Holiday Inn Family Suites - Lake Buena Vista (Lake Buena Vista, Florida)

From the hotel's original website.
Back in 2021, I added the somewhat awkwardly named The Nickelodeon Hotel—when it was just a Holiday Inn, addressing the flaws of a Defunctland video on the subject (during its time as the Nickelodeon hotel) while showing off more of the original hotel.¹ As of this writing, the article is in need of an update, but I wanted to post it to Numbered Exits as part of a revamp to Carbon-izer.

In any case, the property at 18000 International Drive (the last address of Orlando's International Drive)² opened in 1999 as "Holiday Inn Family Suites - Lake Buena Vista" and after dropping the Nickelodeon branding (which by 2016, had dropped all references to Holiday Inn, having lapsed the naming agreement with Holiday Inn. Afterward, it became the "Holiday Inn Resort Orlando Suites - Waterpark" (the Holiday Inn Resort brand created as a replacement to replace the older Holiday Inn SunSpree brand, though few SunSpree hotels made the transition).

I believe that the address was 14500 Continental Gateway through the Nick days.
The current hotel offers Lakeside Cafe (the breakfast buffet), Antonio's Pizzeria, Burger Theory & Pool Bar (near the pool), Hershey's Ice Cream, Red Panda & Sombrero's (rice bowls and Mexican food), and Hideaway Bar & Grill (full service).

1. I'm not sure what Defunctland does these days, I have to assume the high subscriber count translates into Patreon dollars, and that has to be a significant amount...but given how few videos are being put out that means getting thousands of dollars a month for doing literally nothing. It's unfortunate, but life's just not fair.
2. While I have previously covered another International Drive business with hopefully more to come, this segment of International Drive does not connect to the Orlando road. There is a short gap between Florida 535 and World Center Drive.

Sawmill Square Mall (Laurel, Mississippi)

A bit of a bummer they didn't light up the neon for the "Cowboy Maloney's" part, but at least its still open.
This is a bit of a bonus post since it's outside of our schedule, but I wanted to properly integrate a post on Sawmill Square Mall onto this website, particularly because that while Corn Dog 7 has long maintained a presence in the mall, they only recently opened a new Corn Dog 7 (the first and only stand-alone store) in June 2025 to the north of the mall. While this is exciting news for Corn Dog 7, it doesn't bode well for the location inside the mall, or the mall itself. Catch up more details on what I wrote for Sawmill Square Mall on Carbon-izer.com after I visited it in July 2024.

Kroger #241 (Dickinson, Texas)

Photo by Joshua Bailey on Google Maps, cropped (source)
New entries in Houston will be posted on The Houston Files, but that doesn't apply to suburban Houston...while the Dickinson Wal-Mart was relatively short-lived, our post today is a bit further north on Gulf Freeway (around the same exit), at 3410 Gulf Freeway, the now-defunct Kroger, which operated from 1980 to its closure in 2025 (when several Houston-area Kroger stores closed around the same time). While we covered it on the "Galveston" page on Carbon-izer (currently still up, though I plan to reorganize this out of existence by the end of the month, so here's the archived version), it doesn't cover its closure.

Of note, there is a good photo of this store as to what it looked like in the early 2000s as it's on the page of CDA Architects (a commented out photo is on this page for safe-keeping) though it unfortunately shoots the renovated version in shadow, making the "Greenhouse" Kroger objectively nicer-looking (they do have another photo there).

The vacant space was a Walgreens located at 3400 Gulf Freeway, which was later incorporated into the Kroger's expansion, with the Walgreens here until 2000 (moved to 4016 Highway 3). This allowed the Kroger to become a Signature store as it went from 33,000 square feet to around 56,000 square feet. Despite its closure, it did get Kroger's new logo, if briefly. In July 2026 it reopened as Crunch Fitness.

Former KFC in Dallas (Dallas, Texas)

From Loopnet, slightly cropped. I'm not sure WHEN they took this picture. It looked like they scanned it in.
Among various projects here on Numbered Exits is splitting up or retiring various posts that don't fit anymore (about a dozen posts remain in this category, roughly). This post is a short one, splitting off from this post to focus on the restaurant next door, 3806 South Polk Street.

