Highway In The Sky Dining Tour

So I'm just minding my own business and DisTwitter throws this new Official Disney-Sponsored Monorail Bar Tour headline in my unsuspecting face. We loved our own little bar tour last year, so I clicked through to read the article, figuring it would be out of reach. But what's this? Food and drinks at four stops including a main course at Citricos all followed by a Contemporary rooftop viewing of Wishes? And it's how much? $150? Has to be a catch, I think to myself.

Later on I get another minute and look on the official Disney Dining website and see that, yes indeed it is as was advertised, and the $150 even includes gratuity. I read it again. It's true.

People were already beginning to talk about the price being steep. Silly people. People who haven't ever done their own Monorail Bar Tour. This is as reasonable, as close to a "deal" as you'll find in Disney food service. Trust me.

Our tour went to Mizners for a couple cocktails and appetizers, just drinks at the Contemporary, dinner at Captain Cook's and more drinks at Trader Sam's and it cost well over $200 for the two of us. We did see pieces of the Electrical Water Pageant, but certainly not Wishes from the roof.

The Highway In The Sky Dine Around (the official, and super-cool name of this event) begins with cocktails and apps at The Wave in the Contemporary, moves on to the Poly for tropical cocktails and more appetizers, heads to the Grand Floridian for diner at Citricos and the champagne and cheese in the lobby and finishes with desserts and cordials on the top of the Contemporary. The food and drinks alone are worth the money, I'm guessing. I mean, I don't know for sure what they are offering, but I'm guessing it's not potted meat on a Tricuit. And that doesn't even toucht he fact that there's no hassle at all. Disney books the times, Disney herds us from place to place, Disney makes sure we make the fireworks in time and don't spend all night in Mizners. And the price, after all taxes (and it includes gratuity remember), is $316.80. Deal.

The long and short of it is that I blathered all about this deal to Lisa at lunch later that day and one ting led to another and by that afternoon I had reservations for the Highway and two nights at Pop Century booked for the first weekend in February.

I can't wait. I hope they have a commemorative pin!

34 Days: Non-Magical Day on Disney Roads

Photo Credit: WDW Today

An SUV crashed into a support and brought a big sign down across World Drive a few days ago. It snarled traffic quite a bit, apparently, and I'm hoping everyone involved is ok.

But it also made me think about how happy I am to let the driving to Disney when I'm inside "the bubble" of Walt Disney World.

I drive a lot for work, sometimes as much as close to 1,000 miles in a five-day week. I don't dislike driving, but being able to put the car keys away for an entire week is pretty magical for me. I don't mind waiting in a bus line at the beginning or end of a day one tiny bit. I figure you'd spend that time trudging out to find your car in the acres of parking lot anyhow, and then have to drive it back to your resort and find a place to park there. No thanks.

Not only do I not mind taking Disney Transportation, I truly enjoy it. I love all the variety, from buses (both regular and the newer, super-cool bendy ones) to monorails to boats, I love them all! We've actually taken a bus to Hollywood Studios just so we could take the boat from there to Epcot's World Showcase gate because we'd not experienced that particular boat ride before. And it was a good choice, as our boat had a broken horn so the captain and mate had to use one of those canned air horns like you see (and hear) at football games. They were having a blast tooting it at the other boats, and the other boats knew ours had no horn so were mocking us on the way by. It was great fun :-)

Anyhow, that's just one more escape for me on a  Disney trip. Mickey is welcome to take the wheel.

45 Days: Wordless Wednesday, Disney Transportation

58 Days: Poohsticks' Bookshelf

With the approach of Hermine, one must gather supplies. Tops on my list, truth be told, was rawhide bones for Belle the Hound Dog. She gets a little stressy during storms and raw hides are her Valium. The there's biscuits (Lisa's request), cereal and of course Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies, because they are traditional.

But what to do while it's nasty outside? Perhaps the power will go out. Good thing I'm stocked up on some pretty top notch reading, and Disney reading at that. You'll see a review of each of these in the coming days and weeks, but here's a little preview.

