Yet another early start saw us in the queue to get back into Hollywood Studios again by 8.30am. For the second morning in a row Barry & Ellie travelled separately and managed by chance to find us in the crowd. Considering the thousands of people milling around that is quite remarkable or a testament to the boys knowledge of the optimum place to wait to be let in.
This mornings early morning dash was to the Slinky Dog Rollercoaster. Apart from being hit a couple of times by people wielding pushchairs as weapons to get ahead of us, it was all very civilised.
The queue seemed long again when we reached the ride but it was in fact quite short and moved quickly. The ride itself is a children’s ride albeit that it goes quite fast and high. It is very enjoyable. I would like to have stayed on and ridden it again, but Disney don’t operate that policy especially as by the time we were off the ride it was then an 80 minute wait (those people should have just got into the park 5 minutes earlier).
After this, I went with Karen to get a drink from Starbucks (I need to go back and work out the running total of number for this trip) whilst Neil went off to try and ride the Rock N Rollercoaster again, but ended up on Smugglers Run. Barry & Ellie understandably went off to do their own thing. Karen & I then moved to the agreed meeting point with Neil.
Karen then fell for the same mistake as yesterday in that the advertised queue for Star Tours was only 15 minutes and went off to do that, whilst I was left to try and sort out some holiday admin on my phone.
As I sat there I was getting messages from both Karen & Neil saying they were stuck in queues and may not make it back to me for the noon performance of the Indiana Jones Stunt Show. In the end they both did with time to spare.
The show hadn’t changed since we had last seen it a few years back. It was of no surprise to us that one of the ‘volunteers’ from the audience turned out to be a planted stunt double, but it still brought gasps from people around us.
Neil then wanted some food before exiting the park and so we went back to the Star Wars land. Quite unbelievably Barry & Ellie joined us in the queue without having pre arranged it. Great minds think alike or fools never differ? They all had some food from another planet and all seemed to enjoy it very much.
We then headed out of the park and went to Publix to stock up on food. We had written a list and divided it amongst the three of us to speed up the shopping experience. Neil & I were keen to get back to the Villa to watch the City game against Watford live from Carrow Road.
Disappointingly, despite the game being live at home on Sky, the match was not being shown on US TV. Instead NBC chose to show the Tampa Bay Lightening game. Probably a wise choice given the Norwich performance.
We found a really good HD stream with English commentary. Barry arrived back with Ellie just as it kicked off. The stream was 2 minutes behind and he knew we were already one nil down but rushed over to watch without saying anything so not to ruin the ’surprise’ for Neil & I. It made for grim viewing.
At half time, Barry & I joined Karen & Ellie who were relaxing the in the Spa. It was lovely. So much so that we decided to move the laptop outside to watch some of the second half from the Spa. Sadly it did not improve the teams performance. Oh dear it looks like being a long hard season ahead.
Karen & I were keen to have our meal outside of the parks, but sadly time wasn’t going to allow time to visit a restaurant so we opted to pick up a Burger take away on the way back to Hollywood Studios. I ordered it in advance from the local Outback. Sadly they lost the order and then served up some quite poor food late. We were very disappointed and later on I gave them that feedback.
After eating what we could of the food in the Car Park we went back into the Studios.
It was their first official day of Christmas. We went to watch the continuous Christmas show down one of the streets. It felt like the start of our Christmas and was lovely standing there being covered in the Disney snow. After taking some pictures of the enormous Christmas Tree we headed back to Star Wars Land to have a very leisurely proper look around. I was getting more and impressed and was quite taken by a moving Porg in one of the shops.
We went in the droid depot where the geeks build their own droids which must be an absolute money making machine for Disney. It would be fine if the droids actually did some tasks around the house for you or were useful in any way.
I then waited whilst Karen & Neil rode the Alien Swirly things. Whilst waiting I had a message from a very excited Barry & Ellie who were back in Star Wars Land and had bumped into Emma Bunton who was filming a Disney Special for Thanksgiving.
Karen & I then wandered to get into position for Jingle Bell Jingle Bam, which was the Christmas Show that started tonight. It was all very jolly and festive and we joined in with the rest of the crowd singing Rocking Around The Christmas Tree very loudly.
Back in the Villa we all sat around drinking wine and beer and swapping stories of the day. It was a lovely end to another lovely day.
