Ride, Stunt, Toys!
After we went to Columbia’s on Easter, we had planned on Going to Epcot’s Flower and Garden Festival. However, it was still early afternoon, which meant that it was still quite hot. Not only that, the UV index for the day was max, so we decided to do Hollywood Studios instead.
The great thing about having annual tickets is that you can go to any park at any time.So we went to Hollywood Studios. (Parking is $14, per parking lot, btw. So if you park hop without an annual pass, that’s already $28 minimum! That’s way crazy.)
The first thing Chris did was take a look at the Line Estimation Board. I don’t really know what it’s called, but it’s a list that shows you all the rides and how long the lines are. The line for Toy Story was 130 minutes. We said F That! And went to the Great Movie Ride.
The wait for that was only five minutes. But when they say five minutes, they mean that it takes you five minutes to wind your way through the damned snaking lines.If you don’t have time, you can totally skip this ride. They put you on a slow moving tram with an horrid tram guide and a horrible horrible script.
They send you through various movie sets with robot versions of the actors. They have the same creepiness as Madam Toussaud’s wax museum, except that they move. Or approximate moving. The worst is the Wizard of Oz set. Those munchkins are freaky monsters.
Totally skippable.
We decided to walk back and see how long the Toy Story ride was. Unfortunately, it was still hellaciously long. So we kept on walking. We sometimes treat Disney as a very expensive walk.
As we were arriving at the Lights, Camera, Action! Show, we realized that it would start in a few minutes. So went in and saw a fantastic little car stunt show. It’s a good show, plus, it’s under a shaded roof and has fans! So it’s a good way to get out out of the heat.
After the show, we checked Toy Story again. The line was only 90 minutes. On really really good days, the line is only 45 minutes. Since we had time to spare, we said why not? And the line is inside where there’s air conditioning!
Inside is decorated like the toy story movie. They had Candy Land and Scrabble all ginormous like. They are so big that you feel like toy sized. At one point, you see a giant Mr. Potato Head.
He wasn’t moving, so I thought he was just a statue. But then after a while, it started to move and I thought that it was just going through whatever it was programmed to do. But then it asked a girl in the pink shirt which toy was her favorite. The girl hid behind her mom and Mr. Potato Head said, “Aww, she’s shy!” Well, wouldn’t you know it. There’s actually someone in there looking at you! I think it goes through pre-programmed motions with the ability to have someone take over. I think the little kids enjoy those since they really think Mr. Potato Head is really talking to them.
The line was moving at a pretty brisk pace and at one point, one of the attendants asked us how many people were in my party. I said two, and he pointed to another line that had nobody in it. It was the fast pass line! So we were able to jump ahead of all these big old families and pretty much get to the head of the line. By the time we were on the ride, we’d only been waiting in line all of 40 minutes!
Toy Story is one of my favorite rides, but I always like the rides where you shoot things. I’ve ridden this one before, so I knew how things operated and I was ready. I pulled the little string as fast as I could to launch the little bullets or rings depending on the movie screen. And in the end I got 132,000 points. Chris won, but just barely at 134,000 points! And then the high score for the day was 320,000 points. I was like, wtf? There’s no way! But Chris said that if you were in the game by ourself, you could easily get that because he said that there were a few things that he was shooting at, but I had just got there first. If we didn’t have to share the screen, we’d be able to reach those high scores. It could possibly be true. But damn, 320,000 is a lot of points!
By the time we were done with Toy Story, it was already 5:45. Can you believe it? We showed up at the park at 1:30! 3 rides/shows and the afternoon was gone. No wonder people rush their kids through the park. It cost them a fortune for the day, they better see everything. But since we didn’t have to see everything, we left the park to eat dinner at Chevy’s. It’s only fifteen minutes from Hollywood studios AND 1/10 the price.
Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal