Waterside Stage – Disney Springs, FL

January 21, 2017 / davidscointravels / Leave a comment

With all the brand new 2017 pressed pennies and quarters that were just put on stage throughout the Walt Disney World property you think a little down time may have been needed. But thankfully for us diehard collectors another new machine was just put out at the Waterside Stage in Disney Springs.

If you are like me you have probably past this place a hundred times and not really noticed it. It’s located right across from the World of Disney gift shop. The machine is at the back behind the seating towards the right side.

All four of the pennies have the Disney Springs logo across the top, and have images of Mickey & Pluto, Donald with Mickey ears, Lilo & Stitch, and Winnie the Pooh with his friends.

This is a nice new set and is in a location I haven’t seen a coin machine at in the past. There are more stores and restaurants due to open later this year at Disney Springs so maybe they will continue releasing new pressed penny machines at the same time. Be sure to keep an eye out and your pocket filled with change just in case.

Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin – Magic Kingdom, FL

January 19, 2017 / davidscointravels / 1 Comment

My back and neck were still a little stiff from my Speedway drive with Hanna, but that wouldn’t stop us from continuing on through Tomorrowland. I’m not a Space Mountain fan but some of my family are so we made a stop for them to get their fix. Once that was done we headed over to an attraction more my speed and enjoyable for the kids.

Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. Now I was concerned when I first rode this years ago because the famous Tea Cups are my worst nightmare. I hate being dizzy and with Spin in the title of this attraction had me worried. But it’s nothing like the Tea Cups. This is really more like laser tag but you are sitting in a ride vehicle taking you through the alien attack and you need to zap as many evildoers as you can.

You accumulate points for each alien you zap and at the end it’s always fun to see your final score ranked against the rest of your family. Once the ride is over you exit into a photo preview room where you can see your picture mid-ride along with your final scores. Then just beside the exit doors is another new 8-design touch screen machine.

This is the same price as the others, 1 design for $1 or all 8 for $5. This machine also supplies the blank tokens that the designs are pressed on.

This set included a lot of Buzz Lightyear with a few other characters. They include images of Little Green Toy Alien, Buzz Flying to the Right, Buzz with his Arms Raised, Buzz Pointing to the Sky, Buzz Flying straight Ahead, Buzz Space Ranger Spin Logo, Buzz with his Arms crossed, and Evil Zurg. Wow that’s a lot of Buzz!

It was getting dark and the kids (and adults) were starting to get cranky so it was our queue to head back to our resort to rest. But I promise there were many more penny machines to find and I’ll walk you by all of them.

Tomorrowland Speedway – Magic Kingdom, FL

January 12, 2017 / davidscointravels / 1 Comment

I remember as a kid visiting the Magic Kingdom and wanting to ride in the race cars that go around the track. It was my first taste of freedom on the open road, except of course for the bar in the middle of my tires preventing me from crashing off the road. I eventually found it funny to purposely jerk the steering wheel to the left or right so the car jolted against the rail and watching my father try to prevent whiplash.

The Tomorrowland Speedway is just plain fun or least I remember it being that way. On our recent trip I decided to take my daughter Hanna on this ride and I think she tried to pull the same stunt I did with my father. After we got out of the ride my neck was stiff and my back needed realigning. Darn the bar in the middle of the road.

With a chiropractic visit needed I slowly wandered away from the Speedway as if we were heading towards Space Mountain. Just past the Speedway there are some souvenir carts around and this is where we found one of the newly placed penny machines.

As you can see this is a 4-design hand crank model which at Disney are pretty rare, and after my drive with Hanna using this machine was going to be a bit of work.

The pressed pennies dropped out and had some nice updated designs on them. This set had Pluto with a Trophy, Minnie in a Speedway Car, Race Car Driver Mickey, and Mickey with a Checkered Flag.

With my new pennies stored away we headed further into Tomorrowland to see what we could do next, and I’m sure you can guess there were more pennies to be found.

Splash Mountain – Magic Kingdom, FL

January 5, 2017 / davidscointravels / 1 Comment

My family got back from a Wedding in October that was held at the Grand Floridian hotel on Walt Disney World properly in Florida. We took the opportunity to extend this trip into a week-long vacation. As you can probably imagine I took every opportunity I could to visit the parks and collect some pressed coins. Mostly I was updating my picture collection of the machines, also updating some coins that I had collected years ago and were in need of a fresh pressing. I’ll go over all of my adventures in some upcoming posts, but for now I wanted to review some of the new machines that were recently made available. First up let’s check out the Magic Kingdom.

We visited the Magic Kingdom twice on this visit, and one of those times was to attend the Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. Above is the Castle all lit up for the party.

Back on our non-party visit we started bright and early with Splash Mountain. I’m sure most of you know about this ride whether you love it or hate it the adventures of Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Bear and Br’er Fox is definitely a classic.

This is not usually a ride I enjoy as the stomach in my throat feeling is not my favorite sensation. But this year my daughter Hanna was old enough and wanted to try it out so I obliged. I’ll spare her the embarrassment of posting our ride photo here but needless to say she wasn’t a fan this time around. Once your ride is over you walk by the Splashdown Photo Preview area where you can get a glimpse of your ride photo. While we waited for our photo to show up I took the opportunity to use the penny machine located right next to the preview screens.

On a side note for those of you that don’t want to ride Splash Mountain you can still access this machine. You just have to walk back through the gift shop and will find it near the large crowd looking at their ride pictures.

Earlier this year this machine had one of the 2016 yearly design pennies available, but recently this coin has been removed. The above designs are what you will find there for now: Mickey/Pluto/Donald/Goofy riding Splash Mountain, Minnie splashing water on Mickey, and Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox, and Br’er Bear riding Splash Mountain.

Now you remember me just talking about a gift shop? That’s right what Disney ride would be complete without forcing you to exit through a gift shop full of wonderful souvenirs you just can’t live without. In my case this wasn’t a t-shirt or snow globe but instead a new 8-Design penny machine.

I was amazed at how many of these new touch screen machines there were throughout all the parks. The price has gone up a bit, and you can’t supply your own pennies but I still think the tokens these machines use are pretty nice and make for a nice finished product.

The pressed coins here were of Big Thunder Mountain, Frontierland Mickey/Donald/Goofy, Splash Mountain Donald/Goofy/Pluto/Mickey, Br’er Bear, Br’er Rabbit, Mickey & Goofy riding Splash Mountain, Br’er Fox, and Mr. Bluebird. When you exit the gift shop with your pocket jingling with new pressed coins there is a large set of restrooms nearby and just a short walk back towards the entrance to Splash Mountain takes you underneath the Frontierland Railroad Station.

On this trip was the first time I was actually able to use this machine as it always seems to be broken for some reason. I always loved this machine’s cabinet design.

The designs are sticking with our friends in the briar patch: Br’er Vulture, Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Bear. With our clothes soaking wet we met up with the rest of our family to see where we were off to next. Check back often as there are many more pressed penny machines to visit.

2017 Walt Disney World Pressed Coins

December 30, 2016December 30, 2016 / davidscointravels / 1 Comment

We are just a couple of days away from a brand new year and just this evening I was browsing some websites and came across an early surprise. On one of my trips to WDW last year I noticed that a lot of the pressed coin machines had a website address listed to get the most up to date locations of all the machines across property. I took a picture so I wouldn’t forget about it when I came home.

This website has become just another routine I go through a few times a week. I check out the website to see if anything has changed, moved or best of all a new machine is available. Just a short while ago I was checking out the website and almost fell off my couch when I started to see new 2017 coins all around the parks. Unfortunately I am not currently near Orlando and won’t be for a few weeks so I cannot actually confirm that these machines are up and running. But I’m sending out requests to friends in the area to try to get pictures but most importantly press these beautiful new coins. As I acquire the coins I’ll update this post with the actual pictures, but for now I wanted to share the images that are available on the above CTM Group website.

These first two coins are available in the Magic Kingdom. The penny on the left is in the Emporium Store, and the penny on the right is at the Sir Mickey’s Gift Shop.

The next three coins are located in Epcot. The penny on the left is from the Disney Traders Gift Shop, the penny in the middle from the huge Mouse Gears Gift Shop, and the quarter on the right is from The Land Pavilion near the Garden Grill Restaurant.

Over at Hollywood Studios there is just one coin listed at this time. It’s available at what I call the Muppet’s Gift Shop but is technically referred to as the Stage One Company Store.

Located in Animal Kingdom are the next couple coins. The penny on the left is at Chester and Hester’s in Dinoland USA. The quarter on the right is at the Wildlife Express Train Station.

The last batch of coins are available at various resorts. However the resort locations have not changed from last year. At the Contemporary Resort are the above two coins and are right near the Monorail station.

A quick Monorail trip over to the Grand Floridian will get you to the next machine. It’s still located on the second floor just inside the doors that lead to the Monorail station.

Finally the last two quarters are over at the All-Star Resorts. If you aren’t staying at these resorts they can be a bit out of the way to get. The quarter on the left of Goofy is over at the All-Star Music resort just outside the Note’Able Games Arcade. The quarter on the right of Donald is at the All-Star Sports resort outside the Game Point Arcade.

UPDATE:

Found images of the “last” two 2017 designs that will be available. I’m just assuming they are sticking with the 15 designs but we can always hope for more. The above penny on the left is located at Hollywood Studios in the Rock Around the Shop, and the quarter on the right is in the Magic Kingdom at the Main Street Train Station.

