From Woody, Buzz and a $5,000 drawing
to “Toy Story 5! Only in theaters”

Under the drawing, disney.com in December 1996 is a list. Small icons point to family.com, a sweepstakes with Six new winners every month! and Secure online ordering at The Disney Store Online! Then come three columns of red links under capital headings: Books, Home Video, Movies, Music, Shopping, Software, Television, Theater, Theme Parks / Vacations, The Walt Disney Company, International Sites.

The Movies column lists 101 Dalmatians and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. At the bottom sit four small red and black buttons, find, help, e-mail and register, and a small line: Created by Disney Online.

The site was less than a year old. It launched in February 1996 with help from two bigger names online. America Online and Netscape each gave their members a 10-day preview. On AOL that meant a virtual scavenger hunt and AOL Live! Chats with Mickey Mouse, Buzz, Woody and Miss Piggy; Netscape put a button on its own homepage and used it to push the download of Netscape Navigator 2.0.^[1]

Disney still likes this page. In February 2013 the company’s news page showed a picture of it as a sneak peek of the latest redesign of Disney.com, then admitted: Well, of course we’re kidding!^[1]

By 1997 the drawing is gone and the homepage sits in a frame, with a long directory of Disney sites down the right edge. The framed page carries its own date, Monday, June 23, 1997, later than the capture around it. Five character heads line up in the middle above a question: Where will each star take you today? Click one of the above and see! Above them, the Disney Institute promises You won’t believe what you can do, and an ad link at the very top reads Click Here To Go To Excite Now!

On the left, a Daily Blast logo with Mickey comes with a promise: New jokes, new stories, new games -- every day. Try it FREE today! The free part was a trial. Microsoft announced in March 1997 that the Daily Blast, for children aged 3 to 12, would cost $4.95 a month, and that members of its MSN service would get it for 10 months at no extra subscription charge.^[2]

By July 1998 the logo carries a slogan: The Web Site for Families. Four big tiles sit under it: @Disney, family, Blast for Kids and Shop. In November 1997 WIRED had described the relaunch behind them: four channels called Kids, Family, Today@Disney and Shop, with the old Family.com parenting magazine folded in.^[3] Above the logo, an AT&T WorldNet ad says Upgrade your ISP and you could be looking at one of these prizes.

The HIGHLIGHTS FOR JULY 3, 1998 include READ WITH MULAN & FRIENDS! and NEW MINI BEAN BAGS!

The small print is better. Got a fast PC? Watch time fly with Disney’s Atomic Clock! And at the bottom, next to a We rated with RSACi badge: This site is best experienced with a button that says GET Microsoft Internet Explorer.

In our January 1999 capture the address is disney.go.com. The same four tiles are now plain colors, purple, orange, green and blue, because their pictures don’t load in this capture; only the labels remain, like Happy Easter and Something Special for Mom.

The 2000 homepage is blue and gold, and its browser tab carries the slogan Where the Magic Lives Online! The search box asks for a D-Word. Down the sides: buy theme park tickets, Send a D-Card and Make Disney.com Your Homepage. In the middle, Bruce Willis in The Kid, In Theaters July 7th, above sections called Shopping, Vacations, Studio, Zeether, Fun for Families and Playhouse.

This capture is the /html/ version of the homepage, and a small line near the bottom explains why: BRING DISNEY.COM TO LIFE WITH THE FLASH PLUG-IN! This is the version of the homepage for visitors without Flash, and from 2000 to 2003 it’s the one the archive kept in a form we can still show. The 2001 page keeps the same plan and the same line at the bottom, with Atlantis, Only in Theaters June 15, and a Zeether section listing Games, Music, Activities and X Games Camp.

Zeether also turns up in the browser tab of the games section in January 2001: Disney.com - Zeether - Games. Under a Compaq logo and a tile for Toy Story 2 The Game, five doors invite you to Choose a destination! They are Arcade, Disney’s Blast, Sports, Strategy and Adventure.

By 2002 the gold wordmark has a new last word: it reads Disney Online, with the slogan Where the magic comes to you. The page is dated Week of May 27 through June 2, 2002. Its biggest story is a newcomer: His name is Stitch and he’s coming to our galaxy this summer! Around him, Celebrate 100 Years of Magic at Walt Disney World, an eBay ad (Bid on your favorite DVDs & Movies), and a Disney Auctions offer to Own the Monorail.

