Disney World prohibits selfie sticks and tall stands

Ah, yes. It is time once again to revisit some theme park rules. Recently, I have seen a few posts from folks int he 360-video community about bringing those camera to a Disney park here in the U.S.A. Selfie sticks are banned at the Disney parks here, which makes taking 360 photos and videos a bit awkward due to the “giant thumb” problem when you try to handhold one of these cameras…

For example, here is a 2017 handheld shot from Disney’s California Adventure “Bug’s Land”:

Let’s see if I can show that as a 360 image:

Looking down in that image shows … I really need to stop biting my nails.

But I digress…

Cameras on sticks

In this modern world, folks wander around theme parks yakking away to their “camera on a stick” but if that stick is a selfie stick, they are not supposed to have it in the park.

Here is what Walt Disney World currently says about this:

  • Selfie sticks, hand-held extension poles for cameras or mobile devices, flags and banners are not allowed in any theme park or water park.
  • Tripods or monopod stands that cannot fit inside a standard backpack or that extend over 6’ (182 cm) are not allowed in theme parks, water parks, Disney Springs, or ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex.
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/park-rules/ as of 8/28/2026

The term “hand-held extension pole” likely comes from people arguing with them that their “camera on a stick” was not on a selfie stick because they were not using it to take selfies…

The more we try to work around the rules, the more rules we get. The system always fights back.

Break the rules without breaking the rules.

The easiest workaround to “break the rules without breaking the rules” is to bring in a monopod. A monopod is a one-legged tripod (ha) that extends just like a selfie stick. There was a time when I could bring in my full sized tripod into Disneyland for my camcorder, but as the park got more crowded, security started stopping me from using it. It would block the lanes, they said. Fair.

Back then, I switched to a monopod so I could still get a stable shot without blocking the lanes. I just had to keep holding my camera to keep it upright. Also fair.

A few years ago, I travelled to Disneyland with my 360 camera and knew to leave my selfie sticks behind. I did, however, bring in a monopod like this:

Hmm, I had no idea WordPress is now generating previews from Amazon links. In case you don’t see that, the photo is basically a huge selfie stick.

It was specifically allowed on the Disneyland website, after all.

Rules don’t matter.

Unfortunately, rules don’t matter. It only matters what the enforcers (bag check, security) think the rules are.

I tried to bring a monopod in, which was specifically listed as allowed (and within the length they allow), but bag check turned me down. Security agreed with them. After fifteen or so minutes of showing them their own webpage where it says I can bring it in, and them saying “but this is just a long selfie stick,” a lead (manager) finally came to my rescue and agreed I could bring it in.

But I did not bother to bring it the remaining days of my visit. Enjoying the park was more important to me than wasting time waiting for a manager each morning, in case they stopped me again.

Don’t expect. Prepare for rejection.

My advice, from someone who has been taking gear into Disney parks since I started going on my own in the 1990s is: Just because someone else tells you they got some item in “just fine” does not mean it will work for you.

People break rules and get away with it all the time.

As this post shows, even when you try to follow the rules, you can still get rejected.

Yes, you may be able to sneak in a selfie stick. The same visit my monopod was rejected I saw someone using a 9 foot Insta360 selfie stick inside the park!

You may be able to record rides and shows that tell you not to. Many people do. But you may be the one that gets caught and in trouble for doing so.

Just enjoy the parks. Follow the rules, and even then, understand you may still be told no.

Good luck!

360-degree photo update…

Some issues with the JAlbum photo gallery software I use have been resolved, and I am running some test code which appears to be working.

Three galleries now have 360-degree photos that let you look around, up and down, using your phone, tablet, or computer. I have no idea how you would view them in a VR helmet, but maybe that is also possible.

Atlas9 – Kansas City, Kansas

Over 100 360-degree images added to the gallery:

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/misc/OtherPlaces/Kansas/Atlas9/360/index.html

Adventureland – Altoona, Iowa

I took an early 360-degree camera with me to the park in 2016. Here is the first batch of photos (over 250 of them):

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/themeparks/AdventurelandParkIA/Adventureland2016/360/index.html

Of note, this weird two-lens camera got alot of curious looks (well, frankly, even in 2026 360-cameras still get curious looks, though many more people recognize what type of camera it is). I have a gallery of various park managers and staff posing with me in the camera. It was fun to look back on those. Everyone in those photos is ten years older today 😉

I have more, but they were done handheld. Cameras back then did not have all the gyroscope sensors in them, so if I try to view them, they are crooked. I need to take time to level all of them out, then I will have another batch to add to that gallery.

In 2018, Adventureland’s Iowa Cafe was redone into Doc and Leone’s. I captured its opening year in 360-degree as well, plus a few more images from Main Street. Only a few from this visit:

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/themeparks/AdventurelandParkIA/Adventureland2018/360/index.html

I will be going through my archives and finding more to add. I know I took some at Disneyland (2017-2018 era), and Walt Disney World (2018) as well as Universal Orlando (also 2018), though very few, and most probably are not good enough to share. But we’ll see.

