Theme Park Thursdays feature photos from one of our theme park adventures in the past.

World Showcase Omnibus (1985)

The year is 1985. The place is EPCOT Center.

While my parents had taken me to Walt Disney World before, this was my first "memorable" trip, which I experienced at age 10. EPCOT Center was just 3 years old at the time. That vacation had quite an impact on me becoming a Disney theme park enthusiast.

Today's photo — taken with a Kodak Instamatic 126 film camera and cropped accordingly — spotlights the World Showcase Omnibus, a double-decker vehicle that used to provide transportation for guests to visit the various countries around World Showcase Lagoon. It was phased out in the mid-1990s, probably because it couldn't contain a gift shop, timeshare information stand, or pin trading station.

Standing in front of the bus is my little sister Karen (age 7), sporting a lovely red Walt Disney World visor… and I'm not sure what she's really doing with her hands. I'm standing cluelessly next to her in my 1985 Walt Disney World shirt (I wore that thing a TON!) and tan EPCOT Center visor. To be honest, I'm not sure if we actually ever rode the bus!

Nevertheless, they are missed in World Showcase, as the buses provided motion, activity, and a unique sense of place.

Theme Park Thursdays feature photos from one of our theme park adventures in the past.

Vintage WDW Logo on SpectroMagic (2009)

Did you know that Walt Disney World celebrates its 40th Anniversary this year? Probably not, given that Disney doesn't seem to care about individual park milestones these days, instead favoring global "Disney Parks" marketing campaigns usually promoting some derivative of "Wishes/Dreams/Magic blah blah."

Today's photo is one of the opening units for the SpectroMagic Parade, a long running nighttime experience at the Magic Kingdom. It debuted in 1991 as a replacement for the Main Street Electrical Parade, and aside from a few hiatuses, has lit up for almost 2 decades now. It was mothballed last year when Walt Disney World's Summer Nightastic campaign brought back the Main Street Electrical Parade once again… which continues to run.

Continue Reading…

It's Thursday, which means it's time to once again celebrate Theme Park Thursdays. Here we post a photo from one of our theme park adventures in the past.

Steve wants Old Management to return! (2006)

This photo is from January 2006 and was shot at Walt Disney World, specifically the Magic Kingdom. Here I'm standing out in front of one of my favorite attractions, the Tiki Room. Unfortunately, since 1998 this attraction has been known as The Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Management… and has been horrible.

While the original attraction opened at Walt Disney World in 1971, it was rebooted in the late 1990s to make it "hip and edgy," mainly through the inclusion of Iago (from Aladdin) and Zazu (from The Lion King). The storyline was changed to these two birds being the "new owners," with a postmodern take on music and dialog to follow.

And it's bad.

In an interesting twist of fate, while I was at Walt Disney World for a conference in January, a fire broke out in the Tiki Room ceiling. It hasn't reopened since. There are rumors that maybe the show is being changed out to something else. Here's hoping!

Even though I've written many stories about our trips to Disney theme parks, there are often photos and situations that never get told. So I had this idea to start what I'm calling "Theme Park Thursdays." Basically, I'll post a photo or two from a previous trip and jot down a couple of words about it. Well, at least that's the idea. We'll see how it works in the coming weeks!

Dusk approaches on Crescent Lake (2009)

In December 2009, my family was given the fortunate opportunity to rent a Disney Vacation Club villa from a friend, giving us a week at the Beach Club near Epcot around Christmastime. Given that we typically camped at Walt Disney World (Fort Wilderness Forever!), this was quite a different experience.

One of the highlights for me was the entire well-themed Boardwark area set around Crescent Lake, which joins the Yacht Club, Beach Club, Boardwalk, Swan, and Dolphin resorts together. The lights and setting were quite magical!

I was recently looking at some old View-Master reels through my "new" viewer when I came upon this booklet for a Disney-themed set.  Back when View-Master reels came in paper packets, they often included multi-page booklets that further explained each shot, such as this from a G3-style packet.

