24 hours in the car just to see fake palm trees?! Our magical Thanksgiving vacation

[ariane37]

Welcome!! How were the crowds over Thanksgiving??

Well this was our 3rd time being there over Thanksgiving so we're used to how it is, but really they weren't bad. Crowded yes, but nothing like Christmas and extremely doable. I just love visiting during the holiday season!!

 

[jrmint427]

I had to take a quick snap of the Christmas tree outside of the restaurant:

I love seeing the Christmas trees from all over WDW!

I spent a lot of time in the bathroom because of my 4YO who had to poop like 3 times throughout the course of the meal.

I had to laugh at this because I feel like I spent SO much time in the bathroom on our last trip with my 4 year old.

 

[jvz82]

Joining in!

Yay! Thanks for joining!!

Well this was our 3rd time being there over Thanksgiving so we're used to how it is, but really they weren't bad. Crowded yes, but nothing like Christmas and extremely doable. I just love visiting during the holiday season!!

I love it during the holidays too. We almost always go in December, this was our first time going in November. The crowds were super manageable.

I love seeing the Christmas trees from all over WDW!



I had to laugh at this because I feel like I spent SO much time in the bathroom on our last trip with my 4 year old.

I'm sure their tummies aren't used to eating so differently!!

 

[jvz82]

Part 5: When you wish upon a death star

Hollywood studios day!!!!

I have not been to Hollywood Studios since I was a teenager. In fact, that last time I was there it was still MGM. So I had been doing a ton of planning but was still not feeling really confident about our day.

It was actually an Early Morning Magic event from 7-9 am. I pondered getting tickets for this, but sort of balked at the cost. Revisited the idea a couple weeks later and the event was sold out, so I was a little bummed. But it ended up being fine and I ended up being glad we had just saved the money!

We woke up early and ate bowls of cereal in our cabin before heading out. We drove the golf cart down and returned it (bye bye golf cart!!) and made our way to the bus stop. We got super lucky and the HS was actually the first one to show up so we didn't have much of a wait!!

And we were on our way!!



It was a fairly short bus ride to HS and we arrived by 8 am. The were herding the EMM people one way and the rest of us waited in line. We checked out the gift shop near by a little bit and I let me kids take turns playing on my phone. Everyone was starting to get a bit whiny and I was working really hard trying to keep us energetic and engaged.

At 8:30, they opened the gates and let us in!

Most of the crowd went towards Toy Story land. I had done a lot of research and thinking about what we were going to do because we were not able to get a FP for Slinky Dog Dash, but I didn't know that I wanted to go with the crowd at rope drop to Toy Story Land. So we decided to forgo TSL in the morning and see how things were looking later in the day. So we turned left to go sign up for Jedi Academy training!





We were some of the first people to reach the area and we picked an evening time slot for Jedi training academy. We signed up my 3 older kids for the training. We didn't sign up my youngest... I keep saying that he is 4, but technically he doesn't turn 4 until January 1st so I was nervous if we lied about his age he would announce it to everybody. So I was a little disappointed that he couldn't do it because he would have LOVED it. But maybe next time!

We had decided to go to Star Tours first because my kids are huge Star Wars fans. We had to wait outside the area until 9 am before they let everyone go in.

Everybody LOVED the ride, except for my husband who ended up very nauseous from motion sickness. You will see that this will be a theme for the day, unfortunately. All the kids loved it so much that we went on it twice (hubby stayed off).

[URL='https://flic.kr/p/2dmg9eY']

After the ride, My 6YO and 9.5YO decided to build custom light sabers. My 9yo actually saved money from mowing lawns all summer so he could get a fancy one, so he was really excited. My daughter bought a mini light saber key chain, which you'll see hanging off her belt loops in all her pictures! And my 4yo bought a Star Wars Lego set.

After shopping, we were still way ahead of schedule. So we made an impromptu decision to go visit Mickey and Minnie because the lines were so short.















