Toy Story 3 Plot: Woody, Buzz and All
Discover That
Daycare is a Nightmare

The first scenes of Toy Story 3 plot open with an exciting train chase. Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead play as One-Eyed Bart and One-Eyed Betty, and they are robbing a train. Woody is trying to put a stop to it, but he's knocked off the back of the train. Jessie and Bullseye save Woody and they give chase but "One-Eyed Bart" blows up a train bridge in the distance. Bart and Betty make their escape when the three aliens drive up in a getaway car.

Woody tries to stop the train before it plunges off the broken bridge but fails. Jessie looks on, horrified as the train disappears from view. But the train is lifted back into the air by none other than Buzz Lightyear! 

Buzz has also destroyed the getaway car with his laser and they all corner Bart, Betty and the aliens. But Bart calls on Slinky the "force field dog" who encircles the group and puts up a force shield much like Violet does in The Incredibles.

Not to be outdone, Jessie calls out a supersonic yodel which unleashes Rex, the "force field-eating dinosaur" who bursts forth from the ground with ear-shattering roars.

But then everyone is distracted when the Evil Dr. Porkchop flies overhead in his enormous pig ship. Porkchop detonates a "Death by Monkeys" bomb that looks like a nuclear mushroom cloud full of the red monkeys that overtake everyone in their paths. Just as Porkchop is ready to annihilate Woody, Buzz and Jessie, the scene cuts to Andy's playroom, where he's playing make-believe. Andy's mom is recording everything on her video camera.

We get to see Andy grow up over the years, and all the games he plays with his toy friends who never leave his side.

All Grown Up Now

It's now many years later and Andy's grown into a young man, 17 years old and getting ready to head off to college in a few days. All his toys are together in his big wooden toy box, some having been sold off at yard sales like Wheezy, Bo Peep and Etch.

Andy's mom gets on his case about packing up and sorting all his stuff to put into the attic or the garbage. She goes around to Andy's little sister, Molly, and gives her a donation box to put her old toys in to take to Sunnyside Day Care. Molly tosses in her Barbie and several other toys and then goes on reading her Tween magazine.

Then his mom comes back into Andy's room asking what he wants to do with all his toys, suggesting he sell them on eBay or donate them to Sunnyside. He doesn't know, and calls all those old toys junk, that nobody would want them. His mother says either way, anything not donated or packed in the attic will get tossed out once he's gone.

So Andy gets out a plastic garbage bag and puts his toys inside. But he gets to Woody and Buzz and pauses. He decides to take Woody to college with him and puts him in the College box and he tosses Buzz into the bag. Everybody believes these toys are headed for the trash can.

In the Toy Story 3 plot, Andy gets to the hallway and pulls down the attic latter as Woody watches from the bedroom. He sighs with relief when he sees that his friends are destined for the attic, not the garbage heap. But from inside the bag, the rest of the gang don't know this.

Molly staggers out of her bedroom with her box of stuff to donate, and Andy helps take her box downstairs, leaving his bag of toys on the hallway floor. The attic latter folds itself up again, leaving the garbage bag by itself in the middle of the hallway.

Andy's mom comes along and thinks Andy's left his garbage bag, so she takes it out to the curb as the garbage truck is on its way. Woody sees the whole mistake and rushes outside to rescue his friends. But the rest of the toys manage to escape on their own and they sneak into the garage.

As the toys lament that they were tossed out as trash, Jessie sees the box destined for Sunnyside Daycare in the open hatchback of the car. Woody tries to explain to his friends that they were meant to go into the attic, but nobody believes him since they were called junk and put into a trash bag.

Just then, Andy's mom comes in and shuts the hatchback and starts the car, taking all of them to Sunnyside.

Sunnyside Daycare

Woody, Jessie, Buzz Lightyear and the rest of the gang arrive at Sunnyside Daycare and are taken to a room where lots of children are playing with their toys nicely. It looks like a dream place for a toy as they peek through the handle hole in the box. Then the kids go out for recess and Andy's toys fall out of the box on the table and on to the floor in front of all the Sunnyside toys.

The Sunnyside toys welcome Andy's toys to the daycare and they all introduce themselves; the leader in Toy Story 3 is a big pink teddy bear named Lotso Huggin' Bear, called Lotso for short.

Lotso takes Andy's toys on a tour of the facility, and they are introduced to Ken, who instantly falls in love with Barbie, as well as other characters like the formidable Big Baby. Lotso assigns them to the Caterpillar room and they await the children's return from recess.

So they part ways and Woody leaves alone. He has the challenge of leaving Sunnyside and manages to escape out of a bathroom window, then with an abandoned kite on the roof. But he falls down into a tree and his string gets caught in a branch and he's stuck there, hanging down over the sidewalk.

A little girl at Sunnyside named Bonnie is coming home with her mother when she bumps into Woody hanging there. Bonnie puts Woody into her backpack and takes him home with her.

