I thought the North disregarded the Anaconda plan?
Well...not really.
McClellan who succeeded Scott as General in Chief prefered a direct strategy, striking towards important cities and capturing them, but failed in the end to implement this strategy (though not entirely his own fault - which should placate 67thTigers if he comes on this thread

)
The Anaconda Plan was never really scrapped, it was just sort of...put on the shelf. Elements of it were continually employed. Naval blackade and gaining control of the Mississippi being the main ones but still under McClellan and his successor Henry Halleck the major cities and strongholds were targeted as priorities.
The main problem with the plan of course was that McClellan's ratification of it to focus on major cities and strongholds in stead of being the relatively passive type of war Scott envisioned meant that the war was split into three different theaters of independent actions rather than possible three different theaters of a combined and organised overall strategy.
That's not to say McClellan was wrong to shift the focus of the war away from blockade to taking the important cities and strongholds as that probably shortened the war itself but McClellan's changes did make break the overall strategies apart and force the Armies to fight independently for different strategic aims in their own individual theaters.