A Litttle About Myself (Hi Everyone!)

Coolcutelily · Apr 24, 2016

I lived in California and went to Disneyland frequently during the years VMK was originally open. In Tomorrowland there was a building known as Invoventions, and inside they had card stands, computers, and couches set up for the 50th Anniversary. From the moment I found those cactus shaped rubber couches I was hooked on the Virtual Magic Kingdom. That was the first time I had gone onto an internet based game, and to be honest I remember being a little overwhelmed by it all. The sayings "lol" and the emotes took me forever to understand, and for the first year or two I was constantly having to ask what the shorthand letters stood for. I started off with the Sleeping Beauty Castle as my home base and could frequently be found at the Pirates of the Caribbean game, or even more frequently the Jungle Cruise. The other game I could be found at was the DJ game on Main Street, but that was later on. At the beginning I went by the username Coolcutelily, but most called me Lily. I enjoyed going to the Trivia and Game Show Rooms, even though I do not recall ever winning a game. Most of the time I would sit around and watch others play, but I never minded. Around the end of VMK I had found the Warriors "Clams", as they were called back then because VMK would not allow the word clans, and I created a new account under the name of Blackkit, or Blackheart, something around those lines. At the time I had never read one of the Warriors books by Erin Hunter, and was quickly informed that I needed to read the books before I tried to roleplay on VMK. A week later or so I was grounded, and when I went back onto vmk.com the site had been shut down. I ended up reading all the Warriors books, and for the first time ever fell in love with reading. I later joined the yahoo groups forums for roleplaying purposes under the email coolcutelily@yahoo etc. This email is no longer used or valid, but it was my first and long-term email until about two years ago. Through these yahoo groups I have made life long friends, have made my career goal to become an author and a screenwriter, and all of it can be traced back to VMK. Thank you to whoever told me to read those books, you changed my life

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Now, a little about me. I am a freshman in college with a ten year old little brother. Since about third grade I have been apart of the theatre programs at my schools. I have fallen in love with lighting design and have a favor towards straight plays over musicals. This is not to say musicals are bad, I just prefer straight plays over musicalsc. I have been apart of The Night of The Living Dead, Macbeth, Bye Bye Birdy, and The Laramie Project as a cast member and The Spitfire Grill, The Ashgirl, and The Giver as lighting design just to name a few. I love to draw, write, and take part in graphic design. My grammar needs some work, but I do try my best to work through it. It's weird, but I'm a grammar police chick who has trouble with grammar. Recently I have started making button commissions for a small business for anime conventions, and I am super excited about helping the business grow. If anyone would be interested in seeing some of the work that has been done for the business look up Otaku Graphics. My stories are normally published to Wattpad though I have yet to post a finished book on the site/app. Any other questions feel free to ask, and if you think you knew me on VMK: talk to me I may remember you

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AristoKena · Apr 24, 2016

I never knew you or anything before, but just got done reading and think it's really neat that one little thing on a game changed your whole life essentially, with your career goal and all

I also commented because I want to see if anyone from that clam is on here

Coolcutelily · Apr 24, 2016

I wish I remembered what the name of that "clam" was. They might have been going under the name of Shadow"clam" since that actually is one of the canon groups in the novels, but as a young kid I never thought to write that down. And it's okay, nice to meet you now! Are you an original player from VMK days, or just starting in the community?

AristoKena · Apr 24, 2016

Both

I can't remember for the life of me my original username though, the only friend I actually remember having back then was AlisonTan. Just joined this community a few months ago.

Coolcutelily · Apr 24, 2016

Sweet! I was showing one of my college friends a little about VMK on a trip with some friends. My original intention was to find VMK Revistedm but what I ended up finding was MyVMK. I was fangirling so much in my friend's car I'm amazed he didn't call my folks to ask if I was diagnosed with a crazy gene. I know coolcutelily was my original VMK name but I have no clue what any of my friends' usernames were. I think one had pink or pinky in the name, but don't quote me on it.

AristoKena · Apr 24, 2016

lol yea, I didn't realize how many fanbased VMK games there were until I came across this one

Coolcutelily · Apr 24, 2016

I know of this one and Revisited, what other ones are there?

AristoKena · Apr 24, 2016

One off the top of my head that I always hear people joking about is VFK

Coolcutelily · Apr 24, 2016

Interesting, from what I can find it looks like VFK is a history community for people who are unaccustomed to online gaming etc. I might research the site a little for hoots and giggles.

AristoKena · Apr 24, 2016

That's interesting, I never really looked too much into it.

