Day Ten – Hollywood Studios
Our last full day! I woke up sad because despite being very tired and really missing vegetables I was not ready to go home!
The day before we had asked what everybody’s number one priority was for the day – B had said getting to fly the Millennium Falcon again, W wanted to do Rise again (grrr, hadn’t planned to pay for that a second time), Jay wanted Tower of Terror, and I wanted another ride on Slinky. So this morning we’d swapped responsibilities, knowing that Rise would change times on us, because I’d had more practice. 6:59:59, GO! I picked a 10am time for Rise and ended up with 10:10am, and Jay had snagged an 8:30! Almost TOO early, which is a real “my diamond shoes are too tight” problem.
So with that accomplished we packed up and headed out to the bus stop. We somehow chose the world’s slowest line to get in – people were streaming into the park and our line was just not moving. We thought maybe it was just our perception until we realized that no, the other lines were almost gone and we were still like 20 people back. So we hopped into a different line which, obviously, then stopped moving. Is there anything worse than looking up ahead and seeing the cast member at the tapstile’s hand go up? It was so frustrating. But eventually we made it in and headed to Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railroad, since that had worked out so well for us last time. In retrospect, this was a mistake and we should have gone to Tower of Terror, but I didn’t realize.
We headed back into Toy Story Land, thinking maybe we could repeat our last day and hop onto Slinky, but the line was enormous – I checked the app and it was down. Weirdly Alien Swirling Saucers seemed to have a pretty solid line but Midway Mania was a walk-on so we walked on, and then did it a second time for good measure – disappointingly and for the first time this trip Jay beat me on this second round, but for the first time (possibly ever in his life?) W beat B so he was extremely excited about that (so excited that B was getting upset and we had to have a bit of a “Ok, I know, but he’s never beaten you before and remember you’ve won every other game this whole trip so let’s just let him be a bit of a sore winner plus your accuracy score was higher” etc. management chat).
On one of our rides through Midway we had been chatting with the cast member there – W had desperately wanted to use a blue gun and we’d gotten the yellow/green cars every time so we asked if we could wait, and while we chatted she mentioned that Slinky at night was amazing. We were kind of like “Ok, good to know, but our LL for it has already opened, so….”
But when we left, Slinky was still down and had converted into an anytime, so I booked Millennium Falcon for that afternoon to check B’s #1 choice off the list. Alien Swirling Saucers still had long line so we headed past it and into Batuu. First up – a Ronto Wrap, because W had been desperate to eat at “the restaurant where the guy is cooking his food on a space ship”. Neither of the kids would try the actual wrap but they really enjoyed hanging out in the space.
Next up, we wanted to try out something new that I’d seen suggested in @DisneyDayDreamin’s trip report, which I had powered through that morning when I woke up at 5am – playing datapads! We’d been having a lot of fun with the Toy Story games on Play Disney Parks – they’d gotten us through a number of lines and waits in restaurants – but hadn’t branched out from that, so we decided to see what we could find. I set B and I up for a mission where we had to find access panels and hack them, and Jay set up one on his phone where you had to try to decode crates, and we had a blast wandering around the area scanning things, making lights beep and boop, etc. Multiple people asked us what we were doing and were equally delighted when we explained it, so that was fun.
Also during our wander through the marketplace looking for crates and access panels W spent the last of his money on a stuffed Tooka-cat, which is actually really cool – it makes all sorts of purring/hissing/meowing noises when you pet it and we currently enjoy tormenting our actual cats with it.
Then it was time for our second trip through Rise – interestingly we had a different experience this time, we must have been on the other track! On our previous day our car had lifted up and we’d been spotted by a Stormtrooper in the driving bay of an AT-AT, this time we wove through their legs – I didn’t realize there were such different options!
Once we landed we grabbed some more blue milk and did some more datapads for a while, and then headed over to catch the Indiana Jones show. I had, a bit earlier, discovered that LLs were going much more quickly this day than our previous day – I hadn’t been able to get anything on Tower of Terror even though it was only 11am, so I’d booked another round of TSMM for the afternoon. Then, despite arriving at 11:45 for a noon Indy show, there was a castmember holding a sign that said Standing Room Only! This is the point at which I realized this day was a lot busier than our previous day – the ToT standby line was at 130 minutes! We were going to just head back to the resort but the kids had been all amped up to do something. They looked around, saw the theatre for Vacation Short, and said “Can we do that?” Sure we can! We JUST missed a show so we were literally the only people waiting for a few minutes but before long we were in the theatre.
That was ADORABLE! Totally worth the time. Also I finally understand the potato references. But really cute, would for sure do it again. At that point we headed back to the resort to try to get started on packing, take a break, and go for a swim.
Also, my husband and I needed to do COVID tests. The kids, luckily, had gotten COVID a few weeks earlier (luckily because the rules from Canada are that if you have proof of a positive PCR between 10 and 180 days old you’re exempt from testing in that time) but despite our literal best efforts Jay and I didn’t get sick. Happily shortly before we left the Canadian government changed the return requirements from PCR to rapid tests so we’d ordered some from Switch Health and we needed to log into their website and take them under supervision.
I hadn’t thought about this all trip but as we headed back to the hotel I started to get really nervous – what if we had COVID? So I’d packed some rapid tests and I took one just to put my mind at ease. Then we discovered that had we needed to, this test would have been easy to fake, if you had been so inclined. I DEFINITELY did not try that hard to get a good swab, and then dipping them into the liquid wasn’t even done on screen, it would have been super easy to fake that part and just drip plain – saline? whatever it is – onto the test strip! We didn’t, but luckily we also didn’t have COVID, so phew. That worry off our list, we set about convincing the kids to go in the pool. They were bizarrely salty about it but eventually said “Listen, mom and dad want to go to the pool so we’re all going, I don’t care if you go in or not but you are coming to sit by the pool.” They agreed on the condition that we went to the quiet pool so whatever, let’s do this thing.
