Splash had a 101 party today. It was great. We went 101 5 minutes after opening, and were down for 2 hours. Then a couple of hours after we reopened, we went down again for another hour. Yaaaaaay for sitting around all day! Apparently Paris Hilton was in the park, and visited Thunder while we were down the second time.

Toy Story Midway Mania cast previews were this weekend! I thought I wasn't gonna get to go because I was working the whole time, but I found out they extended the hours today, so I stopped by after work! Here's my thoughts... I can't say much about the queue because the wait was 2-3 hours, so I opted for the single-rider line (only 45 minutes or so wait there!). This looks like it'll be one to do FastPass on for quite awhile until the newness wears off, as it's rather slow-loading (they can load I think 3 cars at a time, 4 people per car, and it takes a good minute or more to get everyone in and out). What I did see of the queue: it's SPARSE. It was pretty much all painted walls. It looks VERY cheap. Bleh. In fact, that can be used to describe most of the decorating throughout the building. The theming actually on the ride wasn't that great, either - it felt rather like an assembly line, with nothing to disguise the ride path or upcoming game areas. The cars are interesting - there's four people in each car - two to a seat, with the seats back-to-back (and thus the game screens on both sides of the track). They spin and jerk around a lot, so it made for more whipping around than was probably necessary.

As for the gameplay itself... the pull-string trigger actually works better than I thought it would. It's pretty easy to use. However, I see those being a big issue down the line - with that many people yanking on them day in and day out, they're going to take quite a bit of abuse. It'll be interesting to see, five years down the line, how many problems they have with guns that don't work right. The games are all pretty basic target games, so even though the theming of each of the five games is different, it sorta feels repetitive after awhile. It takes probably a good 5 minutes to get through the whole thing. And there is a bit of effects with the games, but they feel a bit like they were just tacked on (like a lot of the gags in the 3-D movies). The 3-D works reasonably well, although it's nothing to write home about. The ride probably wouldn't be lacking if it was just normal screens.

The unload area seemed to take a long time. From the time we finished the last game to the time we actually unloaded was probably a good 3 minutes at least. I don't know how much of that was because the CMs themselves are still learning the attraction and getting up to speed and how much of it was poor ride design. And my score: 86,000. Pretty modest, really. At the end they show the day's top 3 scores and the month's best, all hovering in the 270,000-300,000 area.

Bottom line: it's rather like Buzz Lightyear on speed with less theming. If you love the gameplay on Buzz, you'll probably really love TSM. It's a lot of fun from a gameplay standpoint, but the attraction as a whole was quite disappointing.

I ended up going to Studios for a bit on Monday night to photograph Fantasmic. It was fun to try out my 400mm at a Disney park finally! Got some nifty closeups. It was also a dragon-less show. I'd never seen one of those before, in all the bajillion times I've seen Fantasmic at both parks. But really, it's done very well. If you didn't know there was supposed to be a big dragon there, you'd probably never know the difference. Pics from the night are up here!

Grey's this week? Addison Montgomery, how are you so awesome? Seriously.

Operation "Beat LEGO Star Wars So I Can Buy LEGO Indiana Jones Next Month With A Clear Conscience" progresses! I'm at 40% now after 25 hours of gameplay. I've beaten everything on story mode, and I'm going through everything in free play mode now to get all the True Jedis and red bricks and minikits. I bought Ghost Yoda, and he kicks ass. Ghost Ben Kenobi is up next, because Yoda is too damn slow when he walks and that annoys me. :P

And speaking of things Indy... AFHLALKGJKSLHK JUST OVER TWO WEEKS TO GO. Seriously. I'm SO psyched. I keep hoping to see Downtown Disney AMC theater announce a midnight showing, but they haven't done it yet. It's SO weird to see Indy tie-ins being pushed everywhere now. And new theatrical trailer out!! LOVE it. And you can pre-order the soundtrack at Amazon for $10. I already did! Is it May 22 yet?