hollywood studios: disney day 2

our second day at disney was a soggy one! we pulled into the hollywood studios parking lot hoping that the gray clouds were just gonna blow over. we'd watched the weather forecast like hawks the week before our trip, so we knew there was a good chance we'd run into some rain in the afternoon. but i was determined not to worry about it! lots of people go to disney in the rain, right?!?! we started off our day by seeing these guys, who caroline and ethan both love. while everyone else stood in the short line to meet pluto and goofy, i hightailed it to toy story mania to get our fast-passes for later in the day. next, we headed to see playhouse disney. this was a cute little show that the kids really enjoyed, but looking back, we should have saved this indoor event for later when it was pouring rain. oh well, i was just following my plan. :) i kind of felt sorry for the playhouse disney girl whose job is to talk to puppets and preschoolers in an ultra-animated voice. she probably goes to sleep hearing "oh, tooooodles!", but i guess the benefits are good. you can see that caroline and amelia were loving the playhouse disney show. (daddy...not so much.) notice the teething tablet bottle that amelia is clutching. she carried this bottle all day long. i can't believe we didn't lose it. amelia wasn't feeling so great this day, but holding the teething tablets made her completely content. so we went with it. (the next day, she could have cared less about them! go figure!)


when it was inevitable that this day was going to be a wet one, we decided to find lightning mcqueen and towmater. i remembered from our kid-less trip to disney that the cars are not out to be seen when it's raining. we were happy to find absolutely no line to see the cars! the kids were so excited to see mcqueen and towmater, but i did not think about the fact that they are really loud! the 5 seconds that it took to snap a picture were plenty for our kids. they smiled and then got outta there! (and now the cars are under a garage, so they are probably still available in the rain....)


after seeing the cars, we saw the muppets, another inside show that we should have saved until it was raining. (we are 0 for 2 there, huh?) it was right around the corner from the cars, so we just naturally mosied on in there. amelia and i actually skipped this show b/c she was not happy when we got in there. so i shopped for a little while without anyone begging me for anything (remember, brian was in the show. juuuust kidding, honey!). we made our way over to ride toy story mania and had a few minutes to meet donald duck!


toy story mania is one of the newest disney rides (maybe the newest ride?!). that alone will jack up the wait times.... it's also popular because all ages can ride it... and because it is so. much. fun. i knew to get our fast passes as soon as we got there, and i was glad we did! we had no wait to get into the building, and then it was the typical 10ish minute wait to actual board the ride. this was one ride where i wished we'd had a few more minutes to have to wait so i could have enjoyed all the little details disney puts into the waiting areas of their rides. we walked too quickly by all the big toys!!! but i can't complain. i love fast passes. i did take a few quick pictures outside the ride. i loved how the entrance was made out of tinker toys and playing cards! and check out that wait time over to the left-- 60 minutes!!!!!! i'm sorry, but no ride is worth waiting an hour for. toy story mania was fun, but not that fun.


here's another pixar building, complete with army men hoisting up the scrabble board! and you can also see the ugly gray sky. :(


brian and ethan at the entrance to pixar place. brian is thinking that they modeled these buildings after the actual pixar studios in california.


this picture is kind of hard to see, but can you find ethan and caroline at the bottom? they are waiting to ride the toy story ride with their 3-d glasses on their heads. :) this really was a great ride. you spin around and stop at different midway game stations, where you try to win points... just like the county fair. you're shooting at a 3-d screen, and it is just a blast. i had amelia strapped to me, so i didn't get to really play the games... plus, i was too worried about her dropping that bottle of teething tablets and jamming up the ride! it would have been much more convenient if hyland's would make a teething tablet bottle with a link-a-doo attachment.


well.... by the time we got out of toy story it was raining. i was so glad we'd covered the strollers with cheap-o ponchos from target. (get 'em in the camping section- $0.75- take several.) at first, it would just lightly rain off and on, but it was enough to be inconvenient. adults walking around probably didn't mind the rain too much, but two strollers packed down with stuff in the rain is two strollers too many! the plus side to the rain (if there really is one) was that everytime i'd cover amelia up in the carrier to walk to our next destination in the rain, she would fall fast asleep (while still holding those silly teething tablets!). one time she dropped them and didn't fuss, so i knew she was out. i looked pretty funny carrying her in the carrier with a poncho over me. i made the head hole big enough for her head to peek out too, and then i covered her head up with her rain jacket when she was sleeping. once when her head wasn't covered up, someone passed by me and said, "you've got a baby coming out of your raincoat!" i had to laugh and reply, "if only it was that easy!" i can't believe i don't have a picture of my rain-gear-baby get up. wait, yes i can. i'm the only one in our crew who would even think to take such a picture, and i was wet and full of baby all day. where's aunt kristie when you need her!?

