Disney world day three: Hollywood Studios day one

My parents wouldn't be there for a couple of more days and we didn't want to go to Epcot or Magic Kingdom without them so we were originally planning on just relaxing on all of our extra days. But then I got to thinking about the fact that we were only going to have one day at Hollywood Studios and it might be nice to have two there.

So, Friday morning we awoke early to make it over to Disney's Hollywood Studios for rope drop. I woke up around 5:30 so I could get showered and ready and arrange the bathroom while everyone else slept. Then I woke up Doug and the girls to get ready. We had granola bars, bananas, and Yoo Hoos that I had brought from home for breakfast.

Here Abi is in her new pajamas. She is holding the lollipop because every day the princesses left her a prize on the bedside table if she had been good the day before. These prizes were also little things I had picked up before the trip such as coloring books, treats, and on her birthday the special new shoes to go with her gown.

She was very excited to check it every day to see what was there and who it was from.

Here's Doug on our first Disney bus ride.

I just loved how every park and every resort had a big Christmas tree. They were so beautiful. This was our first look at the Hollywood Studios one as we walked from the bus stop to the park. You can see The Tower of Terror in the background.

While we waited in line Abi saw another little girl with a pin lanyard and traded her first pin! She was so excited and so was the other family as it was their daughters first pin trade as well.

She had a Stitch pin she was itching to get rid of... we are not Stitch fans around here... and that was what the girl wanted so she gave Abi a fairy pin in its place.

It was pretty cold out this morning and all of us were dressed for warm weather. Poor Abi was the coldest but luckily it warmed up really nicely after about two hours.

You can tell in this picture that Abi is cold!

As soon as they opened Doug ran ahead to Toy Story Mania to get us Fast passes. If you don't know what a Fast Pass is- they are little machines that you insert your ticket in and they give you back a special ticket that entitles you to come back to the ride at a specific time to ride. The line for Toy Story Mania was never shorter than 40 minutes either time we were at this park and was usually over an hour but because of Fast Passes we never waited longer than 10-15 minutes. They are great.

We took our time catching up with him and by the time we caught up with him the line was already huge. He had just got our fast passes so we were so glad that he had run ahead.

We saw this guy on our way over...

We had a couple of hours before we needed to come back to ride so we went over to the Animation area. There is a show and a class amongst other things. I thought that to get into the class we had to go through the show. The show was kind of lame. It had some interesting elements but the cast member that was doing it was either not into it or for some reason they have them act aloof. This wasn't a common thing with the cast members we encountered on our trip so I'm just not sure which it was. I wanted to do the animation academy (the drawing class) but the line was pretty long so we decided to do that next time.

We did take some time to look around at the animation things. They had a huge Tangled display and since we had just seen and LOVED that movie, we had fun looking at that.

Our next stop: Playhouse Disney

I was pretty excited about this one because Abi used to love the Little Einsteins so much and she really enjoys watching the other playhouse disney shows as well when we are anywhere that has cable.

This show uses puppets on the stage and a guy dances and sings up there with them. Everyone sits on the floor and the children are encouraged to sing and dance around.

Both girls loved this!

They were clapping, singing, and dancing the whole time. Maddy kept trying to walk up the aisle to the stage. It was so cute and so much fun.

After this it still wasn't quite time for Toy story mania and Abi wanted to go on a ride! So, we just happened to be walking by the Great Movie Ride. The outside of it looks like the theater in Hollywood which was pretty cool. I had read that this could be a little scary but oops.. I forgot.

The line was cool because there were movie props to look at. Our favorite was, of course, this carousel horse from Mary Poppins.

The line was really short and we were soon on the ride.

Abi was doing fine until we went through the 'gangster' part where there is a pretend gangster fight with a real guy on one side and a car on the other side of you. They are shooting at each other. Abi buried her face into Doug's side and hardly came up again during the ride.

The gangster guy also got in our car with us... she wasn't sure about that!

The worst part was for the movie Alien. I was glad she was hiding then!

Finally, it was time to head back to Toy Story Mania. It is a really fun ride. You ride around in these little cars and shoot at targets. It is all 3D. While it is a lot of fun I still don't understand how this ride causes such a ruckus. It's strange. The greatest thing to me about this ride is that because it is 3D it was basically vision therapy for Abi the entire time.

Abi rode with me and Doug and Maddy rode together. I got the high score! Of course that could have been because Doug had Maddy on his lap! We'll ride this again the next week so we'll see if he beats me. :)

As soon as we came off the ride, we headed across the pathway to where you can get in line to meet Woody and Buzz Lightyear. This was the longest line of the day as we waited in line for about a half an hour.

Doug ran over to the other side of the park to get a fast pass for Tower of Terror while we waited in line.

Abi traded another pin with a cast member while we moved through the line. This was another great thing about the pin trading. She actually spoke to grown men she didn't know!

The line was pretty fun and didn't seem very long because they had lots of little photo ops and things to play with along the way.

Doug caught up with us near the end so that was good.

So, when it was Abi's turn to meet the guys she was a little shy. The autograph book helped to break the ice a little though.

Buzz put his hand out to give her five but she didn't notice so finally Woody gave him five. It was pretty funny.

