Another mega-multi design machine has been setup in Downtown Disney in Walt Disney World Orlando.  I don’t know if that’s actually what it should be called but that’s what I’m going with.  This is a similar machine to the one I visited and wrote about at Hollywood Studios that had 12 designs.  Unfortunately this machine doesn’t have 12 designs but rather only 8.  Doesn’t make much difference to me as I still think these new machines are really cool and hopefully get some people who wouldn’t usually get a pressed penny to try it out just for the unique experience.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to use this machine in person since I’m stuck in Jersey until our next trip to Florida.  Instead a friend of mine was at a conference in Orlando and one evening went over to get the pennies for my collection.  His phone was dead by the time he was visiting so he didn’t get to take a picture of the machine cabinet but from what he described to me it sounds very similar to the one at Hollywood Studios.

As I mentioned this machine has 8 designs which are all part of a series about the popular Frozen animated movie.  These designs are different from all other Frozen designs currently available at the parks, and makes a really nice sub-set to collect.  Just like the other “mega-multi design machine” (I’m going to get this the official name just watch!) each individual design is $1.00 to press, or you can get all 8 for $5.00.  The machine does supply the coin which could be good or bad depending on your luck.

The designs are: #1 Elsa with her Snow Castle, #2 Anna & Elsa holding a Snow Flake, #3 Anna & Elsa looking at each other, #4 Anna, #5 Anna sitting in front of the Castle, #6 Elsa, #7 Olaf, and #8 Sven & Kristoff.  Phew!

As you can see from the picture above I lucked out with some nice shiny pennies, but I know these aren’t pre-1982 as I usually prefer.  A couple of the designs pressed a little short at the bottom but for the most part they came out really nicely.

Hopefully as time goes by we will see more and more of these machines placed on stage.  The higher cost per coins is a little worrisome, but I do like being able to get larger quantities of designs in one place.  There’s no such thing as too many pressed coins!

It’s been almost two months since my family trip to Orlando and the Walt Disney Resort.  During that trip I had a pretty extensive list of coin machines I needed to visit.  Some I needed to actually press the coins and others I just needed a picture of the machine for my website and personal collection records.  I was able to get every machine except for one.  I visited the location for this machine on our very first day in Orlando.  Since the first day was our travel day we didn’t want to waste a partial day at one of the theme parks so instead we headed to Downtown Disney to walk around, and do some shopping.

There were a couple other machines in Downtown Disney I needed to visit but the first one I went to was in the West Side at the Cirque Du Soleil gift shop.  I entered the store with my daughter and niece and while they checked out the unusual gifts available in the store I did my usually casual wander around the perimeter of the store trying to locate the machine.  But to my disappointment I didn’t see it.  So I walked outside to glance around to see if it was around a corner, or near the payphone, but still nothing.  I went back inside and decided to ask the staff member at the register about it and was told the disappointing news that the machine had been removed for repairs.  Every so often I come across this situation and some places actually keep extras of the coins behind the counter to sell while the machine is out getting fixed, unfortunately this store didn’t do that so I was out of luck.  This was not the best way to start off my vacation of coin collecting but things definitely got better and as I mentioned earlier this ended up being the only machine I wasn’t able to acquire.

I had reached out to some contacts and friends of mine to try to see if anyone had extras of these designs, or if they had any news on the machine.  It seemed like weeks went by and I hadn’t heard anything other than the machine was still missing from the store.  Then finally just last week a seller on eBay that I have used quite often in the past had some new items up for auction and to my surprise it was these mysterious Cirque Du Soleil designs.  I quickly did what I had to do to get all four designs and a few days later they arrive in my mail.

I have not see the Cirque Du Soleil show La Nouba in Downtown Disney but have heard that it is really good.  To be honest I haven’t seen any Cirque Du Soleil shows and I’m in Jersey where they come to New York all the time.  My family has seen a show or two and always rave about it so I guess I’ll have to check one out at some point to see what all the fuss is about.  The four designs were all inspired by the La Nouba show.  I had to look up these descriptions at presscoins.com as I really had no idea what a couple of them were so much thanks to them for their amazing database and blog.  The designs are: BMX Cyclist, Green Bird, Titan and two other performers, and Les Cons (The Nuts).  All four designs also say La Nouba Cirque Du Soleil.

There is a nice feeling right now of completion knowing that I have all the current pressed coin designs available at the Walt Disney World Resorts, but I know that is short-lived (Thankfully) and I’ll be on the hunt again very soon.

My family vacation to Walt Disney World has come and gone, and have suffered from the post-Disney blues as I tried to get acclimated back to my normal life.  Our trip was truly amazing and once back home I had quite a task of trying to organize over 2000 pictures and 6 hours of video between all my family members.  Not to mention I also had some new pressed coins to catalog and display.

