In 1972 my grandparents took a road trip from New Jersey to Florida...armed with AAA highlighted maps of the I-95 east coast corridor they stopped at South of the Border, Marineland, Busch Gardens, Walt Disney World and a host of other attractions. To this day I still have the 3-ring binder that contains the handwritten account of their entire itinerary; hand written mileage logs, fuel stops, and notes. For many years I've had in my possession 700 feet of Super8 film taken by my grandparents that documented their entire trip. Recently, I had the footage converted and began to apply my film restoration techniques to the transfer. It's wonderful to see my late grandparents again and all the places they visited. What you see below is in the order that they filmed it; its as it happened.
The two reels together have a runtime of just over 40 minutes, but hidden in the middle of two reels is what I want to share with you - a bit over 9 minutes of rare early WDW home movie footage. What you are about to see is probably some of the earliest and most pristine looking film from Walt Disney World that you have ever seen. You'll be taken back to a time when Tomorrowland was incomplete, the old Frontierland Station still welcomed trains, the long lost West Street is adorned with flowers and you could see the Nautilus patrol the lagoon from the Skyway.
For those interested, the conversion and restoration process started with the original Super8 film being scanned in at a 1920x1080 resolution by Pixcel.com. I then applied a number of filters to remove grain, stabilize, sharpen and improve the color. From their I upconverted the film from its original 18 frames per second to 30 frames per second, this reduces flicker and jerky motion.
I have put in a lot of time refining my scripts and tuning the filters to ensure that the end result is nothing but the best. I was lucky that the film was in near perfect condition after 42 years of storage, making the conversion process a bit easier. I appreciate everyone's input and patience while I completed the restoration process. This is not the last; next up is the Magic Kingdom Parade from 1972...then we tackle 1975, 1978 and 1980.
With that said, enjoy our first Super8 film restoration!
Video here: https://www.retrodisneyworld.com/retrodisneyworld/imageworks-film-restoration-blog/1972-wdw-home-movie-in-hd-final-restoration
