2011 Pin Celebration Event - The Florida Project Trip Report

...cont

More sights...

There are future-release pins on display. I think I'm more interested in the shadow box than I am of the content.

These display cases are one-of-a-kind items that are being auctioned off during the silent auction today.

Today is the final day of the pin event. Tomorrow is the vinylmation event, which we did not register for. Tonight is the event dessert reception, followed by a viewing of Illuminations. So this is going to be a very long day.

Zz.

This is our last full day here at the Most Magical Place on Earth. While a few of our friends will be attending the Vinylmation event this morning, we will be at MK to do a few more attractions before meeting up with them in the afternoon. We have dinner reservation at Boma this evening, and then we will probably go to Downtown Disney to do a few last-minute shopping. We fly back home late tomorrow afternoon.

We spend the whole day yesterday at the pin event. This is a picture of the chaser puzzle pins that everyone was looking for, that could only be obtained from the pin trading games at this event. So I spent a large portion of the day standing in line at various pin games trying to get as many of these, not only to complete my own set, but also to bring back with me to trade with those who could not make it to the event.

In the evening, we had our dessert reception. Here are a few snapshots of the dessert that we had.

The best part about the dessert reception last night (besides the desserts and ice cream) was that pin trading games continued. Since there were less of us who signed up for the reception, the lines for the pin trading games were considerably shorter, and there were a lot more of the chaser pins, and other pins, on the trading boards. So many of us managed to get more than one complete sets of the chaser pins. Hooray!

Soon it was time for us to view Illuminations. We had a special reserved area by France to view the show.

Here are a couple of pictures I took while waiting for the start of Illuminations.

cont...

Soon, it was time for my most favorite nighttime show in all of WDW.

On the way back from World Showcase towards our resort, I snapped a shot of the Boardwalk.

Sigh.... can't believe the vacation is almost over.

Zz.

We are back at our resort after a fun day, and a wonderful dinner at Boma. It is now time to pack our stuff before we check out of our room tomorrow morning. We'll be spending the day at DHS before making our way to the airport late afternoon.

The flags all over WDW were at half-mast today to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. There were also a bit more of a heightened security at the parks. I saw sniffing dogs going through a monorail after it empties out.

Welp, back to packing some more. Hope everything fits into the luggage we came with.

Zz.

We are all packed and almost ready to go. I'll finish up the rest of my report after I get home and recover a bit. It has been a wonderful trip, and a productive one too. We got a lot of good pins during the pin event, and a few traders that might go well with other pin traders in the Chicagoland area that didn't make it to the event.

While it is sad to leave, we will be back here in about a couple of weeks for the Haunted Manson event "Room For One More". It will be a rather short trip just for the event, but it will also coincide with Oct. 1st, the official 40th Anniversary date of WDW. So I am looking forward to that trip, and to what Disney will do on that day.

We will be spending the day at DHS before heading off to the airport early evening. See y'all back in Chicago!

Zz.

We're back at home. In fact, I even had to go in to work today. Ugh! Real life can be so distracting!

In any case, I have to transfer all my photos to my desktop computer, and hopefully will report the rest of my trip soon once I've recovered. I also need to sort out my pins and take pictures of them.

Zz.

It might be slightly too big for the underseat storage, but it should fit in the overhead compartment, don't you think?

Anyhow, continuing with my trip report, the second-to-last day of our trip started out at the Magic Kingdom. MK, as I've stated earlier, was already decked for the Halloween celebration.

We stayed by Main Street for a couple of minutes to watch them perform the "Trolley Song".

We went on Thunder Mountain Railroad, which we didn't get to a few days ago. Here we were all set to go on the wildest ride in the wilderness.

While walking through Frontierland, we encounter the Frontierland Hoedown.

If you haven't seen the video of this hoedown yet, check out this video:

We still had a little bit of time left before we had to leave, so we went on Buzz Lightyear. There was hardly a line. We waited for about a couple of minutes before actually getting onto the ride itself! Why can't it be like this all the time?

We then hopped onto the Monorail for Epcot.

Met up with friends, did some shopping, and lunch, and then went on Soarin' again.

We ended the day at Animal Kingdom Lodge with a wonderful dinner at Boma. The seafood stew was even better than I remember! I could have parked myself in front of the soup and humus station all night long and would have been happy and contented. I love this place!

On the way back, we stopped by Downtown Disney to do more shopping and looking around. It was a long, tiring, but wonderful day. But then, back at our resort, we had to start packing to leave the next day. Bummer!

Zz.

We spent our final day at DHS. It was warn, but not as humid as the day before since there was a gentle breeze.

First thing we went on was, of course, Toy Story Mania. It was barely a 10-minute wait, and for this attraction, that's nothing.

Had lunch at Sci-Fi Dine-In theater.