after lunch, we raced over to the lights, motors, action stunt show. this was on ethan's "must-see" list, and we were hoping they would not cancel the show due to weather. thankfully, the seating was covered, and the show was not cancelled. the guys really, really loved this show. it is totally a guy thing. my mom, caroline, and i liked it too, but there's just something about fast cars, bad guys, and things blowing up that impress the male species. case in point: my favorite part about the show was being dry. ethan's favorite part was this...


as we exited the show, the rain really started coming down. my too-long pants were soaking wet. i was really missing my capris. the guys went to ride star tours while the girls headed to the little mermaid show. we really had planned on skipping this (as caroline will readily tell you, "we haven't seen the movie because ariel disobeys her faver (father)"... and gets everything she ever wanted. that's the kicker. anyway...), but with the rain pouring down, we thought it best to find an inside show (that we hadn't already seen). caroline was thrilled beyond words at the thought of seeing ariel's show, but we arrived one minute too late. the show had just started, and another one would not be for another hour. we were to meet up with the guys in about 20 minutes, so we had to tell caroline that we'd missed the ariel show. she was ok with it because we were standing in a princess souvenir shop when we told her. she was happy to spend the next 20 minutes browsing (the same merchandise she saw just the day before). she really was a trooper this day. we met up with brian and ethan in the animation studio, which is brian's favorite part of hollywood studios. our plan was for the kids to meet characters in there while brian went to the animation academy (where you learn to draw a character from a disney artist), but ethan's mood was like the weather. he didn't want to meet anybody, even giant quincy and june! so caroline went solo to meet the (not-so) little einsteins.


there were some other games and activities for the kids to do while brian finished up his drawing... here, the kids are watching some video they helped create... and i wondered why they both had fevers by the end of the week.... (remember? disney is the most magical petri dish on earth!)


here is my favorite artist with his masterpiece, jiminy cricket!


it was still raining when we left the animation studio, and we had about 10 minutes to make it to the final beauty and the beast musical. we had to make it. so we sloshed our way there as quickly as we could. we got there with plenty of time for me to wring out my pants before the show began. :) this was undoubtedly caroline's highlight of the day. my squirmer did not move for the entire show:


again, she wasn't smiling, but i know she loved every second of it. here's a shot from the "be our guest" sequence. it was really a good show. my mom was so cute... she kept going on about how it was so much like the movie, and i said, "well, it's disney, so it better be!" :)


as the show ended, the magic spell was removed from not only the beauty and the beast characters but from the horrible weather as well! it had stopped raining! my mom and the kids had a snack while brian and i snuck off to ride the rock'n roller coaster. what a thrill that ride is. it gives me a headache every time, but it is so worth it! we enjoyed a few minutes to ourselves, and the kids had fun coloring and snacking with gram at a nearby table.

since it had stopped raining, we attempted to get a family picture in front of the big sorcerer's apprentice hat, the icon of hollywood studios. by the time we got over there, it started raining again, so we gave up and went home. it was probably 6 pm by then, so we stuck it out most of the day. it actually felt good to get back to the condo at a reasonable time. the kids had a fun bubble bath in our jacuzzi tub, and we all got a good night's sleep.

our day at hollywood studios was not ideal because of the rain, but we made the best of it and still had a great time. there were some things we missed due to the rain that we can look forward to for our next visit, like the parade and the jedi training show. and as i was preparing this post, i realized just how few pictures we took that day! 178 compared to 537 at the magic kingdom! it's like we were hardly even there! :) i look forward to enjoying this park again the next time (read: i look forward to taking many, many more pictures the next time)... hopefully with beautiful blue skies! we certainly had blue skies the next day! it wasn't raining, but boooooooy, was it a chilly one!