Retro Disney World

A letter to Tom Fitzgerald – Saving EPCOT Center – Please Retweet/Share

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Tom, You have no idea who I am and I’ll be honest, I only know you from your personal submarine welding experience at Sea Castle as well as the demonstration of imagineering excellence you have bestowed up on the Disney theme parks over the years. This letter doesn’t serve as anything more than part rant, part excitement, part sadness for the EPCOT Center that is gone, but most importantly, part relief that someone of your stature...Read More...

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 With that being said, the amount of unpublished and even un-digitized photos has to be huge.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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Is Bay Lake Gone Forever?

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One thing that always nags me about missing the old days, is how much has changed on Bay Lake & The Seven Seas Lagoon.  I am more of a Bay Lake/Seven Seas Lagoon kinda guy – just spent most of my time swimming, ferry boating, Water Spriting, and anything else starting out on the original two lakes.  When I look now, it is literally a ghost town.  Short of the small and large ferries driving back...Read More...

The Good Old Days – 1972 Prices

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One of my most recent acquisitions is this 1972 info brochure. It is just a one pager, but full of neat information from many years ago. I love the tagline "The Vacation Kingdom of The World" - I wish they would bring this back, but I wouldn't cross my fingers on that. The front focuses on the ticket pricing, or Adventure Ticket Books as they called them back then. The high rollers could get an 11-Adventure…Read More...