On April 7th, 2008, Sue P., a young girl from a small town in Utah, returned home from running errands with her family and logged in to her favorite internet site. She sat and stared at her computer screen at the message from her friend. The content of the message baffled her. It simply said:
“I don’t want VMK to close.”
VMK stands for Virtual Magic Kingdom (www.vmk.com), an online game world that Disney opened in 2003 as a special promotion for their fiftieth anniversary. Despite its designation as a promotion, the rich fun world attracted a community of players which had grown to over 6 million strong with an average of 6-8 thousand players online at any one time. Sue loved to play the game, and had formed over 100 friendships with “people from around the world, including France and Scotland,” in the online community. But, she didn’t understand her friend’s words. When asked to explain, her friend directed Sue to read the VMK newsletter.
Every week, VMK posts a newsletter on the front page of the site telling everyone which new events and special activities were planned for the week. This week, the newsletter announced that on May 21st, 2008, VMK would be closing its virtual doors forever. Sue sat in stunned silence as she read the news. Then as it slowly dawned on her that she would no longer have the beloved place to play with her friends online, tears swelled in her eyes. Crying, she ran to summon her mother who checked the VMK newsletter and confirmed the tragic news.
Devastated, Sue logged on to the VMK site to chat with her friends. Once online, virtual chaos met Sue’s eyes. The small characters, each representing a person in the virtual world, roamed the game streets in confusion and grief as the news spread like wildfire of VMK closing. Such words as “sad” and “cries” appeared in the chat bubbles over the characters’ heads in an effort to express the very real emotion the players were experiencing. Sue talked to her friends for a while online, then asked her parents what they should do. As a proactive solution, and in a bold move, Sue’s mother proposed that they instigate a “Save VMK website” (www.savevmk.com) and start a petition that people could sign. Their thoughts were that if they collected enough signatures online, perhaps Disney would reconsider closing VMK. Sue presented the idea to her online friends and they all agreed that it was a great idea.
The next day, Sue worked diligently on spreading the news of her petition. As a result of her efforts, SaveVMK.com has received over 100,000 visits and people have left over 4,500 comments on their site on what VMK means to them. From the heartrending stories left on the site, Sue and her family grew to understand what VMK meant to so many other young people around the world. The stories revealed that playing on VMK provided an escape from illness for sick children in hospitals, or from loneliness for people with little opportunity to make friends, or provided joy to those who love to bring joy to others. For many people, VMK is such an intricate part of their real lives; they can’t imagine their world without it.
Without a similar online world to take the place of VMK, the future looked bleak and their friendships and community endangered. For this reason, when Sue’s sister discovered VirtualFamilyKingdom.com she was excited. Virtual Family Kingdom is a new virtual world being created for families and friends to get together in an online environment to play and have fun. Sue and her family were “grateful and happy that someone was going to help these people” to whom VMK meant so much.
With her SaveVMK.com site, Sue expressed how she and her family were “happy to help do our part.” Despite the sadness surrounding the closing of VMK, her website has been a great experience. She said she’d “interacted with people all over the world,” and hoped that what she had done would “inspire kids to do something about problems that they see.” Sue added that “lots of kids emailed me and asked how we made our web page, and how they could help people by reaching out to others over the internet.” As a result, Sue said that “my family and I are planning to do a new web site to help people do that. It has made me feel not so sad about VMK when I think that I have helped others feel better.”
Thank you Sue, for sharing your Story with us.
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Our Stories and pictures are the sole copyright of their Authors and may not be reprinted or used without their permission.
© 2008 by Sue Peterson and Story of My Life®
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The latest update from the Save VMK and the Disney pages state:
Will VMK re-open in October or in 2009?
We have gotten lots and lots of comments and questions about VMK re-opening. Apparently, we are not the only ones. VMK has recently added the following to their homepage:
"Recently we've received inquiries asking if VMK is reopening -- there are no plans to reopen VMK in any form."
And, true to how Disney has handled VMK's closure, there are no apologies of any kind, just a statement about how "Disney.com continues to create experiences to amaze our guests."
To this, we agree: the experience we all shared of how Disney closed VMK without so much as an explanation or apology -- completely ignoring the protests of thousands of children -- was truly "amazing."