Friday May 13th 2022

Today I continued my return visits to the Disney theme parks with an afternoon trip to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. My goal was to see some shows and hopefully find wait times on some of the rides at reasonable levels.

I checked the show times ahead of my visit and new that I needed to be in the park by 4PM to get in line for the last Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular show of the day. Traffic in the resort area was very heavy but I managed to arrive at the park by 3:45. The line for the 4:30 Indy show was already forming. By 4:10 I was seated waiting for the show.

The stunt show only returned to the park in December after the pandemic shutdown. It has been modified to have less audience participation and generally use fewer people in the cast. It still had plenty of action, explosions and fun. I’m glad I made the effort to see it.

Next on my agenda was the Frozen Ever After Sing Along. I’ve never seen this show before, but I have read about it from several sources. The sing along part is for the kids in the audience, but the comedy by the people on stage telling the story of Anna and Elsa is very much for the adults. It was also a very fun show.

Checking wait times on rides I was very much out of luck. When I first arrived in the park three of the big newer rides were closed for technical difficulties. Later they all had waits from 65 minutes to 120 minutes. Other than the nauseating Star Tours motion simulator that I had no intention of riding with a five minute wait all of the rides had at least a 45 minute wait.

I wasn’t in the mood to wait in any of the lines, so I walked around the park waiting to see if the wait times would go down. I also checked out some of the menus at the counter service restaurants looking for a good choice for my evening meal. The only thing on the menus that was remotely appealing was the hamburgers, but not appealing enough to spend money on. Wait times for the rides were also climbing rather than going down. An approaching thunderstorm was all it took to end my visit to the park. I was home around 8PM when the rain arrived.

The two shows and the few hours of people watching made the day worth while. It is not just the attractions that the park interesting.