Hollywood Studios is the “little” park it is easy to go through it quickly and miss some of the hidden gems. Don’t worry the park design helps you do this. We went this time determined to see what else was there and found a couple of small gems outside of the Tower of Tower, Aerosmith’s Rock’n Roller Coaster, Star Wars Star Tours, the Muppet Vision 3D, and car stunt show. We found a few new places – a large area dedicated to Disney Animation where you could see an animator painting movie cells, take an animation class, meet characters and see many of the Academy Awards Disney won over the years (they also had movie posters of the next four animated movies and their release dates), the Great Movie Ride (in desperate need of an update), the very hidden collection of the American Film Institute with movie originals (an ax from Lord of the Rings, the puppets from the Sound of Music, a lifeboat from Titanic, Superman’s cape (an early version) and Indiana Jone’s whip) and Walt Disney: One Man’s Dream a great display of history chronicling the life of man behind the mouse.
The Tower of Terror / Hollywood Tower Hotel is still the main attraction. It was great to explore and find new things but this is still one of the best. This time we asked about some of the items in the lobby and the first elevator room. We saw the broken glasses, the pharaoh’s curse, and possibly the most famous episode the mystic seer fortune-teller (starring William Shatner). From what I understand the place has many more but these are the ones our cast member was able to point out quickly before we had moved on. Overall a great time and with a little digging I was able to find a diagram of the inside of the building and how they make the magic happen. Having ridden the ride dozens of times I still wasn’t sure how they go the cart up to the top so quickly not feeling like we had moved at all from the first elevator to the boiler room. This shows a bit of detail on how that works.
