Category: Trip

I know, I know! You’ve all been thinking “Why haven’t they gone to Disney’s Hollywood Studios yet?” You’ve probably also been thinking “He’s a hater; buying into the talk that DHS is the worst Disney park!”

Well you’d be wrong, since there was a good reason we left this park until today: Star Wars Weekends!

Every Friday to Sunday for a month this park is taken over by Star Wars events, merchandise and fans. And I’m glad to count us amongst them 🙂

Amongst other things, we saw Star Wars character meet ups:

We saw star wars actors and voice actors, including Jeremy ‘Boba Fett’ Bullock, Daniel ‘young Boba’ Logan and Ashley ‘Ahsoka Tano’ Eckstein:

We drunk drink from an R2 cup:

Ate a Darth Vader cupcake:

Built ourselves droid action figures:

Saw Star Wars props actually used in the films:

And even ‘fake’ props:

We even visited a giant Star Wars shop:

In which you could buy oodles of SW items including very expensive original art, of which this is an example:

But above all this SW madness two things rose to the top. The first was the updated Star Tours ride, which is now a 3D motion ride with many possible story elements (and planets to visit) that is likely different every time you ride! We rode it four times:

The other best thing about the entire trip day was the ‘Jedi Training’ show. Yes I know, kids dress up as younglings and fight Vader blah blah. But it was cute, and funny and well done:

But what was magnificent about it was this real-life Ahsoka Tano that I immediately fell in love with!

She’s beautiful! Her costume and (very professional) makeup were perfect! I swooned 🙂

So what else happened today at Disney’s Hollywood Studios? Well we went on all the rides, ate some delicious food, saw some shows, bought some stuff and ended up staying for over 11 hours! The weather even agreed, raining only briefly when we were comfortable in an air-conditioned restaurant!

But in truth the day was all about Star Wars, and what a day it was! In many ways, this day alone more than justified the entire vacation 🙂

Morning rain…

…didn’t change our plan to go to Magic Kingdom…

…at which we had fun…

…and some laughs…

…until torrential late afternoon rain…

…washed us (and everyone else) out of the park…

…and into the loving hands of Jesus-chicken-cookers 🙂

Today we took a day trip to a fishing village on the gulf coast called Tarpon Springs, known for sponges!

Yep, those are sea sponges. Every single souvenir shop sells them in all shapes and sizes. Curiously, this is a product for which I can barely think of a use (at least beyond the tiny ones!), but it was interesting regardless to look at them all.

It was a lazy, relaxing and (importantly) Disney-free day of browsing the shops, eating lunch in a delicious Greek restaurant and laughing at terrible souvenirs!

Of course, there were one or two great ‘souvenirs’ as well…

Tarpon Springs is right on the wharfs, and the tide was very high. So high in fact that the main road started to flood when we were there.

The drive home was in occasionally heavy rain, and dinner was fruit and salad (once again) from the grocery store. I also got this:

I’m typing this at night, in the room, listening to ostriches ‘croaking’ below our balcony. Tomorrow we’re going to wake at dawn and head to Magic Kingdom for 15 full hours!

Wish us luck 🙂