We meet Darth Vader. And the Wishes Dessert Party

Saturday - December 12, 2015

Part II: We meet Darth Vader.  And the Wishes Dessert Party

Being that my mama limited us to 3 days in WDW (sob!  I wanted 4 days, she wanted 2, so we compromised on 3 - though in hindsight we really needed 5-6) something had to give; some park had to get gypped.  That park happened to be Hollywood Studios.  It didn't start out that way - the original plan from the beginning was to just do a half day at AK and then the remainder of the day at HS.  Well...then I decided that I really wanted to see Wishes, since we don't have the same fireworks show here.  And come on, Disney totally does the best fireworks.  So...as the day I planned for MK was on a Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party day, I had originally figured I'd just buy tickets to MVMCP.  Except those tickets are about $70 a person.  And the hours were from 7 pm to 1 am.  I went back and forth about it, not so much about the expense, but about whether or not we'd be able to survive the party and such a long ass day flying in the night before.  I finally decided against it about a week and a half before we left for the trip.  Why?  I researched the crap out of MVMCP, but it seems like all the stuff people go there to do (meet characters.  Eat free cookies.  Meet more characters.  Go to dance parties with the characters.  Meet additional characters) were all things I didn't want to do.  I SO did not want to pay $70 to stand in line for an hour (at least) to take a photo with the Seven Dwarves.  I also don't want a photo with Santa.  Or Mickey in his Santa clothes.  Or meet any of the princesses, however elusive they are.  I don't dance, especially with Disney characters and I bake some hella kick ass cookies on my own and don't need free (likely stale) cookies.  Or watered down cocoa that's made with water instead of milk (because I am a snob).  The ONLY thing I'd be going to the party for (other than short lines, but 12/11 was projected to be a low crowd day and we wouldn't have problems fitting all the rides in before 7 anyway) would be Holiday Wishes.  I haven't even seen the regular Wishes yet, so I didn't have a preference as to which version I saw.  At the end of the day, I just couldn't spend the money when all I wanted was to see the fireworks.  Oy.

About a week and a half before our trip, I was tooling around on My Disney Experience (because I am clearly crazy) and found opening for the Wishes Dessert Party held at Tomorrowland Terrace on 12/12.  Hmm...I immediately reformulated our plan - Fantasmic! (which I had booked a dinner package for originally to get premium seats without having to line up early) had to move to Friday night without a dinner package.  Our time in Hollywood Studios would have to be cut WAY short to get us to the MK in time for the party which started seating at around 8:45 (the fireworks started at 10 pm, but Celebrate the Magic - the castle projection show - was around 9:45 pm or so).  Anyhoo, I basically blew up our original plans and started over.

SO...our time in HS was cut short from ending after Fantasmic! (9:30 pm or so) to having to leave around 6.  Oops.

Anyhoo - after we left AK and drove to HS, there was a sign outside that said the lot was full and we needed to park at Epcot.  What. the. hell.  We decided (in our infinite wisdom - which was the DUMBEST idea ever) to instead head to the TTC since we were ending our night at MK anyway, and to just take the Disney bus over to HS and then we'll take the bus back to MK for the dessert party and drive back to our condo from MK.  Makes sense, right?  Well...our plans ended up changing later.  

We drive to the TTC, but instead of the bus to HS being at the TTC, we needed to take the ferry or the monorail to MK itself to catch a bus.  So we catch a ferry because the dumbass express monorail is down again.  :(  Basically, we added an extra step.  If we parked @ Epcot, we could just bus from Epcot to HS and back again and hop on the tram.  Now we had to go from the tram to the TTC to the ferry to MK to the bus.  Basically, we shot ourselves on the ass.

The ferry sucks.  I'm just saying.  We get off the ferry and find the bus stop.  And wait.  and wait.  and wait.  There are a LOT of people going to HS from MK.  So we get onto a loaded bus that's standing room only after a 20 minute wait or so and bus over to stupid ass HS.  WE HAVE FASTPASS RESERVATIONS PEOPLE!!!

But we make it there.  And dagnabit, I'm determined to have a good time!

the HS tree

we finally enter.  I feel like we endured an ordeal just to get here.

