Disney Day 4: Hollywood Studios

I'll warn you up front. This is going to be a long post. Although Hollywood Studios is the smallest of the main Disney parks, I took a LOT of photos that day plus quite a few videos. As many as you see here today, there are at least double that that didn't make the cut. One of these days, when I start updating Flickr again, I'll upload the rest of them.

One of the upsides to being a smaller park is that we actually got a chance to see almost everything at Hollywood Studios so we didn't leave wanting. I definitely wouldn't mind going back someday, especially since they have some big additions planned in the future, but of all the places we visited, Marilu and I agree that we did the Studios justice.

Before we look at our adventures at the park, I wanted to let you see Lucas's bed at the resort. We were staying at Port Orleans, which was themed in large part around the Disney film The Princess and the Frog. I'll admit I've never seen it, but I assume this alligator was one of the characters in it. Apparently, the pull-out bed was comfy since Lucas slept soundly in it every night. I'll have a few more photos of our room on the last day of the series.

You can't go to a Disney park without taking a picture on its version of Main Street. In Hollywood Studios, the backdrop is a replica of Mann's Chinese Theater.

Since we got to the park early, we decided to get in line for the Toy Story ride. This was by far my favorite line to wait in since the theme was very cool. It gave you the feeling that you were the size of a character from the film as there were plenty of super-sized toys and games to see.

After the ride (which was REALLY fun, way better than the Buzz Lightyear one at Magic Kingdom), we posed with one of the heroes from the new Cars 3 movie. I haven't seen it, but Lucas loved it. He probably even knows the name of this car--which I obviously don't.

I think Hollywood Studios is a lot more appealing to adults than some of the other parks since it highlights franchises that skew a little older like Indiana Jones and Star Wars. Below, the Deal men pose in front of a German tank from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And here's a rare selfie in front of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Lucas was really nervous about this one, but he survived. However, he said later it was his least favorite ride. On the other hand, my dad went on it with us and enjoyed it.

I think this was taken while waiting for a photo op with Olaf, the snowman from the Frozen movie. Sometimes you just gotta let it out!

And here's the reward for waiting a half hour in line.

As I mentioned earlier, Star Wars is a big part of Hollywood Studios. The main Star Wars themed ride is Star Tours, a 3D ride. Once again, the decor while waiting in line was top notch.

Lucas and I show off our fashionable 3D glasses.

The main tie-in to Indiana Jones, besides all the wonderful props, is the stunt show. It's impossible to show how entertaining it was through photos, but this one at least shows off one of the sets. Yes, I said "one of," as they use some pretty creative engineering to change from the cave in the opening action sequence of Raiders to the streets of Cairo.

Lucas and I shred our best air guitar moves in front of the Aerosmith Rock n' Roller Coaster. I didn't know what to expect, but this turned out to be my favorite thrill ride of the entire trip. I would highly recommend it to roller coaster fans. 

Our next stop was the Star Wars area to meet some of the characters. We decided to get in the Chewbacca line first since he's one of Marilu's favorites (as evidenced in the second photo below). In case you are wondering about Lucas's partner, we met him and his mom in the line for the Aerosmith ride. The kids took a real shine to each other and ended up palling around for the next hour or so. We even got their contact info to send the photos and potentially meet up at some point in the future since they don't live too far from my mom in Massachusetts.

Earlier in the day, we signed Lucas up for a Jedi training session in the afternoon. It was a very elaborate production and made the pirate training at the Magic Kingdom pale in comparison. I have quite a bit of it on video, so much so that I've decided to save the videos for a second post, which I will put up later in the weekend. For now, enjoy a couple of photos of the experience.

I don't think this is a standard Jedi expression.

After the wild action (see the videos), the Jedi warriors pose for the camera. It's a good thing Lucas wore a shirt that lets him stand out.

Later on, I had to get in on the Star Wars action.

Never one to be outdone, Lucas posed with his new lightsaber. For those of you care about such things, he made a variation of Kylo Ren's lightsaber that still has a red main blade but the horizontal blades at the bottom are blue. So he's only 90% evil, not 100%.

We had dinner at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant at Hollywood Studios. The wait was downright unbearable, and we were tempted to cancel our reservation once or twice, but once we were in there, it was worth it. As the name implies, the theme is a drive-in theater, and the tables are cars in the audience. Rather than try to explain it, I'll let the pictures do my job for me.

If you recall, on the first day of the trip, Marilu and I returned to the Magic Kingdom to watch the night time fireworks show while Lucas and my dad stayed at the resort. we enjoyed it so much that we knew we had to bring them to see it. So after dinner, we headed straight over to Magic Kingdom and experienced it again. Spoiler alert: it was just as good the second time!

Someone had a good time.

Just like the Jedi training, I have a bunch of videos of the fireworks that came out surprisingly well. However, since uploading them is going to take a while and this post is approaching my longest ever, I'm going to quit for now and put those in a follow-up post either later today or tomorrow.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed!