How I Made a Video & Won a Trip to Disneyland as a 13-Year-Old Girl

I used to spend hours exploring Disney’s website, planning trips to Disney World, and gathering prices to dream up elaborate and budget-friendly deals for my family. Usually, the budget-friendly deals would get my parents to listen. Shoutout to All-Star Sports.

It was 2003 and I found my way to Disney’s Toontown Online. The free trial pulled me in and from there, after grinding to Donald’s Dock, I was hooked. I convinced my mom to sign me up for the $5 monthly plan by doing extra chores or watching after my younger siblings. Then, I convinced a few neighborhood kids to join too. So we all were running around in the game, teaming up to complete tasks, improve our gags, and destroy cogs.

By the time summer of 2005 came around, Toontown was a part of my daily life, my younger siblings played, my mom started playing herself, and I had become a pretty powerful little purple mouse named Miss Maxie at 105 laff. And that’s when Disney announced the Are YOU Toon Enough? Video Contest. The grand prize was a family trip to Disneyland in Anaheim, California. As a nerdy 13-year-old girl with an A+ video project record in school and my crafty mom there to support me, we came up with a story about Toontown-itus, a mild condition of the mind where you experience brief lapses of reality and envision the world around you as Toontown.

We made paper mache costumes of cogs for my brother and cousin to wear, spray painted various animal ears to bright colors to match our toons, sourced clothing that looked like outfits you could get in the game, and developed a script. My sisters were my green doodle named Epcot and my blue rabbit friend, Princess Rainbow. We used my old videotape recorder, took several takes, and then edited it all together in iMovie and burned that baby with iDVD. Once we had it completed, we designed a label for it, and popped it into an envelope with “confidential toon mail” stamps all over it, just like I’d received each month from Disney for having a paid membership. Then we waited.

About a month later, the contest was far off our minds and we assumed the winner would be announced soon, but there was little chance that we could win a national contest. There had to be so much competition for a trip to Disney.

But one day, the house line got an unknown call from Burbank. My mom came into my room with the cordless phone and was filled with excitement. I had no idea why, but then shit got real… She revealed that we had won. A week or so later, the team at Toontown sent us a package full of shirts, lanyards, and other Toontown swag, along with our itinerary and tickets. We’re a family from NJ, so we had never been to California or anywhere out west. This was more than a fun trip to Disney; this was a cultural experience and a chance to see the magic behind Disney. And the best part was that I was giving this experience to my family.

On our trip in January 2006, we were welcomed into the Disney Studios in Burbank and given a private tour of the campus. It was the height of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, so I got to see about 100+ pirate extras lining the backlot. I brought my video camera and documented it all. To gloat to my friends, we rented a car and drove down to Laguna Beach, which was all the rage on MTV at the time. I brought them back sand in a sandwich bag and shorts with “LAGUNA” on the butts. LOL.

I’ve been making videos ever since. So when I say I have over 20 years of experience, I mean it. My videos are typically made for social media marketing or celebrating personal or family events. But the thing about video is that it can reach much further than text or static images, emotionally and communication-wise. It’s much easier to get a message across in 10 seconds of video than 10 seconds of reading or 10 seconds of staring at a photo. Each form of art has its own time and space, but it’s important to figure out which is appropriate for your messaging.

I don’t know that I could have conveyed the story of Toontown-itus in any other way. Certainly not as well.

If you’d like to see the video (or work on one of your own together), message me! Maybe I’ll share the top-secret link so you can see it too.