Theme Park Enjoyment Index for SEPTEMBER 2024 (Cabana Bay Turns 10, Pecos Bill New Menu, Dante’s 10th Circle Unveiled and MORE!)

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The month of September seemed to be the “calm before the storm” in terms of theme park news. The parks are already fully into the spooky season (look for our coverage of HHN 33 in this fine blog series next weekend) and in one month they’ll be taking everything down and putting up the Christmas decorations (seriously.) It’s nice to take a brief break from the seemingly non-stop Breaking News cycle. so we should enjoy it while we can. That doesn’t mean nothing happened this past month though. In fact, some pretty cool stuff went down including…

*Cabana Bay Beach Resort’s 10th Anniversary Refillable Cup

Longtime readers know how much I love Universal’s Cabana Bay and consider it – pound for pound – the best onsite hotel there is for vacationing families. The price point combined with room size, amenities, and location just can’t be beat. I’ve done articles on pretty much every single hotel at both WDW and Universal, and it is only Cabana Bay where I had to pull out the Artistic Vision card and expanding the SATURDAY SIX to a THURSDAY TWELVE to profess my love for the resort.

One of the many reasons Cabana Bay is the cream of the crop for onsite hotels comes in the form of refillable cups. Since Cabana Bay opened back in 2014, the resort has had over 20 different designs for their refillable cups. They have had multiple versions of Halloween and Christmas themed cups, a 4th of July cup, and may be the only theme park hotel in history to have a New Year’s Day refillable cup! It’s incredible and the latest design is another historic first in the world of refillable cups because its the first one – that I know of at least – that has ever used an actual photograph on the cup rather than artwork.

That’s right, the Cabana Bay 10th anniversary refillable cup uses a photo of the resort taken during the first year of operation.

Notice the Cabana Bay bus that is seen in the artwork on the cup?

That is the style of bus that the resort used when it first opened. As a reminder, when Cabana Bay opened, the only other resorts at Universal were Royal Pacific, Hard Rock Hotel, and Portofino Bay. All of those are close enough to the parks to walk or guests can use the complimentary water taxis. There was no need to have a bus fleet, so the first buses were retro-themed like Cabana Bay itself.

In fact, the Cabana Bay buses even had a surfboard design on the top of the bus! Just an insane level of design but shows how much TLC was put into this onsite resort.

Now that the busses include stops at Aventura, Sapphire Falls, and Endless Summer, the designs are much more generic and generally feature characters or brands including Minions, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, or How to Train Your Dragon.

*Pecos Bill’s New Menu

The Magic Kingdom is not known for having good food, especially with the tragic decline in quality at Be Our Guest Restaurant (no one can take away the great experiences I did have there though.) However, I’ve always thought Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Café was always the best quick service location in the park. The best just got better this month with the debut of a whole new menu. You can check out an in-depth review of the new menu from TouringPlans by CLICKING HERE.

Let’s take a look at the new items. First what we have pictured below is what the industry calls A Blogger’s Special. Its where you order everything on the menu for a gorgeous photo and look like an absolute insane person to all the guests around you. You know what? Who cares what they think. This photo is for you, Dear Reader, and don’t you ever forget the sacrifices we make in order to get it. You deserve our very best and we will give it to you at all costs.

A new gimmick at Pecos Bill is the Build-A-Bowl option, where you build your bowl base and add on protein toppings of your choice. The base options include Steamed Tamale: Steamed green chili-cheese tamale with stewed pinto beans. Nacho Bowl: House-fried corn tortilla chips smothered with stewed pinto beans. Rice Bowl: Stewed pinto beans, cilantro-lime rice, cowboy caviar. Southwest Caesar Salad: Romaine tossed in creamy salsa verde dressing, pepitas, and tortilla strips. Each base includes queso fresco and pico de gallo.

The bowls can be topped with a protein choice of  Citrus-Chipotle Chicken, Green Chili Pork, or Coca-Cola Cherry Braised Beef. One protein is included, although you’ll be charged an extra 50 cents for the beef option. You can also add an extra protein onto your bowl for an additional charge.

