What Transpired With The Virtual Magic Kingdom?

Absolutely loved this game when I was little. I remember when I first stumbled upon it and didn’t stop playing it until closing day. Closing day was a sad day, because of how attached all of the users had been to the game (including myself). Honestly closing day felt exactly like if you watched the real Disneyland close. It’s funny how such a simple little game can impact so many people, and even though it is still sad and disappointing to this day that it closed, it makes sense that it would since it was started in the first place to celebrate the 50th anniversary, I think the most disappointing part about it closing though, is Disney never used the concept again and just abandoned something that so many young people actually loved. Thank you for bringing me down memory lane. Definitely was awesome to see things I haven’t seen in years and years.

Holy crap this brought me back.. I used to have an account in this and was able to get some digital swag from Disney when I went. People would make mini haunted mansions and space mountains… the day it was announced it was closing everyone I knew in the game all got together and had a final sendoff.. oof. So many memories.

Just wanted to take a moment to thank you for this article. I’m one of the very few who really remember this game, it was my entire childhood, and I remember playing the game probably the year of it’s inception and then on/off for its entire run; I remember playing the game to sometimes to points of obsession. I have watched other documentaries about the game – but it didn’t capture the exact precision and accuracy yours was able to portray. And I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for the work you placed in the article. Specifically, I remember my two stitch hats, the rooms “cute or boot,” trade rooms, “taken.” I still get nostalgia listening to the music. My name on the game was SmartyChristy, so if anyone remembers me please feel free to respond to me haha 😀

Great piece on that game, but I’m glad I’ve still got Disney Kinect. I love walking through the virtual park ( as it was in 2011 ) as much as the mini-games inside. …maybe more. It’s really a treat to walk through a park that’s NOT crowded or where the AI dodges out of your way. Completely unrealistic, but fantastic if you hate reality and crowds.

I was Iliketoboogie. Loved this game. I was never able to visit actual disney parks but with the help of a friend who was I was able to get some rare stuff and begin trading and making deals and I worked my way up to owning a stitch hat and sparrow outfit. Truly a major accomplishment in my life haha.

I was one of the original Beta Day 1-ers and spent pretty much ALL of my middle/early high school years on this! What made this game so unique was that it wasn’t just about playing mini games or exploring the park- it was about the community. You could get creative by making your own dark rides, quests, games, or dance clubs… If you got to the top of the trending guest rooms and one of the VMK staff members came to check it out… man, you felt like you made it. I was “Blop” if anyone recognizes the name! ✌🏼

Me and my sister saw this game being advertised in a monthly magazine called “Disney Adventures” in 2005. We rushed to the computer and made accounts for the game. I remember having the “Here Since Day 1Badge”. That summer all we did was play this game, and we even went to Walt Disney World to celebrate the 50th Anniversary. Our baby sitter also played the game too so we would take turns rotating out between the three of us to play on the computer. When we went to Disney world we did the in park quests to get the in game items. We got a lot of questions wrong but the guy working the counter was obviously crushing on our baby sitter who went to Disney world with us, so much so that he just gave us all the items even tho we got many questions wrong. This game is just a tiny piece of my life but I can’t help but feel so nostalgic for it, I really wish I would have taken screenshots or a article of my account before it closed to see all the rare items I had. This is Goffymatt (yes I spelled it wrong in game by accident lol) signing off!

Miss this game, collecting “rare”, and all the friends I made on here. Hope they are doing well :). I was “SplashAceSaucer” 🤣. Spent much of 7th and 8th grade on here. I was devastated when it closed. Really was a great escape from such an odd and awkward point of a kids life around middle school age. It also felt kind of exclusive to play this game as most kids would talk about “Club Penguin” or “Toontown”. Thanks for this memory!!

To rack up points more quickly so I could buy stuff, I used to play the Haunted Mansion game against two other people. That way there were more ghosts to vacuum up and more potential points to be gained per game. Also, I think you got the same 5 points (or however many) in the Jungle Cruise game regardless of how well you did, so I’d just speed through to get it overwith and get my points, lol.

I remember there being something called Disney Explorer, or something like that for iPod Touch. I don’t remember much but you’d basically go by every land of Disneyland/California Adventure and Walt Disney World when you scrolled past it. There was a ton of stock music that played with every area of the “park” you were in. There were usually only 3 things you could tap, and only 1 or 2 was a minigame that didn’t really do much. I loved it to death when it was still up, but I think they took it down when more areas and things were being put up or taken down.