Happy collecting, and have a great New Years!!

Virtual Magic Kingdom – VMK

December 15, 2016 / davidscointravels / 1 Comment

In my never-ending quest for all things pressed coins I sometimes come across something that I’ve never seen before. On a recent hunt through eBay I was just seeing what was out there I came across just such an item, and I had to buy it and then immediately do some research. The item in question was the below collectible card.

On the left is the front of the card and the right image is the back. I thought this was kind of a cool and unique collectible but was intrigue with what game this was actually from. As you can see on the card it listed VMK along the sides, and on the back at the bottom was a link to a website VMK.com. Unfortunately this link doesn’t work and just reroutes you to the Disney Online Games website instead. But with some google searches I was able to find out some more information.

VMK stands for Virtual Magic Kingdom and was a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) was a virtual representation of the Disneyland Theme park. It was initially launched as part of the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Disneyland but had no long-term intentions when initially released. It first became available in 2005 with three virtual lands to explore: Main Street USA, Fantasyland, and Adventureland. Then over the next couple years additional lands were made available like Tomorrowland, Frontierland, and New Orleans Square.

In the game you were able to create an avatar to wonder the streets of Disneyland and interact with other players, and play mini-games based on the popular Theme Park attractions.

Places like the Jungle Cruise (shown above) were available over in Adventureland.

Or the Haunted Mansion in New Orleans Square.

Get soaked on Splash Mountain going through the Briar Patch over in Frontierland.

They even had the super exclusive Club 33 for a special event. Now back to my original find the collector card with the penny press on it. I scoured every corner of the internet I could access trying to find an in-game picture or screen shot showing the machine but just couldn’t find anything.

At one point I did think I was on to something. When I found the above map of Main Street I noticed the Penny Arcade was an area to explore. Eventually I did find a picture of the inside of the arcade.

For those of you that have visited Disneyland in Anaheim this is the jackpot (or at least it used to be I haven’t been in a while) for penny press machines. But sadly as you can see in the above picture the penny machines are nowhere to be found.

Continuing on the sad note this game was actually shut down in May 2008. This is really unfortunately as the more I researched this the more I wanted to play. I’m also surprised I never knew about this. Sorry to string you along and then drop the bomb that you can’t actually play this anymore, but you never know maybe Disney can bring it back. There are quite a few fan sites out there with great information and details on the game. I just thought it was really cool to have a digital version of a penny machine inside a video game. My imagination is racing as to what the coin designs would have been and if they changed on a regular basis. Hopefully someone out there knows and can share with us. Virtual pressed coins sound like a futuristic new idea especially if pennies become extinct…gasp!

Coin Collecting Packages for my Friends – Follow Up #3

November 16, 2016November 16, 2016 / davidscointravels / 1 Comment

Earlier this year I was aware of some friends and family making some trips to the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida and I wrote about some packages I put together and you can read out it here. My pressed coin collecting hobby is so well-known among friends that anytime someone goes on vacation they always ask if there are any coins they can get for me. I’m a truly lucky guy to have some amazing friends. In the past I have also mentioned that I do really appreciate them going out of their way to get these coins for me but I never want to take away from their own holiday enjoyment. So I try to make collecting these coins as easy as possible with these little packages.

Just recently a co-worker of mine let me know they were taking a very last-minute trip to Disney and were going to be staying at the Coronado Springs Resort. This is a location I have visited in the past to acquire the coins there, but it has been a few years and I always jump at the opportunity to get a fresh set.

Years ago when I had graduated high school my parents sent me to Disney and I stayed at this resort. I remember it being a nice place to stay with a really cool pool, but it was huge and there was lots of walking.

There were numerous bus stops inside the resort and it always seemed we were either the first picked up (last to the parks) or last to be dropped off at the end of the night. Then there was more walking to the room. But I was young and walking is always good for you so I shouldn’t complain. My co-worker did mention the walking so that hasn’t changed, but I still think this is a nice Moderate resort to check out.

Located in the main building of this resort where the check-in area is, and the main food court and restaurants is a place called Panchito’s Gift’s and Sundries. This is the main gift shop for this resort and from what I remember this is pretty big. Just outside the main entrance is where the two coin press machines were situation.

The first machine is a 3 die electric model that presses the designs on pennies.

The set includes Cinderella, The Fairy Godmother, and Dopey Dwarf.

The second machine located right beside the first and has one image that presses on a Quarter so the over cost is $1.25 for this one.

The image is of Jose Carioca who you may recognize from the Three Caballeros movie. Even though these weren’t new designs it was nice to get a fresh set for my collection. The resort is really beautiful and if you are in the area it does make for a nice place to wonder around. Just make sure you bring some comfortable walking shoes.