Let’s check out how some of these options look…

There is also a new  vegan friendly flatbread and carnivore friendly burger option on the menu.

Dessert options include a bonkers looking Sweet Corn Mousse with white chocolate and raspberry powder, Mexican Chocolate and Horchata Verrine, and Mini Churros (which unfortunately only come with chocolate sauce instead of what I feel is the premier dipping sauce for churros: caramel sauce.)

The new menu had people on social media talking about Pecos Bill for the first time in a while, and it got me to remembering back to one of my favorite moments in Pecos Bill history: the brief time in 2017 that they offered The Rio Grande Nacho Challenge.

The cost was $85. That may sound crazy – remember, this was pre-Covid pricing – but I believe there was a lot of value there. Pecos Bill offers an AP discount, so after discount and tax, the total was $72.42. The Rio Grande was only served between 3-6PM, and Pecos Bills would only serve four groups per hour. A small production was made as the Cast Members brought the Rio Grande food to the guests.

The picture below shows how the Rio Grande was normally served, while the picture following is what you get if you asked for the toppings to be served on the side. There was a whole bunch of meat on these nachos, and everyone absolutely loved the chicken. The beef crumbles and pulled pork weren’t bad at all, but the chicken was really tasty.

Pecos Bills did the Rio Grande right in terms of presentation, as groups were brought back to a reserved section of the restaurant. There were fun, old timey tin plates and cups for everyone in the group. Two pitchers of whatever drinks you preferred were served with the Rio Grande, but you could ask for pitchers of any other type of beverage once those were gone. We originally started with lemonade and iced tea, but eventually also got pitchers of Coke, Diet Coke, and water.

When we were finished, the group received a certificate proclaiming us the Deputies of the Day. The kids in the group got cowboy hats, and everyone got a sheriff’s star. The whole experience was exceptionally well done by the staff, and everyone left full. Trust me, I know extreme plates of nachos, and the Rio Grande blew me away. Looking back at the Rio Grande Nacho Challenge has me feeling like Jack from Lost after he left the island…

Pecos Bill wasn’t the only restaurant to introduce some tasty new options, as Minion Café over at Universal Studios Florida also dropped a couple new dishes featuring the mega popular Minion Tots. The first new dish came as a controversial blow to the theme park foodies as Minion Café eliminated the option to get mac & cheese as a kid’s meal, and instead created a new entrée with the Freedonia Festival of Mac & Cheese – pasta shells tossed in white cheddar cheese sauce topped with crispy pork belly, chopped parsley, shaved parmesan cheese with Minion tots.

The second dish was created for HHN and is the Evil Minion Totchos. Check out the description for this one: crispy Minion tots relaxing in their pimento cheese sauce tot tub with crispy pork belly, jalapeño relish, tomatoes, and ranch.

“Relaxing in their pimento cheese sauce hot tub.” INCREDIBLE.

*Making of Villain-Con Special

Speaking of Minions, Universal fans got a nice surprise this month as a Making of Villain-Con special came out-of-nowhere on the Peacock streaming network. Disney fans are used to getting lots of making of specials and documentaries, dating all the way back to the early 1950s before Disneyland even opened. Universal? Not so much.

The special is only 11 minutes long, and its not presented as a straight documentary. Instead it is sort of a parody of a crime show format like Unsolved Mysteries. The host of the special is Al Roker.

The special interviews many people from both Illumination (the people behind the Minions movies) and Universal Creative.

The highlight – for me – was getting an incredibly rare look at Universal creating the Villain-Con attraction. There was an interesting discussion of the challenges created by building an attraction in the middle of a working theme park. Also interesting was that there was no mention whatsoever that the Villain-Con space was previously used by a different attraction (RIP Shrek 4-D.)

The special also spent a little time on Minion Land in general, including the new additions such as Back my Day and even the popcorn stand. One of my favorite moments in the entire special was how they showed the evolution of the designs for Minion Café. This was a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the creative process, and one that I try to give SATURDAY SIX readers every year with the Turkey Addendum, showing how artist Brian Cooper’s drawings go from concept to final product.

