Like any decade looked back upon in the rearview mirror, the 2000s had its share of weirdness, and Walt Disney World was not excluded. If your family visited Walt Disney World in the 2000s, there were plenty of new attractions to experience. Some of the Disney theme parks’ signature rides, like Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain and Toy Story Mania!, debuted during this decade and instantly became guest favorites. However, the decade was also known for awesomely weird Disney moments, offerings, and publicity stunts.
Your Disney trip in the 2000s might have included seeing a car in the shape of Aladdin’s Genie, or coming face-to-horrifying-face with Disney’s attempt at a Nemo walk-around character. In this story, we’ll turn back the clock to rediscover some of the most wonderfully weird things we can’t believe were at Walt Disney World in the 2000s. See also weird Disney moments of the ’90s. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including Disney World hotel refurbishments in 2027 and a look at all the new rides coming to Magic Kingdom.
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Really Cool Cars
The Disney Stars in Motor Cars Parade debuted in 2001 at Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney’s Hollywood Studios). The parade’s scale was modest compared to other extravagant Disney street processions, but its approach was wholly unique. Rather than huge parade floats, the Disney Stars in Motor Cars Parade was made up entirely of convertible cars, each designed to reflect the personality or story of the character(s) who rode inside.
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This parade was really fun visually, with each car more creative than the last. Palm trees adorned Lilo and Stitch’s car. Woody and Buzz sat atop a car resembling Andy’s bed. Pictured above, Hades from Hercules represented the Disney Villains in a car decked out in flames, accompanied by other Villains walking the parade route in front of the car. The parade’s theme song, “Spotlight on a Dream,” was also catchy and memorable.
Disney Stars in Motor Cars Parade continued through 2008. There is no daily parade at Disney’s Hollywood Studios today.
The Terrifying Nemo Character
You want weird Disney? Here’s peak weird Disney. To promote the 2003 release of Finding Nemo, the titular fish appeared at EPCOT as a walk-around character, if you could even call it that. Rather than being a costumed mascot, Nemo was a vehicle of sorts, almost like a mini parade float. He was about the same height as an elementary-school kid.
Nemo “swam” around outside of The Living Seas (now The Seas With Nemo & Friends), with fake bubbles hiding wheels that were very audible as he moved. Nemo’s eyes could slowly glance from left to right, and his fins could gently move. I hesitantly posed for the photo above with this gloriously weird and mildly terrifying Walt Disney World 2000s creation.
Random Characters Photo Moment
The central plaza in front of Cinderella Castle, aka the Hub, was formerly a common Magic Kingdom spot for character greetings in mass quantities. While it’s hard to imagine the consistently crowded Hub accommodating character queues on top of its regular foot traffic, this was the norm in the early 2000s, and even popular characters like Mickey and Minnie met here.
At the end of some meet-and-greet sets, the characters would gather on the castle stage for a posed photo-op. This was not a full-blown stage show. Although the castle stage hosted character shows daily, this photo-op was not that. Instead, a brief audio recording played of Mickey leading all the other characters in posing for a picture-perfect, postcard-ready, quintessential Walt Disney World photo for guests.
Due to the somewhat random nature of the castle’s character greetings schedule, the exact group of characters in this photo-op session varied from day to day. Mickey was always there, but anyone else could be swapped out. This could lead to a somewhat humorous grouping of characters, such as in my photo above, in which Geppetto from Pinocchio, just out of frame on the left, is hobnobbing with Big Al from The Country Bear Jamboree. Note how Stitch, Disney’s poster child of the 2000s, is just as prominent as Mickey and Minnie.
Sorcerer Mickey in 2 Park Icons
Visuals representing Mickey Mouse’s appearance in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Fantasia were a huge part of two of Walt Disney World’s four theme parks in the 2000s.
In 2001, Disney built a giant sorcerer’s hat at the center of Disney-MGM Studios, directly in front of the replica of the Chinese Theater façade. The hat was constructed as part of 100 Years of Magic, a yearlong campaign to celebrate what would have been Walt Disney’s 100th birthday, but it stayed in place once the celebration was over. Disney eventually dismantled the hat in 2015, restoring the view of the Chinese Theater from Hollywood Boulevard.
Disney also echoed The Sorcerer’s Apprentice with a giant magic wand that was adorned on the side of Spaceship Earth at EPCOT, held by Mickey’s hand, with the arm of his red apprentice robe visible. The wand was initially built for the Millennium Celebration, and “2000” was displayed in huge glittering numbers at the top. Once 2001 rolled around, Disney kept the wand, but switched out “2000” to instead say “Epcot” (at the time, the park’s name was de-capitalized). The wand was removed altogether in 2008.
