Are you sure you read that schedule right?
Wednesday October 19
Our plan for today was to go to Hollywood Studios in the morning and then take a Friendship boat around noon to get lunch in EPCOT.
We had the following Fast Passes:
Tower of Terror 9:10 to 10:10
Toy Story 10:25 to 11:25
Star Tours 11:35 to 12:35
Since we always choose to go to the Early Magic Hour park, my plan was to get there at opening, ride RockNRoller Coaster first thing, followed by Tower of Terror standby, then Tower of Terror again with our Fast Pass before heading to Toy Story.
Unfortunately, things did not work out the way we expected…
We woke up and had breakfast in the lounge as soon as it opened. There were a few people popping in and out of the lounge, getting coffee or grabbing a pastry, but we were the only ones sitting down having breakfast.
When we were done, we went out the back entrance towards the lighthouse boat launch. It was beautiful out, and there was not a boat in sight, so we decided to walk to the Studios
We encountered something weird when we arrived at the Hollywood Studios gate. There was only one group at the tapstiles in front of us and they weren’t letting anyone in.
Huh?
As it turns out, it was NOT an early extra magic hour morning. It looked like there were a few guests in the park, so I think it was actually one of those paid access things. I'm pretty sure at one point I knew the park was not opening until 9 and there were no morning extra magic hours scheduled that day and thought “Oh, good, we can sleep a little longer the morning after the Halloween Party”. But then I forgot and I never double-checked the schedule. I just assumed since we were going to HS, it was the early open park. GRRRR!!!!
So we had a pretty long wait there at the gate, watching a mostly empty avenue in front of the Great Movie Ride theatre.
Then, shortly before we were let in, a cast member came over and told us that RockNRoller Coaster was down.
Crap! Our plan had been to ride that first since we didn’t have a Fast Pass.
So when the cast members dropped the rope, they led the way to Jedi Training and Toy Story Mania. I can’t remember if they had a group going towards Tower of Terror. We were on our way to
Pixar Place.
This was the lineup of people behind us:
And, we're off!
The time listed on the Toy Story sign as we got to the door said 20 minutes, but it was less than 10 minutes before we were all ready to go:
After Toy Story, we did something we had never done before- the Toy Story meet & greet. I had seen pictures of the very cool queue here with some neat photo opportunities.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out- Mark took my picture here, but the sun was streaming in from the windows and it was not good lighting.
I wanted to get a picture of Mark as Stinky Pete, but the kid behind us in line was all over the props, so we didn’t have the opportunity to pose him- not that Mark would have done it anyway…
When we got to the front of the line, we let that family go before us because the boy was running ahead into the meet & greet room, and as a couple of adults, we were happy to wait a few more minutes.
Then it was our turn:
After we left Andy’s Room, we made our way to use our Tower of Terror fast pass
RockNRollerCoaster was still down ☹
It was not time for our next FP, so we stopped off in a galaxy not so far away:
And we met this guy:
We still had a little more time, so we popped into Starring Rolls for a mid-morning snack, an iced coffee and a cupcake.
And to make a major change to our plans for the following day.
Our current reservation for Thursday night was Yak & Yeti and we had Fast Passes at Animal Kingdom. Since we already had lunch at Y&Y earlier in the week, we decided to cancel. But what to do?
Mark kept saying how much he loved the Hallowishes fireworks show and that he wanted to see it again. We talked about some of the restaurants where you could see the show. He checked to see if there were any openings for dinner at California Grill.
Negative.
Mark was looking at his phone and he got very excited. He asked me what I knew about the Pirates and Pals Fireworks Cruise. The answer was “Nothing”, but I told him I would call IPO (the club level planning desk) to see if there were any openings for the event.
It was very difficult to hear with everything going on around us, but we were able to book a couple of spots!
It was the first step in what turned out to be a fantastic change of plans for a magical anniversary celebration evening.
Continued in Next Post