Animal Kingdom closed early today (5pm), so we came on home, giving me time to go through some pictures and ready a post just for y’all – and me when I’m wanting to know something later. 🙂

Yesterday was our second out of six days at Disney World, and we spent it at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Fun, a couple awesome rides, but I don’t know that I’d call it a favorite park. And here’s the map for Hollywood Studios if you want to follow our here, there, and everywhere day.

The first attraction of the day parked a second before we did about 3 spaces down. Kyle was enthralled – as were most of the other folks parking/directing/driving by/ and going to their cars.

We headed directly to the Pixar Studios section and grabbed Fast Passes for the Toy Story ride. More on that later.

While we were around there, we stopped in at One Man’s Dream. It’s sort of a walk-through, museum-like area showing you various Disney-related paraphernalia and such. After that, there’s a movie about Walt Disney’s life and successes, failures, and dreams. It was pretty cool.

Then we went to Sunset Boulevard, stifled any initial misgivings, and entered the Twilight Zone on Hollywood Studio’s Tower of Terror! I can honestly say it wasn’t nearly as frightening as I was expecting. There was such build-up beforehand though, that I still came off shaking. BUT the gift shop had pretty awesome “room number” key chains. Unfortunately, that was the only key chain I got yesterday.

This ride was seriously awesome! It was amazing, and I’d love to go on it again!

Relaxing after the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. It was interesting and fun for us, but we knew just about every movie it sent us through. It’s a must for classic movie fans.

Toy Story!!! This was very possibly my favorite ride of the day – Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster probably tied for first. It was like Buzz Lightyear, but better (in my opinion). We had Fast Passes, and used them, but apparently everybody else did too. I think that Fast Pass line was the longest waiting time we’ve had for a ride yet, and it wasn’t bad. LOVE Disney World right after Labor Day!!! 😀

Throughout the day there was an army man character to pose with in the Pixar area. One of them stood so still for a while people thought he was a statue. They’d go pose with him, he’d move, and they would freak. It was funny with the adults, but he did it to a couple of little girls (like >6). Needless to say, the crowd’s sympathies were with the terrified, crying children.

Then was Muppets. Corny, of course, but out of the rain.

We caught the last (I think) performance of the day of Beauty and the Beast.

Star Tours was also good. I think it was a simulator of some sort. Luke got in the seat that was the undercover rebel spy, which was fun.

The Indiana Jones Stunt show was really neat too.

Dinner was really decent burgers and a salad at the Backlot Express.

The Little Mermaid show was… Well, I didn’t care for it. The best part, in my opinion, was the part where Sebastian sang “Under the Sea” – where Ariel wasn’t on stage. After Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, I was quite tired of the red-headed princess with the fish tail. Then again, Ariel has never been a favorite of mine.

The last attraction of the day: FANTASMIC! It was very neat and a powerful ending; definitely glad we saw it.