The Glowtini Girls do DLP - Day 2 - Tower of Actual Terror

[Beaker7929]

Despite getting to bed around midnight the night before Anna was up at 6.30am, and I was shortly after.

We took our time showering, getting dressed and having the obligatory cup of tea before heading down to breakfast for 8am.

One of the many joys of booking the Golden Forest level at Sequoia Lodge is the separate breakfast area. It is such a relaxing start to the day with a great selection of food. I chose Special K cereal, topped with some nuts and sultanas, and for afters 2 slices of toast

We'd not long started on our breakfast when Mel arrived, so naturally she joined us and the three of us had breakfast together

After breakfast we re-confirmed our plan to meet in Studios at 11am, and Anna and I headed back to our room to sort through the plan and make sure we took the right amount of money out with us for the day. Today was 'shopping day' so money was vital!

Money sorted we headed off to the parks... slowly, because it was so icy! Anna and I didn't realise this until we'd taken up position near the lake to take a scenic snapchat video and then found we had to skate our way back to the main path, oops!

We arrived at Studio's around 9.40am to find the gates already open.

I love walking through Studio One, it gets a lot of bad press in the online DLP community and I've never understood why!

On walking out of Studio One however, I was faced with my nemesis...Tower of Terror, the name of this day will become apparent later.

The plan was to head straight to Crush's Coaster to get in the queue, after about 10 minutes in the queue we noticed Cast Members coming along the line, talking to people and then those people leaving the queue... I left Anna in position and (carefully, it was still icy!) went over the to Cast Member, no surprises that Crush was down, due to the weather according to the Cast Member. So with that news Anna and I skipped to the next ride on the plan which was Ratatouille.

Incredibly, Ratatouille was a walk-on!

This is the 3rd or 4th time that we've ridden Ratatouille and still we were seeing things we'd never seen before. We swear there was a complete scene that was new, it was the Skinner chase scene when his hand gets caught in a mouse trap, neither of us remembered that from riding it previously.

After Ratatouille we had some time to kill before meeting Mel at 11am outside Tower of Terror, the plan being to use our hotel fast passes to ride it together. Joy!

We left La Place de Remy and walked through the tunnel to Toy Story Playland to visit our friend Rex

He has this habit of photo bombing our pictures!

And of course we had to take the obligatory RC Racer photos...

We checked the Studio's meet and greet timings and saw that Buzz was due to be meeting, on rounding the corner to Toon Town was saw that Buzz's queue was really short, so joined it.

This was another great meet, especially when Buzz was shown Anna's backpack...covered in Buzz Lightyear's!

Once Buzz was met there was no putting off the inevitable...it was time to meet Mel for Tower of Terror.

I literally cannot put into words how frightened I am of this ride. I don't do heights and I don't do drop rides...so this is my worst nightmare. I think this face says it all really.

Mel joined us and it was time. Oh god. Using our hotel fast passes we jumped the entire queue and went straight to the holding room for the pre-show. The Cast Member in here was hilarious, and did nothing to quell my fear! He kept shouting out, making us jump, especially Anna as he was stood right behind her!

Next comes the wait to get into the lift, this is the worst bit for me. I start working myself into a right state, but having both Anna and Mel there to distract me helped...but only a little bit

Once in the lift and buckled in I properly started to s*it myself. That's the point of no return...I think I'll let the ride photo give you an idea as to what happened next (I'm the one in pink, just in case you hadn't spotted me ).

You see, it is the Tower of Actual Terror!

If you look at the family in front of me, they appear to be on a completely different ride

Poor Anna and Mel got the life squeezed out of their hands! But I did it, woo hoo! I finally stopped shaking after about 10 minutes in the exit gift shop.

Now I could relax, finally! Mel had made a promise that if I went through with ToT she would come on Rock n Rollercoaster with us, with the queue being only 20 minutes that was where we headed next.

The queue moved really quickly, I think the music helps, and soon enough we were being loaded into our 'limo'. I love this ride, it's so much fun! Crazy how I can love this and hate ToT

On leaving Rock n Rollercoaster all three of us couldn't believe our eyes, because right in front of us was Push, the Talking Trash Can! We'd never seen him in real-life! He was so cute, wheeling around asking people for rubbish, I had some used tissues in my pocket (from wiping the tears after ToT ) and dutifully 'fed' them to him, he said "thank you"

By now it was around midday. The three of us walked back through Studio's towards Front Lot and spotted that an English showing of Stitch was due to start at 12.15pm so decided that we would do that next. It was as amusing as always, I especially love it when Stitch picks on an adult member of the audience, the little boys face when he saw his Dad on the big screen was priceless.

On exiting Stitch we saw that Cinemagique was due to start at 12.45pm, perfect timing!

After Cinemagique Mel headed back into the Disneyland Park and Anna and I planned to get a cup of tea in Studio One.

On entering Studio One we could hear a live Jazz band, it's so nice to hear music in Studio's, they were great!

Unfortunately the refreshment stand we visited only had Earl Grey tea bags, which was no good for Anna so it was only me who managed to get a cup of tea. Anna made a mental note to get some tea bags from the hotel just in case we were faced with no normal tea bags again at any point.

