We descended on Disney's Hollywood Studios after lunch, armed with our Fastpasses booked online the night before, along with a restaurant booking for Mama Melrose's Italian Restaurant for tea.
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| Hollywood Studios inc. me looking like I'm trying to pose for a magazine or something! God knows what I was up to lol |
Firstly, no one walks anywhere. I think a lot of it is down to how towns have been designed etc., and that there's often no pavements (sidewalks, sorry!) to walk on. But also, everything is so spread out, we went through many villages and towns that stretched on for miles, but were literally one long road, so if you wanted to get to the hairdressers at one end and the bank at the other end you would have to walk for miles, whereas our towns and villages are more compact and most amenities are in a small area that you can walk to easily. Also a lot of the residential areas are on estates with main roads between them and the shops etc. Then you think about how kids are picked up by the school bus at the end of the road, how your groceries are always from the supermarket (I don't recall seeing any small independent grocers/bakers/butchers etc), which you need to drive to etc., and you can see how walking has become an unusual occurance and everything is about the car. (As a disclaimer, I'm aware that not everywhere in the US is like this!).
I'm a big believer in exercise not working unless it becomes habit (and that's probably part of the reason I'm the size I am lol), and if people can't walk on a regular basis they're just not going to do it. I know there are other sports and forms of exercise, but walking is one of the biggies and what we were designed to do.
The other point is unsurprisingly the food. There is of course a generalisation that portion sizes are massive, and for the most part we found that to be true. Especially the unhealthy things! Pizza sizes for example, seem a size up, so a personal pizza over here would be four slices, over there it was six (and a lot bigger too!). We went to a fab restaurant in Universal Studios that had a starter of sushi rolls, which I ordered. If you've been to Yo Sushi! think the bigger sushi rolls they have there. I expected three, four maybe? I got nine!! And the last one had been given a tempura batter and fried. It was lovely (more on that restaurant later), but I actually couldn't eat more than a few forkfuls of my main meal as the starter had been so much. If I have any advice on the food in America, it would be to not bother with a starter!
On top of that, everything seemed to have tonnes of sugar in it. The bread had so much in (normal everyday white sliced, or even a wholemeal roll) that I could actually taste the sugar in it. Crisps, sauces, all manner of things, not just the cakes and biscuits etc that you would expect. So on top of all the extremely enticing sweet things on offer (whole rows in the freezer aisle of supermarkets dedicated to all kinds of wonderful ice cream for example), and shelves of cakes like this;
that the Americans have to try and resist, it's being hidden in all sorts of food that you wouldn't expect too. I think a sad testament to the problem is the amount of each Walgreens (large chemist chain) that is dedicated to Diabetes stuff.
One other thing that struck me; very very rarely did any of the kids meals we had come with any kind of vegetable. I think Toby had a corn-on-the-cob with his meal once, but that was pretty much it. Now, if your kids are like mine, the peas, beans or sweetcorn that comes with most child meals over here either gets ignored, or is only consumed with a bribe that they can have pudding if they eat their veg, BUT it's there, on every plate, it's part of our children's idea of what a meal is. If American kids grow up without that it's no wonder they find it hard later in life to introduce healthy food.
Of course not all Americans are like this, not all Americans eat out all the time and I'm sure have lots of wonderful healthy food at home, I'm not for a minute suggesting this is the case everywhere. I'm also not judging - look at me! I'm hardly preaching from an ivory tower! But what I'm trying to say is that it's very easy to see how the obesity problem has grown in the US, and I'm sure, as it seems to be, it'll be making inroads here too.
Anyway, I digress! Let's get back to the perfect world of Disney....
We started off with The Great Movie Ride, which I remembered a lot from when I went to Florida when I was 16 (some 25 years ago!). I remembered it had live action bits, and I remember something a bit scary to do with the Alien film, so we agreed beforehand that we wouldn't make Toby do the ride (sensitive soul that he is (even more than we thought as we were to find out later!)).
