I am super excited to share this find with everyone, since I'm not one to uncover cool little WDW history bits, but here goes.
My boyfriend is a big "car guy" and we regularly go to cruise nights and car shows across Western New York (we live outside of Buffalo). Last night we went to a cruise night that we visit pretty regularly and I saw this:
I turned and said, "Wow, that looks like the exact same model of the WDW omnibus!"
BF is like, "Yeah, mhm," as if I could tell the difference between different models of omnibus, lol. He can spot any car and know the make, model and year from a mile away, although even he isn't an omnibus expert
As we got closer, I'm like, "No, really, this looks like the EXACT same one! Crazy!"
The New York State registration showed that it was from 1983...hmmmm.
Then...I spotted this:
I started shrieking, "Omg, that's the EPCOT logo, babe - do you know what this means?!" He had seen the omnibus before we started dating, and they don't come to cruise nights regularly, but he knew who the owner was, so we walked onto the omnibus and I blurted out.
"Is this an original EPCOT Center omnibus?!"
He smiled and pulled out a photo album filled with pictures of the omnibus in EPCOT Center, and also during his work refurbishing it. He also showed me the original title (with WDW as the owner) and other cool pictures (he lets people use it for weddings...I told my boyfriend that I absolutely want that at our wedding, lol). His daughter has worked in special events at EPCOT for decades, and apparently when they were for sale, she thought of him. He actually owns
two of them. He also said that a few years ago they called him about buying a third one. He flew down there and said that it was rotting out. Ironically, he said that they don't care for the vehicles well at all, considering the elements in Central Florida (hello - Spectro, anyone?!).
Anyway, this was such an awesome and amazing surprise, it totally made my night to discover a little bit of Disney magic here in Buffalo. And it was awesome that this guy lets people actually climb up and sit on the omnibus to truly appreciate it. I can understand why he isn't able to come out to the cruise night every week, though - he said that it doesn't even fit on part of his street!
Here are some more pictures for you guys - enjoy!
I don't think this sign is original, but looks like a faithful recreation:
Here we are up top, facing the front:
