Honeymoon Day 5: Disney's Hollywood Studios

Thursday morning Aaron and I decided to head to Disney's Hollywood Studio's as this was the only park we had not gone to yet. We knew that if we wanted fast passes for Toy Story Mania, we had to be there when they opened- so we got up, caught the early bus, and were waiting on their equivalent of main street for the park to open!

We got our Toy Story Mania fast passes (the general queue was ALREADY like 60 minutes long less then 15 minutes from rope drop), which were about 2 hours out. I decided Aaron needed to check out "Rockin' Roller Coaster"! This is one of my favorite rides, and I hoped Aaron would enjoy it as well. The general queue was about 30 minutes, which wasn't too bad, so in line we went. I enjoyed the line much more once we got inside to the air conditioning (it was another hot and nasty Florida day!)

Aaron had been hearing about the ride while we were in line, and as we got up to the front, became QUITE nervous at the thought that we would be going on a "high speed attraction including upside down loops and cork screws":
I however, was not:


While Aaron didn't want to ride Rockin' Roller Coaster again- he did enjoy it the one time we did it. We decided to pass on Hollywood Tower of Terror, it gives Aaron a head ache when he rides it, and I didn't want to ride alone. We grabbed a small bite to eat, and headed over to the Back lot Studio Tour. We happened to pass by the ABC Commissary, which had a sandwich I had to snap a photo of for my dear co-worker Reem:

Our next stop was the back lot tour. I honestly didn't even know this existed until I found Disboards.com (of course there are a lot of things I didn't know about until Disboards.com). While we were waiting for our turn to start, there was a video and pictures around explaining how they shot a lot of the movie, "Pearl Harbor".

This was a rather interesting attraction. It started with a "walk through" show of sorts showing how they use water in movies:
After the show, we got to walk through their prop house- which was really neat! We saw some of the props from some of our favorite movies, including the Chronicles of Narnia.
From the prop house, we boarded the tram tour. The tram, while not nearly as cool as Universal Studios, took us around the back lot. Our first stop was a "working set" where they showed us how they use fire, water, and other special effects while filming:
We then just toured the back lot, where we got a shot of the infamous water tower modeled after the water tower for Walt Disney Studios in Burbank:
We then got a glimpse of the plane that Walt Disney and executives used to fly back and forth from Anaheim to Orlando when planning/opening Walt Disney World:
There were some other neat things, but nothing note worthy. After our tram tour, it was finally time to redeem our fast passes for Toy Story Mania! Honestly- it's exactly the same as Disneyland, but I think Disneyland's queue is far superior to the queue at Disney World.

Up next- our afternoon at Disney's Hollywood Studios.

Honeymoon Day 4: Down Town Disney Wednesday Night

So after deliberating- we opted to head to Down Town Disney. We hadn't been yet, and after looking at our itinerary for the last few days didn't know when we'd have time to go again. Besides we hadn't really had a productive day, seeing as how we only lasted about an hour at Animal Kingdom that morning.

When we first got off the Disney Bus, we headed straight into the Christmas store. This is the one shop that I wish Disneyland had a duplicate of. This store is AWESOME- its absolutely huge and allows you to buy Christmas items (tree skirts, ornaments, stockings, stocking holders, village pieces, etc) year round! Disneyland has a very tiny Christmas store in New Orleans Square, but it's tiny and has a very small selection of ornaments only. While we were there, we found our Christmas ornament for the year! (Hurray for being early!) It was a gold ball that says, "Our Honeymoon" with Mickey and Minnie Bride and Groom ears!
I of course wanted it personalized! However, items weren't going to be ready until Saturday at 4pm :( Thankfully we had the option to have it shipped to us, so we did. It actually just arrived, all finished:

After purchasing our ornament we walked around Downtown Disney. I have to say I was not impressed what-so-ever with their pin trading- it was actually pretty junky. Almost all of the cast members had the exact same pins for trading; and they were lame. It really wasn't anywhere near as big as it is at Disneyland. However we did find the big pin store in DTD:
This was one of my favorite pins- it said, "I'd rather kiss a wookie" and it had Minnie with a Chewbacca on it. From the pin store we headed over to the Ghirardeli store, and got some super yummy ice cream!
After enjoying our yummy ice cream, we headed down to the World of Disney- which is much larger then the one at Disneyland, and let me say I lasted about 5 minutes before it was just too much for me. After that we decided to head back to our hotel, so we could be rested and up early for rope drop at Disney's Hollywood Studios.

