What odd memories do you have from childhood of WDW?

[EPCOT.nut]

IYHW was one of my very fave attractions too.Im 36 so was able to enjoy it before it closed.Now I may be wrong but I swear that at one time you could even book Airline flights at a kiosk there for Eastern.

All these Disney girls around 35.....

Where were you guys when I was a NERD in High School and couldnt get a GF.I would have taken one who hated Disney but to have one that LOVED DISNEY????? BONUS!:hammer:

I think IYHW was my favorite ride because we rode it all the time. Why? I didn't know back then, but I know now - it was freeeee! It's one of the few rides I can close my eyes and be right there with the screen that was the whole room and there were birds flying with us as we moved towards the end of the ride. I can't believe BUZZ uses the same track.

I know what you mean about HS except a girl never had trouble getting a guy if we wanted one. Now we can't get rid of them. :ROFLOL:

 

[ChrisQ]

When I was around 10, we were on a trip staying at Fort Wilderness, and my cousin and I were allowed to go around by ourselves for the first time. We were told to be back in time for dinner at 7:00. Once we got off the boat, we somehow decided that we'd be quicker walking back to the campsite instead of taking the tram. So we walked, and walked, and walked. I knew we'd be late, so I got scared that we'd get in trouble and started running. My cousin started crying because she was convinced we wouldn't get to eat. I don't think I've ever ran so much in my life. We were about 30 minutes late, and all our parents did was laugh at us. They still do.

 

[sublimesting]

I have memories of when I was younger and the Fort Wilderness general stores seemed HUGE and filled with toys and stuffed animals. When the DW and I visited FW 2 years ago to stroll around I said "We gotta go to the General Store in the Meadows area, they have every stuffed animal imaginable." We walked in and I was like "What!?!?!, did they rebuild this place, where'd everything go?" It's amazing how childhod distorts memories.:veryconfu

 

[Gooch]

This isn't so much odd as it is embarrassing, but I remember being in the back seat of my car, around 4 or 5 years old, driving to the Contemporary one night when the gum I was chewing pops all over my face and gets stuck in my eyebrow. Had to cut it out because it was so much, lol.

 

[EPCOT Explorer]

Not so much as odd but funny nonetheless...

On my first trip to Disney(1993)I had no idea that we were going.I was just thrilled with being far away from home and staying in a hotel.Previous to leaving my parrents had shown me tons of planning videos and just general info about WDW.However,they failed to mention that you had to drive really far to actually see the castle and actually BE IN Disney.So, there I was,driving through WDW intill I saw the Earful Tower on the way to the TTC.Thinking that we were passing Disney and just driving through I burst into tears and wasn't happy untill I saw the castle.

Ooops.

 

[ChuckElias]

My first trip was December of '72. I was 6. We packed NO warm clothes. Hey, it's Florida, right? My first memory is walking into the Magic Kingdom, straight into a shop and buying an ugly orange sweatshirt with Mickey on it.

On a later trip, my family was standing in line for IASW, and I was lifting myself up on the handrails and swinging my feet forward and back. My mother, standing in front of me, said "Watch out for the lady in front of you!" I looked around the line and very innocently said, "There's no lady in front of me." My sister and I still say that to each other to remind each other of our mom.

 

[cpeterstx]

Here's mine. As a kid, I was fortunate enought to visit DL 1 time and WDW 5 times. In all my trips as a very young kid, I always remember having the best Monte Cristo Sandwich ever at WDW. I don't know why but whenver someone would talk about Disney, I always thought about that darn sandwich. Here's the kicker, when I went back to WDW for the first time as an adult about three years ago, I was hoping to find that sandwich. I knew that it was a restaurant right by POTC. That's all I could remember.

I looked all over and asked around. No luck whatsoever. In fact, most could not remember one at all. I thought I was going crazy.

Well, I finally did some research and found out that the sandwich is only availabe at the Blue Bayou cafe in DL. Well I had only been to DL one time and yet I had somehow associated it with WDW. At least I remembered one thing correctly, it was right by POTC...just not the Florida version...