Next up: Launch Bay to meet more characters!!![/url]

 

[jvz82]

Part 5: When you wish upon a death star (chapter 2)

After meeting Mickey and Minnie, we headed over to Launch Bay. My husband's big request of the trip was that he wanted to meet Chewbacca. As I mentioned earlier, he is 7 feet tall and was excited to look almost face to face with Chewie.

It was a 20 minute wait and we decided it was worth it. During the wait, some storm troopers were walking away shouting threatening things at people and the kids thought that was pretty funny.

After a 15 minute wait, my husband FINALLY got his big Chewbacca sized hug!!



The other kids got to share some hugs too.







I swear to you, I have never seen a happier Wookie. He gave my husband several hugs and they had some of the best character interactions!



After Chewie, we headed over to see Kylo Ren. It was sort of an awkward character meeting because I think the kids were a little scared of him!!



He told my oldest that the force was strong with him and that he thought she should join the dark side. My oldest told him no! But you can see my daughter holding up her mini light saber, which apparently was the dark side colors.



After meetings the Star Wars gang, it was time to separate. I had fast passes for me, my oldest son, and my daughter for Rock n Roller coaster. My husband did not want to ride because it goes upside down, which makes him sick, and my 4YO wasn't tall enough yet. My 6Yo was technically tall enough but I honestly didn't know if he was ready for the ride or not yet so I opted to have him go with my husband and I got them fast passes for the Muppet 3D show. We went our separate ways.

I was sooooo excited for the RNR!! I went on it as a teenager and loved it.



My kids were really excited too. I had shown them some videos already so they were prepared. The line, even though it was the FP line, was actually kind of long so the anticipation was high. You can see how excited they were even while waiting though!



And FINALLY it was our turn!!! The ride was even better than I remembered it. So much fun!

My 9YO had decided, before our trip started, that he wanted to have a super serious face on every ride roller coaster. So this is the first of many photos where he simply looks bored. But don't worry, he totally had fun!!

[url=https://flic.kr/p/RiLjZQ]

[URL='https://flic.kr/p/2aEaQCj']
Apparently the random girl sitting next to him had a similar goal???

Thanks for reading tonight!!! Next up, lunch and we continue working through our fast passes!
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[suse66]

Your Hollywood Studios morning looks like so much fun! How did you like your cabin? It must have been so nice to see all the Christmas decor throughout the resort.

I'm glad you enjoyed Hoop de doo....I have never gone but it is on our list for our anniversary trip in July.

 

[jvz82]

Your Hollywood Studios morning looks like so much fun! How did you like your cabin? It must have been so nice to see all the Christmas decor throughout the resort.

I'm glad you enjoyed Hoop de doo....I have never gone but it is on our list for our anniversary trip in July.

We loooooved the cabins and already have plans to return there in 2021.

I would definitely try out HDDR. It's a super fun experience.

 

[smilie]

Love this!!!

 

[jvz82]

Love this!!!

Thank you, that's one of our favorite pictures from the whole trip!!

 

[jvz82]

Part 5: When you wish upon a death star (chapter 3)

After leaving RNR, we had to walk all the way across the park to meet hubby and the boys at Pizza Rizzo for lunch. When we were just about there, I got out my phone to call hubby to find out if they were eating yet and he said that Pizza Rizzo was closed for the day! This threw me off because of course I had done so much research on finding the perfect restaurants for us and didn't have a back-up plan, plus we were all STARVING.

We met up with the rest of the family and decided to just head back the direction we'd came from and go to ABC Commissary. I didn't know anything about it, but it was close and that was most important. It was 11 am by this time (I think).

Food was fine here! I think most of us got burgers and fries and nothing stands out to me about the meal, but it was good.

After lunch, we had a bit of time before our next FP so we headed over to the Indiana Jones show.

I'm not sure if it's because it was hot, or because it had been a long morning, or because it was crowded (so many possibilities) but all the kids started going a little crazy when we sat down in the audience for Indiana Jones. They wouldn't stop bugging each other, they were whining about everything, my 4yo was climbing all around the benches like an animal and kept running into people sitting around us... it was chaos. I finally pulled my 4yo onto my lap and firmly told him he had to sit with me, and I handed my husband my phone that had been in my lap because I didn't want to drop it.

