Five years of the Disney-MGM Studios

	Print this article
	Email to a friend
	Discuss

Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Matt Hochberg

This week’s article of Studios Weekly is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of column introduction.  This past weekend, studioscentral.com celebrated it’s 5 year anniversary.  In years past I’ve done different things to commemorate anniversaries but this year has been a little more laid back.  Rather than launch some uber-glitzy promotional page with spiffy new graphics, I thought I’d take an opportunity to write an open letter to the studioscentral.com community that has been growing every year and has made these past years worth all the effort.

In the five years the site has been up, I’ve made a lot of new friends from around the world, both in person and online.  Someone people have come and gone while others have stayed on and really have become friends.  This past December we had the first studioscentral.com sponsored meet at Mouse Fest where we hosted a ride on Star Tours and had over 40 people show up to it and more importantly, this past March we had a meet for members of the site in the Studios and spent a really fun few hours together chatting about just about everything.  And in the end, that’s what studioscentral.com is all about: making connections….and the Disney-MGM Studios of course, but really it’s all about the people.

The site has also grown beyond simply studioscentral.com, there’s now TowerOfTerror.Org and RockNRollercoaster.com as well as a Star Wars Weekend site and of course, the little podcast I host and each of those ventures requires quite a bit of work, but they’re all extensions of what I love to do: talk and write about the Disney-MGM Studios and Walt Disney World in general.  Somehow I’ve found the time to keep them all somewhat up to date and running.

Of course the question remains what is in store for studioscentral.com in the future and rest assured, I’ve got quite a bit up my sleeve.  In the short term, this year for Star Wars Weekends, we will have a live blog where information and images will be posted live from Star Wars Weekends starting at about 7am on the Friday of the first weekend of the event.  I’m really looking forward to this (until I have to actually wake up in time to get to the park for the event) and this will allow you to follow along what’s going on in the park during the event, which will be great for those who can’t go and wish they could be there or for folks who are going on a forthcoming weekend and want to know what to expect.

We will also continue providing thoughtful and interesting articles and features on the site, continuing our drive to provide new content every weekday and so far I’ve been quite pleased with how I’ve done with that goal.  With the exception of a few days where I’ve been in the parks or on vacation elsewhere (Yes, people evidently do go somewhere other than Walt Disney World for vacation), we’ve been providing new content daily and I encourage you to take advantage of the regular columns by reading and posting your comments.  We’ve also got some other fun ideas coming down the pipeline that I can’t share quite yet, but I can promise you that they will be worth the wait.

I have to acknowledge some important people who have helped make this site better in the past year (and even further back).  First, is the wonderful moderators I have on the studioscentral.com message boards who help delete spammers and help the other users along the way, so thank you Josh, Jeanne and Marissa.  I’ve also had a lot of help from different people, sometimes it’s someone who contributes photos of something new at the parks or it’s someone who lends me some advice, they’ve all helped more than they can know and I’m truly thankful for their support.

Most of all, I want to thank everyone who frequents this site and makes it part of their day.  Without the enjoyable crowd that I get to talk to, this site would have died a long time ago because I feed off the different people that visit and it’s been a real pleasure to talk to all of you everyday, whether it be on the message boards or through email of an Ask Matt column question.   As always, if you have a comment or question or suggestion (if it’s a lawsuit, send it to Glenn), please feel free to email me.  If you ask anyone who has emailed me, they’ll tell you that I always write back personally.

Thanks again for stopping by and I’m looking forward to our 10^th anniversary already.

Agree with what I said? Disagree? Have a story to share sparked by this column? Share your own idea by posting a comment below.