When we got up this morning we had some large Ankole cattle right outside our window.
When we arrived it was pitch dark outside so we hadn't really been able to see anything on the savannah. It was great pulling back the curtains in the morning and getting to take it all in.
Then we headed to the Studios. What a gorgeous day!
We headed out the door Thursday morning at 7:55 to get to the Studios in time for rope drop. There were 2 problems with this. Last time I was at WDW I stayed at Jambo and leaving at 7:55 for a 9 am park opening worked just fine. This time though we were at Kidani which means once the bus picks you up, it then has to go to Jambo ect, so that takes like 10 extra minutes. Plus it was a 9.4 out of 10 on the crowd calendar! I don't usually go to WDW on peak days and usually being at the rope drop means I am physically touching the rope, so I was shocked when we got through the turnstiles and the crowd between us and the rope looked like this:
Waiting for "go" time!
Yikes!! So we had to do some crowd dodging power walking to get to Toy Story Mania and I actually had to stand in a 10 minute Fast Pass line (Oh the shame of it...) to snag the FP's before we rode it. This it turns out was an unnecessary step, but more on that later....
TSMM is one of my favorite rides in all of Disney. Of course it's everyone else's fav ride too so it builds the longest lines in all of WDW and the Fast Passes (FP from here on out) are usually gone by 11:30 or so. It's so much fun it should be illegal!
Here's me in the zone chucking rings or darts or something. I could go on this ride all day and I usually do!
Next up was the Tower of Terror. Now some of our party was a bit worried about this ride, but I told them that they HAD to go through the lobby, the library and up to the elevator just to take in the incredible theming of the whole thing and then they could bail out the side door if they still wanted to be total wusses.
Of course everyone succumbed to peer pressure and got on the elevator which was my sinister plan to begin with... bwahaha!! Check out Karen hanging onto the side bar for dear life....
After that Rock and Roller Coaster had a 50 minute wait so we nabbed FP's and then Ivana and I went to the Animation Academy while the others did some shopping. This is the one of the coolest things at the Studios. You go into a big classroom with drawing desks and pencils and a Disney animator shows you how to draw a character step by step. We got Donald and it was so fun! What an amazing (and free!) souvenir!
We watched Beauty and the Beast live on stage and then headed to the coaster. I LOOOOVE this ride, especially the beginning. I got everyone on it (bwahaha again!) and told them that you didn't go upside down or anything. This was an honest statement at the time because I couldn't remember any inversions from 2 years ago. After the 3rd upside down corkscrew I was like "they're going to kill me...." so it was a huge relief when it came to a stop and I heard Karen go "That was BRILLIANT!!!" from the next row up. Whew!
After that we headed to the Hollywood Brown Derby for our 1:25 ADR (advanced dining reservation). It was nice to take a break and eat a sit down meal in the middle of the day. And it's a good thing I was sitting down because this was the point in the trip where I made a horrible, devastating revelation: I was not at WDW with fellow fan-girls. No ladies and gents, my 4 companions in adventure are normal, moderate individuals who >gasp< see no reason to re-ride something once they have ridden it once. Now please understand that I had 5 FP's for Toy Story, The Coaster, and the TOT so I was like "It's ON after lunch, right you guys??... right?" I mean we wouldn't have had to even wait in line. They looked at me like I had lost my mind. I was unable to get past the reality of my situation for the rest of the trip BTW. I kinda figured that first day was a fluke and I continued to gather "ride 'em again" FP's for the rest of the trip with the same result. NO ONE has EVER left WDW with more FP's that I did on this trip people. No one.
Lunch was "beautiful" though as the Aussies would say. I had this Tuna tartar app and a stirling porkchop. Yum!!!
Flower and Garden festival starts this week so there were beautiful displays and topiaries all around the world. Made us feel like it really was spring!
Next we headed off to Target to do some American shopping. Pretzels! Fruit Snacks! Ridiculously cheap T-shirts! Tampons in size larg-ee! We were in heaven!
Got back to the room and had an ostrich and a giraffe right outside.
Hello there gorgeous!
After that it was time to head back to the Studios for Fantasmic. Now my little group was very, very tired.... but sometimes being a good Disney commando tour guide means having to say: "So the choice is you can come with me to Fantasmic or I can throw you over my shoulder in a Fireman's carry and TAKE you to Fantasmic. What'll it be?" They all very kindly decided to go to Fantasmic with me under their own power which I was very grateful for as I was a bit tired too.
It was even better than I remembered. The combo of live action with the animated bits on the water screens is soo clever. Here you can kind of see Malificent behind the magic mirror.
And of course it all ends happily with the boat cruise. I had wet-eye...
We were pooped! And so hoping that we would be out the minute our heads hit the pillow which didn't quite happen thanks to Jet-lag. It did give us some good middle of the night bonding time with the savannah animals though.....
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