For a long time, I had been wanting to visit Walt Disney World (in Orange County, Florida). For one thing, I'm a big fan of the Disney theme parks (my primary experience being at Disneyland, in my native Orange County, California, though I had actually also visited Tokyo Disneyland twice before I ever got a chance to visit WDW).
The other, more important reason, was that as a child actor, I had participated in the creation of one of the attractions at WDW. In EPCOT's World Showcase, in the French Pavilion, there's a multi-screen film called Impressions de France. In this film, there's a scene with two little boys looking in a bakery window and commenting on what looks yummy. Apparently most of the film, including this scene, was shot without sound, to be ADRed and foleyed in post-production. I dubbed the voice (in French... sorta) for one of the two kids.
I had never gotten to see the film (small-time actors are not exactly presented with videotapes of their work), and I was terrified that it'd be ripped out (as Disney theme park attractions occasionally are) before I got a chance to see it, especially considering it had been in place for almost 20 years by this time.
Also, my friend Setsuko had been wanting to visit somewhere else in the U.S. before she had to go back to Japan. I'm not all that big on travel, but WDW was definitely a place I wanted to go, so we finally made plans to head to Florida, earlier the same month (November, 2000) in which she'd have to return to Japan.
I had been wanting to get a video camera for years, having developed an affinity for them when my Mom would, uh, "rent" them (mail-order them from credit card company "special purchase opportunities" and then return them just before the trial period expired, since we couldn't really afford to keep them) during holiday seasons. It was important to me to get one small enough to be carried around in a pocket (at least a jacket pocket), and finally in June, 2000, they hit that sweet spot with the Sony DCR-PC5 MiniDV camcorder. So for this trip, I finally broke down and bought this lovely little piece of technology, so I could make an archival recording of "Impressions de France", as well as other WDW attractions.
The DCR-PC5, along with recording video to MiniDV cassettes, can record digital still photos (unfortunately only at NTSC/VGA resolution — 640x480) to a Sony Memory Stick. The still photos I took during this trip appear below. Sorry — there aren't very many of them — when you have the option of taking moving pictures with sound vs. still pictures without sound, it's easy for the latter option to lose out, especially when your subject is dynamic, like theme park attractions are.
So, sorry for such a long wind-up and such meager content — in the future I'll make some streaming video clips from my MiniDV footage so there'll be more to see.
Simply click on any file size figure to get a page with just that image, including its caption (if any), a toggle for additional info (e.g. EXIF data), and arrow buttons that will take you to the previous and next images. Clicking on the "File" column heading will collapse the table below to exclude the inline thumbnails. Clicking on one of the other column headings will get you a page containing ALL the images in that particular file format and size, with their captions (if any) printed alongside them.
| File | .jpg: Thumbnail | .jpg: Normal | |
|---|---|---|---|
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WDW00-01-self-portrait_on_departure_morning | 1.6 kB (80 x 60) |
85.1 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-02-Setsuko_on_plane_to_Florida | 1.9 kB (80 x 60) |
78.1 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-03-The_Traveler | 1.5 kB (80 x 60) |
87.0 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-04-Magic_Kingdom_from_ferry_dock | 1.9 kB (80 x 60) |
89.5 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-05-ferry_to_Magic_Kingdom | 2.2 kB (80 x 60) |
80.3 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-06-Polynesian_Resort | 1.7 kB (80 x 60) |
80.9 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-07-new_Grand_Floridian_Resort | 1.3 kB (80 x 60) |
86.1 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-08-monorail | 2.0 kB (80 x 60) |
82.1 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-09-Enchanted_Tiki_Room-rear | 1.9 kB (80 x 60) |
84.8 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-10-Sunshine_Tree_Terrace | 2.3 kB (80 x 60) |
91.0 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-11-small_vaporator | 2.3 kB (60 x 80) |
84.9 kB (480 x 640) |
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WDW00-12-large_vaporator | 2.7 kB (60 x 80) |
82.4 kB (480 x 640) |
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WDW00-13-Endor_tree_village_1 | 2.5 kB (80 x 60) |
82.1 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-14-Tatooine_Traders_sign | 2.1 kB (80 x 60) |
92.0 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-15-Tatooine_Traders_rear | 2.2 kB (80 x 60) |
80.2 kB (640 x 480) |
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WDW00-16-Endor_tree_village_2 | 2.1 kB (60 x 80) |
88.1 kB (480 x 640) |
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WDW00-17-T-rex_head_1 | 2.2 kB (60 x 80) |
89.2 kB (480 x 640) |
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WDW00-18-T-rex_head_2 | 2.1 kB (60 x 80) |
81.9 kB (480 x 640) |
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WDW00-19-antelope_head_sculpture_1 | 1.6 kB (60 x 80) |
79.1 kB (480 x 640) |
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WDW00-20-antelope_head_sculpture_2 | 1.7 kB (60 x 80) |
82.2 kB (480 x 640) |
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WDW00-21-antelope_head_sculpture_3 | 1.7 kB (60 x 80) |
83.2 kB (480 x 640) |
| Album last modified: August 3, 2025 | Validated HTML 5 + CSS Generator: image_album |
