Day 2, Part 7: After Hours at Hollywood Studios, Part 1!
After a nice break in the room we headed out again just after 8:00. We decided to take the boat over to HS to save our legs a bit.
It was a bit of a wait for the boat that night, but not horrible, maybe 10 minutes? There was only one other family behind us waiting, and I was shocked and impressed they were wearing shorts! It was only like 38 degrees out! But they were from like Wisconsin so apparently it wasn’t that bad for them.
I was shocked while on the boat ride over, they announced that the boats would actually be running after the event. Now, last time I did this event they also said they would be, but they were wrong, but this time they actually had a printout of the schedule for the day which showed the boats would run until 1:30 that morning! This was SUCH a huge improvement from last time! Although I had to laugh, the captain made a comment that it would be the CP kids working since they save the bad shifts for them!
We ended up arriving at HS a tad before 8:50 and quickly made our way to security. BTW, why oh why do they put security as far as possible from all the arrival points at HS?!?! I feel like they never have the security that is right by the boats/skyliner open, we always have to walk around to the far side.
After passing through security we made our way to the event check-in where there was absolutely no one waiting. They also had signs out that tickets were still available for this night, so we expected the place to be empty!
We quickly got our credentials, which I will note I wish they did lanyard when it’s so cold outside, having to pull up our sleeves constantly to show our wrist bands got really annoying and cold really fast!
Once in the park it was 8:50 on the dot, so I checked to see what wait times were and checked to see if I could make a DAS for anything in the last few minutes the park was open (park closed to day guests at 9). I was shocked I was able to pull a DAS for Slinky, especially since the posted wait was 50 minutes and our return was only in 5 minutes!
So we made our way back to TSL. We stopped at the photopass just at the entrance of the land.
Once at Slinky I saw the actual wait was definitely not 50 minutes as posted, the line wasn’t too bad at all, I’d be surprised if it was more than 10 minutes. We scanned into the LL and soon we were on!
After Slinky it was 9:02, so the park was officially closed! Since we were right there, we decided to go ride TSMM. Being after park closed they were checking wrist bands to enter.
Now, I expected being only two minutes after park closed, there would still be a bit of a line, so I was shocked to get inside to see it was practically empty!
This was awesome! We walked right on!
This was a tough game, my mom was beating me for most of it, it was scary! Finally at the end I pulled ahead, but wow, that was stressful!
After TSMM I asked my mom what she wanted to do, and she wanted to ride Slinky again. I told her that wasn’t the best idea since a lot of people tend to rush to Slinky at the start of the event, but she really wanted to ride it, so we headed back over there.
I wasn’t too surprised to get there to see that line was long compared to when the park was open earlier! Mom really wanted to ride it, so we got in line. Fortunately the wait wasn’t too horrible, only about 20 minutes, and since the event didn’t actually start until 9:30 it didn’t eat into the event time too much.
After Slinky I took a look at the wait times and they were all higher than I expected for an after hours event, most in the 15-20 minute range. We figured that there may still be day guests there filtering through, so decided to avoid the rides for a bit and find some characters to meet!
Next up: Character Time!