Gregory · Apr 24, 2016

The reason VFK became so popular is cause they piggy-backed off of the original VMK's closing, so you will find that a lot of the players have come from VFK. Personally, I hated VFK. Thought the graphics were so weird and I didn't like the piggy-backing off of the closing. I went from VMK to Habbo instead. Anyway, since you shared your story... Here's mine

So way back in 2005 or 2006 (around the opening of VMK sometime) I was doing this promotional thing Disney had for the new POTC movie, Dead Man's Chest- it was this kinda online treasure hunt, and one of the prizes were items in a game called "VMK". I win the prize, logged in, didn't understand the game at all (I was young at the time- 1st or 2nd grade I believe), and logged out within 5 minutes. However, a few years later, me and my twin brother were spending some time looking for a new(to us) online game to play. I found Club Penguin, and he found VMK. At first I was insisting Club Penguin was what we should play, but quickly fell in love with VMK upon seeing it. That was late 2007 or early 2008. Unfortunately, only a few months would go by before VMK closed. However, in that time, I'd become HOOKED. I was livid when the game closed, as well as terribly sad. I was in 4th grade and walked around all day at school with a "Save VMK" sign on my back the day the game closed. I wrote a letter to Disney, which my father still has, and oh boy is it entertaining to read. Anyway, from that point forward I set out to eventually recreate VMK or something similar (Not as a career, but for fun). So I started working on graphic design and learning a little bit about coding. I ended up doing graphics for many things, including companies and other games, and I started to learn bits and pieces of coding on my own. Eventually I'd end up taking a few years of coding in various languages, and I also took a year of graphic design. I now use the coding skills I've learned for small projects, plan to learn Swift (Apple's new coding language) when the summer rolls around, intern at a graphic design firm, and design items for this game, MyVMK!

So yeah, VMK has played a huge part in my life as well! Although I don't want to go into graphic design or computer science as careers, they've both helped me tremendously in business, and I desire to start a cruise line in the future. Hoping to buy a hotel in a joint venture between a few family companies, I'm actually away from home looking at locations as I write this. Haha. Disney is by far my favorite company on this planet, and I've always built mine to be like theirs. VMK played a huge roll is securing my already extreme Disney love for eternity.

Best_Blonde · Apr 24, 2016

Hi and Welcome @Coolcutelily! If you have any questions, feel free to ask me!
And if you see me around in-game, come say hi!
:Tinkerbell1:

Moogle · Apr 25, 2016

Hello and Welcome! I was Pintradingskier or Pintradingskiier in the original game (I was obsessed with real life pin trading at the time). I can't for the life of me remember anyone's username, but anyway hola! Hope to see you around the kingdom! :hat:

Coolcutelily · Apr 25, 2016

I love hearing all these different stories. It would be interesting if Disney did a "Remember VMK" thing for those kids who grew up and that way Disney could know just what an impact VMK had on our generation. I don't think Disney should bring VMK back, surprisingly as all they would do is bring it back and get rid of it again, because they can. Honestly, Club Penguin was cool as a kid, but I mean I've went on there from time to time out of boredom and I end up just walking around not talking to anyone because it's aimed at kids not families like VMK was. I also played Toontown, but I again only went on here and there, until the closing months. When I heard it was closing I instantly went onto Toontown to play as much as I could; I think it was a nostalgic moment of not being able to play those closing days of VMK. The problem I had was Disney closed Fairies, Tootntown, and POTC but left open Club Penguin. Personally I wish Disney would bring back an online game aimed not just at kids, but at the family again.

Moogle · Apr 25, 2016

Coolcutelily said:

I'll be honest here I think Disney once did great things, but as of recently I feel like they have been changing everything. (Whole different debate topic) Keep what's working. When they closed VMK I was devastated because they didn't have a good reason for closure except that the 50th celebration was over. Didn't they realize that it became 100x more popular than they really imagined. Why not keep it? When that was over, I'll be honest again, I got heavily into Neopets. That consumed some of my life until High School and College happened. I quit because I was an adult playing in a community filled with others who took the game too seriously or not serious enough. It became a struggle to keep up with everything. I think Disney is done with online games since the influx of mobile games. (Someone please make this game playable on the phone :clap:

)

Coolcutelily · Apr 25, 2016

I'm a little surprised they did not do anything for the 60th anniversary this past year. Disney went full out with diamond this and diamond that, even though diamond is 75th, but you know who is actually paying attention to details. *cough* *cough* me. Disney is trying to put a foothold into every aspect of a person's life. Have to say, the Disney Infinity is a little out there. The figures are cool, but the game itself seems like something that could have been done without the figures and done on a phone app. It was just Disney trying to compete with Skylanders which had skyrocketed in merchandise with kids. Personally, I think Disney has better resources and creative minds than they put to use. They could have done something like Dimensions has done where all the Disney Worlds are clashing together, and made it an actual on-going growing story, but instead they're all toys from a toy box and you play mini games with them. Maybe there is more, but my family and I haven't played all that much, just my little brother.

Now, back on topic and away from my silly rant. Neopets was fun. I think that was my first time ever on anything internet based. Again, I think it's been changed a lot, but it's still super cute. I think somewhere in my mess of a room I have a sketchbook with a few doodles of my pets.