December 29, 2020

Disney! We woke up yesterday morning all excited and ready for Disney Hollywood Studios.  I had read that the park opens about 45 minutes earlier than it says it does so we made it our goal to leave the condo at 8:00 even though the park didn't open until 9:00.  We were not the only ones with this plan, however, we did get great parking, got through security and checks in great time and made it quickly into the park.  

Once in, we took a little potty break while Anne and Nolan got a stroller.  Then we were off to our first ride- Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. It is a new ride and opened in March, right before COVID hit and Disney closed.  It was the perfect first ride for everyone! 

I was incredibly impressed with how Disney kept everyone socially distanced and kept an eye on everyone's mask.  For every ride they had lines that marked "Please Wait Here". It was socially distanced from the next line and your group waited on one line to keep distance from the next group. If there was a space where the line split and you could potentially be next to someone there was plexiglass dividers to keep you separate. In areas where you needed to gather as a group there were large dots that your party needed to stay on to keep distanced from the other groups. 

After Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway we continued on toward Toy Story Land. They really make it feel like you are a toy and everything is largely sized. The details put into it is amazing! There were even large foot prints on the cement to try to give size reference.  The benches were made to look like pieces of wooden train track set and the fences were made of k'nex. Very, very cool.  We saw Toy Story Mania had a 5 minute wait so we decided to hop on it! It was a fun 3D ride where you had to "blast" different targets and they kept score. I rode with Teddy and he liked it a lot! 

We then traveled over to the Alien Space Saucer ride, which is very similar to the tea cup ride. Rocky LOVED this ride. You couldn't tell it when he was riding, but as soon as we got off he got so upset and tried running back toward the ride. 

We then split and the big boys went to a Star Wars ride while Mom, Anne, Nolan and I kept the kids.  We ended up walking through Star Wars World and then heading over to an area where we saw a Disney Junior thing.  It was Disney Junior Dance and Play show. They had groups of people perfectly spaced out and characters from Disney Junior like Vamparina, Doc McStuffins, Timon, and Mickey came out on stage and did a dance move. Kids were encouraged to dance along with the characters and bubbles flowed through the air.  Teddy loved it!

For lunch we went to Rosie's Cafe and had burgers and chicken nuggets. It was so slick to order online and then pick it up! 

After lunch Dad, Drew, Thom and I wanted to do the Rockin' Rollercoaster so Mom stayed with the boys.   We then picked up Teddy and headed to Tower of Terror. We tried our best to explain it to Teddy so he knew what to expect, but when we started to get into the hotel he thought it seemed a little scary. We told him it was kind of silly scary.  When we go ton the ride the "ghosts" freaked him out a bit, but he did great with the drops.  Everyone was looking at him to see how he would respond-and he did great! He said he loved it!

After meeting up with Mom and Rocky, Thom and Drew went to Rockin' Rollercoaster again while Mom, Dad the boys and I went to the Lightning McQueen Cars show.  It had real sized Cars characters. Teddy and Rocky loved watching it.

It was evident Rocky was getting tired so I wheeled him around hoping he would fall asleep while the rest of our crew went on Star Tours. Teddy really thought he was in space! After the Star Tours we went to the alien ride again.  Drew and Thom headed back to visit a Star Wars shop that was open while Mom, Dad, the boys and I went to the Frozen Sing-Along show.  It was cute!

Back it up-- a little piece of information that we learned was that in order to get on the Rise of the Resistance ride you had to enter a virtual queue. They opened the queue twice each day. Once at 7:00am and once at 1:00pm. We were told to be quick because it fills up instantly. At 7:00Anne and I met to try on all devices to get our party in, but we were too slow. At 1;00, while in line for another ride I tried again and was placed in backup queue 149. So if they were able to get enough people through then our queue might come up....

After Frozen we went to wait by the Star Wars ride because our queue was coming up—luckily our boarding group got called! Rocky was unable to do the ride because he is too little so we did rider swap. The group go to go, except for Rocky and me and then when they were done I got to pick two people to go with me so Drew and Thom got to go twice! I am not a big Star Wars fan, but that was an awesome ride! People were in character and we had different loading zones which acted out different parts of the big story of the ride. Essentially, we captured by the bad guys and trying to escape. I understand why it is so popular!

Mom and Dad took the boys for a pretzel and popcorn while we rode and we met them at the front of the gate. Before we left I wanted to walk though Toy Story Land in the dark because I heard it was beautiful with all the lights- and it sure was!!

It was an easy drive back to the condo where we just relaxed, got the boys to bed early and then I went to bed early too! Tomorrow = more fun in the sun at Cocoa Beach.