October Trip Report - Day 2

October 14, 2014

Day two sees us at Disney's Hollywood Studios.

As usual, we have breakfast in our room - having purchased food from the Pop Century food court. An early start is not on the schedule, as all of our Fast Passes have been scheduled after noon. In fact, as it turns out, we will only use two of our three today.

A bus arrives just as we get to the bus stop and soon we are off on our way to the Studios.

When we arrive, my wife used to spend a few moments in Sid Cuheunga's shop, but that is no longer the movie memorabilia store it used to be, so we walk towards her second favorite place to browse, the pin station under the (soon to be leaving) Sorcerer's Hat.

When she is finished there, we decide - after seeing how long the line is at The Great Movie Ride - that we will come back later when the line is shorter. Our destination now is the Animation Building to attend a class at the Animation Academy.

We head to the Animation Academy through the gift shop and pass through the gallery. I always love admiring the Oscars that have been earned by Disney Animation. Sadly, so many of these award winning cartoons have largely been forgotten by the general public.

We get on line for the next class, but when we realize that will will actually get in, but will be the last two admitted, we actually pass our turn to the next two in the queue, as we prefer to have a desk with a lighted surface rather than lap pads. So we wait the additional half hour - no need to rush for us any more.

It's always fun to draw a character for the first time, and after much indecision by the gathered animation students ... we settle on Carl from Up.

Once our class is completed, it is lunch time. As usual, we haven't made any reservations, so we decide to see if Sci-Fi Dine In is taking walk-ups. The park is unusually crowded today, which we had not expected since the long Columbus Day weekend was now behind us, and as we approach Sci-Fi, there is a large crowd still waiting to be seated. I feel our chances are small, but as we have almost always been accommodated for walk-ups (I can only remember one time when we couldn't be) I give it a shot. I tell the CM that we would be perfectly fine if we had to sit at a table in the back rather than a car if that helps. Surprisingly we are told that we can be accommodated and that it should be about 20 minutes. That works for us, and in only 10 minutes, our beeper goes off and we are on our way to lunch ... in a car.

Our first Fast Pass will be for Star Tours, but when lunch is finished, it is still too early. Since we are right in the area, we hang out a bit at Buy The Book, waiting until our Fast Pass window opens. While we are in the store, the skies open up with a very heavy downpour. This was not unexpected, today was supposed to be a rainy day, and we wait it out.

When it finally stops, we approach the Fast Pass entrance to Star Tours, and find an extremely long line that goes almost all the way to Indiana Jones Stunt Show. It's still raining a bit, so we decide to skip this attraction for today, and go instead to get on line for Muppets 3-D. There is a line here as well, but this attraction holds a large amount of people, and the outdoor part of the queue is under cover so we get on line.

After Muppets 3-D (and a trip through the Muppets store), we walk back by the Frozen Sing Along theater and our timing is good, so we get on the stand-by queue and soon are in the theater. Whenever my grandsons are in my car, they ask me to play Frozen while they sing along. They know all the words (and sound effects) and I can't help but think how much they would enjoy this.

After the Frozen Sing Along, we continue on to our next Fast Pass which is Toy Story: Midway Mania. Always a fun ride, and as usual, the stand-by line is over 2 hours.

Our next Fast Pass is for The Voyage of the Little Mermaid but we still have some time and the line at The Great Movie Ride is much shorter, so that is our next attraction. When we get out it is almost time for The Little Mermaid, so we walk over there and at the appropriate time, enter.

When we get out, the skies are threatening again - so far we have managed to be inside every time the rains came - so we decide to call it a night and head back to Pop Century. Once back, we have dinner at the food court and then while we are going back to the room, once again the skies open up, but this time we get caught and get soaked. While managing to keep dry all day, we lose the battle as we head back to the room. Okay, I can live with that.

Tomorrow - Animal Kingdom.