The Thinking Fan's Guide To Walt Disney World: Magic Kingdom-- I've actually already finished this book, and it was great, but it was a little bit ago and I think I need to refresh my memory before I can review it. It contains history and some editorial thoughts on each attraction in the Magic Kingdom, both of which were interesting and often thought-provoking.

Drunk At Disney-- I'm almost finished with this one and it has made me snort out loud quite a bit. But aside from being hilarious, this book contains some really valuable information, such as which bars allow you to order from the associated restaurant's full menu. Brown Derby with out an ADR? Yes, please.

The Design of Fear-- This is the second book by RJ Ogren, a former WDW Animatronic Artist Lisa and I met at Mizner's Lounge during our Epic Monorail Bar Tour last September. This book features stories about working on haunted houses, from Disney's Haunted Mansion to the Queen Mary to others all over the country.

Keep Moving-- This is Dick Van Dyke's autobiography written on the occasion of his 80th birthday. This man is an inspiration. He lives Disney Magic. He loves life and it shines out of him. I'm guessing there's a lot he can teach me about growing older with class and exuberance. If he has any dance tips in there, so much the better :-)

Any interest in a Poohsticks Book Club? I just had that idea. I'm a genius.

79 Days: Captain Cook's at the Polynesian Resort

Captain Cook's, on the ground floor of the Polynesian Resort, is one of our favorite counter service spots on Walt Disney World property. We love the atmosphere of the Polynesian to begin with, and being just a short monorail ride away from the Magic Kingdom is a real bonus. Plus, there are Lapu Lapus to be had just upstairs at the Tambu Lounge, so......

Our last trip to Captain Cook's was totally impromptu during our Monorail Bar Tour 2015. There was a waiting list to get into Trader Sam's Grog Grotto (which is just down the hall) so we took our little blinky coaster thingy and headed to Captain Cooks for a late night snack.The food at Captain Cook's is, in our opinions, a cut above standard resort counter service fair. It's not burgers and pizza, though they do have flat breads that are delicious. The menu is not exotic by any means, but offers some more unusual dishes with a Polynesian flair. On this night Lisa had the Hawaiian flatbread and I had Thai Coconut Meatballs, and both were delicious. We've enjoyed their pulled pork nachos on previous trips as well.

Thai Coconut Meatballs

Hawaiian Flatbread

The wonderful Disney Food Blog reports that Captain Cook's has added a few new dishes to its menu, including curry seafood stew and seared chicken with quinoa as a side. Also, at breakfast you can now get the unbelievable Tonga Toast.

Captain Cooks is great as a break from the park or as a stop on your way in or out of the Magic Kingdom, it really is worth the trip as a destination of its own. Why not give it a try?

99 Days: We Love The Monorail

One of the first things I saw this morning, checking Twitter before I left for work, was a photo of the monorail. Monorail Yellow, I think it was. It being Friday, and nearing the end of July, I am pretty exhausted and thought how much I'd love to be riding the monorail rather than heading out to work. So I decided to make today's blog post a bit of a tribute to our love of the monorail via links. Easy peasy for a Friday night :-)

Last September Lisa and I took a "just us" anniversary trip to Disney World. We only went for the weekend and never entered a park, but we DID enjoy a Monorail Bar Tour and you can read all about it here.

And here we have A Teen's Eye View of the Monorail Loop, shot by my son John out the window as we, well, rode the monorail loop.

This is a short one, but it's still kinda cool....the Avengers Monorail. I'm hoping they have wrapped a monorail during our trip, maybe Rogue One?

That's all I have in me tonight. Sweet dreams :-)

The Great 2015 Stites Monorail Bar Tour

This has been on our Disney bucket list for a while. If you're unfamiliar with the concept (and I feel sorry for you if you are), this involves taking the Disney monorail around the resort loop and drinking at The Contemporary, The Grand Floridian and The Polynesian resorts. I suppose if you're a purist you should hit ALL the bars in each resort, and I'd love to try, but we settled for the Readers' Digest version and just hit one in each.

