Our 2014 Walt Disney World Vacation pt. 3

Day 3: Monday, June 16th, 2014

For our second full day at WDW we headed back to Hollywood Studios for a full day of fun! Before leaving the resort we grabbed some breakfast – a veggie omelette for Ryan and some banana bread for Ellen! We headed off to the park for rope drop! Although there isn’t an opening show at Hollywood, we like to get there early in the day to avoid some of the large crowds who funnel in later in the morning.

Our first stop that morning was to the Backlot Tour. This is a tram-style train ride that takes you through the backstage of a movie studio. It has a bunch of old props from Disney movies and some great special effects that they use in major motion pictures! Unfortunately, we’ve heard that the Backlot permanently closed in August of 2014. We’re sad to see it go but glad we got once last ride before it closed!

After the Backlot Tour we headed over to the Animation Academy for another drawing lesson! We had so much fun on our first half-day that we couldn't wait to go back and draw another character. This time we drew Mike Wosowski from Monsters Inc!

Next up, we visited One Man’s Dream. We hadn’t visited this museum-like tribute to Walt Disney and his dream of building Walt Disney World on our last trip in 2012 but came across it this time around during our planning. We really loved this attraction. While it isn’t any kind of ride or thrill, it showcases many of Walt’s and Roy’s plans for WDW as well as many early pieces of merchandise and goodies. It’s a really great stop for any Disney-fanatic who loves not only WDW but also the history behind it.

We took a stroll through some areas of the park near One Man’s Dream and the Backlot Tour for some fun photo-opps before making our way to Muppet Vision 3D. We’re not huge Muppet fans but this is a fun attraction to add into our day.

Can you guess what we did next?? Another round at Animation Academy! Not only is this a fun and interactive attraction that gives you a free souvenir at the end of the 15 minutes but it’s also a great way to fill your time between FastPasses! Because classes run every 20 minutes or so you’re never in for a very long wait (as long as the line isn’t too long as they only let in a certain amount of participants per class). This time we drew Buzz Lightyear!

You can’t do EPCOT without visiting the Great Movie Ride! We love this attraction for its nostalgic feel but also as a great slow-moving ride to rest your feet!

By this time, we were in the time bracket to use our first FastPass which was for....The Hollywood Tower of Terror of course! We rode this on our first evening at HS but definitely weren’t about to pass up another chance to ride!

We decided to check out the Voyage of the Little Mermaid Show which is an indoor live show attraction. It was a really cute and there were appearances from all our favourite characters!

We had another FastPass booked for the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster so we raced over to that! One of our favourite rides at HS!

Because we had visited the park earlier in the week, we didn’t see Fantasmic again and used the time to visit some shops and get out of the park before the huge crowds. We called in an early (ish) night and headed back to our resort to rest up for tomorrow – Day 1 at Universal!