The point is that this CD-ROM was always out-of-date, even when it was released. Of course, it’s silly to evaluate an old tourism ad, made for old computers, on current terms. Watching it proudly advertised feels like seeing a ghost. By the time the Explorer CD-ROM reached stores, one of the rides in Epcot, Ellen’s Energy Crisis, had already switched its name to Ellen’s Energy Adventure.Īnd in 2001, the water park River Country was abandoned – not simply closed but left to be reclaimed by nature. A fourth theme park, Animal Kingdom, opened just two years after this CD-ROM came out, and its absence is glaring. Although the information is a bit disorganized, the whole purpose of this CD-ROM was to encourage you to explore more of Disney World, like the Disney Institute, where your family can enroll in “unique hands-on experiences” that will “stimulate guests’ minds and bodies.”īut Walt Disney World changes constantly. This was likely one of the most media-rich guides to Walt Disney World you could pick up from the mall or the local library in 1996, better than the comparatively bare Disney World website at the time (which most people probably couldn’t access at home anyway). (Look it up! It’s incredibly suspect!)īig rides like Pirates of the Caribbean get special attention with more trivia, pictures, and videos To round out the Disney mythology, significant chunks of the program are also about the history of Disney World and subjects like the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a government entity run by Disney since 1967 so they can self-govern.
#Walt disney world explorer game plus
The CD-ROM is filled with beautiful photos of the parks, plus trivia facts and themed tours of the attractions. It certainly makes Disney World look like, well, magic.ĭisney Interactive wanted to excite you about visiting the parks. The cursor has been replaced by Tinkerbell, who flies closer into the park when you click on something, leaving behind a sparkly trail. Every landmark in Disney World has been redrawn as a cartoon, with steamboats paddling on the river and trains riding around the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The great big beautiful Disney World they want you to believe inĮven as a skeptic of the “Disney magic” thing, I had to admire how well the Explorer CD-ROM uses the Disney style to build the illusion.
This is the version that Disney wants you to fall in love with, The Most Magical Place on Earth, the perfect fantasy land unencumbered by the demands of real life. It looks like a world map from a video game. But here on the CD-ROM, everything lives in one endless stretch of fun and imagination, connected together by footpaths and rivers. In reality, the various regions of Disney World are separated by highways, retention ponds, and parking lots. The program re-imagines the entire Disney World complex as one gigantic theme park map. Disney World superfan site WDW Radio hyperbolically called the opening credits “perfect” and “tear-inducing.”) (Evidently, it sold to the right audience. Over the opening credits, it sets the tone with inspirational quotes from Walt Disney about his ambitions. It wants to give you the idealized Disney World. The Explorer CD-ROM doesn’t try to be a realistic travel guide. In hindsight, it still has merit as a snapshot, an image of what Disney aspired for the parks to be at one specific point in time. Yet the Explorer CD-ROM has always been a time capsule: even in 1996, this program became outdated quickly. Disney World today looks quite different from this version of the park from 1996. It’s a piece of the sort of celebratory self-mythmaking that Disney loves.ĭecades later, we can call the Explorer CD-ROM a time capsule.
The CD-ROM doesn’t have information about planning a visit it’s more like a sprightly, clickable ad for Disney rides, hotels, golf courses, and water parks. It compiles a bunch of photos and facts from Disney’s Orlando theme park resort into an interactive map format – a way for families to learn about Disney World and, maybe, remember their trip later, like saving a paper map for a scrapbook. The Walt Disney World Explorer CD-ROM is an animated travel brochure that doubles as memorabilia.
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