 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Age 8, so @ 1975.
My main memory was how much the 'Journey Inside the Molecule' scared the f- out of me.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1974, I was 12. It was Disney World in Florida. There was the "It's a Small World After All" indoor ride, with the "boats" in shallow water, and the animated puppets singing that song. But I don't remember too much else about Disney World. The Kennedy Space Center was the big deal for me on that trip.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
'Twas in 1992. I was 31. My daughter Jamie was one year old!, and her mother decided she should see the new Disneyland Paris, or as it was called at the time, EuroDisney. Because here in the UK this was our local one. It was great. I knew what to expect. A high grade theme park with a huge selling ethos.
We apparently had the best Pirates of the Caribbean, obviously because it was the latest, I enjoyed also both Phantom Manor and Star Tours. On this occasion we stayed outside the parks in a French chain hotel. The best show was Wild Bill Hickok's Wild West Show.
We went quite a lot during the next few years and started staying in the park itself. I remember both the Cheyanne and the New York hotels. I also started getting sick of the place even with the addition of the new extra next door park, Walt Disney Studios. My daughter was and still is infatuated with the place, so as she got older she started going with other relatives and friends. Of course the dream was to go to Florida and Walt Disney World. A few years ago she ticked off the original Disneyland, California on Trek America tour, and a couple more years later went to the one in Japan with her partner.
Back in the early 70s when I was an early teen I got my name checked in the UK's Disney weekly comic at the time, 'Donald and Mickey'. That year the hardback Annual book of the same title had a four page spread on the new Florida park, and being a fan of course I wanted to go. I finally went having agreed that we'd - my daughter, her partner, my wife and myself - all go on holiday just four years ago. Loved it. And would easily go again. We stayed in the Fort Wilderness campground.
This year, thirty years after that first trip in '92, it was my granddaughter's turn to be taken at one year old. History repeating itself. The good thing now is, since the Florida trip, we just let Jamie organise the whole thing, and boy does she fit everything in. Every restaurant, the hotel. The lot. We just go where we're told and to be honest it works just fine.
There was only one thing that disappointed right me back in '91. Obviously I knew the parks' are there as a pure fun and commercial enterprise, but I actually expected there to be some sort of museum of Disney film history. One little serious place that one could go and study the history and cultural impact of one of the biggest film factories in the world. But there was nothing like that. I even foolishly expected a decent soundtrack section in at least ONE of the many shops, but nah. They were too busy selling cuddly toys.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The English equivalent to Disney land -
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I grew up in and around Orlando so...the mouse loomed large in my childhood.
I think I was probably around 6 or 7 when I first went to the Magic Kingdom (1993ish) and I loved every minute of it. The music playing everywhere, the colors and smells, the beautiful landscaping and all the rides (Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain were the two big attractions--Splash Mountain was still under construction).
I went to Epcot for multiple school field trips and usually enjoyed it about as much as a trip to the museum--it was interesting but I wanted to be strapped into a fast-moving cart and violently shaken and spun upside down at speed.
Subsequent visits saw the magical sheen wear off. The lines were always a disappointment (I don't think they had that thing where you could pay extra to skip to the front of the line back then). The cost of food continuously disgusted me as I got older.
By the time I was 20, I didn't care if I ever stepped foot through those gates every again. However, I do have fond memories of trying to SNEAK IN to Magic Kingdom with my brother-in-law. We were both broke college students tooling around Orlando on the Lynx bus and after cashing out the downtown Orlando scene, we decided to mosey over to the theme parks and see if we could get in (I vaguely remember someone saying "they let you in for half price if it's later in the day"...total BS btw). So we walked up to the gates, took one look at security's omnipresence, and promptly gave up. We ended up missing the bus back to town and the next bus didn't come until the next morning. We ended up having to spend the night in a sort of purgatory, taking the trams allllll the way around the park until they stopped operating for the night and finally ending up at the faux-beach at the Polynesian resort where we found a couple of hammocks that we could lay on until the sun rose. The next morning, we were both covered in mosquito bites, starving, dehydrated, and exhausted. Goooood times.
During my later years, I learned all about the twisted things Ol' Walt did to get all that land at something like $.20/acre and how the mouse basically forcibly altered Florida's economy and environment forever. Carl Hiaasen wrote a great book on it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Rodent
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Aug 9, 2022 - 4:44 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
gsteven
(Member)
|
I visited the Anaheim attraction several times in the 1960s. I remember the "free" attractions as the most interesting:
the animatronic Abraham Lincoln, Carousel of Progress, the above-mentioned Circlevison theater (then showing "America the Beautiful"), and most of all, Monsanto's House of Tomorrow. Introduced in 1957, "the house survived the introduction of New Tomorrowland in 1967, but closed shortly after, as Monsanto’s attention shifted to their new sponsored attraction, Adventure Thru Inner Space. The building was so sturdy that when demolition crews failed to demolish the house using wrecking balls, torches, chainsaws and jackhammers, the building was ultimately demolished by using choker chains to crush it into smaller parts. The reinforced polyester structure was so strong that the half-inch steel bolts used to mount it to its foundation broke before the structure itself did."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
