Chapter 42
Disney Meets Bob Ross

(Originally posted September 17, 2012)

There wasn’t much of a line for The Great Movie Ride, though in my experience it’s never exactly been a walk-on.

We went in the entrance to the building and were able to skip through the whole first room straight into the movie theatre room.

Once in the room playing the movie trailers, we made it through probably three or four of them before it was time for us to board our vehicular transport into the movies! There’s something about The Great Movie Ride that I’ve always loved. Partly, I think I remember my first experiences with it when I was eight and everything seemed so grand. The cowboy taking over the vehicle and us being saved a few scenes later by our Indiana Jones-esque cast member were such surprising turns on my first ride-thru. Since then, the ride has gotten a little worn down, though not particularly stale in my opinion. All the audioanimatronics are still really impressive. Our cast members, while obviously trying, were a bit stagnant with their delivery, but all in all I still love the ride. Tracy always seems to enjoy it too, though her eyelids definitely started drooping right around Casablanca as they always do. I think she was partially awake for some of the Wizard of Oz scene this time, which may have been a first, but she’s CERTAINLY never seen the movie montage at the end of the ride.

After we pulled back into the unloading area and I woke Tracy from her nap, we journeyed back out into the sunlight. We took a brief trip toward the Sunset Boulevard side of the park.

Rather than heading too far in that direction, though, we just stopped at Starring Rolls Café for a few minutes. We admired the Butterfinger Cupcake, but we were still way too full to try it. We decided to put that snack off till our next trip, and instead just got some water to replenish ourselves while we sat and rested for a few minutes.

We decided to head toward the Animation building next.

It’s been years since I’ve done the full Magic of Disney Animation tour, and I would like to do it again someday, but on this day we cut through the building and got in line for the Animation Academy.

We discovered Animation Academy in Disneyland totally on a whim. Part of our Costco Travel package there included priority seating to a few of the attractions in DCA, and Animation Academy was one of those. I can honestly say it was one of the most pleasant surprises of our entire trip! It’s so much fun to take some time out from the typical “day at a theme park” and get to spend some time being taught to draw a Disney character by actual animators! We loved it and put it on our must-do list for this trip to the Studios.

What we weren’t counting on was how incredibly popular this attraction would be. We arrived about 15 minutes before the next lesson would begin and were already outside of the waiting area of people who were guaranteed a spot. We were told there was a decent chance we’d be able to make it in anyway as long as we were okay drawing on lap boards, so we decided to chance it. Luckily for us, we were the last family admitted into the room. When we first entered, we grabbed our lap boards and took a seat in the back corner of the room. Then, quite suddenly, a family with a young kid who must not have known what exactly they were in line for had to leave because the child wasn’t happy. They abandoned their drawing desks and we quickly moved in to take their places.

It was decided that we would draw Dopey because he was one of the characters that no one in the class had ever done before. Following along with our instructor, Tracy and I both did pretty decently, though it’s always a little hard moving at the quick pace required of the half-hour time slots. Here are our finished products.

The Animation Academy both at Disneyland and at WDW were so inspiring for us that we both often enjoy killing some spare time now by finding instructions to draw various Disney characters online and trying our hands at them. Neither of us are going to be future Disney artists by any means, but we always are able to do a decent job.

Here’s Tracy’s Bambi.

And here’s my Dumbo.

After exiting the Animation Building, we made our way in earnest down Sunset Boulevard.

You may have noticed that on this day we had treated that side of the park as though it didn’t really exist. While both of us are fans of both The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, we weren’t exactly sure that they were the best ideas for us on this trip. I hadn’t felt well on Expedition Everest so I wasn’t sure another roller coaster was going to be any better for me, plus Tracy always gets a little injured on that ride. Despite keeping her head back against the headrest, she always manages to bounce around a lot, so she usually comes off Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster with a headache and a sore neck. Tracy also isn’t a fan of the dropping feeling in your stomach on rides like Tower of Terror, and I wasn’t really attached to riding that one on this trip either. All in all, it made our wait times in the Studios a lot less intense to skip these E-Tickets, but it also meant we were basically out of things to do in the park by mid-afternoon. We still wanted to go back there just for the photo opportunities and to look around. We got some good Photopass pictures in front of the Tower of Terror.

It’s always fun to walk past the entrance to Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster as it’s very well-themed.

What DID interest us down Sunset Boulevard were all the shops.

We stopped into several of them, at first just planning on looking around. Then we found some things we wanted to buy. First off, I saw this mug for the first and only time at one of the Studios shops and knew I had to have it (unfortunately mine is in storage, so here’s a picture from Disney Food Blog until I can replace it with a picture of mine after the move is complete).

The other item we found and couldn’t imagine not getting was the license plate frame we have on our new car. (In cases you missed the “real-life” update that included photos of said license plate frame, here is a link to it).

While we were waiting for the paperwork to be ready to send our purchases back to our hotel, we noticed a few Disney trivia questions printed on a sheet at the cash registers. We knew all the answers and were given more stickers as prizes.

Our shopping done for now, we made our way back outside and kept meandering down Sunset. I made Tracy pose with these suitcases because we’ll be going down Route 66 to California soon.