It's amazing what things and how these things imprint on your mind.

 

[spoodles]

I have the vaguest recollection from getting ready for my first WDW visit. We're talking '74 or so. I seem to remember my older sisters going on about this one place the was world famous for the size of their deserts. Like a piece of pie would be 4 inches thick or something! Could of just been the Main Street Bakery, or some place long since closed. Funny the weird things that stick in your head.

 

[Thiger]

a few memories of my earlier trips:
-driving down and after seeing the sign for a Florida 'welcoming station' i looked at my brother and said, 'come on Mike, we've got welcoming to do!'
-taking a really fun picture at Lafitte's Portrait Deck
-riding IYHW a million times and after every ride running over to the PeopleMover (the birds and the tunnel scene was the best part)
-being really scared of descending into the HM's graveyard scene cuz I felt like I was going to slide out of the doombuggy
-Loving figment, but fearing Captain EO
-being apprehensive about drowning in the 20K sub
-leaving crayons in out station wagon's trunk one day and when we returned that night finding them all melted..my dad wasn't too pleased.

 

[Sadiebird]

During my first trip to WDW, sometime in the early 80's, we stayed at the Contemporary and heard that Mary Lou Retton was signing autographs in the lobby of the hotel. I was really into gymnastics at the time, but it was early in the morning and I hadn't yet gotten my shower, and I didn't want to meet her having just rolled out of bed, so I didn't go. My sister went and I cried in the hotel room.

From the same trip, I also remember eating tons of strawberry froze fruit at Epcot because it was so incredibly hot and also eating these powdered doughnuts that came in a little white paper bag. Does anyone else remember these? I have no idea why that sticks in my memory.

And I also remember being terrified of the Haunted Mansion and holding my Dad's hand in the stretching room.

Oh, and one last one. I remember eating in the restaurant in Mexico in Epcot and asking my parents if I could ride El Rio del Tiempo by myself, and they said I could, but then changed their minds and came and got me before I got on the ride.

Oh wait, just one more! I remember this special hot dog meal we got on the plane ride down to Orlando. I forget the airline, but the hot dog was wrapped in a foil wrap and came with a Mickey Mouse toy. Remember when airlines used to serve meals for a 3 hour flight? Although I swear those flights were more like 5 or 6 hours long back then.

 

[ProfSlim]

Back in '76, when I was 10 years old, we stayed at the Comtemporary and there was a 'Disney' channel on the T.V. (obviosuly not the Disney channel of today...more of a Disney promotional channel) Anyway, there was a song that was played continuously as background and foreground music (non stop). The song has stuck in my head for 30+ years... lyrics something like, "DisneyWorld, DisneyWorld, what a bright day, american apple pie will always stay, etc."

Anyone remember this jingle ??

Also, eating frozen bananas every chance I could... Too bad they only sell them, now, primarily in the AK.

 

[Eyorefan]

I don't have a lot of childhood memories, but I do remember stuff from our early Disney trips.

When I was 4 (1986) we went to celebrate by birthday at the Emperise Lily. My mom had made us dresses with a Disney print fabric and we were waiting with a group of other kids who were all excited to meet the characters and eat breakfest. I was crying. I didn't want to eat breakfeast there from my birthday I wanted to go to McDonalds. I was still crying when we sat down at our table. I remember Goofy came over and gave me a hug and patted me on the head. He pointed at himself on my dress and acted like it was the coolest thing ever. That is when I stoped crying.... and later bought a Goofy hat (you know the baseball hat with the long black ears and is made to look like his face) I still have it.

I remember being too short to ride BTMRR with my dad and having to run over to 20,000 legues to catch up with my mom. The way I had always remembered that, it seemed like they were right across from each other. It wasn't until I went when I was in High School that I relized just how far apart they were (and why my mom was so mad at my dad for not walking me over to her).

The other is just general, l remember riding MTWR about a million times on every trip. It was our favoriate. I never understood what the ending was suppose to be, just that it scared the crap out of us, until I read about it years later on the internet.

