1. The first visit I took to WDW was in Jan 1989 when I was in kindergarten and my family went because my grandfather had just been diagnosed with lung cancer and he wanted to go with us before he got too sick. The memories I retain from that trip is probably why I’m the fanatic I am today. Key moments include riding Spaceship Earth with my grandfather (especially the top of the ride,) the Enchanted Tiki Room, Space Mountain being closed for refurbishment but getting to see it with the lights on the Peoplemover, the Enchanted Tiki Room, the Haunted Mansion, Hoop, BTMRR, the Mexico Boat Ride and a ride with a certain Purple Dragon.
2. As a child growing up in New Hampshire every summer 3 magical days (1 at each park) would be spent at Story Land, Santa’s Village and Canobie Lake Park. Those parks are etched in my memory and are very dear to me, I ride my first roller coaster a few days before my 3rd birthday, the Yankee Cannonball, and the following summer a height limit was introduced and I couldn’t ride it until I was 5.
3. Summer of 1990 brought us to Busch Gardens Williamsburg for the first time, and we would go annually for the next 3 years, making this park very dear to me, my first looping roller coaster was the Legendary Lockness Monster and the core memory of that trip was a midnight ride with my mom in the front car (but the multiple night rides on the Big Bad Wolf are a close second.)
4. Then in 1993 we moved to Wisconsin and the vacation patterns changed as soon there after my dad bought a conversion van and we started taking big road trips. Goals on those trips were National Parks, Big Cities, Cultural Sites and Amusement Patks. This was also the era of Discovery Channels Thrill, Chills and Spills Memorial Day Weekend programming that helped determine which parks to go to, naturally Cedar Point became a top target quickly and we made our first trip in 1999, and my love affair with that park and Magnum XL 200 began. To this day, with the exception of 2020, I have visited that park the most and ridden that ride the most of any other park/coaster. This is the park of my teenage years and then I lived in Toledo for 4 years as a young adult.
5. My second and final childhood trip to Disney World occurred during Easter 1998. It cemented my love for that resort, core memories from that trip include E-Ride Night in the Magic Kingdom and being able to reride Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain without getting off, Fantasmic blowing my socks off, along with the Tower of Terror.
6. My first Universal Trip would happen we stayed at the HRH so having Express is definitely a big memory of that trip, as was IOA highlights like Spidy, JP River Adventure and Dueling Dragons but the clear core memory would be the end of the night at USF when my parents would let my sister and I go off on our own (as my little brother was exhausted as were they) and we would spend the last hour power riding the Mummy and MIB.
7. Moving on to my college years, Cedar Point was only 3.5 hours away from my college so I organized a trip there on an October Sunday with my friends. I just wanted one more trip before the end of the year, but seeing as it was October that meant it was Halloweekends and this became my first Halloween visit to a park. I had done a view roadside Haunted Houses in the past and weren’t super thrilled by them, but going through with my friends I got hooked. It then occurred to me that on Fridays and Saturdays the park was open until Midnight and that combined with an earlier sunset meant hours of night rides. I had to do more.
8. I left childhood with a mental block that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy a Disney Park alone. Fall of 2012 my Alma mater was playing at the University of Oklahoma which my brother was then attending. I knew I wanted to go and as I had a seven day a week job and needed to take a week of vacation to get there I had 4.5 days (Sunday-Thursday) to do something else. The game was in October, a Halloween park trip was in order. As I grew to love Halloween events and attend more regional parks, research told me there was two kings that I would need to visit Knotts and HHN. Since I had just gone to Universal 6 months prior and would have only gotten 2 nights of HHN one of which was my arrival day. Knotts became the clear choice, but that’s a one day park, given all the press around Cars Land, the chance to do Haunted Mansion Holiday, see World of Color and do Mickey’s Halloween Party I elected to go to Anaheim for the first time. When it comes to the DLR portion, core memories was destroying that mental block, being blown away how practically every ride on both coasts is better in Anaheim, seeing Remember Dreams Come True and Halloween Screams which blew away Wishes, World of Color and Cars Land. For Knotts Haunt surpassed my incredibly high expectations and this would start an annual trip for the next 4 years.
9. Between the Halloween trip, my family deciding to do Christmas and the upcoming 60th Anniversary I purchased a DL AP in fall 2014 for the first time. I had so much fun doing multiple trips that I decided from then on I was going to get an AP to either DLR, Universal Orlando or WDW every year. Other than a few years in a row with Covid at WDW I’ve rotated every year. Always purchasing in mid October so that one pass gets me two Halloween trips and I do 2 trips to these three places every fall.
10. HHN 25, my first HHN, and my first house was the Jack presents house, talk about a core memory. I vowed to go every year (and have to this day.)