Until then…

The $195 theme park meal…

YouTube just showed me a random video of someone walking around Epcot. One of the things he did was walk over to a restaurant in World Showcase, and show the sign.

$195.

For a meal in a theme park.

$195.

I am clearly not the demographic Disney is after…

360-degree photos being added to the galleries!

Huzzah! I just learned that the photo album software I use, JAlbum, supports 360-degree photos. I should really read the fine manual someday…

I can share all the 360-degree photos I have been taking in my albums. The first test was a set of images taken at Atlas9 in Kansas City, KS:

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/misc/OtherPlaces/Kansas/Atlas9/360/index.html

They even view on a phone just fine. In the past, the only place I shared them was in Facebook groups, and lots of folks do not use Facebook.

My history with 360…

As I repeat endlessly here, I got my first digital camera in 1996. Less than ten years later (2005), I was experimenting with “one shot” 360 panorama photos. I write a bit about my camera history on my Cameras page.

I doubt that modern 360 viewers will support those ancient SurroundPhoto images I took at Disneyland during its 50th Anniversary in 2005, but I am going to test. If they work, that will be the first time I have ever been able to share those ancient, low resolution 360-degree (horizontally, at least) images.

I don’t think I took a “real” 360-degree camera to any theme parks until 2016 (Iowa’s Adventureland). The first time I took one to Disneyland was 2017. Assuming the album software supports whatever size these older “modern” images are, I hope to get those shared as well.

Fun times.

Lost Island POV videos… Official ones.

For some reason, video bloggers think we need fifty different videos of the same roller coaster riding the same track. And, in many cases, these fan videos are breaking park rules unless you have specific permission to record on rides.

Here is my “Pro Tip” (no, there is no such thing as a “pro” tip unless your profession is giving tips):

If the park already provides official POVs, you are not contributing anything but an inferior version.

Here are some official POV examples provided by Lost Island Themepark in Waterloo, Iowa.

Mura Fury

Shaman’s Curse

Fire Runner

Nopuko Air Coaster

Skyborne

Lokolo

This one is my favorite they have posted 😉

Matugani

Now, put down your camera while on the ride and just have fun…

Chateau Avalon themed hotel Disney could learn from

In Kansas City, Kansas is the Chateau Avalon Hotel. We discovered it while researching places to stay near Atlas9, a super cool attraction which I have written about previously.

The Chateau Avalon is a small boutique hotel with about three dozen rooms.

Chateau Avalon – exterior

And this place is quite nice, even though we got our room for about $20 more than nearby Holiday Inn type hotels! During our visit, the hotel was undergoing some updating, with signs saying “Chateau Avalon 2.0 now loading” hanging on various walls. Hopefully this will result in repairing some of the crumbling stairs we noticed.

Chateau Avalon – entrance

Unlike the normal “cookie cutter” hotels that even companies like Disney are now building, no two rooms at Chateau Avalon are identical. The rooms are also themed, rather than “decorated.” i.e., you can decorate a room with Mickey Mouse shapes but that is “Mickey Mouse decorated.” If you built the room to look like a house in Toontown, that would be a “themed” room.

This hotel does themed rooms. We stayed in a western themed room, simply because it was the cheapest rate at the time of our visit.

Yes, that is actually a room within a room! When you enter the hotel room, you are “outside” the cabin, where the outside jacuzzi-style tub and shower is, along with a small dining table. The restroom was off to the right (sink and toilet), then the bedroom, TV and closet was “in” the cabin. Very cool first impression!

The hotel has a small bar, with rather pricy drinks ($14-$16, so still cheaper than Disney/Universal). It has a small inside seating area, then a larger outdoor patio.

Chateau Avalon – D’Nile Bar

There is no restaurant, but you can fill out a card and leave it outside your room door (before 11 p.m.) and receive room service breakfast — for only $13.95! (Drinks, alcohol, etc. extra, of course.)

Chateau Avalon – room service breakfast

It was surpassing that “rooms service” was cheaper than a lot of the normal restaurants we go to for a similar meal.

But, this place only charges $1.25 for their bottled water, so clearly they are not making their money off the snacks.

Chateau Avalon – $1.25 bottled water

Here is their webpage listing of various room types, from ones like we stayed in, to “Penthouse” suites or rooms with Eqyptian themes:

https://chateauavalonhotel.com/rooms/

If this hotel were in Orlando at one of the theme parks, I expect it would be many times more expensive and basically impossible to get reservations at.

So the next time you are in the Kansas City area to check out Atlas9, consider checking this one out. It has all the fun theming that Disney used to have but seems to have gotten away from.

Atlas9 gets it. People matter.

