and invited the Wendels and Greens to join us.  Since they both have older kids, our park touring strategies were different.  Luckily we were able to join them for meals.

Our Hollywood Studios day was just the right amount of park touring and relaxation, considering three of us were still on the upswing from being sick.