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1. Best Disney Parks For Teens
2. Walt Disney World Facts And History
3. Walt Disney World Explorer First Edition

📆 Thu 25 January 2018 📁 👤In 1996, on one of the earliest Walt Disney World trips I can strongly remember (Cinderella's Castle was a cake), Ipurchased a PC game called The Walt Disney World Explorer. Presumably, it came in one of those classicinexplicably oversized boxes that only contained a CD jewel case and small instruction book. This game ended up beingone of my favorite things about childhood, and is probably the source of my passion for pursuing Disney parks knowledge.On another trip in 1998, I excitedly purchased the Second Edition, which was largely the same but with minor changes toreflect WDW updates of the preceding years. The main overview screen of the gameThe game — though it's arguably more of an educational/informational tool than a game — may seem quainttoday. The user is shown whimsically (but inaccurately) drawn maps of Walt Disney World and its theme parks, then clickson attractions, resorts, or images representing topics like Imagineering or horticulture (yeah, really), and gets takento a short slideshow of images playing under a descriptive narration and authentic parks music. Most attractions alsofeature 'Backstage', 'Trivia', and 'More Stuff' sections containing even more information and photos. Today, trivia andphotos of everything at WDW are available online from myriad resources; however, in the mid-1990s having a colorful,interactive tool with so much information (and music!) was extremely novel.

Example of an attraction slideshow screenSince mine isn't the first nostalgia-tinged writeup about The WDW Explorer, I won't go into a ton more detail. There arefor those who wish to get a feel for thegame or revisit it. Instead I want to focus on a particular feature of the game, the interactive timeline.

The WDW TimelineOne of the memorable features of both editions of The WDW Explorer was the interactive timeline. For each year, fromopening in 1971 to 1996 or 1998 depending on the edition, a narration explained some of the key developments at WDW.

Anoverview map of the resort also updated with each year to show each new park or resort as it opened. One could slide thetimeline back and forth and quickly watch the resort develop or regress. DemoAs a coding exercise, I decided to re-create the Second Edition's timeline in a web browser. The demo is below.Warning: After clicking start, roughly 10MB of data will be downloaded.

(The game will begin before this download is complete).Sorry, your browser doesn't support As you can (hopefully) see, the timeline is a fun way to explore WDW history.Most entertaining to me in 2018 is how it serves as a time capsule of when it was released. Notice, for example, theinordinate amount of space given on the map to the now-defunct Disney Institute. Seriously, it's as prominently featuredas the theme parks (even moreso than Animal Kingdom).

It should come as no surprise that the Institute opened in 1996. Iimagine Michael Eisner (aka Captain Synergy), the driving force behind the Institute, specifically directed the artdepartment to highlight it.Here are a few more bits of trivia for WDW buffs:.Careful listeners may note that Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney's Hollywood Studios) is referred to as 'The DisneyStudios' in the game. As, this 'was due to a licensinglimitation dealing with content distribution' that barred the use of the MGM name in certain contexts. This name wasalso used in promotional VHS tapes of the period.There are a few notable omissions (beyond the conspicuous lack of parking lots on the map). Coronado Springs Resortdoesn't appear, nor is it mentioned in the narration, despite opening in 1997 and being featured elsewhere in the game.The opening of the Wide World of Sports complex is mentioned in 1997, but it does not appear on the map (probably due tolack of space).Take a moment to compare this map to actual satellite imagery of WDW. To put it lightly, there are some libertiestaken to allow the whole property to fit on a 640x480 screen. Among the more egregious errors is the implication thatBay Lake and the lake bordering Downtown Disney (now Disney Springs) are connected by a short river or canal.

Best Disney Parks For Teens

Inreality, they are not connected and are nearly four miles apart. Ironically, the navigable waterway in the Epcot ResortArea is not shown connecting to the Studios as it actually does.I wish I could recall exactly where I found the game. I think it may have been at the now-defunct VirginMegastore in Downtown Disney. Oddly enough I also have a distinct memory of looking at the box and pondering purchasingit ($25 was a lot to a kid) at some shop in World Showcase.Anyone that shared the realtime experience of buying both editions knows the ensuing (admittedly childish)disappointment of finding out that the Second Edition was 95% the same, and that Animal Kingdom was represented by asingle slideshow rather than the park having its own map(s) like the others. But that's a rant for another time (namely,twenty years ago).This lake was known as Village Lake at the time. In recent Disney Springs maps, it seems to have been re-designated Lake Buena Vista, despite this name traditionally belonging to the connecting lake to the northeast, on theother side of East Buena Vista Drive.Tags Related Posts AboutAdamCOT is the personal blog of an aspiring front-end developer.

