Hollywood Studios

The four of us were all up before 6:30 this morning to take advantage of the early morning magic hours at Hollywood Studios.  It was one of the perks of staying at a Disney resort and we wanted to make the most of it.  The bus arrived as soon as we made it to the station and by 8 a.m. we were all in Brett's favorite park in line for Slinky Dog Dash.  We hoped that they would let us on the ride before the 8:30 start time, but in the end were just thankful for the early access to the ride.  We were done with the roller coaster and in line for the new Runaway Railway before those staying off property were admitted into the park.

Runaway Railway replaced The Great Movie ride in March of 2020.  We were said to say goodbye to one of our favorite rides in the park, but did enjoy the adventure with Mickey and Goofy on the new one.  After the train ride, Brett, Cameron and I headed to Millennium Falcon while Doug took a few calls from work.  The ride was as fun as we remembered and Brett and Cameron were glad to be pilots on this flight.  We reconnected with Doug afterward and made time for Star Tours, Muppets 3-D vision and Toy Story Mania before catching the Skyliners to EPCOT for lunch.

We arrived at EPCOT before the 2 p.m. park hopper passes started, so we walked over to Beaches and Cream to check out their famous shakes that I had heard a lot about them from Disney Food Blog.  We were definitely impressed with their size.  The boys and I shared a 50th anniversary one that was topped with a slice of cake.  It was delicious.  

We arrived at EPCOT at 2 p.m. ready to tour the countries and all of the food booths of the Food & Wine Festival.  It was hot and the lines were longer than we expected, but we still got to try a lot of different dishes.  Cameron enjoyed the sushi in Japan the best while I liked the chicken from India.  Brett and Doug were pleased with the new beer from Germany and we all split a giant German pretzel as well.  While we were touring the countries, Cameron looked for the Remy characters hidden throughout the park.  We found quite a few, but not all of them by the time we left EPCOT for the afternoon.

Doug and I headed to the hotel after lunch.  I wanted to rest and Doug had to work for a little while.  The boys chose to go back to Hollywood Studios.  They didn't get to ride Tower of Terror and Rock N Roller Coaster before we left this morning and were hoping to catch them on their return trip.  Fortunately, the lines had receded and they were able to ride both within an hour's time.  They stopped back at the hotel for a little while before we headed out for the night.  

Dinner was once again at EPCOT as we checked out all of the booths that we missed at lunch time.  There was no contest tonight on my favorite.  It was the chocolate cake/pudding dish from Ireland.  After we ate, we watched the new EPCOT show, Harmonious.  We all thought it was wonderful.  As it was ending we got in line for the Frozen ride.  We were thankful that we did as it started to fill up immediately after the fireworks show ended.  Since we were staying in a deluxe resort we could access the evening extra magic hours as well.  In the two hour window we were able to not only ride Frozen, but Test Track, Mission Space and Soarin' as well.  It was after midnight when we caught our bus back to Sarasota Springs.  Although we were all tired, we were extremely happy with our first full day at Disney World.