World’s Largest Toy Museum?

In Branson, Missouri is a building claiming to be the World’s Largest Toy Museum. I do not know if this is truly accurate, but after visiting, I can say this place certainly is the largest collection of toys I am aware of 😉

https://worldslargesttoymuseum.com

The facility opened around 2001 (it is unclear on the website when the actual year was, only that they moved to Branson that year). It was initially one building, then in 2015, they expanded in to the building next door. That building also has a lower floor accessible from the outside, so I refer to it as the third building.

As I go to write this, I now see there is the original building – World’s Largest Toy Musem – and the second building is called The Memory Barn. This explains the charge on my credit card I was trying to figure out.

My gallery now has aver 500 photos taken in the museum — and that barely (BARELY) scratches the surface of what all is in these three buildings. While I was there, I also took over 100 VR360 photos, which I will eventually get posted to a gallery on the Branson in VR Facebook group.

You can check out my photos here:

http://misc.disneyfans.com/OtherPlaces/Missouri/Branson/Branson2024/ToyMuseum/index.html

There are other things new to the Branson section, so explore a bit if you are Branson-curious.

Until next time…

Silver Dollar City Harvest Festival photos

My Theme Parks gallery now has over 2500 photos taken at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri. The most recent batch features their Harvest Festival, featuring thousands of pumpkins, special lighting, and more.

You can find these photos here:

http://themeparks.disneyfans.com

I did a bit more sorting to the photos as I learn the layout of this park. I still have virtually no understanding of where one “area” ends and another begins, beyond the obvious areas like “Grand Exposition” (which has a big sign as you enter it), “Fire District” (also a sign) and now “Wilson Farms” (another sign).

Eventually, I’d like to group all the photos by the area they are in. According to the map…

…it looks like I have much to learn:

  1. Fire District
  2. Grand Exposition
  3. Homestead Ridge
  4. Hugo’s Hill Street
  5. Main Street
  6. Midtown
  7. Rivertown
  8. Valley Road
  9. Wilson’s Farm

Nine areas shouldn’t be too difficult to learn, should it? But at Silver Dollar City, most of the areas look like Frontierland to me, and I have yet to “learn” the subtle differences so I can recognize one western building selling corn dogs form another western building selling corn dogs.

Everybody needs a hobby…

Universal-SeaWorld gallery updated – over 49,000 photos.

New photos added to the Universal Studios/SeaWorld gallery. This includes Universal Orlando Resort, SeaWorld, SeaWorld’s Howl-O-Scream event, and photos from my first-ever visit to the amazing Discovery Cove.

http://us-sw.disneyfans.com

This brings the total to over 49,000 images, going back to 1996.

“No. Never faster. Painfully slow.”

Years ago, I had a brief online exchange with someone about the use of Walt Disney World busses. At the time, they had spent a decade collecting statistics, riding bus routes, and researching. They knew the average times between buses at different times of day, and during different times of year.

My question was simple… Are busses ever a faster option?

The title of this post is what their response was.

No. Never Faster. Painfully slow.

Now, when it comes to staying offsite with a car versus staying onsite and using buses, I can personally say that my “research” agrees. I was able to leave my offsite hotel (the cheap kind, where you open a door and walk ten feet to your car, not the expensive kind where you might have a ten minute walk to the parking lot) and be at the front gate of all the parks except Magic Kingdom before my onsite friends could make it using the busses. Magic Kingdom is a special exception since you can drive to the parking lot quickly, but then there is still that lengthy journey to the park itself via monorail or ferryboat… while onsite buses can drop off near the park entrance.

Because of this, I had never stayed “on site” during any Walt Disney World trips. Amusingly, even Disneyland Resort has a longer walk for guests staying at the official Disneyland Hotel west of the park compared to off-site guests who stay at off-site hotels east of the park on S. Harbor Blvd. There are a number of hotels on that side that have a much shorter walk to the Esplanade between Disneyland and Disney California Adventure.

When it comes to official Disney hotels, you may “get what you pay for” in hotel amenities, but one of them isn’t “time to get to the park.” 😉

That was then…

That is how things were nearly twenty years ago when I was visiting Orlando for Epcot’s 25th Anniversary. Since then, a few things have changed… Back then, I would have recommended renting a car even if staying on-site to get the benefit of being “closer” to the parks (depending on where your hotel was) and bypassing the slowness of the bus system. But, these days, Disney charges for parking at the hotels and, if you didn’t have an annual pass that includes park parking, you’d be paying two parking fee each day you drove to the parks.