We acquired some drinks and tricked the kids into the pool (“hey, I wonder if your baby yoda toy floats?”) and before long they were having a fantastic time. I had my most frustrating Genie Plus experience of the trip at this point – we had a 7pm Swirling Saucers LL. I was looking at the app and saw that there was a 5:40pm one available so I cancelled the 7pm one, went to book the other, by the time I clicked through it was gone, I got the same 7pm time back, but it reset my 2 hour clock. Curse you Genie Plus why are you like this?!?!?!
Slightly too late, I realized that my afternoon plans were….let’s say overly ambitious? In the sense that I had a 3:45 TSMM LL, a 3:55 MFSR LL, and we wanted to be at the 4:30 Indy show, which I’d planned to get a LL for but now couldn’t, as the resetting of my 2 hour clock meant that I wouldn’t be eligible in time. So we called an Uber to go back to HS, realizing that this wasn’t going to work and doing some math in my head. Zoomed over to Toy Story Land and got on Midway Mania, but it was up and down and took longer than expected, so by the time we got off it was 4:20. I left the family and did some Olympic-quality speedwalking over to Indy to try to save seats, and literally as I walked up the cast member put up the Standing Room only sign. So I’m standing at the back, scanning the crowd to see if there’s anything, when I realize the bench directly in front of me is one of the “wheelchair friends and family” bench, the wheelchair spot at the end of it is occupied by a woman, but the bench is empty. So I asked hopefully if there’s any way she would let me and my family temporarily join her party and sit with her? And she said sure, no problem! It was an incredibly lucky break as they were literally the last seats available in the space plus they were right at the back, allowing us to duck out the second the show ended, race over to Batuu, and try to hop onto MFSR before our grace period 15 minutes ran out!
Ah, Disney math is so ridiculous.
Anyway a few minutes later my family arrived and joined me, and it ended up being an excellent vantage point. The kids loved the show just as much as they had the previous time, which – obviously a bunch of explosions is right up their alley but I was really thrilled by how into it they got! And then as planned we jumped up the minute they called cut and raced out of there.
When we got to Millennium Falcon, though, we had to explain to the rider swap cast member our problem – we were technically outside the limits of our LL (“the Indiana Jones show was longer than we realized!”) and we knew that we could still tap in but we were worried it would use our Slinky anytime. She sent us over to talk to the “coordinators” who said yes, it WOULD use our anytime and they didn’t want us to have to deal with that, so just escorted Jay and B onto the ride and said when they got off to come find them again and they’d do the same for B and I. We hadn’t necessarily planned to go back to back but they were being so nice and accommodating that we didn’t want to push it so figured this would work. So W and I headed out to scan some more access panels and watch the Stormtroopers, and then when Jay and B got back from being pilots B and I headed back in for our turn. At this point B had had been a gunner once and a pilot twice and he’d expressed interest in being the engineer and luckily, that’s what we got assigned. I once again discovered that being the engineer is kind of boring and also makes me much more motion sick than being the pilot, but whatever, we turned in our cargo and B was happy that he’d gotten to try everything.
From there there was a bit of a back and forth about where we were going to get dinner but it was all cleared up when I realized that B thought we were talking about going back to Ronto Roasters when I was actually talking about Docking Bay 7. For reasons completely unknown to me now I got the Batuuan Beef, Jay got the Smoked Kaadu pork ribs, and we got the pasta rings for the kids – W gobbled them up, but B only wanted French fries, although he ate a little bit. We also got the Outpost Puff, which was delicious. It was nice in Docking Bay 7, I especially enjoyed having actual cutlery! The only downside is that the family sitting next to us (and we were in one of the little nooks, so fairly cut off from the rest of the restaurant) had a youngish kid (4?) who wasn’t interested in eating and a Dad who thought the best way to get her to eat was to constantly narrate, in a cartoony voice and to the tune of Do you Want to Build a Snowman, everything that was happening. It was, to put it mildly, very annoying. I have kids, you do what you have to do, but think about the people around you who maybe don’t want 30 minutes of Olaf impression.
We didn’t really have much planned at this point, so we popped into Muppets. B still wanted French fries so we mobile ordered from Backlot Express (and threw another Wookiee cookie in for good measure!) but when we walked past Star Tours W said he wanted to go on it again so he and Jay did that while B and I went to eat fries.
Looped back around to Toy Story Land for our Saucers LL – we’d never done it at night and it was cool with all the flashing lights! And then rounded out our trip with Slinky after dark, which was as cool as this morning’s cast member had told us. I hadn’t realized it had lights under the track that changed colour as the coaster went past them! What an amazing detail!
We had REALLY hoped we’d be able to get onto ToT at the end of the night but it had stubbornly stuck at 130 minutes – I felt so bad, it was Jay’s main request, but I did offer to take the kids home and let him stay to ride it and he said no. As usual W was asleep by the time we got back to the hotel but B still, incredibly, had some energy to burn so he and Jay took lightsabers down to the beach for a little late-night battling before we turned in for our last sleep of our vacation.
I almost missed a flight in October (and was there the recommended two hours early) and hence bought Clear for my upcoming two trips this summer. It’s just not worth that stress to me. I sure as heck didn’t buy it for my local airport where I never wait more than 20 minutes (Austin). MCO is AWFUL!!!