Miranda
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2001
I have managed to unintentionally be at a lot of the celebration events at WDW and almost at DLR. I say unintentionally because our trips were never specifically planned because of the events... not once did I know any of these were happening ahead of time when we (or my parents) booked the trip or even until we got there!Well, it's the 50th anniversary. I have no idea what the rest of my 2021 will look like, but I figured that was worth an effort. Especially because I'm still sad I missed Disneyland's 60th.
- Mickey's 60th Birthday - They had a special land built for this event. I think this area is now what is the newer part of Fantasyland? It was the area that was Mickey's Toontown Fair for a while... originally it was Mickey's Birthdayland for this celebration. They had cupcake carts that sold birthday cupcakes. My mom and I made many trips out back there for those. Including one last trip into the parks right before we left to go home for the sole purpose of getting a cupcake. We went to the park, rode the train from Main Street back to Birthdayland, got our cupcakes, rode the train the rest of the way back to Main Street, then went back to the hotel and got ready to go home.
- 25th Anniversary - Was really surprised to get there and find the castle was pink and covered in candy!
- Millennium Celebration - My mom and dad had moved down to FL as soon as I graduated college in 1999, and I was an only child and we were a close family, so it was tough on my parents to move so far away from me. My dad turned 50 in 2000, so my mom planned a trip for them to go to WDW for the week of his birthday (they had moved to SW FL not near WDW), and on the side made plans for me to also join them on the trip to surprise him. So, I got to see the wand that was on Spaceship Earth and all the new stuff that got introduced with that like the updated Illuminations show and the Tapestry of Nations puppet parade. And I think that pin trading started being a "thing" during this celebration. I am not good at the actual trading part, but I got really into going around and buying pins. There was this map and special pin trading kit you got, and I think you had to collect stamps from various pin places... I don't remember all the details.
- 100 Years of Magic - I think this was supposed to be the 30th Anniversary, but then 9/11 happened, so it became a celebration of Walt's birthday... lots of new stuff showed up in MGM for this (I think it was still MGM then) like the Sorceror Mickey Hat and the One Man's Dream exhibit, and the Tapestry of Nations parade changed to Tapestry of Dreams.
- Year of a Million Dreams - I got a special pair of Mickey ears given to me as a gift in the queue for Test Track. One of the new attractions that opened for this was the Nemo show, which I love and is one of my favorite shows!
- Disneyland 60th Anniversary - We didn't actually make it to the official celebration, because it started a week or so after Tink weekend, but that was the year I went out to run the HM. But, the castle transformation was all done and we ended up being some of the first people to see the Hatbox Ghost in Haunted Mansion. SO and I had gone into the park early the day before the race, to make sure we got an early start on the park. We wanted to hit a ton of stuff in the morning and early afternoon because then we had reservations for our pasta dinner and an early bedtime for the race, so we wanted to get as much done as we could. The day before, we had tried to go to the Haunted Mansion, only to find it closed, so we were bummed about that. Having only been to DLR on one other occasion, I like to see the differences between the "same" attractions in WDW vs. DLR. So, we were eating breakfast at the River Belle Terrace and we saw people headed towards the Haunted Mansion and a bunch of them were dressed in crazy costumes, so we were wondering what was up, and we followed people over there and got in line. We thought we were just getting in line because it was open again, but then we found out that they were all these Hatbox Ghost fans there for the opening day and dressed in ghost costumes and stuff. People were really excited... I had no idea who the Hatbox Ghost even was, but we got in line with everyone anyway. We had to ask someone what it was so we knew where to look for the new ghost.