Star Wars Weekends

Our weekend arrival day was Sunday.  We're a family of 4; 2 children ages 5 & 7 and our goal were character autographs, celebrity parade and the Jedi Training Academy (JTA).  We arrived just before rope drop and barely had time to see the stormtroopers on the roof as they were waving us in with their guns.  After reading some of the earlier weekend 1 reports I decided to grab the kids and head straight for the Sounds Dangerous stage where they were going to have fast passes(FP's) for the JTA.  DH had gone in the opposite direction for TSM FP's.  I was in line by 9:04 AM and ended up being in the 4:15 time slot already!  Funny how many men were in line frantically calling their wives to hurry up and get the kids to them before they got to the front of the line!  It was insisted that the kids must be present in order to get the fast pass and I had no idea it was sooo popular; it looked worse than the TSM line!  But it was also soo worth it! More on that later...

After retrieving the JTA FP's we met up with DH by the Backlot Tour where he was already in the Darth Vader line for us after he got FP's for TSM.  Probably spent 20 minutes in line for him, and it was fun watching him pose with the public.  We definitely made use of the photopass photographers for him and all the characters.  Highly recommend getting the photo CD for this event.  We already planned on coming for wknd 3 for the 2nd day and so we mostly stayed on the "dark force" side.  We learned to time trying to get in line for the character we wanted by asking the CM's what time they were due and jumping into the line 10 minutes before it would show up and the other switch off.  Plan on spending 20-30 minutes in line per character.  Roaming characters can also be hard to stop and get to pose much less get an autograph for you but if you do things like shriek and run (my son did that when he saw Aurra Sing) that catches their attention and then they'll actually chase you, which is exactly what she did!

Lines were already in place for the parade by 11:00; we squeezed a spot near the America Idol stage.  Extremely hot and humid, plan on a lot of water!  Lines for lunch were long even at 2:00 at the Pizza Planet, seats upstairs were full so we sat on the ledges outside.

JTA- what makes it different at this particular event?  Ventress and Ahsoka helps out!  It's double the kids; 1st set of kids fight Darth Vader on stage, 2nd set on the floor against Ventress and Ahsoka helps the Padawan fight against her.  Ventress stays in character and is quite graceful with her Sith lightsaber moves.  In the end, the kids each receive a star wars figure toy along with their certificate.  The kids LOVED IT!

Early dinner but kids and I were too tired for the Hoopla event.  Decided to ride Star Tours and use our FP's for TSM and then called it a day.