Joy and I were married in February 1996. It's hard to believe that, in under one month, we'll be celebrating our 18th anniversary. It just doesn't seem possible. Time really does fly when you're having fun and, man oh man, are we having fun! Anyway, in June of 1996, we visited Walt Disney World. We didn't go alone, though. We went Joy's brother and his wife (fiancé at the time) and we had a really good time. However, we didn't stay on property. We stayed at a Days Inn nearby and, as I recall, it wasn't a bad experience. We didn't feel unsafe or see weirdos roaming the parking lot or anything like that. I do remember it had a pool and, when the pool was closed at night, we visited the pool of an adjacent hotel. So, maybe we were the weirdos roaming the parking lot.
But back to the parks. This was 1996 so, Animal Kingdom was not open and Disney Hollywood Studios was still known as Disney-MGM Studios (in fact, Joy still casually refers to the park as "MGM" on a regular basis). So, naturally we visited the Magic Kingdom, Disney-MGM and EPCOT. We also visited Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach (more on those later). I should mention that, on this, our first Disney trip, Joy and I were not Disney World buffs at all. Oh sure we had a wonderful time but, for whatever reason, we didn't get hooked like we would later on.
It's also reasonable to expect that, since this was almost 17 years ago and, even though it was our first vacation as a married couple, I cannot remember the exact dates or how long we visited. I do recall that our trip spanned the last day or two of June and ran into the first week of July (but probably did not run into July 4th). Aside from the fact that Joy's birthday was spent down there, it's easy to remember that it rained. Everyday. Around 4:00pm or 4:30pm. And I mean it poured. Knowing what we do now, this was perfectly normal but, for some reason I don't remember expecting this. Weird.
Throughout our trip, we adopted the habit of getting up super early and going hard all day long until well into the very, very late hours of the night and then repeat for the next day. To make sure we applied this pressure to ourselves, we had park tickets with the hopper and water park options added. In other words, no time to relax; we were in Disney World so we were going to push ourselves to experience as much as we could possibly stand.
Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with people going hard all day long while on vacation. And there's nothing wrong with getting hopper/water park passes and using those to their fullest. I'm also not saying that I enjoy sleeping in super late and skipping the fireworks at the parks because I want to be back at the hotel at before 7pm. Not at all. What I am saying is that because of this self-induced craziness we put ourselves through, maybe we pushed a Disney trip off to the back of our minds. And then there was the sun poisoning (more on that later too).
As I recall, each day of our vacation, the four of us would get up, go to Burger King (or some other fast food place) for breakfast and head to the parks. Even though I can't remember for sure, it's probably pretty safe to assume our first visit was the Magic Kingdom. Sitting here, I can't believe that I can't remember what we rode that first day. Wow. Maybe instead of listing all of the stuff I can't remember, I'll just focus on the things that I do remember.
The water parks. We took one day and visited both water parks. I don't remember everything about what we rode at these parks either but I do remember two things in particular: Joy's brother and I rode Summit Plummet at Blizzard Beach and we all experienced Shark Reef at Typhoon lagoon.
Shark Reef at Blizzard Beech is basically a snorkeling tank. I had never been snorkeling before and I have not been since this trip. I don't remember how busy the park was but I do remember that my brother-in-law and I went through the attraction multiple times. Prior to entering the pool, the cast member that was handing out the vests you had to wear made the following remark to me: "You might want to put on some sunscreen." Now, I am not what anyone would call a dark complected man. To the best of my knowledge, my heritage is primarily Irish and English so, it should come as no surprise that I could easily be considered "pale".
Up to this point in all of my 22 years, I had experienced some sunburns before. Nothing prepared me for the severity of the sunburn I received after spending an entire summer day at Disney's waterparks with my pasty white skin exposed to the cruel Florida sun.
After leaving the waterparks, we went back to our hotel, cleaned up and went to eat at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney. That was when I started feeling sick. I thought I was just coming down with some sort of stomach bug because I was really feeling nauseated. The next morning, the agony started kicking in. I'll skip the rest of the painful details except for one important part: Alien Encounter.
Stitch's Great Escape is the re-branding, so to speak, of Alien Encounter. We visited this attraction when my sunburn was in all its painful glory (sore, hot, and shoulders... blistering). As we went to take our seats, I looked at the shoulder harnesses and thought, "I'll let the shoulder harness lock a little further away from my shoulders so I'll be spared that painful contact." Well, that didn't work out as I planned. You see, during the attraction, the alien "escapes" and roams through the audience. At one point, he stomps right overhead and, in order to make this seem authentic, the Imagineers decided to have the ride's shoulder pads slam down onto the audience members' shoulders. Ouch. That really, really hurt. I understand that, generally speaking, Stitch's Great Escape isn't all that popular. To be honest, I haven't been very interested in riding that again. Ever.
So that's pretty much the rundown of our maiden voyage to Walt Disney World way back in 1996. You may notice the lack of pictures. That's because I've never scanned our old prints that are currently sitting in a shoe box under our bed. However, for our next trip in 2007, I took plenty of pictures.
Stay tuned for part two of Our Walt Disney World History...
Shark Reef at Blizzard Beech is basically a snorkeling tank. I had never been snorkeling before and I have not been since this trip. I don't remember how busy the park was but I do remember that my brother-in-law and I went through the attraction multiple times. Prior to entering the pool, the cast member that was handing out the vests you had to wear made the following remark to me: "You might want to put on some sunscreen." Now, I am not what anyone would call a dark complected man. To the best of my knowledge, my heritage is primarily Irish and English so, it should come as no surprise that I could easily be considered "pale".
Up to this point in all of my 22 years, I had experienced some sunburns before. Nothing prepared me for the severity of the sunburn I received after spending an entire summer day at Disney's waterparks with my pasty white skin exposed to the cruel Florida sun.
After leaving the waterparks, we went back to our hotel, cleaned up and went to eat at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney. That was when I started feeling sick. I thought I was just coming down with some sort of stomach bug because I was really feeling nauseated. The next morning, the agony started kicking in. I'll skip the rest of the painful details except for one important part: Alien Encounter.
So that's pretty much the rundown of our maiden voyage to Walt Disney World way back in 1996. You may notice the lack of pictures. That's because I've never scanned our old prints that are currently sitting in a shoe box under our bed. However, for our next trip in 2007, I took plenty of pictures.
Stay tuned for part two of Our Walt Disney World History...