Next up was the daytime Star Wars entertainment, we went back to the Front Lot to find that we'd caught the end of the Star Wars 'A Galaxy Far Far Away' stage show, not being huge Star Wars fans we weren't worried about trying to catch it in full.

After this 2 Stormtrouper's came out to mingle with guests and have pictures taken with them. Anna and I watched for a little while but it soon became apparent that we were no match for the die hard Star Wars fans and there was no chance of getting a photo with one of them

At that point we decided to get going and do our shopping. However, on walking back into Studio One we remembered the 'Selfie' photo machine we'd seen mentioned on Twitter. This was located in the main shop in Studio One, and for just 2 Euros was an absolute bargain! You can choose from several different 'frames' and it prints out a hard copy photo. This is going to go on my desk at work

While in that shop we noticed they had a lot of Tsum Tsum's, the most we'd seen in any of the shops so far, given that this was what DD had asked me to bring back for her I checked the list she'd given me and chose Donald and Daisy Duck to add to her collection

The previous day we'd had a look in the shops on both Main Street and in the Village and decided that Main Street had everything we were looking for so we walked over to the Disneyland Park, spending money at the ready!

I bought a new Cheshire Cat mug for myself, and an 'H' initial mug for the OH, seen here in their new home

Fronts

Backs

All shopped out we headed back to the hotel to put our feet up for a little while and get changed, before heading down to the Golden Forest Lounge for afternoon canapes

This is another great Golden Forest perk, free food and hot/cold drinks, awesome!

Just look at those mickey shaped sugar cubes, cute!

Tummies full we headed back to Studio's for the evening Star Wars projection show. It was so nice to walk back into Studio's in the dark! At this time of year the park is normally closed by now, such a shame as it looks beautiful in the dark.

We took up position in the Front Lot only to be approached by a Cast Member, wealding a toy Light Saber he told us if we moved to a position more central to the screen we would get a much better view of the show. He was absolutely right!

We'd seen some video footage of the show before coming to DLP, but nothing could do it justice, the show was absolutely incredible! (and that's coming from a non Star Wars fan). The way they have mapped the scenes onto Tower of Terror is so so clever, there really are no words, hats off to DLP, well done!

We exited Studio's with the masses, shuffling along until we were half way down Studio One when the crowds thinned out, and walked back through Disney Village to Sequoia Lodge. The plan was to crack open a bottle of Prosecco and have a couple of glasses before meeting Mel for dinner.

Prosecco consumed, we popped our coats back on, grabbed our half board vouchers and walked over to Hotel New York.

I love these trees at the back of the hotel, they're so pretty.

Dinner tonight was to be at the Parkside Diner, Mel was already waiting for us when we arrived

We had a lovely dinner here last year and it didn't disappoint this time around either, from the moment the Cast Members checked us in, joking with us about needing to take hotel room numbers, purely for the system because he was married (you had to be there ) we had a lovely evening. The food here is always lovely, and for dessert they had crumbled Oreo's, heaven!

On leaving the restaurant the Cast Members insisted we have photo's taken with them...adding a Cast Member each time

Anna, Mel and I wandered back to the Golden Forest Lounge for...wait for it... a cocktail, well we are the Glowtini Girls after all!

This time I let Mel and Anna choose for me, what with my knack of choosing the most lethal cocktail on the menu

Mine was the one on the right, really yummy and much easier to drink than the one from the night before

The Golden Forest Lounge closes at 10.30pm and on noticing that they were cleaning the floors we made our way out around 10.45pm, being sure to leave them a tip for not hurrying us out.

Back up on our corridor we said our farewells to Mel as she was heading home the next day, it had been so wonderful sharing our trip with her that it was quite an emotional moment, big squeezy hugs were had and it was time for bed.

Obviously Anna and I had to do our fair amount of faffing before going to bed and again it was midnight before our heads finally hit the pillow!

Next: Who's got the rum?

[kadypants]

Loving reading your trippie! Its making me so excited for our visit in a few weeks time!

[Beaker7929]

Originally Posted by kadypants

Loving reading your trippie! Its making me so excited for our visit in a few weeks time!

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Ah so glad you're enjoying it, you're going to have a great time, I'm jealous!

[penguin19]

Great report! Really enjoying it

[Beaker7929]

Originally Posted by penguin19

Great report! Really enjoying it

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Thank you! Just 2 more days to write up

[jandlsmum]

Thank you for sharing and I am loving the look of them cocktails

[Loopylooloo]

You were very brave on TOT! I havent faced it yet but have promised kids I will do it this year. I am glad you enjoyed the star wars show, I am eagerly awaiting to see if they are on when we go to Orlando in April, but no times added yet... will be gutted if its not on while we are there!
A great day and a better dinner!

[candycat75]

Love this report really makes me want to go back to dlp.

[Beaker7929]

Originally Posted by jandlsmum

Thank you for sharing and I am loving the look of them cocktails

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The cocktails were sooooo yummy!

[Beaker7929]

Originally Posted by Loopylooloo

You were very brave on TOT! I havent faced it yet but have promised kids I will do it this year.

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I would say, do it, it's fine once you've done it...but it's not, I still hate it