Once Upon A Toy Store – Disney Springs

October 19, 2016 / davidscointravels / 2 Comments

It’s been very hard to keep up with all the changes and new openings going on at Disney Springs. I’m attending a Disney Wedding in October and can’t wait to spend some time here checking out all the new stuff. But with all the changes be sure to check out the old standbys as they still have some great things to offer.

Down in the area towards the Rainforest Cafe is a pretty cool store called Once Upon a Toy. As the name implies this is just one huge toy store. When I visited in May this was one of the stops I needed to make as they had one of the new super multi-mega penny machines themed for Frozen with 8 unique designs and you can read out it here.

Que the Star Wars music. I told you in my previous post that pressed coins seem to have ” gone to the dark side” (sorry couldn’t resist) with the Star Wars bug which is fantastic for us fans. Shortly after the most recent machine at the Star Wars Galactic Outpost there is now a second 8-design penny machine.

This machine is located in the far back area of the store where majority of the Star Wars merchandise is located.

This set has each design numbers from 1 to 8, and includes the classic characters R2-D2, Chewbacca, Yoda, C-3PO, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, a Stormtrooper, and Darth Vader.

As with the other Star Wars machine I haven’t personally been able to visit this machine yet, but did acquire a set to post about thanks to a co-worker that just happened to be visiting Disney this pas week. I actually sent her with a package to get some other coins from her resort which I’ll review shortly, but thankfully when she saw this machine and found out it was brand new she didn’t hesitate picking me up a set. I really do have my friends and family well-trained to always be on the lookout.

Will Disney release any more Star Wars coins? Only time will tell but with their upcoming release schedule of about one new Star Wars moving a year for the next who knows how many years this is probably a huge new set that will be forever growing.

Star Wars Galactic Outpost – Disney Springs

October 4, 2016October 4, 2016 / davidscointravels / 1 Comment

When I had visited Disney Springs back in April I couldn’t help but check out a fairly new store at the time called Star Wars Galactic Outpost. For any huge (or casual) Star Wars fan this place is a must stop, and has everything you could possibly imagine.

Inside has clothing, memorabilia, figurines, magnets, key chains, and much, more.

However when I visited I was sad to see that there was no pressed coin machine here. This boggled my mind as this seemed like the perfect place to have one. Apparently Disney decided they had enough of my persistent emails (not really) and put a new machine here just a few weeks ago. Not only is it a machine but one of the new super mega-multi design touch screen units.

Unfortunately I was not able to actually visit this machine in person yet, but did have a friend check it out for me and send along a set of the new coins so we could review them. The cost is 1 design for $1 or all 8 for $5 and it works just like all the others. This set includes coins of Han Solo, Kylo Ren, the Millennium Falcon, an X-Wing Fighter, a Store Trooper, Power First Order, Fan Favorite Droids C-3PO BB-8 & R2-D2, and the Justice Rebel Forces Shield.

I’m heading back to Orlando in October for a Disney Wedding and will be making a special trip to check out all the new things in Disney Springs since our last visit and this machine will be on the top of that list. If you are a Star Wars fan be sure to pick this setup up as it’s a great addition and seems to be a new hot pressed coin trend as you will see in the very near future.

Samoa Snacks – Polynesian Village Resort WDW

September 26, 2016 / davidscointravels / Leave a comment

On our various trips to Walt Disney World we always make sure we book a reservation to eat at O’Hana in the Polynesian Village Resort. It is just one of our all time favorite places to eat, with fantastic entertainment, wonderful food and we have (knock on wood) always had excellent service. On a sad side note we have yet to actually stay at the Polynesian and end up having to settle for staying at another resort and making the trek over just for dinner. But it’s absolutely worth it to us.

Being the obsessed pressed coin collector that I am I have acquired the 3 machines located at this resort many years ago. Sadly these designs have rarely changed. However I’m sure yo can guess that since I’m writing and entry about this place that must not be the case any longer and you would be absolutely correct.

On the second floor (same floor you are already on if you take the monorail over) which also is where O’Hana is located there is a nice little place called Samoa Snacks. As the name implies this is a convenience store of sorts that has drinks, candy, snacks, and since it’s Disney some themed merchandise. Just outside this little store is one of the machines that presses quarters. For years this machine has only had 1 design to be pressed on a quarter but no longer.

This machine has been upgraded to now have 3 separate designs still all pressed on quarters. The machine does require $1.25 in quarters for each design. These images are very similar to existing ones, but have been enhanced in detail and two of them now have a dotted border. All of these are Lilo & Stitch themed and also have the Polynesian Village Resort Logo included.

Of course knowing there were new coins available I had to pick these up as soon as possible, but if the previous machines are any indication here these are probably going to stick around for a while. But I never say never so make sure to pick these up just on your next trip over to the Poly, and since you’re there check out O’Hana you won’t be disappointed.

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