A year later the browser tab names this page for what it is: Disney Online - The Official ‘Lite’ Home Page of The Walt Disney Company! Finding Nemo is NOW PLAYING, a Toontown box asks you to Help save Toontown today!, and two buttons hang off the masthead: BRING DISNEY.COM TO LIFE and MAKE DISNEY.COM YOUR HOMEPAGE. The invitation to bring the page to life has moved up into the masthead.

For 2004, 2005 and 2006 we have no homepage to show. Every capture we tried replayed an empty Flash shell or an upgrade page, and the browser tab on those attempts says it plainly: Experience the magic with the latest Browser and Flash plug-in! The plain HTML and lite addresses from other years didn’t help either.

Malinda Lloyd, who worked on the next redesign, remembers how this homepage was made. It was updated by publishing Flash heavy HTML pages manually, and its main pages were meant to convey the same feeling as being in one of the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.^[4] The pages were popular all the same: Disney counted 24.8 million unique visitors a month in November 2006.^[5]

The games section shows what a replay from these years looks like. On New Year’s Day 2005 it has a frame labeled Disney Online Games, blank in the middle where the Flash would play, and among the links underneath a prompt that says Game Finder! Find fun games to play indoors & outdoors!

The 2007 homepage looks like a theme park sign. Icons run along a dark blue bar, a castle among them, and the menu under it reads Movies, TV, Games, Music, Live Events, Travel, Shop, Mobile, Characters and Disney XD. A box called Disney For You sorts the visitor: Preschool, Boys, Girls, Kids & Teens, Families, Disney Fans. The hero says Watch the new Underdog trailer!, and the row at the bottom says Enter a Character World!

Disney XD was the new part. Bob Iger showed the redesigned site at CES in January 2007, with Disney Xtreme Digital (Disney XD) as its broadband centerpiece: videos, chat, music, playlists and games.^[5] The TV channel came later. Toon Disney was renamed Disney XD on February 13, 2009.^[6]

The page we can show is still a fallback. Its address is home.disney.go.com/lite, and the last link on it is Switch To Disney Online Broadband.

Our 2008, 2009 and 2010 captures reuse the same welcome artwork while the panels around it change. Mickey stands next to a big sign that says Welcome to Disney.com, a panel says PLAY GAMES NOW, and a row of character worlds waits below. The ads change around him: a WALL-E boutique in 2008, an Alice in Wonderland DVD in 2010. Each of the three captures ends with the same link, Switch To Disney Online Broadband.

The character worlds are pictures, and their alt text reads like a list of what children clicked on at the time. In 2009 it names Club Penguin, Toontown 2, Hannah Movie and High School Musical 3; in 2010 the row ends with ToyStory3.

The games section had more going on. Its January 2009 code lists Arcade, Puzzle, Word, Action and Sports games and a weekly Games Challenge that names winners and asks players to log in to earn badges. In our replay that address jumps to another page, so here it exists only as text.

Our June 2011 capture is the main homepage, not the lite one. It is one big stage for Cars 2, with red buttons that say LEARN MORE, PLAY GAMES, PRE-ORDER GAME and OWN THE SOUNDTRACK. The black rectangle in the middle is the feature’s player, blank in this replay. Three small boxes on the left say LISTEN NOW, PLAY NOW and CREATE NOW, and the Disney For You row now has three tiles: Disney Junior, Families and Fans.

There is no broadband switch at the bottom any more. The code keeps one message for browsers that are too old.

Two days after the relaunch, on October 3, 2012, the homepage is white and wide. A black-and-white banner for The Lone Ranger fills the top, with Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer’s names above the eyes. Under it: Today on Disney.com, Exclusive clips, premieres, and more, and video cards with running times, A is for Arachnophobia at 1:30 and a Bridgit Mendler song at 4:15.

Disney launched this first phase on October 1. It was built with responsive design to fit computers, tablets and phones, and its look had first appeared in May in a Video Portal beta. Disney also said visitors on smartphones were spending nearly 50 percent more time on the site than desktop users. That week the site hosted an exclusive Frankenweenie clip.^[7] In our capture the menu in the code lists the film next to Wreck-It Ralph, while the banner belongs to The Lone Ranger.

