Our Road Trip to Orlando – Day 5 – Hollywood Studios

Hello, Wednesday and Hollywood Studios. While the rest of the family has never been, it’s been over 20 years since I stepped foot onto Hollywood Studios. I don’t remember too much from our family trip back in the mid 90’s, but I remember enjoying it. Although the new Toy Story Land doesn’t open until June 2018 and Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge doesn’t open until sometime in 2019, we assumed there would be plenty to do. Hmmm more on that later.

After breakfast, we arrived at the entrance, paid for Standard parking again, and found a crowded parking lot. Huh, it’s only 9 am. Taking the next tram the short distance to the main entrance, we were unpleasantly surprised by huge security lines. We may have waited a good 30 minutes to make it into the park. We had two key Magic Pass reservations for the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, Star Tours, and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. We also had lunch reservations with the Winters family at the Brown Derby, and dinner reservations at the Sci-Fi Drive-in Theater restaurant.

With ample time between these reservations, we wandered the park leisurely throughout the day. To put it simply, I don’t there is a lot yet to do at Hollywood Studios. Not yet anyway. Apart from the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular (which is a must), or the Frozen ride (which we skipped), or the Tower of Terror (pretty good), there’s only small little things to do there. We did watch a small film at an exhibit on Walt Disney. That was nice

Muppet Vision 3D? Nice diversion, but it felt like a 10 min short film.

Star Tours? Decent, but it’s blink-and-you-missed-it short. If you’re considering standing on line for an hour for it, stop.

Star Wars Launch Bay? It’s an 8 min infomercial for Star Wars under Disney. The only other thing to do there is meet characters and see some models. We had so much time, we stood on line to meet Kylo Ren and BB-8. See? We had spare time to stand in line for unplanned opportunities.

The nine of us had lunch at the Brown Derby, which is a fancy-ish place to eat, although everyone is wearing shorts and t-shirts. More expensive than we expexted.

Beyond that, we were wandering around looking at the scenery. We knew Toy Story Land was opening later this year, but I figured there would be enough to keep us busy in the mean time. Not…. really.

We had dinner reservations at the Sci-Fi Drive-in restaurant where you sit in tables shaped like 1950s American cars, eat diner food, and watch old sci fi clips. We ran out of stuff to do, so Nums luckily moved our Tower of Terror reservation up 2 hours, rode it, decided to cancel our dinner reservation, then head back to the hotel.

It’s a decent park, but’s there is not enough value for the price today. My recommendation to you is wait to visit Hollywood Studios until end of 2019. Wait until Toy Story Land and Galaxy’s Edge are up and running. Or do a Park Hopper, hit up what you want strategically, then head somewhere else.

It was a shorter day at the park than we planned, but the Winters and the Ipes made up for it by hitting the pool and hot tub in the evening. We ordered food to eat at the pool (delivery through Uber Eats) from Fuddruckers, but the restaurant cancelled the order on us mysteriously. I didn’t know they could do that. We placed a new delivery order at a different local restaurant, and we all ate in our hotel suite. The kids ran off into the bedrooms to watch TV or play Nintendo. Fine by me, because that left the adults time to talk and drink!

The Winters were flying home in the morning, so this was our last hurrah together. We had one more day in Orlando.

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