In the meantime, back in the Caterpillar room, the children are getting ready to come in from their recess time and the toys are very excited about being played with again. They take their places around the room, but Buzz becomes suspicious when he sees the other resident toys cowering in fear and doing their best to hide.

The kids storm in like a herd of wild things and attack them in the Toy Story 3 plot: shoving pieces in noses and mouths, riding, licking and pounding them, bouncing on them, and poor Jessie's hair being used as a paintbrush! After Buzz was tossed on the top of a shelf he sees next door into the Butterfly room and notices the other group of children playing nicely with the toys over there.

At Bonnie's House

Woody gets to meet Bonnie's toys back at her house in the Toy Story 3 plot. There's Mr. Pricklepants the hedgehog, Trixie the Triceratops, Buttercup the unicorn, Dolly, Chuckles the Clown, and nice fat Totoro. They're a laid back friendly group, except for Mr. Pricklepants, but all Woody wants to do is get back home. The only problem is that he has no idea where he is.

When Woody explains to Bonnie's toys that he came from Sunnyside Daycare and that he escaped, they gasp in amazement. Nobody ever escapes from Sunnyside! They explain to him how bad Lotso is, and then take Woody to see Chuckles the Clown, who tells his story.

Chuckles is a sad looking clown who once belonged to a girl named Daisy, along with Lotso and Big Baby. The three of them did everything together, but Lotso was very special to Daisy.

One day the family took a drive and they stopped at a rest area. But after lunch, Daisy fell asleep and their parents buckled her into the car but forgot her three toys.

Lotso led the group back to Daisy's house eventually, however, he saw that he had been replaced by an identical Lotso Huggin' Bear. That changed Lotso and he became extremely bitter and angry. Taking Chuckles and Big Baby with him, they left, riding in the dark rain on the back of the Pizza Planet truck.

They were bumped off the truck in front of Sunnyside Daycare, where Lotso took over and made it into a prison. Chuckles got broken, and Bonnie found him and took him home, but the rest of the toys don't have a chance, especially the new ones.

Upon hearing this news, Woody knows he must go back to save his friends.

Toy Prison

Meanwhile, Buzz and the gang of Toy Story 3 are messed up from the day's inappropriate, rough play. He goes on a mission to find Lotso and switch to the more age-appropriate Butterfly room. Buzz finds Ken and follows him into the break room where he goes into a vending machine meets up with the rest of Lotso's gang as they gamble.

However, Buzz is caught spying and Lotso offers the room transfer only to him. Buzz refuses to go without the rest of his friends, so Lotso turns Buzz back into his Space Ranger demo mode. Buzz now becomes one of Lotso's soldiers, following his commands, and is set with the task of imprisoning his friends and guarding them overnight.

During the time Buzz was looking for Lotso, Mrs. Potatohead could see through her missing eye that Andy was looking for them and it was clear that he was intending to put them into the attic. Woody was right all along! The gang realize that they must escape Sunnyside and get back to Andy where they belong.

But before they could do a thing, Buzz, Lotso and his minions enter the Caterpillar room and imprison them all, with Buzz watching over them.

The following morning, Woody returns to Sunnyside Daycare by sneaking into Bonnie's backpack. He sees the horrors his friends go through in the Caterpillar room from a hiding place. Chatter Telephone rings him over and tells him he shouldn't have come back and that Woody and his friends are never getting out. But if they can get out, the garbage dumpster is the best way to escape.

Chatter Telephone then advises Woody by giving him a run-down of all the strategic obstacles he and the gang face as Woody plans their escape, from locked doors and patrolling trucks to the 8-foot high cinder block wall.

Chatter tells Woody that the most difficult obstacle to get past is the monkey guard - the eye in the sky who sees everything through security cameras placed in different areas throughout the facility. In the Toy Story 3 plot, nobody escapes the monkey so Woody's got to get rid of that monkey!

Woody reunites with the rest of his Toy Story 3 friends when the Caterpillar kids go outside for recess. He asks where Buzz is and they explain how Buzz was reset to his Space Ranger mode. They also admit to Woody that he was right about Andy still wanting them and they all want to get back to Andy. Woody is now committed to sticking together and he tells them of his plan to make an escape.

The Great Escape

That night, Mr. Potatohead gets out of his jail cell and provides a diversion while Slinky Dog helps Woody overtake the Monkey. Barbie convinces Ken to take her to his Dream House to get him out of the way. Mr. Potatohead is thrown back into the sand box outside and he tosses his eyes, nose, mouth, arms and legs outside a hole in the box.

Slinky Dog and Woody enter the security room and overtake the Monkey (a very SCARY monkey, in my opinion!)tying him up with tape and shoving him into a file cabinet. With the monkey out of the way, Woody grabs the set of keys.

Hamm and Rex pretend to fight as a diversion while Jessie and Bullseye throw a plastic bin over Buzz. She then slides an old leftover lunch box tortilla under the door to Potatohead's arms. Mr. Potatohead assembles himself onto the floppy tortilla and checks to make sure Lotso is sleeping. He then gives the OK to the rest that they can unlock the door and come outside.

