Friday Orlando PTR

Okay so where were we, ahh yes. So I woke up to my alarm extremely hung over and slightly curious why there was a large half eathen Dominos pizza in my room. As I struggled to get myself ready for the day, I had a brilliant idea that I would get the hopper pass instead of the regular. This turned out to be a great idea and really made the 2 Disney days awesome.

So I actually made it to the studios in time for opening and got to see the rope drop ceremony put on by the 'Citizens of Hollywood' streetmosphere actors fairly entertaining. After opening I rushed over to the Toy Story Mania area only to be met with this:



FUCK wasn't open, and didn't open all day long. This had me pretty bummed out, but thankfully I got to ride it the next day. Once I saw TSM wasn't going to happen I headed down Sunset Boulevard to the studios big two. Tower & Coaster were of course awesome as always. Then after another failed attempt to see if TSM was open I got my picture with the studios newest meet & greet character Prince Caspian. The guy playing him does an excellent job of staying in character.

Decided to take a ride on the classic Great Movie Ride and my host was below average. I actually felt bad for her cause aparently she was new and the ride broke down for about 5 minutes in the Wizard of Oz scene. Then I had another craptastic ride on Star Tours this one needs a rehab bad. The Star Tours 2.0 rumors have been around for 10 years, I actually think it might be the longest running rumors of any theme park.

Got some construction shots to satisfy all or your nerdy urges:



No too much action at American Idol



The old hunchback theater was almost totally enclosed. Everything online says this will be used for specail events and not any new attractions.

I rode the Backlot Tour, which I didn't do on my January trip. The experiance was mildly entertaining. Some cool props along the way and the exhibit at the end with costumes from great movie villains was neat. They had Davy Jones huge pipe organ from the pirates films!! I took some video in here for the podcast. Of course no trip to the studios is complete for me without a walk through the Walt exhibit and a viewing of my favorite 3D show ever Muppetvision 3D. Then off to EPCOT.

I decided to take the walking path:



This wasn't a smart move. The walk from gate to gate took about 25 minutes and was very hot with little shade. There is also a boat that runs between the two I took later on.

Once arriving at EPCOT I decided that I haven't walked far enough and went all the way from the international gateway to Soarin' to grab a fastpass for my favorite EPCOT attraction. After that I rode Spaceship Earth, which with the Face Recognition Technology working made the second half of the ride a lot more fun. Throughout the afternoon I caught rides on Mission Space (underwhelming) and Nemo (very enjoyable). I rode Imagination and hate that disgusting skunk smell effect, YUCK. I can't decide which is the worst, that, the chili dog at stitch or the stinkbug from its tough to be a bug.

One of the coolest things I did on the entire trip was when I wandered into Innoventions and rode a segway!!!



This was very neat. The technology with the auto-balancing is something very difficult to describe and really needs to be experianced. I was a little to jerky on it the host said. It was time for my Soarin' fastpass and it was great as always, but the screen or film could use a little cleaning cause it was a tad grainy.

I spent about 2 hours wandering around World Showcase. I like the colorful Three Caballeros boat ride in Mexico, very colorful. The China Pavillion kinda freaked me out, first was these puppets:



All I could think about was these puppets from Aqua Teen Hunger Force (watch the whole clip)



Then there was this creepy army of stone soldiers:



Got some good dinner in Japan at Yakatori House:



I then grabbed an adult beverage and enjoyed some music watching Off Kilter in Canada and British Invasion in England. Then after a french pastry desert it was Illuminations time. This is my least favorite of the 3 WDW nighttime shows, even though the music is spectacular.

I decided to take the boat ride back to DHS, the boat was nice but took forever because after EPCOT it stopped at Boardwalk-Yatcht/Beach-Swan/Dolphin so it took about 20 minutes. I made it into the studios 10 mins before closing (TSM........... still not open) and caught Fantasmic which was a lot of fun as always.

By this point I was exhausted and went back to my $30 dollar ghetto hotel room.