My story began in 2000 and 2001. Somehow, my family was able to afford traveling to Walt Disney World twice in two years. In 2000, we were able to experience the Millennium Celebration and in 2001 we enjoyed the 100 Years of Magic celebration. While we were there, I fell in love with Walt Disney World. It was no longer just a magical place of my childhood, but for a 13-year-old it had become a place teeming with adventure, history, and technology. Later in my high school years, we traveled to Walt Disney World a couple more times. As I grew older I was better able to appreciate the intricacies of park theming and the technology that brought my favorite stories to life. Upon graduating from high school, I entered college with the plan of becoming a teacher. While I was never all that interested in education growing up, I absolutely adored history and realized that education was the best route to take if I wanted to pass my love history along to other people.

One day while listening to a podcast, I heard a segment about a new Orlando-based magazine that was being started. I decided to send the publisher an email and pitch an idea for an article about my experience in the Walt Disney World half-marathon. This began a relationship with the editor which led to a few more articles being published. I had fallen in love with writing about Walt Disney World. One day while taking a shower (that’s where I do all my best thinking), I came up with the brilliant idea of researching how accurate the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction really is. I spent the next several months doing in-depth research about pirates, the Caribbean, and Spanish imperialism during the 15-1600s. What came out of this research would ultimately be a 10 page article which revealed that the attraction was full of historical accuracies and inaccuracies. While the magazine publisher refused to put my article in the magazine because of its length, he did agree to post it on the magazine’s blog.

A few years later, I received a strange email from a guy named Bob at Theme Park Press. He explained that he had read my article about Pirates of the Caribbean on the blog, and was interested in offering me a book deal to write about the historical accuracies and inaccuracies of many famous Walt Disney World attractions. I agreed to tackle this challenge, and my first book, A Historical Tour of Walt Disney World Volume 1, was published in fall of 2015. The rest is history! Since that day, I have written several books in three different series, which you can find out more about in the “Published Works” tab above.