Over the next few posts I’m going to detail out each day of our trip and will primarily focus on the pressed coin machines I visited but will also insert some anecdotes about things we encountered along the way.  Just as a heads up Dole Whip is my new obsession, if you haven’t tried it you MUST.  But I’ll get into that .

Day 1 started with a 5 am wake up time (to be honest I didn’t sleep much the night before so I was already kind of up).  With our bags packed we carpooled with my parents over to the airport where we met up with my sister and her family.  Our flight left around 7:30 am and about 2 hours later we touched down in Orlando.  The glorious Florida heat was a welcome sensation from the cold weather we have had in the Northeast.

Disney makes it really easy to with airport system in Orlando.  We had special tags for our luggage so we didn’t have to pick them up and instead they were automatically transported to our resort later that day.  Following the signs in the airport we made our way to the Magical Express which are nice air-conditioned buses that transport you from the airport to your resort.  It took about 30 minutes or so but we finally saw the magical road sign we had been waiting for.

There were a few stops ahead of ours but eventually we arrived at the Contemporary Resort.  Of course the always entertaining and never gets old part of this resort is the monorail that runs directly through it.

 

After the Magical express dropped us off we were immediately greeted by a cast member.  Unfortunately since we had arrived early our room wasn’t ready yet.  We decided to head in anyways and get an early lunch at the Contempo Cafe.  This is a quick service type eatery, the system is pretty cool.  You first walk up to a kiosk with a touch screen system and select your order, then a receipt is printed out.  You can then pick up desserts from the display case, drinks and other snacks then when ready you head to the checkout lanes to pay.  With the new MagicBands we all had on these are also a great new technology.  Not only were these bands our park tickets, but they also opened our resort room, had our Fast passes and most dangerous of all you can pay for things with them.  My dad was anxious to try his out so he used it to pay for our lunch and it worked like a charm.

The lunch was must better than I had anticipated as a quick service location.  We tried burgers, salads and a flatbread pizza kind of thing that were all ready tasty and filling.  When I had walked by the desert case I couldn’t resist getting a Frozen (not literally) cupcake.  The exact Disney description was as follows “Chocolate Cake infused with Caramel and topped with Swirled Butter Cream and a Non edible Souvenir Ring”.  How could this not be good.

Our room wasn’t going to be ready for a couple of hours so we decided to grab one of the Disney Transportation Buses and head to Downtown Disney for some shopping and a special reservation we had made for my niece Ava.

Downtown Disney has been going through some changes recently and some areas were blocked off for construction.  Enjoying the wonderful weather we headed directly to the West Side where the Cirque du Soleil La Nouba stadium was located so we could work our way back.

Another reason for doing this is I had news that there was a penny machine in the La Nouba gift shop.  We walked and to check out the souvenirs but after pacing the entire store I asked the cashier about the machine.  Unfortunately I was informed that the machine hadn’t been working properly and had been removed for repairs.  So far I was zero for one on penny machines, hopefully this wasn’t a sign of things to come.

We headed back towards the Marketplace where the bus had let us off and I went into another store called Marketplace Fun Finds.  This little shop has all sorts of fun little souvenirs and mystery grab bags.  I had already received these coins from a contact of mine weeks before but wanted to get a picture of the machine for my records.

I did cave in and pressed another set (you can never have too many).  The machine worked great and pressed all four designs nicely.  The designs included Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy.  I posted a picture of these pennies in a previous post.

After leaving the store I noticed it was time for our reservation at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique for Ava’s Princess Makeover.  The boutique was located inside the World of Disney store which is the biggest Disney gift shop I have ever seen.  The makeover took about 35 minutes or so.  They really do a nice job creating that magical experience.  I don’t know if Ava loved all the work on her hair, but it came out really cute.

By this time we were started to get a little sluggish from the early morning start.  My dad received an email and text message on his cell phone letting us know our room was ready.  With the online check-in we had done before arriving the message also listed our room number so we could head right up without needing to wait at the front desk.  We grabbed the next bus and headed to our resort in anticipation of checking out our room.  Did you notice I said room (singular).  That’s right we had decided to all stay together.  There was 9 of us in total, but the Contemporary Resort offered some nice family suites up on the 14th floor which is what we had opted for, and ended up working out really well.  Upon entering our room there was a large living room, with a dining area and kitchen.  There were two bedrooms, one to the left and one to the right.  Each room had its own full bathroom which made getting ready each morning much easier.  We had 4 balconies in total and we were facing Bay Lake which gave a great view of Epcot and could watch the fireworks right from our room.

