Day 5 - Disney Studios

We keep on rolling. While at DisneyQuest last night, we were able to jump online and check out the weather forecast for the rest of the week. Looks like there is the possibility of having a few small thunderstorm in the upcoming days, but nothing like yesterday. I believe it was just the outskirts of the tropical storm that is hitting Louisiana. Good news. We checked outside in the morning and it was another sunny, humid day. Get ready for 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity. Hello Florida.

Today is the last of the firsts (first times hitting the parks, not counting the waterparks). This was also one of the last changes we made to our schedule. Originally, we were going to hit Disney Studios earlier in the vacation, but due to some crowd analysis, we decided to go today. We're also very excited for today because this park holds the newest of the new rides....Toy Story Mania. But with new rides come large crowds, as we learned from the submarine openings last year.

Although the crowds weren't huge, I think it has been the most crowded park we've seen. And guess where they were all headed, yup, Toy Story. When we hit Disneyland last year, the queue really played to our advantage. I was able to "walk quickly" to get in line first after the rope drop on Main Street and then follow the twisting queues around (allowing Julie and the kids time to walk up and meet me) and then roll into the first submarine. We've noticed that many of the queues in Florida are inside due to the heat and thunderstorms. So our strategy was to get a fastpass. Well, they handled the rope drop differently and made us follow cast members the entire way for the ride. I'm guessing half of the crowd made a huge bubble around the Toy Story cast members. Far uglier than the subs. As we approached the ride they split us into two mobs, one to ride the ride immediately and the other to abuse the fast pass machines. I made a mistake by taking our passes out of my pocket while walking through the ropes (yes, they had to set up a rope queue to get fast passes. It was that bad.). The cards hit one of the metal posts and went flying. I dove to the ground to collect them as quickly as I could to avoid being trampled by the ensuing fast pass mob. The good news was that my hand speed was working at an all time high (only slipped a couple slots in line and didn't have to wait for a machine), but the bad news was that my knees took the brunt of the dive and I had to deal with bloody knees for the rest of the day. ( See my Knee?) As I made my way out of the area I looked back to assess the situation. Brutal, I'd say it was more croweded than the subs. More on this to come.....

I headed over to Star Tours to meet Julie and the kids. Again, the queuing of the area is much better than the Land. There was a big Imperial Walker, a speeder and a few other things for the kids to take pictures with. The rest of the morning was trolling through some of the other ride and show offerings. Some were, um, bad. The sounds dangerous ride, the great movie ride and Journey into Narnia need to be replaced. Just brutal. We also tried to catch the first shows so that any afternoon storms wouldn't impact them. The Indiana Jones show struggled. We really enjoy the franchise, but the stunt show was average at best. We did like the car stunt show though, just seemed a little more real. The broadway type shows were good too. Beauty and the Beast was nice and Connor was able to open the Little Mermaid Show (how was he picked instead of the girls? No idea. Unfortunately he didn't take my advice and open the show by adding to the end of his line "Now, let's go see Ariel, she's hot!").

Back to the rides, we attacked their other big hitters - Tower of Terror and Rocking Roller Coaster. Court and I couldn't convince Connor or Mallory to go on Tower of Terror with us, so we did that one alone while the others saved a spot for Beauty and the Beast. We liked the California version better. The Florida ride didn't seem to have as many big drops. The entire family rode Rockin RollerCoaster. I think I liked it the best of anyone. It takes off in a hurry. I thought it was fun, but I think the quick start may have startled the kids and they never caught up. California Screaming appeals more to the family, but I may like Rockin Roller Coaster more. One note, the fast pass wasn't a huge benefit here, I think it was our longest wait of the day even with fast passes (20 minutes).

Back to Toy Story Mania. Our first fastpass allowed us to get the next pass about 40 minutes after I got the first ones. Seeing all of the excitement around the new ride, I thought that I would get a second straight pass to Toy Story. When I ran over to get the next set of passes the line to get fast passes was ~20mins long. 20 mins to get fast passes...no. I ended up grabbing the set for Rockin RollerCoaster. When the next set came available around 11am, I went over to Toy Story again. The good news was that the line was no longer there to get the passes, the bad news was that we grabbed some of the last ones for the night (7:40PM). They were out of fastpasses by 11:15. Yeah, it is a big hit and probably the family favorite for the week.

We went first in the early afternoon with the first passes and loved it. Good thing we got the second passes (the standby line was consistently at about 90 minutes and it is a quick loading line too, unlike the subs). Julie was worried that she wouldn't like it because she thought it would be like Buzz Lightyear. No worries there. You go through a bunch of 3D carnival games trying to rack up points by shooting eggs, rings and a variety of other things at targets, chickens, aliens, etc. The mechanism was really different than Buzz too. It's a bit hard to explain, but we'll just say, don't miss it. It is great for the whole family.

Well, we had to wait around for the second passes, so we went to the cartoon acadamy. There was a really funny intro that pitted Mushu against a cast member acting as a cartoonist before releasing us into the games/drawing activity area. Big thumbs up for the intro. After messing around on the games, we decided to go to the drawing course. The group decided to draw Stitch (Court's or Mallory's suggestion). We had varied levels of success. Julie's was the best. We closed out the day with a little shopping and the final ride on Toy Story.

It was another full day that ended with swimming back at the pool before getting to bed. The overall feel is that it was fun, but probably our least favorite park. They need to replace a few things and it has real potential. Court's birthday in the Magic Kingdom is on tap.....