Walt Disney World In The 1990s: From Childhood Wonder To Teenage Cynicism

Living in Florida, you take things like theme parks for granted. Those of us in Central Florida do even more so. We’re so used to having Universal, Busch Gardens, and Walt Disney World within an hour’s drive.

However, looking back on all the times I went to the parks, I became somewhat nostalgic for the more straightforward way the theme park industry operated. There were no fast passes, lightning lanes, or microtransactions. You bought the ticket (less than $100 each back in the 90s) and walked in.

Although places like MGM and EPCOT were crowded, you could get all the rides done in a day. Sure, you’d sometimes wait an hour to get on a ride, but you were not being charged just to skip the line.

As I looked through a few photo albums, I started to wonder if the magic of the parks was gone or if age had put rose-tinted glasses on my view of the past. Regardless, let’s explore what the parks looked like in the attitude era that was the 1990s.

We’ll kick things off with a favorite character of Geeky Sparkles and myself, Figment. The mascot of EPCOT is still present within the parks, but not as much as it was in the ’80s and ’90s. Before Journey into Imagination was disastrously remodeled, the purple dragon and Dreamfinder roamed the area just outside the show building.

After a quick meet and greet with Dreamfinder, you could head inside Journey into Imagination to get all of your Figment needs met.

Before Disney got all slap-happy with making sure EPCOT rides were branded with popular IPs, we had the plain and simple attraction known as The Living Sea. Simple, educational, and a great place to see chubby manatees eating lettuce.

Oddly, aside from the Finding Nemo re-theme that happened in 2007, very little has changed in the area following the omni-mover ride. In fact, here are two pictures of me in Sea Base a couple of decades apart:

Although not considered the same today, EPCOT was once considered a major educational destination. In 1990 my elementary school took us on a field trip to the park. Our chaperones were given explicit instructions NOT to let us ride anything more thrilling than academic.

So, of course, Body Wars was out. However, demanding the chaperone, some took the term “educational” more liberally than others. If you got stuck with one of the younger teachers, odds are they would let you ride Body Wars and Maelstrom.

I was not so lucky. It was all Horizons, World of Motion, and Spaceship Earth for me.

I can see the rose-tinted Oakleys now. Yeah, while the park-going experience was much better back then, the rides at EPCOT left much to be desired. That’s not to discredit the work of the Imagineers. The art, animatronics, and storytelling within the rides are fantastic, but it’s frankly dull as a kid compared to the rides we have now.

Oh, and theme park pictures from the days when we only had film cameras wouldn’t be complete without accidentally getting your finger in the frame when taking photos of your friends.

Years later, as I was in my teens, we returned to Walt Disney World to check out the latest ride: The Tower of Terror. When my parent’s asked me which parks I wanted to go to, my teenage brain automatically rejected the idea of returning to any place where education was favored over fun. So, EPCOT was out, and MGM was in.

Walt Disney World in the 1990s was at a crossroads when courting the teenage audience. While we found certain staples like the Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Star Tours, and Space Mountain fun, there wasn’t enough across Walt’s Florida empire to keep us entertained.

I could see my teen brain at work as I thumbed through photo albums because I took fewer pictures at The Magic Kingdom than at MGM (now Disney’s Hollywood Studios). The rebellion that comes with this part of growing up does affect how you view even the simplest things like theme parks.

As you can see in the photos below, I’m totally thrilled to be at MGM with my parents rather than doing my own thing without supervision.

This doesn’t mean that Disney’s efforts were not appreciated. During the mid-1990s, the Walt Disney Company put a lot of effort into drawing movie fans to MGM. The number of props in the Bone Yard and in various exhibits increased.

For a time, you could see nearly the entire cast of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas on display. As a huge fan of stop-motion, I couldn’t believe I was within feet of the puppets used in that landmark movie.

As a mega Star Wars fan (before the dark times of the Disney era), MGM was the place to get up close and personal with screen-used props from the Original Trilogy. You could see speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi in an exhibit and the Dejarik board from A New Hope. By Star Tours, an original snow speeder and skiff were positioned in front of the AT-AT.

Cynicism, however, was still present. It increased when I saw how poorly major props from some of cinema’s greatest films rotted in The Bone Yard. Thankfully, some of these items, namely the Spinner from Bladerunner, were saved in the coming years.

Even though I love photography, that stupid teenager part of my brain turned that off once we got to Walt Disney World. Occasionally, the synapses would fire, and I’d be struck with the sudden urge to snap a picture, somehow knowing that the things I was looking at wouldn’t always be as they were.

Things like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage:

Or the simple queue area in front of Walt Disney World’s version of the Haunted Mansion:

Not everything Mickey Mouse-related was verboten in my brain at this time. I did see this display and found it profoundly touching:

There is a final photo that predates all of these and is my most cherished. In 1982, my late grandfather (who I called ‘Pops’) took me to my first Magic Kingdom visit. Although we don’t have many pictures of that day, we have this single photo together as we watch the parade.

I think this is all that matters. It’s the memories we make with our family. Disney parks may go through ups and downs, but the annoyance is a small price to pay to create a moment in time that we look fondly back on.