Month: August 2026

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

I shot VR of Universal shooting VR

Here is a story I do not know if I ever shared on this site.

In December 2023, we visited Universal Orlando and watched their Universal Holiday Parade featuring Macy’s. Here are my photos of that specific parade:

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/us-sw/UniversalStudiosFL/UniversalStudiosFL/UniversalStudiosFL2023/HolidayParade/index.html

I noticed Universal had a video crew set up just across the street from us. I also noticed they were using a large professional VR camera (a large black sphere covered in camera lenses) to record the parade. I was intrigued because I had brought my own VR camera and was set up to record the parade from the same location they had chosen.

Here are photos of the crew and their equipment, as well as my camera mounted on the railing.

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/us-sw/UniversalStudiosFL/UniversalStudiosFL/UniversalStudiosFL2023/HolidayParade/VR360Cameras/index.html

I wondered what they were going to do with this VR footage. They had their camera surrounded by a crowd. That would allow a 360-degree video to turn and look at them rather than the parade. How were they going to deal with that?

The following year, we found out. Universal posted this “immersive 180” degree video about their Christmas event. Instead of a full 360-degree video, they posted it using just the front portion. This allows you to look up, down, left and right, but not behind. Here is their video (and be sure to use your mouse to “look around, up and down” while you watch it):

Near the end of this video is where they used footage they recorded that night. At about 4:17, you can see us across the street wearing our yellow/orange Wizard Quest shirts. My camera was on the railing directly in front of us.

And here is the view from my camera around that same time, with their camera crew in the background:

I never posted my video of the parade. There were already dozens, if not hundreds, of videos of it that year. But now that I think about it, I was there on a special night when Universal was recording footage for one of their official videos. Because of this, I decided to upload my video with notes about the camera crew being there.

And now you know (er, have seen) the other side of the story 😉