Hollywood Studios...where Star War is awesome but Beauty and the Beast is not (sob!)

Sunday - April 30, 2017

Today we wake up bright and early at 7 am.  Which to my west coast body, is freaking 4 in the morning.  Oh joy.  Except I manage to drag myself out of bed because we're in WDW!!!

It's unfortunate that Hollywood Studios doesn't have a lot to do right now while they're still building Star Wars Land, but since I spent less than a half day here on our last trip, I was excited to visit for a whole day.  We had FP's in the morning for Tower of Terror and I wanted to try to rope drop Rock n Roller Coaster.  We also planned to go to Sunday service at Faith International Baptist Church, eat at Cracker Barrel, and we had booked the Star Wars Galactic Spectacular Dessert Party so we could see the fireworks and projections from a fantastic location without having to stake our claim hours beforehand.  Because I'm lazy, and I love desserts.

The one bad thing?  Sunday's are Hollywood Studio's (HS) Extra Magic Hours (EMH) for Disney resort guests...and we weren't eligible yet because we don't check into a Disney resort until the next day (sob!).  BUT - we still planned HS for Sunday because 1) less attractions meant spending a few hours off-site wouldn't impact being able to do everything we wanted to; 2) we would be spending Monday at Animal Kingdom, which DID have EMH on Monday, the day we check into Beach Club; and 3) they have the Galactic Spectacular on Sundays, not Mondays, and I didn't fly all the way to Florida to NOT see Star Wars fireworks!

Even though we made rope drop, we could see all the resort guests already going inside.  Because I used our tier 1 FP on Toy Story Mania, we had to rope drop RnRC, and I was starting to stress out over the wait for it because of all the guests that were already in the park.  I shouldn't have worried, even with moderate crowds, our wait was under 20 minutes.  

Literally, the moment we were let in, I started power walking to RnRC - and as a lot of the line is indoors, it was quite nice.  :)

The theming may be cheesy and dated (Aerosmith?  Really?), but the ride is so much fun!  See?

don't we look like we're having fun??  Although the random guys behind us look like they might be having more fun.  And maybe ate a marijuana brownie or two.

After we hopped off the roller coaster we went directly to the FP kiosk to get our same day FP's for the day.  We booked RnRC again, Tower of Terror (again), and another FP for Star Tours.  Once our selections were made, we headed off to ToT.

I have to say, even though ours here in DCA (may God rest its soul, as it's now Mission: Breakout!) was themed well, it sucked balls in comparison to the one at HS.  I swear!  The building is creepier and way bigger and more awesome.  The interior lobby scene is similarly elaborate, but the 5th dimension thing is freaking awesome!  Even JK, who stopped going on the DCA version strapped herself into HS ToT twice (with the aid of Dramamine) and raved about it.  

we are the awkward Asians NOT making faces at the camera

After a quick walk around, we then head out to our car to drive to church.  JK's job for the trip (other than providing awesomeness) was to find a church for Sunday service.  She found one that was literally down the street...and ACROSS from Cracker Barrel (she wins!).  It's held a small room at a timeshare resort, and they're very small, but the people there are super nice.  They're from a church in South Carolina so services are held concurrently to the sister church and hymns are sung along with them, with the sound and images being projected on a screen.  

The sermon was short and sweet, and by noon, with my stomach rumbling, we were out and headed to Cracker Barrel.  I hope to be back to visit them next time and hope to see growth there.  The people there are so nice, and though they're very welcoming to all the vacationers, it'd be nice to see them with more stability.

I've never been to Cracker Barrel before, and it's seriously been on my bucket list.  Who wouldn't want to eat deliciously fatty southern food?  AND it's attached to an awesomely kitschy store!  I was excited to try sweet tea as well...I'm pretty sure the sweet tea they have at McDonald's isn't the same thing.  -_-

I was so overwhelmed by the menu I didn't know whether to get breakfast or lunch...but I ended up opting for the sampler since I can get french toast anywhere.  It came with chicken and dumplings, meatloaf, and sugar cured ham.  Going southern all the way, I also got hash brown casserole, mashed potatoes, and cheese grits as my sides.  JK ordered the chicken tenders with fried okra, fries and collard greens, keeping the down south theme alive.

