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I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

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Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#111

Post by morganf »

I grew up a nerdy kid in the 80s that liked military airplanes, and on the island I grew up on, was the HQ and manufacturing facility of a local manufacturer of military aircraft, that at the time was named Grumman. They were like a local source of jobs and pride and prestige of something cool to come from the island (second only to Billy Joel, the most famous celebrity of that era from The Island hahaha.)

Anyhow, when I was about 10, I wrote the CEO of Grumman a letter about how great they were talking nerdy about my favorite planes of theirs. The CEO wrote back with a short message thanking me personally. I was so excited, my parents framed it and put it on the wall of my childhood room, etc etc. Only as an adult, well into my 30s, did I remember that and think "OMG, of course his secretary or PR firm wrote that", but I truly couldn't realize that when I was a kid.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#113

Post by a_t48 »

nlawalker wrote: post #64
dfxm12 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the reason? Anything beyond concerns over ownership of the ideas, characters, etc. (which I presume is the boilerplate legalese)? Did they even admit to reading your letter?

In elementary school, a couple friends and I sketched out an entire game's worth of ideas for Mega Man bosses and mailed them to Capcom (this would have been 1990 or so). I remember how thick the envelope was. I recall their response being very human, warm and encouraging, but it also included all of our original sketches, with a very direct (but kid-understandable) statement that they were obligated to return the or…

Funnily enough - they do actually take fan submissions for bosses - https://megaman.fandom.com/wiki/Boss_character_contest - but you’d need to do it during the development time, and probably mail into Capcom JP. Bad luck, there.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#114

Post by postalcoder »

Nition wrote: post #104
nogridbag wrote: post #15

These letters matter a lot to kids. I sent my video game idea to Nintendo as a little kid and I had the same reaction seeing that envelope from Nintendo in the mailbox addressed to me. I think it was also a bit more special pre-internet as these companies felt a bit more magical and mysterious. You can only read about them through video game magazines and see their names in the credit scenes at the end of the games.…

In 1997 I typed up a letter to Maxis in Microsoft Creative Writer about how much I liked their games and wanted to move to America and work at Maxis when I grew up: https://i.imgur.com/1eHcead.jpeg Unfortunately I made the mistake of mentioning that it'd be cool if you could print out an image of your city in SimCity 2000, as you could in the previous SimCity game. That was enough to get me only this letter from lega…

Creative Writer is one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. What's the state of kids software nowadays?

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#115

Post by Nition »

postalcoder wrote: post #114
Nition wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1997 I typed up a letter to Maxis in Microsoft Creative Writer about how much I liked their games and wanted to move to America and work at Maxis when I grew up: https://i.imgur.com/1eHcead.jpeg Unfortunately I made the mistake of mentioning that it'd be cool if you could print out an image of your city in SimCity 2000, as you could in the previous SimCity game. That was enough to get me only this letter from lega…

Creative Writer is one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. What's the state of kids software nowadays?

Pretty terrible in my experience. The good stuff for kids mostly moved to tablets and phones, but no keyboard and mouse is a limiting format, and you have to sift through a hundred bad apps to find the good one. Not much that runs easily on modern PCs comes close to the old magic. Though Tux Paint is actually very good, retaining the sense of whimsy that most modern software lacks.

It's hard to describe but it almost feels to me like media today - this applies to games and films and everything - is often created at a meta level, a simulacrum of the real thing. Like in the 80s and 90s people were trying to make things that were fun and interesting and probably based on their life experiences. And now they're trying to make things that are the best distillation of whatever was most successful before. But that makes it feel dishonest, corporate.

Even Microsoft in the 90s could still make stuff that felt fun and unique. There was a counterpart to Creative Writer called Fine Artist that was equally good.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#116

Post by fhdkweig »

ashleyn wrote: post #23
dfxm12 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the reason? Anything beyond concerns over ownership of the ideas, characters, etc. (which I presume is the boilerplate legalese)? Did they even admit to reading your letter?

This was a very common thing media companies dealt with and still deal with. There are too many legal risks in even reading the idea. SOP is to send back the envelope sealed and with a canned response explaining that they don't accept pitches from the public.

I can't remember what the topic was, but I remember hearing a story about a company that was soliciting ideas from the public for maybe a joke book or maybe tv show plots. They got into a lot of legal hot water once they found out that the ideas weren't original and people were actually just taking them from other sources.

If anyone else knows what I am talking about, I'd like to know the name of the company.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#117

Post by foxglacier »

I suspect his persistent confidence was already there to lead him to write to Disney in the first place. As a kid, I had an idea like that and my Dad was going to write to the company but he never did, I never had the inclination to do it myself, and now I'm not an actor.

It also takes some awareness to state your age at the start of the letter. That's what makes people respond so well to it. I would never have thought age was relevant, or even that it was shameful to admit you're just a child. I didn't understand how people think. This guy apparently did, so again, he was already cut out for acting, I'd say.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#118

Post by WA »

personalcompute wrote: post #108
WA wrote: post #82

I once mailed the maker of a little German indie game called Clonk about wanting to learn programming. It was my favorite game for a while. Never heard back from him, which I found disappointing. Now, I answer every single email my app customers are sending me and have been doing this for close to 20 years and I get a lot of positive reviews for the great customer support.

Wow, I didn't expect to see Clonk on HN today! Almost 20 years ago, as a 13 year old in the US I managed to make friends with an older player from Germany, and then we collaborated on making Clonk Rage mods together in c4script. It was an amazing experience and did help me get more into programming, so I'm so sorry to hear about your experience! I do recall members of the development team at the time being accessible…

I think it must’ve around '98 when I played Clonk 4. I even downloaded some custom assets via an Internet cafe to floppy disks to play with them back home. The mail was actually a physical letter. Maybe the devs became more active later when internet communities started to grow.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#119

Post by hinkley »

dhosek wrote: post #72
earlyriser wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 months later sounds too short to have taken your idea, I'm guessing launching a product at Mars scale takes like 2 years. This is probably why the always say they cannot take ideas sent by external people... but on the other hand if this came from the CEO, probably could be fast tracked. So 80/20. Do you remember who was the CEO?

Only vaguely related, but the Mars family lived in neighboring River Forest and the factory was just north of me in Galewood (it is shutting down or already shut down and the property is planned for redevelopment, but the neighboring Metra station is named “Mars” which means that in Chicago you can take a commuter train to Mars). Sadly the Mars estate was apparently torn down to be replaced with a pair of bland McMan…

That’s a shame. Annhueser Busch turned one of their estates into a tourist trap. But you couldn’t pet the horses, which is literally the only reason an 11 year old would want to go near a brewery.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#120

Post by hinkley »

MattGrommes wrote: post #100
RobCodeSlayer wrote: post #44

At age 13 I pitched a candy idea to Mars Bars as part of a school project to write business letters. I loved Snickers at the time but was tired of unwrapping so many fun-size ones from Halloween. I told them something like - “you should just put the fun-size candies in a big resealable bag, so people can eat as much as they want without dealing with the wrappers. You can call them unwrapped minis. All you have to do…

I wonder if they have a policy about not accepting ideas / replying to people don't think their idea was stolen. I know TV shows have that policy so nobody can accuse them of plagiarizing their script idea.

And yet we get copycat movies all the time where clearly someone stole an elevator pitch or eavesdropped at a coffee shop and ran with it.
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