Hollywood Studios

My brother, Michael, and his family live in Shanghai, China. He is an imagineer working on Shanghai Disneyland. It's a pretty cool job if you ask me.

They came to the States for a vacation to see family. All the rest of my family lives on the west coast. They asked if we wanted to meet up with them in Orlando. Of course!!!

Unfortunately, Clay had a big review coming up at work. He was working very long hours and was not able to take the time off to go with the girls and I. So my dear friend, Melinda, volunteered to take his place ;) It was great to have someone to help me drive down to FL. She even read a book aloud for me!

Our first stop was Hollywood Studios. It is my favorite Disney World park. My absolute favorite roller coaster ever is the Aerosmith Rockin' Roller Coaster. I also love the Star Tours and Toy Story Midway Mania.

 I took the girls into Walt Disney: One Man's Dream. It was a little walk-through of the history of Walt's animation. Rebekah like the models of the Cinderella's and Sleeping Beauty's Castles.

Oswald was Walt Disney's first creation when he was working for Universal Studios. Disney finally traded an Executive (actual person) for the rights to Oswald. If you noticed in the group pictures my nephew, Nathan, is sporting Oswald ears (instead of the traditional Mickey ears). 

A surprise was a scale model of the New Fantasyland in Magic Kingdom. You can check it out below.

This model is from Tokyo DisneySea. I got to see this in real life. Mike, Heather, and newborn Nathan were living in Tokyo while Mike was working on Tokyo DisneySea back in 2001. I got to go visit them there. When we went to Tokyo Disneyland I could see into the DisneySea park. I remember seeing this part of the park under construction.  

I love this picture of the kids. They wanted to go on the Tower of Terror. The line said 50 minutes. Turned out to me closer to 2 hours. They got pretty crazy. Last year Rebekah loved this ride. She and her friend Evan were laughing the whole time. This time there were some very loud guests who screamed with terror. Rebekah came off the ride in tears.