Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Most of Disney World’s magic is in the ambience and the experience, not necessarily in the rides.  Nowhere is this more true than Hollywood Studios.  It’s all about the world and the shows.

The very first thing you must do if you have a Star Wars fan

In the corner over by Star Tours is a little thing called “Jedi Training Academy.”  This show happens every 30 minutes or so with 6 kids being trained as Jedi.  SIX.  If you have a Star Wars fan head straight over to the sign up booth or your child will not do it.  I have no clue if you can pre-sign up, but I do know by the time we realized where the sign ups were the line to SIGN UP was over 2 hours long.  So we nixed that plan and just rode Star Tours 3 different times.

 

Shows to see at Hollywood Studios

If you have any action movie fans see the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, it takes you through how stunts are done, and is highly entertaining.  Also make sure to hit the “Lights, Motors, Action!” show because my boys spent a long time raving about it.

If you have someone crazy about Frozen use your fast pass to see For the First Time in Forever.  Even going in February the shows would fill up and people would be waiting an hour or more for the next show.  FAST PASS.  I would also heartily recommend the two other princess shows they have: Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid.  Princess was quite a happy girl watching those shows.

Fantasmic is the fireworks show at Hollywood Studios and they’ve set aside an entire corner of the park with an ampitheater and everything to see it, but even with that you still need to get there plenty early to get seats, again you can fast pass this, and that is certainly worth thinking about using a Fast Pass for.

 

Don’t miss the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground

Your kids will love it.  I remember loving it as a 13 year old, and my kids happily played there for a good long time.

Must Ride at Hollywood Studios

As I said we rode Star Tours 3 times, and the fun of that ride is the changing “show” as you ride the “tour.”  It is well worth going through several times if you can swing it.  The decor as you’re waiting in line is quite entertaining, there’s reward posters for creatures you’ll recognize if you’re a Star Wars fan, and lots of great references.  All in all, I still love this ride just as much as I did at 13.

I’m a huge Muppet Fan, so we had to go see Muppet Vision 3D, but I will admit if you’re not a Muppet fan you might skip this.  Afterwards we had to tour the studio store, and everyone picked up one or two things while we were there (I got fun Kermit gloves).

Jeff and the boys fast passed Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and Jeff loved it.  The boys complained about the storyline of the ride, which cracked me up quite a bit, they said it wasn’t realistic because elevators don’t go sideways.  I tried very hard to keep a straight face as they told me this.

If you have younger kids you’re going to want to fast pass Toy Story Midway Mania because even in February the line was always over an hour, we never made it on the ride because of that.

We wasted a fast pass on The Great Movie Ride, that line will usually not be long enough to need a fast pass, but it is a fun ride to go on as you take a tour of movie history.

We skipped the Rock ‘N’ Roller coaster because Jeff isn’t a fan of the theme music they were using for it, but I’ve heard it’s a great ride and well worth using a fast pass on.

One last thing, in many ways this park had the most nostalgia feel and it felt like you were on the backlot of a studio producing movies, and I really enjoyed the feel of it.  I don’t know why, but there was something fun and special about how they decorated it.

 

For more great series go check out the iHomeschool Network hopscotch.  The final post in this series is coming out on Monday because I have another scheduled post for Friday.