Yes, Virginia, there was a time when the Internet was small enough that discussions about Disney were held in only a few places. The largest was probably the Internet newsgroups, which were accessible to anyone with Internet access.
I recently decided to look at some of the posts I made back then on the alt.disney.disneyland group and the rec.arts.disney.parks groups. It’s quite a time trip, seeing things announced like the first redo of Pirates of the Caribbean, or McDonald’s coming into the parks.
I found the first Internet post I made announcing me moving my “media archive site” to a domain:
Just a quick FYI for anyone who has been visiting my
http://disneyparks.simplenet.com photo archive site… All the pictures have now moved to my new domain, www.disneyfans.com. The simplenet site will likely be closed down sometime in the next few weeks.Also, I’d like to mention that the Disney Vacation Club site,
www.dvcfans.com, is now hosted at my server. If anyone would like to have a subdomain there (such as “weare.disneyfans.com” or
“hauntedmansion.disneyfans.com“) let me know 🙂 What good is a domain if you can’t make full use of it? 🙂Lastly, I am scheduled to be in California the first week of May for a
work trip, and if I make it out there I’ll be making evening trips to
Disneyland to get more pics. If anyone has any Disneyland photo
requests, please drop me some e-mail and I’ll make a list and see what I can do.See ya,
My post to rec.arts.disney.parks on 4/21/2000
—
Allen Huffman – alsp…@pobox.com – http://www.pobox.com/~alsplace
-/- Theme Parks/Disney, CoCo/OS-9, and over 11,00 Digital Photos! -\-
Heh, over 11,000 photos. How quaint.
If you really want to see some history, take a look through these old messages via Google Groups:
- alt.disney.disneyland – “Talk about the Kingdom of The Mouse.”
- rec.arts.disney.parks – “Parks, resorts, dining, attractions, vacations.”
I’ve found posts I made in 1996 after I purchased my first digital camera. At the time, there were practically no Disney photos online. The ones that existed mostly came from film cameras and folks with scanners. It’s hard to imagine the internet before images became common!
I also found posts from the week I was in at Magic Kingdom when the Skyway stopped operating.
The earliest post of mine I can find is from June 1, 1996, and I mention upgrading my digital camera memory, so that must have been real soon after I got it.
Fun times.
A long, long fun time ago.
Until next time…