I was first made aware of this site during Christmas break 2003 when my younger brother
Kram Nebuer asked me for help answering some trivia questions for one of UD's giveaway contests at the time. (Backtracking even further, I was first made aware of my younger brother when he was born and my seventeen-month-old self climbed up onto the hospital bed to take a look at him.) I didn't join the forum until January 2004, at which time I was at university and decided to register for the forum in order to keep a virtual eye on my brother (as well as have something to do between classes besides go back to my dorm to watch "All My Children".).
Sixteen years later, and I'm still here, albeit on a far less frequent basis. Back right now because I got an e-mail about a PM and had to go check on it. Saw this and decided to take a trip down memory lane. Will try to fill in some memory gaps discussed here, but too lazy to be gung-ho about the Search Option (as I was in my younger days), so I'll not link to the relevant threads. And to ensure it's all forum-specific, I'll use everyone's usernames rather than any real-world names that I already know.
I'm just going to go through the thread and bold stuff I want to talk about as they come up rather than quote things.
Lars Vermundsberget always had a dossier ready of Disney books that every fan should own, and I loved whenever he'd pull the list out to share with members. My Disney book collection dwarfs in size to his, but I feel like I'm a more learned Disney fan because of his list. It's not enough for me to just own the movies and their studio-produced documentaries, but better to have a library of official and unofficial tomes that go into the making of these films.
2099net was so frickin' generous, I sometimes wish I still kept in contact with him to thank him for that. I remember when I was first getting into "Doctor Who," he sent me, unsolicited, the complete first series (2005) on DVD to help me get acquainted with the series. And when he found out that the US didn't get a DVD release of the 1996 TV Movie, he sent me a box set of the Eighth Doctor's audio stories on CD so I'd have access to some of that Doctor's adventures. He's always been very kind like that, and I loved his insight on both Disney, Doctor Who, and various pop culture.
Pluto Region 1 was the BEST. She was always so invested in learning everything she could about Disney, about Disney's DVDs, and about everyone's love for the films. During one of my forum hiatuses, I remember she sent me a very touching PM that said she understood why I was taking a break, but would be so happy if/when I'd return. I know she and her family lived close to Disneyland, it was always fun getting the West Coast perspective of the parks as most theme park discussion here usually centered on Walt Disney World.
UD Secret Santa was always one of my favorite things to do here, and I'm always glad that we managed to have one last hurrah with it in 2011 after Sitepocalypse. Writing the Wish List letter grew to be a challenge every year as I knew I'd have to out-do the previous year's letter in both quality and quantity, whilst still giving my Secret Santa a wide range of options for gift possibilities. I've had plenty of Secret Santas over the years (2005: Jessica, 2006: pinkrenata, 2007: The Little Merman, 2008: AWallaceUNC, 2009: PixarFan2006, 2010: PeterPanfan, 2011: JiminyCrick91), and gifted to plenty of Secret Cindy Lou Whos (2005: Zoltack, 2006: The Little Merman, 2007: DaveWadding, 2008: Dottie, 2009: Just Myself, 2010: CJ, 2011: Mooky). I'm still trading Christmas gifts with
AWallaceUNC, haha, but that's what happens when you become good friends in real life.
There were two UD chat rooms. The first one was actually hosted on the UD server (accessible by replacing "forum" with "chat"), but eventually it got removed twice after some forum drama. If I remember correctly, the chat was first "hidden" in the sense that a link was no longer provided, but if you knew to type /chat, you could find it that way. Then, Luke decided to get rid of it entirely to conserve bandwidth. One of UD's earliest bans was a result of misuse of the chat room, as a member named
Tangela would often use it as a place to partake in his own private dramatics - some of which involved different identities that ranged from a high school kid to a repentant porn actor if I remember correctly.
The second UD chat room was not really set up by Luke, but had his blessing in the sense of being designated as the official chat room on a forum thread. This was hosted by a third-party site (I forget which), and was at its most active between 2007 to 2009. I remember a lot of late-night 2008 chats because it was an election year. But it was also the birth of
UD After Dark, which usually occurred post-midnight and involved whoever was in the chat talking about NSFW and often-verboten-on-the-forum topics.