Believe it or not, the Peacock special is not the only place where you can get a glimpse of how Villain-Con was created, as one of the people who worked on the project early on wrote about their experience that you can read by CLICKING HERE.

*Dante Gonna Create New A 10th Circle For This…

The movie Unbreakable taught us that if there is a video you really should watch, like the Making of Villain-Con special, there must also be a video you should never watch. This month I was introduced to a video titled “Disney Circle of Stars – Do You Want To Build a Snowman.”

This was absolutely incredible as it is a music video for the popular Frozen song as sung by kids and adults who were featured on Disney Channel shows. What’s CRAZY is how they filmed the video. First, you get footage of the people showing up in the parking lot for the shoot. Like, what?!! Then it goes straight to groups of two singing parts of “Do You Want To Build A Snowman.” Each time it is one female and one male.

Each time, the two look lovingly at each other, which is kind of odd because the song isn’t a romantic song, it’s about two sisters.

In the middle of the video we get some behind-the-scenes footage, including the kids at catering and hair & makeup.

But you are just not prepared for the end when everyone comes together like it was the We Are The World celebrities raising money for Africa.

I could not believe my eyes.

FOR “DO YOU WANT TO BUILD A SNOWMAN” FROM FROZEN!!!!

Maybe the all-time greatest music video ever created. If you were to do a parody making fun of We Are The World, what could you even do differently?! Incredible work. You can watch in full below.

*Sir Henry’s Haunted Trail

We were lucky enough to be invited to check out Sir Henry’s Haunted Trail in Lakeland, FL (in between Orlando and Tampa, less than an hour from Disney) who just so happen to be celebrating their 10th season of scaring guests. We sent SAT SIX Editor-In-Chief Megan Stump to check it out, and here’s what she thought…

MEGAN: Sir Henry’s Haunted Trail in Plant City, FL is a fantastic local haunt located in Polk County. While not on the level of Halloween Horror Nights when it comes to sets, Sir Henry’s definitely brings the scares. With 3 brand new trails and a haunted hayride, not to mention axe throwing and 2 escape games, it’s absolutely worth the trek down I-4 for the experience.

Our first trail was Agua de Muerte which was a twist on Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth. Fun trail, and lots of scares. Instead of triggers, the actors use their voices as they come after you.

Our second trail, Pyrum’s Wrath was much more intense and included a maze within the trail that completely threw us for a loop and I swore that I was stuck. With a couple really neat scares that made me super uneasy, I’d love to go back through that trail this season!

The third and last trail, The Ripper involved Jack the Ripper and had tons of actors jumping out at you and was the longest trail, sending you through the woods where you weren’t sure who would be out there.

This year’s hayride was much improved over last year’s. The trailer sat 4 across and involved benches instead of squishy hay that didn’t quite hold you. The ride takes you through several Halloween scenes with scareactors coming up on both sides of the trailer.

If you have time to check out Sir Henry’s, head over to their website for tickets. All tickets need to be purchased ahead of time and cannot be purchased at the event. They also have a merchandise area and several concessions including hot mini donuts and corn dogs. You can’t go wrong with mini donuts!

Thank you Meg! What I found interesting was the Sir Henry’s Code of Conduct signage. Straight forward, easy to read, and essentially boils down to “Don’t Be An A-hole.”

This is a stark comparison to the Code of Conduct signage for Halloween Horror Nights, which is almost impossible to read and has so much stuff anyway that you just feel like its a Terms of Service agreement you need to scroll quickly through before clicking “accept.”

I like that Sir Henry’s has plenty of photo-ops along with scareactors outside of the actual haunted trails.

Congrats to Sir Henry’s for 10 seasons of scares, and don’t forget that they also have a Christmas haunt as well as a Valentine’s haunt. CLICK HERE for more info.

*Is Disney Really a “Tech Company”?

