Disney’s Hollywood Studio

Day two of our Disney park adventure took us to Hollywood Studios. Again, this was a first for Andrew, but Susan and I visited once before years ago. We got off to a late start because everyone was tired from yesterday and Andrew needed to make some progress on his homework assignments. We arrived at the park just after noon.

Hollywood Studios doesn’t have much in the way of rides, but they do have some interesting and exciting live action performances. The two we liked the best were the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular and Lights, Motors, Action Extreme Stunt Show.

Andrew enjoyed the Star Tours ride. This ride is based on Star Wars and has a full-sized Imperial Walker outside. Next door, young kids were training to be a Jedi and eventually got to face Darth Vader in a light saber battle. On this ride, we entered a Starspeeder 3000 (full motion simulator) to Endor. Along the way, we experienced a little trouble and detoured to the Death Star. Pretty cool.

The most exciting ride that Andrew was able to ride was the Hollywood Tower Hotel, also known as Tower of Terror. I was surprised to learn that he was big enough to ride it. The setup to the ride was pretty scary. We walked through the deserted hotel, full of dust and cobwebs, then went down to the basement, past the old coal furnaces, to the maintenance elevator. From there, we strapped in tightly and went for one crazy elevator ride. It started off slowly, but then, to everyone’s surprise, it dropped back to the basement, then shot up to the 13th floor, then went up and down in starts and stops. Finally, it dropped back down to the basement. At the end of the ride, we were all glad to be alive!

A new attraction at the park was The American Idol Experience. It was like being on the set of the actual TV show. Three park guests were chosen ahead of time to come on stage and sing. There were even judges there providing feedback to the contestants. Andrew liked the voting buttons, even though his favorite contestant didn’t win.

Another hit with Andrew was the Studio Backlot Tour. The coolest part of this was the Catastrophe Canyon. In here, an earthquake causes a power line to fall on a fuel tanker truck, which catches on fire. Then a dam breaks and dumps water into the canyon from both sides.