11/22/2014
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| One of Baby's favorite movies |
Hollywood Studios is a separate park from the Magic Kingdom, as is Epcot. So you either choose to do a park a day or you have to purchase the more expensive park-hopper option. We chose to do a park a day, so today's Hollywood Studios for us. Before we went, I was skeptical that they would have enough attractions to warrant a full day here, but now I know better.
It's a very entertaining park, actually. They don't have many rides (most of the attractions are shows), but the rides they do have--JACKPOT. Angel didn't want to leave at the end of the night, that's how good it is.
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| Real tickets from the Mary Poppins premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1964 |
Angel said this Mickey monument was being built the last time she was here back in the early 2000s:
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| Bust of Walt Disney |
There's a show about car stunts that was hugely entertaining. They did car chase after car chase, in different, innovative sequences. Then they show you how they set up each sequence. For example, there's this one sequence where the good guy (red car) is being chased by 5 bad guys (black cars), and the red car is driving in reverse, trying to get away from the bad guys. The whole time, I was thinking, Damn, that guy drives awesome in reverse! Turns out, they tore out the back half of the car (the trunk area) and installed a driver's seat there. Aaaahhhh. So the driver in the red car looks like he's driving in reverse, but in actuality, he's driving straight forward. Neat, huh? The spectacular finale:
Disney is super wicked, in that they know Frozen's popular, so they've deliberately separated the Frozen attractions into each park, which means you have no choice but to visit all the parks. Epcot is getting a Frozen ride (they tore down a Norway ride to accomplish this), Magic Kingdom has Meet Anna & Elsa, the Frozen Nighttime Spectacular show where the castle lights up into thousands of twinkling lights, and Anna & Elsa are in the parades.
Hollywood Studios has the Frozen Sing-A-Long:
The "historians" of Arendelle take you thru the storyline, reliving each major plot point. When the songs come up, they have huge screens on each side of the stage with the words so you can karoake along. All the kiddies were singing along. So why wasn't Angel? :P
Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff all make an appearance:
C'mon, Angel, sing along!
When you leave the Sing-A-Long theater, they give you Frozen ornaments as keepsakes to take home!
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| Frozen cupcakes! |
Hollywood Studios also has a Frozen playground, complete with snow where kids can make snowmans and snow sculptures. It's a timed event, which means that everyone gets (probably) 15 minutes playing in the snow. They let in a certain number of people; when the rink gets filled, they close it off for 15 minutes. Which means there's a loooonnnng line of families waiting in line to go play in the playground.
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| Elsa's Castle |
The playground and adjoining shop and cafe are called Wandering Oaken's Trading Post. Angel and I kept trying to figure out who was Wandering Oaken. I thought he was the snow monster that Elsa conjured up.
Even this didn't clue us in:
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| Yoo-hoo! |
It wasn't until I returned home and rewatched Frozen, that *ding!* Ooooh, it's the huge German dude who owns the supplies shop!
We saw Beauty and the Beast: Live on Stage! I remember watching this show the first (and only) time we came here, way back in the '90s when I was a little girl. I remember the human-sized Mrs. Potts dancing on stage, and Belle and Beast dancing too. It hasn't changed much since then, so it's a nice nostalgic feeling~
The theatre holds 1500 people. No way! 1500?! The theatre was completely packed--and considering they do multiple shows a day, can you imagine how many people watch this show in one day? Crazy!
We saw Voyage of the Little Mermaid, also something I remember from when we were here in the '90s. Though I don't remember Eric making an appearance last time:
They have the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights light up at nighttime for Christmas:
It's named Osborne because the Osborne family started this tradition of holiday lighting out of their home in Arkansas. Over time, it grew and grew and outgrew their house. In 1995, Disney World and Osborne collaborated to bring this spectacle to the masses each year for Christmas. There's a lot of hidden Mickeys lurking about. During daytime, the street looks like a New York movie-set street.
And now we come to Angel's favorite ride of ALL the parks. Toy Story's Midway Mania:
You need glasses here cuz it's 4-D.
Two people sit in one car and you're off on a journey thru all your favorite midway games (the games are a lot like the Circus Circus games we played as kids). Woody, Buzz, the whole gang pops up as you're using your plastic gun to aim, shoot, fire at the interactive 4-D games.
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| C-U-P. Cup! |
Angel loves this ride so much, we rode it 3-4 times back to back. The afternoon lines are crazy long wait times, but if you come in the evening when the park's about to close, there's almost nobody in line.
The ride opened in 2008 and cost $80 million to design and build. Many parts of the control system came courtesy of Disney's sponsors, Siemens and Hewlett-Packard. Since the games are essentially software (like a giant X-box), they can change the games at any time so it never gets boring to go on the ride.
Our arms were so sore from shooting the plastic guns! You can get serious carpal tunnel from doing this the whole day! Angel used her bicep to pull the lever; I used my forearm (gotta do it repeatedly at top speed). Different people, different techniques.
We finished the night watching Fantasia. Just as good as Disneyland's. Must go there sometime, musn't we?
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