Chapter 98
Anticipation

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(Originally posted November 11, 2013)

June 15, 2013

To fully appreciate today, there are a few things you need to know. First, I want you to think back to the 24-Hour Monstrous Summer All-Nighter. Even though we only went to the parks for a couple hours, we tweeted a picture to fellow Liner Jason with the hashtag #jasonindisney. He runs a small fan site at jasonindisney.com, and he was trying to promote his blog through a Twitter contest.

After everyone tweeted their pictures, Jason drew a randomly selected follower out of a virtual hat and chose the winner of a $25 Disney gift card. In addition, he posted, if you also followed Jason in Disney on Facebook, you could win a special mystery prize.

While we were in CO, Tracy got an alert from Jason that she had been chosen as the winner of the contest. She would get the gift card and the mystery prize when we were back in town. We were pretty excited (after all, $25 was a good percentage of that Haunted Mansion music box, if it ever came back into stock), but our excitement at the money paled in comparison to that when we found out what the mystery prize was going to be.

Earlier this week, Jason texted Tracy to ask if we would be interested in accompanying him to a very special (and very exclusive) Disney place. (I should note that he told us where we would be going, but I’m not telling all of you just yet because I’d rather make this update as suspenseful as possible.)

We jumped at the opportunity, and on Saturday morning, we got all dressed up for our trip to the parks. After parking at Mickey and Friends, we headed toward the tram. We were so fancy that I even left the fanny pack in the car, and THAT is saying something…

We arrived at DCA for the first time in ages.

As we walked down Buena Vista Street, we noticed that all the patriotic bunting still adorned the facades and windows. Apparently it was easier to just combine the Memorial Day and 4th of July celebrations with one continuous set of decorations.

We had some time to kill before meeting up with Jason, so we walked around the Carthay Circle area as well as Hollywoodland.

We decided to head back to the Disney Visa meet and greet to get a good picture in our fancy clothes.

Minnie was out, so we took a photo with her.

Our anniversary was coming up the next week, so we had to get one picture printed with the “Happy Anniversary” border.

This was the first time we had really seen how they had turned this whole area into Monsters University in preparation for the new movie.

We really wanted to get this costume for Duffy… Maybe someday it will show up on clearance.

It was almost time to meet up, so we went into Off the Page to kill a few more minutes. I love all the Olszewski miniatures, so we ogled the great ones for Dumbo and the Mad Tea Party.

Okay, now I feel like I’ve kept you all in suspense for long enough. In case you haven’t figured out where we were going when we met up with Jason, we started off heading toward Carthay Circle.

But instead of going through those main doors, we got to go through this one marked with the simple insignia, “1901.”

So here was the deal. We met up with Jason and his wife Brianne. Also with them were newlywed Liners Kathy and Jake. The actual member wished to remain anonymous, but they are a friend of Jason’s and they have gotten him into both the 1901 Lounge and Club 33 many times.

Now, when we first were invited to accompany this crew to 1901, I’ll be honest—we didn’t really know much about it. I feel like you always hear about Club 33, but since 1901 is newer and a lounge rather than a full restaurant, people don’t talk about it as much. We looked up a bit of information (including some recommendations for what to order), and we got extremely excited to get to experience this exclusive place.

What we learned is that 1901 is actually harder to get into than Club 33. If you want to go to Club 33, you can get a member to make the reservation for you, but they don’t actually have to be with you for your meal. To get into 1901, though, the member has to be present with you. Also, only the newer Club 33 members and those old members who chose to upgrade to a premium version of the membership have access to 1901.

So what’s behind that door? Well, first there’s a host/hostess stand adorned with a beautiful Tiffany lamp and pictures of Walt behind it.