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A lost legacy

Girl - VHS
Credit: Disney

“The Magic of Walt Disney World” is a cotton candy cousin to opening day Epcot classics like “It’s Fun to Be Free.” The title twinkles in over a helicopter shot of the Castle spires against a red clay sunset, still a sight to behold in fuzzy 4:3. “You turn around and then there’s more than you ever dreamed of!” promise the choir as vignettes of laughing guests and exotic entertainment fade and zoom into one another. There’s even a bumbling cameo from Brer Bear some 11 years before the Magic Kingdom got a Splash Mountain. It’s peanut butter and jelly for the tourist soul. Walt Disney World looks warm, welcoming, and worth the then-unthinkable $1.31 a gallon to make a pilgrimage.

Title Card - VHS
Credit: Disney

Even with just 16 of its 25 minutes spent on the only park, A Dream Called Walt Disney World covers bases no planning video has in the 39 years since. The PeopleMover earns more real estate than Space Mountain. The Country Bears and the Adventureland Steel Drum Band both get a turn in the spotlight. Instead of later videos’ Order-Of-Longest-Line editing, each land is given its intentionally isolated due. If one of the Peterson’s guests got up for an ice-cold Tab at the wrong time, they’d sit down assuming Fantasyland was in an entirely different theme park than Liberty Square. It’s a refreshing reminder, sometimes forgotten in the heat of battle/vacation, that each area is more than its Fastpass-eligible attractions. Some of those attractions, too, play very differently from their eventual reputations. The Haunted Mansion is introduced with raw Gothic menace, shot low and shrouded in ash-blue fog that could’ve rolled right off The Legend of Hell House. All Pirates of the Caribbean footage belongs to the Disneyland version, though that’s just the start of a misleading tradition that would only get worse in the 1990s.

Mansion - VHS
Credit: Disney

The back nine of A Dream Called Walt Disney World, once you’ve seen the greatest hits, is the more interesting for any fellow armchair historians. As further helicopter shots remind, there wasn’t much to the resort at the time. But don’t tell that to the narrator. “Once you’re here, just getting around is half the fun.” This is a must-watch for the Disney Transportation devotees. Boats. Monorails. Golf carts. Wagons. Horses. Cars on Main Street. Buckets over Fantasyland. Double-decker buses. Normal-decker buses. All set to a cocktail-jazz cover of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah and juxtaposed with the slickest editing tricks of 1980. It’s a carefree time capsule of a better yesterday, when Monorails still might’ve been the future and you could wage bumper boat war on the Seven Seas Lagoon.

Skyway - VHS
Credit: Disney

A better yesterday when all Contemporary guests wore safari suits the color of gender reveal parties. That’s no slam against the current tourist fashion. I just like safari suits. The exterior looks mod as ever, but the interior has never looked better. A breezy marvel of glass and translucent trees, blushing orange in the lounge light. The Polynesian, by contrast, looks like an all-inclusive resort on the other side of the globe. If you never witnessed its original lobby and wonder why it’s still mourned to this day, Dream makes a compelling case. Every couch was guaranteed a sun-streaked tropical view and a natural soundtrack of softly rolling waterfalls. 

Polynesian Lobby - VHS
Credit: Disney

Even as the minutes tick down, A Dream Called Walt Disney World finds time to explain how the flamingo pool worked on Discovery Island. It finds time to show an artistan hand-crafting lamps at Cristal Arts in the Walt Disney World Village. Goofy may or may not water-ski. At the time, spending a week at Disney was not a foregone conclusion. By the end of the decade, park media didn’t need to convince anybody to book their flights; there’s a reason Disney never bothered with too many more souvenir tapes, but started offering planning tapes for free. It’s a subtle difference - here’s what you can do here vs here’s how you’ll be spending your time here - but Dream defines it with a word.

Disney Aerial - VHS
Credit: Disney

On the transition from Magic Kingdom to Vacation Kingdom, the narrator rattles off a list of the park’s guiding principles. “History, prophesy, adventure, fantasy.” Each a philosophical placeholder for its respective land. The last word is “Nostalgia.” Today, the Peterson’s grandchildren and their neighbors’ grandchildren and most Paducah residents are nostalgic for Walt Disney World. It’s baked into the brand. But in 1980, nostalgia only meant Main Street USA.

In 1980, Walt Disney World wasn’t quite Walt Disney World yet. In 1980, it was still a dream you had to buy a tape to prove you had.

Fireworks - VHS
Credit: Disney

 

 
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Comments

Loved this article. Still have the VHS and love watching this on YouTube from time to time.

This one was enjoyable... but Epcot Center: a souvenir program was the one I watched over and over. Filmed before horizons opened, but they teased it... and I think it’s this video that made me love Horizons more than the ride itself.

If I keep covering these tapes, that's one I'm itching to dig into. The Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow still at its most experimental.

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