Keane's August 2011 Trip, Part 6
"It Was Hot, Then It Rained, Repeat Tomorrow"
Please see Part 1 for cast and plot summary...
Day 5, August 20th.
Disney Hollywood Studios, Epcot and Rain!
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On a whim, we drive. Buses haven't been kind to us this trip.
We get to DHS, and are ushered into the parking lot, and as expected, we aren't anywhere close to the tram, but since we're early and close to the park, we walk to the entrance. The line for bag check is 10 to 15 minutes long, so I become a stupid guest and stick Jenny's purse and my fanny pack in my shorts pockets, and go through the no bag entry. The CM smiles and waves us through. I don't see how most of you fly and deal with airport security, much less bag check. :-)
Yes, I'm sure Disney did a facial recognition thing on me and have me labeled as a troublemaker, which is probably why I get the next to last room from the elevator...
We enter the park, and 95% of the guests are at the rope drop on Hollywood Boulevard. The other 5% of us are in front of 50's prime time, at a secondary rope drop. Even though we're there only a couple minutes before DHS officially opens, we can walk right up to the rope. A non-rope drop CM arrives, and announces that all the people there to sign up for Jedi Training should *walk* and follow her to sign up. We ask and since we're not going to sign up for Jedi Training, can run to Star Tours. We don't. They really don't drop the rope. As a matter of fact, we're told to pretend the rope is still there, and they coil it up. They hold everyone until the opening ceremony concludes on Hollywood Boulevard and just waves everyone through.
I'm going to treat Star Tours like I do Toy Story, and get a fast pass first, then get in the Standby line. I'd say 4 in 5 guests go to the Jedi Training Academy sign-up (and we all know what happened to all those padawans in Episode 3, don't we) and the rest of us go to Star Tours, the adventures continue. (Is that officially STTAC?)
Well, we pretty much find out why Jenny's been having problems with her AP this trip, her magnetic personality has nullified the mag strip. The way she and electronics get along, I figure all the compasses point her way. She's told to get a new AP at guest relations, and is given a temporary fastpass ticket, only good for today in DHS. I've never seen one before, but our helpful CM gets a *stack* of them. In any event, it's 8:05am, and our return time is between 8:40 and 9:40.
The first time in standby, it was a walk on. And I mean that. We didn't stop walking (well, I took some pictures) until we were at the attraction entrance, and even then, we probably didn't wait more than a minute or two before the doors opened. The attraction started with 8 guests on board.
We did the attraction two more times from the stand-by queue, and by the time the non-resort guests were let in, it was time to use the fastpass. A persistent person was able to drive an ECV up the fastpass queue line, and a CM is trying to get it backed back up to the entrance. In front of us. This causes queue chaos for several minutes.
Star Tours, The Adventures Continue
(Note, there are probably spoilers in here, so if you don't want to know anything about the attraction, scroll down or Click Here...)
You get cool bug-eye mirrored 3-D glasses. You need to pay attention to the intro movie that plays above the doors to the entrance of the simulator. If you're some of the last, maybe third of the guests getting to the far simulator from the entrance, you probably won't see why C3PO is sitting in the captain's seat. It's not earth shattering that you know, but it does explain why you don't have a pilot.
Unlike the last movie, which was a movie, now you're looking out of the front of the star speeder using digital projections that are tack sharp. The movies are *perfect*. Maybe it's because the viewing audience is so small (as opposed to a theater), but you don't even realize you're watching 3-D. No artifacts, no loss of sharpness, at all. You're just looking out the speeder window. Which was recently cleaned. But I digress.
There are essentially four "acts", each transitioned seamlessly. Two of them are jumps to lightspeed, of course. :-)
There's the introduction, where a probe-bot of some sort scans all the passengers in the Star Speeder through the front window. The attraction does a facial recognition thing (just like in Haunted Mansion and Spaceship Earth), and in one intro, flashed everyone's face on a monitor before finding *the* rebel spy. Of course, on our first ride, Jenny is *the* rebel spy, and has the t-shirt to prove it...
I thought the Darth Vader opening was the best of the two we saw.
Once you're clear of the spaceport, you hyperspace to an "escape" sequence. We saw two different "escape" acts, one at Hoth, the other doing part of the pod race on Tatooine. You hear C3PO say "I've always wanted to do this", the same way pee-wee did it for the trench scene. Very cool. (BTW, Rex can still be found in the queue, marked "Defective"...)
You then find out why there's a rebel spy on board, and Artoo is given the coordinates of the rebel base. We saw two versions of this.
With that, your mission concludes by delivering the spy to the rebel base. For us, once it was on Naboo, the other on Courisant.
As some big black guy once said, "Impressive. Very impressive."
5 of 5 stars.
We walk around to Toy Story, and the standby queue is 75 minutes, and fastpasses are for between 4:25 and 5:25pm. It's only 9:10am...
So I guess the strategy would be to go straight to Toy Story, get a fastpass, then go to Star Tours and ride a few times, use your Toy Story fastpass then get a Star Tours fastpass. Was there something else you wanted to see in DHS?
