But first, Star Tours had a short standby queue, so we did that again - the randomised storyline makes it a lot more re-rideable. Due to them having managed to synchronise 3 of their simulators, it meant there were three lots of people exiting the ride at the same time. Since each holds about 40 people, that's a lot to descend a relatively narrow ramp into a relatively small and already busy gift shop!
We still had time to kill before our first FastPass and Voyage of the Little Mermaid was about to start so we caught that - it was a strange amalgamation of 4D show, laser show, and live-action. Lasers drew shapes on the walls, it sometimes rained on us for no apparent reason, and puppeteers in black costumes moved brightly coloured sea creatures under UV lights that made them glow. It was nicely done but seemed a little dated.
In the following scene, Ariel comes on, though her mic was very low so we couldn't hear much of what she was saying, until she kicks into Part of Your World. Cue a large glowing-eyed animatronic Ursula, giving the full Wicked Witch act. Then for some reason we cut right through the rest of the story and almost immediately end up with her falling in love, losing the flippers and heading off into the sunset. It was like someone had thought "oh no, this is only meant to be 15 minutes long, and I've spent 10 of them on 2 songs!" and panicked.
Toy Story Midway Mania had a very nicely-themed queue, with lots of fun interactive elements and characters like Etch. This would be necessary if you were in the standby queue, which was showing 70 minutes during our visit. Thankfully the FastPass line was fast indeed, and we breezed past everybody. At the confirmation scan we were sent to the side through a gate that bumped us right to the front - apparently being a party of 2 helps you get to the front very quickly on that ride!
The ride itself was unusual - you have blasters stuck on the front of your car, like in the Buzz Lightyear ride at the Magic Kingdom. This time, depending on the game, when you fire it you shoot darts, balls or even custard pies out of it, on 3D screens depicting various target-based games. Apparently this is based on a Wii game that you can actually buy, though not having a Wii console meant I didn't really care. Tom beat me (somehow) though the people in the vehicle in front somehow managed to get double our scores!
Around the corner was the Magic of Animation area. There were queues for the various attractions inside (draw your own animation, character meet-and-greets) but they didn't really appeal anyway, so we popped into the theatre next door where a half live action, half animated show talked about character development, with the specific example of the dragon from Mulan. Now I haven't seen that film, but it was still interesting to see how the character design evolves during pre-production.
Our second FastPass was for the Lights Motors Action stunt show at the back of the park. This took place in a large arena, and we managed to get pretty good seats about 4 rows back from the front (though the family behind had a small child who kept kicking me in the back at random intervals by accident). The show itself was in a similar vein to the Indiana Jones stunt show we saw last week in the same park. The framing device is that a movie is being filmed, and so the "assistant director" talks us through what they do to get the shots they need - in this case for car chases and stunts involving vehicles. We saw some stunt formation driving (though it mostly appeared to be them doing doughnuts) and a high speed chase where the hero drives in reverse; they then revealed that they used a second car where the driver sits facing backwards to allow them to see what they're doing!
The finale of the show was big and bold, with a car and motorbike chase, a man on fire, vehicles jumping through buildings and a random jet ski for some reason. I suppose rule of cool applies here!
We did lunch at the Backlot Express counter-service. Tom was served almost immediately with a burger he seemed to enjoy. For some reason I'd picked chicken nuggets, which took quite a long time to appear, and the portion size wasn't exactly massive. Still, dessert was a lot better than the banana stuff I had last time we were eating here - the strawberry parfait had actual custard and actual strawberries!
From there we did our final FastPass, skipping a 50 minute standby queue to get straight onto Tower of Terror, still my favourite ride in the park. In fact, I liked it so much I bought a t-shirt in the gift shop.
Back at the resort we were planning to go to the pool, but I didn't feel like it so Tom went on his own while I rested. Our dinner reservation was at the Beach Club resort, so to get there we could either go back to Hollywood Studios and get the boat, or to Epcot and use the International Gateway exit. We opted for the latter. Epcot was busy as we passed through, with the locals out in force for the food & wine festival. Thankfully the International Gateway exit was pretty quiet, and we walked along the river and up to the Beach Club.
The restaurant for this evening was the Cape May Cafe, which is a seafood buffet. A very friendly lady took us to our table, and our waiter took a drinks order, at which point we attacked the buffet. I decided my first course should be seafood-based, so filled a plate with mussels, crab legs (which were enormous) and some potatoes. Back at the table I made an enormous mess trying to crack open the crab legs with the supplied nutcracker-type implements. It turns out that they can be bloody impossible to open. By the time I'd got some meat out, I had got food all over the table and myself. I managed about half the crab legs before I gave up and went to clean myself up in the toilets!
For second course I decided to go more conventional, so filled a plate with some rather delicious mashed potatoes, a chicken wing and a slice of freshly-carved beef rib. Now that was more like it! Leaving enough room for dessert meant I took two runs at the pudding counter. Boston Cream somethings were ok but the Lemon Chiffon cakes were better. What looked like a small bowl of fruit turned out to have a nice flan base below it, though I wasn't so keen on the flourless chocolate cake. I also raided the kids' buffet for cookies, though they weren't as good as the ones from the other night in the German biergarten. Finally, as a sort of palate cleanser, we both had a bowl of melon from the salad bar.
Suitably stuffed we waddled back to Epcot. There were no FastPasses available for anything we particularly wanted to do, so we decided to take a nice relaxed walk to The Sea pavilion, where Finding Nemo was a walk-on. We spent a nice few minutes looking around at the fish, followed by a quick bit of present shopping in Mouse Gear, then headed up to the World Showcase to find a spot for IllumiNations.
It was already pretty busy up there but we found a spot right at the front near the Norway pavilion. The show was brilliant as ever, only slightly spoiled by the woman next to me videoing it on her iPhone with the light on throughout, which seemed pretty pointless.
Now back at the hotel for the last night... probably ought to be packing. Our flight for tomorrow's been showing a delay and they've been moving our seats around, which is a bit annoying, but we'll see.
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