The UD Forum Awards were started by
Jack, one of the most prominent members in the forum's early years. After his self-imposed exile from the internet (he came back in 2005 and 2009 to talk about it, actually),
AWallaceUNC took over the Awards. But eventually, law school and work made it time-prohibitive for him to continue, and so I took the reins for one year. And I could see why he decided to pass the baton, as the Awards does take a lot of planning and a lot of organization. So, the following year, I handed it to
SpringHeelJack, and I think it concluded with him? By this point, I was no longer on the forums anyway so if someone could fill in here, it'd be great. Writing skits for the forums were a lot of fun, but very time-consuming.
Lazario was an interesting case. He was very set in his ways in the sense that his opinion was unbreakable, and he made sure others knew it. Though I don't always agree with what he'd say, I admired the sheer passion that he put into the why-fors of what he liked and didn't like. His fights with
Goliath were legendary in their scope and scale, often resulting in multiple warnings from
CJ (I miss her!) and even Luke stepping in now and again. Oddly,
Goliath was very chill in the UD chat. I always had fun conversing with him in the chat room.
I met
DisneyFreak5282 at World of Disney back in... 2015? We went to Magic Kingdom one night. They were shooting a commercial at the Dumbo ride so we got in line for it just to see what it was about. We were supposed to meet up again during another trip of his, but scheduling was not in our favor, unfortunately. By my count, he was the 20th person I met from the forums. Overall, I've met 27 people from here in real life, with varying degrees of frequency in my life.
Prudence was a sweetheart, but there was a period of time that I confused her with
Margos. One of them was
Mason_Ireton's girlfriend, but I don't remember which. I met up briefly with Mason and
blackcauldron85 during a WDW trip in 2008. And
blackcauldron85 and I hung out with
goofystitch in 2007 at what we dubbed the First Official UD Union. It was a Union since it was the first, and would justify any future meet-up as a UD Reunion.
goofystitch now writes for LaughingPlace.com and I usually see him at D23 Expo as a result.
Technically, the First Official UD Union for me occurred in childhood, as my siblings are also UD members. But in terms of meeting someone that I first knew on the forums, that was during my 2005 college program when I met up with forum member
Prince Phillip. I worked Magic Kingdom, while he worked at what was then still called Disney-MGM Studios. We managed to schedule an afternoon together to hang out; I always remember that he had the
bluest freakin' eyes I'd ever seen in my life. Literally, if you've seen the bluer-than-blue eyes of the Fremen in
Dune, it was like that. Later on, he visited me at my work place (the Nut Wagon in Adventureland), but I never got to visit him at his (Tower of Terror), but because his program was shorter than mine (he left before the summer), we never did get a chance to schedule another hang out. Unfortunately, we've since lost touch although I still keep his number in my cell phone as "Alex (Prince Phillip)" in the off chance I might need it.
One UD member I've always wanted to meet was
disneyfella. We traded e-mails a lot, which graduated to social media, but he deactivated his Facebook a couple years back, and barely uses his instagram these days, so I don't hear from him very often now. He actually hosted a presentation about
Swiss Family Robinson at D23 Expo last year, but I was stuck in another presentation that overran its time, so I couldn't meet up with him and never ran into him on the show floor. If this pandemic ends before D23 Expo 2021, hopefully we'll meet at that one.
I looked up
Disney Dossiers and found that although wikipedia deleted the UltimateDisney.com page,
it's still intact on the Disney Wikia.
Jules created it on Wikipedia originally, and would gradually expand it here and there. I contributed sections of the page as well (most notably the staff list), so I was sad to see it go from Wiki. Thank goodness for Fandom wikis.
When the site expanded to cover non-Disney material, I was ecstatic. UD reviews were often the most thorough online, especially compared to other DVD reviewing web sites. So I loved that this level of quality and treatment was going to expand to non-Disney material. And since I was on the reviewing team for a couple years, I liked that it meant I could cover non-Disney discs, too. I stopped reviewing in 2007 because of both school (taking on more classes) and technology (my laptop was stolen so I couldn't make screen caps anymore, and by the time I got a new laptop in 2009, I was not interested in reviewing again), but came back for one review in 2010.
I was on a Skype call with
TonyWDA last night! He's doing well. Will let him know y'all were thinking of him. He's one of my favorite people to chat with on the phone, our conversations usually last an hour or two when we get the chance to talk. He did delete his YouTube channel, at least the one he posted here on UD.
