88 Days: Typhoon Lagoon Gets A New Ride!

Disney announced today a new attraction coming to the Typhoon Lagoon water park, a raft adventure called Miss Fortune Falls. The trip clocks in a two minutes of ride time, apparently making it the longest ride at either Disney water park, which is cool. It's themed as a trip both up and down in which guests will get to check out some of the artifacts collected by adventuress Captain Mary Oceaneer on her journeys around the world.

Miss Fortune Falls is scheduled to open in the spring of 2017, one of many cool additions coming to Disney parks in the near future.

89 Days: Disney Steam Train Memories

Not the Lilly Belle, but her brother locomotive

One of the four steam locomotives used at the Magic Kingdom is leaving the Stasburg Railroad Museum after a long refurb and making its way back to Florida. This is the Lily Belle, the locomotive that has been used to bring Mickey and friends to the park entrance for rope drop.

That moment when the steam train pulls into the station above you and a pile of Disney characters emerge to sing and dance the park open for the day was my son's very first Disney experience and the look on his face is something I will never forget. John was going on three years old at the time and was completely enthralled by the spectacle. I'm pretty sure we've not seen the Magic Kingdom rope drop since that day. Hmmmmmm.......

We enjoy the steam train ride around the park, usually taking at lest one full round trip each visit just for the ride. It's also a fun way to skip from land to land, and nice way to get off your feet. You also end up interacting with other guests more than we are wont to do usually. Once, while on a trip on the lovely Miss Lisa's birthday, she was wearing her tiara. Because, well, it's Disney and her birthday, so why not? Another woman on the train admired it and immediately asked her husband why SHE didn't have one, and asked Lisa where she got it. Lisa had bought it a few weeks before at a renaissance festival and not in the park, so hubby was off the hook, at least briefly.

We like the front and back of the trains

We also saw one of the strangest guest behaviors on the train. Somewhere between Frontierland and the Toon Town  station (I think it was Mickey's Toontown Fair at the time), a man apparently dropped his cell phone from the train. We heard a loud ruckus from the back of train and turned to see that the man had jumped off, retrieved his phone, and was running to catch up and jump back on. This did not please the conductor dude one bit. The train stopped, the man was collected, and he was met by security at the next station. We sort of hung around to rubber neck and see how the situation was resolved. Looked to us like the guy's young, huge-eyed daughter in a princess dress saved him from being ejected from the park. That entire trip featured some weird, bad guest behavior. Even saw a fight almost break out waiting for the evening parade. Nutso stuff.

These guys would rather you not jump off mid-trip :-)

90 Days: Memory Maker: Letting the Dis Help With The Photos

First off, 90 DAYS!!!!!! Woot Woot!!!!!

Ok, got that out of my system.

My favorite Disney photo. Ever.

Today I decided to try to put all the Disney photos I have on a portable hard drive so it will be easier to access them for this blog. Turns out we have over 3000 photos from our trips to Disney since 2006. We like taking photos :-) And Disney World is a great spot, every time we go I see something new, some new angle. But I think for this trip we're going to enlist some Disney help with the photography and buy the Memory Maker.

A Handy Dandy Map of PhotoPass locations in the Magic Kingdom

Both Lisa and I love photography and John is really good at composing and shooting photos as well, so we have great photos of all three of us. The problem is one of us is always behind the camera, so we have very few photos of all three of us together. Disney's PhotoPass to the rescue! Disney stations photographers all over the parks ready to shoot you and your family all together. They are at all the character meet and greets as well as some of the more photogenic and iconic spots, like entrances and in front of the Cinderella Castle. These folks are happy to take photos of anyone, no purchase necessary, and photos are pegged to MagicBands (if you have one) or a special PhotoPass card. You can view your collection of photos at the park or online and decide if you want to purchase any. What Memory Maker does is get you access to all PhotoPass photos as well as ride photos and dining photos in one pre-paid package. For $149, I'm thinking we're going to go for it this trip.

Disney's PhotoPass Service is explained really well here. Page down for maps of all the parks with the PhotoPass spots marked. These maps are also on the My Disney Experience app.

You can find out all about and purchase Memory maker here

91 Days: Day Drinking and Dole Whips

Our big adventure today was running some errands. This trip took us past our local brew Pub, Check Six Brewing Company, and at the last second (I mean that, I kinda swung in not in the most safe manner) we decided to stop for a beer before hitting our last stop. Lisa isn't hard to talk into a beer stop. I love that woman.

