Sunday, January 4 was our first full day at Disney. We had plans to go to Hollywood Studios today. It happened to be the last day for the Osbourne Holiday lights so we wanted to get a chance to see those before they were removed.
Joe, B and I made reservations at Hollywood & Vine that morning so we could have breakfast with all the Disney Jr characters. The others went to Olivia's which was the restaurant in our hotel. This was our earlier morning but the early night in meant it was fine getting to the bus at 7am. I'm pretty sure we had the bus to ourselves and arrived quickly at the Studios. The Christmas tree was still up and since it was barely 7:30am, we had the place to ourselves. Barrett made sure to run around like a crazy person. He was still getting used to all this freedom which was very exhausting for his mom and dad.
Quick, you have two seconds to take my picture, Mom. I don't care that you need to get your camera settings set.
Our reservations for breakfast were at 8am which was an hour before the park actually opened. There is a special line that you get into for those exact reservations and a cast member with an iPad comes to check you in before allowing you entrance into the park. Crazy enough, there were about 20 other people already lined up at the main gates to get in for the day. You might be a little early, folks! We got checked in and were released about 7:55 to walk to our restaurant. It was really nice to get to walk the streets with about 30 others rather than the normal stampede that can happen when entering parks with 1000s of others. We only had about a 40 second wait before they seated us at our table.
I tried to run to the buffet first so we could have our food before characters started coming but we ended up being the first table to be seen and I almost missed Jake and Sophia! Bad quality photos for documentation. I missed Doc completely because the characters were coming at us to quickly. Handy Manny worked though! If you do this, I suggest you wait a bit until you know the characters are not coming to you.
This would be Barrett's first experience with the characters and we were unsure how he would do. He actually LOVED them and waving and saying Hi to them but getting close was sometimes touch and go. It took him a bit to get used to the idea that they were right there. Hugs were not going to happen just yet. I thought this was a good way to get started for our day. The food was standard (Barrett ate almost nothing because he had other distractions....JAKE is right there!) but otherwise I was happy. Joe even got to take some coffee to go which was a bonus. I will mention here that we paid for everything with our magic bands. The servers hold up this machine and it scans the band and sends the bill to our hotel. We never carried cash or cards for anything. Even the popcorn carts had this and it was super convenient. Definitely the way to go and a huge on-site perk for those who are able to stay in a Disney hotel. Anyways, we finished up at almost exactly 8:55am and got outside just as they were letting the rest of the crowds into the parks. Couldn't have timed it any better!
The rest of the gang were a little behind the pack so we ended up going to crawl around the Hat. Barrett saw it from afar (see yellow curly cues in above picture) and thought it was a big slide. He couldn't figure out how to get up the entrance though. :) A few minutes of climbing around there and we met up with the others. The boys were going to do Rock n Rollercoaster and use fastpasses for Tower of Terror while us girls took Barrett to meet some characters. He wore his Buzz and Woody shirt so they were the first set we had to meet! It was like a 2 minute wait. Perfect! And this time he was comfortable enough to approach them by himself. Wouldn't take the picture alone and needed his security blanket (finger nail biting...ugh) but he enjoyed it.
After strolling around for a little while, waiting for the boys, we ended up heading into the first Disney Jr live show. At this point Rock n Rollercoaster was down and the boys were waiting around to see if they could get on so we went ahead without them. The theater is set up to where everyone sits on the floor and the show is of Mickey and friends who use Mouseketools to surprise Minnie for her birthday. The Mouseketools are borrowed from friends Jake, Doc and Sophie who help along the way. Barrett loved this! The theater was full and somehow my kid was the only one who was up and jumping and dancing. All the others were nice and comfortable sitting on their parents laps. Exhibit A:
After that was over, we met up with the boys as they were just getting off Great Movie Ride. They never did get to ride RNR because it was closed to repairs all day. Next, we had fastpasses to use for Toy Story Mania which would become Barrett's first real ride. This was fun. Totally over Barrett's head but he likes to pull strings and pretend shoot even if he only hit a few targets the entire ride. I don't quite remember but I think Joe beat everyone in the score category. We waited less than 2 minutes probably with our fastpasses.
The last real plans we needed to do were to meet Mike & Sully and Lightning & Mater. We are big Monsters fans and this became one of my favorite meets from the entire trip. Barrett went right in for the hug which surprised the hell out of me. His huge smile says it all!
At this point, it was about 11am and the only thing left on the agenda was for the others to use their fastpasses for Star Tours. B and I couldn't go on it and Joe's stomach wasn't feeling so great this day (he caught the sickness B and I had the few weeks prior) so instead of waiting around, we decided to head back. I was hoping to maybe see the Muppets show but Barrett doesn't know them so it wasn't a definite.
Our luck was with us again as we walked right onto the bus and had a solo ride back to our hotel. It was here we had our best transportation experience and a wonderful driver. He told us a bunch of Disney trivia and even gave Barrett the coveted bus trading cards as a souvenir. He was awesome! One of his trivia information was: Add all the miles the Disney buses drive in a month (I think) and it would equal going around the equator 7 times!
We got back to our hotel and stopped to get some lunch before taking about a 2 1/2 hour nap. The early morning made us tired for sure. Here is a photo of the main lobby of our hotel.
Joe was still feeling pretty rough and we ended up deciding that he and Barrett would stay in and rest while I went with the group back to finish up our plans at Hollywood Studios. I really wanted him to join us for Fantasmic as Fantasia is one of his favorites but his head was so stuffed and his stomach just wasn't back to normal yet. We didn't have anything important to accomplish that night so it was a good time for him to try to recooperate. We had a long week ahead of us still.
About 5pm, we all head back to the Studios. I had one task to finish first before we entered. I had saved a number of flashback pictures on my phone of our family Disney trips of years passed. We happened to be there almost that exact week back in January of 1997 and took a classic sister picture in front of the big Christmas tree so we had to recreate it.
We were all hungry so we set out to get some food and ended up at ABC Commissionary (I think?). Nothing exciting here, just basic fast food but we found a spot at a table over looking the Jedi Training show and got to watch some kids train to become a Jedi. Our next stop was to check out the Osbourne Lights. This was really really cool. Pretty dang packed with little room to move around but fun to experience. The snow falling was neat too.
We took our time and just really relaxed for most of this before heading back around to the Animation building. We wanted to try to make an Animation Academy class as it was a big hit with us when we visited the Walt Disney exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry last summer. You sit down at drafting desks and follow along as an animator has you draw one of the characters. The pencils have no erasers which can be daunting but it is really cool to follow along in the process. We ended up drawing piglet!
Lastly, we headed over to the amphitheater to get seats for the nighttime show, Fantasmic. Allyson and Eric are the only ones that have seen this and I think the rest of us enjoyed it. It's a mix between a water show with boats, fire, music and characters.
We decided that when it was over, we would all just head out and if we get separated to head to the hotel without the others. We did get separated for quite a while but somehow ended up at the turnstiles back together and made it on the same bus. Kind of crazy when there was like 10,000 people leaving at once! We also got right on the bus and had seats even! So much bus luck!
We got back to the hotel about 9:30pm where Grandma and Grandpa had arrived to join us for the next few days of the trip.
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