Walt Disney World's "If You Could Fly"

This video is made up of three separate ride-throughs of "If You Could Fly", an Omnimover ride in Walt Disney World's Tomorrowland. The ride originally opened with the park in 1972 and was sponsored by Eastern Airlines. At that time, the ride had a different theme song with an ear-worm chorus, "if you had wings, had wings, had wings...". Eastern Airlines dropped its sponsorship of the ride in 1987, and the ride was renamed "If You Could Fly" and a new theme song was produced. Although all mentions of Eastern Airlines were removed, the ride remained virtually the same as "If You Had Wings", just with different music. "If You Could Fly" lasted until January of 1989, at which time it was completely gutted and turned into "Delta Dream Flight". In 1998, the ride was converted to "Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin", which it still is today.

I have been on all the variations of this ride over the years, and my favorite version is "If You Could Fly" as seen in this video. I like this theme song better than "If You Had Wings" because it is more melodic. I always enjoyed taking a break from the Florida heat and seeing all the little projections in this ride. Because of the Omnimover system, there never seemed to be a long line and you could hop right on. My dad was especially sad when the ride closed and was converted into "Dream Flight". It was just never the same.

This footage was taken by my father, Joseph G. Cherkasky, in August of 1987.