In the meantime Barbie ties up Ken and "tortures" him by ripping his favorite outfits until he confesses how to set Buzz back to his original self. She gets the user manual and they hold down Buzz and try to reset him, but he goes into Spanish mode when Rex leaves his finger in the reset hole for too long.

They all manage to make it to the dumpster with a couple of close calls and have only minutes to spare before the dump truck arrives. Slinky Dog is about to have them cross from the chute to the other side of the open dumpster when Lotso appears.

The Toy Story 3 gang is surrounded by Lotso's minions and they see Chatter Telephone who says that Lotso had broken him into confessing. Since Woody knows of Lotso's past, he brings up Daisy and how Lotso lies to all of them. This enrages Big Baby who throws him into the dumpster and shuts the lid.

The garbage truck is almost there, so the toys must hurry! They almost reach the other side when one of the aliens gets stuck between the dumpster lid. As Woody comes back to lift the lid to set the alien free, Lotso grabs Woody's leg and drags him inside. The garbage truck arrives and the gang jumps on, trying to get Woody out as the dumpster is raised to be emptied into the truck. All of the Toy Story 3 toys fall inside.

At the Tri-County Dump

It's a rough and dangerous ride to the dump, but everyone manages to stay together. Buzz gets squished from an old TV, but that major bump turns him back to normal.

Once they're "dumped" the three aliens see a big machine with a claw in the distance an immediately run to it, much to Mrs. Potatohead's despair. But before anyone could go after them, a huge bulldozer pushes all of them onto a conveyor belt with garbage headed toward huge shredders.

All the Toy Story 3 gang manage to escape the shredders by grabbing onto metal objects and being whisked to the ceiling by magnets, and even Woody, with his kind heart, rescues Lotso at the very last moment. They drop back onto the shredded garbage conveyor belt but see that up ahead is a huge incinerator! All they can do now is run the opposite direction, but the belt is moving faster than they can run.

Lotso sees an emergency stop button at the top of the wall, and Woody manages to give him a leg up as he runs for his life. Woody pleads for Lotso to push the emergency button, but Lotso turns his back on them and disappears.

The Toy Story 3 gang are doomed. They stop running and sit together, all holding hands as they draw closer and closer to their fiery demise. We weep with them as the scene goes on moment by long moment.

Just as we're convinced that this is the end of the Toy Story 3 plot, they're scooped up by the giant crane, the claw digging into the garbage around them, taking them up and around to safety. As they're swung around, the claw stops in front of the driver's window where the three aliens are at the controls as they exclaim, "The Claawww!!"

In the meantime, as Lotso is sneaking off, one of the garbage men stops in his truck and scoops him up, remarking that he had one of these bears as a kid. He ties Lotso onto the grill of his garbage truck and takes off, sealing Lotso's fate.

The rest of the Toy Story 3 gang then see the garbage truck, driven by a grown Sid Phillips, that makes the rounds in front of Andy's house. They arrive just as Andy's stuffing the last box into his car. Before sneaking back into the house, they all hose themselves down after getting so dirty at the dump.

Sweet Goodbyes

In Andy's nearly empty room, the Toy Story 3 gang jump into a box labeled "Attic" and Woody heads for a college labeled box. Mrs. Potatohead also finally finds her missing eye.

As Woody witnesses a tearful goodbye between Andy and his mom, an idea strikes. While Andy says goodbye to their old dog Buster, Woody scribbles a note and puts it on the Attic box and climbs inside.

Andy drives the car and is looking for an address. He pulls up in front of Bonnie's house and introduces himself to the little girl and explains that he's going away and he needs somebody really special to play with his toys.

One by one he takes out each member of the Toy Story 3 gang. It is so touching and sweet as he introduces each one to Bonnie, so you must have your tissues out. Andy explains each toy's name and personality to Bonnie and how they mean a lot to him.

Little Bonnie then gets up and looks in the box to see if there are any more toys and she exclaims, "My cowboy!" Confused, Andy picks Woody up, wondering what he's doing in there. Bonnie reaches for Woody, but Andy pulls back, unsure. Then he tells Bonnie how he and Woody have been friends as long as he can remember. He hands over Woody to Bonnie and she takes him and hugs him tightly.

In one last symbolic gesture, Andy and Bonnie play with all the Toy Story 3 toys. Andy thanks them for such a wonderful life together. Bonnie waves Woody's hand goodbye and as Andy leaves, they all sit together on the front porch as he drives away in the distance, to start his new life at college.

The ending credits are nice if you can see them through your tears. It shows the Toy Story 3 toys and their new life together at Bonnie's house with her toys. Rex has made a friend in Trixie and the aliens perform in a play.

Back at Sunnyside, Ken and Barbie are the coolest, flirtiest new leaders and have turned the daycare into a fun, friendly, happy place. Emperor Zurg and the Army men join the Sunnyside gang. The last scenes show Buzz and Jessie dancing together to a Spanish version of "You've Got a Friend in Me." It is a fantastic way to end this touching, WONDERFUL movie.