Make-a-Wish Trip Day 3: Disney's Hollywood Studios

Today we slept in a little later—til about 7:00. At GKTW each morning they have various characters from the theme parks come to GKTW. So this morning we met Mickey Mouse and Goofy and got our pictures taken with them. GKTW has photographers that take our pictures around the village and when characters from the various parks come, and will give us a disc at the end of our trip of all our pictures. Again, it’s so nice to all be in the pictures and not worry about my own camera. (Again, this is just a VERY small sampling of all our pictures!)

With Mickey at GKTW

Annie and Mickey!

Molly lost her enthusiasm for characters about this time on the trip.

But Lexie was still enjoying meeting all the characters!

Goofy at GKTW

Goofy was pretty silly this morning, and even got a giggle or two out of Molly!

We ate breakfast at the Gingerbread House which is run by Perkins. Every meal there is a buffet full of tons of food—all free with our meal card. The volunteers there are so nice too, and won’t even allow you to carry your own tray! Even though it’s a buffet, everything is still served to you and carried for you so you don’t lift a finger at all. If you need more of something they will go get it for you and deliver it to your table. The volunteers are so kind and loving and truly happy. It brightened our day each morning to be greeted by these volunteers at breakfast. I kept telling Justin that I want to come back to GKTW and volunteer sometime. I can’t imagine a more rewarding experience. (More pictures of the inside of the Gingerbread house are coming later.)

Gingerbread House Restaurant at GKTW

We drove to Disney’s Hollywood Studios this morning. We took advantage of free stroller rental again today, as well as more pictures from the park photographers to go on our Photo Pass card.

Disney's Hollywood Studios

Tower of Terror!

We went on Tower of Terror first bypassing the HUGE line. Later in the day the wait time reached 160 minutes!! Justin and I switched off, and Molly rode with each of us, but Lexie didn’t care to ride again. I would never ever buy the pictures that are taken on rides, but since they can be included on our Photo Pass for free, we snatched every ride picture we could!

This is one of my very most favorite rides.  I'm not sure Molly and Lexie felt the same!

But Molly still chose to ride a second time with Justin.  At least she's not as scared as the boy behind her!

Then we went on Aerosmith’s Rocking Roller coaster which I wasn’t sure Molly would like since she
didn’t like Space Mountain, but she loved Rocking Roller coaster and ended up saying it was her favorite ride of the entire trip! She went on it with me and then again with Justin. It's quite an impressive feeling to go from 0 mph to 65 mph in 2 seconds at the beginning of this ride.  They even capture that lovely moment for you:

I'm not sure how Molly managed to stay looking so calm when I look more like the terrified boy in the orange shirt!

And it's funny that when Molly went on this a second time with Justin, she just looks downright bored!  But she still claims it's her favorite ride!

Next we made our way to the Beauty and the Beast stage show which was fabulous. Annie loved it and it held her attention the whole time.

Then we went on Toy Story Mania which was fun, although Annie slept through the whole ride. Toy Story Mania is a much more fun game than Buzz Lightyear’s, plus Annie could ride in her wheelchair in Toy Story Mania. 

Don't we look cool?

Next we went to a stunt show called “Lights, Motors, Action!” It was pretty impressive, but started
getting a little boring after a while.

Waiting for the show

I'm not a huge Cars fan, but thought it was cute to watch Lightening McQueen speed around.

Then the real stunt cars came out which were rather impressive.

 
We ate lunch at Toy Story's Pizza Planet and had to fight to get a table! The whole MAW thing wasn't happenin' for us there!  The place was mobbed and people were downright rude. Then we went to the Muppets 3D show which was fun, and rode Star Tours, and the Great Movie Ride. Then we headed to the Little Mermaid stage show which Annie really loved.

Molly looking awesome with her Star Tours 3D glasses.

Waiting for the Little Mermaid show to start.

We went to a short animation show, and Molly wanted to do the animation class there too, but the next class was too late for us to hit and still see Fantasmic. So we walked through the animation gallery instead and got pictures with Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, cutting to the front of the lines, of course. There were lots of other characters in that building, but none that we really cared about, and Molly was done seeing characters.

Molly's hangin' in there.

Didn't I see you this morning at GKTW?

Minnie Mouse!

Minnie was super nice!

So then we made our way to Fantasmic. It was really good and the kids all loved it too. It’s been so touching to run into so many people who stop us to ask us about MAW or GKTW and find out how our trip is going, or to tell us that they did a MAW trip once, or knew someone who did MAW. People are all so nice!
 

Waiting for Fantasmic to start

Annie was having a great time!

After we left Hollywood Studios around 8pm, we went to Downtown Disney in search of Mickey ears for the girls. We found some at Hollywood Studios earlier in the day, but the place selling them had closed down their embroidery machine and wouldn’t put their names on them, and once the hats are worn, they won't embroider them. So we found the place in Downtown Disney that embroiders hats, but they didn’t have the hat that Molly had wanted earlier, so we left without buying any and promised to get Mickey ears first thing tomorrow at Epcot.

Lexie tried on a pair of her favorite Mickey ears!

We HAD to get this picture because Lexie's and Molly's nicknames are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.  We often call them that around the house, so we just couldn't pass up this photo opportunity.  Lexie thought it was funny, but Molly not so much.

We went back to our villa, ordered free pizza from GKTW, did laundry, and crashed into bed.