Theme Park Nerdo
Active Member
The two astronauts from SSE were moved to Space Mountain after the 1994 refurb if I'm not mistaken.
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Spaceship in Spaceship Earth
- Thread starter mayoki
- Start date
VicariousCorpse
Well-Known Member
As far as I know, it was just the one from the bigger satellite. The second astronaut in the Space Mountain post show scene was in a standing position which is unlike the second astronaut from SSE.
Bill in Atlanta
Well-Known Member
Incredible! You can see working mom's red high heel shoe at :09. I was under the impression she was removed, but nope! Amazing she's still there after all these years.
HMF
Well-Known Member
More depressing considering that remnants of better past versions of the attractions are still there because WDI thought they could justify hiding them behind black curtains and distract guests with a flash animation which was probably already dated when it debuted and has almost been there nearly 2 decades.
Dragonman
Well-Known Member
Does anyone perhaps have good photos/diagrams of the pre-1994 descent with all the projections and lights? I understand there were mirrors involved but I’ve never come across a good representation of how the scene was set up and how it looked outside of blurry ride footage and photos
Gullwingdmc
Member
I just went through all 138 pages of this post (skimming) and I wanted to contribute a little piece of Spaceship Earth history I purchased recently.
Recently a reel of 1” tape came up for auction on eBay. All the reel said was “Disney Spaceship Earth HD Clone Of Edited Master” with a run time of 7:59:10 and a date of 12/22/94. I was intrigued, because I love Spaceship Earth and 1994 seemed very early for anything to be HD, especially on a 1” tape format, so I bought it.
I reached out to the amazing group of people at Futureport 82 and they were able to determine that it was an HDVS tape. HDVS was an experimental pre-HD format developed by Sony in the mid 80s. Even more amazing, they were able to connect me with the a video archiving group called OP Workshop run by u/ReelyInteresting. They had the exact model machine needed to transfer this 3 decade old tape! That is no small feat considering this format was very rare, and this particular machine was very expensive and had a short shelf life.
As soon as OP Workshop received the tape we found out what was on there. It was the virtual classroom scene from the 1994 descent in beautiful uncompressed HD! The video is about 32 seconds long and loops for 8 minutes. The reason for this is the master tape was most likely pressed on to an HDVS laserdisc for use in the attraction and that format had a time limit of 8 minutes.
I’m so glad the stars aligned and we were able to connect with the right people to preserve this small piece of EPCOT history!
Recently a reel of 1” tape came up for auction on eBay. All the reel said was “Disney Spaceship Earth HD Clone Of Edited Master” with a run time of 7:59:10 and a date of 12/22/94. I was intrigued, because I love Spaceship Earth and 1994 seemed very early for anything to be HD, especially on a 1” tape format, so I bought it.
I reached out to the amazing group of people at Futureport 82 and they were able to determine that it was an HDVS tape. HDVS was an experimental pre-HD format developed by Sony in the mid 80s. Even more amazing, they were able to connect me with the a video archiving group called OP Workshop run by u/ReelyInteresting. They had the exact model machine needed to transfer this 3 decade old tape! That is no small feat considering this format was very rare, and this particular machine was very expensive and had a short shelf life.
As soon as OP Workshop received the tape we found out what was on there. It was the virtual classroom scene from the 1994 descent in beautiful uncompressed HD! The video is about 32 seconds long and loops for 8 minutes. The reason for this is the master tape was most likely pressed on to an HDVS laserdisc for use in the attraction and that format had a time limit of 8 minutes.
I’m so glad the stars aligned and we were able to connect with the right people to preserve this small piece of EPCOT history!
Figments Friend
Well-Known Member
Absolutely awesome, and congrats on scoring this lovely find!
Thank you for sharing this, and your story here!
You were very lucky being able to find someone who had the correct player to run this tape.
Not an easy feat as you are already aware of.
Wonderful work in tracking those good folks down!
I love stories like this.
Thank you.
Nice little display you made for the tape reel as well.
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muddyrivers
Well-Known Member
I was the one who tracked down ReelyInteresting, and amazingly, the way I found them was through one of my other hobbies where I collect retro TV recordings. Never expected for the two disparate worlds to come together! 
Gullwingdmc
Member
Hey there! Good to digitally run into you on another platform! I still can’t believe all the stars aligned for that.I was the one who tracked down ReelyInteresting, and amazingly, the way I found them was through one of my other hobbies where I collect retro TV recordings. Never expected for the two disparate worlds to come together!