The hubris in Disney management is pretty much unmatched outside of social media websites that are bought for $44B, and a while back some of the management smugly referred to themselves as a “tech company” rather than what I think most of  us would think of them as, an entertainment company. Yes, technically they are a tech company because they offer so many items that use tech, but in almost every example they are one of the worst possible examples of that form of tech. Take for example, My Disney Experience, something forced upon pretty much every guest to Walt Disney World, and is so intuitive and easy to use that they need to send out surveys with the following question:

Is this where mention that earlier this month My Disney Experience couldn’t accept forms of payment in the app?

*Our Man Bio

We had a major milestone for blogger-in-the-sky @bioreconstruct this month. Many reading this know that Bio had a major health scare after last year’s Walt Disney World marathon that had him hospitalized for a lengthy period of time. The road to recovery was long and slow, but this past month had Bio back on a roller coaster for the first time since going to the hospital.

A big day today. My first roller coaster ride since Leukemia hospitalizations and chemo. On VelociCoaster, of course!’ – @bioreconstruct Sept. 16th, 2024

We couldn’t be happier that Bio is pretty much back to 100% and hasn’t missed a beat when it comes to getting us great shots of Walt Disney World and the Universal Orlando Resort from both the sky and on the ground. I mean c’mon, who takes better sunset shots?!!!

They say the great players are the first one on the field and the last ones to leave. Well, not only is Bio getting those sunset shots, he’s also getting those sunrise shots!

One of my favorite moments in any Marvel movie is in Spider-Man: No Way Home when the character of Happy Hogan picks up a shield to throw at a drone, but upon throwing it the shield only goes a couple feet and hits the ground. An exasperating Happy says, “How does Cap do that?!” He’s referring to Captain America throwing his shield and always hitting his target.

I get the same feeling every time Bio teaches us about astrology, including the photo below featuring the Belt of Venus. I’m blown away by the photos and information, but after taking it all in my first thought always is, “HOW DOES BIO KNOW THAT?!!”

Seeing these photos of Epic Universe in construction has me so excited for next year.

Bio is basically the paparazzi covering the long running feud of the Osprey vs. Universal Orlando.

Not only does Bio get great shots, but he’s an expert at telling a story with them.

*Epic Universe Preview Center

Some new merchandise arrived at the Epic Universe Preview Center, including these cool looking bags…

…and this Dark Universe pin set featuring various Class Monsters.

But the big update was characters being added to each the of the photo-friendly portals in the store. We have Frankenstein’s Monster in front of Dark Universe.

Mario for Super Nintendo World.

Toothless for How To Train Your Dragon.

A niffler for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

*Something WICKED This Way Comes…

In anticipation of the upcoming movie Wicked this November, Universal announced that they would be introducing Wicked across the Universal Orlando Resort. We’ll be seeing Wicked-themed shakes at Toothsome Chocolate Emporium, a Wicked inspired donut at Voodoo Doughnut, and a Wicked shopping experience replacing the UNIVRS/Hello Kitty retail stores.

Work has begun in Universal Studios Florida preparing for the new retail store. I’m looking forward to the Wicked movie. For many years there have been Rumors and Innuendo that Universal would be implementing the Wicked brand into the parks, and it’s neat to finally get something.

I’ve never seen the play Wicked, so I’m also looking forward to checking out the movie later this year. Wicked is one of three plays on Broadway that have been on my Bucket List for years, along with Hamilton and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Thankfully Disney+ allowed me to see Hamilton (and to say I was BLOWN AWAY would be an understatement.) For the life of me I don’t understand why these plays aren’t recorded and offered for sale/streaming and instead are content to being lost in history.

*When I Say Something Is Unhealthy, You Can Take That To The Bank

*Artist Spotlight Creators Done Good

The annual SATURDAY SIX Artist Spotlight series is one of my favorite things that we’ve done at TouringPlans, and what a month for artists that we have featured over the years, including Brian Cooper‘s art being used as part of a new Trick ‘r Treat line of shirts from RSVLTS.

