Sunday, January 8th: Hollywood Studios
Before getting into the park, I have to give credit to my older daughter who came up with the brilliant solution to my MagicBand problem: her braces rubber bands. They are tiny little rubber bands that she has to use to keep her mouth from opening too wide and they were the absolute perfect size for keeping my MagicBand from coming off:
After using this, my problem went away! I would occasionally find that my band had come undone, but instead of it falling off, I remained firmly on my wrist. I’ve heard there are fancier options online, but these worked perfectly.
Learning from my panic-y Remy LL from EPCOT, I made a more determined plan for our morning at HS. First, we knew our priority was going to be Slinky Dog, ToT, and Rock n’ Roller Coaster since these are not available at DL (RIP CA ToT). We decided to rope drop the Mickey RR ride (since not everyone would ride ToT or RnRC… is this the appropriate abbreviation?) and grab our first LL for Slinky Dog.
This worked really well. I got the 9am (opening time) LL for Slinky Dog right at 7am. No ILL purchase today because we had zero plans to visit Galaxy’s Edge. We’ve done that aplenty at DL and knew it was basically identical.
Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway
We made it onboard the Skyliner by 7:40 and to the park entrance by 7:55 for an 8:30 Early Entry. By 8:05 we were already in line for the ride. It was hard to tell how far behind we were, but we were already in the pre-show room by 8:20, which indicated to me the rides started before the official time. This was something we noticed seemed to happen in all of the parks, which is a definite difference from
Disneyland, where they seem to always stick very strictly to the schedule.
The pre-show of the ride is a lot of fun and the ride was even better. Imagine Rise of the Resistance but with Mickey & Minnie and cartoon special effects. I think I left the ride having had more fun than I did the first time I rode Rise (although I’m a noted Rise contrarian). It made me really glad to know this ride would be coming to Toontown within the next couple months.
Toy Store Land
We headed to TSL after getting off the ride with the plan on hitting Slinky Dog, but decided instead to ride Alien Swirling Saucers first. This ride is the exact same system as the Mater ride in Carsland. Fun, but nothing to write home about.
After Alien Swirling Saucers (notice my intentional avoidance of the acronym), we hit Slinky Dog, waiting no more than a few minutes to board. I had very low expectations for this ride, figuring it was a standard out-of-the-box kiddie roller coaster. While it wasn’t mind-blowing, it was more fun than I expected. The timing was perfect because as we exited the ride, it literally turned 9, so we used the LL to ride it again. I immediately grabbed ToT after the second scan station for the four of us that would be riding it and MMRR again for the other two.
Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster
After a second ride, five of us made a quick march over to Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster and had maybe a 15 minute wait tops to get onto the ride. I was quite surprised with exactly how thrilling of a ride this was. I knew it had inversions but didn’t realize how disorienting it would be riding a coaster like this in the dark. We all really loved it, and I made a mental note to grab LL’s for it later.
More Pre-Lunch Stuff
After exiting the ride, we met back up with my wife and took a few pictures in the area and then meandered over to the Indy show. We often skip shows, but I’m glad we didn’t skip this one. Again, much more entertaining than I had imagined. I don’t know why I ended up getting Star Tours as our next LL, but people didn’t complain. I’m glad we at least walked by the outside as it’s pretty awesome with the AT-AT. The ride is pretty much the same and I think the queues were mostly the same as well.
Needing to kill a bit more time before our lunch reservation, we kept in the same direction we had been going and ended up at Muppets 3D. We’ve done this before at CA before it became Philharmagic, but it was fun seeing it again. I’m not sure if there were any differences as it has been a while, but we all really enjoyed hanging out in the area. I’d love to see more Muppets presence in DL/CA, but seems like it isn’t an IP Disney cares about much right now.
Sci-Fi Dine-in Theater
At my cousin’s recommendation, we had reservations for the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater. For those that haven’t been, it’s essentially a recreation of a drive-in, inside of a big building where the cars are dinner tables. They loop through old clips from Drive-ins and Sci-Fi movies of the 50’s. I don’t remember exactly what I ordered, but I think it was some sort of burger. Overall, everyone really enjoyed it and liked the food. It was also nice that it wasn’t quite as expensive as the other TS options we had reserved.
Rest of the day
After lunch, it was time to hit Tower of Terror. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Out of the four of us riding, three of us had done ToT in CA before it closed and it was one of our favorites. It was fantastic to be able to ride it again and to be able to ride the superior version. For those not aware: in the HS version the elevator shaft actually travels a bit through the ride before starting the ascent and descent portion. It really adds to the ride in my opinion and makes it a more interesting ride.
At this point, we had LL’s that became available for riding Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster again, but only three of us felt like riding. We got in the LL ride only or it to immediately shut down. I left the line and instead joined my wife and daughter to check out some of the shops. Eventually, the ride started up again and after they finished, we decided to head back to the room, as we had pretty much done everything we wanted to do.
After we got back, chilled out, and ate some dinner, my wife and I wanted to head back so she could take some night pictures. No one felt like joining us (we had really been going pretty hard the last few days and were still adjusting a bit to the time zone difference). When we got back, we used a couple LL passes we had for MMRR to ride it again and LL passes for Toy Story Mania. I’m glad we checked out TSM because the queue blows away the CA queue, even if the ride is identical. I got a pretty good score too.
My wife took some incredible photos of the MMRR ride, Toy Story Land and Tower of Terror. After the park had been closed for almost an hour, we headed on back to the resort to prepare for Day 4: Animal Kingdom!
