Hollywood Studios Toy Story Land review

On Friday, December 24th, our final park day, we were headed to Hollywood Studios.  On our last trip, we finally got to ride Slinky Dog Dash after years of waiting, and my daughter hated it.   So our first Genie+ selection today would be Mickey and Minnie runaway railway, another ride downgraded for the holiday week, for 1pm.

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Once again, I let the family sleep in a bit.  My wife decided she wanted to wait for the afternoon to go to the park, so I took our daughter and we left the hotel at 10:30, but first, I grabbed a noon Genie+ pass for Toy Story Mania. I should have also pre-ordered lunch at this time, but I didn’t.

We arrived at the park around 11 and went straight back to Toy Story Land, our favorite starting point at Hollywood Studios!  We went to Alien Swirling Saucers for our first ride.  Standby was 30 minutes, so while we waited, I decided now I should mobile order lunch.  Unfortunately, Woody’s Lunchbox was already at 1230.  I guess it’d work to eat after Toy Story Mania.

Our wait time was pretty close to the posted 30 minutes.  The family in front of us had a daughter about the same age as mine and it was her birthday that day!  The girls played together throughout the line, so that made the wait more bearable.  It’s always fun when the kids meet a new friend in line, but sad when the ride is over and everyone goes separate ways.

After the ride, we had about 20 minutes before our Toy Story Mania Lightning Lane pass time, so I took a couple 360° pictures in the land.  This first one is from the Alien Swirling Saucers area, looking into the ride and around the area.

The second 360° picture is from Toy Story Mania area looking over at Slinky Dog Dash with a ride about to hit the drop!  You can also see the building for the new restaurant, Roundup Rodeo BBQ, coming soon in 2022.

We were able to then check in to our Toy Story Mania ride about 5 minutes early. We always have so much fun on this ride.  My daughter’s score is improving.  I think she had 10-15k the first few times playing.   I need to get better!

After the ride, we had to wait a little while before checking in to get our food.  I ordered the BBQ brisket melt sandwich, which I’d been wanting to try since our first trip in 2018, but hadn’t been able to yet.  My daughter had the kids grilled cheese.  I forgot to order myself a drink, so I put in a separate mobile order for that, for a later time.  They were able to combine at the counter though so I didn’t have to come back, that would have been obnoxious. 

The mobile order pick up line was rather long.  I think it ended up taking 15 minutes to get to the front and get our order after the app said it was ready.  By that time, it was nearly time for our MMRR Lightning Lane pass time, plus there was no seating available, so we tried to exit straight to our stroller, but the Woody’s lunchbox bouncer would not let us use that exit, I tried to plead my case, but saw it wasn’t happening, so thanked him and went the long way around.  It was rough navigating a little kid trying to hold her food through the crowd of people, so I wasn’t very happy, but it is what it is.

Neither my daughter nor I liked our sandwich.  The bread was hard and dry, so it made it difficult to eat.  I also was not a fan of the BBQ sauce used on the sandwich.  Being in the Midwest, I think I’ve gotten used to KC style sauce. I think we both ate about half the sandwich.  We were also eating on the run.  She was able to eat sitting in the stroller, but being pushed while I was trying to eat and push.  We both enjoyed the tater tots or potato barrels as they call them. I got the Frozen Mystic Portal Punch to drink, not realizing that it was frozen, but it was really good.  Especially since this was the hottest day of the trip.  It was nice to have that available for a while. 

That concluded our morning in Toy Story Land.  I’ll have a new post soon with the rest of our Hollywood Studios day.  Thanks again for following along!

If you’re ready to start exploring a Walt Disney World or Disneyland family vacation, I recommend checking out Undercover Tourist for your ticket options. I’ve already used them twice, once at Disneyland and once at Disney World and will plan to continue comparing their prices with other sites, however I usually come back to UT because they have the best deals and their instructions make it easy to add your tickets to the Disney apps.