Tag: New York

Dear W Hotels – Stop With The Impossible To Understand Room Categories

Trying to figure our what type of room you’re booking is difficult enough without hotels giving fancy names to the categories. No hotel is worse when it comes to that than the W Hotel chain. I discovered these strangely named room categories when booking a stay at the W Hollywood. Remember, they’re the hotel that told us we needed to bring our party game with us.

Since I was booking with points, I could only book the base level room if there was one available. Here were the room categories I had to choose from:

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What’s The Big Deal About Getting A Free Breakfast?

For as long as I’ve been reading travel websites, one of the biggest advantages of having status with a hotel chain was getting free breakfast. At first, I wondered what all the fuss was about. I mean, I’d received free breakfast at hotels before. They consisted of some stale bagels, bread and pastries, powered eggs, flimsy bacon, one flavor of yogurt, a vat of oatmeal and maybe some unripe bananas. Oh, don’t forget the really bad coffee.

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The breakfast rooms were usually packed at the normal eating times and the food wasn’t refreshed nearly enough. Why were people so excited with this benefit? Continue reading “What’s The Big Deal About Getting A Free Breakfast?”

Disney Fan? Like To Travel? You Can Visit The Real-Life Places That Inspired Disney’s Animated Features!

Although we don’t do it all the time, when Joe and I have a opportunity to visit a place where a movie we enjoy was filmed, we visit it if we can. We’ve seen lots of places where they filmed the Harry Potter films, and even spent several days in Salzburg, Austria, visiting places where they filmed The Sound of Music. We’ve also been to lots of locations in New York that were used in movies, such as The Plaza (Home Alone 2) and Katz’s Deli (When Harry Met Sally). Oh, and I TOTALLY geeked out when we visited A Christmas Story House (it’s a museum now) a few years ago.

Over the years, we’ve come across a few places in our travels that had Disney references in them. i.e., when we went to France, we stopped at Notre Dame Cathedral, and in 101 Dalmatians, Pongo dragged Roger to the park, which is fashioned after Queen Mary’s Garden, in Regent’s Park. But it turns out that nearly every Disney animated feature was based, in part, on a real place. Take a look:

Continue reading “Disney Fan? Like To Travel? You Can Visit The Real-Life Places That Inspired Disney’s Animated Features!”

Want Something Different To Do While In NYC? How About The Museum of Sex?

Yup, The Museum of Sex. And yup, it’s a real place, with an address on 5th Ave in Manhattan. Now, I won’t sink to the childish depths of saying their exhibits will arouse your attention or you can really learn the ins and outs of this unusual museum or that they mount very explicit exhibits…mainly because others already have (by the way, those three are from Huffington Post. Because of course they are). But if was willing to sink to those depths, you know I would have. Or I would have at least said how exciting the museum is. 😉

Anyway, back to a serious note, here’s more about it…

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When Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade Rode Up NYC’s 5th Avenue

Following in the footsteps of their very successful screenings of “Pocahontas” in Central Park in 1995, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame in New Orleans in 1996, on June 14, 1997, the Walt Disney Company, well-known for orchestrating large-scale special events both in and outside theme parks, took on the streets of New York City by bringing its world famous Main Street Electrical Parade to the Big Apple for a one-night-only ride up 5th Avenue. Part of a “Hercules World Premiere Weekend in New York,” the 3-day weekend of events that included a mini-amusement park at Chelsea Piers, it was all a promotion for its upcoming 35th full-length animated feature, “Hercules.” This all came on the heels of the Walt Disney Company doing their part to “clean up” the Times Square area with its purchase and renovation of the historic New Amsterdam Theater for its upcoming theatrical releases (the New Amsterdam had officially re-opened just 2-1/2 months earlier).

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The Hercules logo was painted all up 5th Avenue

Both the New York Times and Variety reported about the “herculean” event (do you see what I did there?) the day before it happened. Some fun facts included:
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