My dad is already tired just from the TTC to MK to HS situation.  He is unhappy.  And he most definitely is NOT having a good time.  My mom is tired, but she's mostly worried about dad.  I'm worried about dad too.  I end up leading them to Walt Disney's One Man's Dream because they have a show in there with a/c, and Raymond and I go off to hit the rides and use our FP's after agreeing to keep in touch over text.

no smiley faces :(

It's a little weird being at HS in the day time when I could see everything.  It seems familiar...but not.  It shares a lot of elements with DCA's Hollywood Land, and it's a little disconcerting because once again I feel like I should know where I'm going, but I actually don't.  

Our first FP is for the Rock n Roller Coaster - which was crazy fun and of which we have no equivalent to here.  It's like Space Mountain on steroids.  But better.  I'm going to admit that I wasn't expecting a whole lot.  Especially since the pre-show was super cheesy with a clearly much younger Aerosmith (just saying, Steven Tyler did NOT age well).  

Despite our FP, we end up waiting about 20 minutes.  Not horrible, but I've been spoiled by our short waits.  Also, parts of the queue are outside and my jeans were sticking to my legs in a most unpleasant way in the Florida humidity.  I actually contemplated going to a Mickey store and buying a pair of unattractive Mickey sweat shorts so my legs could breathe, but a cooler head prevailed and I did not spend $30 on a pair of sweat shorts.  And my legs cried.  Literally.  Or that was just the steam from the humidity.

The ride is themed where we are visiting Aerosmith at their recording studio, but they've got to get to a concert and decide to just take everyone along.  So the ride vehicles look like really cheesy crappy super stretch limos - but because it's Aerosmith (when they were much more relevant), we've got enter the limos from the garage of the recording studio to avoid the paparazzi.  Okay.  Sure.  I'll say this: it does look like a garage.  

We have no idea what to expect.  This was the only ride I didn't bother researching or youtubing (I mean, I even know - spoiler! - that Expedition Everest had a moving track so we'd go backwards, but I didn't bother looking this one up) so it surprised the hell out of me.  It was so much more fun than I thought it was going to be!  The backdrops were kind of cheesy, but it did flips!  And it was fast!  And it was awesome!

When we got into the ride vehicles I put my camera in the little pouch in the front.  I looked at Raymond and said, "you think it'll be safe in here?  It won't fall out?"  He replied, "it's not like it's going to go upside down.  It'll be fine."  So I kept my camera in the pouch instead of stuffing it in my purse.  Well, the ride goes upside down - during the first loop both of our hands reached for the camera to make sure it wouldn't fall out.  If it did, I'd sob because I'd just bought a new lens for it.  Fortunately, it did not, but being anal retentive, I kept my hand on it the whole ride.  It was so much fun!  Too bad the stand by line was about 90 minutes - there was no way I'd be able to wait that long.

clearly we didn't have any fun

We find another photo pass photographer and take a super cheesy photo.

She told us to look scared, this is our crap rendition.  Hmm...Ray's got jazz hands too.  Maybe it's genetic?

Then it was time for another Starbucks break.  So we head to the Trolley Car Cafe.  We continue to collect the "you are here" mugs for each Disney park and get our regular drinks.  I end up being totally turned onto chai tea lattes.  I usually end up with a vanilla latte when I go to Starbucks, but maybe it was because of the heat, I ended up loving iced chai lattes and found them super refreshing and continued to order them for the duration of our trip.

Although I didn't want any sweets at the time (gasp!  I know) I couldn't resist taking photos of their adorable themed cupcakes.

There was one thing I kinda wanted to do at HS that wasn't really on my touring plan - and that was to visit the Star Wars launch bay.  Also, because I'm a Disney Visa cardholder, I apparently qualified for a special meet and greet.  And damn it, I wanted to do it!  So I talked Raymond into going to Launch Bay and stand in line.  The thirty minute line.  And we (I) start panicking a little because I was afraid we'd miss our FP window for Star Tours, so we had a drop dead time that we'd HAVE to leave no matter how long we'd waited in line at that point.  They wouldn't tell us who we were meeting, just that it was someone "very high up in the Empire."  Uh...okay.  Since they said the "Empire", we knew it wasn't going to be Kylo Ren.  Or Jar Jar Binks (thank God).  So we theorized it'd either be Darth Maul, a storm trooper (how could they be high up though?), the emperor, or Darth Vader.  I REALLY wanted to meet Darth Vader, but they structured the line so you couldn't see into the Meet and Greet area at all, so we had no idea who we were going to meet until it was our turn.  And we got Darth Vader!  Unfortunately, the photo pass lady sucks donkey balls at taking photos.  She took three photos - one of them both of our eyes were closed.  Another one was so blurry there was no way we could use it for anything.  And another less blurry crappy one.  So that's the one below.

can you see how excited we are?  Even with the blurriness?

I will say though, that despite her less than stellar photo skills, she played her part very seriously.  She told us with a straight face, "thank you for supporting the Empire."  Sure.

The theming for Star Tours is SO MUCH BETTER than what we have at Disneyland.  OMG.  It was so much more awesome.  We loved seeing the AT-AT amid what looked like Endor with the Ewok hut.  We totally geeked out.  They were having a Jedi training thing for the kids when we got there, so it was a little crowded, but we got on the ride without too long a wait.  Probably around 10 minutes.

We ended up with a REALLY good series - we got Darth Vader (and I did an Elf - "I know him!  I just took a picture with him!") and Boba Fett and though I can't for the life of me remember the other scenes, I DO know we got one of the new ones from The Force Awakens and we got all excited.  Raymond said this combo was the best one he'd ever been on - he got all the really good scenes and characters, and we were both glad we managed to make our FP reservation.

After Star Tours, we went to look for mom and dad.  Mom and dad were sitting outside Starring Rolls cafe in the shade.  They were a little sad after ingesting subpar overpriced coffee (they didn't go to Starbucks) and they were still tired.  They REALLY wanted to go back to the condo for a nap, so we gave up (reluctantly, Raymond and I are still sad about it) our FP to Tower of Terror (at least we got to go on it the night before - sob!) and headed back.  The thing @ HS that I really wish I got to do that we didn't by leaving this early?  The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights - it's their last year, so it's not something I can ever come back to see.  But my parents were tired, and health is more important, even though I'm still sad that I missed it.  So we left.

And here's what sucked.  We had to take the bus BACK to the MK.  THEN we had to take a crowded ass ferry back to the TTC, line up for the tram, and take the tram to where our car is parked.  It took us almost an hour to get back to our car from HS.  IT WAS SO STUPID!!!  We were all tired at this point.  We drove back to our condo and all took a nap.  Instead of leaving HS at 6 pm, we left before 4.  We got back to our place a little after 5 pm and napped.  I got up a little after 6:30 pm - I felt SO much better.  So did my parents.  Raymond woke up the latest.  My parents had been on the fence about attending the dessert party,  but after a nap decided to do it (thank God because I'd already paid for it.  And no refunds!).  We woke Raymond up, ate a quick light dinner (because man cannot survive on sweets alone without keeling over) and left the house around 7:30 pm. We made decent time - we parked in the freaking boonies, but it was pretty close to the tram stop so it wasn't a long walk.  Instead of the ferry, I wanted to try the express monorail, so we did that instead.  And it was SO much better than the ferry.  The ferry is overcrowded and it takes forever.  The monorail had a/c and everyone had a seat (going to MK.  Leaving MK is a different matter).   

The crowds weren't as bad as I thought considering this was a high crowd day.  We entered the park and of course, had to take photos.

Not just of the buildings, but of us.  We must not let any photo pass photographers go unscathed!

hello blurry lighted MK tree!

And we get photobombed by SWAT elves under the MK tree.

The castle was so shiny (which we didn't see the night before - though we did see it lit up from the TTC after we disembarked the ferry) and it was so crowded!

And there it is, in all its blurry glory (sorry, serious lack of mad photo taking skills here) - Tomorrowland Terrace.

Let's get a leetle bit closer, shall we?

Why did I opt for a dessert party?  Well, there's dessert.  But $49 just for dessert?  Nope.  So why did I do it?  Because I am antisocial and weird and instead of jostling with 10,000 other people for a spot to see Wishes (we are not the type of people - by we I mean dad - to stake out a spot for fireworks 2 hours ahead of time) we have a seat, a table, drinks, and plenty of space at the railing to see the fireworks and the castle show.  We have a nice break (I wasn't anticipating coming to the party from a nap), a nice place to relax, and food to eat.  Yes, it's expensive for what it is, but for us it's worth it.  I also contacted special diets at Disney via email when I booked because my mom is diabetic.  Why would I book a $49 dessert party for someone who can't have dessert?  Well, they're great with accommodating special dietary needs: they prepared a diabetic dessert plate with sorbet JUST for her!  And it was good!  My mom was displeased with our table (it was in the back instead of at the railing, which didn't bother me since everyone left their tables for the fireworks anyway, but it bothered her), but tables are assigned by order of booking, and I booked the week before, so nope, I wasn't getting a table by the railing.  But she settled in and we enjoyed ourselves.  They had drinking chocolate in addition to hot cocoa - drinking chocolate is a lot heavier and richer - and you sipped it out of a small espresso sized cup because it's so freaking rich.  It's good, but only in small doses because too much may mean immediate onset of diabetes and heart failure with all your teeth falling out at the same time.