Disney must really want you to ride their busses.

This is now…

Since then, some things have changed for the better. Today, the Skyliner connects several hotels to Disney Hollywood Studios and Epcot. This gives those hotels an unbeatable advantage to anyone staying offsite and driving in.

Art of Animation/Pop Century Skyliner station, 2024.

With today’s annual pass price (that includes theme park parking) being so high, it is no longer a better value to buy an annual pass to take one week-long trip (when you first activate the pass) then a second one a year later just before the pass expires. Those “no brainer, buy a pass” days seem long gone. Thus, driving in by car now requires paying $30 to park at a theme park! That adds an extra $210 to a weeklong visit.

But today we have Lyft and Uber and other ride sharing services. And you can buy a lot of short rides for $210.

I’ll put together a part 2, discussing visiting Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando Resort and Disneyland without a car, and without riding buses.

Until then…

SeaWorld celebrates 60 years…

…and I had no idea until I visited and saw it on some banners.

SeaWorld 60th anniversary.

60th anniversary is a bit of a cheat. While the original SeaWorld in San Diego did open in 1964 (making the SeaWorld brand 60 years old), the Orlando park did not open until 1973. Happy 51st anniversary, SeaWorld Orlando!

I suppose this is similar to how Walt Disney World celebrated “100 years” in 2001, based on the birth year of Walt Disney, then later celebrated the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World.

SeaWorld 60th sign.

You will notice that, unlike the SeaWorld of the past, this SeaWorld does not seem to promote its animal shows at all — just roller coasters and their water/flume ride. More on this later…

SeaWorld entrance plaza sign.

There were some photo signs around the park with specific dates, such as this one about their Sky Tower, which I assume opened in 1975.

There were several others I spotted, but the one I think I liked the most was about their classic water ski show. I remember watching some version of that in the pre-Epcot era of Orlando:

In front of Seafire Grill (well, outside the bar area for it) was this photo, which I suppose is showing what that building used to look like. I have no memories of it from my childhood visits, but it certainly gave me tiki vibes.

There were even tributes to the more recent history of the park during its years under Anheuser-Busch ownership. Though this sign made me sad, because it reminded me I have to pay for beer at this park now.

Speaking of adult beverages, of course there was a specialty drink with a special souvenir cup.

The blue clam shell looking thing on the top of the straw was some kind of dissolving glitter thing that made the cocktail sparkle.

I expect there was more going on throughout the park, but those were the main things I noticed. Unlike Disney, SeaWorld is not set up to have anniversary parades and fireworks and such. I bet their 60th anniversary doesn’t even last 18 months 😉

But I digress… A quick recap of the history of SeaWorld, taken from the always-accurate Wikipedia entry:

  • 1964 – SeaWorld San Diego opens.
  • 1973 – SeaWorld Orlando opens.
  • 1976 – SeaWorld parks sold to Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. (I know nothing of this, but apparently HBJ owned Cypress Gardens near Orlando which I knew of, but never visited before it closed.)
  • 1978 – SeaWorld San Antonio opens. I grew up in Texas and never visited this park. I did, however, visit the very first Six Flags over Texas near Dallas, and frequented my local Houston park, Astroworld, which became owned by Six Flags.
  • 1987 – There was a hostile takeover attempt!
  • 1989 – SeaWorld sold to Anheuser-Busch, maker of Budweiser. Because, reasons. (Busch Gardens and many smaller complexes were operated by the beer company. In Houston, there was a small and short-lived Busch park, though I only remember us visiting it to see a trained bird show. The park side may have been gone by then.)
  • 2008 – Anheuser-Busch sold to Belgian-Brazilian brewer InBev.
  • 2009 – InBev, who was not in the entertainment business, sold the parks to Blackstone Group. They renamed to SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment.
  • 2024 – Then they renamed to United Parks & Resorts Inc.

Which brings us to today where it seems clear the park is moving away from the SeaWorld branding by removing it from the company name, and deemphasizing animal shows in their 60th marketing.

