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4.06.2013

Magical Memories at Hollywood Studios

After almost 9 hours at Magic Kingdom on Monday, we all slept in a little bit and then drove to Hollywood Studios for another day of fun!  The kids were so excited now that they knew what Disney was all about.  However Ava announced she was only interested in seeing more Princesses and revisiting the castle...both of which were not on the agenda for the day :)  Oh, boy!!
Seriously we got excited every day just driving into the gates!  
 Lucky for Ava, our first item on the agenda did involve a Princess as we went to the Beauty and the Beast stage show, which I remember clearly from when I was a girl.
 We ate lunch while we watched and aside from Carter falling off the bleachers and hitting his head, it was a great show!
Those Princesses always get that happy ending, don't they??  I'm all about it!  
We should have known we were in for a long day with Carter when he started out with a bang, literally.  Thankfully he rallied for some fun too!
Who says you have to be a on ride to have fun??
 Hollywood Studios is the least kid-friendly of the parks, it's really better for rides.  But they do have some great shows and since it was SUPER hot and humid on this day, we made the most of every show we could get into, including this Little Mermaid show.  As you might guess, this was Ava's highlight of the day!  Carter liked it too, but toward the end when Ursula makes her appearance he started telling us quite loudly that "it's a lil bit scare-wee" :) 
 Our kiddos are big Disney Jr. fans every morning so they were especially thrilled to go to this show!  It was a cute one but we ended up with horrible seats (in the front row, go figure) so it was kind of a bummer.  We still sang along and enjoyed it as best as we could, Travis and I were mostly thankful to be in the air conditioning and sitting down for awhile!  The kids left happy, I think it was more disappointing for us when we realized we could have chosen better seats for them to see more.  Oh well, when your kids aren't complaining then neither should you, right??
We ran into the Green Army Guy from Toy Story and Ava jumped right in for a picture and an autograph.  Carter wanted nothing to do with him :) We were hoping to get Buzz and Woody too, but the wait to see them was almost an hour and there was no way we were standing in that line!  One of our favorite rides of the day was the Toy Story ride.  It's a fun shooting range ride that we all loved.  I beat Travis' score, so of course I made sure to rub that in all day!
After staking out a spot for the afternoon parade, Carter had a HUGE blowout in his diaper which required a complete outfit change.  Yes, even at Disney those things are bound to happen!  I told him it was ruining my magical day :) :)  Of course I didn't pack an extra outfit in our bag because I thought we were done with those days, but thankfully the car was in the parking lot with baskets of clean laundry and we had plenty of options to choose from.  Carter and I missed the entire parade while I tried to clean him up in the bathroom and then Travis took him out to the car to change, while Ava and I went in search of some characters.  We waited  in line for this guy, and as soon as we got to the front of the line, he went on a 5 minute break!  Gotta love when that happens to you :) Thankfully we decided we could wait a few more minutes, but did I mention it was SOOO hot that day??  We were very glad to be in the shade!  
Is she not the cutest, little autograph seeker ever???
Handy Manny...Kind of D-list character if you ask me, but she was happy to see him and I was just thankful our time in line resulted in something :) 
We really wanted to see Sophia the First and Doc McStuffins, but neither of them were out that day, so we posed by this sign instead!
It was a sunny day to walk around!
While we waited for Carter and Trav to come back, we found the one thing we KNEW would thrill Carter, Lightning McQueen!!!
As soon as he spotted us and caught a glimpse of his two favorite characters, he was in Cars heaven!  It was so cute to watch him get excited, even the Disney photographer thought he was so sweet because he couldn't take his eyes off the cars!

Ava and I grabbed a picture together before the boys came...

 But we were so excited to let Carter have his turn too!
He just kept walking around the cars, stroking them and grinning!  As soon as we wrapped this picture up to let the next people see it, poor Carty burst into tears and sobbed his little eyes out.  He was SO sad to leave his heroes and I think the thought he would be able to hang out with them as long as he wanted!  It was terribly sad :(  We felt so badly for him but obviously we had to move on!
We thought we'd console him with an immediate trip to the stunt show, but he was brokenhearted. We did eventually win him over with frozen lemonade :) 
Ava was not so sure about all the noise and action...
...and Carter was basically in a trance.  Similar to the princess induced trance that Ava enjoyed the day before!
He did perk up considerably when good ole Lightning McQueen made an appearance!
We were loving the grin on Carter's face, I wish I would have captured that but I didn't want to take my eyes off him :) 
We were doing pretty well, enjoying all the tricks and action until this guy caught on fire.  Carter started crying and we decided that was worthy of crying over!  Should he ever see a person on fire, we think concern is a good trait to display!

 Travis enjoyed this the most that day and so did all the other Dads around us!  
 This is my favorite ride at Disney, but sadly we didn't get to go on it.  We both offered to let the other one ride this and the Aerosmith roller coaster, but neither of us wanted to ride it alone and the kids were not easy for one of us to keep both of them entertained.  If we came back to this park, I'm not sure I'd do it for a few more years.  When they are able to ride the fun rides, it would be a lot easier, but it definitely wasn't quite as kid-friendly as Magic Kingdom.  
 We decided they'd had enough when they wanted to sit on the street :) 
We had a fun day, but all Ava wanted was to see the Castle again and Carty only had eyes for Lightning McQueen!!  Travis and I could have spent a few more hours there, but we decided to head home around dinner time and save our energy for Epcot.  It had been a hot day and we packed in a lot of shows and as many rides as the kids could handle.
 It was another sweet day at Disney!
 Had to get a shot in front of the big hat!  We loved how tiny they looked in this picture!
What a treat, another great day together and many fun memories made with our kiddos! 
What a blessing, somebody pinch us!!

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