The theme park formerly known as Disney's MGM Studios

Walt Disney World had loomed large in Kate's mind as a kid, not an uncommon desire for American children, but she'd never made it down to Orlando. This trip we were remedying that, but since we were arriving midday we decided to hit one of the secondary parks for the first of our three days of visits. Hollywood Studios, an unfortunately generic name, is Disney's answer to Universal Studios and is an amalgamation of some Disney and Pixar-themed rides and shows with a range of other licensed properties like Star Wars, Muppets, Indiana Jones, and Aerosmith. While it is a comparatively smaller park, there was still too much to do in the time we had, so we relied heavily on a Frommer's travel guide given to us by my mother who was also along for the trip.

We started out with the Great Movie Ride in a replica of Grauman's Chinese Theater. The range of sets shown, sometimes for specific films, sometimes for whole genres, was neat but the audio system could have used some work as one of the guides proved rather difficult to hear.  The sets were neat and there was a cool moment with the guides, although I think they might do better if their scripts had interesting content about films rather than focusing on expressing enthusiasm for them.

After hitting the Walt Disney museum, which merits its own post, we went on to the Magic of Disney Animation exhibit. That was a fun show about Mushu, Mulan's dragon sidekick, with a human 'cast member' interacting with screens showing the character and some of his original animators. Fun facts: Mushu went through a lot of iterations such as a two-headed dragon form, and the classical Chinese dragon animators were using as a reference model was said to have the nose of a camel. The show let out into a kid-friendly area where you could meet the characters, including to my amusement Mr. Incredible and Frozone, get drawing lessons, see a gallery of Snow White art, and the like. The exit was through an Art of Disney store which was my favorite type of store in the parks as they include Disney works in a range of styles, character sketches, and the like.

Leaving that exhibit we wandered through Pixar Place which was very kid and Toy Story-oriented. This seems like a bit of a missed opportunity, while there were several opportunities to meet Pixar characters there weren't any behind the scenes bits like we'd seen earlier in the day for Disney proper. I suspect that may be a result of the sometime indeterminate nature of the Disney-Pixar alliance. Leaving the Pixar zone took us by the Honey I Shrunk the Kids which was tragically closed ahead of schedule! This is a shame, as in my memory that playground was awesome; there were ant hill caves to crawl through, giant spider web meshes to climb up, and the like. Lesson learned: check the closing times and give yourself some time to spare. This is probably particularly true in the off season where a fair number of rides, like in this case the back lots tour, were just closed. Shortly thereafter, Kate also experienced great disappointment that in the Pizza Planet arcade there wasn't a claw machine dedicated to grabbing the little aliens from Toy Story, the closest available was a generic alien bin.

Finishing off the afternoon, we wandered through the cityscapes section which combined some of America's great cities at a single intersection. There was no real attraction there but it was cool enough to stand on its own. The adjacent Muppet area was also quite fun, although our guide book didn't recommend the show so we skipped it. I'd been through the show once before and found it enjoyable enough, but I think my ticket was nicked while waiting in line for it [the show on a prior visit] so despite being a Muppets fan I was a bit biased [against going out of my way to see it this time]. [That said, I'm told by a friend that this was a bad call.]

 

Photographs taken by the family and available under a creative commons license.