After a nice relaxing day at the pool (at least for my family since I ran around to numerous resorts instead) we were ready to visit the last theme park on property Hollywood Studios.  We started the day having a character breakfast at Hollywood & Vine with the Disney Junior Character’s.  This was another pretty standard Disney breakfast buffet, but this was one of the few places to see Sofia, Doc McStuffins, Handy Manny and Jake the Pirate.  Our kids really liked meeting these characters which wasn’t too much of a surprise since they have only recently started watching the Disney Junior shows on TV.

After breakfast we headed back towards Hollywood Boulevard to check out some of the stores.  While my family checked out the souvenirs I ran over to Oscar’s Super Service center which is mainly used for stroller and wheelchair rentals but they do have a penny machine located inside.

The machine has 3 penny designs: Snow White, the Cheshire Cat, and Aladdin.  With these new pennies in my pocket I walked up Hollywood Boulevard and met my family in the Mickey’s of Hollywood store.  Lucky for me this place has 3 machines that I needed to used.

    

Machine #1 has 3 quarter designs: 2015 Tinker Bell, Minnie Mouse and Belle.  Machine #2 has 3 penny designs: Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, and Olaf from Frozen.  The third machine also has 3 penny designs: Mickey with a Movie Camera, The Tower of Terror, and Mickey at a Drawing Table.  After picking up some gifts we headed towards the Disney Animation courtyard and checked out the Disney Junior Love on Stage show.  Even though we had just had breakfast with these characters our kids still loved see the puppet show with lots of singing and dancing.  After the show we were aiming for The Great Movie Ride but before we left he Animation courtyard we passed by the In Character Shop.  This is the first ever 12 design penny machine and it was really cool.

   

I wrote about this machine in a previous post which you can read by clicking this link.  The coins are $1 each, or $10 for all 12.  You can use cash, credit or Apple Pay as your form of payment and the machine supplies the coins which isn’t always to your benefit as you may get stuck with a bad penny.  The 12 designs available are: Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Ariel, Pocahontas, Mulan, Jasmine, Tiana, Belle, Aurora, Merida, and Alice.  This is really a great complete Princess Set that I would highly recommend.

After that machine my pockets were really getting weighed down but there were plenty more to get this day.  After we rode the Great Movie Ride we headed to the Muppet Vision 3D Theater and let the kids check out the Stage 1 Company Store that has everything Muppet related you could think of.  By one of the doors there was penny machine calling my name.

As you would expect this machine has Muppet related designs: Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear, and Miss Piggy.  By this time we could tell the kids were antsy to run around and get some energy out so we walked over towards Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area.  As I’m sure you may have guessed they also had a penny machine right outside which I quickly used before we entered the play area.

This machine has 4 designs: Iridessa, Flik, Tinker Bell, and Heimlick.  Now this is a pretty big play area where everything is giant-sized so it seems like we have all been shrunken down to the size of ants (maybe even a little smaller).  The kids had a great time running around and playing on the slides, cargo net (Spider web) and even the leaking hose that sprays water every so often.

Once we were ready to be transported back to our original size we headed over to the closest quick service food location which was the Studio Catering Company for a quick break and some much needed drinks.  While my family sat and relaxed I walked over to the nearby Prop Shop to use the next 3 machines on my list.

    

The first machine has the following designs: 2015 Minnie Mouse, Jessica Rabbit, and Jack Jack from The Incredibles.  Machine #2 was a hand crank version with 4 designs: Mickey with a Movie Camera, Merida, Agent P, and Buzz Lightyear.  The third machine has 3 penny designs: Anna, Elsa, and Olaf all from Frozen.

Speaking of Frozen, by this time is was ready for our Fastpass to see the Frozen Sing-Along Celebration stage show.  This was a really cute show, with large screens on the wall for the few people who don’t already know the words to all the songs (shame shame).

Of course Anna and Elsa make a special appearance to help close out the show.  Unfortunately part way through the show Hanna was so exhausted she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.  Everyone has decided they were ready to head back to our resort for an afternoon rest, but with a few machines still to find I stayed behind with my father who helped me located them.

Our first stop was back to the Animation Courtyard, but headed into the Magic of Disney Animation building.  This place has recently added a Baymax character meet and greet which was booming when we walked in.  I found the machine near their character meet location and pressed the pennies.

This machine has 3 Baymax inspired designs: Baymax, Hiro, and Fred breathing Fire.  The crowds seemed to be getting larger in this place so we walked around a bit to check out the artist on hand drawing animation cells, and then headed back outside.  Next we headed down towards the Tower of Terror which neither my father or myself were going to attempt, but instead we checked out the Once Upon a Time gift shop.  Inside by the side door closes to the Tower of Terror was one of their penny machine.  This was another collection update I was doing as I had previously collected these designs but on old coins that wouldn’t clean up despite numerous different attempts.  So next best option, press new ones on nice clean pennies.

These designs were all about Beauty and the Beast which has a stage show nearby.  The 3 designs were: Lumiere & Cogsworth, Belle & Beast, and Mrs. Potts & Chip.  We walked out of this store and into the one right next door called Legends of Hollywood.

This was a popular machine with 3 Frozen designs.  I believe now in total there are 16 Frozen designs throughout the entire property but on this trip I hadn’t seen too many people collecting them.  But this machine did have about 3 people using it before it was my turn.  The 3 designs included: Anna, Anna & Elsa, and Olaf.  There was only one last machine to get, but two places to stop before we left the park.  My father is an avid collector of Starbucks mugs.

Through his work he has traveled all over the work and started picking up these mugs in each different country and has quite a nice collection.  Before we headed on our trip I had read online about the new “Starbucks” locations within the Disney Parks.  I used quotes because technically they aren’t labeled as Starbucks.  Each of the 4 parks will have a Starbucks location, but when we visited the Animal Kingdom one hadn’t opened yet.  The Epcot location didn’t have any mugs available as they had been pulled due to a recall on the mugs about the color of the monorail displayed on the mug.  I believe this was because that color monorail had been in a crash that resulted in a casualty.  So we had only been able to get the Magic Kingdom mug (he later got the new updated Epcot mug online after we returned home) and were now trying to get the Hollywood Studios version.  The “Starbucks” was back on Hollywood Boulevard and labeled as the Trolley Car Cafe.  While my dad waited in line for our coffee’s and his mug I ran next door to the Celebrity 5 & 10 Store to use the last machine on my list.

This machine also had 3 penny designs: Roger Rabbit, Lady & Tramp, and Baloo from the Jungle Book.  I walked back over to the “Starbucks” just as my dad was finishing up.  We took our frappuccinos and headed out of the park towards the bus stop to take us back to our resort.

After a nice relaxing afternoon we jumped on the bus back to Hollywood Studios for our diner reservation as the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater.  In all my trips to Disney I’ve never eaten hear and to be honest I’m not sure why.  This place was really cool.  The food wasn’t overly exciting but was classic diner food like burgers, fries and shakes with some other things mixed in.  But the atmosphere was really amazing.

You are located indoors, but it looks like your outside at a Drive-In movie theater.  We were seated in cars with a little table ledge that didn’t give a lot of room for food and drinks but was manageable.  They played classic sci-fi horror movies with little cartoons intermixed for the kids.  This really was another unique place to eat and I would recommend it if you haven’t tried it out before.

After dinner we walked around a bit just to try to work off the meal a bit.  But it had been a long week so far and it was starting to take its toll.  We eventually headed back to our resort for a restful night.  The next day was our last full day in Florida and we had plans to get a very early start.

I’m baaack!  Sorry couldn’t help myself.  My big family vacation has come and gone and all I can say is wow we had an amazing time.  Our kids loved meeting all the characters and of course I was able to visit every penny machine I had on checklist for this trip.

My original plan was to post an update of what we had done each day, but unfortunately the wi-fi in our resort was terrible and made connecting to the internet almost impossible.  So here I am after a week-long visit to the happiest place on earth and I have so many notes and pictures I’m having a difficult time trying to figure out where to start.

Well I shouldn’t say that exactly, there was one very special machine I was able to access and knew I wanted to write about it immediately which I’m about to do.  Then as I go through all my paperwork I will make additional posts going over everything we did and the pennies I collected.

Now on to the main event.  This was a machine I had read about on PressCoins.com about 3 days before our trip.  The information on this machine was actually listed on April 1st and to be honest I thought it may have been an April Fools prank.  But none the less I updated my maps and to do list making sure I didn’t forgot to check it out just in case it actually was real…and to my surprise it was 100% reality.

On our 6th day in Orlando we had schedule to visit Hollywood Studios which is where this magical machine was supposed to be located.  We spent the entire day at this part but I’ll write about all of that at a later date.  For now I’ll jump right mid-morning after we had watched the Disney Junior Live On Stage show (which our kids went crazy for).  This show is located right near the  Magic of Disney Animation studio and a little outdoor store called In Character.

In the past this location has always had a penny machine that usually has 3 designs.  But the big news was that this location now had a first of its kind.  A new penny machine with 12 unique designs!!  WHAT!?!  Hopefully you can see how I could have convinced myself this was an April Fools joke but trust me it is real.  I saw it with my own eyes and pressed every coin it had available.

As you can see from the picture above this looks more like an ATM machine than a penny machine, and it really was simple to use.  There is a touch screen that you use first to select what language you would like to proceed with, then the machine asks you whether you want to press one design for $1.00 or all 12 for $10.00.  Now these are amounts are more than the usual $0.51 (two quarters and penny to press).  I can only assume this is to try to help recoup the cost of this advanced machine but who knows.  If you decide to press only one design the screen will then ask which of the 12 designs you would like to press.  I opted to press all 12 and made that option.  The machine then prompts for payment.  You can pay 1 of 3 ways.  Cash, Credit Card or Apple Pay (if you have an Apple iPhone this is their new touch to pay system).  Just to try something new I took out my phone and used the Apple Pay system which was really easy.  I just touched my phone to the payment processing part of the machine, my phone prompted me for my fingerprint as authorization and I was done.  The machine acknowledged my payment and started pressing the coins.

I took a close up picture (above) of the inner workings of the machine.  As you can see it has 3 designs across and 4 designs on each die making 12 in total.  The machine worked really quickly and I think it pressed multiple coins as once.  It took less than a minute for all 12 designs to drop out of the machine into the holding cup at the bottom.  The only issue I had with this machine was that I couldn’t use my own pennies.  The machine has a hopper inside filled with all different types of pennies (pre-1982, post 1982, clean, dirty, and everything in between).

As you can see from the pennies I received most are in pretty good shape but there are a couple that were not so great.  I was still happy with the overall process and the machine really was cool to watch it work.  There were people waiting to use it after me so I grabbed my coins and left.  Later in the day I went back to try to press some additional sets, but the machine was out of pennies and I was told by the store cast member that the attendant had been called but they didn’t know when it would be refilled.

I tried to give a close of the coins in the pictures above.  The entire set was listed as the Heroines set which included all the Disney princesses.  Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Ariel, Pocahontas, Mulan, Jasmine, Tiana, Belle, Aurora, Merida, and Alice.  Even though not all the pennies came out great when I got back home I was able to clean them and they brightened up nicely.  This is really a fantastic set and I hope that if this new machine is an experiment that it succeeds so we can look forward to more of its kind.

I will be trying to organize everything else I have from our trip and will post details of each day’s events.  I’m still trying to get back in the mindset that I’m no longer in Orland and am back home having to go to work and pay bills.  But the afterglow of our trip is still fresh and the smile I have on my face will be around for quite a while yet.  Happy collecting!