Disney World. Day 4. We just watched that!
Hallie slept through the night last night without incident. Thank God.
We got up this morning, got ready, and set off for Hollywood Studios. While we were getting ready we showed Hallie videos of Toy Story to get her ready for the day. She seemed really interested in it.
Once in Hollywood Studios, our first stop in the park was to meet Olaf from Frozen. I think Hallie was really happy to meet him but she was kind of surprised by how large he was. Considering that he’s a small little snowman, I’m also kind of confused by why he was six feet tall.
After that we had an 11:15 fastpass for Frozen Ever After, a sing-a-long and show. It was basically a stage show where two historians from Arendelle (the town where Frozen takes place) told the history of Arendelle (i.e., the story of the movie) complete with clips of most of the songs. At the end of the show, Anna and Elsa and Olaf all came out and sang a few new songs for the holidays. Hallie really liked it.
By the time we were done with Frozen it was basically lunch time, so we started looking for food. Our usual Hollywood Studios lunch, the Toy Story Pizza Planet, is now gone and replaced with a Muppets themed pizza restaurant, which wasn’t even open. Instead we found pizza on Sunset Boulevard. As it’s been every other day, the pizza was good. Actually, I have the say that the pizza here is pretty good considering they’re cranking out thousands of these little individual pies a day. All through lunch my dad was trying to call a kosher place in town to order food for Shabbat. By the end of the call all we heard was him speaking broken Hebrew to some man on the other hand. It was Hebrish and it was hilarious. That’s why he says he only makes calls up in his office alone, so he’s not ridiculed. At least it was entertaining, and at least he placed the order.
After lunch we did some shopping.
and we saw these guys with these awesome shirts. Bonus points if you recognize the pattern on the shirt on the left (answer here).
After lunch we did a rider switch with my parents for Tower of Terror (my parents went first and we got a fastpass), and then did Rock n’ Roller Coaster, which we already had a fastpass for. Both rides were great as usual. I think somewhere in here my mom was trying to order a HAFTR cookbook on her phone and for some reason the credit card wasn’t going through. God forbid she waited until she got back to a computer, so I think she called the company. I think she also had to start using her extra battery pack. Priorities.
We then made our way into the new Toy Story Land, which Disney has done a fantastic job with. The whole area is supposed to represent Andy’s backyard, but you’re entering from the perspective of a toy, so everything is really huge. Right at the entrance there’s a giant Woody and then a person dressed as Buzz taking photos. Every time Hallie saw one of the Toy Story characters she got really excited and started yelling, “we just watched that!” This went on all day, all throughout the park.
The land is basically just three rides – the original Toy Story Midway Mania (same ride, they just moved the entrance/exit), a new Alien Swirling Saucer ride (basically the same as the Tow-Mater ride in Disneyland), and a new Slinky Dog roller coaster. The Slinky Dog coaster had the longest wait at 55 minutes (earlier in the day it was 80 minutes). Me, Tzvi and Hallie rode the alien saucer ride while my parents waited on line for Slinky Dog (again we did a rider switch, so my parents waited and we got a fastpass – thanks guys). The saucer ride was fun and Hallie enjoyed it.
While we waited we left Toy Story Land and got a Mickey pretzel and a Mickey ice cream pop. We sat on a bench for a while until they were done and then went back to Toy Story Land. At some point along the way, one of Hallie’s shoes must have fallen out of the stroller. That was pretty bad, because we weren’t going back to the hotel until after dinner. So she walked around with only one shoe the rest of the afternoon.
Anyway, we finally rode the Slinky Dog ride and it was great. Totally worth the wait, although that’s easy for us to say considering we got the free rider-switch fastpass. Again, thanks mom and dad!
Here we are on Slinky Dog. It goes by pretty fast but we’re in the last row:
Lastly in Toy Story Land we rode the classic Toy Story Midway Mania. I got my lowest score ever due mostly to Hallie sitting on my lap and doing a lot of the shooting. It was fun though and I think Hallie liked it. She didn’t really seem to react to the 3D at all.
We left Toy Story Land and made our way out of the park. We stopped at Guest Services to ask about the shoes (they didn’t have them but the cast member who helped us exclaimed, “Oh Cinderella!” when we asked) and my mother thought that was the right place for us to take a family photo. Such great memories.
We went back to the car and drove over to Disney Springs, where our first stop was the Sperry store to buy Hallie a new pair of shoes. We chose the cheapest ones we could find. What she’s going to do with white shoes in November, I don’t know, but at least she wasn’t barefoot.
Dinner tonight was at Maria and Enzo’s Ristorante, an Italian restaurant themed to look like an airport lounge from the 1960s.
I had minestrone soup and a salad. Tzvi also had the minestrone soup and had eggplant parmesan with a side of rigatoni in cream sauce – he’s really trying to eat healthy here. We both enjoyed our meals. My father also got the minestrone soup, but his was cold. Then he got fish, but half of it wasn’t cooked through enough. Finally we skipped dessert but got coffees. They were all fine, except for my father’s which was cold. Hallie got a kids meal that came with a fruit cup, pizza and dessert. The pizza was like a whole slice of pizza, and not bad, but she didn’t really eat it.
Hallie was pretty nuts during dinner. Whenever we have a booth she just climbs behind everyone back and forth over and over again.
These pictures don’t really show how nuts she was.
After dinner we walked around some more and did some shopping. We made a stop at a store that sells all honey products. My mother considered buying some honey, but she was worried about overweight luggage. Then we spent about twenty minutes in World of Disney while my mother bought two massive bags of Disney chocolate and candy. Again, priorities.
We then did some shopping in the newer part of Disney Springs that has all of the non-Disney stores. It really reminds me of the Grove, partially because it’s a nice outdoor mall and partially because of the California/Spanish style buildings/roofs. I bought a bathing suit and we got Hallie Uggs. She was so nuts in the Ugg store, I just checked out and was done parenting. Tzvi tried to discipline her but then just ended up getting upset at himself for getting upset with Hallie.
After that we went back to the hotel. It was pretty late so we put Hallie to bed and packed up as we would be leaving Vistana in the morning.