[Joy J]

Today was our day to immerse ourselves in the movie business at Disney’s Hollywood Studios so we were up and out bright and early. Our first stop was the Great Movie Ride, followed by one of Kirk’s favourite attractions: Star Tours. After spending some time browsing through all of the Star Wars paraphernalia in the gift shop, we watched Sounds Dangerous before zipping over to the ABC Commissary for an early lunch. This was our first time having lunch here and I’m afraid I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone. We both had the Cuban sandwich with plantain chips. Kirk had a strawberry parfait for dessert and I had the chocolate mousse. Although the desserts were fine, the main course was pretty much inedible. We then attended a showing of the Voyage of the Little Mermaid before visiting our old friends the Muppets again in their 3-D movie. On our way back to the entrance we spotted Mickey and Donald so we stopped for a meet and greet and a nice photo op.


It was now time for our midday hotel break. Afterwards it was back to Hollywood Studios for some shopping followed by our dinner at Hollywood and Vine. There was a crowd of people waiting to be seated when we arrived so I figured it was probably going to be a fairly long wait for our table. The cast members handled the crowds in a very organized fashion and in twenty minutes we were seated a nice window table in the far corner of the restaurant. I haven’t eaten here in a few years and I was very pleasantly surprised by both the variety and quality of the offerings. Everything was delicious and both of us enjoyed our meal tremendously. At the end of the meal we pocketed our prized voucher for reserved admittance to Fantasmic and off we went to kill some time before the big show. We did some more shopping, wandered lazily through One Man’s Dream and then spent quite a bit of time admiring the assorted busts and footprints outside the Chinese Theatre that houses the Great Movie Ride.
We decided to head over to the special reserved entrance for Fantasmic (beside Oscar’s) about 40 minutes before show time. We were really glad we did as we were able to get seats on the far left of the reserved section so we were pretty much smack dab in the middle of the theatre. I was surprised by how quickly the theatre filled up and by show time, there didn’t appear to be an empty seat in the house. We both thoroughly enjoyed Fantasmic, as always, and returned to our hotel afterwards to make it an early night so we could be raring to go bright and early the next morning.
Joy