In the midst of the chaos, they are asking for volunteers to be extras in the show and my husband decides that this seems like a good time for him to volunteer for the show. And of course, he is chosen!!! So I was super excited for him, because any time you're chosen for something at Disney is amazing, but suddenly I'm left with 4 feral children. By myself.

After hubby left, I realized he had my phone. So I reached down and took my good DSLR camera out of the camera bag and snapped some pictures of him. But then several things sort of happened all at once. My 4yo continued being absolutely crazy, climbing around and bothering people, my 9yo broke his finger nail waay low and was freaking out because it hurt so bad and he wanted a band-aid or a nail clipper, and my 6yo lost a tooth. I'm not even kidding that this was all happening at once.

So I'm reaching for the backpack trying to get the first aid kit, and all of a sudden I hear the most awful crunching noise, so loud that people in the row in front of me turned around to look.

I had dropped my beautiful camera onto the hard cement!!

I immediately tried to turn it on. Wouldn't work. Turned it off, turned it back on. Nothing. Took of the lens and checked it for cracks and didn't see any, but changed to another lens and tried to turn it on again, still nothing.

I would say overall I handled it pretty well. Even though I was feeling a huge weight on my chest, I reasoned with myself that the camera was almost 9 years old and probably need to be replaced anyway. It was only day 1 of our trip, but my phone camera is really decent so it's not like I couldn't take any pictures. It wasn't the end of the world.

In the mean time, I'm trying to be excited for my 6yo and his tooth, trying to soothe my 9yo, wrangle my 4yo, and enjoy the show.

It looked like my husband really enjoyed himself! No picture to share yet because I haven't been able to get it off my camera, but he came away from it with some fun stories! When I told him about my camera, he handled that well too and agreed that it was disappointing but that it was old and replaceable. So I was able to move on from that minor disaster and head into the next part of our afternoon!

Up next: Toy Story Land!

 

[xlsm]

What a fun and busy start to your Hollywood Studios day!!

I loooove the pictures of your husband with Chewie!! That's amazing. You know Chewie isn't finding too many guests he can see eye to eye with.

I wanted to hug you reading about the kids getting the crazies at the Indy show. You handled it well!!

Really enjoying this so far. Oh, and I liked seeing the tree at the Fort, I don't think I've seen pictures of it before.

 

[jvz82]

Part 5: When you wish upon a death star (chapter 4)

After experiencing the many highs and lows of Indiana Jones, we started walking towards Toy Story Land. I was excited because I'm a huge Toy Story fan! We had a fast pass for Toy Story Mania so that was our first stop.












Toy Story Mania was super fun!

When we got out, we were doing great with time. Our next fast pass at Tower of Terror wasn't even scheduled to begin for another full hour, and some of the things I had tentatively planned for this time (like meeting characters) we had already done just because we were so ahead of schedule.

The wait for Slinky Dog Dash was 70 minutes. I almost NEVER wait for anything that long, usually even 20 minutes is pushing it for me. But the kids were watching that dog cruising around the park and really wanted to go on it, and I figured why not wait? It's not like we were on a huge time crunch. So we all agreed to wait the 70 minutes and hopped in line.

My two middle kids immediately made a friend in line, a boy who was about their age and apparently had been on SDD several times already that day because his family had come to Early Morning Magic. I don't know if that family is out there reading, but I am forever grateful for your child who kept my two children occupied for the entire 70 minute wait!!!!

My oldest was a bit grouchy, even though he had been in full agreement to wait the 70 minutes, and I let him play some games on my phone so then he was mostly fine.

But sweet little 4yo... sigh.

Like I said, it was hot that day. And Toy Story Land seems to be a few degrees warmer than other areas. And Reid just got it in his head that he wanted to go back to the hotel and go swimming at the pool and he did not want to move on from this plan. So we spent a solid chunk of time in line (it felt like forever but in reality was maybe 15 minutes or so) with him whining and crying because he wanted to go swimming.

I don't remember what finally snapped him out of it, but he finally just let it go and went back to his usual crazy self.



FINALLY!!! We made it to the front of the line. The 70 minute estimate was pretty spot on.