I liked the fried okra, and the hash brown casserole was tasty (why wouldn't it be though?), but the grits were eh.  They weren't good or bad...just bland.  Apparently people love or hate grits, and being weird, I didn't love or hate them - but they could've used more flavor.  Maybe they use this as a palette cleanser down south?  The chicken and dumplings were good, but lumps of dough just aren't dumplings for a Chinese person.  THIS (below) is what dumplings mean to a Chinese person:

So when my chicken and dumplings came with chicken swimming in a pool of gravy with cooked dough, I was confused.  Apparently the white lumps at the front of my plate are what non-Chinese people refer to as dumplings.  Not that they weren't good, I just though it was false advertising.  The meatloaf was tasty too - I've only ever made meatloaf with turkey, so beef meatloaf was a new thing for me.

We waddle out of lunch, and head for Target because we needed more blister patches for JK's poor feet and I wanted snacks because I'm a fat cow.  Being that I only know of one Target there, the one where we went to EVERY DAY at my brother's request our last trip, that's where we drove back to, which was conveniently about a mile down the road.  It's so big.  I have Target envy.

After loading up on water and snacks and more band aids and blister blocks, we head back to the parks.

We used our FP's for Toys Story Mania (their sets are better than ours.  Just saying.  Andy's bedroom, where they loaded us...ahmazing) and Star Tours.  I then grabbed a 4th FP on MDE for The Great Movie Ride.  This was one I really wanted to hit because we missed it last time.  But I have to say, I was a little disappointed.  They have SO MANY FANTASTIC movie properties, and clearly Disney can do incredible theming and detail - but why is this so shabbily done?  The interactive/acting guides stuff was cheesy, but not Jungle Cruise cheesy (= good), it was just...shoddy.  Some of the sets were fun - but I just feel like there was so much potential with the size of the sets and all the movies at Disney's disposal...and it wasn't met.  Yes, it's "hosted" by TCM (which I love by the way, I LURVE old movies), but it just didn't hit the mark.  

I love Indiana Jones, so of course I need a picture of the ark

One of my absolute favorite movies in the world (that I watched over and over and over as a kid) that I own on VHS, DVD, and a digital copy of - is Singin' in the Rain.  Love it.  I'm that crazy annoying person who quotes it while watching the movie.  So of course, I had to snap a picture of fake Gene Kelly (my namesake you know, because my dad's name is Gene) as Don Lockwood in one of the most iconic scenes of any movie.  Even if he looked a little weird and not like Gene Kelly at all.

And of course there's Mary Poppins.  Love!

There was a kind of creepy scene from Aliens, and the munchkin village from Wizard of Oz, and some westerns and stuff...but sadly, most of it was kinda forgettable.

We also hit the two headliner shows at HS, The Voyage of the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage.  Little Mermaid was actually done pretty okay (well, it wasn't the "extravaganza!" Disney advertised it to be).  It wasn't fantastic or wonderful, but sitting in an air conditioned theater for 15 minutes while listening to Disney music sure doesn't suck.  But B&B, oh Lord...that was so...wrong.  And it was incredibly disappointing since B&B is my favorite Disney cartoon and I love the live version, so I had high hopes for it.  Those hopes weren't just dashed, they were stomped on and farted into oblivion.  The theater was outdoors on hard benches - so it was hot and sweaty and my butt was sore sitting on the bench.  And it was 25 minutes.  Now, I know it's crazy hard to condense this into 25 minutes...but it's literally "after a series of unfortunate events Belle ended up at the Beast's castle."  Um, what??  It was disjointed, the story was weird, and it was so cheesy (and I don't mind cheese to a certain degree, after all, we're at Disney) that I was embarrassed for the actors on stage.  The singing was good - it's not the cast's fault that the producers chopped it up so badly.  The only person who looked like he was having any fun at all was the Gaston guy, because he was soooo over the top and cray cray.  For a park named after movies...their stage shows were...not great.  