We then went on Star Tours. The storyline that we got for this particular ride was THE BEST! It was hysterically funny and fun. Definitely the underwater sequence is a winner, but the ending was a classic, with the windshield of our space craft being shattered by the sharp, pointy nose cone of fighter! Hilarious!

We went back to do Toy Story Mania since we had fast-passes. My scores for both rides were consistent. They were in the 156,000 range (wildcat).

One of our must-stop attraction is the Animation Academy. This is the black sheet of paper on the desk before we started drawing...... Eeyore! I'll snap a picture of what I drew and post it here later.

Before long, it was time for us to head to the airport.

Goodbye, Walt Disney World. See you in 3 weeks!

Zz.

Actually, it is 2 weeks from yesterday.

We will be attending the Haunted Mansion event "Room For One More" on the 30th. And of course, since we're going to be there already, we will be at MK on Oct. 1st for WDW's 40th Anniversary. Since this will be a very short trip, I am not sure if we'll have a chance to get to Epcot for Food and Wine festival.

Zz.

In most cases, the parks were just that full. And since I always kept an eye out whenever I see an almost empty-looking scene in front of it, I tended to snap picture when that happened. I had been known to have a collection of photos of almost-empty WDW theme parks.

Zz.

So during this trip, we stayed at the Boardwalk Inn. In the lobby is this miniature carousel. Periodically, it spins around accompanied by a series of tunes.

During one of those times, I captured a little bit of it. So here it is:

Zz.

Just when you thought I'm done with THIS trip report.....

One of the most memorable part of this pin event, at least for me, was my "vest". If you had read one of my earlier trip reports, especially on the previous pin event, you would have heard about my "Chip 'n Dale Dole Whip pin vest" that I wore at that pin event.

As with the previous year, a lot of pin event attendees stopped me to stare at my vest, and then to ask me the story surrounding it. All of them found the story so amusing and fascinating, I had a couple of people who actually searched their pin trading pile and literally just gave me the pin to add to my collection! Several people also walked up to me saying that they remembered me from last year's pin event and wanted to know how has my Dole Whip pin collection grown.

Needless to say, I had a lot of fun retelling the story over and over again, and it certainly amused a lot of people who heard the story.

And to answer the question on how much the collection has grown, at last year's pin event, I had ~60 pins. At this year's pin event, I had 92. Add the 2 more that I was given, the vest as you are seeing it below, has 94 Chip 'n Dale Dole Whip pins!

And yes, this pin is getting to be rather difficult to find nowadays.

Oh, btw, even cast members at that event were interested in it. One even took a picture of me wearing the vest because she knows the person who designed the pin and would like to show him the picture.

The only thing I haven't done with this vest is to wear it and take a photo with Chip and Dale. Maybe next year!

Zz.

Hum... the only 2 places that I know of where Chip and Dale will take their pictures together are in Camp Mickey Minnie at DAK, and across from The Land in Futureworld at Epcot. Those two are very long ways away from Adventureland at MK (or the Polynesian) and from the Dole Whip ice cream. They'll all be melted by the time I get there, not to mention, the folks at bag check will want a thorough check of my Dole Whip, I'm sure!

Zz.

Happy Pin Hunting! It is not an easy pin to find anymore!

And no, I don't have all of them. They made thousands of these, usually. I have less than 100.

Zz.

Pin collectors themselves find this to be unheard of!

I collect pins (mainly Donald/Ducks and theme park icons). But this Dole Whip pins collection is unusual, to say the least. Still, after the amusing reaction that I got among my pin-collecting friends, and at the first pin event that I bought it to, it is kinda nice to "stick out" a bit, so much so that people are starting to remember you from year to year. I've had several people at this last pin event walking up to me asking for how my progress in collecting this pin. They always get a kick out of the fact that I don't even like the pin! And yet, here I am, collecting as many of it as I can get my hands on.

Zz.

No one knows how many were made, because they don't publish such numbers for cast lanyard pins. I'm guessing that they are in the thousands. I suspect that most of the Dole Whip pins were used as trading pins to the cast members, so they probably went back to Disney. So it is anybody's guess on the fate of these pins - probably got sent back to China to be melted to make other pins? Who knows.

Not sure if others will start doing it, because it has to be something that is mass produced (i.e. not a Limited Edition pin), it has to be cheap (so probably a cast lanyard pin), and it should be easily found, at least in the beginning. That's what it was for this Dole Whip pin.

I just got back from our monthly Windy City Pin Traders meet yesterday, and I found ONE dole whip pin. That's the first dole whip pin that I found in 4 months outside of this Epcot pin event! This pin is getting to be very scarce. They no longer appears on cast lanyard, and the only place one get find them now is if some collectors have them in their trading books that have been sitting there for years.

Zz.