I would say overall, considering that's probably the first time we've ever waited in line for 70 minutes, it didn't go too bad. Once we finally calmed Reid down!

[URL='https://flic.kr/p/2aEaRKu']

Omg, what a fun roller coaster!!!! Seriously, we all REALLY enjoyed it and I'm very thankful we had the time in our day to do the wait.

After SDD, we made our way to Tower of Terror because it was fast pass time!



I was excited that all of us were able to go on this ride. Reid was a little nervous about it being scary but I told him I would sit next to him and hold him.

So during the scariest part of the ride, I am holding Reid's hand and I look over at my 9yo and he keeps looking at this wrist and I'm like *** is he doing??



He tells me later that he was pretending to check his watch just to prove how bored he was because the ride wasn't scary at all.

We get off the ride and start talking about how much fun it was, when my husband immediately says "I think I'm going to throw up" and takes off.

So we hang around in the gift shop for a while and wait for him to reappear. We decide to take a little break and get some ice water for everyone for a nearby counter service place. We sit in the shade and wait for him to feel better. Apparently he never threw up, but was very close. He had been taking dramomine but for some reason it wasn't working well for him that day.

I noticed that our picture had been posted on the Disney app from the ride and hubby asked if he looked like he was going to throw up in the picture, so I took a look at the picture and decided yep it did.

A close-up for your viewing pleasure.



No more rides for hubby today!!!!

Up next: Sci Fi and Jedis!
[/URL]https://flic.kr/p/2cjLRA9

 

[jvz82]

What a fun and busy start to your Hollywood Studios day!!

I loooove the pictures of your husband with Chewie!! That's amazing. You know Chewie isn't finding too many guests he can see eye to eye with.

I wanted to hug you reading about the kids getting the crazies at the Indy show. You handled it well!!

Really enjoying this so far. Oh, and I liked seeing the tree at the Fort, I don't think I've seen pictures of it before.

Aww thank you! Virtual hugs accepted!! It really was okay, even in the moment I didn't feel like it ruined our day, our even the show. You just sort of have to laugh through the crazy!!

We are totally framing some Chewie pictures. The happiness from both him and my husband was so real!

 

[QueenJen]

I have enjoyed reading your TR. I can't imagine driving for 24 hrs straight......with 4 littles to boot.

Apparently the random girl sitting next to him had a similar goal???

I thought the same thing and was cracking up before reading that you picked up on it too.

suddenly I'm left with 4 feral children. By myself.

This paints quite the picture. Rough times.

 

[starousse]

Enjoying your report. I always look forward to the TOT pics with my husband looking like death. He hates it, but he goes just to give us a laugh.

 

[jvz82]

I have enjoyed reading your TR. I can't imagine driving for 24 hrs straight......with 4 littles to boot.


I thought the same thing and was cracking up before reading that you picked up on it too.



This paints quite the picture. Rough times.

A rough time at Disney is still better than a good time at home right??!

Enjoying your report. I always look forward to the TOT pics with my husband looking like death. He hates it, but he goes just to give us a laugh.

That's nice of him to go with you anyway!! I feel bad for hubby because he does enjoy rides, but the motion sickness makes it tough! Thanks for reading!

 

[jvz82]

Part 5: When you wish upon a death star (chapter 5)

As I'm looking through my pictures, I realized we did a couple of other things during the day that I forgot about! After Indiana Jones, but before heading over to Toy Story Land, we got Mickey ice cream and then met Olaf because the line was really short! I remember now that my 9.5yo didn't want to meet Olaf because he was worried we would miss our fast pass time for Toy Story Mania but it was only a 15 minute wait.





Oh boy, now my trip report is all out of order!

That's ok. Let's jump back to the late afternoon where my husband has finally recovered from his motion sickness.

We had a long walk from the ToT area all the way back to Sci-Fi diner. On our way, we passed a gift shop and the kids wanted to look at Toy Story things. They each picked a little blind bag with 3 surprise Toy Story characters inside. And I got my Slinky Dog headband, featured on page 1 of my report! It seemed like a silly splurge, but I loooooved it.

