In 1970, I was burned out from Graduate School at FSU and took a teaching job in Jacksonville. My parents lived in Mt. Dora and I was visiting them for the Holiday season. At FSU, I had been active in theatre tech and even a member of the IATSE local. Jack, another member of the local, now lived in Orlando, but we'd lost touch.

The late afternoon of either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve, I'm not sure which --- they're only a week apart, after all, I got a surprise phone call from Jack asking me if I was interested in an adventure. [Most 24 year-olds are'] He gave me driving directions for an area south of Mt. Dora, about an hour's drive through the orange groves. His directions included dirt roads. He told me I would eventually encounter a guard gate and, in the unlikely event a guard was present, just wave and drive right through like I owned the place. For a young kid on an adventure: no problem'.

The blue and white guard shack was there all right, and, as predicted, was empty. I cruised on through and parked near some pickup trucks near a small grove of trees. Jack was waiting for me and handed me a hard hat. We walked around the trees and for the first time, I discovered where I was. I'd been to the visitor center a few times (where Lake Buena Vista is now), but didn't make the connection until I got out of the car.

I guess the guard shack was about where today's waterway connects Bay Lake to the Seven Seas Lagoon. I suppose I parked my VW about where the ferry now docks at the Magic Kingdom. I don't really know.

Three structures were visible that afternoon: The first, in the foreground, was a multi-story train station. In the distance, off to the left, was a strange skeleton of steel pipes which would become the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. In the center, behind the train station was the nearly completed castle. We walked up what would be “Main Street” (nothing but sand, really) and around the scaffolding that surrounded the castle. We walked down either a ramp or stairs, I don't remember, into an empty concrete walled room, northwest of the castle. Jack said this was to be the computer room. Today, I think that's under “Philharmagic.” That was my first visit to the Magic Kingdom.

In Jacksonville, that teaching job was at Stilwell Middle School. After the Magic Kingdom opened, but before the local school board ruled that trips to WDW were not “educational” field trips were enormously popular. I remember organizing field trips that included as many as 9 Greyhound busses. We'd leave at 0600 and return at 2300. I quickly learned that the Magic Kingdom was a really safe place for my kids so we didn't keep the junior high kids in groups; just let them go. This, of course, was during the time of the A-E tickets. About the only trouble a kid could get into was shop-lifting. I had been told that the penalty for pilfering involved a two-option choice to the trip director: Choice 1: The offending child and a chaperone were banished to the bus until departure; Choice 2: the light fingered child would be turned over to the local sheriff's office. In assemblies held before each trip, I told the kids I would opt for Choice 2. I asked them to consider the situation by which their parents would spend three hours driving down from Jacksonville to secure their release and would subsequently spend three hours, in the car with said parents on the return to Jacksonville. I never had a shoplifting incident on any trip I directed. I learned the location of numerous hidden phones whereby I could fulfill my requirement of 30 minute check in. I called City Hall and they would report any incident involving my kids. My favorite hidden phone was inside a huge rock near the entrance to 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.

By 1974, I was a counselor at Terry Parker High School, in Jacksonville, and was invited as a chaperone for the senior class trip to “Grad Night.” This was before Downtown Disney. We arrived, by Greyhound, in the Magic Kingdom parking lot near dusk. There was a dress code, strictly enforced. All rides were open and the A-E tickets suspended. Chaperones were required to staff a table for their respective high schools so miscreants could be reported. Our HQ was in a room behind one of the stores on the right side of Main Street. Following my assigned shift, I explored the underground passageways.

My first visit to Walt Disney World has now passed its 40^th anniversary. It's been 4 wonderful decades of pixie dust.

Tom.