disney day 4: quiet on the set!

disney mgm studios (now disney hollywood studios) was by far our favorite disney park! we were told that we would not need to spend a full day there, but we ended up wishing that we had more time at the end of the night! the characters that we most wanted our pictures with were at mgm, and the lines were not too terribly long (nothing like the "toontown fair" with all the classic characters and kids' favorites at the magic kingdom!!). the streets seemed to be pretty full of people, but there were not long waits for rides like star wars & tower of terror. we walked right on to both! i could see how younger kids would prefer magic kingdom to mgm, but we had a blast...



brian's main request at mgm was to go to the animation studio. he was so excited about learning how to draw a disney character from a disney animation artist! these classes began on the half hour, and i made him miss the opening of the doors to the classroom 4 times because of my preoccupation with getting pictures with certain characters! once he even missed the class while i was in line to get my picture with RATS! (see below...) we finally made it brian's beloved class, and i think he'd say it was well worth the wait. the artist taught us how to draw winnie the pooh step by step. very neat. of course, brian's turned out perfectly accurate. mine did not. but i was also busy taking pictures of my cute husband as he concentrated on his masterpiece. :) if you click on the picture, you can see his great drawing of pooh!


my main request was to ride aerosmith's rock n' roller coaster. we definitely needed a fast pass for this one, and we still waited a good 30 minutes or so. but it was completely worth it!! i love the atmosphere of this one while you wait (disney is smart like that, ya know)... you are in aerosmith's recording studio, and suddenly they are late to a show. you are given backstage passes to the show, so you are ushered into the alley behind their studio, where you get on a "limo", and you have to hurry to make it to their show. and they aren't kiddin' when they say hurry! the launch is pretty quick!!! it actually gave me a headache, probably due to the fact that i was still sick and stopped up with a cold at this point. but it was sooooooooo fun!! we didn't get to get back on this one, and i was really wishing we could... headache and all. :) this was by far one of my favorite rides at disney! here we are after the rockin' ride!



ethan's main request was for mommy & daddy to meet the little einsteins. well, since we didn't bring him with us to disney, it was the least we could do! :) so we stood in line for half an hour with a bunch of 2 year olds dressed in oversized princess dresses to see leo and annie... i couldn't help but giggle as the parents kind of started to realize that brian and i were only talking to each other and not to any children of our own! brian gets daddy of the year award for actually getting a picture with our son's favorite characters, don't you think? after we had our picture taken, brian asked if the picture looked ok. "annie kind of grabbed my arm, and i didn't know what to do", he said. i laughed and laughed... "honey, i don't think it's every day that annie has her picture taken with a 29 year old man, so i'm sure it was a bit awkward for her, too!"


we planned on framing this picture for ethan's room, but before we had time to do that, he got the movie cars for christmas, and now little einsteins have taken a back seat (literally) to towmater and lightning mcqueen! so it's a good thing that we stood in line for almost an hour for these pictures... they are actually cars that drove down mgm's "streets of america"! lightning revved up as he drove down the road, and towmater had country music playing from his tow truck! so cute! we got in line to see the cars, and after we stepped in line, they cut off the line behind us. when we waited for the cars to arrive, we witnessed family after family try to get in line, only to be refused. i felt SO BAD that we were taking up a spot that could be filled by sweet little boys who really wanted to see these cars! but as you can see, i didn't feel bad enough to give up our spot in line!




we also met the incredibles and the rats from ratatouille (which we'd just seen the week before). fun, fun, fun!




one perk of visiting disney during the christmas season is the AMAZING festival of lights at mgm! these millions of lights were strung on every inch of every "building" on one of the streets, including white lights around the window frames! the lights danced to the christmas music, and there were people everywhere. they had fake snow blowing down, and it was even slightly cold that night. we bought a blinking insulated mug with hot chocolate in it, and i had so much fun carrying around that silly mug the rest of the night! it was kind of nuts trying to take pictures of all of this blinking insanity, but of course, we tried. in the picture to the right, you can see that our faces look BLUE! this is because of the MASSIVE blue light christmas tree that was reflecting on us. you'll see me standing in front of it in one of the pictures below... and i was standing really far away from it. it was huge. can you believe that all of these lights were in one family's yard?! (fyi for my fellow HU grads... that family is the osbornes... remember the big bbqs they sponsored on the lawn in front of the GAC?)







we ran into our friends (dax, kj, their kids, and kj's parents) a few times during our visit to disney. we intended to go on a date night with them one night, but it never worked out. i REALLY wanted to get a picture with them in front of "it's a small world" at the magic kingdom, but i settled for planet hollywood. it was so fun to see them during our vacation!




so this marks the end of our disney trip that began way back in november! thanks for coming along with us! hope your feet aren't too tired. :)

that's a wrap!