Time Capsule...

No license plates today, sorry. What I do have, though, is a time capsule of sorts. When my dad had surgery to remove the brain tumor that ultimately took his life, we were all anxious for him to be able to come home and be with his family again. We all were very excited when that day finally came. As a welcome home present for my dad, we put together this collage made with different items from his many trips to Walt Disney World (more than 50 trips in all) and gave it to him the day he came home. He was very excited to have it, and it now hangs in my own house above my fireplace. I'll give you the the list of items starting with the top left and working around clockwise.


1. Mickey Mouse Drink Coaster - I have no idea where we got those
2. Animal Kingdom Lodge Privacy Hanger - Dad had a habit of taking those home with him
3. Disney Dollars - These are from the very first run of Disney Dollars
4. Pioneer Hall Paper - Picked this up at the Hoop De Doo Musical Review
5. 25 Year Pin/Sticker - Handout during 25th Anniversary Celebration
6. Annual Passes - These are the old style that had a photo and were laminated - pre bioscan
7. 100 Year Napkin - Pretty self explanatory
8. Polynesian Village Resort IDs - Late 80s and Early 90s, before card key IDs
9. EPCOT Center Bumper Sticker - One that managed to not make it onto a car
10. Caribbean Beach Resort Flier - These were placed in the rooms
11. Main Street Electrical Parade Sticker
12. 4-Day Pass - These are from 1987/88
13. 4-Day Pass - These are from 1990
14. EPCOT Center Guide Book - Vintage, that's all I can say
15. Parking Tickets - From a few off property vacations
16. Year 2000 Pass
17. Magic Kingdom Park Guide
18. Various Admission Tickets
19. 100 Year Celebration Annual Pass
20. Various Room Keys - From the early 90s to present
21. Disney/MGM Studios Park Guide
22. Osborn Family Lights Special Effect Glasses
23. Disney Transportation Guide - For interpreting those goofy flags that were on the buses
24. Spectromagic Sticker
25. MGM Bumper Sticker
26. Old Style Resort Room Key - From the Polynesian Village Resort

All of these items are very special to us, reminding us just how much dad loved Disney and what it did to bring our family closer together. During this holiday season I truly hope you and your family can experience just a little bit of the closeness that Disney has brought to my family. Happy Holidays and Have a Great Disney Day!!!

Then and Now...

Not too long ago I was talking with one of my friends about their upcoming trip to WDW. They told me that they were trying to decide where to stay and that they were having trouble deciding on a resort. During the conversation, this friend said that they were considering Dixie Landings because they had stayed there once before and enjoyed it. I said "yeah, Riverside is a really cool resort." They had no idea what I was talking about and thought that I had gotten myself confused. I then had to explain to them about the combining of Port Orleans French Quarter and Dixie Landings into one single resort, and the subsequent renaming of Dixie Landings to Port Orleans Riverside.

Disney has not restricted their name changing prerogative to that singular resort, having refurbished and changed the names of some others such as Saratoga Springs, the Polynesian Resort, and Shades of Green. I just thought that I would share a couple of the license plates that were issued with the original name of this particular resort. These are a little hard to find now, so if you run across them for a reasonable price I suggest picking them up.

The First Three...and the three that didn't make it...

As it stands right now there are almost 20 resorts at Walt Disney World, and that's only if you don't count all of the Vacation Club Villas that are available to guests. It wasn't always that way though. When Walt Disney World opened in 1971 there were only three resorts to choose from. The Polynesian Village Resort, Contemporary Resort, and Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground were completed in time for the grand opening, and for quite some time they were the only on-site option for guests to the Florida property.









Most people know the basic time line of development for other resorts at WDW, and many can quote verbatim opening dates and the exact year that Disney started differentiating between Deluxe, Moderate, and Value resorts. What many people don't know, however, is that there were resorts that were already planned, locations picked out, and plans drawn up, that were never built. These resorts were to have amazing theming and access to the monorail. As a matter of fact, if you look at early pictures of the property around Seven Seas Lagoon you can see the square of land that was already developed for Disney's Asian Resort.


This was to be the first of the monorail line expansion resorts, but plans for it were canceled. This resort was even featured in Walt Disney World literature available in the early 1970s. There was a resort built on the site that was planned for this resort. The Grand Floridian, opened in 1988, occupies the land originally developed for The Asian Resort.

The second resort that was scrapped was Disney's Venetian Resort.


This resort was to be built between the Contemporary Resort and the Transportation and Ticket Center on the shores of Seven Seas Lagoon. It was to be themed after Venice, Italy, and was to be connected to the monorail line. This project was scrapped and enjoyed a short rebirth during the 80s and 90s when the concept for the Mediterranean Resort was developed. This was also scrapped although land had been cleared for its development.

The third resort was the Persian Resort.


