Here’s a link to videos I captured from the game engine of a ride sequence for the Star Jets. I wanted to fulfill a request to have the videos available for looping, like a TV fireplace video. The evening video was the original one (though this was completely recaptured), but I added a morning video as well just for fun.

I have them in a Dropbox account, so if they decide it’s too much bandwidth I will see what I can do to find a place for them!

They’re in MP4 format, and the downloaded versions look much better than the preview window ones that play on the Dropbox site. Let me know if you have any issues!

Here’s the videos:

Tomorrowland Morning

Tomorrowland Evening

So 500 sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?

It’s amazing how a total can creep up while you’re not looking.  If somebody put 500 maps in front of me to process, I would just get up and walk away from the overwhelming magnitude of the task.  But taken little by little, it’s a fun-filled, educational experience instead.  I still get excited as I open up each new map to find what they hold.  Sometimes it’s a new or updated attraction, sometimes it’s a person’s handwritten notations that give a little glimpse into their vacation.

I definitely owe huge thanks to the people that stuck with me when this collection was just a shared drive with really no organization at all.  People like Jim and Dotty Hart as well as Arthur Na gave me the encouragement to keep pushing onward even when I was discouraged.

I also have to thank my VERY understanding wife and family that supports and tolerates this obsession.  It’s gotten to the point that any time the mail shows up with something that has an eBay mailing label, my 9 year old daughter scolds me that my wife is mad that I’m spending all the money on Disney auctions.  Which she NEVER has, by the way!

Lastly, I need to thank you people on the internet, wherever you might be.  Even if you never email or leave a comment, just seeing the traffic numbers is encouraging itself.  Anyone out there that has done a website, blog, podcast or published can attest to the fact that it’s scary to offer a piece of yourself.  This site has definitely turned into a pretty big piece of me!

I hope you will all continue to visit, and tell your Disney loving friends as well.  I hope to continue adding to the site for a long time to come!

Oh, and one more thing, be on the looking in the next couple of days for a major addition to the website, something that any respectable Disney lover should appreciate!

After listing all the additions in the previous post, I realized that I needed an easier way to let people know what had been added. So now, if you look on the upper right side of the page, you will see a link for Latest Additions. Just click here to see all the maps that have been added in the past 30 days. Hope that helps!

So I promised something big, and I finally finished the code part: a custom search engine for maps. I had been uploading all the PDF files into WordPress then manually making the map index pages. The problem was that I had to manually edit each of those pages when I added new ones.

Now those index pages just send a premade search, and I also made a page where you can specify which maps you’d like to see. It’s still ugly, but it IS functional. I will get to work on making the search and search result pages more attractive as well.

Most importantly I am very close to being able to concentrate more on the content rather than building the infrastructure. It’s a big deal to me anyways!

I added the 1980’s decade for Magic Kingdom today.  These are all just the thumbnails for now, but I will go back and add the PDF files as time allows.  I’m trying to get the extent of the collection up first, just so that everyone can see what the collection encompasses.

I will keep adding more decades as soon as possible, so keep checking back.  I also have set up an RSS feed as well, which will notify you of any updates automatically!

In the process of trying to get everything online, I decided to start with the Magic Kingdom maps, beginning with the 1970’s.  I have maps from every park on Earth, but those will have to wait for a little bit.

I will put up the PDF file for each map.  I will also have JPEG files made for each page, but those will probably be posted as I have time to go through each with a commentary.  For example, the 1972 Magic Kingdom map is what I’m hoping to do.

If people have specific requests I can always try to fulfill those as well!  Keep checking back as the online archive grows.

Todd

Wow, who knew that taking the first step on a website would take this long? Hopefully things will go a little faster from here on out. Stay tuned!