I first read Ridley Pearson’s The Kingdom Keepers back in elementary school, which was about 12 years ago. I had never heard of VMK before that, but when I did, I really wanted to join. Unfortunately I was a month too late. I was really disappointed, but I doubt it even compared to the feelings of people who had been on the site since the beginning. With the 50th anniversary of WDW coming up, Disney has the chance to build a bigger and better VMK, especially with the advancements in game development.

As Keegan1104 pointed out in a previous comment, there are remarkable theme park recreations in Minecraft. MC Parks and MC Amusement have shockingly accurate recreations of the parks, Disney and universal, and even have working rides with working sound. ( audio server playing music depending on your location in the park using the command /audio) The world of Minecraft theme parks is incredible. Personally, I think the best Minecraft theme park is Craftventure which is a custom Minecraft theme park with remarkable Minecraft ride technology (Preshows, Rides with loops!, On ride photos in Minecraft!!) It would be very interesting if you made a article about these Minecraft servers.

I found VMK through the Kingdom Keepers Series. Sadly, I only got to try it once, and I don’t remember much but I heard that it was AMAZING! They should do what they did with Runescape (which I haven’t played), and reboot the game, and take the game in its last state and call it “VMK Classic.” It would bring new people in and original players. Knowing Disney they’ll just shut it down and never update it, just like the Pirates of the Caribbean MMORPG and ToonTown.

It wasnt just kids either. My late wife used to love this and habbo hotel and she’d have been in her early 20s at the time. Not my thing personally but maybe Alton Towers should do something similar while the park is closed – the experts are now saying we could be in lockdown for a couple of years until a vaccine, so how many parks will survive that sort of prolonged shutdown is anyone’s guess 🙁

They should really just take the concept of Disneyland adventures (the one on Kinect, it’s also on Xbox One and steam without the motion controls) and impove it/expand on it and do sequels for all the other Disney parks. Like have it take place in real time so you can actually play through a day in the park. Have parades and shows like in the parks. Allow us to wander around the shops and restaurants. Do updates to reflect when the actual park updates. Have dlc packs for different time periods so you could say, play in the park as it was when it opened or other time periods so people could play in their favourite era. Have updates during the holidays so thd park in the game gets the special holiday overlays and events.

I remember playing vmk a decade ago. Shame it got shut down in 2008. I still play the revisted version of the site just only for nostalgia purposes I rarley play mymvk that often. Now a days these days i just play movie star planet. Avakin life. Wich is similar to Vmk. And any similar open world like vmk i that play.

Shit was bussin. I used to get the free kellogs code from playing some browser game where you crash a ship. It gave you a code to redeem some ship pirate stuff if I remember. I spammed it sold the stuff repeatedly and decked my entire room out. Had a teleporter entrance lmao one side you could bug through on some rooms so i placed a water tank. You could click it and get a cup lmao mad vmk parties in there

I found it a bit ironic that a article about safe, wholesome and really free social network game is sponsored by game that can be only described like heroine with gambling for kids. Most of those freemium games just sell addiction. It makes me really sad that Youtube is making it so hard for content creator that they need to sell virtual drugs to kids too keep afloat.

0:30 Ok, that literally sounds like you took your intro theme and put it through a MP3 to MIDI converter. It is GRATING to the ears. You should’ve paid someone to actually recreate the intro in the style you were trying to go for instead of taking the cheap route because WOW does that intro sound absolutely terrible

This game occupied my entire life from ages 10-12. I cried when it closed. I then joined the VMK Magic (VMKM) forums, which eventually turned into Disney MMO, and am still friends with many forum members to this day. I even went to the same college as one of them worked at, and was constantly within 500 feet of him at all times. Fun fact: My cringey VMK music articles still exist on my old YouTube website. I spent HOURS on them.

Are those earrings of the tbh creature?? 😭❤️ Idk how well documented this is, but I remember a prevalent feature of the original VMK was that clicking someone’s avatar would pull up a little window with their username and a short bio. It was pretty standard to see bios that said “single” or “taken” at the end as vmk had the average kids’ virtual world problem of everyone trying to date each other. There were also pigtails or bald heads, primarily worn by people who were doing adoption roleplay.

oh my god i’ve been DYING for someone to cover this. i remember my brother and i building a “rollercoaster” in our little house from the parts of the Mt. Everest ride– people would visit us and then leave immediately because it was really small and they though it was lame. I also remember going to Disney World one year and looking for specific items in the gift shops to get items in the games!