When Stitch TP’d Cinderella Castle
One cannot write about weird 2000s Walt Disney World moments without mentioning this wild moment. On November 16, 2004, guests visiting Magic Kingdom were greeted by the sight of Cinderella Castle covered in toilet paper. The occasion was the grand opening of Stitch’s Great Escape!, a now-defunct attraction that arguably deserves its own section in this article. The attraction repurposed the former Alien Encounter and saw Stitch escaping from imprisonment to torture strapped-in guests in a pitch-black room with special effects, like tickling their hair and burping in their face.
Stitch was the culprit behind the TP’d castle, along with faux graffiti on one of the castle turrets, reading, “STITCH IS KING.” Unlike other castle makeovers of Disney history, like the infamous castle cake, Stitch’s TP castle was only for one day rather than a year-long promotion.
Stitch’s Great Escape! closed in 2018 and has not been replaced by any other attraction.
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Free Park Admission or Ultimate FastPass on Your Birthday
The economic recession of the late 2000s prompted Disney to implement drastic promotions to attract visitors. In 2009, guests could visit any Walt Disney World theme park for free on their birthday. The visit had to occur on their actual, legal birthday. If the guest already had theme park admission (such as with an annual pass, or if their vacation package included park admission), they could instead redeem a FastPass Birthday Exchange Card, loaded with skip-the-line privileges for multiple attractions, valid for the birthday guest and up to 5 other people in their party.
These freebies were completely separate and could be used in addition to an incredible “buy 4, get 3 free” promotion happening at the time, where guests received 3 days of park tickets and 3 nights at a hotel free (!) if they bought 4 days of park tickets and 4 nights at a hotel.
A Parade of Snowglobes
Each float in Magic Kingdom’s Share a Dream Come True Parade was a giant snowglobe with a live Disney character in the center. Among the honored stars with snowglobes were Mickey Mouse, Pinocchio, and Aladdin. A massive three-part snowglobe unit, tethered together, hailed the arrival of Cinderella, Belle, and Ariel.
Share a Dream Come True Parade was performed from 2001 to 2006. After that, Disney removed the glass snowglobe tops from the floats and adapted the production into a recycled show, the Disney Dreams Come True Parade in 2006, and modified them again for the Celebrate a Dream Come True Parade in 2009, before finally retiring the parade altogether in 2014. The Disney Villains float, pictured above, is still used each Halloween, sans glass globe, in Mickey’s Boo to You Halloween Parade.
A Working Radio Studio
Radio Disney was all the rage in the 2000s as a dedicated radio station for kids, playing the top hits from artists like Backstreet Boys, Hilary Duff, and Baha Men. DJs hosted different blocks of programming from around the country, and one of the radio stations was at Walt Disney World.
B.B. Good hosted her midday programming from Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney’s Hollywood Studios), approximately where Celebrity Spotlight, Olaf’s meet-and-greet, is located today. Guests could look through a large window from outside the building and see B.B. Good host her show live, and sometimes she’d even come outside to say hello to fans and then give them a shout-out on air.
Character Meals Only Reservable For Parties of 8 or More
Disney rolled out a niche promotion in 2003 called Grand Gatherings, aimed at parties of eight guests or more. This campaign included several experiences that could only be experienced by these larger groups of guests.
Among them was a character breakfast at Tony’s Town Square Restaurant at Magic Kingdom. An ad from the time teases Mickey and Goofy being present. Another was a character dinner at Tusker House at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, preceded by a VIP ride on Kilimanjaro Safaris.
The Year of a Million Dreams
The Year of a Million Dreams was a marketing campaign in 2007 at Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland Resort in California. It emphasized the magical moments that can happen any day in a Disney theme park, and committed a number to those moments: 1,000,000. Over the course of the year, Disney would grant one million prizes to guests randomly in the parks. These “dreams come true,” however, wildly varied in value. They could be as extravagant as a night in the newly opened Cinderella Castle Dream Suite, or they could be as simple as winning a game of tic-tac-toe against a cast member, a real “dream come true” that I was awarded as a kid.
Disney ended up extending the Year of a Million Dreams and doubling the prizes, so the campaign was more like 27 months of two million dreams.
Continue your journey back in time through the weird moments of Disney history with our journey to the ’90s!
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