Retro Disney World

What A Find! – River Country Photos

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When looking around the web, I am always drawn in by the vintage and retro photos people have of WDW.  If you really think about it, the entire complex is photographed so often and even when cameras were “tougher” to use, people still took tons of photos at Disney World. With that being said, the amount of unpublished and even un-digitized photos has to be huge. This collection we came across is no exception. These were...Read More...

RetroReplicas

Horizons Pegasus Hoverlift a.k.a. Mesa Verde Hovercraft

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It may have seemed to be have a little quiet around here in February, but I can assure you we were busy. In fact we were working on several projects at once. I was busy working on the Horizons model and both of us were working on developing a toy which ate up a lot of our time. While developing the toy we realized we should try a smaller test on a less complicated subject. This…Read More...

Retro Disney World

The Walt Disney World Waterski Show

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When I started looking through the Bill Cotter photos, I was just amazed at how many gems and awesome photos are included.  The content and history is amazing and I almost don’t even know where to start! Well I think I have found a solid topic that I’d like more info on, and will be doing some more research like usual.  The infamous WDW Water Ski Show.  Some people may not know this even existed, but...Read More...

Retro Disney World

What if the Maelstrom soundtrack was “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure?

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Tonight, I again took a good look at the Norway grand opening celebration hosted by Willard Scott from 1988. The guy clearly had about 8 jars of Smuckers before they shot this; he’s on a sugar high that rubs off into the other actors like a bad cologne. What surprised me comes at the 5:51 mark where the adventure of Maelstrom begins. Do we hear “You are not the first to pass this way…” followed by...Read More...

Retro Disney World

High Resolution 1982 EPCOT Center Map – Free for download/printing!

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Over the past few months we have been working closely with Jason at Deep Water Studios, he is our key 3D guru for our Retro Replicas project (for more on that, visit www.retro-replicas.net). When Progress City posted a photo of an 1982 EPCOT Center Map a few days ago, Jason followed the conversation and realized there is a demand for a high resolution and zoom-able version of the map. Jason quickly reached into his bag of…Read More...

Retro Disney World

WDW Info Packet from 1989 – A window to the past, and future

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In the 1980s and 1990s if you wrote to WDW asking for information (I often did under the guise of a “school project”) they would send you all sorts of information goodies…now they would just re-direct you to some sticky sweet looking PDF file loaded with stock photographs of perfect families skipping through the Magic Kingdom. Brian one of our users sent us a scan of a 1989 WDW information package. There is a wealth of...Read More...

RetroReplicas

Horizons 3D Model – Update 1 – Part 2

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In part 1 of this update, I discussed the changes to the landscaping I’ve made to the Horizons model to improve its accuracy. In this part, I’ll explain the changes to the Horizons pavilion building I’ve made so far. Luckily, most of the changes I’ve made and plan to make to the model of the Horizons building are minor and are mainly adding more detail and optimizing the mesh for later use in the model making…Read More...