FL Vacation: Giddy As a School Girl

Sunday was our first day of park perusing and we were starting with Disney Hollywood Studios. I, having done little to no research on the various Disney parks, did not really know what to expect but the long awaited giddiness and excitement leapt upon me like a leprechaun on a pot of rainbow infused gold as we drove through the giant arches adorning the entrance to the many parks, sporting Minnie and Mickey among other characters. As we got closer, I saw the giant 6 story replica of Mickey's sorcerer's hat from Fantasia peeking over the trees at me and at that moment it finally dawned on me: I'm going to Disney World. With John. EEEK!!! We parked and made our first tourist mistake: we paid ZERO attention to where we parked. We got our tickets validated and the man in the ticket booth purposefully gave me a ticket with Minnie on it and John a Mickey ticket. We approached the ticket readers and experienced our first moment of confusion that reoccurred daily during our trip to the parks that week: after scanning your ticket, you are required to "read" your index finger print. The only problem here is we never had our fingers scanned to begin with. So how would reading your finger print help ANYTHING at all if they don't already have it on file? The mystery continues...
After going through the ticket-readers, we found ourselves on a happy little street with cheery music playing in the background as the morning sun smiled down on us. A huge surge of happiness swelled inside of me. I could have burst out in song. It was just all so...giddy. John smiled at me and said "Welcome to Disney World" and we started walking. (And of course we had to try on some ears...)
Disney World makes the most unrealistic town scenes in its parks. They are spotless of trash, always smell nice and seem to be in a never-ending state of perfectly positioned sunshine. I am definitely not complaining. It's hard not to grin while you walk their streets. The only realistic factor is all the cranky families breaking out into unneeded arguments and tiffs. We saw much too much of this while we were there and I'm sad to say the most badly behaved people we saw there were the parents, not the children.
Back to the park...we made it up the street and found ourselves standing below the giant Sorcerer's hat when I spotted the first character in costume. Minnie stood taking pictures with kids under the hat and I was instantly in giddy shock as John shuffled me over to take my photo with her. When it was finally my turn, I was surprised at how small she was. She was my height (with head on) and her shoes were bigger than my head, sporting skinny little legs. The only sound she made was kissing smacks as she blew me a kiss as we left in search of our first ride: The Aerosmith Rock & Roller Coaster. This was our first ride and having not been on a roller coaster in quite awhile, I was a little nervous. When we took off, I had a small heart attack but quickly enjoyed it (it's hard not to have fun with John next to you yelling "WOOHOOO!!! YEAH!!!" at full volume). After we staggered our way off that ride, John dragged me over to the Tower of Terror (for anyone who hasn't ridden it, you basically ride an elevator to the top of a tall building when it suddenly drops...over and over again) and we waited in line for a bit, listening to the hysterical screams of the people on the ride above us. From where we were standing, we could watch trap doors open on the side of the building as the elevator dropped down the shaft. Before long, we were entering the creepy hotel lobby and shuffling onto the "elevator." Apparently, this ride is different from the one in Disneyland. We knew this because a few people behind us said "Ohh this is different from Disneyland!" Yeah. We listen. The elevator stopped at each floor where we saw a series of "Twilight Zone" oddities, one including ghosts. When we reached the top floor, I was expecting it to drop immediately but instead the entire elevator box we were inside traveled horizontally across the top floor to the other side. When we reached the end of the track, we did a dead drop. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting although I did grab onto John's shorts for dear life (as did the little girl on the other side of John...haha) a few times as the elevator dropped over and over again. It's an awkward ride because there's literally nothing to hold onto (hence why John got the brunt of it). Finally we got to the bottom and giggled our way out of the building. Around this time, it was lunch time so we headed over to the Hollywood Brown Derby, a fancy shmancy restaurant John had gotten reservations at for us. We got seated quickly and had an amazing meal, served by a terrifying man named Tomas who was from Lithuania. Every time he would leave our table, he would smile widely at me like I was mentally disturbed and he was deeply pitying me as he glided away like some restless spirit. He had two expressions. This one and his unsmiling "You are stupad, unduhstand yah? Stupad imbeeseal!!" expression...which was most of the rest of the time.) I don't know why but he scared the crap out of me. It might also have been his "SHNELL!!!" accent that was unnerving (if you don't know what I'm talking about, watch 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' and wait until you hear someone screaming "SHNELL!!" Yeah...ruthless and scary). At no point did he look truly humored...by anything. However. I must state that he was a GREAT server and took care of us. Even if I was close to peeing myself.
Throughout the day we did a variety of different rides and displays including the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular (a stunt show from one of the Indian Jones films), The Hollywood Film ride (a ride full of creepy animatronics), Toy Story Mania (like an arcade, fair, and ride all mixed into one...super fun), among others. Along the way we ran into the toy army men from Toy Story. Some complete with feet platforms. SWEET!After awhile we just walked around, browsed the shops, and explored the rest of the park. We found an entire section on the Muppets and some amazingly realistic fake city backdrops. They made me feel like I was on a movie set. My favorite discovery of the day was the 'Singing in the Rain' umbrella. If you stepped on the small grate below the umbrella, it began to rain over that spot. I can not tell you how awesome I found this...since my life is a living musical and all.
We left around 4:30 during the parade (but not before taking a picture of the Pixar lamp dancing) and we felt like we covered most everything we wanted to see. It was definitely a magical day, one of the best of the whole week. Thankfully, although we had not noted where we parked, we found it surprisingly easily (especially considering we drove my miniature car which is usually hard to locate in a NORMAL parking lot, let alone a crazy huge Disney parking lot).

To be continued...