Honeymoon Day 4: Wanyama Safari Wednesday Afternoon/Evening

So after having very relaxing nap and afternoon in our room on Wednesday, we anxiously got ready for our Wanyama Safari! The Wanyama Safari occurs in the evening (around dusk/sunset) and takes you through all of the Savanna's at the hotel. It's exclusively for Animal Kingdom Lodge guests and includes dinner at Jiko (a very nice restaurant located in the hotel). It was a very costly experience, but it was our splurge for the trip. It was required that we wear shirts with collars- but shorts were acceptable.
We met our fellow "Safari Goer's" at Jiko, along with our guide. We were quite lucky as there were only 6 of us going for the Safari, a family of 6 cancelled that morning! We started in the newest Savanna, Kildani (which was named after the newest portion of the resort). This Savanna is not 100% open yet, and we got to see some very interesting animals as we trekked through the Savanna, unfortunately we were not allowed to photograph them as we were "behind the scenes".

In the next Savanna we met the Hartman Zebra's, one of whom I fell in love with, though I don't remember this girls name:


Apparently they are quite aggressive creatures. The one I fell in love with followed us around the savanna, the guide called her the shark of the savanna saying she'd sneak up on you and attack. While she looked cute and cuddly, apparently they're well, not.

We also saw several other animals:
Once we finished we moved on to the next savanna where we saw SO many giraffes (I thought of Herman Jeanne!). This was the main savanna of the lodge and it housed the 2 main male giraffes, they were quite friendly.
We also saw some regular Zebra's as well. While they were cute, I didn't take as much to them as I did to my friend the Hartman Zebra earlier...
If you haven't been able to tell- we got QUITE close to these animals, it was really amazing, I mean at one point I could have reached out and touched the Hartman Zebra, but we were not allowed. Below I've included some very up close (not so much great quality) of the giraffes that came to visit us while we were having our Sun Downer (I may have that name wrong) basically its a snack and juice you take on a safari when the sun is setting to recap on the experience.

Lastly, we met this fellow- Bubba. Bubba got an ear infection and since then, has had this head tilt, it has nothing to do with the weight of the horn! And no, he is not a long horn, he is some sort of cattle from Africa.
We really enjoyed this safari, it was well worth the money! Unfortunately this is the point in which our camera battery died and memory card filled to capacity. We visited one more savanna with some vultures and gazelles who were adorable.

After our safari, we ventured to Jiko and had an amazing dinner. It was served family style and the menu was unreal. Our dinner lasted for about 3 hours, (edit) after which we headed up to our room and debated if we wanted to head to Disney's Hollywood Studios for extra magic hours, head back to our room, or head down to Down Town Disney- we opted for Down Town Disney!!!

Honeymoon Day 4: Animal Kingdom Wednesday Morning

Honestly by Wednesday morning we were getting tired, so we decided to sleep in a little bit. When we finally woke up, we headed over to Animal Kingdom in hopes of doing Kali River Rapids (which I've never done before). Can I just say, it was wicked nasty outside. From the moment we arrived all we could think of was leaving- but Kali River Rapids is a water ride (if you couldn't tell) so we were determined to try to get on it! My other mission, which Aaron didn't know about, was to get a photo pass picture of us holding "baby Simba"- which we did!

We headed over and got fast passes, but had a 2 hour wait. No sweat- we figured we could totally do it! During our wait we decided to head through the Maharaja Jungle Trek- as I had never done it and Aaron wanted to see more animals! While this was cool- it was wicked nasty outside! We did see some cool animals through the trek:



After the jungle trek, we headed over to the safari- but at this point it was too hot and just not worth it. We gave away our fast passes for Kali River Rapids and headed back to the hotel. We figured we needed our rest for the safari we were doing that evening a the hotel. We grabbed lunch in the Mara and sat down to enjoy a movie together in our room and just rested before our evening.

Up next an exciting Wanyama Safari and dinner at Jiko!