Day 2

We had reservations for breakfast at Hollywood & Vine at Disney's Hollywood Studios, f/k/a MGM Studios.  When I made these 8:30 a.m. reservations, I had the delusional hope that my usual late rising family would wake up early because we would be so "high" on Disney.  I was wrong. 

We were in luck again that we had our car with us.  We drove to HS, which was coincidentally super close to our resort.  We made it to the park without a second to spare.  The park itself or their gates hadn't opened yet, as their opening time that day was 9:00 a.m.  You are allowed to enter the park early if you have dining reservations.  It was pretty neat to walk into the park with virtually no one in it.  We didn't have time to take it in as we were running to the restaurant.

This is a buffet character meal with various stars from Disney Junior.  The stars there during our visit were June from Little Einsteins, Secret Special Agent Oso, and Handy Manny.  There was an emcee person that stays on the floor the entire time sort of keeping the crowd "pumped" up.  Kids (of all ages I suppose) were encouraged to get up and dance and sing.  It was cute at first, and got less cute the longer you stayed.  None of us were awake enough to desire to participate in the dance party.

Prior to agreeing to take the photo above, sweet M asked us if June had any lipstick on!  After confirming she in fact did not have lipstick, I got this adorable shot.

The food was the usual items you would expect to have for breakfast.  There were a few breakfast casseroles and a fritata that was yum.  And of course no breakfast at WDW is complete without Mickey shaped waffles!  The service was great-and I forgot to mention that the service was also great at Park Fare.

After breakfast, we set out to spend some time in the park.  As we were leaving the restaurant, we noticed a herd of grown men and younger boys running in the same direction, coincidentally in our direction.  A cast member (a/k/a employee for those of you not living in a constant state of WDW) was yelling "no running!"  I asked someone what everyone was running for and learned that they were running to the Star Wars Jedi Academy.  This is an interactive program for kids-not adults-where they get to take a Jedi class and then perform what they have learned on stage.  There are a limited amount of classes, and from what I heard, the classes are full by an hour or so after opening.  We watched the first performance and it was GREAT.  The kids get to dress up and have light sabers, show everyone what they learned, then...Darth Vader makes a surprise appearance and the Jedi students get to try their moves on him! I can imagine this being something M will be wanting to do in a year or so.  It was a really fun show to watch and I'm sure way more fun to be a participant.

There is also a ride called Star Tours next to the Jedi Academy, but M didn't want to ride, so we moved on.  Our next stop was Pixar Place to ride Toy Story Midway Mania.  This is probably THE most popular ride in the park.  There were fast passes (I will discuss FP later) available for this ride, but the return time was already 4:30 p.m. and it was only 10:00 a.m. or so.  We weren't sure if we would still be in the park that late, so we took a chance and got in line.  There is a sign at every ride that tells you what the current wait time is, and it said 40 minutes.  We ended breezing through in less than 20 minutes.  This ride gets a 10 out of 10.  Its fun for all ages and you get to compete with the person riding in the car with you, so its alot of fun to see who has a higher score at the end.

Next on to the Backstage Tour ride.  Its exactly what it sounds like, and I give it a 7/10.  Its more of an informative ride-partly walking and partly riding on a trolley.  This ride exits conveniently into a gift shop...something that you start to notice being a trend at all of the parks.  We got some Sorcerer Mickey ears and a Mickey Light Saber and had them sent to our resort. 

*ON SITE RESORT PERK* You can have your purchases sent to directly to your resort so that you aren't having to carry your stuff around all day. *VERY NICE*

We then went to the "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" movie set.  This is a playground where everything is larger than life, like the movie that I hope everyone reading remembers. If you have never heard of this movie, please go find it and watch it, and show it to your kids.  M's favorite part was the slide made to look like an unrolled canister of 35 millimeter camera film.  Poor thing has never seen a roll of film.  The Cast Member working at the slide said that none of the kids know what they are sliding down and some call it a space ship, trash can, and other random things! The set is definitely showing its age, but its still so very cool and M probably would have stayed there all day if he could.

We had lunch at Pizza Planet.  This is considered a quick service restaurant.  M had pizza, I had another Greek salad, and Todd had a meatball sub.  The food was given 2 thumbs way up by all of us.  I tried some of M's pizza and it was de-lish.

We spent the rest of the day going to shows.  We went to Playhouse Disney Live, The Little Mermaid, and the Indiana Jones stunt show.  All three of these experiences were super duper fun must-do's!

We decided to "hop" over to Epcot that afternoon...