Disney Day 6, Thursday 11/11

Today we headed to Disney Hollywood Studios (DHS) again. We were supposed to have a character breakfast in one of the resorts at O'Hana with Lilo and Stitch, but it was a very awkward time and we decided to cancel it. When I scheduled it (months and months ago) I did not know anything about Disney and did not realize that it takes a long time to travel from a resort to the parks. Plus, I had figured that by Thursday, we would be wanting a day to sleep in and have down time. I thought a 10:40 breakfast was going to be about all we did this day. Well, since everyone was going to be awake by 5:30 am and ready to hit the park at opening, we felt this fifth character meal could be skipped. Cost factored in, too.

So, we ate at home and got to DHS about 9:30. We went immediately to pick up 4 Fast Passes to ride the hottest ride in Disney, Toy Story Mania. Our return time for these passes was 4:20 - 5:20 pm. But, we were excited to have been able to get them. They run out for the day by 11:00 am. And, we figured, if the kids really got super fussy and we had to leave, we could hand those 4 golden tickets to another family and share some magic. Nice thought. Didn't happen.

We started out looking for a couple penny press machines and for the meeting place for Mater, from the movie Cars. The park back in that area was so quiet, we thought we were not allowed back there. Here they are super excited to be posing with Mater! We never saw any other Cars characters in the park. We were a little surprised they weren't hyping it more because Cars 2 is coming out next spring. Must still be a bit early. From there, we went to see 'The Muppets in 3D'. The kids weren't too into this one. The effects weren't as cool as PhilharMagic and they don't really know the Muppets. I was a bit disappointed, too. The coolest part was that the theater was the Muppet Show theater and Waldorf and Statler were up in their balcony heckling away. When this ended, we made more pennies! I need to take a picture of our stash and post that soon.

This park has a huge playground - yeah, another one where you can't see your kids all the time and you hope they don't leave on you - from "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids". It was a big scaled up outdoor area with huge bugs and toys like Playdough around. We had wised up and as soon as we entered, I staked out a great spot by the one exit. Lew placed himself directly across from me and we actually texted back and forth to be sure someone saw both kids every few minutes. Somehow, we managed to get them to leave there. I think at that point we bribed them with lunch and the promise that we would come back later in the afternoon.

Between the playground and lunch, we spotted the short line to meet Mike Wazozski and Sully from Monsters, Inc. The kids both drifted towards Mike (the shorter green guy, if you don't know the movie. He is voiced by Billy Crystal. Sully's voice is John Goodman's. You can see the resemblance, right?) and shied away from the very large, Sully. This was one place where they had Photo Pass photographers taking pictures for you. They actually were all over, but a few characters we met did not have photographers with them. These photographers happily used my camera if I gave it to them. This guy said, "Whoa, that is heavy." But, he took this awesome shot for us. I love this movie - and I am so happy this photo is so cute! It is high on my list (if not the #1) of favorites of the whole trip. We dined at the ABC Commissary. Lew & I split some curry chicken and the kids both had cheeseburgers. All good food yet again. We went into this vacation not expecting much in the line of food. We knew it would be expensive and felt it would be decent, but not great. Maybe the low expectations helped because we enjoyed every meal we had on vacation.

At this point, we split up for a little while. I took the kids back to the Playhouse Disney puppet show while Lew went and rode the Aerosmith Rockin' Roller Coaster. He was able to ride twice without a wait. Both kids were too short for it and that was fine. Lew said it was very fast and they wouldn't have liked it. On the other hand, they loved the Playhouse Disney show, so we all made good choices. The show had floor seating for everyone so the kids could stand and dance if they wanted to. And mine did. Once we exited, we got right into line to meet Leo, a character from the TV show The Little Einsteins.

We stopped to watch a few minutes of the afternoon parade. The kids really are not parade people. So, we headed back to the 'Honey, I Shrunk the Kids' playground. This filled up the time until our 4:20 return time for Toy Story Mania. I don't know if you can see this in the picture below, but it is the time we are returning with our fast passes. These passes we obtained earlier int he day allowed us to move right to the head of the line. The line that was 140 minutes long! See the Stand-By time on the sign below? 140 minutes. Yes, 2 hours and 20 minutes of waiting in a line for a ride. And people were actually entering this 140 minute line!!

The ride was a lot of fun. You wore 3D glasses as you rode through a classic arcade, playing the games. Lew went with Gretchen because of the 2 parents, he is the better video game player and of the 2 kids, she would be the one who would be better playing and also more into the actual playing. Carl & I had fun trying and watching the scenery and 3D characters. It was fun, but not 2 hours and 20 minutes of waiting fun! Still, I was really happy we got to experience it for the 15 minutes of waiting we did. It really is the one ride that many people don't get to do, so it was fun to have gotten even the chance to ride it once. Some people claim it is addictive and you want to better your score each time. These people must also enjoy standing and slowly snaking through queues.

I did jot down our scores when we met up outside:

Jill's score: 54,200 with 65% accuracy

Carl's score: 500 with 15% accuracy

Lew's score: 128,000 with 29% accuracy

Gretchen's score: 18,000 with 11% accuracy

We had one last photo taken with Mickey's huge sorcerer's hat behind us before leaving the park at 5:15. Another shot high on my list of the week's best.Once back to the condo, we changed to go swimming. We got there just in time for the boys to have "one minute" of slide time before the life guard for the slide area was done for the night and locked the steps to the slide. Carl was too light, he struggled to actually slide and fall out. Lew, on the other hand, came shooting out of the tunnel. Carl got to go 3 times, Lew only once. Both guys had fun!! If you want to check out the slide and pool, here is the home page for the condo and the pool slide photo is in the middle of this page. We all swam in the supposedly heated water until the kids chattering teeth got too loud. It was pretty cold! But, we all headed into the hot tub for a few minutes and that was wonderful! Ahhhhh!!

Lew cooked hot dogs for the kids and we fed them grapes, green peppers, bananas and milk to go with it. Lew had to run out and pick up the ignition coil he had on order. The kids went to bed before he got back with the pizza for our dinner. They were always easy to put to bed. Gretchen had a queen sized bed to herself and Carl had the twin. He chose it first. He liked the sock monkey sheets. They were actually the same exact fabric as pajamas we have. The kids don't call them Sock Monkeys, they call them "Bowling Monkeys" because on the jammies, the monkeys are doing different things, including bowling. Look how grown up he looks on the bed (with sock monkey sheets) watching TV. They loved having a little TV in their bedroom.

They can't work the remote, so it was tuned to Disney and safe for them to turn on at any time. Like, say, 5:30 am.