Another thing we did on this trip was to pre- purchase a Photo pass card. You can buy it afterward but if you do it's $50 more. Basically, there are Photo Pass people all over the place that take your pictures in the parks and with characters. If you get any pictures taken and want them, you take the card they give you and can go onto the site after your trip to order pictures. The pictures can be really expensive though. The next option is to buy the CD. The pre purchase makes it just under $100 (which my mom and I split) but you get the CD with every picture (over 300 for us) and the copyright to them so you can do whatever you want with them.
It was a great bargain for us not only because we took a lot of pictures, but also because I was able to use them for a photo shoot for Abi on her birthday. After her boutique appointment the most expensive package includes a photo shoot. Since I got it along with the photo pass I saved over a hundred and fifty dollars (along with making her dress for it) by just doing the middle package.
Here are the Photo Pass pictures with these characters...

We decided to go to lunch at this point but on our way we ran into Minnie Mouse! She is one of Abi's favorites and was right up there on the list of the most important people to meet. So, we got in line. While in line we noticed Pluto walking by a little ways away so Doug ran over there with Abi and I stayed in line with Maddy.

This was the best picture I could get of her with Pluto.

The magical moment of meeting Minnie for the first time...

Here are the Photo Pass pictures:

For lunch we went to a little counter service place called Backlot Express.

Doug and I both had the avocado cheeseburger with fries and sodas.

For dessert Doug had a cheesecake and I had a strawberry parfait.

Abi had the meaty macaroni with fries and a cookie but we saved the cookie for a snack later.

Our food was really good. Abi however did not like her meaty macaroni and hardly ate any of it. Maddy fell asleep in the stroller just as we were getting to lunch so I bought her a giant pretzel with a snack credit later.

While we finished lunch Doug ran over to use his fast pass for Tower of Terror and I took the girls to the Honey I shrunk the kids movie playset. He would meet up with us there after the ride.

This place was cool but scary. It was so much fun for the girls but so hard to keep track of them. It was packed and everything seemed to have more than one entrance and more than one exit.

Maddy went down her first slide and absolutely loved it. A sidenote: when Abi saw this slide she said, "Look! Spiderman!" I think it's funny how much kids know about when they have never even seen a show.

A few minutes after Doug met back up with us we left the playground and went to Muppet Vision 3D. Abi liked it a lot and her favorite part was when Beeker keeps getting hit with this machine over and over. I thought that was funny because I loved Beeker as a kid.

Again, it was fun to see her reaching for things and actually being able to see the 3D. Her eye doctor said that all of this was vision therapy!

We then went to watch the Block Party which I thought was a parade but is actually just people dancing on and around a float. It was pretty hot by this point (I wish we had enjoyed that more and realized how rare it was going to be!) and the sun was in our eyes so we decided to head out.

On our way out we had the Photo Pass guy take our picture in front of the Christmas tree...

Here's Abi enjoying the bus ride home. She was pretty tired.

We changed the girls , got Mickey Ice Cream bars for Doug and Abi, our mugs refilled, and went to the pool.

By this time it was starting to cool down and the kiddie pool is in the shade at this time of day- I'm sure that is great in the summer but not so much this time.

It was just too cold so went back to the room.

The 'mousekeepers' had decorated our window with some of the girls books and toys and the Tink welcome banner so Abi wanted a picture of it.

I had Abi decorate our door with the princess magnets so that she would always know which door was ours. When my parents got there we put a few of them on their door as well. It worked really well until a few days before we left someone stole them. All of them. Rude.

We rested a bit and then got dressed for dinner. I had made reservations (You HAVE to make reservations 180 days out if you want to get into any of the good restaurants but I lucked out with this one since I didn't know about the extra days until a couple of months before) to eat at Narcooses at the Grand Floridian Resort.

It is a signature restaurant so it took two of our table service credits each but had we been paying out of pocket this place would have cost us almost $200. Seriously, the dining plan is great.

I dressed the girls in their sailor suits because it is on the water and a little nautical. I made reservations here specifically because Doug wanted lobster.

Here are Doug and Abi walking up to the Grand Floridian lobby for the first time. (We spent a lot of time at this resort!)

The Grand Floridian is the most amazing place ever. If money was not an object this would be my first choice of where to stay- of course it is the most expensive resort there.

This is the lobby...

We exited through the back of the lobby and walked along the lake to get to Narcooses..

We checked in and then hung out on the deck looking across the lake at the castle while we waited to get called.

Here they are....

Doug asked for a castle view when we checked in... and we got it! The restaurant was so beautiful and just so us. This was most definitely one of our favorite dining experiences of the trip.

They brought us bread and butter while we waited for our dinner..

Doug and Abi...

Me and Maddy...

We were so proud of Abi that she wanted to try the fish. I don't want her to not like fish just because I don't so it was good that she was willing to try something new.

Doug got the surf and turf which was a lobster tail and filet mignon with potatoes and veggies. He said it was fantastic.

I got filet mignon with potatoes and asparagus. It was the best steak I've had. It was so good.

Children do get a dessert at table services so Abi chose the Make your own Smore's...

I got the Bittersweet Chocolate Mousse dome with berries. This was great but a little sweet so we didn't finish it... I say we because we always shared the desserts all around..

Doug got the Gelato Sampler.

It was all so good and it was so magical to be able to watch the castle all lit up changing colors while we ate.

Here's Maddy as we left.

We got some pictures around the lobby on our way out... here are the girls on the grand staircase...

Abi wanted to watch cartoons in their kids section for a few minutes so we let her.

Before we left, we had the Photo Pass photographer take a picture of us in front of the Grand Floridian tree...

Both girls fell asleep in the car on the way back to our room so we quickly changed them into their pajamas and went to bed.

It was another great day!