Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Walt Disney World 1979


My family took a trip to good old Orlando to see the sights in the summer of 1979. During some cleaning a while ago I became the lucky recipient of all the brochures and such from that trip. I thought I'd share. I only have two things now, but there's more (darn the busy holiday season).

Here she is, a map of the entire resort from the summer of '79. I left the image really big so detail can be seen. Where are all the other theme parks, resorts, water parks, shopping districts, night life areas, and hotels?! It's strange to see the resort with only ONE theme park. There's some promotional materials for EPCOT, but it's obviously not even on the map yet as it didn't open until October of 1982.

Here's the map of the Magic Kingdom. It's it pretty? Ehhh, well it's interesting at least! Quite different from the beautiful maps they have these days. Look at all the classics that are on there: "If You Had Wings", Circle Vision 360, Mission to Mars, the Skyway - and that's only Tomorrowland! The lovely 20,000 Leagues is still around, along with Mickey Mouse Revue (isn't that still playing in Tokyo?), and notice that the Tiki Room was called "Tropical Serenade." I never knew that.

This was also still the time of Tickets for attractions. I find it very interesting to see what was what, if you will:

E Tickets:
Jungle Cruise
Pirates of the Caribbean
Country Bear Jamboree
Hall of Presidents
Haunted Mansion
It's a Small World
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Space Mountain

D Tickets:
Tropical Serenade
Tom Sawyer Island
Liberty Square Riverboats
Mickey Mouse Review
Skyway
Mission to Mars
StarJets
WEDway PeopleMover

The rest are the smaller attractions. Some of these make sense to me as the big ticket attractions (Pirates, Mansion, etc), but some don't. Why was StarJets a D ticket? Capacity, popularity? Hmm. And you can imagine trying to pull off the Hall of Presidents as an E ticket today? I don't mean technologically speaking, just as far as subject matter. Oh my, how times have changed.

More soon!


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