2024.11 Disney Hollywood Studios on Thanksgiving
We’re not night owls. After leaving Magic Kingdom close to midnight, it was a good thing we didn’t have any park visits planned the following day. This allowed us to sleep in and have a relaxing day. Our final Disney theme park to visit was Hollywood Studios. On US Thanksgiving day. It would be a quiet day, right? Anybody but.
Star Wars: GalaXy’s Edge
This was new to us. Our prior visit to Walt Disney World was pre-pandemic, and climbing ever closer to ten years ago. Both of us wanted to explore was the Star Wars area. We did well this time around arriving at the park before opening time. One helpful thing was that the park was open an hour early for Walt Disney World hotel resort guests, and as a result we were able to enter the park before 9am and make our way over to Galaxy’s Edge. The good idea however came to a quick end — park workers were checking wristbands so that only resort guests could continue into Galaxy’s Edge, while we joined a large group of folks waiting for the regular opening time to occur. We didn’t have to wait long and soon enough the horde of park-goers were released. Entering the space, it is an excellent immersion into the Star Wars universe. Everything in the space was themed, and the design was comprehensive such that no sightline gave any indication that there was anything else to do in the park. Excellent job.
Below are some pictures of the area:
Pictures do not adequately reflect how all encompassing the space feels. Unfortunately the popular ride, Rise of the Resistance was not available. In fairness the ride wasn’t on my list as the wait times during the week of our visit was regularly running hours long. As an aside, here was the estimated wait time that Little Miss had on her phone later the same day. The projected wait time of 4 hours seemed to collide with the reality that the park wasn’t open that late!
Instead, I lucked out with Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run. Being a simulator Little Miss passed on it, and I being a single rider enabled me to instantly join an existing group of 5 waiting for the next simulator. I had no wait at all. The ride requires six people to participate in the different tasks in the simulator, so being on your own for this ride definitely would speed things up.
After the ride we walked around the shops and things in the area. One surprise we had was Oga’s Cantina. Upon entering, even with it being 9:15am, we were asked if we had a reservation. Obviously we had none, but the staff allowed us to walk around and take in the ambience of the bar, err, Cantina. It was again another well executed space that made us feel like we had been transported into the Star Wars universe.
Toy Story Land
After Galaxy’s Edge we walked through Toy Story land. Here we went on Toy Story Mania!, a cute shooting game. The waiting area was neat, complete with a Mr. Potato Head that would react to what people would say while going through the line. It was entertaining and a nice change from a stock item that would repeat itself every minute or so.
The ride itself was good. We continued our journey through the area, and here are a few more pictures of Toy Story Land.
We did go and attend a few other things here, such as the Muppets theatre (that was scheduled to close sometime after our visit), and Mickey’s Day out. That was a great ride and one of a few where Mickey is the main character. I feel that Hollywood Studios has much more open space within the park, especially in areas that aren’t overflow areas for rides. Here too Christmas decorations were in full swing.
I waited over an hour for the Aerosmith ride, another ride that was scheduled to be renovated and remodeled into something new after our visit. Eventually our snack fell to our growing hunger, and we wanted something to eat that was not at the park. We then decided to leave the park and have Thanksgiving Dinner.
Thanksgiving Dinner
In fairness, on many of our road trips to the USA we end up visiting a Bob Evans. This is a chain serving homestyle meals, and for us one, or both, of us we will reliably order their Turkey dinner meal. It comes with biscuits, Turkey, stuffing, gravy, and then choice of sides. I don’t think I’ve strayed from the mashed potatoes and carrots option.
During our time driving around between our accommodations and the parks I noticed a Bob Evans. After joking to her about the idea, and not having a competing idea, we went to Bob Evans for Turkey Dinner.
Of our many visits, Thanksgiving is truly their day to shine and be packed with people. Their take-out was so busy, they had setup folding tables and a canopy at the back of the store for customers to handle the orders. We arrived later in the afternoon and we didn’t have a long wait. Once seated we were presented with a menu with many options: Turkey and Ham, or just Turkey, or just Ham as your protein? It was too late for breakfast, so half the menu didn’t apply to us. Here’s the slideshow of the menu (both front & back)
We both had the Turkey, and the meal was very filling. Our server was not surprised when we requested or slices of pie (Pumpkin for her, Pecan for me) in to-go containers. I think we did get around to eating them before our week concluded.
Finally, we did not participate in the most typical US Thanksgiving activity — going shopping, either at midnight or first thing the following morning on Black Friday in search of massive discounts and deals. Flying home restricted the quantity of items we could purchase, and truthfully there was little that caught our eye. From general observations though, large flatscreen TVs continue to be a door-crasher offer. I think it was a 55″ TV for $199. Or maybe it was even lower.
With our visits to Disney complete, we had a full day planned for our final full day in the Orlando area — Universal theme park!
Explore other parts of this trip:
Part 1 – Air Canada Flight Toronto to Orlando
Part 2 – Animal Kingdom & Downtown Disney
Part 3 – Magic Kingdom – Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party
Part 4 – Hollywood Studios (this post!)
Part 5 – Universal Parks, two parks, one day
Part 6 – Flight home