Jenny feels a migraine coming on, so we stroll over to the first aid station where Disney will dispense a variety of drugs at no charge. Cool. Do you have any versed? We also notice a disturbing trend. The line for Great Movie Ride comes out the doors and past the hat. The line to Starring Rolls is out the door and almost past the tables. The line to Muppets is out the door. Crap. This place is *crowded*.
We take some stupid photoshop pics, go back to Star Tours and actually buy the t-shirt, and we bug out to Epcot.
Jenny's ready to take the boat, but I drove, remember? We go get a tram, and this is the first time I'm dealing with the doors on the trams. It's not difficult, but both of us note the space to get in is rather... tight... And were not sure how large people would handle it... This is actually the first time Jenny is on a tram. I'm not sure if she's impressed or not.
We drop the car off at CSR, then go to catch a bus to Epcot. I've decided I'm going to start collecting images of Coke Machines, and they have a Cornado Springs Coke Machine at Bus Stop 2. And the bus to Epcot doesn't come. Three MK buses, two or three DHS, AK and DD buses, it's all getting very old until an on-demand bus shows up.
We get to Epcot, in sun and dry (and by dry, I mean not rained on, not necessarily that you were dry) this time, and waste some time in Mousegear until Jenny can go to guest services and a) get her boarding pass for her flight tomorrow, and b) get a new AP. She identifies a coffee cup she needs to get for one of her employees, and we're off to guest services.
A boarding pass and AP later, we need food. We cross Future World to Sunshine Seasons, and as I pass Circle of Life, I have to stop in and take pictures of the carpet walls. Down the stairs to the food court, and I look over the selections at the various counters.
I get the Spicy Cashew Chicken, Jenny gets the roasted beet and goat cheese salad. I think there was something green in the vegetables, so I consider this a heathy meal. Another plus on the Sunshine Seasons scorecard. We only stay at The Land for lunch...
Suspecting Imagination is going to get a needed makeover soon, we go on Journey Into Imagination, which is as lame as I remember. Soon. Disney should gut Imagination soon and start over. If they need any ideas, they have my e-mail address...
We wander around World Showcase starting from Canada. I stop in at Canada and take some pictures. We want to see the new group in the UK, but they don't perform until this afternoon. Serveur Amusant is performing in France. I wonder if this show ever went awry... Maybe a hard wind...
There is a new quick service place in Japan, and the characters portrayed on the signs looked pissed. Why do all those stylized characters from Japan look pissed? It's a stereotype...
The Fife and Drum Core is playing in American Adventure, so we stop and watch the show. Voices of Liberty will start in a few minutes so we stick around. We sit on the floor under the dome, and listen to them do a set. Of course, one of the gents in the group helps Jenny to her feet, leaving me there to fend for myself. No respect for us old guys...
We bypass the show, and continue to make our way around the lagoon. We notice they've opened up the back of Italy for the new restaurant, making the pavilion seem twice the size it used to be.
Jenny is looking for a particular licorice they used to sell here, and find some, but isn't convinced it's the same stuff. She buys it anyway.
We pass by the Outpost. They should really think about developing this area for more than a quick service and gift shop opportunity. Now that Australia has been more or less situated in Animal Kingdom, this area is again up for speculation on what it should turned into.
We actually get on Maelstrom. No, we don't stay for the movie. Yes, we get pictures of the troll.
Since we're doing rides in World Showcase, we also get on the Grand Fiesta Tour in Mexico, which I think should be partially renamed small world south. But I digress. At the end of the ride, a stupid guest in one of the boats behind us, gets up to get out, and the entire process comes to a stop until they get said stupid guest to sit back down.
I mean, if no one in any of the boats in front of you, or in the boat you're in, isn't getting up to get out, and all the announcements tell you to either come down to Mexico or stay seated in the boat doesn't suggest something to you? Not if you're a stupid guest, I guess.
We're going to head out of the park, with dark clouds forming to the North. We go back into Mousegear, and buy the mug Jenny wants. I enquire about the 2GB and 4GB SD memory cards Disney has for sale, and no one can give me a price. $18 and $20, one cashier tells me. So about 3x above and beyond the price at say... Amazon. Whattadeal. But I supposed if you're dumb enough to leave your SD card in your card reader in your room... (cough)
We walk back to the CSR bus stop (there's still a line for Spaceship Earth, so we pass), and a bus is waiting for us. They're changing drivers, so there's no rush. However, we're on the bus, nice and dry, when suddenly the heavens open up, and it starts raining. Hard. As hard or worse than the other day when we aborted our trip into Epcot.
It's still raining remarkably hard when we get back to CSR. There's a crowd of people at Bus Stop 2 (the stop I would normally get off) waiting for the rain to stop or slow, so I stay on the bus with Jenny to Bus Stop 1, then walk back to my room undercover of walkways, and get to my room dry. Good deal.
It continues to rain for a couple of hours, so we're going to avoid the parks tonight once again. We eat at Pepper Market. I had a remarkably good Chili Cheeseburger (Jenny had the margherita pizza), and when we're done, the rain has stopped, so we take a walk around Lago Dorado to take some night pictures. Halfway around the lake, we find some industrious spiders spinning their web for the night, and take some backlit pics.
Coronado Springs Resort at night
And so, my latest trip to WDW ends with a quiet, pleasant night.
End August 2011 Trip Report - Part 6.
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