Disney Day 3- Hollywood Studios

On Monday, we headed to Hollywood Studios. It was also my little brother's 33rd birthday!

I can't figure out my feelings about this park. There are several things there we LOVE, but I feel like efficient planning/scheduling is hard, and both trips I got a little stressed out there. I felt like there were several times we had some dead time where it was too soon for our next fast pass, but either lines were too long or other shows were already full, so it felt like we were just wandering. My personality does not do well with that. :) And it felt like we didn't "do" much, even though we were there all day. Christopher and I went back and forth a lot when we were planning that day. The park closed at 7:00 and Fantasmic {the night time show} was at 7:30, and even though HS is typically considered a half day park for families with small children, it didn't seem like it made much sense to leave for naps and/or dinner and come back just for the show. And Christopher really wanted to see Fantastic. So we just decided to spend a whole day there and hope we got some stroller naps out of the deal.

We ate breakfast in the room again and then headed for the bus stop.

Waiting on the bus and her 'do is still perfectly intact. :)

The Photo Pass people make you do totally embarrassing stuff like this. And Curran holding Rapunzel between her legs just makes the picture. Don't worry, Chris and Craig have one too but I thought I'd be nice and not embarrass them too. :) 

My original plan was to get there right when they opened and head for Tower of Terror and Rockin' Rollercoaster. I had really talked up ToT to Curran, and although she was a tad nervous, she was excited to ride it. Well we got there at 9:20 and the lines had already started to build. So we headed to the 9:30 showing of Voyage of the Little Mermaid instead. My parents and brother got there while we were in the show, and my dad and Walter headed to their Fast Passes at Star Tours. Then the rest of us took the girls to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids play ground {the beginning of our wandering around}, 

You can see that their girls were really feeling this photo op.

But they loved Honey I Shrunk the Kids and begged to go back all day.

then we headed to our Fast Passes for Disney Junior Live on Stage, which we didn't see last time. It was cute, and the girls really liked it. 

Looking through her spy glass like Jake

Catching gold doubloons! C was hoarding these things like they were real gold {they were thin sheets of tissue paper} and freaked when some got messed up.

As a side note, we totally didn't need Fast Passes for this, but that's an example of how you just never know, which is really true for all the shows at HS. I would have much rather gotten a Fast Pass for Tower of Terror, but SC wouldn't have been able to do it, and I really wanted to make sure they all got to see Disney Jr, and you never know when you are going to get to a show and it will already be too full. This just felt like a wasted Fast Pass to me. Oh well.

From there we headed straight to our 11:00 lunch reservations at Hollywood & Vine. 

Waiting on our table at lunch. Both times we have been here, they don't even fill this restaurant to half capacity, and we always have to wait.

We did the Fantasmic dinner package which is only available at lunch and dinner, and the characters are only there at breakfast and lunch, so eating lunch there worked out best for us. It was very chaotic right when we walked in because as soon as we hit our table, the characters started coming by. It felt like a mad rush to grab cameras and dig out autograph books. 

That's SC's head in the foreground. She just ran out there and watched them sing and dance. {I thought Jake looking at her was cute. :) }

Craig took the girls outside while we paid, and a Photo Pass person snagged their pic.

Christopher may have been too embarrassed to wear her birthday button the next day, but she did wear the Mickey shirt I gave her. I was proud of her. :)

After lunch, we headed to the Indiana Jones stunt show, but unfortunately it was already full. We really didn't know what to do to fill the time, so we headed to the Muppets 3D. We all had Fast Passes for Toy Story Mania after that, but my parents went their own way,  and B wasn't feeling well and had fallen asleep in the stroller, so Chris stayed with her, and Walter, Craig and Sinclair rode Toy Story. Our Fast Pass times were slightly staggered, so then John, the girls, and I rode it a few minutes later. After Toy Story, the Quinns made our way over to the Beauty and the Beast Stage Show. Becket ended up waking up so she and Chris joined us. I can't remember what all everyone else was doing but I know they did the Lights, Camera Action show and saw Indiana Jones at some point, and Walter got to do Tower of Terror and Rockin' Rollercoaster. 

After Beauty and the Beast, we headed to the Writer's Stop Cafe for a snack. They will give you a free cupcake on your birthday, so I wanted Walt to get one, but he didn't {he doesn't like a big deal to be made about his birthday, I guess, but I wouldn't leave him alone :) }. I wanted to go there to try the carrot cake cookie that I have heard so much about, and it did not disappoint! It was massive so I could not eat the whole thing.

Curran picked out a Mickey shortbread cookie that fell on the ground minutes after this picture. So we headed to an ice cream stand to get SC her daily Mickey Bar and get C something else. And John's snack was a beer. :) 

We ate our snacks and then got in line for the Great Movie Ride. I didn't know anything about it except that it was in the Chinese Theater and I thought it would be fun. Wrong. The kids hated it and both got scared. They have a Western shoot out with real people and there was some explosion and they both had their heads buried in our laps. As soon as it was over, we raced to get to our Fast Passes at the Frozen Singalong, and we almost didn't get in. We missed our Fast Pass window by 5 minutes, so we had to go in the Standby Entrance which they were closing, but I begged our way in. My mom was in there waiting on us, but no one else came. SC missed Frozen last time because she was asleep in the stroller, so I was glad she got to see it this time. She loved it! After it was over, we met up at the boat lunch to take a boat to the Beach Club/Yacht Club for our dinner reservations at Beaches and Cream. It's a casual place that I had heard had good burgers and ice cream. We had a 5:20 reservation but had to wait for a while for our tables. Poor Becket threw up as soon as we sat down at our table, so Chris and Craig took her back to the hotel, and Sinclair stayed with us. The menu was very small but I thought my burger, onion rings, and milkshake were good. John wasn't crazy about it. If I was staying at that resort, I would for sure eat there, but I don't think I would ever make a special trip back. The reason we ate there was because we were going back to HS just for the Fantasmic show at 7:30, and Beach Club/Yacht Club is a quick boat ride away, and we didn't necessarily have anywhere in HS we were dying to eat. Plus I wanted to check out that resort. :) The park closed at 7pm that night, and when we finally got a boat back, it was after 7. The boat captain warned us that they might not let us back in the park despite having tickets to Fantastic, so my dad was stressing out, but they were super nice and nobody said a word to us when we walked in. We headed straight to the show to get seats. We did not do this show last time because people had warned us that it was scary and our kids were too young, but Christopher really wanted to see it {hate she didn't end up getting to}. It was an awesome show, but there were definitely several parts where the girls got scared. I will probably wait until they are older to take them back to it. 

The glow sticks and bracelets were their present from Minnie that morning {I did the hotel room gifts again this trip}.

We took a bus back to our resort and got the girls in bed. I really wanted to take Curran to Magic Kingdom just to see the fireworks, but I knew she was tired and needed to go to sleep. So at 9:30 I called my brother to see if he wanted to hop on the monorail for MK. The light show starts at 9:45 and the fireworks start at 10, so we made it just in time. We ended up staying until close, riding Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean. We caught the Electrical Parade on our way out and got back to the hotel around 11:30pm. It was really fun to spend the last few hours of my brother's birthday with him!