Disney Trip 5

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3:
Labor Day. This day could have gone any number of ways for us, since we wanted to finish off Hollywood Studios and enjoy our final full day at the park. Thankfully, it wasn’t very crowded at all.

Rocking the Minnie Mouse ears!

We got in the park early and were immediately greeted by the sales people lining the main road, who were trying to get us to pose with their various mouse-related products. It was pretty fun when you just embrace your inner child, so I started posing with them and taking photos.

Eventually Beth and I made it to the Hollywood tour, which shows how some special effects are made in flicks. I remember doing this as a kid and doing the blue screen scene from Honey I Shrunk the Kids where one kid is riding the bee, and has to save the other kid. Yeah, they don’t have that there any more….But they did sink a battleship!

D-8! You’re damn right, I sank your battleship!

After the tour we were let off right outside the place I had been wanting to go this entire trip: The Honey I Shrunk the Kids movie playset. This is one of the only things I remembered about this park from when I was last here, and we spent hours in this place running around like idiots taking photos for the webcomic.

I think I broke it…!

I was crawling around inside of tunnels, trying to take low-light photos (sadly, they didn’t work), running and climbing on everything. I even ran into a cave two little kids were “guarding.” One had a tiger painted on their face, and they were bragging about how they had already scared off two kids from “their home.”

I was like, “That’s not guarding your home, that’s being a bully. You’re being mean.”

Their response was not as well mannered as I would have liked, which was something like, “We can get you to leave too, we’re scary tigers!”

My response was better: “I’m 5 times your size and 10 times your weight soaking wet: I’d like to see you try to get me to leave.”

Suddenly they wanted to give me a tour of their cave house. Hilarious.

Beth and I wandered around the park, going to the animation studios (now two people coloring commemorative still cells), riding some Pixar themed rides (which were awesome), and eventually making our way over to the other stunt show which had car chases and explosions.

We’re in Hollywood (Studios), baby!

We ended the day on a high note, heading over to the last few roller coasters in the park. The first was a rock themed ride with Aerosmith endorsement. We by-passed some extremely rude Hispanic kids and their parents (who are clearly not interested in actually controlling their children), and went on an indoor black-light acid trip of a ride. It was a lot of fun.

After that, we opted for one final ride (with Beth bowed out of), which was the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Everyone had told me how great this ride was, and I have to say – the ride was okay, but the experience of going through an actual Twilight Zone episode was much cooler.

After that, we headed back to Downtown Disney for some Irish food and drinks – including a Bailey’s Irish Milkshake – and bummed around before heading back to the hotel for an early night.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4:
We had the front desk call us at 5am, so we could get ready and arrive at the airport in time for our early morning flight. We arrived with little issue, and boarded without incident. The flight was going to have to route around the leftover hurricane, which was attacking the mid-west at the time, which added 45 minutes or so to our flight. This was fine, though, since the in-flight movie was The Avengers!

The movie is already 3 hours or so, so we had plenty of entertainment during our return trip. Beth slept for a chunk of it, but joined me for the end of the movie.

In no time at all we were back to Chicago, in significantly less humid and comfortably chillier weather than what we had experienced for the last several days, and drove back to our home to relax, rest, unpack, and generally unwind after our long week vacation at Disney.

They say that trips are always made by your traveling companion, and Beth is a top-notch vacationer – ready and willing to indulge my crazy inner child. We had a blast, and we’d totally do the trip again – just maybe give us a few months to recover first. 😉

YEAH!

THE END…!