Thursday was Disney’s Hollywood Studios! Yes, just about the same thing as California Adventure here in Anaheim!
Still, Griffin has not been on Star Tours yet so we decided to skip the whole Disney World thing and do Hollywood Studios. We booked it over to Star Tours and got distracted by the sign that said ‘Jedi Training’.
Oh, it’s also about the part of the trip where I refused to lug around my camera any more so… pictures are all from my iPhone 🙂
Now, let me talk a little about how they do it over here in California. They do it at Disneyland and it is completely random. If you want to get picked for Jedi training your best bet is to jump so high, scream as loud as you can, be wearing a birthday pin, or a star wars t-shirt, or hand-make a sign that says I HEART YOU, JEDI MASTER! That’s what we did around Sam’s birthday last year and that was how she got to fight Darth Vader. I like the mystery of it. The mystique. It’s perfectly random.
At Hollywood Studios, you have to sign up for a time slot. We were at the gates at 8:55 when the park opened. By the time we walked back, we could sign up for the 1:30 Jedi time slot. Crazy! So we did for Sam. Griffin didn’t want to. When they do it, they are VERY stingy about it. They spent 5 minutes lining each child up by height (what did it matter?) and it had to be EXACT. While the hot sun beat down on our faces. Then they passed out robes which didn’t seem to fit random kids even though they lined them up by height… and when they got them all set up on their circles, they were not prepared and took for EVER to pass out the light sabers. Sam didn’t get hers until after they already taught the first stuff. So I really feel like the magic is preserved at Disneyland, however at least expectations are managed in Florida. If you don’t sign up early then you just don’t get in and can only watch.
Then we went over to Star Tours. Griffin was IN LOVE. The huge speeder things. All the people. He can spit out their names and he knows each one. Even though he has NEVER seen the movies (too violent for him at this point) but he has poured over all the lego books, the character books, and everything else. It’s crazy how much he knows. So he loved it. We got strapped in and… ohhh, Star Tours is JUST like Harry Potter. I took off my 3D glasses about 30 seconds into the ride and looked at Sam getting sick the whole time. Poor girl. Griffin was scared but he said that it was his favorite thing. Sam needed some gum after.
When we were done, we realized we should have made reservations for lunch somewhere if we wanted GOOD food. We should have done it a month ago but somehow we were able to get reservations at the Vine which was a character dining spot! Yea!
So we headed to the Indiana Jones Stunt show right after. Which was great! We spotted the fake volunteer immediately though but the show was still amazing.
Headed to lunch and we got to dine with Jake the Pirate, June, Handy Manny, and Oso. The kids have watched enough shows of all of these to know them and dance and sing the songs. By the time lunch was over we had even got Griffin to stand up with his sister and dance!
After that, we wandered around and headed to… I can’t even remember. But then we did the Jedi Training with Sam.
We saw the Muppets. Same show as CA adventure. We saw the parade. It was a little lame. Can you tell I was a little done with this park? haha. I was voting to leave at this point. I was outvoted. 🙂
We saw the live Beauty and the Beast show. This was great. However, half the show was playing the music directly from the movie. So every time Belle was singing and it switched over to the movie soundtrack, I kept getting distracted. Then I was watching half the chorus lip synch and it got annoying.
After that we stood in line to see Ariel Show. It was more like puppets and sound with real rain coming down. Super short. Interesting. But not super great. I was really done by that time. There were mumblings about going to see It’s a Bug’s Life but I put my foot down. The same show is at Calif Adventure!
So we headed off to go eat and ended up at Red Lobster. Yummmmm! I got shrimp and scallops! I munched on some chips and lobster dip though and had half a cheesy roll. My stomach was punishing me from yesterday so I tried to be a little good.
Friday we headed out to our last park of the week, the awesome Wild Animal Park. Besides Islands of Adventure, this was easily my favorite of the week…
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