The Monorail Bar Tour was first on our list of Things-To-Do for this trip. We planned to (and did) arrive around dinner time and figured we'd just settle into our room and then begin the adventure. I briefly considered a trip to Downtown Disney (it was still called that) to try out Jock Lindsey's Hanger Bar before our monorail journey, but decided against it for time concerns. That was wise. Our timing ended up being PERFECT!

An unexpected bonus was our Monorail Tour Tour night being a Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party night, so we were accompanied on all our journeys by all manner of costumed partiers. We stepped off the elevator in our Pop Century building and ran smack into a 4 foot tall Darth Vader and Storm Trooper. We about died of cute before we even began, ya know? The whole night was sprinkled with costumes, mostly homemade and awesome. I kind of wanted to take photos of some, but it would be creepy shooting photos of strangers, wouldn't it? I thought so. Anyhow, off we went on our bus from Pop Century to the Magic Kingdom to catch the monorail.

Now, the logical thing to do would be to just hit the monorail resorts in order--Contemporary, Grand Floridian, Polynesian. But no, we were hungry and our friend Jen had raved about the pork belly appetizer at Mizners Lounge, so we headed there first.

Mizners is way in the back there

These guys were great!

The lobby of the Grand Floridian is breathtaking, and Mizners is situated in a rather cozy manner on the second floor opposite the entrance from the monorail behind a bandstand. If you're lucky, a band will be playing and you can sit at the bar, as we did, and feel all tucked away in another world. When the band IS playing, it's a bit loud at the bar, but it's still really cool to be in such a fancy place sipping a Manhatten and listening to live jazz. Which is what I did (Lisa chose the Cosmopolitan) and we had a great, relaxing first stop.

The bartender noticed our Happy Anniversary buttons and when another couple came and sat down next to us, she noticed theirs as well and sort of set the four of us to talking. Turns out they were celebrating 50 years and were both former cast members at Walt Disney World. We got talking to this couple, R.J. and Suzanne Ogren, and it made our night. R.J. had been an animatronic artist in WDW's early days and Suzanne had been a character actor and later supervisor in the live entertainment department. They've just published a book about their experiences called Together in the Dream: The Unique Careers of a Husband and Wife in the Early Decades of Walt Disney World. I've got my copy (though not read it yet, review forthcoming after I have) and you can get yours on Amazon here, in either paperback or Kindle edition. R.J's stories about the Haunted Mansion and other attractions from the "inside" were enthralling, but as sometimes happens, we found out we had much more in common. He had served in Vietnam as a Navy combat photographer and was familiar with some of the locations and experiences my father had told me about from his time in the war. We also found that we were all four of us involved in some way in our local community theaters, even having put on a few of the same shows. We spent a few hours in Mizners with the Ogrens; the time just disappeared as we talked about everything from how to make a spider web gun to the experiences of veterans returning from war to the staging of 39 Steps. All this while R.J. was speaking with his friend, the drummer in the jazz band, to request Suzanne's favorite songs. It was, as I said, a huge highlight of a wonderful weekend, and time I will never forget. Disney magic is everywhere.

Finally dragging ourselves away from "Cocktails With An Imagineer" (he wasn't an Imagineer per se, but close enough for us. Heck, he fixed things in the Haunted Mansion), we hopped back on the monorail and headed for the Contemporary. I'll admit, this was more a "have to" than a "want to" for us. We wanted to do the whole tour and the Contemporary is one of the resorts. It's just never been one of our favorites. I mean the monorail running through the lobby is beyond cool, but other than that nothing in the Contemporary's "feel" appeals to us. We chose The Outer Rim lounge, which sits right next to Chef Mickey's in the lobby

and sort of serves as its waiting area. This means it's loud. Very loud. And crowded. With kids. This night said youngsters were crawling all over the couch seating and having pillow fights with the cushions. It was a bit of a shock from the staid atmosphere at Mizners. We sat at the bar and ordered a couple drinks from a frazzled and grumpy bartender (who can blame him? Bar tending in Romper Room would put anyone in a foul humor) and went to find a couch away from the worst of the ruckus. It wasn't terrible, let's be honest. The drinks were good and we got to watch the Electrical Water Pageant out the window. But we simply finished our drinks, completed our required tour stop and set off excitedly for the Polynesian and Trader Sam's Grog Grotto!