I still keep in contact with
Pap64 and
Disneykid as well, and Pap resumed work at Disney Springs a couple weeks ago (I started back at Animal Kingdom last week myself), as Walt Disney World is in phased re-openings.
zackisthewalrus left WDW a couple years back, but is doing well, too. Now that it's Criterion @ Barnes season, I'm sure there will be revitalized chatter in a group chat I have with the three of them.
The "Are You Freaking Kidding Me?" member was
Jasmine1022, the real-life best friend of
Disney Duster. I've not met her in real life, but I have hung out with Duster (with
Super Aurora and
Prince Phillip Fan) in the parks during two of his trips.
When Luke and pinkrenata visited Florida last October,
reyquila's name came up in conversation. Luke was looking over my movie collection and said how it reminded him of reyquila. (Probably because I have 2800 titles in my collection, not all of them are Disney, though.) This led to AWallaceUNC mentioning that whenever he sees a new Disney Blu-Ray at a store, a little voice in the back of his head will just parrot over and over "It's Disney, I'm buying!" almost as reverse psychology that compels him to not buy it unless he actually needs it. (Usually, he'll text me about the Blu-Ray first for my input on whether or not to get it anyway.) Otherwise, I don't really think much about him.
The nicknames I came up with were usually spur-of-the-moment creative choices or laziness. Regarding "Jules," as posited here, it did have its roots in "Hey Jude." Paul McCartney originally wrote the song as "Hey Jules," with Jules being the nickname for Julian Lennon. But ultimately, he went with "Hey Jude." Since Julian was the only Julian I knew, I figured "Jules" would be an appropriate nickname. I've done a variety of nicknames since, mostly for members who aren't as prominent on here, but regarding those in conversation in this thread,
blackcauldron85 will always be Ames to me, and
DisneyFreak5282 is forever Cubby.
I have had
dvdjunkie blocked on my social media ever since 2012, when he lied about why I left the UD forums, and aside from one, short spat with him again on this forum in 2013, we have not had any contact since. I'd like to keep it that way.
One final note of UD memories, over the past 16 years, I changed how I'd sign off on my posts. Initially, it always ended with Escapay, as I did not reveal my real name to anyone here. When I started reviewing, I knew I wanted my real name on the byline (for resume purposes), so I'd start signing off with Albert. There was a brief period of time where, as part of a joke that kept going for some reason, I signed off as "Zulu, King of the Dwarf People." Then, during one of the UD Secret Santas,
The Little Merman christened me as "Scaps," which I began using frequently. Eventually, I'd have variations of that (like Scapsta Claus for Christmas season). Eventually, I went back to Albert, and then laziness made me just sign as albert without capitalization. These days, I sign off as Alby, partially because of my blog (Alby Seeing You).
Escapay/Albert/Scaps/Scapsta Claus/albert/Alby
Back then I was in high school, and I remember going to my school's computer lab during the lunchbreak to do the same but using the faces of about six local TV personalities and showing it to my friends. It was quite a hit, lol. 
It may not be 2006 anymore, but that doesn't mean we can't inject the same level of fun back into these boards if we all pull the same rope! Also, what Amy said! 
Well, he used to call me Jules, and I liked it! So, when I decided to change my username I opted for Escapay's name. Though, truth be told, Jules is not strictly speaking a nickname, right? Isn't it after all the official short form of Julian? Like Tim is to Timothy and Jim is to James?
So it's sort of like the site has become a part of my life. I'm glad it didn't close all those years ago. It's just a shame forums in general are becoming a thing of the past. 
I've been through like three different Kingdom Hearts forums that closed after having such strong communities to begin with.
Still, the Maltese Lira is obsolete as of 2008 so perhaps the conversion is not accurate ... I dunno) on new titles was out of the question. So, in 1999 my PlayStation was sent in to be modded and from then on my older brother would visit certain shops and "order" the game titles we wanted, which would then come burned onto a regular CD-R with badly photocopied cover art - at a fraction of the cost. This was very common in my country at the time. Not sure how widespread it was in the rest of Europe and the USA.
I remember it being deleted from Wikipedia despite my efforts to keep resurrecting it (I must have seemed like such a pest to the Wikipedia mods!) but had no idea it survives on a different Wiki! Thank you so much for providing that link.