Everyone was pretty tired and ready to just relax.  We didn’t have any plans that evening but did have an early start the next day.  I decided to take this opportunity and jump on the monorail to get some coins from the neighboring resorts.

First I needed to check out the penny machines in our own resort.  The machines are nicely located right beside the escalator that leads up to the monorail platform.  The Contemporary Resort has one of the largest banks of machines all in one place that are all connected in one cabinet.  These machines are almost always busy.  There is a total of 6 machines, but I only used 3 of them.  I did watch other people use the remaining machines and they all appears to be working without any issue.

  

The first penny machine had a Chef Mickey design that was first made available in 2013.  I pressed the design and moved on to the next machine which were Quarters.  This was the first of the new 2015 designs I was pressing myself.  I already had a full set at home but couldn’t resist pressing my own set.  The quarter design is of Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey with 2015 in the background.  The third machine had another 2015 penny with Tinker Bell in the design.

One thing you may notice in the above pictures which was something I hadn’t seen on my previous trips was the plaque on each machine.  Here’s a close up of it:

If you come across a machine that isn’t working you can send a text message to this number and let them know.  I don’t know what the average time would be and don’t believe it would be while you waited at the machine.  But I really think this is a great way to help keep the machines in working order.  Another great tool for anyone before or during your visits is the website listed.  This will contain maps of each park including the resorts and will show you exactly where each machine is located and what designs are available there.

I jumped on the monorail and headed to the next resort which was the Polynesian Village.  There were 3 machines located here.  One machine is located on the first floor outside Wyland Galleries, and the other two machines are side by side on the second floor outside Samoa Snacks.

  

These designs haven’t changed since the last time I was here.  I knew this ahead of time but always love just walking around this resort and took the opportunity to update the pictures of the machines.  The machine on the first floor has 3 penny designs: Sneezy, Buzz Lightyear, and Scar with the 3 hyenas.  The second machine upstairs also has 3 penny designs: Pocahontas & John Smith, Pocahontas kneeling, and Bruce the Shark from Finding Nemo.  The last machine had one quarter design: Lilo doing a hula dance.

My next stop was the Grand Floridan Resort & Spa.  This is another beautiful resort and I spent some time just walking around and taking it all in.  This resort has 4 machines but I only used 2 of them.  The one I didn’t go see is located out by the bus stop area.  I have collected these designs in the past, and was starting to get tired myself so I decided to skipped this one.  The first of the machines I did check out was on the second floor right inside the doors from the monorail platform.  The other two machines were on the first floor outside the 1900 Park Fare restaurant.

  

The first machine by the monorail had another 2015 penny design with Goofy as the main attraction.  The last two machines I only pressed the quarter designs.  I previously had these quarters but the coins I had used back in 2010 were pretty beat up and I wanted to get nice new ones.  There were 3 designs: Mickey Donald & Goofy, Mulan & Mushu, and Pumba & Simba.  The other penny machine located here didn’t have any new designs so I didn’t bother using the machine.

Satisfied with my first days collection of new coins and updated machine pictures I headed upstairs and back onto the monorail.  While on the monorail I had to go through the Magic Kingdom station before heading back to the Contemporary.  Luckily after leaving the Magic Kingdom station I had somehow managed to be passing by just as the fireworks were going on.

This was a wonderful way to end out first day on vacation.  We had an entire week ahead of us and I had a lot more machines to check out.

Last week I had received new that there were two new penny machines put on stage at Downtown Disney (soon to be renamed Disney Springs).  There is a lot of changes happening to Downtown Disney in addition to the name change, there are new restaurants and shops opening over the next year or so.

As with any new machines I find out about I immediately reached out to some of my contacts in Florida and was able to acquire the pennies from one of the new machines.

This new machine is currently located at the Marketplace Fun Finds store which is over by the Rainforest Cafe and next door to Goofy’s Candy Co.  This is a great little shop that has inexpensive gifts and the famous Grab Bags with mystery items inside.

My friend told me that the penny machine worked without any issue, and as you can see from the picture below the designs came out great.

The four designs are of Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy with a nice dotted border and their names in block letters.  The designs are pretty simple but still have great detail.

The second new machine is located down in the West Side of Downtown Disney at the Cirque du Soleil gift shop.  I’m still trying to acquire these new coins and will be sure to share details about them as soon as I get my hands on them.

With everything going on at Downtown Disney it’s great to see some new penny machines going on stage. I visited a few years ago and collected all the coins at that time and none of the designs had changed since then.  Hopefully these aren’t the only new machines to appear before Disney Springs is completed.