It’s always interesting to tumble down a rabbit hole while learning the history of a video game you enjoyed growing up. I did this previously with Myst, so this time I wanted to investigate another game that brings me great nostalgia: Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom (VMK). This video game was a browser-based Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) that existed for only three years. Yet while searching through articles, podcasts, and fan recreations, I learned that the history of VMK stretches back much further than I had realized. This made it that much more special when I looked at what went on before and after the early 2000s when I grew to love the game.
The story of VMK begins in 1995, when Terry Dobson and Roger Holzberg pitched a video game idea with the title Virtual Magic Kingdom. The goal was to serve as a “snapshot vision of the [Disney amusement] parks from the 1990s.” The concept for this CD-ROM game involved a player arriving one night at the Magic Kingdom, while the villains from Disney movies were taking over the amusement park. Gameplay involved the player having to fix the problem before the park opened the following morning by going from Fantasyland to Adventureland, Tomorrowland, and Frontierland in the park. In his interview on “The Video Game History Hour,” Jacob Star described this iteration of the game as “like Myst but in the [Disney] theme parks.” While the idea sounds amazing to me, sadly, the developers cancelled the original game in 1998. But many of the assets and ideas from it lived on in the game Disney’s Villains’ Revenge, which released in 1999. For a while that was all that came from the project.
Skipping ahead to 2006, while my older brother played all the various renditions of Tony Hawk Pro Skater on our PlayStation 2, I went to our family’s computer for my video game entertainment. Unfortunately, we had limited access to CD-ROM games, but thankfully this was the time of games you could play online! I did not have the funds to pay for anything myself, so World of Warcraft was not an option. While NeoPets certainly provided hours of entertainment, it hardly satisfied what I was looking for: mini games, interaction, personalized avatars. After multiple searches I stumbled upon a game that seemed too good to be true: Virtual Magic Kingdom.
This new VMK initially launched as part of the Happiest Celebration on Earth campaign, honoring Disneyland’s 50th anniversary. The game itself had only small traces of its original concept within it. Instead of saving the amusement park from villains at night, you were one among many online players walking through the Magic Kingdom. This time you were participating in mini games, designing rides, decorating rooms, chatting with other players, going on quests, or just experiencing the fun of seeing Main Street USA decorated for the holidays. Disney’s hope behind revisiting this setting in their game was to drive attendance to the amusement parks by including enamel pins and other code interactives you could get at the park and add those items to your inventory in the game. They even promoted the game and parks further by featuring VMK heavily in Hyperion’s book series Kingdom Keepers, providing another connection between the virtual game and physical promotional material.
To me, the idea of a virtual space where I could go to the Magic Kingdom from the comfort of my living room and chat with people online was a perfect way to pass the time. It was also a safe space for someone my age. Disney, knowing that most players were children, had staff monitoring the various servers throughout the day but, as a result, the game was only open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. PST each day. Despite these limited hours of operation, Roger Holzberg stated in an interview for PopHistory, “Our biggest guilt was the fact that [kids] were playing online 16-18 hours a week and not doing their homework.” I am sure I was among those who avoided my homework in favor of playing in VMK. But have no fear Roger, because I did my homework while engaged in the ultimate Disney experience of them all: lines.
Although VMK had multiple servers, the game was divided itself into rooms to explore, but each room could only manage 15 players at a time. And what happened when they ran events where players had to search for items or hidden Mickeys in specific locations? Why, there was a queue of course! I would be at the computer doing my homework while a window on the computer screen proclaimed I was 10th in the queue. But the lines did not end there. Just like the actual experience of the amusement parks, sometimes a new line of avatars, waiting to participate in the room’s activities, would greet you upon entering a room. To this day my father still does not understand how I found enjoyment from playing a game that involved waiting in lines. However, to me the wait was always worth it. In player-made rooms, other players would treat you to mini games, such as the fashion game “cute or boot,” or you could enjoy player-made rides for your avatar. Holzberg also found this community-building to be a wonderful learning experience for the developers saying: “I’ll tell you what we learned was: Providing the tools to make games, and letting our players create the games, delivered exponential levels of gameplay that we never could have done in-house.”
So, what happened to this game that now gives me so much nostalgia? Well unfortunately in 2008, Disney announced it was abandoning the project to pursue other online games. VMK was taking users away from the studio’s other online games such as Club Penguin and Toontown Online. It was truly a sad day on May 21, 2008, as players gathered in various locations in the online park to say their final farewells to friends in the game and the space they had grown to love. But this was hardly the end of VMK. In 2013, fans of the game started to rebuild it in its former glory. When I first encountered the fan-made VMKs, players weren’t able to see or interact with others or play minigames. Instead, you could virtually walk around and have a moment of nostalgia. Having recently revisited one of these fan-made games, I was delighted to see that the creators had completely remade the experience of VMK. It truly awed me to see how a community of fans were able to rebuild the entire experience so that they would not lose the magic that had brought them so much joy years ago.
While the 1995 concept of a puzzle game in the Magic Kingdom never fully came about, VMK still provided hours of entertainment for me and others in the early 2000s. And that version continues to live on, made by and for the fans of the MMOG we experienced. It is often amazing what a group of devoted fans for a niche game can accomplish when they come together. Fans of VMK certainly have done just that, keeping the playful magic of the virtual space we loved alive to this day.