The code also holds a pop-up for children headed off the site, titled An Important Message: Don’t forget to check with a parent before you go to a site where you can buy or download things.

On New Year’s Day 2013 the homepage leads with Best Videos of 2012. Under it are two games: Phineas and Ferb’s New Year’s Blast Off (Fly your spaceship to the Moon) and Sugar Rush from Wreck-It Ralph, with a red Play button.

The games section a few days later has its own masthead, Disney Games, and a menu of Online Games, Mobile Apps, Video Games, Club Penguin and Create. Good Luck Charlie has a Shopping Spree Showdown, and the Games of the Week are two Frankenweenie games: Vampire Cat Attack and Electrifying Experiments. The code still lists the virtual worlds: Club Penguin, Pixie Hollow, Pirates of the Caribbean Online and Toontown Online.

By 2014 the browser tab is shorter: The official home for all things Disney. It still says that in 2026. The heroes rotate, so each still shows one slide: in 2014 the Thingamabobs Quiz (Find out if you are truly a Pixar expert.), in 2015 Perry, The Best Platypus: See why everything’s better with Perry.

In October 2016 the top of the page is a film poster: Rogue One, Brand New Trailer, Watch Now. Below it, a grid of pictures, including a video called Cute Cats and Kittens in Alice Costumes and Wigs.

In 2017 Lightning McQueen leads a quiz, Quiz Pit Stop: It’s time to find out which one of the Cars you’re most like. In 2018 the Incredibles 2 banner sits above a row called Shop Incredibles, with price tags, starting with an OtterBox iPhone case.

June 2019 is a contest. Yeehaw! says the hero, next to Toy Story characters at Disneyland: Enter every day until July 10 for a chance to win a Disneyland Resort vacation! Its video module doesn’t play in the replay, so we folded it away in the still, as in 2018. And the menu in the code has a new entry between the parks and the games: Disney+.

By June 2020 Disney+ is the first entry in the menu in the code, and the hero’s button says Stream Now: Artemis Fowl, Believe in the extraordinary. Now streaming exclusively on Disney+. In 2021 it’s Loki, now streaming on Disney+, with two green buttons, Stream Now and Watch Trailer.

The October 2022 page puts it in capitals across a blue band: YOUR FAVORITE DISNEY MOVIES & SERIES STREAMING ANYTIME ON DISNEY+. Just above it, a light blue shopDisney strip says You have items in your bag. This copy of the page was made by the archive’s crawler. The same strip is back in October 2023, above a Haunted Mansion hero.

The footer links in the code change too. In 2020 they include the Disney® Premier Visa® Card; in 2026, the Disney® Inspire Visa® Card.

The last three heroes all send you to a cinema. In June 2024: Experience ALL THE FEELS with Inside Out 2, now playing only in theaters! In June 2025 Stitch, now playing only in theaters!, with a Get Tickets Now button.

And in June 2026 the green hero belongs to Woody and Buzz again: Get your tickets NOW for Toy Story 5! Only in theaters June 19! Under it run cards for films, merchandise and Disney+.

1996 · Prize drawing2026 · Toy Story 5

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In 1996 Woody and Buzz asked you to log on on Sunday. In 2026 they ask you to buy a ticket.disney.com, December 1996 → June 2026

The 1996 page asked visitors to log on on Sunday. Two years later its code asked for a browser that could show frames, and its footer recommended Internet Explorer. From 2000 to 2002 the bottom of the page said BRING DISNEY.COM TO LIFE WITH THE FLASH PLUG-IN!, and in 2003 the masthead said BRING DISNEY.COM TO LIFE. From 2007 to 2010 it offered Switch To Disney Online Broadband. In 2011 the code told old browsers We no longer support the browser you are using, and in 2014 and 2015 it still recommended a newer one.

From 2016 on, none of our captures carries such a note. The page fits the screen it’s on, and the hero sells a film, a trip or a streaming service. Toy Story was on the homepage at both ends. In 1996 it was a $5,000.00 drawing on a Sunday. In 2026 it is a film, Only in theaters June 19!