This resort was to be built not on the shores of Seven Seas Lagoon, but on Bay Lake. Early concept drawings of it had a monorail spur line running from the resort to Tomorrowland. This resort was also scrapped.

Although these resorts never came to be, they have become a part of Disney Lore and a very serious point of speculation and discussion by many Disney fans. I will leave you with an aerial view of the area surrounding Seven Seas Lagoon from the early 70s. See if you can pick out where these resorts were supposed to go.


Till next time, have a great Disney day!!!!!

The Other Side of the World...

One of the things that I have learned in my license plate collecting is this: The bigger the resort, the more license plates. Where Walt Disney World has had literally hundreds of license plates produced for it, there have been but a fraction of that number that have been produced for the park that started it all, Disneyland in California. This week I have decided to leave Walt Disney World for a little while and share some of my Disneyland license plates. These are not all, but rather just a sampling of what can be found for WDW's older but smaller sibling.






The last one was actually sent to me as a free bonus for an auction that I won on ebay, so I can't really complain about the condition. Till next time have a great Disney day!!!

Diamonds in the Rough...

In a previous post I talked about mistakes that have been made with some of the license plates that have made their way into the hands of the general public. The most notable ones have been the mistakes that were made on the 1970 WDW pre-opening license plates:



These are just two of the error plates that made their way into circulation. There are others such as the green mis-cut, which has no white printing and is a little longer than the plate above with the edge of another plate attached to it. There is also a double plate that has been found as well as several other mis-cuts. Steve Garner has some great pictures of these errors on his website if you would like to see them.

The main subject of this post, however, is a little gem that was discovered by my younger brother while searching for license plates on one of his WDW vacations. We have developed the habit of looking through literally every single license plate on every rack we come across just in case there are any variants in the pile. It was during one of these searches that my brother ran across this plate:


For the sake of comparison, here is what it's supposed to look like:


The error on my brother's plate, although pretty obvious, is made all the more interesting when it's observed first-hand. Not only is there an error on the Mickey, but all of the black print on the license plate is shifted over to the left. This being an aluminum plate, all of the lettering is raised when the plate is stamped, and the lettering for the word "STUDIOS" is shifted in such a manner that the lettering itself sits on the flat of the plate while the raised sections remain blank. In my opinion this plate is truly a rare find in that it's one of those errors that's just a glitch in the printing process that may not have been duplicated more than a couple of times, making this license plate a true "Diamond in the Rough."

Now, as a bonus for making everyone wait so long for a new post, I want to share another Disney MGM Studios license plate. This was a cast member only issue many years ago. The special thing about this license plate is not that it was only issued to cast members, but that it was also issued with a letter from Dick Nunis thanking them for all of their hard work. This is not by any means the norm with Disney license plates, cast member or otherwise. Normally they are simply issued en masse to the public or the cast members or to the appropriate group in the case of opening team and other exclusive commemorative plates. This plate is one of the true gems of my collection as I was able to not only acquire the plate but also the original copy of the letter that was issued with it:





I truly hope you enjoyed this post and I hope that I can get back to a somewhat regular posting schedule again very soon. Till next time, Have a wonderful Disney day!!!

Crazy Times and Good News...

To all the readers of this blog, I once again apologize for an extended down period. As the title says, there have been some crazy times going on lately that have had to take precedence over my updates here. The first bit of news is that my younger sister recently gave birth to a new daughter. She's absolutely beautiful and both mother and daughter are doing great, so I think she'll be ready soon to begin her indoctrination into the world of Disney! The second piece of news is that I have been in the process of transitioning from my old job to a new one. As some of you know I used to work for a library system as Technology Manager. I thought I was doing a good job, at least that's what my immediate supervisor said, but it turns out that other people in positions of power had very different ideas. Whatever the circumstances were (to be truthful I really don't know the whole story), the Acting Director (you read that right, he's not even a permanent fixture) decided that it would be a good idea to contract out the entire technology department thinking he could do it for less than my salary (good luck there). Rather than wait around to be fired I decided to accept an offer from a company that had been after me for some time. I am now working again as a marine electronics technician, and I'm convinced I should have made this move a lot sooner. So for the last few weeks I have been trying to prepare to leave the library and make the move back to ships. I think I'll send the library a thank you note for getting me a raise and a better job! There have also been some other happenings, but I won't get into them here. I will be getting back to my regular posting ASAP and I promise the next post will be a good one!

Even Cast Members Get Left Out...

As I've posted here before, there have been many license plates that are produced specifically for cast members. These license plates are not available to the public except through auction sites like ebay, and sometimes through more esoteric channels (a friend of a friend of a friend knows a guy...). Some of these license plates are very highly sought after and the prices of these plates have soared into the hundreds of dollars on very regular occasions.

There are times when being a cast member isn't even enough. Disney has, on numerous occasions, gone even deeper and separated specific groups of cast members from the rest. These specific groups have, much to their good fortune, been the recipients of some very hard to find license plates. Who are these cast member groups? What makes them so special?