I went on with Dad, and Dan and Ollie went on afterwards. It was pretty much as I remember it, and wasn't especially thrilling when you already knew what was going to happen! I should imagine the first time you do the ride it's quite cool, but once you've done it it rather loses its appeal. Dan and Ollie enjoyed though I think.
Then we went into the Star Wars area of the park, and to the ride "Star Tours". I absolutely LOVED this ride, which we all went on, however we found out something new - Toby is scared of simulators. He's adamant he's told us this before, but I don't remember him saying anything. As we were all going on the ride though it was too late for him to opt out, so he had to do it with us. I don't want to go into too much detail about the rides here because I know there's a few people reading this who are going to Orlando soon and I don't want to ruin any surprises! But to say it's a really good Star Wars themed simulator isn't letting any cats out of the bag. It's a definite for any Star Wars fan, but also for any general ride fan too.
You exit the ride into the gift shop (as you do with most rides in all the parks - it's all about the cash at the end of the day!), which is cleverly moulded to look like a building on Tatoonie:
and I do feel that this is one thing that Disney do particularly well. There's a high level of detail too, as well as the overall feeling. I do feel it's one thing that Disney still have the edge over the parks with.
We then walked into the Muppets area and decided to do the Muppets 3D show. Now, we were aware of Toby's dislike of anything 3D, but he insists he's fine as long as he doesn't wear the glasses! I think it's a bit sad really that he refuses to participate in a technology that can bring a lot of fun and laughs, but there's no persuading him. The Muppet Show was good, I think Dan especially enjoyed it, but the Muppets are quite a "boy from the 80s" thing iyswim!
We wandered round a bit more, then decided to do the Backlot Tour. I remember doing this here, and we'd also done the DLP version. Unsurprisingly, when we did the DLP version Toby hated it (he was only about four at the time though and stupidly I thought he might have gotten over it a bit!). He spent about an hour beforehand asking if we were going on it, telling us he didn't like it, checking that I'd look after him if something scary happened etc., etc. After having to listen to him going on about not like simulators, then not liking 3D things, we were getting a little tired of the negativity! We eventually persuaded him on after we checked (and double-checked) with the crew members which side of the tram was furthest away from the action! The tour is quite interesting, first of all you're shown how some of the special effects (like fire, and water explosions) are done (Toby doesn't like fire and loud noises we found out!), then you get on a little tram and go for a ride round the park, looking at old props and things from films. Then you go onto a (pretend obviously) set and they do some more special effects (yup, Toby didn't like them!), and that's it. I quite like it as it's interesting as well as having a bit of "wow" factor.
We then went for tea at Mama Melrose's. I was a bit peeved as we were made to wait with a buzzer even though we'd booked. We went for a look round the Disney Christmas shop (groan) while we waited. The restaurant is very nice, with hundreds and hundreds of fairy lights on the ceiling, which appealed to me!
The food was also very nice, good quality and very tasty (although I can't actually remember what I had lol), but we were a little shocked by the bill at the end! (I think it was about £150 for the five of us, I don't think we had starters, I think we had puddings (at least I remember the kids did), and I think Dan might have had a beer, but no other alcoholic drinks). In general we found eating out in the US to be good value. I wouldn't go quite as far as "cheap" unless you're talking about the real fast food places, especially as you need to add at 15-20% tip to every meal for your waiter/waitress. But generally speaking food was good, and a little less than what you'd pay over here. There were quite a few times that we had an excellent meal for the same price as an average meal here as well though, iyswim.
After dinner we had booked to see the Fantasia show, but we were all tired and none of us were that interested! We wandered round a bit more, and came across the Rockin' Rollercoaster (the Aerosmith themed one), which Dan and Ollie decided to do. They absolutely LOVED this ride, came out laughing their heads off and Ollie talked about nothing else for days! I don't know much about it, other than it's almost completely dark inside, you start off really fast and there are a number of inversions! I kinda wish I had gone on it too, but hey, there's always next time!
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