Disney’s Hollywood Studios

 

December 16, 2022

Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Our second day of our Disney World experience with our friends started out at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. This theme park has never ranked among my personal favorites, though it continues to expand and change and gets more interesting all the time. This park has seen the most significant changes over the years of all the Disney Theme parks. The working studio aspect that was originally featured has been phased out and replaced with more traditional theme park fare.

That is sort of sad to me in some ways as I always enjoyed the working backlot tours as well as touring the working animation center, both of which have been shuttered, torn down and replaced with new and updated attractions that do not focus on the art of making movies much at all. The good news is that the replacements are now some of the coolest and most visited areas and attractions and it is obvious that they are far more popular and thus profitable for Disney.

The main new attraction is the amazing Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge land which opened in 2019 and replaced the old Streets of America section of the park. This amazing recreation of the world of the Star Wars films is masterful in its detail and overall feel. I had been there once shortly after it opened but now it is even more expanded and new rides have opened.

The two major attractions here are Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run, a flying simulator attraction that allows guests to pilot the Millennium Falcon  through a customized secret mission. Both of these are incredibly cool and super popular but thanks to the new ticketing system Genie Plus, we were able to get in with no major problems or long waits.

The other areas of the park include the Animation Courtyard, Toy Story Land, Hollywood Boulevard, Echo Lake, Grand Avenue and Sunset Boulevard and we had plenty of time to see them all and though it seemed crowded, we really did not have to wait for anything very long.

Sloane was able to ride her first true rollercoaster, The Slinky Dog Dash, which she seemed to love for the most part, she was quite a little trooper. She wasn’t quite as enthralled with the Tower of Terror ride, which is pretty frightening even for me, but again she survived pretty well and hopefully was not too scarred by the experience.  I was really impressed by her bravery and willingness to do just about anything.

We did take her to visit some of her favorite characters from current shows on Disney Plus which she enjoyed immensely. We also had a terrific lunch at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theatre, the retro themed diner that shows 1950s sci-fi films on televisions suspended above the tables. The food was great and the experience was really quite fun. 

Sloane even had the surprise of running into a friend who she attended preschool with at the park. His family had recently moved from New Mexico to Florida and just happened to be vacationing at the same place. It was cool to see the young children greet each other and immediately begin to play and interact as if nobody else was even around.

When it was time for the late afternoon break, Kathy and I returned to Epcot once again because we wanted to stay late and catch the end of the night fireworks display.