Howe Two: Disneyworld: Part 4--Hollywood Studios

We hit Disney Hollywood Studios for our third and final park day. For the record, this park was both Matt and Adrienne's favorite. We caught the bus pretty early since Matt skipped out on the conference that morning (not his content area).

See how TIRED Adrienne looks?

We did our best Elsa braid because we were going to the FROZEN sing-along and wanted to be looking our best when we saw the real Elsa.

Our first stop was Wandering Oaken's, a new attraction themed after the store in the FROZEN movie. Basically, it was a pile of ice/snow for kids to play in. The girls were in hog heaven. We had a good laugh that we hauled our Minnesota kids all the way to Florida to play in the snow.

We finally tore them away from the snowy fun and went to meet Mike Wazowski and Sully from Monster's Inc.

Monster faces with Mom

The family scare faces!

Next it was on to my personal hell--the Honey I Shrunk The Kids play set. While this was a super cool play structure themed after the movie, it was full of people swarming around in one small space. Hard to keep track of your kids. Thank goodness Matt enjoyed climbing around with them.

After a quick lunch and then a short Muppets 3D film (minimal crying by Adrienne), we hoofed it over to see Beauty and The Beast Live onstage. This was a Fast Pass we reserved since Belle is Jillian's favorite. They did a condensed version of the show in 30 minutes and it was fantastic. Even Matt was glued.

Adrienne was onto the characters, however. She leaned over to Matt and said, "Dad I know those are just costumes because I see people feet!"

Couldn't resist this photo of Jillian resting her hand so sweetly on my leg during the show.

After a quick snack, we hoofed it back across the park to wait for our second Fast Pass show--FROZEN sing along. We suspected this would be the highlight of the trip for our Elsa-loving Adrienne. I think it was, but it also presented the greatest disappointment of the trip for her. She started sobbing when we walked into the theater and were directed to seats. Our seats were great, so I couldn't understand the tears--until she stopped sobbing long enough to speak, "I thought we were going to sing with Elsa onstage!" Oops. Parenting fail. Didn't realize she interpreted "we are going to sing with Elsa and Anna" as "we are going ON THE STAGE to sing with Elsa and Anna. Sigh. Thankfully, she got over it. The sing along was kind of lame to be honest, mostly singing along to movie clips. But then. Then "the real Elsa" came out on stage for a reprise of "Let It Go"...along with snow falling from the ceiling and wind blowing through the theater.

More out of order pictures. Waiting outside the theater.

Life is full of disappointments, A.

Hi, Anna!

We thought we were just singing along to the movie, until...

Check out that face!

Here came the real Elsa!

"Let It GO!"

Love Matt's face in this one.

After FROZEN, we decided to start our daily souvenir shopping early so as to avoid the drama of the previous day. Once again, however, we left the store with A's easy decision and nothing for Jillian. We had tears and tears. But, we promised her we'd try one more store on the way out of the park and encouraged her to think about what she might like while we were at the next show. This one was for Daddy...the Lights, Camera, Action Car Stunt show. It was seriously awesome. We learned how they make stunt scenes from action movies, and witnessed some pretty awesome stunts. I was trying to video some of the stunts, but I had trouble doing that while also keeping a scared Adrienne out from underneath the bleachers.

A was holding onto Matt

Jillian thought it was cool

Hard to tell by these pics, but I assure you we saw lots of fire, car jumps, and motorcycle stunts.

OK, maybe this isn't so bad

They brought out a Lightning McQueen stunt car...but don't worry, they didn't do any stunts with him!

Yes, this man did jump off the top of this set building

We cooled off after the car show with a beverage, and Matt got the girls a surprise "Elsa Slush". They thought they were pretty hot stuff.

We intended to find some dinner right away, but as we were walking through the park saw that the much sought after ride (Toy Story Mania) had a line that was "only" 40 minutes long. We really thought this was a rare ride that everyone would enjoy, so decided to be spontaneous and go for it. Waiting was easy because the scenery inside was so cool.

The only problem was that Jillian and I had to go to the bathroom pretty bad. I was sure I could wait, but Jillian really didn't think she could. We seriously got up to the front of the line, ready to board the car and she decided she HAD to go. Sigh. Luckily, the ride worker was so nice and let us go (Matt and A went ahead and rode the ride) and then come back into the exit and they put us on the next available car. Super nice. Glad we got to go because we had a lot of fun on this 3D video game ride.

She's thinking, not picking her nose

Thumbs up for Toy Story!

And then. Yes, it was time for more shopping drama. Matt finally took A out of the store and across the street for a drink and snack while I stayed in the store and tried to coach Jillian to a decision. After about 45 minutes we came out of there--with a coloring book. Yep. Sigh. So we headed over to beg for a table and landed one at the Brown Derby Dinner. Actually the best meal of our trip. We had a good giggle at the table because Adrienne kept holding up the bread plates and asking us to "put some cheese curds on this plate!" A native Minnesotan is pretty used to getting some fried cheese curds as an appetizer most everywhere we go.