Magic Day 4 - Hollywood Studios

Despite being the home of a lot of Nate's favorite characters, this park was probably the least exciting for the kids...but we still managed to spend an entire day playing in Hollywood Studios.  One downside was there was a High School Dance competition going on which not only closed down the Indiana Jones theater but also flooded the park with masses of teenage girls and their stage parents.

It was a Magic Hour morning so we hustled straight to Toy Story Mania...yet still waited for 45 mins...with Matthew screaming and writhing to get our of our arms the entire wait...he even wanted off the ride (which I guess I understand...it's not too exciting if you aren't playing the games).  After that exhausting hour, we decided to wait in line for over 30 mins to see Buzz and Woody...Nate was a little tired of standing in line at this point (and you can't see Buzz and Woody until you get up to them so I think he lost sight of what we were waiting on).  As a sidenote, I can honestly say this is one time when  I am thankful that I don't have a girl...if we had had to wait 30+ mins to see every princess I would have gone a little crazy.  (Those Princess lines were crazy.)

Then we took the Backlot Tour...

He enjoyed the action of the water tank scenes

And the award for craziest baby goes to....Matthew!

After all of that Toy Story fun, we found cousins again.  Yeah!  We got to meet Mike Wazowski and Sulley...

When it was Nate's turn with Mike and Sulley, they broke in to a song and dance number...Nate had no idea what to do so he stood there and bounced a bit :)

....and then we passed Lightening and Mater but the line to see them was ridiculous, and it was getting close to our lunch reservation time, so some how we got away with just letting him look at the cars (phew - but I did feel bad.  Phineas and Pherb, who he thinks are really funny, were next door but for some reason he didn't think they were real??)

One of the reasons I was looking forward to Hollywood Studios is that it was our last character meal and with Nate's favorite - Jake the Pirate!  (I never got around to that Halloween post but that is who he insisted on dressing as.)  So, we headed over to Hollywood & Vine...and Matthew was fit to be tied.  He was not having it and nothing could convince him to sit still for a meal.  So Fred was a saint and scarfed down his food and took him outside (where Matthew promptly fell asleep), which allowed us to let Nate meet Jake....and June.  He has watched Little Einsteins numerous times but for whatever reason seeing June in person made him fall in love....he is still talking about her to this day...he thinks she is so pretty.

Nate had a mouthful of red velvet cake when Jake stopped by to say hi

This is Nate's favorite picture...with June

Matthew was obsessed with Jake...so when it was time for Jake's dance party he had to join him

While Matthew slept, Fred, Michael, Nate and I rode Star Tours.  And then Nate literally insisted on riding Tower of Terror...I showed him what it was and explained it all to him and he said he wanted to do it and since he was tall enough it was hard to convince him otherwise.  I figured since he was cool with Haunted Mansion and loved Splash Mountain he could handle it.  But apparently those didn't translate. He thought the Twilight Zone stuff was "really spooky and it dropped a lot".  I think he watched the little intro movie too closely and he thought the elevator was going to derail.  I actually thought it was really cool but it was hard to enjoy with Nate terrified beside me.  He was ok but he definitely said he didn't want to do that again!

So we high-tailed it over to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area to settle his nerves!  Nate and Matthew ran around like wild kids in there...they loved it.

He loved "drinking" the rainwater off of the giant leaves

After that we hit the Muppet Movie and were ready to call it a day.  Dad, Julie and their crew were staying at Ft Wilderness so we hopped the boat over and had dinner with them...we had a really nice night hanging out and letting the kids play together...and then we said goodbye because they departed the next morning.  We came back to the hotel and also said goodbye to Neena and Fred who were also getting on the road the next day.  So all of our family fun came to an end and we still had a couple more park days to go!

Playing with the new Toy Story toys