Adventures With My Parents - part two

(a continuation of my report of my recent trip to Florida with my parents...)

Thursday:  I managed to get myself out of bed earlier because we had so many things planned for the day.  We only had about a half day at a park because my mom and I were going to Cirque du Soleil later in the evening.  I decided to make Hollywood Studios our second park (I think my dad was disappointed we didn't go to the Magic Kingdom, but I was kinda trying to avoid stroller-overload) because I was dying to try the new Toy Story ride.  I love me some Toy Story.

I just want to mention that I'm now a big fan of the Magic Bands and Fast Pass upgrades.  I liked being able to wear the Magic Band at all times to get in and out of our hotel room, the parks and even to use them for Fast Passes to get on rides more quickly.  We truly didn't stand in any long lines our entire time at Disney (Universal Studios was another matter, but that will be another post).  I know that we were at Disney during one of their low attendance seasons, but the upgrades to Fast Pass also helped with that.  Moving on...

First thing after we entered the park, we rode the upgraded Great Movie Ride, which is now narrated by Robert Osborne from Turner Classic Movies.  My mom and I ADORE Robert Osborne.  The ride was fun, with a wisecracking tram operator and lots of clips, music and audio-animatronic characters throughout the ride.  I was surprised there wasn't a scene from Gone With the Wind during the ride, but The Wizard of Oz stuff was really fun.  This is definitely a great ride to hop onto first thing.

We then strolled over to the Pixar area for our first Fast Pass of the day - Toy Story Midway Mania.  I was dying to ride this ever since it was announced.  I just adore Toy Story, all of the movies, and the childhood fun it brings back.  The theming of the area is fantastic, with all the board games and toys from my childhood blown up to enormous sizes.  With our Fast Passes, we only had to stand in line for a few minutes before getting on the ride.  Toy Story Midway Mania is a fun video-game-like ride, in 3D, where you shoot at targets and get points.  The only drag was that each car only seats two people on each side, so Mom and I rode on one side, but my dad was behind us, so we didn't get to laugh with him during the ride.  Mom and I had a good time, though.  We're both terrible at video games, with just horrifyingly bad hand/eye coordination.  Our scores were in the 70,000 points range, but when we looked at the high scores of the day so far, they were in the 200,000 points range.  Uh, we didn't come close.  Oh well.  We had fun anyway.  :)

Next, we went to the exhibit called Walt Disney: One Man's Dream.  This was a wonderful exhibit, with tons of great memorabilia and insights into Walt Disney's life and career.  it was very cool to see Disney's second-grade school desk, models he made himself, vintage Disney merchandise, costumes, scaled replicas and more.  We were there for quite a while, then we watched a movie about Disney, narrated by both Disney himself and Julie Andrews.  It was a very special place and I'm so glad I finally got to see it (somehow, on all our other trips, we missed this exhibit).

Our next Fast Pass was for the new and improved Star Tours ride; on our way back to that area, we passed a café called the Writer's Stop.  I had read about this café before I left for Disney, so I wanted to take a peek inside.  It was a little smaller than I expected, but it was cute and not very crowded (and well air-conditioned).  They had a nice snack bar, rows of books for sale and Disney merchandise, mainly for the kitchen.  I had also read about their carrot cake cookie - my dad loves carrot cake, so after I made sure that it didn't have nuts in it (it didn't), I got one for the three of us.  It was so huge, we still couldn't finish it!  But it was delicious; it's actually two cookies with a cream cheese filling.  So yummy.  I also ordered an iced tea - they don't actually have iced tea on the menu, but the gals behind the counter were very nice and made me one anyway.  I liked stopping at Writer's Stop and plan to make it a regular thing from now on.

Anyway, on to Star Tours.  It was TERRIFIC!  So different from the last time we did it!  Now it's in 3D and they've updated the film you see inside the ride, so now there are over 50 different combinations in the adventures you'll see.  We got to fly over Hoth and then underwater; Darth Vader tried to board the ship and it was just a lot of fun.  I'm glad we did it again.  And we got some souvenirs in the shop just outside the ride.  After we finished Star Tours, we had a bit of time before our next Fast Pass at the Muppet Vision 3D, but as we walked over there, we saw there was no line anyway.  Being creatures of 'let's get into some a/c', we walked on in.  We stood for the pre-show film and then made our way inside the theater for yet another 3D adventure.  Disney really likes their 3D.  They've also made updates to the Muppet Vision 3D since the last time we were in the park, so that was nice.  We laughed and had a great time, as usual.

After the Muppets, we did a little shopping and then got some lunch at the ABC Commissary.  I forgot about the whole-grain-bun thing and ordered a sandwich.  Sigh.  Again, I ended up eating it open-face.  Oh well.  The grilled chicken club was at least tasty.  It was nice to sit for a few minutes - even though we had been sitting in rides/exhibits, with the heat and humidity, it was still pretty tiring to walk so much between attractions.  So it was good to sit.  My mom mentioned that she wasn't sure if we had gotten our money's worth out of the park yet and since we were leaving in a couple of hours, I felt a little guilty about trying to get more bang for our buck.  We missed the stunt shows, so I thought maybe a stroll over to the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror could be fun.  But after we left the commissary and started walking, I looked over to my right and saw that the Frozen sing-along show was about to start, so I talked my parents into checking it out.  We were almost in the back row, but that theater is so big, I don't think it mattered.  We had a blast!  My dad hasn't seen Frozen, but he had a great time, too.  The show has live performers, clips from the movie and opportunities for you to sing along with all the songs at the top of your lungs (which I did).  It was great fun.  It even snowed at the end of the show!  We loved it.  It was so cool to hear so many people know all the words to the songs - kids behind us were even making the sound effect noises.  Very cute.  So that ended our morning at the Hollywood Studios with a bang.  It was off to the bus to return to our hotel so we could change and get ready for Cirque du Soleil.

My dad's conference group got a bloc of tickets for everyone to see Cirque du Soleil at Downtown Disney.  Dad decided he didn't want to go, so just Mom and I went.  We changed our clothes and took the water taxi from our hotel over to Downtown Disney.  Even after taking the water taxi, the hotel's landing was way far away from Cirque du Soleil, so we took another water taxi across the lagoon.  But, honestly, any time there's an opportunity to take a boat, I'm on it.  We had to wait outside a bit for some of dad's friends so we could pick up our tickets, but not for too long, thankfully.  It was still hot.

I'd actually seen this particular Cirque show, La Nouba, before, maybe seven or eight years ago.  I loved it then and I was so excited to be able to see it with my mom.  I knew she would love it and I was right!  All of the acts were just incredible - the singers, the dancers, the jugglers.  We especially loved the young girls with the Chinese yo yos, and the guy who did the red silk aerial ballet.  But everything was fantastic and the closing act with the trampolines was just as amazing the second time seeing it!  My mom and I weren't as enamored with the clowns as the rest of the crowd, but oh well.  We loved the rest.  I'm so glad Mom got to see it.  On the way out, we picked up some souvenirs, then we took the water taxi back over to the shopping area of Downtown Disney to do some shopping.  We got some lemon gelato at Vivoli il Gelato, a new spot in the expansion they're doing at Downtown Disney (soon to be renamed Disney Springs).  That lemon gelato was delicious!  So tart and lemony!  Yum.  As we sat and ate our gelato, we listened to some live bands perform.  It was just a really nice night.  After a little more shopping, we finally called it a night and took the water taxi back to our hotel.  It was a very full day, but we had two more full days ahead of us!  We needed our sleep!  :)