The “Meow Wolf-like” experience in Kansas City, Atlas9, has taken some flack for their use of A.I. in their attraction. Some A.I. use is obvious — your photo is taken during your “agent onboarding” and then your image is used later in the attraction to put you in a movie poster.

Atlas9 movie poster.

While I hate “A.I. Slop” as much as the next person, I think this type of use of A.I. seems fine enough. Disney added a similar feature to Epcot’s Spaceship Earth decades ago, though using the technology available back then, the result was not quite as nice…

Epcot Spaceship Earth “puts you in the video” using pre-A.I. technology.

This post is not about their use of A.I., or the complaints about it. Instead, this post is about the people you encounter while visiting Atlas9.

First, there is a live show every hour, alternating between the Jazz Club…

Atlas9 Jazz Club performance.

…and Auditorium 9.

Atlas9 auditorium 9 performance.

These shows feature multiple performers and really add a lot to the experience.

But Atlas9 does more than that.

Each time we have visited Atlas9, we have encountered into various actors (apparently known as “ambient characters”, per a reference on a behind-the-scenes Instagram video) roaming around. The storyline of the place is that these entities have escaped from the movies that were showing at this theater when the Holomax projector system was first brought online in 1995.

The characters we have seen the most are these orange haired gals that seem travel in packs of three:

Atlas9 mysterious orange hairs.

I do not think these characters speak, though they sometimes will offer you candy from a pizza box or black briefcase.

Which is not creepy at all.

From watching various videos on YouTube, we have seen there are quite a few others that have been seen inside the attraction. We saw this one for the first time during a short stop on our way back home from Branson:

Atlas9 – The Hypnotist ambient character.

…and we finally encountered these “beep, boop” characters, that only speak in beeps and boops…

Atlas9 “beep, boop” characters.

And, of course, the actual staff of the place — from the “agents” that help you with your “training”…

Atlas9 – Agent C08 begins your onboarding process.

…or the random “theater employees” you might run into while they are cleaning mirrors…

Atlas9 theater employee Angel.

…as well as workers at the concession stand, Speakereasy bar and Splice Bros. Pizza. Atlas9 feels more alive than what we encountered at our three different Meow Wolf visits.

So, kudos to Atlas9. While they may take flack for their use of A.I., they also make use of actual people. (Well, at least we think most of them are people. Still unsure on the origins of the orange hairs…)

Until next time…

The Day the Music Died in Clear Lake, Iowa

Last year, we did a road trip to visit some friends in Clear Lake, Iowa — home of the Surf Ballroom where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper played their final concert before dying in a plane crash.

I have photos of the restored Surf Ballroom in my gallery:

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/misc/OtherPlaces/Iowa/ClearLake/SurfBallroom/index.html

They have built a large “Music Experience Center” next to the ballroom. Inside is another museum with artifacts from musicians who have performed there. I expected to see things from Buddy Holly and those folks, but did not expect to see a hat from Slash of Guns and Roses…

Slash’s hat.

…nor did I expect they would have items from two different KISS members – boots worn by Ace Frehley, and a bass guitar from Gene Simmons:

Ace Fehley’s boots.
Gene Simmons’ bass guitar.

This new facility also has a new type of “immersive” museum experience that uses projection mapping to enhance a history video. You see the main content, as well as content on the walls and behind you, and even the floor. As they describe the winter night crash of the plane, the floor turns into snow… Very interesting.

Projection mapping on the floor.

The technology reminded me of the Immersive Disney experience we saw in Branson, Missouri last year:

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/misc/OtherPlaces/Missouri/Branson/Branson2025/Shows/DisneyImmersive/index.html

Especially after the presentation, when you could walk around and musical notes would follow you on the floor.

Interactive projections on the floor.

But, unlike those passive experiences (moving projected leaves on the floor is hardly an “experience”), this show ended with the main wall becoming an interactive museum. You could hold your hand in front of word bubbles then a pop up would appear and you could page through for more information – text, photos and even some video clips. It was very cool. They could then cram hundreds of displays on the wall rather than needing a huge facility to show them all in frames with plaques next to them.

Interactive wall projections.

For more photos from this unique new musical experience, check out my gallery:

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/misc/OtherPlaces/Iowa/ClearLake/SurfMusicExperienceCenter/index.html

And you can find some 360-degree (“VR”) photos posted to my Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set?set=oa.1682013753024168&type=3

And that is the update for today. New photos, new 360-degree photos, and some links to old photos.

More to come…

Silver Dollar City parks not yet coming to Palace Entertainment park passes?

The 2027 season passes for Iowa’s Adventureland have been put on sale. The highest end pass allows access to 11 formerly Palace Entertainment parks, with none of the Herschend Family Entertainment parks on the list (such as Dollywood or Silver Dollar City). Unless additional parks are added later, it looks like we have another year to wait and see how HFE will be integrating the Palace Entertainment parks with their own properties.

Details here:

https://www.adventurelandpark.com/buy-tickets/season-passes/passholder-perks