The last week in February 1983 after months of saving and dreaming myself, my wife and our two young girls found ourselves in WDW. I had never been and had no idea what it was all about. (Pre-internet days) As a family it was our first road trip from Vermont to anywhere further than Boston. I know my family had a great time but just to emphasize the affect it had on my life, the joy I was feeling on every minute of that trip was not describable and I can honestly say has never been duplicated. I tried a number of times to duplicate, but honestly was never successful.
I acquired my love of a road trip at that time, but that didn't compare with my feeling of total exhilaration and childlike anticipation that I felt as I drove onto World Drive. The sounds, the sights, the mechanics, the showmanship the ability to forget that the rest of the world even existed was overwhelming. After a long day at MK the next was to visit a 4 month old EPCOT Ctr., sorry to say that it was not mature enough yet to gather my imagination. Speaking of Imagination, even that didn't have the ride ready at that time and the lines were horrible for what was there, so we took a vote amongst ourselves and decided to climb into the car and go to the Kennedy Space Center. That place also blew us away and even that wasn't the finely tuned place it eventually became. But it was still fun and informative and the kids really loved it, as did my wife and I. Back to MK the next day to finish up on all the attractions before we headed back north the next day. We took a different route back and managed to spend a few hours in Silver Springs before heading back across the state and up I-95 to Washington, DC. After what turned out to be a private tour of DC the next stop was home. The only thing that prevented us from dipping into a depression was that after just one showing the girls and I had memorized the words to "Best Time of Our Lives" from CoP. Now is the Time was the theme music for CoP at the time and we managed to sing it most of the way back.
That adventure made me a die hard Disney Park fan. After that trip our lives took a turn for the worse in ways that are too complex and unstable to go into here, but it didn't stop me from trying to relive that Disney experience over and over again. It never was the same but that's not to say the subsequent trips weren't fun, because they were, they just didn't have that Wow factor that was presented by that first one. That was almost 39 years ago and my daughters, now in their mid-forty's, can still remember so clearly so many details of it. It just clicked. Heck, I even pursued getting a CDL with passenger endorsement so I could retire to Florida and drive bus for Disney. That and the first trip were constantly part of my day dreaming done when times were less then perfect.
As a side note, the song The Best Time Of Your Life was so appropriate during that and subsequent trips because it really felt true. Jump ahead 20 years and my wife had left, my girls were married and building their own families and I was traveling solo. I felt miserable and lost. I sat there on a bench and saw families going past and my mind went to those happy, happy years and what happened back then. I decided it was time to stop the pity party and went to CoP. By then "It's A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" was the new theme. There was something about it that fired me up and made me feel that life could be good again and that the only thing that was standing between me and that was myself. I then made new plans for what was left of my life and try to build a new set of memories to basically bookend my life. I made decisions that changed everything. I kept the past in memory and looked forward much more then backward. Now the older age is paying me it's visit once again things have changed but I'm not upset, just trying to adjust to my new adventure.