The groups that I am speaking of are the Opening Teams. Cast members who are in some way associated with the opening of a new resort, attraction, or even a park. Disney has established a history of producing Opening Team license plates which are distributed only to these cast members. This means a limited number are produced and distributed, oftentimes making these license plates more valuable than even other cast member plates. If you are a collector and you have to good fortune to run across one of these for a decent price, buy it, they don't show up very often.

Both sides of the story...

When Mickey's Philharmagic opened, It was anything but a normal 3-D show. It stands to reason then that the license plate associated with it should be anything but a normal license plate.


This marks the first time that Disney has continued the artwork onto the back side (using a backside) of the license plate. I truly hope they continue to try new things with these plates.

Early Variation...

As I've said before, Disney developed the habit of producing variant license plates very early on. Many of these variations have no real rhyme or reason as to why they were made except to put more plates on the market. Disney has no official standpoint on these variants, and since they're listed as general merchandise there is no completely accurate way to track them.

There is, however, at least one variant plate that was produced, whether intentionally or not, with some purpose behind it:





This license plate, which was produced for our nation's bicentennial, was produced with two different backing colors as well as variations in the red on the front of the plate. The red backed plate uses the same color red on the front while the aluminum backed plate is more of a pinkish shade on the front.

Unlike other variants, the differences in these two plates were because they were produced for two different parks. While I haven't been able to find out for sure which is which, I have been able to find that one plate was produced for Walt Disney World and one was for Disneyland in California. Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure based on what I've found that the red back was issued in Florida. So far this is the only instance I have been able to find where a color variation can be used to denote the park of issue.

Outside the Parks...

When it comes to collecting Disney license plates, as with any other aspect of Disneyana, sometimes we have to look outside the parks to find our collectibles. When Disney started producing their license plates they didn't restrict themselves to only plates that pertained to their theme parks. Some plates were made to commemorate special events in the history of our nation:



Other plates were made to spotlight some of our favorite classic Disney characters:


Still others were made to remind us of some of our favorite types of characters:


One thing is for sure. No matter what the subject matter Disney does a terrific job of reminding us that the parks and resorts are not the only stars in the Disney galaxy!

SSSSmokin'...

If talk of tobacco use bothers you then you may want to skip this post and check back in a couple of days.

Remember when one could actually buy cigarettes right on Main Street U.S.A.? Prior to its closing in 1985, and its subsequent move across the street to a tiny corner of the Smucker's store, there was actually an entire store right on Main Street devoted almost completely to the sale of tobacco products. It was called "Tobacconist." I wasn't old enough to buy cigarettes then, but I do remember walking through the shop more than once when it was open. I did, however, buy cigarettes at the new location across the street after it moved (I wasn't actually old enough at the time, but they didn't seem too worried about seeing an ID). One of the other things that I remember was the sight of people walking around freely in Walt Disney World lighting up everywhere. Let me also say that as a smoker I never did much approve of this practice. I always tried to get off to the side where my smoking wouldn't bother anyone, but it was nice to not have to walk a country mile just to find a place to have a quick smoke.

Anyway, enough about the reminiscing and talking about touchy subjects. The whole reason for this entry is that I was looking through the old collection again and ran across these:





These used to be widely available all across Walt Disney World, and each matchbook design was specific to where it was available. I'm sure I have plenty more hanging around somewhere but I just need to find them. The cool thing is that all four of these have never had a match used out of them, and they're still in great shape. I really believe that these are a part of Disney history that many people would like to forget about, but it did happen, and now we have some great pieces of Disneyana to show for it.

Round and Round...

Who says a license plate has to be a rectangle? Apparently Disney doesn't feel that way, as they have released a number of oval shaped license plates. Unfortunately these license plates have not been made available to the general public for sale, but they can be found on ebay pretty regularly. These oddly shaped plates have shown up to commemorate a number of different events, and at least one was made to resemble a Disney Cast Member name tag (look at the bottom of the page!). I really think these are some of the most original license plates that Disney has produced, and I'm really hoping that they produce more of them. Once again, these are not all of the oval plates I own; I actually have plans for posts involving some of the others.




This is definitely one of those instances where Cast Members have been treated to a nice little bonus that us run of the mill Disney Nuts missed out on!

It's been a while...

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've updated the blog. I've been in the process of moving and have been without access for a little while, but things are back up and running now. The good news is that you, my wonderful audience, get a whole load of license plates on this one!

Disney has been producing yearly license plates for some time now. I believe they started this during the millennium celebration and have continued it each year since. I have not posted up all of my license plates, but a selection to sort of whet the appetite. Some of these may show up again later in variant discussions or just a random post.









I would also like to ask if there is anything specific that you would like to see, please let me know! I'm always up for anything, it doesn't have to be just about license plates!