This was a KFC; according to the Loopnet link above the actual building dates back to 1979 (looks more like a mid-1980s build to me) with Kentucky Fried Chicken first building here in 1971 (and rebuilding later).

Al Chile Tacos currently takes up residence. It is the fourth restaurant after the initial replacement; after KFC left, it was replaced by "Chicken House", then "Tu Taco", then "Don Taco".

As of this writing, Al Chile has a looping video on their website that shows this location among various other food items, though their "Sushi Estilo Sinaloa" they show prominently (beef fajita, sour cream, and avocado wrapped in rice and rolled in what appears to be Tajin) is not at this location.

Super 8 (Hope, Arkansas)

From TripAdvisor.
I'm back! I've decided, in light of the rather intense posting schedule over the last few weeks before the break, that new posts should go up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (may be delayed), but sharing duties with The Houston Files and Brazos Buildings & Businesses (so not necessarily three posts in a week for Numbered Exits). Seeing as how I got back from a vacation which I'll be documenting on Numbered Exits in the future, this post concerns a property from a few years ago, the Super 8 in Hope, Arkansas, at a property which is no longer a hotel.¹

I stayed at the Super 8 in July 2024 and found that the address, 2000 Holiday Drive, indicated its pedigree as a former Holiday Inn (though hadn't been one in years at that point). Unfortunately, I can't find hard proof that it was a Holiday Inn or when the changeover happened (no postcards, no newspaper archives, the only thing I really have is that it wasn't listed in the 2002 directory). In 2024 it was a very tired motel, worn down and not much of a breakfast at all, despite a huge dining area. The reviews were pretty bad at the time but it wasn't the worst motel I've stayed in. (Maybe it was at the time, but that record has easily been broken.)

Around 2025 it closed and became a location of The Dels, an Arkansas-based company to provide "sustainable, transient housing throughout Arkansas and the Midwest". I do have a picture of my own room's easy chair (but did not take a picture of the bathroom and its baby blue tiles).

1. Other than the Travelodge in Austin that has since been converted to apartments, I can't think of any hotels I've stayed at where the property isn't being used as a hotel anymore.

Bastrop H-E-B plus! (Bastrop, Texas)

I don't have a picture of H-E-B plus!, this is from Community Impact. Cropped. (Amanda Cutshall)
As of this writing, the Bastrop Highway 71 page will be getting another redo that removes the H-E-B from the list, despite it facing Highway 71 (it has the address of 104 North Hasler Boulevard), and it's worth talking about here.

H-E-B plus! is the de facto supermarket in Bastrop (Albertsons, Kroger, or Randalls was never here) and opened in 2003. The old H-E-B was 50,000 square feet and located directly across from North Hasler. I remember seeing both and thinking that the new H-E-B didn't look much bigger than the old one, but it was a deeper store, with the old store being 50,000 square feet and the new one being 91,000 square feet. In November 2014 it finished an expansion, rebranding it as an H-E-B Plus (at about 119,000 square feet). Ten years later another expansion was announced that would add another 21,000 square feet which would add True Texas BBQ, additional Curbside service, and an expanded tortilla department. BastropTexas.net has pictures of H-E-B when it was brand-new. The clock tower is still there.

Godfather's Pizza (Tillmans Corner, Alabama)

Picture from Google (from Cary Reams, 2026)
I'm afraid I don't have much on this one. This Godfather's Pizza in Tillmans Corner (Mobile), Alabama at 5442 US-90 has been here since at least 1998 but I can't tell what it was before, if anything. (It looks much older inside and out than 1998, but I've been wrong before). Unlike the motel I stayed at nearby (more on that another time, it was probably THE worse motel I've ever stayed in) it didn't suck, and actually pretty decent; it was my first time eating at a Godfather's since December 2002. I do have a picture of my own; it's from my 2025 vacation.