Hollywood Studios

We tried to get an earlier start yesterday to go to our second theme park - Hollywood Studios - but still didn't didn't get there until around 11:30. Once again, we took our lunch and ate before we went into the park.:

Immediately inside there was an area where groups were entertaining on this stage:

This was next to the area where the American Idol tryouts were being held and we didn't go inside to see that attraction because there were so many more that we wanted to see first. We walked down what was called Hollywood Boulevard and went into our first attraction - The Great Movie Ride:

It was during this ride that we realized we had been here before. We vaguely remember coming to this park when there was a lot of construction going on and we were thinking it was while we were here for the FTD Convention in 1998. Anyway, it was a nice 20 minute ride through various movie sets.

We spent quite a bit of time in the area called Streets of America, where the first attraction we went to was a Backlot Tour:

This was a ho-hum ride on a tram through some old movie sets, the best of which was an earthquake where there was lots of fire and water and the tram shook to make it seem real:

The next attraction was one which we thought might be a good one to see - Honey, I shrunk the Kids:

This was a disappointment as it was a huge, larger-than-life playground, and we didn't go all the way inside. This also made us realize that this theme park is really geared toward the kids. We wished we had our grandkids with us as they would have enjoyed all the attractions like this one.

Our next stop was also along the Streets of America and we went to New York:

and then San Francisco:

These both were life-size pictures of these cities and you felt like you were actually in these towns.

There was another 3D film starring the muppets:

which was excellent and a lot of fun to watch. This was another of the attractions we remembered visiting before.

About this time the parade started and I took lots of pictures, but have included only this one of the Toy Story float:

There were floats for just about every one of the more recent Disney movies.

The last attraction we went to was the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular that was held in the Echo Lake section of the park. This was a well done execution of an Indiana Jones scene (30 minutes) from one of his movies:

As you can see from the above shot, Indiana Jones gets the girl and escapes the wrath of the bad guys.

All in all, it was another fun day for us. We didn't think it was quite as good as Animal Kingdom, but certainly is a worthwhile visit for everybody. We once again only had to buy our usual ice cream cone for a total of $7.50, which is all it cost us for the day.

It's back to work today - a long day from 8 AM until 5:30 PM. There are only three more work days scheduled before we depart Orlando on the 17th. Sometime before then, we will try to squeeze in the other 2 main theme parks. That's about it for now...