I guess i’m a 1%er (grew up in Kissimmee, went to the parks most weekends and some days after school, 1-2 times a week in the summers) so I had all the park quest items now I have a lot of useless VMK trivia etched in my brain! My family played constantly, and we had stacks and stacks and stacks of in park quest items. My parents used to have VMK date nights and my mom and I were very competitive with the fireworks game. The reason you can’t walk in space is because it’s another area you need an outfit to access. Another day 1 item that became a status symbol was green flip flops. A close family friend who was a monorail operator was friends with Yavin, and the moderator consensus seemed to be that it finally closed because it cost money to run and wasn’t a draw for the parks anymore. The most active players were often people with annual passes and closing VMK wouldn’t really hurt those numbers so Disney ditched that money pit. Because of exclusive item scarcity people would often sell cards online, I recall the Disco Inferno effect going for up to $400 on eBay. Some people would mail cards to friends who didnt live near the parks, and if you did live near the parks you probably had a stockpile of unredeemed exclusive promo cards to give to visiting family and friends. Some items were limited promotions, often player rooms and things related to TV and movie IP like a piano from High School Musical park exclusive card. The whitelist chat feature created a series of workarounds known to players.

I didn’t go to school until 9th grade, and my parents never supervised my computer time. In 2008, I played VMK from opening to closing. It taught me how to type quickly (not efficiently though lol), learn internet shorthand and I enjoyed it a lot. I don’t remember about half of the mini games you covered in this article, which makes sense since my main focus was acquiring rare items. I did this through quests and playing “Cute or Boot,” a popular player-hosted game show. The two items I wanted the most were the red “Stitch ship” hat and the cowboy pants. Unfortunately I never got the former. I had the chance to get it, but I let another player trick me out of my rare Tron suit because they were “mediating the trade.” I cried a lot after that. Sadly, although this game was heavily moderated, I experienced my first instances of racism through players refusing to play certain games with me since my character had dark skin. After the second incident, I gave my character pink skin and hair which I wish I didn’t feel required to do in order to have a fun time.

i remember as a kid knowing about the in park rewards, and finally when we went to disneyland the park had stopped implementing the in park quest related stuff so there was nothing we could do, also at the same time that was when the finding nemo ride opened in 2007 and they were giving away free VMK furniture codes for a submarine piece you could put in your room that was related to the finding nemo ride

Oh my god im only a minute into the article but i had to pause just to applaud your incredible ad performance, whatever theyre paying you is not enough. Edit now that I’ve watched the full article: I just wanna say I love all your articles and appreciate the effort you put in to making them. This article has made me interested in something I’ve never even heard of!

vmk meant so much to me! it was such a mess, but i have fond memories of completing the quests for diving/autopia/space magic, chatting with people in various overworld spaces (the blizzard beach pool area was a vibe), grinding minigames for cash so i could decorate my room, mixing garbage beats, and generally getting up to as much mischief as i could without getting banned. much like free realms, i just sort of let it go with a heavy heart – i’d heard of restoration projects but did not witness the drama first-hand.

thank you so much for this!! i’ve been DYING for your vid on vmk—it was basically my entire life as a middle schooler. i basically learned how to type from playing it! i was so devastated when it was announced it was closing & vividly remember spending the last hour doing the dumb default dance in the esplanade with my friend (who’d gotten me into the game) til they pulled the plug. i play a bit of myvmk as an adult but you’re right, it’s seriously not the same without the massive playerbase and huge social aspect. it’s so sad.

I found this, like… days? Maybe? Before it closed. I was captivated, mesmerized, in love, and then it disappeared and since it was such a short experience for me it sort of just faded into a vague background memory. I didn’t know it that well, so seeing JUST how much was in it blows me away. Plus, being intensely too into Disney now it’s neat to see the many Easter eggs and references and places I’ve come to love in the actual parks. The team that built this really knew what they were doing!

