Long Lost Mesa Verde Times Part One

  The strangest thing that ever happened came a couple of weeks ago when I went over to Chief's moms house to pick up some more of his belongings that she thought I'd like. She's always right I love anything that reminds me of my old friend. This time was a bit different. She gave me a plastic box with a bunch of Paul F. Anderson cassette tapes and a pack of photos mixed in with tons of other stuff. 

After a week or so I got around to the plastic box. I was surprised to see that the photo package had Horizons pics that weren't in the huge photo album with all of his other Horizons stuff. What were these? Extras? You can't imagine how surprised I was when I found that I had never seen most of these pictures before!! Why? We gave each other copies of every single roll of film we took. 

....and now General Electric, The Walt Disney Company, and Pabst Blue Ribbon proudly present "Chief's Mystery Photos"

Glorious Chief

Bored with waiting for the gap, Chief puts on some monkey shines for the camera:)

50 "followers"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow! We made it to 50! Honestly I never thought we'd get two or three. I mean, this long after Horizons closed? I never thought there were so many hardcore fans out there. I love this blog:) Thanks, Horizons fans for everything you do.

tanyeshka was our 50th follower! Tell her what she won, Johnny!

"tanyeshka wins a new washer dryer combo! Not only that, she wins a brand new Laser Chef "Laser Oven"!" She also wins an all expense paid trip to.................SEA CASTLE! Yes tanyeshka and a guest will experience life under the waves! Dinning, Romance, and leisure! This could all be yours if the price is right!

Rock on! Chief is going on vacation so you people are all MINE for the next week!

Chief of the Future

Here's my pal Chief, yellow flashlight in hand. He's grinning like that because he's trying to hook up! In fact, he was the last person on Earth to kiss that Animatronic figure goodbye. This took place as the "last" people to ride Horizons were about 10 cars ahead of us:)

How is that so? We saw a handful of die hards toasting with grape juice just outside of the entrance. Some sort of management person was with them. We went in ahead of them, hid out, watched them go by, we then paid our goodbye's to the greatest vision of future living ever created. When we got to unload there wasn't a person to be seen. We walked out and sat in front of Horizons. It was officially over for us and everyone else.

The rumble of poorly built cars on a shaky track ran next door at the new "Test Track". We sat and looked at the pastel wonder we had tried to document and couldn't help but to feel empty. Mrs Gibson found us there, bag of cool stuff from the Japan Pavilion, and we all three went home.

New Years Eve 1999/2000 happened and....................................

Forgot My Scuba Gear

I know we are moving on to the Desert Habitat Kitchen, but I thought I would go ahead and post a shot with me in it, since a couple have been posted with Hoot and now Bionic Fonzi. Dont want anyone to think I am hiding. I even have my trusty flashlight in hand. :)

A few notes from 'ol Hoot gibson

1. I'm moving this weekend but it shouldn't change the pace of this blog. You'll just think I'm on a lazy streak so it'll be fine. HAHA! Chief will jump in and lay down some future goodness.


2. I love the input from you Horizons junkies! We only have 21 followers and that's just fine with me. We're all that's left and like I said before this is all for you.

3. Did you notice the Google ads on the sidebar? I installed those at the beginning because I wanted to see what Google would serve up based on my keywords. Hilarious! A fish market ad, a band called sea fish I think, "book your Epcot vacation" Why? So you WON'T see the ride that this blog is about?, etc. Hardee frickin' har! On a lighter note Chief and I have made 43 cents!

The Catwalks

Here's a pic of Chief high up on the catwalk. You can see how close it was to the roof as it slopes down to the right. It's not totally visible here but you can see some water damaged ceiling tiles of which there were many. It was also almost pitch black up there but we had our trusty little Mag Lights. How long ago was this? LOOK AT THE SIZE OF CHIEF'S CAMERA! Haha!

Hold the BUS!

ok. ok. I just talked to Chief and he made a great point about this blog. We're NOT trying to be the best Horizons blog or tribute site ever. Wikipedia beats our asses on info! These pics are nothing new and the info isn't either for that matter. Really! TONS more research went into other sites and much more was gathered in the way of cool video, information, and pics. Do we get it now?

I need to do a better job of illustrating that this blog is about the adventures of two dorks who couldn't stand to see Horizons close. Now that I look back it was pretty amazing and some of the stunts pretty stupid:) These dorks, Chief and I, just wanted to document as much as we could for ourselves before it all went away.

For the time and place, we were the boys. Nothing to lose, no regard for our own safety, passes to all of the theme parks, etc. We worked boring desk jobs, rented shitty apartments near all the parks, rode rides and roller coasters, and thought nothing of the future......until! Horizons.

Look, dear reader, We left our ride vehicles, crawled through filth, and spent 8 hours at a time inside Horizons while it was OPERATIONAL. Every pic we have here was taken while the show was being enjoyed by people visiting EPCOT CENTER. Every one. We weren't employees or anything. Just two dorks looking for adventure and trying to preserve something special to us.

Thank God we were sort of young and had the time and balls to do this. We want you to get a feeling for what we did:)

Going deeper

The area under this rock work was hollow with a concrete floor. There were two I-beams that could have served as benches for adventurers to eat their lunch on. It also could have served as a nice storage place for cameras and equipment because of it's easy access. One might have called it base camp if one were so inclined.

In this pic we're going deeper and you can see the end of the rock work in the lower right corner.