One of JK's few requests was to eat at the Brown Derby.  I ended up making an early reservation to accommodate our dessert party, and we had to eat light - but the food there is really good!  Even the salad was good, and I don't even like salad.  However, when at the Brown Derby, you gotta get the cobb salad...I mean, they invented it.  

And because we're grown ups, we got mocktails like real adults.  I think this was the pineapple no-jito, it was super tasty and if it didn't cost like $6, I would've ordered 4 more.  

We got the crab cake, which was so freaking good - full of crab, not fillers and "krab".  

The Duck Two Ways was also fantastic.  I love duck, but I love Cantonese roast duck.  Western duck is usually prepared in a way where it's a little gamey for my taste (not that I won't eat it, I will, I'll just complain about it not being delicious like Sam Woo's roast duck), but the preparation at Brown Derby is really, really, really good.  The server actually recommended it, and we were both really glad to have taken his advice.

Trying to eat "light" (for us), we shared one entree and got 2 appetizers.  We were pleasantly sated without being too full.  Because we still had a dessert party to go to!

Duck Two Way = super tasty and delicious

It's a good thing we weren't too full, because we still had RnRC and ToT to ride again - both of which still fantastically fun.   I'm glad we got to go on both of those multiple times.  

why do we always end up in the same car as super crazy people???

THEN...tada!  It was time to continue to stuff our faces.

The dessert party is held inside the Star Wars Launch Bay, so you could eat, then take photos with Star Wars characters and visit with the Jawas (they were very disappointed we were more interested in frozen nutella than trading with them).  We found a table a little removed from the dessert stations (I wished there was seating, but they were all high tops) and ate.  Even though I didn't eat a lot at dinner (okay, a lot for me) I didn't eat as much dessert as I usually would because I couldn't fit THAT much in.  But what I had was excellent...I actually thought it was better food than the Wishes dessert party @ MK.  

This freeze dried nutella truffle in chocolate and raspberry sauce.  This is crack.

After close to an hour of wandering around (I also took a photo with Kylo Ren to make my brother jealous) we headed for the viewing area.  It's roped off and it's right in front of one of the big projection structure thingys.  There's a portion in the front for those on scooters (as it should be, they shouldn't be stuck behind tall people with kids sitting on their shoulders when they paid for the same dessert party) and we were right behind the scooter people, so we got a pretty good view.  My brother asked me to record it for him, so I did, even though my phone did a crappy job.  By my phone I really mean me, and once again I had to remind myself to watch the pretty fireworks in front of my face, not to try to see it through my tiny phone. 

Instead of sharing with you my crappy shaky video, I give you the awesome one filmed by The DIS in 4K:

As a gift, we also got a funky looking Chewbacca stein.  Um...I don't think I want to drink out of Chewbacca's head, so I think I'm going to bring it to the office and put paperclips or something in it instead.  

As the park was clearing out, so were we.  We caught a tram back to our car (okay, what's up with WDW parking lots not having signs UP ON A POST WHERE EVERYONE CAN SEE THEM and instead just painting the stupid section and row on the ground at the END of the row?  How can you find anything?) and headed back to the Waldorf.  And it still smelled like rich people.  We showered, then packed as we were moving hotels the next morning, and fell asleep watching TV.  Because we (JK) are geniuses, we decided to split an order of the continental breakfast through room service (it was like $18, which wasn't bad for being on vacation) so we could eat as we got ready in the morning - so we filled out one of those rich people forms and hung it outside our door.  

The next day, we head to Animal Kingdom, which is my favorite park in WDW.