With all the roller coasters the park has been adding — two have opened since I returned to visiting the park in 2020 — I am going to randomly predict that the future of SeaWorld will be a different name, and the removal of the “trained animal shows.” We have already learned that the orcas will not be replaced, so that will leave only the Sea Lion and Otter show and the Dolphin Encounter show.

Perhaps after a few more roller coasters, it will simply be a water-themed coaster park where all the rides feature aquariums and are named after sea life.

We shall sea. Until then, you can browse thousands of my SeaWorld photos taken during my digital camera-era visits:

http://us-sw.disneyfans.com/SeaWorldOrlando/index.html

I will have a bunch more from 2024 added as soon as I have time to sort them and regenerate/upload the gallery.

To be continued…

Discovery Cove, Howl-O-Scream, Dreamworks Land, and more…

Over the next few weeks I will be working on an update to the photo galleries. Over 6200 photos will be added (yes, it they include plenty of photos of walls and trash cans and other details I found interesting).

I also want to write up thoughts on Discovery Cove (spoiler: probably my favorite Orlando thing now, if the price is right for a visit–and that comes from someone who hates getting in public pools or water parks).

There were some wonderful team members, cast members, and ambassadors encountered along the way, too, so some shout-outs to them too (such as Biebs at Duff Brewery, who, along with John, seem to be there every time we visit).

More to come…

Howard Johnson’s Mattercam

Last year I stumbled upon this YouTube video where a family photo bombs the Mattercam:

The Mattercam is a camera on the top of the Howard Johnson’s hotel next to Disneyland. “Back in the day” it provided a static image of the Matterhorn that would refresh from time to time. Today, it is a live video feed, and the camera pans to different locations every few minutes.

As of this writing (9/23/2022), here are the fourteen locations the camera will cycle, in this order:

  1. Matterhorn
  2. Space Mountain
  3. DCA Overview
  4. Mickey’s Fun Wheel
  5. Incredicoaster –
  6. Carsland –
  7. Guardians of the Galaxy –
  8. Grand Californian
  9. Monorail
  10. Esplanade
  11. Check-In Spot
  12. Disneyland Overview
  13. Bobsled Zoom
  14. Submarines

The Walt’s Chili Bowl family chose the “Check-In Spot” for their location. I thought it might be fun to pinpoint all the locations the Mattercam points to which could also offer photo bombing opportunities.

Unfortunately, I live in Iowa, so running down to the Disneyland Resort Area is not something I can easily do.

Any locals out there care to take this on?

New Lost Island photos in the Theme Parks gallery

My Theme Parks photo gallery has been updated with new photos from Lost Island Themepark in Iowa. Check them out here:

http://themeparks.disneyfans.com/

I also have nearly 100 VR360 photos/videos to process and get posted. The photos will end up at my Park Hopping in VR Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/parkhoppinginvr/

…and the videos will be shared to my Park Hopping in VR YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@ParkHoppingInVR

I will post an announcement here or on my DisneyFans/Park Hopping Facebook Page when these are posted.

https://www.facebook.com/@disneyfanscom

More to come…

Disneyland VR360 photos from 2017

When I bought my first digital camera in 1996, I was the only person I knew that had a digital camera. I had to explain it as a “computer camera” when folks asked what it was. No one knew the term “digital camera” yet.

Even when I’d visit Disneyland, no one had them. You’d see the occasional camcorder or film camera, but no one was snapping away digital … yet. That changed quickly.

Later, I took a 3-D camcorder attachment on a trip, recording interlaced 3-D to Digital8 video tapes.

Around 2005, I took a “one shot panorama” camera gadget to the parks. You would point the camera up, where it would take a photo of the bottom of a half mirror ball. Software would later turn that in to a panorama with limited up/down viewing. This was the predecessor to the 360 cameras we have today.

When I “returned” to Disneyland in 2017, I took my RICOH Theta VR360 camera with me. I have never shared any of these photos before (there really wasn’t an easy way to share them back then), but I have started uploading them to my “Park Hopping in VR” YouTube group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/@parkhoppinginvr

Stop by and see opening year of Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout in VR.

Experience A Bug’s Land in VR.

Be amazed at the incredible quality of a 2017 VR camera 😉

Or not. But they are still fun to look at.

Drop by and if you also do VR photography, feel free to share some of your theme park VR photos.

More to come. So much more…