Thursday, January 31, 2008

Daily Figment 157: I won!

We don't like to brag at Imaginerding very often (yeah, right)...but I won a free StudiosCentral.com t-shirt! Glenn (one of Hochberg's cronies) posted the request for your earliest memories of the Disney-MGM Studios. Apparently, thousands entered, but only a few won. You can read the other winning posts here.

Here is my award-winning post (nerded up for our site):

You can read about my first day at Walt Disney World here.

We continue our story with the Disney-MGM Studios. Specifically Star Tours. Besides the Haunted Mansion, this was the ride I was most excited about. Back in the day (1994), the Early/Extra Magic Hour was called Surprise Morning. They rotated the parks on a specific schedule and people really did not take advantage of them. Ah, those were the days. Anyway, Sunday was the Surprise Morning for the Disney-MGM Studios.


We arrived at the Studios a little after 8:00am. If I remember correctly, the park was scheduled to be open at 9:00am. For some reason, I remember the song Mr. Jones by the Counting Crows playing on the rental car that morning. But I could be wrong; it may have been another day we were there. Needless to say, that song reminds me of that time. Warmth. I remember that it was very warm in the mornings in Orlando.

There was no one in the park that morning. To the right and above, you can see my first view of the Star Tours attraction. I vividly remember the kid and his parents walking in front of us. The kid with the baseball hat and blue backpack. And yes, I am wearing a dark blue t-shirt. It was hot (the weather--not me). We followed the kid and his family through the line and rode the attraction. What can I say? It was great. We visited Endor and in the traditional Disney storytelling fashion--something went wrong! When we left the ride the Star Wars fanfare was playing (you know, the music they play over the credits) and it was really exciting. Then we walked into the coolest thing in the world: a Star Wars gift shop!

I know, you're laughing, right? Well, you have to remember that back in 1994, there was not a lot of Star Wars merchandise. Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn had just been published in 1991. Before that, the last Star Wars books, merchandise or toys had been released in the middle 1980's. Needless to say, Teresa let me gawk for a moment and then we went to the front of the building to ride it again.

And again.

And again.

And again. I think we stopped after the fourth ride to meander and shop. At least I did. This is another one of those moments that I remember. Picking out the books, toys and paraphernalia--trying to decide what to get my brothers and nephews. And what I wanted. I picked out a book for myself by Stephen Sansweet called Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible. I consider it one of the first books of my collection. When we finally had finished, we had spent over $400.00 (1994 dollars). Whew! Talk about spending too much! But it was Star Wars.

I do remember that the cast member gave us a lot of attitude about shipping the items back to our hotel room. Which was really weird. We just spent a lot of money...and we were at Disney! Actually, she was the least friendly cast member we ran across during that first trip. I believe that we ended up riding it at least one more time before Teresa told me we had to do something else. I don't remember anything else about the day. I know we rode other things, like the Great Movie Ride and Muppet Vision 3D, but I can't recall exactly.

Thanks to Matt and Glenn for the amazing addition to my wardrobe. I just need to get it pressed and cleaned before MagicMeets!

8 comments:

Greg said...

Congrats. I suppose you'll be sporting it at MouseFest 2008!

Matt said...

By the time Mousefest rolls around, George will have an entire week's worth of Studios Central shirts.

Disneyana World said...

I really miss the props that used to be in front of Star Tours.

Disneyana World said...

I really miss the props that used to be in front of Star Tours.

Anonymous said...

me too. I hope the shirt comes in before I leave for the World.

Anonymous said...

Congrats again George.

So when do I win an Imaginerding shirt?

Lou Mongello - WDWRadio.com said...

So... you're saying that you getting a StudiosDecentral shirt is a "win" in your eyes? I guess it's all a matter of perspective. ;)

Unknown said...

Hmmm...

How many times have I had the chance to win a WDW Radio shirt (with the cool balloons logo)?

This year, Andy and I are going to be taking rates for wearing different shirts at different times. You can't imagine how expensive it will be to wear a logo shirt during Lou's 2008 DSI.