Steamers Cafe in Estes Park, CO

Horror movies are fun. Historic hotels are fun. Combine the two, and I found myself stopping at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. In horror movie terms, this was Overlook Hotel from The Shining.

The Stanley Hotel seemed to get into their horror movie identity as the Overlook more than I expected. They were having a horror film festival on the day I was there. There were exhibits set up explaining the history of the hotel with The Shining. It made me happy that they embraced their horror movie history as much as they did. While there, I stopped into their coffee shop called Steamer's Cafe.

I had a Chai Latte. It was a typical chai latte. Tasty enough but nothing to write home about. As I sipped, I wandered around the hotel grounds hoping to see a ghost. Didn't see any, but I did come across an elk on the hotel's front lawn. Seeing an elk is even better than seeing a ghost. Elk actually exist...

AMC Dine-In Theatres in Downtown Disney

I was invited to the media event for the opening of the new AMC Dine-In Theatres in Downtown Disney. AMC offered us bloggers and other media type people to come try their food and watch TRON Legacy for the complete dine-in theater experience.

The theater itself had extra wide rocking seats. There was a counter for the food in every row, although I personally thought it was too far away from the seat. I wasn't able to comfortably reach my food without sitting on the very edge of my seat which was especially distracting when the movie started. One cool little feature on each counter was the call button to summon your server for drink refills or whatever.

For food, we started out with two appetizers. The first appetizer was the Parmesan Fries. These were standard French fries with grated cheese on top.

Wings & Things Sampler: Came with buffalo wings, potato chips, onion rings, and mozzarella sticks.

Smoked Salmon BLT: For some reason I was really hoping for lox on here, but it was the more traditional type of smoked salmon on the sandwich. Big slab of fish on a bun with bacon, lettuce, tomato, and a garlic basil sauce. More potato chips came served on the side.

Buffalo Chicken Flatbread Pizzetta: Pizza made with buffalo wing sauce rather than the more traditional tomato. Was topped with blue cheese and chicken.

AMC had tables set up in the lobby with many of their menu offerings on display. Here's a few of the foods I didn't get a chance to try:

Overall, I liked my food at the AMC Dine-In Theatres. The prices were good too, with some of the sandwiches being equivalent to what a large popcorn costs at other theaters. The Downtown Disney AMC was already one of my favorite theaters in Orlando, so now food makes them even better!

Basil Shrimp from Bento Cafe

I went to a movie at the new theater in the Plaza in Downtown Orlando. Although the theater serves actual food rather than the normal popcorn and candy, I passed on eating here. Instead, I went to Bento Cafe on the ground floor of the building.

I ordered the Basil Shrimp Bento Box. The shrimp were really good with plenty of basil. The rest of the box was filled with green beans, lo mein, salad, rice, and a butterfly cookie. Although the sides tasted good enough, I thought they could have been improved. There wasn't really enough of the sides to fill the box, so there was lots of empty plate below the food. Most bento boxes that I've had come with a California Roll too. Regardless, I'd definitely return to Bento Cafe!

Popcorn, King Kong, & Godzilla

I went to the Winter Park Popcorn Flick in Central Park on May 28. They were scheduled to be showing King Kong vs. Godzilla, but it never happened. When I got there, they gave out free bags of popcorn as seen below:

Once it was dark enough out, someone from the Enzian started talking about the movie and the title screen of the DVD was brought up. As soon as this happened it started pouring and the audience scattered. So much for the movie in the park...

Hollywood Studios and the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater

Disney gives you a free ticket to one of their parks on your birthday. It was recently someone's birthday, so I went along to Hollywood Studios (or MGM as many people still call the park). Eating happened at the Sci-Fi Dine-in Theater Restaurant in the park.

I ordered the Shrimp Pasta, which consisted of bow-tie pasta, shrimp, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, Spinach, sun dried tomatoes, capers, and Feta. I liked the pasta a whole lot. Feta and olives always seem to go well in pasta. At $20, the pasta was a bit overpriced, but it's in a theme park so that's expected.


The restaurant is set up like a drive-in movie theater. There is a screen up front that shows old science fiction movie clips while everyone eats in tables shaped like cars. Our waiter kept on asking to borrow my camera, and he would then run off elsewhere in the restaurant and take these "postcard" quality pictures of the screen.




Besides from eating, we rode rides and watched shows such as the Great Movie Ride:

Star Tours:

Rock N Roller Coaster:


The new Lights, Motors, Action Stunt Show:

Muppet Vision 3D:

And one of my personal favorites, Tower of Terror:


The biggest surprise of the day was the newest ride at the park, Midway Mania. I really wasn't expecting much from this ride, based on the fact that it's a dark ride that consists entirely of watching movie screens and also because Disney's other shooting dark ride isn't very good. I wasn't expecting much, but this ride was very cool. I was ready to go back on for a second ride, but the park had closed for the night.

Downtown Disney's Planet Hollywood

I ate at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney on January 30, 2008. The restaurant at Walt Disney World is the biggest Planet Hollywood that I've seen. Compared to the Planet Hollywood in Myrtle Beach, this restaurant is humongous. The whole restaurant is housed inside of a giant 5-floored globe filled with tables and lots of movie props. Not only is this Planet Hollywood larger than Myrtle Beach's restaurant, it also has a larger menu, and everything costs a few dollars more.

My meal was started with an appetizer of Chicken Crunch. It was basically fried chicken strips dipped into a sweet batter. Sweet and chicken don't go together in my opinion.

For the main course, I had the Garlic Shrimp. This consisted of soba noodles topped with shrimp, sugar snap peas, onions, peppers, garlic, and ginger in a slightly spicy sauce. I liked it, but at a price of $19.99, I didn't feel it was the best value for the food given. A few hours after I ate the meal was a problem though. Something in the Garlic Shrimp caused me to repeatedly burp out a horrible smell that reminded me of salami, meatballs, and Pepsi, all combined into one foul smelling gas. Beware...


After eating, I took the steps down from my 5th floor table and looked at some of the movie props. Before heading downstairs, this was my view from where I sat:

And here are some of the movie props I took pictures of. Here's a witch from Hocus Pocus:

Woody from Toy Story:

A giant moth from the original Dr. Dolittle:

A robot from some science fiction movie that I don't recognize:

One of the buildings from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Much of the sets and puppets from this movie used to be on display at MGM Studios. Rumor is that when Disney decided to update their exhibit, a few of their minimum wage employees got very lucky when they found a slew of Jack Skeleton puppets and most of Halloweentown in a dumpster somewhere on Disney property. Imagine what that stuff would go for on ebay...

And then there was this saw blade from a David Copperfield TV Special:


And finally, in the pond outside of Planet Hollywood was The Jenny from Forrest Gump: