Hollywood Studios Park and Fantasmic

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4.15pm and we are off to the Hollywood Studios Park for dinner and then we plan to watch the Fantasmic Show.
Dinner is booked at Hollywood and Vine and we arrived late. It wasn't our fault, the transport took longer to arrive than we thought it would and it took longer to actually get to the park than we thought. Our dinner reservation was for 4.45 and when we arrive 30 mins late we find out that our tickets for tonights Fantasmic show and our dinner reservations have been cancelled. Not Happy Jan. The seater at Hollywood and Vine finds us a table, so we are seated for dinner, then our server finds us tickets for the show, so we are all set. Dinner is pretty ordinary, the choices and types of food in the buffet that is are pretty ordinary, also the service left a lot to be desired. Oh well, they can't all be fabulous. Can They? I suppose that these types of meals do suit some people, unfortunately just not us.
Dinner finished and we head outside the restauraunt to see what we can do to fill in a couple of hours before we have to present for Fantasmic.
The Hollywood Studios park map tells us that the Studio Backlot tour runs every 35 mins and is in the Streets of America park area. We head there and join the queue. It doesn't take too long to make it into the first part of the tour which is a demonstration of special and physical effects on water. Short show, over and done and we head to the transport which take us around the Hollywood Studio's backlots. The transport is actually a series of open air trolleys attached together at intervals that form together to make an open-air type train. It takes us about 20 mins to make our way around the backlots and I must say it wasn't really what I had expected (now in hindsight having also done the Universal Studio's backlot tour, I would skip this one if I ever went again).
From there we take a walk around The Streets of America, down Commissary Lane, through Pixar Place, Mickey Ave, Animation Courtyard and down Sunset Boulevard. Whilst walking down Sunset Boulevard we stop to queue for some cold drinks for the show and find ourselves in a queue for a cart that sells Turkey Legs. These are hugely popular in Disney and are much like a Chicken Drumstick only much much bigger (more like 3/4 of a chicken size). People buy these and chomp on them like they would a chicken drumstick. No we didn't try one, but it was fun watching other try to get their mouths around them!
Okay it's after 7 and Fantasmic starts at 8.30 so we find our way to the Preferred Seating entrance and follow the crowd to the seating.
Once we find a seat, its still another hour and 15 mins until the show starts so we wait and watch the crowds come. The Hollywood Hills Amphitheater seats 6900 people and has room for another 2000 - 3000 to stand, so at capcity it caters for nearly 10,000 people. I can tell you that every one of those 6900 seats were taken for the performance we watched. It was a long wait, Jnr Chicken surprised us all by coping extremely well with the wait, but it was most definitely worth it. It was also worth it to get 1 of the 500 preferred seating seats as well, as we only needed to complete with 497 other people instead of 6400 other people. Of course, once the show is over (lasts 22 mins) you still need to exit with all the people in the ampitheatre, and you need to compete to get a spot on a bus to back to your accomodation, but we made it and it was a worthwhile experience.

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