Walt Disney World Fantasyland View-Master Booklet Cover

Through various ownership changes, View-Master dropped the use of packets and shifted to bundling reels in blisterpacks, eliminating all included supplements like order forms and paper booklets.  Today's View-Master sets ironically focus mostly on cartoon and preschool properties, but we no longer get to view the type of artwork featured on the cover of the Fantasyland set that I've shown here.  So take some time to enjoy this nice 1970s montage of things found in the land, in great contrast to what we'd probably see today (i.e. there's only 1 princess featured!)

Can you identify the ride depicted in the image that is no longer found in WDW's Fantasyland?

In January, I got to travel to Florida for a few days to attend the Children's Pastors' Conference on behalf of Kidology. Lucky for me, the event took place on the grounds of Walt Disney World, specifically at the convention facilities of Coronado Springs (which we stayed at back in 2006 for the same event).

While we were all there in the official capacity of being exhibitors, we did get away from the convention every now and then. One afternoon we decided to hop the bus over to Downtown Disney for a bite to eat… and then this photo was taken:

Why is Steve perplexed?

As I sit in my yellow jacket between my coworker Daniel and my boss Karl, I really have to wonder what I was thinking at the time. 

Today is my Dad's 63rd birthday.  Last year, we had the fortunate opportunity to spend a week at Walt Disney World during the holidays and celebrated his birthday on Disney's BoardWalk. (Note the unique Disney trash can in the background of this video!)

If you recall, back in 2009 Disney was running their "What will you celebrate?" promotion where you got free admission to the theme parks on your birthday.  Since we already had park tickets, they offered Dad other benefits.  We chose the "Birthday Fastpass"

Dad shows off his Fasspass Birthday Card

This allowed the birthday recipient and 5 other guests to get what was basically a universal Fastpass to any attraction, selected from pre-defined groups at each park.

Continue Reading…

If you were to take a look at my iTunes collection, you'd notice two genres that are substantially larger in song quantity when compared to an "average" person.  The first is "Christmas", which isn't a surprise for anyone who has participated in my annual Steve's 25 Days of Christmas Music countdowns.  The other is "Disney Theme Park", which features songs, area music, soundtracks, and other related audio from Disney-owned theme parks around the world.

The Official Album of Disneyland (2008)

Thus, you have to understand my excitement when I'm able to add some new audio to this collection.  There is quite a bit of Disney theme park audio out there, and to be honest, most of it is unofficial and obtained via "underground" means.  However, since 1980 Disney has released what they termed "Official Albums" for their parks, eventually growing from a single LP into multi-CD sets that cover Disneyland or Walt Disney World.  Other special sets have also been released to compliment this genre, such as 2009's 5-disc Walt Disney and the 1964 World's Fair set or 2005's elite 6-disc release to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Walt's original park, A Musical History of Disneyland.

Continue Reading…

Disney theme parks will often repurpose music and themes among properties on opposite coasts. For example, as I've already written, in 1985 Disneyland's 30th Anniversary Parade soundtrack was tweaked to be used by Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom as the tune for Mickey's Street Parade.

Recently, we've seen this type of repurposing in soundtrack once again with Disney's promotion for Summer Nightastic. This seasonal event started in Summer 2009 as an all-encompassing theme of pre-exisiting shows bundled under the same brand name ("Nightastic") to help Disneyland push their summer activities, as they didn't have any new rides or attractions to promote.

Continue Reading…

I recently got a new hat, thanks to my friend Branden who visited Walt Disney World not too long ago. I had seen this hat show up on some theme park blogs, so I asked him to track it down while at the Magic Kingdom.

My new Monorail Hat!

It's orange and black and features an iconic Spanish phrase on the front: "Por favor manténganse se alejado de las puertas." As any Disney theme park fan will recognize, this is the safety spiel that plays when boarding the monorail.

Can you say this?

I've written about this spiel before, ironically when I tracked down a t-shirt with the same phrase. Here's the audio for the safety spiel, recorded by "the Voice of Disneyland", Jack Wagner:

Audio: "Please stand clear…"

Jack passed away in 1995, but he still is the "voice" of the monorail safety message at the parks. I also use this audio on my phone as my ringtone. Yes, I'm a dork.

Hi Mickey!

Incidentally, the hat is part of Disney's "Vintage 1928 Collection", which has a worn and distressed look… thus the built-in rips and tears on the hat. Very cool!