12:13 PM - The Day the Music Died: new projection mapped museum in Iowa (posted by Allen )
The historic Surf Ballroom is infamous for being the place Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper performed before they died in a plan crash leaving Clear Lake, Iowa. Late last year, the restored ballroom opened up a new facility next door with a projection-mapped immersive virtual museum experience.

Of course, they also have normal displays of guitars and other artifacts from performers who have played there over the years. They have boots from Ace Frehley of KISS, a bass guitar from Gene Simmons, a hat from Slash of Guns and Roses, and lots of other surprising items.

I have added them to my Misc/Other Places gallery:

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/misc/OtherPlaces/Iowa/ClearLake/index.html

9:40 AM - Over 300,000 photos? Did I do that? (posted by Allen )
I have not been able to (easily) update any content on this website (other than these news posts) in over a decade. (Thank you, Adobe, for making it too costly to use your tools for infrequent updates.) I did manually update some text on this main page to reflect the current photo count -- over 241,000 photos. And, when you add the 62,000 photos from my other site, that means I have passed 300,000 sorted photos online. Yowza. What a long strange trip it's been since I got my first digital camera in 1996...

9:59 AM - Over 10,000 visitors on a good day? Really? (posted by Allen )
Hello, robots. I've seen many days where my recently updated "last 24 hours" counter has shown 10,000-15,000 visitors. One day it was around 4500. I know how this counter script works because I wrote it. It only counts an IP once per 24 hours, and ignores multiple reloads from that same IP address for the 24 hours after it sees it.

Now, I know 'bots are most of the internet now, but ... this is ALOT of bots -- 95% of them viewing my photo gallery.

Am I A.I. training image generators with my galleries, now?

1:11 PM - More Atlas9, plus Great Wolf Lodge and Toot Toot. (posted by Allen )
Well, I don't expect anyone to know what Toot Toot is, but after 20 years of passing by billboards for "Bethany's Famous Restaurant", Toot Toot, I finally took the bait and stopped in to see what it was.

Atlas9 is a "Meow Wolf-like" attraction in Kansas City, Kansas. I have resorted the gallery to split out all the locations, and then add sub-galleries showing doorways, paths, and crawls with a folder name of where they lead. For example, in The Speakereasy, you can exit to the Letter Hallway or the Projection Room, so that gallery has sub-folders for "toLetterHallway" and "toProjetionRoom". It ain't pretty to look at, but it is slowly turning into an organized collection of photos that will help you understand the layout. Which is crazy.

We also visited a Great Wolf Lodge. I have been aware of these family resorts for almost 20 years and maybe have seen one from the outside, but never set foot inside. This place is more Disney than most Disney resorts these days (not in way of Disney IP or characters, which is has none of, but in theming and attention to detail). Very impressive.

More to come. Photos are in the MISC gallery. Click [more] below, or copy/paste this:

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/misc/OtherPlaces/index.html

10:37 PM - Atlas9 photos added, and a "review"? (posted by Allen )
I have done a quick sort to my Atlas9 photos (a Meow Wolf-like attraction in Kanas) and placed them on my Misc/OtherPlaces gallery.

I also did a writeup about the experience which you can find on my ParkHopping.com blog:

https://parkhopping.com/2026/06/17/atlas9-a-meow-wolf-like-attraction-in-kansas/

Much more to say about this place, but that may have to wait until I can drive down and visit it again.