Disney's Hollywood Studios

I hadn’t visited this park for years and years (since the 1990’s) back when Disney’s Hollywood Studios was known by its former name: MGM Studios. Carlos and I went to Starbucks in Kissimmee this morning prior to driving to the park (to have some real coffee – Disney only serves Nescafe) and we arrived at the Hollywood Studios entrance ~9 am (opening). This place was crowded! Apparently something called Star Wars Weekends was going on so the crowds were a little inflated today. We walked to the Toy Story Mania Ride (which I had never ridden), but the line was absolutely crazy so we skipped it and went on the classic Great Movie Ride instead.

We walked to the Tower of Terror (where I got a fast pass to ride it later), before wandering to the other side of the park to see Muppet Vision 3D (a classic).

Next we got some fast passes for Star Tours and I rode the Tower of Terror – it was pretty intense and we got dropped over 5 times – argh!

We rode Star Tours (one of my favorite rides) and by now it was time to head over to the Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant for our lunch reservation. This was a really nice, fancy restaurant and the food was really good. I had their famous cobb salad and Carlos had a nice steak with potatoes and mushrooms in a wine sauce.

After lunch we went on the backlot tour (I really like this ride too because you get to see a lot of props from old Disney movies).

Next we ventured through the One Man’s Dream tour. This was a really well-done collection of items from the life of Walt Disney. An outline of his life and plans for Walt Disney World were here and we also watched a short film about the man behind the mouse.

From there, we wandered next door to the Animation Theater where we watched the Magic of Disney Animation show. After that, we went into a little animation studio where we were taught to draw piglet – it was really fun because we had our own little animation desks and paper.

From there, we went to the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular which I have always really liked – these stunt actors are really good!

After the show, we wandered through some shops looking for souvenirs, but we couldn’t find anything interesting. By this time it was getting late (~6 pm) and we were getting a little tired, so we left for the hotel and took it easy for the rest of the night. Tomorrow would be our last day in Disney World and we were visiting a park new to both me and Carlos – Animal Kingdom!