My First Trip to Walt Disney World!

Right as I began the unexpected one year hiatus from the blog we were getting ready to take our first family trip to Walt Disney World.  I had plans for very detailed blog posts about our trip, full of fun pictures and highlights.  I still plan on doing this (I actually wrote something up a year ago after our return) but first I thought it would be fun to step back in time and take a look at my first trip to Walt Disney World way back in 1989. When we were up in Massachusetts last week I asked my parents on the whereabouts of the Disney photo album and my father found it in the storage room.  I thought it would be fun to show the kids.  Then I brought it home with me because I thought it would make a fun blog post. That's right folks, we're about to crank up the Wayback Machine.

Things I realized upon opening this photo album 26 years after that first trip.

1. People didn't take as many pictures back in the day.  You really couldn't when a roll of film only allowed for 24 pictures.  Then you had to store said film with you along with the multiple other spare rolls and filled rolls.  And good film wasn't cheap.  I came home from WDW last August with 400 pictures on my phone alone.  Impossible in 1989. 
2. The quality of the pictures pales in comparison to today's digital.  I'm not just talking pixels here.  Now we can take multiple pictures in a row, select the best one and delete the others.  We can line up a shot just right, take the picture, and have immediate feedback of how we did.  If we don't like it, we simply delete it and retake.  Not so back in the day.  You took the picture and hoped and prayed you did a good job when they came back from development. Oh and your developed film always included one of these...trying to squeak an extra picture out of that roll of film. 
   
3. I think there are pictures missing from this album...the missing sleeves tell me that there are.  Over the years pictures may have been robbed for various projects. And unlike today those pictures become irreplaceable (I am assuming the negatives are long gone but hey, I won't put it past my Dad to have them stored in a box somewhere.  Where does one get negatives developed these days?).  Still some gems in there!  
4. You weren't going to waste taking a picture back then unless someone was in it.  Hence, just about every picture from that trip featured my sister and I standing in front of something.  We were game at almost 12 and 14 but I believe we adamantly refused on the return trip two years later.
5. These pictures were taken in 1989...there will be some big hair, fun fashion, and fanny packs...lots of fanny packs.

Are you ready?  Here we go! And if you click on each pictures it will show up nice a big in a slideshow.

There we are...stardate late June/early July of 1989 at Bradley Airport.  I don't remember everything about the trip but I do remember this picture being taken.  In fact I can close my eyes and picture my 11 almost 12 year old self sitting in that seat.  Why?  Because I was about to take my first EVER airplane ride and I was beyond excited. In fact it was my sister's first too and I don't think my parents had been on a plane since their trip to Greece when they were first married.  I would sit in the same terminal many times years later flying back and forth to and from Raleigh but I couldn't have even imagined that that morning.  And hey, check out that Eastern Airlines sign over there!  And look at my mom and Colleen's perfect 80's hair.  As you can clearly see I my scrawny little self didn't care one bit about doing my hair back then...the bowl cut suited me just fine.  And another thing...my mom is only two years older in that picture than I am right now.  Ok, onward!

We stayed at the newly opened Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort.  This was the very first of the moderate resorts.  We were there over July 4th and celebrated my 12th birthday:

Let's start with the Magic Kingdom because even back then, that was the first place you headed:

One thing I noticed this past August was that there was stroller parking lots EVERYWHERE.  I didn't remember this many strollers 26 years ago!  That's because I wasn't pushing one.  As you can see there's me walking by a big ol' stroller lot right there in front of Small World:

The obligatory castle shot:

And I wonder where my son gets his dorky smile:

EPCOT Center (as it was referred to back then) was and continues to be my favorite park.

I know people say that kids find it boring but I was fascinated by it from my first glance at Spaceship Earth. I really felt like I was walking around a futuristic city in Future World.  So here's the obligatory pics in front of some of the pavilions:

The Land

The Living Seas

Horizons (One of the best rides EVER...may it RIP.  We rode it multiple times).

Journey into Imagination:

This was the original version of this ride not the current sub-par version that they are showing. Bring back the Dreamfinder! Seriously, I was so disappointed last year.  Back then you actually got to go up into the glass pyramids for Image Works, now it's all closed off. This guy snuck up there though... if I may make a request to Disney to open this back up because my kids would love to see this view:

via

But I digress...on with the tour. Disney's MGM Studios was brand spankin' new.

Not as many pictures there as the other parks but my Dad finally got in one:

We also took an excursion over to Kennedy Space Center:

Here's my funny memory from that day.  See that jumper I'm wearing?  I loved it but it was starting to get a bit small on me...lengthwise. To this day I distinctively remember walking around Cape Canaveral with the biggest wedgie every time I sat down.  The things you do for fashion...

We sandwiched the trip with excursions to water parks, an afternoon at River County in the beginning (a long abandoned but loved place) and our last day at the newly opened Typhoon Lagoon Water Park.  Very few pictures for obvious water logged reasons.  Then it was time to head home via a layover at RDU:

For those that don't know that's the old Terminal C in Raleigh.  That's where we changed planes.  I remember having to haul it from one end of the terminal to another.  Little did I know I'd be spending a lot more time in that terminal starting 10 years after that picture was taken.  Funny how your future interacts with your past.

We had so much fun on this trip that my parents started saving up for Round Two as soon as we got home.  Two years later, we were off!  We'll continue that adventure in another post...