The beer flight even comes on a PROPELLER! get it ?

Anyhow, we get to looking at the beer list and see lots that looks good. Then I saw that they offer a flight of four beers for only $8.50, so how could we not? I'm tickled by having a flight in this place because it is owned by naval aviators and keeps to an aviation theme. Cool place. One of the beers we both got wasn't really beer at all, it was a pineapple cider from Ace Premium Craft Ciders (Check Six keeps a cider in rotation, but doesn't produce its own.) It was delicious. So we got a half gallon growler of the stuff to take home.

(side note--the best beer was a Scottish Ale that at 13.5% abv they don't trust with mere mortals and so won't put in a growler.)

While enjoying my pineapple cider I was reminded of a blog I saw this morning telling how to make a wonderful sounding Dole Whip margarita. I thought to myself, well, actually I thought to Lisa, heck, why can't we get some vanilla ice cream and make floats out of this pineapple cider? That would be kinda Dole Whip-y, right?

Well, let me tell ya, I'm a genius. Talk about a plan coming together. Delicious. And refreshing. It's happy juice, really. And who doesn't need more happy?

92 Days: Superheros on Netflix

We "cut the cable" a couple months back and began a Netflix subscription as part of our replacement. The first show I found and "binged" on was Marvel's Daredevil. I wasn't a huge comic book guy growing up, but I did read my share and Daredevil was always one of my favorites. Also, I'm a huge fan of Marvel's movies and figured a TV show might be good as well. I was right.

Daredevil isn't quite the same as the Marvel movies. It's much darker and lacks much of the humor I enjoy in the films. But it is completely engaging and sucked me in from the first episode. The characters seem real and the whole thing is really easy to accept. There's not nearly as much suspension of disbelief needed as for the movies, which is kind of funny as it takes place in the same world, the same New York actually, that was damaged so severely in The Avengers. Everyone in Daredevil is just as freaked out by the appearance of superbeings in their city as we would be. We never see those "supers," but they are discussed a bit. It is a nice tie-in while keeping the TV Marvel its own little world as well.

I'm just starting the second season of Daredevil, then want to see Jessica Jones before Luke Cage comes out. Have you seen the trailer for Luke Cage, by the way? It's set to Wu-Tang Clan. 'Nuff said, I think :-) An Iron Fist series is also on the way. Then, in 2017, we get Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist together in a Defenders series. Very cool.

93 Days: Muppets Coming To Liberty Square!!!!

Two Muppet posts in a row? You bet!

Today Disney Parks Blog announced a new live show called "The Muppets Present...Great Moments In American History" for Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom. It debuts in October, just in time for our trip! The Muppets will appear outside the Hall of Presidents to offer their take on the events of America's founding.

Let's just go through how much I love this news. Liberty Square is, in my opinion, highly under-rated. Having a show will bring some well-deserved attention to a really cool area of the park. Both Lisa and I are of the Muppet Generation and love the show and its characters to this day. John is happy because the show features his favorite Muppet, Sam the Eagle. We get to be among the first to experience the show. It's coming at a time I've pretty much lost faith in the sanity of our country. I'm thinking a little American History humor will be just what the doctor ordered the week before the election.

I'm sure there will some Statler and Waldorfing of this show. Bringing Muppets to the Magic Kingdom will make some scream heresy, I'm sure. But Disney properties are valuable and we need to expect they will be used widely. I'm cool with that. I mean Snow White wasn't a Disney character until Walt made her one. I say welcome to Magic Kingdom to Kermit and Miss Piggy and Gonzo and all the rest. I can't wait to see what they bring to the place :-)

94 Days: Pizzerizzo!

There are lots of changes happening at Hollywood Studios with Star Wars Land and the new Toy Story area on there way. I'm happy about these plans, but in the meantime the park is in a bit of a transitional phase and I gotta admit it's the one I'm least excited about this trip. The announcement of the new Pizzerizzo opening in the old Pizza Planet building has helped, though.

We love the Muppets, especially the lovely and talented Miss Lisa. And we enjoyed Pizza Planet, but the re-imagining as Rizzo the Rat's hang-out sounds like an improvement on an already fun space. We're not looking for a gourmet experience, just eating passable pizza amongst the Muppets will be just fine :-)

I love that logo. It looks like every single pizza box in America. Perfect.