As a lifelong comic book fan, I’ve wanted to be an artist since I was a little kid. You can even see a little Burgan Fine Art in my letters to Santa, making absolutely sure the big man up North knew exactly what I was asking for after the debacle we refer to as The Gobots Incident. Unfortunately, like the character Rudy realizing he wasn’t made to be a football player, I’ve had to accept that I’ll just never be able to draw the way I want to.

THAT SAID, if I rubbed Aladdin’s lamp and got three wishes, one of those wishes would be able to draw. And if I could be blessed with the art style of any artist in the history of mankind, I wouldn’t choose Michaelangelo, Leonard da Vinci, Alex Ross, or even the prolific Jack Kirby. Nay Nay. I would choose to be able to draw like Brian Cooper (and that’s a shoot, brother.)

Superstar artist Rob Yeo announced earlier this year that he has been working with Walt Disney Imagineering for projects at Disneyland Paris. One of those projects was the Le Pays des Contes de Fées attraction poster that can be seen at the front of the park on Main Street. That has to be a lifelong dream for many theme park artists and so happy to see Rob see that dream come true.

One of the boat passengers is a tribute to Rob’s grandmother who passed away while he was working on the poster. How wonderful is that?

Rob also got to work on the new queue display for Le Pays des Contes de Fée. The structure resembles a jet of water, as pages flow from a book. The pages continue the water theme with floating iconic props, which hint at scenes guests will see on their cruise.

This is the first three-dimensional project I got to work on at DLP, and it was so exciting to see the concept brought to life by the whole team of skilled artists, sculptors and engineers, even better than I could have pictured.” – Rob Yeo

Artist Sam Carter also posted the artwork he has done for Disney that have been used on popcorn buckets and refillable mugs. First up we’ll look at one he did a little while back for the Disney water parks, Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach.

I mentioned earlier how much I love the Cabana Bay refillable cup designs, but this artwork from Sam below for the WDW refillable cups is straight up E-Ticket. Look at all the nods to the various resorts. From the Grand Floridian to Wilderness Lodge to  Pop Century. 10/10 – can’t get better than this.

I stand corrected. The spiritual successor to the artwork above features fireworks, the awesome Spaceship Earth lighting package, and even more characters in the car with Mickey & Minnie. 11/10.

Artist Hayden Evans dropped this incredible mash-up piece using Disneyland and Mars Attacks!

While Jess Siswick unveiled a wonderfully spooky take on the Jungle Cruise.

Jess even blessed us with some behind-the-scenes look at how she created the artwork. For me personally, seeing how the sausage is made can be just as amazing as the actual finished product. Getting a peek inside the creative process is my “the action is the juice” moment.

Loved this piece of Expedition Everest art by /evandisneydesign.

When I’m considering inductees into the Walt Disney World Photography Hall of Fame, a few names come to mind. Tom Bricker, Bioreconstruct, Josh easyWDW, and Mark Willard are easy first ballot shoe-ins. There’s also some people putting in the work that you need to keep your eye on, including @somewareatdiz. The shot below may be one of my favorite “Hidden Mickey” photos of all time.

I’ve been repeatedly harassing gently pitching the idea to @somewareatdiz of an Artist Spotlight feature dedicated to his photography. We’ll see how that goes, but man does he know how to take a picture!

Another account to keep your eyes on is @Diservations. As the official gate keeper of theme park photography, it takes a lot to impress me, and I can say with no reservations that these pictures are straight up E-Ticket.

Last month’s Theme Park Enjoyment Index: 45
This month’s net change: 45
Current enjoyment level: No Change. A HISTORIC TPEI FIRST!!

Writer Derek Burgan, when not cleaning Len Testa’s pool, can be found reading comic books, watching professional wrestling, organizing his various Tsum Tsums in alphabetical order, and taking his dog Bacini to Universal and Disney.. He will not, we repeat not, be found at a Disney Outlet Store. An official DisTwitter Influencer, you can interact with him @derekburgan

Digital Artist Scott Walker hails from Scotland and is the fifth most famous person from this country following Alexander Graham Bell, Ewan McGregor, Gerard Butler, and Groundskeeper Willie.