Disney World, Part VIII

Friday, we headed back to Hollywood Studios for a half day. We had an extra magic hour in the morning for early opening, so we got up early to make the most of it, knowing we were going to only be there half the day. We got there even before the early opening, and were some of the first people through the gates. We went straight to get in line for the Jedi Training Academy. We heard it filled up quickly, and from the schedule we needed to be in one of the first two time slots to make it work in our schedule. When we got to the front of the line, the man in front of us couldn't sign up because the rest of his family wasn't with him in line. When it was our turn to sign up, we got the last three slots for the last time that worked with our schedule - phew!

We then took a quick ride on the Star Wars ride before taking the kids over for their Jedi training. The kids had a great time, and it was neat watching them frame the story with the kids up on stage training with the Jedi master... that is, until they cued the loud scary music, and Darth Vader came out. That was it for Josephine. The other two actually got to "duel" Darth Vader, which was cute. All three got certificates for participating.







Next we went back to visit the characters that our kids were took cranky to stand in line for our first day at HS (and to cool off in the air conditioning :).







We all thoroughly enjoyed the Beauty and the Beast stage show, which we had missed the first day at HS.












Then we had time for one of the several-daily episodes of the American Idol Experience, which basically was where 3 park visitors compete by signing one song for the judges. The winner of each of that day's episodes gets to come back for the last one of the day, where they compete against all that day's winners. Apparently the winner of that last show each day gets a special invitation to a real American Idol audition. We had buttons at our seat so we could vote for which of the three contestants we liked the best, so that was kind of fun.

That was it for Hollywood Studios - and all the Disney Parks for this vacation. So we hopped on a bus to take us back to the hotel for a final afternoon of pool/beach time, before a late dinner in our room, then packing for heading home, and a fairly normal bedtime.




The kids were asleep before the 9:00 fireworks at Magic Kingdom that night. Actually, I was too, but I wanted to enjoy them, so I opened up the curtains all the way, and watched the fireworks from bed.


I would sum up the Disney World experience as "Magical", as it's supposed to be, right? :)




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Saturday Morning, we were up around 3:00 am, as our bus for the airport picked us up at our hotel at 4:00 am for our 7:00 am flight. We did grab a bit to eat from the airport Burger King. Our return flights were both on time, so we arrived to the Des Moines airport to Jock's mom waiting for us with our van.

We got back to our house around 1 pm, and having been exhausted from the week and having already been up for 11 hours, we slept for 3 hours, then went out for dinner at 4 pm, then we were all back in bed for the night by 7 pm. Sunday we had time for laundry, homework, and relaxing before getting back to work/school/daycare on Monday.