Omg, I remember playing this! I got in trouble for playing it because I wasn’t allowed to play multiplayer games which let me talk to people on the internet when I was 10 years old lol. I remember one time I hung out with a mod on Main Street, then had a dance party with at least thirty other people who were following them around. I was really young then but I remember only having positive interactions with the mods, if you reported someone for bullying they typically responded fast. I think one time after I reported someone I got a personal message from a mod saying something along the lines of ‘We handled it, the player was banned.’ Or something like that. I remember the DJ game was my favourite tho, I thought I was so good at it despite the terrible sound clips, but the queue to play your tune on stage was always insanely long. I vividly remember the restrictive chat features. We would typically use slang or other ways to get around it, for example I remember ‘sys’ meant ‘Sister.’ If we wanted to tell each other our irl names, we would use the first letters of words, i.e. if your name was Carl, you would go ‘First of Coconut, first of Art, first of Rain, first of Land.’ I would spend hours decorating my private room, I remember I had two specific locations in them: one looked like the inside or a pirate ship or was underwater, and the other was some kind of castle which I turned into a fighting arena. You’re right whne you say that the social aspect was the whole reason for playing, I don’t remember playing many of the games at all.

This game was my life when it was open. I was tore up when it closed. I was there on the very last day and said my goodbyes with everyone. Everyone would face their avatar to look at the screen and wave, like we were waving goodbye and thanking the staff for their work. In the og game, if you sat down at the Bayou restaurant and said the magic word “Neverland”, the gator waiter would bring you food. The fantasy land rides were always super packed when they were released, bc a random few riders would get a a special pin. I was obsessed with this game, and I remember it very fondly. My only friends were friends I made on that game. Thanks for making this article, I always love your stuff!

VMK was a core piece of my childhood from about 9-12. Played it every single day with my friends. Spent so much time trading to work my way up to getting a stitch hat, eye pin, and green pants. Had so many online friends on there, some of which I still am friends with. I was on VMK Magic forums as well. I was lucky enough to be a moderator for a while on there. When VMK announced it was closing I cried. I had spent so much time in this game building friendships, trading items, and playing games. I signed petitions and emailed Disney execs to try and get them to not close it down. Unfortunately, none of that worked. I remember when the game closed there were hundreds, if not thousands, of players in (I think the esplanade) all standing side by side waiting for the clock to strike midnight when they were shutting it down. I still have VMK cards and pins. I tried the fan run VMK for a while but it just wasn’t the same.

THANK YOU for covering this game!! It was my absolute favorite growing up and I’m glad to see it being talked about💞 I was one of the first 100 players to play VMK and had a special badge for it – it was my entire life for a LONG time😅 Also, I only went to Disney once at got VMK items as a bonus, never went there specifically for them..most of my special items were from trading with other players, never had to pay a cent for them! And I also remember Hosts giving away items, player auction and game rooms to acquire prizes in the form of rare/desired items!

oh i played this game so much…. i vividly remember muting the game music most of the time and playing the music hosted on the launch page? disney covers of pop songs, iirc. walking on sunshine was my favorite…. anybody else remember the top user room often being the Sky High roleplay hub? i think about that place all the time

I remember playing this. The load times were so long I had to upgrade my 56K dialup modem to a DSL line. Not much of an improvement. My biggest neg was living in fear of the moderators who monitored the limited chat exclusively. I guess that’s why I wasn’t impacted when the thing was shut down. In fact, looking back at this, I was like “Good Riddance!”

I was obsessed with this game. I had all the secret mickey heads, untold rare costumes, I even went to Disney world for the only time when VMK was up and they had VMK arcade machines and if you logged in there you got a special badge. My friend was IP banned for 1000 years from this game. I waited in line for hours to play the Halloween Haunted Mansion game and then repeatedly crash. I loved this game and it’s absolutely an important part of my childhood (for better or worse)

Love this, love you- I’ve been binging your articles for the last couple of days. …….. but had to come into the comments to be an obsessed Kingdom Hearts fan for a second and say the track you credited as “Title Screen” is Dearly Beloved. I’m not super well versed in telling the versions apart but my guess is you used KH1 or CoM’s variant. Just in case you end up using that track again in a future article or feel like falling down a rabbit hole listening to all the different versions. Thanks for making amazing articles and diving in deep to flash games and virtual worlds! Your deep dives keep bringing me so much nostalgia, even if I didn’t play the specific media in question. Growing up in that era of the internet was special.

