Disney World 2015, day 4: Disney’s Hollywood Studios

[pyesetz]

[My HOTTEST DAY *EVER* at Disney World!  97°F *before* factoring in humidity!  Ontario, Ohio, Florida — doesn’t make a difference, it’s been over 90 every day of this trip.  And Hollywood Studios is the hottest of the parks because its many tall buildings and excessive quantities of asphalt create an “urban canyon” effect.]

Ink and Paint (inside Art of Animation Resort, 9:55am).  $12.40 for Imodium and Benadryl at the gift shop, for Wifey and Kid #1.  The cashier expresses her condolances.

Our room.  My family is out of shape and yesterday involved much more walking than our usual, and in very high temperatures.  So we start our day late and end early, which once again requires rejiggering all our FastPass™ appointment times.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  Attractions visited today: The Great Movie Ride, Star Tours, Muppet★Vision 3D, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, ABC Commissary (lunch, 2:56pm), Toy Story Midway Mania, and Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (only Kid #2 and I).
      Midway Mania is new.  Unlike most Disney rides, it has no storyline; you just shoot at virtual targets while wearing 3D glasses and sitting in a rotating vehicle that’s moving along a serpentine track.  Kid #2 gets the most points in our vehicle.
      Our children are too old to enjoy the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground, so Wifey takes a photo of them standing on either side of a giant ant.  Some other kid decided to sit on top of the ant during the photo, so I guess we’ll have to try out our PhotoShop skills when we get home.  I take a photo of Kid #1 going down a giant leaf-slide because we have a photo of her doing that back in 2001.
      Kid #1 used to like Tower of Terror, but she decided to skip it for this trip.  Kid #2 has never been on it, so I take him.  He doesn’t like being yanked violently downward in total darkness with nothing to hold on to but a seatbelt, so we ride only once even though the standby line is short.
      At the ABC Commissary, they are showing America’s Funniest Home Videos from 1994, so the children having pratfalls in the videos are now all grown up.  ABC had required video submitters to relinquish all rights without any compensation except for each show’s winner, so when Disney bought ABC in 1996 they gained the legal right to display these videos for the amusement of park guests, even if the people in the videos hate Disney and would never have agreed to having their pratfalls (some of them painful) commoditized like this.  As Billy Joel sang, “I’ll get put in the back, in the discount rack, like another can of beans”.
      Wifey has never seen the “Fantasmic” fireworks/laser show.  But it doesn’t start until 30 minutes after the park closes, and it’s very hot and we just want to get out of here.  So she still hasn’t seen it, and this is our only scheduled day at Hollywood Studios.

Landscape of Flavors (8:17pm).  Dinner at our resort.  Kid #2 announces that his pizza is not sitting well in his stomach, so I tell him he can just go back to our room.  Wifey then quickly finishes up her dinner and walks after him to check whether her 17-year-old son made it back to our building or is retching in the bushes someplace (actually his stomach settled down after he left the cafeteria).  Kid #1 and I finish our dinners and then rejoin the others in our room.

Our room.  Kid #2’s right ear still doesn’t hear well.  I give him a pseudoephedrine tablet, but it doesn’t help.  We decide that we are trying too hard on this vacation and need to take the day off tomorrow, which is forecast to be (surprise!) yet another scorcher.