Disney Studios- Monday, August 25, 2014

We got a very late start today and all of us took the opportunity to sleep in.  That was almost a necessity after our long, busy day at "Diz" yesterday.  By the time we got to the Disney Studios park today, it was 11:00, and time for lunch, which was actually breakfast too for some of us.   We ate at the ABC Commissary.   Since our food plan includes a dessert with each meal, we got a cupcake shaped like Olaf, the snowman from Frozen.   His head was white chocolate, and there was lots of white frosting, but when you got down to the bottom it was carrot cake.  Scott said it was like a metaphor for the Disney Studios park and thought he was funny.

We had prearranged FastPasses for the Rockin Roller Caster.   Anna and Mom were just remembering their failed attempts to ride it at Disneyland Paris last year, and found it was closed again today because of technical difficulties.  Our FastPasses transferred to the ride of our choice, so Anna and Julie went next door to the Tower of Terror while Emma and Dad waited.

The first ride we went on together was the Great Movie Ride.  It's a favorite, and is usually the one that we start with.   After that, we went to MuppetVision 3-D, and then it was time for a drink break.  It was still very hot, but there was a somewhat steady breeze today, making it the best day weather-wise that we've had.  

Star Tours was next, which we had a FastPass for.  This ride has gone through some major redos since it first opened, but we approve of the changes that have been made.  When it began, your captain was a random droid that you've never heard of before.  Now, the pilot is C-3PO.  There are many other callbacks to the original Star Wars trilogy too, where before, things were more non-specific.  It was well-done.

We ended our day at "One Man, One Dream," which includes a museum and movie about the life of Walt Disney.  The models for the new parts of Fantasyland were still here- we had seen them before in 2011- but this time we got to compare them to what we saw yesterday.  We especially thought it was interesting to see the maquette of the Little Mermaid ride, because it showed the whole floorplan of how everything is laid out.  The movie about Walt's life was an appropriate way to end our time at the parks. 

We then went to Downtown Disney, where we ate at Wolfgang Puck's Express with our meal plan.   Then we had tickets for the 7:00 showing f the Doctor Who Season 8 Premiere.  It was broadcast on TV two days ago, but Disney's TV choices at the hotel didn't include BBC America.  This episode is the debut of Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor, and we've been looking forward to seeing it for a while. Some British tourists in front of us in a line at Epcot saw Julie's Doctor Who shirt that day and said that they had tickets to see it at the theater tonight.   It got us to thinking, and we decided to get tickets too.  We stopped at Downtown Disney on the way to the park this morning and got tickets in advance.  It was a good thing we did too, because the theater was quite full.  The episode was only showing for one night.   It was fun seeing the episode in a theater full of fans.  There were lots of people wearing Doctor Who t-shirts, and even a fez and a costume or two.  There was a "making of" short after the movie, and a bonus scene at the begining where Strax listed what little he new about the other Doctors, which had everybody laughing.  "The first Doctor was a woman," he said with a picture of William Hartnell showing.

We were disappointed to find that there was still money in our pockets so we did some shopping at Downtown Disney afterwards to take care of that problem.

 We all got something- shirts and clothes, toys and pins.  Then, we drove back to the hotel, to try to get some sleep because we've got an early start tomorrow.  Our plane leaves at about 10:00, but we've got to pack, get to the airport, check-in, and so forth.