I have a ridiculously clear memory of some random kid I was chatting with trying to tell me their real name and desperately clicking to leave the area, hoping the next area would load before their next chat message. I have no idea what I thought would happen, but it was the first platform I used with a chat function, and all of the online stranger danger lessons I’d had shoved down my throat had well and truly freaked me out. It felt like I had prevented the apocalypse when I managed to leave the area before seeing their name.

This article is very interesting! I’m a big fan of learning all about Virtual Worlds, whether I had personal experience with them or not. I have vague recollections of VMK, but I might be getting confused with visual similarities it holds with the Disney Magical World games. It’s not of the same caliber, but it’s a fun duo of games. The fact that you have KH music playing in this article keeps making me jump since I’m currently grinding in KH1 as I watch this article. Merlin’s House’s music fits perfectly with the other music you use in your articles, though. Right alongside the Wadanohara tracks!

I was a VMK player who ended up migrating to VFK for many years – definitely a bootleg version, but it had a pretty big player base back in the day, and much more of a game element with its quests and events. I picked it up for a few months during the first half of the pandemic and there was still a small but respectable group of loyal players and new events, but the social aspect is still the most important and is sadly missing with how cliquey longtime players get. The history presented is also not fantastic, it’s often very whitewashed, especially in the Australian and Colonial eras, and IIRC there aren’t any avatar options for darker skin tones. The holiday quests are also overtly Christian, like they talk about pagans being heathens. Going back to it was, um… interesting! I don’t know who runs it, but I don’t trust them.

I played this game as a child 15 years ago. And interestingly enough the player “OhMyChurro” was one of my very closest friends on the game. I had no idea he recorded the game. Now I’m curious if my avatar was ever saved. It was “SmartyChristy” at the time LOL, I’m gonna have to check out his old articles 😅. I remember spending hours on this game, and doing trades I was considered rich on this game’s tier system. And I remember 100 percent the drama with Amy and Open VMK

This…. THIS WAS A REAL THING? I don’t know if you guys have ever read the Kingdom Keepers series but they used VMK as a form of communication between people, and I always thought it was something that was made up, or if it existed it was made specifically for the series. I didn’t realize it was a legitimate thing that even predated the books. Wow…..

I’ve been waiting for this article. I played a lot of VMK as a kid, and was certainly upset when it closed. I was really young when habbo was big and so while my siblings played it, my parents prevented me from playing it. When VMK released I saw that it was like Habbo but disney and so I wanted to play it. I loved trying to find all the secret rooms and the hidden mickeys. However when I saw the player rooms I realized a LOT of the game was similar to the problems I already saw with Habbo. The fun stuff, like the rides and teleporters, were WAY unavailable to me. I really disliked the feeling of creativity/expression being locked. Did you ever read kingdom keepers? If not, it’s a YA series about teens with attitude who find themselves in Disney World at night and have to fight the animatronic villains that come to life. It was fine, though pretty obviously a big advertisement for the parks. Well in one of the later books there’s a scene in which all of the main characters nerd out about and then lament the shutdown of VMK. Either the author was a fan or they were really keyed in to the tweenage disney fans.

I’m sorry this is an absolutely amazing article and this is off topic but i hv nowhere else to go and NEED to ask… Does anybody else remember the Phineas and Ferb MMO??! How it worked was i believe Dr Doofenshmirtz ala Dr Eggman-style makes a robot army and your character is either a rebelling robot or made as a counter by O.W.C.A (i forget) so you play as a robot. The customisation was limited but meh, i remember my robot had long brown hair and a fedora (blonde hair was added later lol) the main gameplay was basically buddying up and battling just like ToonTown except the worlds worked more like Moshi Monsters. They were 2D with wandering players (you couldn’t tell whether they were online or not) and no chat system. You could click on wandering player bots and add them or request battles and apparently your character could engage in battles with others even if you weren’t logged in? it was weird. You’d collect parts from evil bots to upgrade yourself and when you first logged in you’d be in the O.W.C.A HQ where you could click on a screen to see your stats. Please tell me i’m not the only one who played this!

idk if youll see this but a heads up – please, please dont say the first half of *** joe’s name, its a really really intense slur against us indigenous american peoples comparable to the hard r n word (part of why the name being used in the park is so bad, not just the background of the character itself)