Next up was an early 4:25 dinner at Sci-Fi drive in. I had been reading so many good reviews and I was really excited to try it. This had been my husband's first choice for restaurants on the whole trip and I lucked out getting a reservation using one of those reservation finder programs.

We were seated right away and it was a super cool place! The food was amazing and I loved the theming. I will say that it was so dark and for some reason that bothered me a little bit. The food was amazing but I'm not sure if I'd go back or not!

So we had signed up for the Jedi Academy training at 6:20, and the kids had to check in by 5:50. With our 4:25 reservation, and no characters to meet at dinner, I didn't think we'd have any problem making it to check-in by 5:50. But by 5:40, we hadn't even ordered dessert yet. We didn't want to miss Jedi training, so hubby decided to stay at the restaurant and get our dessert to go, and I took off with the kids as fast as we could!

First thing we noticed when we got outside was the ground was soaking wet, it had obviously poured rain while we were eating, which was funny because it had been sunny and beautiful all day. But that's Florida I guess! It was still misting a little and I was worried they would cancel Jedi training.

We made it just in time and I checked the kids in. Reid and I then headed back to where the show would take place and sat down at a nearby table. Hubby arrived shortly after with dessert. In case anyone ever eats here, I got the Sci-fi homemade candy bar, and holy crap it was unbelievable!!!!!

When it was close to 6:20, we claimed some spots near the front of the stage.



The kids came out and were looking a bit nervous! They were on the lower stage, which meant they would get to battle Kylo Ren. They went through the training part first and then got to have their battles!



















Overall, such an amazing experience! I can't wait until Reid is old enough to do it too, he will just love it!

Up next: RAIN and SNOW
https://flic.kr/p/2dnfAiN

 

[jvz82]

Part 5: When you wish upon a death star (chapter 5)

After the Jedi training, we took a quick break at some tables for the kids to eat their desserts from Sci-fi that we had taken to go. We had good timing, because not long after we sat down in started POURING rain. I'm so thankful that we were still able to do the Jedi training in between the two big rain showers!!!

It was getting later around this time, probably around 7 pm, and we were trying to decide what to do, especially with the rain. We had talked about wanting to see Toy Story Land in the dark, but wouldn't be much fun in the rain. We decided to go to the Frozen Sing Along, since that was indoors and not too far away!

We literally ran through the pouring rain over to Frozen! It's hard to see in the picture, but we were just drenched lol.



I had no idea what the expect with the Frozen Sing Along. But we all absolutely loved it! Even my 9yo was completely cracking up over all the jokes. In fact, he will still randomly quote some of the funny parts from the show.



Then of course it snowed at the end! And I don't think any of my kids liked that, lol. They were like "we're not in Minnesota, why is it snowing??" But overall, it was a fantastic way to end our night.

It was a long show. By the time we exited the auditorium, it was ten after 8 and Hollywood Studios was supposed to close at 8!

As we headed towards the exit, I could see the Tower of Terror lit up and I really wanted to see it so we detoured that direction.







So I think that's it!!! I think that completes our Hollywood Studios day!!

We had a couple of harder moments, but overall it was an absolutely amazing day. I was highly impressed with my children, who proved themselves to be hardcore Disney tourists with a full 12 hours straight of park time. Even though they had moments of whining or crying, it never lasted long and they had so much fun. I am so filled with joy with I look at that last picture of them together!!!

Up next: Ohana means family

 

[rdkeim]

Wow - what a long but amazing day! Love the last picture!

 

[jrmint427]

In the mean time, I'm trying to be excited for my 6yo and his tooth, trying to soothe my 9yo, wrangle my 4yo, and enjoy the show.

I can only imagine the chaos! It sounds like you handed it really well, even with the camera dropping.

He tells me later that he was pretending to check his watch just to prove how bored he was because the ride wasn't scary at all.

This is hilarious!!

They were like "we're not in Minnesota, why is it snowing??"

I lived in MN for 2 years but my daughters have grown up in TX and said the snow was their favorite part of the show! Too funny that they were probably wondering why people like snow that much.