Trader Sam's is the seller of the Nautilus souvenir mug that sort of brought this whole trip together. I'll devote a whole post to a review of this place later, it deserves it. We were concerned about making it in before closing after spending so much time at Mizners, but it all worked out fine. We checked in with the hostess and left our names. She told us we would have about a 45-minute wait and that would leave us only about 15 minutes before last call, which I think was meant to discourage us. She doesn't know Lisa and I don't discourage easily. We smiled, added our names to the list and with blinky coaster alarm in hand headed down to Captain Cook's to see what they were serving at this hour. Turns out they had the whole dinner menu going so we got a flatbread and some Polynesian meatballs and sat down to wait our turn. Before we were even finished our coaster began blinking so we boogeyed on back to Trader Sam's and found seats at the bar.

Tentacles. Why'd it have to be tentacles?

Trader Sam's seemed like eating in the Enchanted tiki Room, where the birdies sing and the tikis boom. There are "windows" that turn from sunny seascapes to thunderstorms, there are moving bar stools (throwback to the awesome Adventurers' Club), there are moving giant squid tentacles, it's a wonderful place for a drink. The drinks are expensive but delicious, and the Nautilus mug is worth every penny of it's $50 price tag. They even give you a brand new, still in the box one on your way out after you finish. We had a blast and left thinking it was the greatest bar in the world.

The Prize

We monorailed it back to the Magic Kingdom at about last call, caught a bus full of sleepy, costumed Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party revelers, and tucked in back in our Pop Century room feeling quite proud of ourselves and accomplished. Our sights are set high, right?

The Just Us, No Parks, No Schedule 20th Anniversary 2015 Disney World Trip

This trip was just for us. For my sweety and me. Go ahead, gag, It's ok. She's my sweety though and I'm happy to say so. After 20 years of marriage, we are still very much in love, still enjoy each other's company over others', still giggle over stupid stuff, still love simply being around each other. And where better to be around each other than Walt Disney World?

Spoiler Alert! I got my mug

We even enjoy the car ride. It's a chance to talk :-)

This trip came about in classic Lisa and Jeffrey fashion. I was seeing photos from the newly opened Trader Sam's Grog Grotto and they included a souvenir mug shaped like the Nautilus. I HAD TO have one. We had some friends heading down to Disney World in November so I asked them to try to pick one up for me. But when I told Lisa, she was all like, "Hey, why don't WE go down for our anniversary and get one for you?" The boy told us since it was our anniversary trip, we should go without him. And so the Just Us, No Parks, No Schedule Disney Anniversary Weekend 2015 was born.

We always leave the driving to Disney

Lisa and I grew up in Pennsylvania, so the novelty of being able to leave home at breakfast time and eat dinner in Disney World has never worn off. And probably it won't ever, to be honest. We packed up, took the boy to the bus stop (it was raining) and left the island by 7:00. After a new-GPS-inspired detour to the Kissimmee DMV office, we found Pop Century Resort and were walking in the front doors by about 5:00. We had a plan to do the monorail bar tour Friday night, bum around the pool Saturday morning then hit the brand spanking new Jack Lindsey's Hanger Bar for lunch and cocktails, then have a look around Wilderness Lodge before our 7:30 Artist's Point ADRs and hopefully catching the electrical water pageant from the Wilderness Lodge beach. That was the extent of our plans. They included no parks and only one dining reservation, and that only because we wanted to make sure of a table at a nice place for a sort of anniversary celebration dinner. And this all
worked out PERFECTLY!