 

[wedway71]

I have the vaguest recollection from getting ready for my first WDW visit. We're talking '74 or so. I seem to remember my older sisters going on about this one place the was world famous for the size of their deserts. Like a piece of pie would be 4 inches thick or something! Could of just been the Main Street Bakery, or some place long since closed. Funny the weird things that stick in your head.

Looking at your Avatar.....where was that pic taken from?????

 

[ChrisQ]

-driving down and after seeing the sign for a Florida 'welcoming station' i looked at my brother and said, 'come on Mike, we've got welcoming to do!'.

I'll never forget stopping at the Florida Welcome Center and being excited at the idea of getting free orange juice, then picking up the cup, taking a swig, and it was grapefruit juice! Talk about a disappointment...

 

[ChrisQ]

I have memories of when I was younger and the Fort Wilderness general stores seemed HUGE and filled with toys and stuffed animals. When the DW and I visited FW 2 years ago to stroll around I said "We gotta go to the General Store in the Meadows area, they have every stuffed animal imaginable." We walked in and I was like "What!?!?!, did they rebuild this place, where'd everything go?" It's amazing how childhod distorts memories.:veryconfu

I was thinking the same thing. I remember how cool and huge the Trading Post was when I was a kid; then when I've visited as an adult, it was not so huge...still cool, but not so huge.

 

[SDav10495]

Just a couple of odd, out-of-context flashbacks for me...

"Dinosaurs" at MGM. My memories are too faint to remember much about them, but I do remember seeing the characters from that TV show at MGM.

And for some reason an image has always popped into my mind, probably from when I was 3 or 4, of groups of people moving over a slight hill through a line of trees...the image isn't much clearer than that, but I always knew in the back of my mind that it felt like it was just outside a park, and that the park was probably EPCOT Center. I was never sure if the place even really existed outside of my mind. It wasn't until my last trip to Epcot a year ago that I recognized the place in my memory as the grassy island you have to walk through to get from the parking lot to the park entrance. I wasn't crazy after all.

 

[Cane27]

When I get to really thinking about it, I remember quite a lot from my first trip in 1973 when I was in first grade. We didn't have a whole lot of money growing up, so we drove up and back in one day in our 1969 Chevy Townsman wagon sans air conditioning. Some memories-
1. The line up the ramp to the monorail was long, and we noticed our neighbor was there as well.
2. My parents commenting on how expensive the E tickets were.
3. The Skyway to Fantasyland.
4. Telling all of my friends at school how cool IASW was
5. Being scared of the Jungle Cruise animals because they had to be real.
6. The Monsanto Magic Carpet Ride-that was the best.
7. Getting a bucket of KFC for the road as we went home. I was in the back of the cavernous car with my two sisters-how did we survive back then with no seatbelts or car seats?

I remember another cool trip in early December 1982 just after Epcot opened. We were there during the week, and I remember me and my friends going on Space Mountain 13 times in a row before anyone else even showed up to ride.

Good times indeed.

 

[spoodles]

Looking at your Avatar.....where was that pic taken from?????

Somebody posted pics a while back of the inside of the turret leading up to Tinkerbell's flight. What you see in the pic in my avatar is her view as she takes off.

 

[EPCOT.nut]

I was in the back of the cavernous car with my two sisters-how did we survive back then with no seatbelts or car seats?

Off topic, sorry, but when I was a kid we always had a station wagon like the Toyota Corolla...when we were on road trips I sat in the back seat and every hour or so he would ask me to get him a beer out of the cooler in the "way back." GOOD TIMES

My first car was a Dodge Dart 1969 and it had no seatbelts, a metal dash, and no A/C. :lookaroun WOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOO :xmas:

 

[raven]

Not a WDW memory but early memory for DL. I was 8 or 9 years old. We were on the train and it was pouring down rain and we were going by an outdoor eating eara and they were closing all of the umbrellas that the people were standing under. I thought it was rude but then my dad said that they wanted them to come inside the other attractions and indoor eatting places.