We arrive and wait in line - but it doesn't take long, we're there less than 10 minutes before we are guided to our table by a host who then gives each of us a plastic flute of cider and offers a toast.  Hmm...

Anyhoo, we head off for the desserts.  The manager came over and informed us that they would bring out my mom's special dessert plate.  And they gave her a lot of food - she couldn't finish it - so being the frugal Asians who hate waste, we end up wrapping the leftover cookies in napkins and taking them back so she had something to snack on.

Since we've all been refreshed by our naps, we're all in a pretty good mood.  Even dad.  He even sorta smiles!

And of course, awkward family selfie!  I want to know why there's no photo pass photographer at this event - I would think this would be a great place for one since everyone here clearly has disposable income and the itch to use it.  Since you know, we're all fat and lazy; we like food and we don't like to wait with other people.

clearly there is one of us not like the others.  Can you guess who it is???

mom's special diabetic dessert

my plate of goodness.  Yes, that's cheese - they have a cheese plate as well

It was nice.  I really enjoyed it.  I enjoyed having a chair to sit in, a table to put food and drinks on, and spending time with my family when none of us are exhausted, short tempered, and in pain from the amount of walking we've done so it feels like our feet are going to fall off.

But we had a good time - especially since we got a pretty great view (not the best - the best would be head on from the street in front of Casey's Corner - but we weren't going to stake out and defend our spot for 2-3 hours ahead of time), didn't have to wait around, and it wasn't crowded.  AND we could eat snacks at the railing.  Well, I did.  I munched on a rice crispie treat while watching Celebrate the Magic and taking photos one handed with my phone.  Because I can multi-task.  As long as one of those tasks involve food.

I didn't pay that much attention to Celebrate the Magic before our trip, so I wasn't sure what it really was - just that they project images onto the castle.  But like everything Disney does, they do it well - the narration, the music, it all works very, very nicely.  It was a nice little surprise!  They also make announcements about 15 minute before, and at 10 and 5 minutes before to let people know how much longer they have to wait.  At about 5 minutes before we wandered over from our table to the railing near the food and watched the show from there.  It was a tiny bit obstructed by the trees in the hub, but it didn't interfere with our enjoyment at all.

Soon after Celebrate the Magic was over was when Wishes began.  The music, narration and the fireworks are different than what we have here @ DL, so I'm glad we had to opportunity to see it.  And we loved it.

For the rest of the night, the castle would cycle into different colors

There was one more ride I wanted to go on that we didn't hit the day before - and that was Winnie the Pooh.  The version we have here at DL sucks donkey balls - but I heard the MK version is much more charming and adorable.  So as I was here, I wanted to see it.  As we had unused FP's from HS, I hopped onto MDE (My Disney Experience) and got FP for after Wishes.  So off we went to ride on (hopefully) the better Winnie the Pooh.  

Yes, it was better - the queue was charming with adorable interactive elements for kids (and adults), the ride was longer - and it just worked better.  I can't say why, but I just liked it more.  

After Pooh, there was nothing else we had a burning desire to go on.  I looked up the time for Mine Train, but it was at 100 minutes.  Yeah...we weren't going to get to go on Mine Train again.  And so we mosey over to the exit slowly, taking photos on the way.

Main Street is sooo crowded.

And we see photo pass photographers, so of course we must take more photos.

We exit the park and see a thing of horror: a 20 minute wait for the monorail.  None of us wanted to take the ferry again - which would have seen the same wait, but in more uncomfortable surroundings, so we waited the 20 minutes for the monorail.  Thank the Lord for smart phones!  We surfed, read, and played games and the time went by relatively quickly.  We finally get on the monorail and three of us were lucky enough to get seats (my mom rushed to another car and had to stand - the three of us stayed in the same car and because they had wheelchairs and strollers, there were seats open).   We toddle to the Villains tram and drive back to our condo.  It's about midnight by the time we get back - and we have an 8 am ADR for breakfast tomorrow!  Oy.