WDW July 2018 Recap: Day 2, Monday July 2nd - Hollywood Studios & Animal Kingdom
Warning: This post is mostly words with only a few pictures. I'm too tired for pictures.
Anyway, on to the story:
Day 2. DHS was having EMH starting at 7am, so before bed the night before, we asked a CM what time the first bus to DHS would be. We were told 6am, but I still wanted to get to the bus stop closer to 5:45 in case there was a line.
We ended up catching a 5:47 bus (so ... apparently buses were running before 6am) and were at the park before 6. We lined up by the tapstiles, and after giving us a little speil of what to expect (we would be held near Trolley Car Cafe, which was open, until CMs were ready to walk us back into Toy Story Land), they let us into the park around 6:15. We decided to wait to eat breakfast (which we had brought with us) until we got to Toy Story Land. At about 6:48AM, CMs started walking the group back to Toy Story Land.
I took this picture a little before 7:
Next picture on my camera was this:
Wait time is posted at 80 minutes, but we waited around 20. The line moved a lot, but there were also points where we were standing still, and that's when we ate breakfast. And took lots of pictures of the queue, which was (spoiler alert) amazing. Here's one such picture:
We absolutely loved it! It may have become our new favorite WDW attraction. And, it ends on the best note with ...
After Slinky Dog Dash we made our way to
Alien Swirling Saucers, which was also super fun. We wanted to do Toy Story Mania to complete all of the Toy Story Land attractions before the park opened to day guests, but it was closed due to technical difficulties, so instead we met
Woody & Jessie. By the time we finished the M&G,
Toy Story Mania was open again, so we experienced the new queue for that.
Before we leave Toy Story Land:
Next up: The rest of the park.
We met
Buzz Lightyear and
Cruz Ramirez (separately) in
Pixar Place, then made our way to
Trolley Car Cafe for our coffee #2 of the day. We finished our coffee and met
BB-8, who asked if we flew in on an x-wing fighter. I've seen the Star Wars movies, but I'm not a super fan, so I was a little nervous ... but I answered correctly. Next up was the
Incredibles 2 preview at
Walt Disney Presents.
Our first super-long wait was for
Mickey and Minnie Starring in Red Carpet Dreams. It said 20 or 30 minutes, and we waited for almost an hour. We did play Heads Up in line, which helped, but still ... long. After the long line, we ate lunch, and then met our favorite chipmunks,
Chip n Dale. Then we did
Muppet*Vision 3D, which is not as much fun when the theater is packed and you have a higher probability of sitting next to someone annoying. But whatever.
After visiting the muppets, we met some more characters -
Goofy and then
Olaf. And that was the end of our day at Hollywood Studios.
But ... we weren't done for the day. We hopped a bus that took us to ...
We started off taking pictures around the
Tree of Life, which is always great. Then it was time for our first FP+,
Na'vi River Journey. This was our first time experiencing Pandora.
The verdict: It was pretty, but we didn't feel a need to stick around and explore. Na'vi River Journey was pretty, but we didn't get the storyline. It was explained to me (by
@rteetz) after the fact and I guess I understood it then, but ... it was pretty and that was all I got during the ride.
Anyway ... after leaving Pandora, we made our way to Dinoland U.S.A. to ride a particular attraction, but we got distracted by something that I forgot was happening:
Donald's Dino Bash. We realized that there would be some special characters out and about, so we went to meet a few:
Launchpad McQuack and
Scrooge McDuck! Score!
We also met Daisy Duck in a fun outfit, and then watched some of the
Dino-Riffic Dance Party before heading where we were headed in the first place ...
Primeval Whirl, which we rode with a fun mother and daughter.
We left Dinoland U.S.A. and met some more characters ...
Timon,
Mickey and Minnie (with FP+), and
Pocahontas. We had a few minutes until our next FP+, so we checked out the single rider line for
Expedition Everest, and since it was relatively short (15 minutes, I think), we rode.
Then was the FP+ I was most excited for ...
Kilimanjaro Safaris. We ended up riding a little earlier than planned because we were nervous about making it to Rivers of Light (although we had picked up a FP+), so it wasn't the exact experience I was hoping for, but we still saw a lot of animals, including:
African Elephant, African Lion, Ankole Cattle, Black Rhinoceros, Bontebok, Cheetah, Eastern Bongo, Eland, Giraffe, Greater Flamingo, Greater Kudu, Hippopotamus, Nile Crocodile, Okapi, Pink-Backed Pelican, Yellow-billed Stork, Spotted Hyena, Springbok, White-bearded Wildebeast, and White Rhinoceros. Overall, it was a really good safari.
We had grabbed a FP+ for Rivers of Light, so we made our way to the FP+ seating area entrance. We had heard good things about the show, so we were excited.
Overall, we liked it, but didn't really get the plot. I'm someone who really loves taking pictures (although I'm actually a terrible photographer), and Rivers of Light is a really good show to take pictures of. OMG. I just could not stop taking pictures. I was loving it.
We had one last thing we wanted to do that night: see some of the tree awakening. We were able to get some pictures of the tree looking incredibly beautiful and lit up (it really was super pretty):
And then we left.
That was day 2. We got to DHS a little before 6 and left AK around 10. So that was a 16 hour day. Yeah. Time for bed ... especially because we had another early morning ahead of us.