Having the window seat meant Lisa was on photo duty

We're on a boat!!!!!!

In the coming days and weeks I'll be blogging about all the different aspects of our trip. For now the short version is this--we completed the monorail bar tour including drinking with a retired Imagineer and experiencing Trader Sam's complete with Nautilus mug, we chilled at the pool reading books, we explored the new Hanger Bar, we loved Wilderness Lodge and Artist Point, we saw both the fireworks and water parade from the beach, and we got some very relaxed shopping time in at Downtown Disney before leaving in time to arrive home by 10:00 pm Sunday night.

We spent about 20 hours driving and pretty much exactly 46 on Disney property. There are those who

Jock Lindsey's Hanger Bar is PERFECT

would think that nuts. But for us it was a dream. We relaxed and unwound after a crazy summer, we enjoyed each other's company talking and laughing our way from doorstep to doorstep, we took a ton of photos, we people watched, we ate and drank without worrying about a DD, we rode the monorail and several different boats, we tried out a new resort and quite a few new bars and restaurants. We simply had a ball doing what WE wanted to do when we wanted to do it.....together.

People can decide to celebrate a big milestone anniversary many ways.

We chose wisely.

Disney Monorail - The First Ride At Walt Disney World

We're Disney Transportation people. We leave the car keys in the room while we're at Disney. We take long,
convoluted routes between resorts and parks just so we can use the Disney transportation system. We love the boats and even the buses that move you around the World, but from my earliest Disney memories, I've been totally in love with the monorail.

I mean, if you can look upon that thing, futuristic even though it's as old as the park, and not get excited, you're wasting your money on a Disney vacation. If public transportation was like this, I'd support the heck out of it! I love waiting at the station, peering down the track to see if it will be Monorail Blue, or Monorail Orange, or maybe, just maybe, Monorail Red. I love the silly door warnings in English and Spanish. I love seeing the resorts as we slide past, especially getting to go inside a hotel! I love people watching and seeing what "types" seem to be staying at the different resorts. I don't mind standing at all but I love when we get a whole car to ourselves. I love the whole experience. It's the perfect introduction to the Magic Kingdom, a little magic outside the gates.

So here is a tour of the monorail loop, with stops at all three monorail resorts, the Transportation and Ticket Center and of course the Magic Kingdom. It's shot by my son at almost 13 years of age, so understand you're seeing what he is interested in. Watch for the Avengers Monorail, the docked Electrical Water Pageant and Mary Blair's awesome mosaic in the Contemporary. Enjoy the trees and the parking lots and the glimpses inside the Magic Kingdom. But most all, Please Stand Clear of the Doors.

A Teen's-Eye View of the Monorail Loop

Wordless Wednesday...Disney Letter "J"

Check out all the "J" fun over at Focused on the Magic!!!

Jungle Book

Jammin' Jungle Parade

Japan

Jones

Jeff & John

Janis

Wordless Wednesday.... Joy

Be sure to check out all the other Joyfulness at Focused on the Magic

 

Disney Architecture

I'm hopping aboard Focused On The Magic's Wordless Wednesday Magical Blogorail today and offering my contributions to today's theme, Disney Architecture. Go ahead and follow that link and check out all the cool picures. It's called a "blog hop" and it's fun :)

If you enjoy these, there's plenty more on Pooh Sticks Facebook page!

A little Architecture under construction at the new Fantasyland

I'm not sure I'd want to stay here, but I have always loved that the monorail ran through :)

My favorite spot on Main Street. I love that there is no real reason to come down here (well, now there's a Sororcer portal, but that's a recent thing) , but Disney went all out building this to look perfect

We took tons of architecture pics in Morocco. Love that place

We feel very comfortable in Epcot's United Kingdom. It seems sort of Hobbit-y.