The Walt Disney World Explorer CD-ROM is an animated travel brochure that doubles as memorabilia. It compiles a bunch of photos and facts from Disney’s Orlando theme park resort into an interactive map format – a way for families to learn about Disney World and, maybe, remember their trip later, like saving a paper map for a scrapbook. The CD-ROM doesn’t have information about planning a visit; it’s more like a sprightly, clickable ad for Disney rides, hotels, golf courses, and water parks. It’s a piece of the sort of celebratory self-mythmaking that Disney loves.Decades later, we can call the Explorer CD-ROM a time capsule.

Disney World today looks quite different from this version of the park from 1996. Yet the Explorer CD-ROM has always been a time capsule: even in 1996, this program became outdated quickly. In hindsight, it still has merit as a snapshot, an image of what Disney aspired for the parks to be at one specific point in time.The Explorer CD-ROM doesn’t try to be a realistic travel guide. It wants to give you the idealized Disney World. Over the opening credits, it sets the tone with inspirational quotes from Walt Disney about his ambitions.

It’s selling you the Disney dream.(Evidently, it sold to the right audience. Hyperbolically called the opening credits “perfect” and “tear-inducing.”)The program re-imagines the entire Disney World complex as one gigantic theme park map. In reality, the various regions of Disney World are. But here on the CD-ROM, everything lives in one endless stretch of fun and imagination, connected together by footpaths and rivers.

It looks like a world map from a video game. This is the version that Disney wants you to fall in love with, The Most Magical Place on Earth, the perfect fantasy land unencumbered by the demands of real life. The great big beautiful Disney World they want you to believe inEven as a skeptic of the “Disney magic” thing, I had to admire how well the Explorer CD-ROM uses the Disney style to build the illusion.

The map is teeming with activity. Every landmark in Disney World has been redrawn as a cartoon, with steamboats paddling on the river and trains riding around the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The cursor has been replaced by Tinkerbell, who flies closer into the park when you click on something, leaving behind a sparkly trail.

It certainly makes Disney World look like, well, magic.Disney Interactive wanted to excite you about visiting the parks. The CD-ROM is filled with beautiful photos of the parks, plus trivia facts and themed tours of the attractions. To round out the Disney mythology, significant chunks of the program are also about the history of Disney World and subjects like the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a government entity run by Disney since 1967 so they can self-govern. It’s incredibly suspect!). Big rides like Pirates of the Caribbean get special attention with more trivia, pictures, and videosThis was likely one of the most media-rich guides to Walt Disney World you could pick up from the mall or the local library in 1996, better than (which most people probably couldn’t access at home anyway). Although the information is a bit disorganized, the whole purpose of this CD-ROM was to encourage you to explore more of Disney World, like the Disney Institute, where your family can enroll in “unique hands-on experiences” that will “stimulate guests’ minds and bodies.”But Walt Disney World changes constantly. The Disney Institute closed in 2003.

A fourth theme park, Animal Kingdom, opened just two years after this CD-ROM came out, and its absence is glaring. By the time the Explorer CD-ROM reached stores, one of the rides in Epcot, Ellen’s Energy Crisis, had already switched its name to Ellen’s Energy Adventure.And in 2001, the water park River Country was abandoned – not simply closed but. Watching it proudly advertised feels like seeing a ghost.Of course, it’s silly to evaluate an old tourism ad, made for old computers, on current terms. The point is that this CD-ROM was always out-of-date, even when it was released.

Walt Disney World Facts And History

Disney Interactive put out a second edition in 1998, but especially with the internet growing, nobody needed to buy a new interactive Disney World encyclopedia every two years. Trying to keep pace in an expensive, static format would never have worked.

Watch the park grow into an overstuffed behemoth that fills the screenInstead, it works as a commemoration of the Disney World dream as it existed right at that moment in 1996. The release of the Explorer CD-ROM coincided with the 25th anniversary of Walt Disney World; it feels like a celebration. It pays homage to the history of the parks while also promoting the Honey, I Shrunk the Audience 4D movie, presented by Kodak. To an extent, the program has gotten better with age as it transitions from being a vacation guide to being a yearbook.

In both cases, it’s still an effective ad for the idealized Disney World experience.The CD-ROM includes a visual timeline, where you can witness the park slowly expanding over 25 years, every minor change and new hotel leading up to the mythical perfect-looking modern resort. Maybe it seems more obvious now, but the celebration of Disney World in the Explorer CD-ROM is just one more point on that timeline – an outsized fantasy, a triumph at the time, and, years later, a quaint stepping stone for things to come.Then and now, Disney Interactive made one major mistake with this: the looping background music is a brass band playing “it’s a small world.” It’s terrible. Trivia!The Explorer CD-ROM tries to spice up the information with a game to find “Hidden Mickeys,” little Mickey Mouse icons tucked away in the program like you can also find hidden at the theme parks. They’re usually crudely inserted into the photos and sometimes too difficult to pick out.

Walt Disney World Explorer First Edition

If you find them all, you unlock a bonus video clip. Thankfully, the program is interesting enough without having to search for them. Leave a ReplyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked.CommentName.Email.Categories. (15). Medal of honor allied assault patch 1.2 download. (24). (10).

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