Finding Monorail Red

It's really cool :)

I love the monorails. They help define Disney for me, and quite a few other people I'm sure. We love riding them around and do so whether we have a good reason or not. This trip I was looking forward to seeing the monorail that was wrapped to advertise the Avengers movie. I wasn't sure I liked that break with the traditional colored stripe, but after seeing it, I now am in favor. It's just way cool.

I kind of stalked the Averger-rail as we took to calling it, trying to get the perfect picture. I did ok, I got one from across Bay Lake and one of it entering the Contemporary. I finally got some up-close pics the last day of our trip when we actually rode the Avenger-rail from breakfast at Chef Mickey's to the Magic Kingdom. It was that kind of trip.

John was happy to see and ride the Avenger-rail, but wanted to see the Monorail Red, red being his favorite color. We looked and looked and the closest we found was Monorail Black, which has a little red as an outline. I knew I remembered there being a Monorail Red, but where could it have been? Finally, on our last day trip to the Magic Kingdom on the Avenger-rail, our question was answered. The monorail had to stop at one point to re-boot it's computer and in announcing this, the driver (pilot?) announced "Welcome to Monorail Red, we need to make a brief stop."

Monorail Red/Avenger-Rail wasn't very crowded

Mystery solved, that's where it went. What a great end to our monorail hunting.

I've put more monorail pics and lots of other cool stuff on Pooh Sticks new Facebook page. Go check us out!
http://www.facebook.com/poohsticksjeff

And for an added bonus, I've added video of the Avenger-Rail on my Youtube channel. Check this out!

Live from the Disney bus

I love Disney's internal transport. I love it so much that sometimes we use it just to use it. On arrival day, John wanted to ride the monorail, so instead of going straight to the Magic Kingdom from Caribbean Beach, we took a resort bus to Epcot then transferred to the monorail to the Transportation and Ticket Center. We wanted to eat at the Polynesian (Captain Cook's where I got the pork bbq I made for our last Disney Dinner), so we hopped the resort loop monorail, rode past the Poly the first time so we could see all the resorts, and then stopped for dinner. After eating, we took s boat to the Magic Kingdom, just to be different.
Today, right now as I type actually, we are bussing to Hollywood Studios so we can take the boat to the World Showcase entrance to Epcot. It involves extra stops and extra time, but we are journey people and to.us its more than worth it!

A Few Good Links

Today I saw some really interesting and/or fun articles and blog posts concerning the Dis, so I thought I'd share.

What's On Walt's Bookshelves?

 I have something in common with this author. I too love to look at the bookshelves in homes of people I visit. It gives me a window into the person who owns the books and, as the author says, it may show me a book I want to find for myself. I'm sure anyone old enough to remember the Wonderful World of Disney shows on television can remember seeing Walt Disney standing in front of a huge wall of books. This article delves into the story behind that bookshelf and shares some of the books found on it. It's not what I was hoping for, but extremely interesting anyhow.

How To Get And Use A Pin Code

This is an installment in Everything Walt Disney World's series of how-to's. I have heard of pin codes, special discounts Disney sends out to people it considers good potential customers, but I've never gotten one myself. I'm going to try some of the tricks in this blog post and see what happens.

Disney Monorail Stuff

Our new decal. Thanks Iapaluccis!

I have always LOVED Disney's monorails. Riding the monorail was, and still is, an attraction in itself. I love the retro-modern styling, the way they are different colors so you can try to ride them all, the cement rails that look exactly the same way today as they did when I was 5, I love it all. Apparently they no longer let people ride up front with the driver, which is a bummer, but at least my son got that experience before they quit. This article from MousePlanet has some awesome pictures of monorail toys and models.

The Coming of the XPass?

All the hub bub about enforcing Fastpass rules may be just a prelude to the introduction of a new XPass system. XPass would reportedly allow visitors to some deluxe resorts the option of paying more to schedule ride times weeks or even months in advance. I'm not sure what I think about this idea, and I want to know more than just rumors about it before I give it a post of its own, but this article is at the very least food for thought.