By the co-author of The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit 2020, the best-reviewed Disney World guidebook series ever.

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Happy Birthday to yourfirstvisit.net!!!



By Dave Shute

Sometime in the past few months this site turned two years old. Soon I expect to be unfolding a stroller and taking it off the bus and into the Magic Kingdom!

You’d think I’d know how old the site is.  But I am easily confused.  One early test version began in late January 2008 (posted from the Polynesian).  I “went public” to this website in late March 2008.  And in April 2008 I started tracking data.  So I declare a recent, somewhat vague birthday!

Your response, dear reader, has been overwhelming.  More than 120,000 of you have visited…twice as many in the last six months as in the six months prior, and twice as many then as the six months before that, etc…

You have come from more than 12,000 cities in more than 150 countries. Almost 10,000 of you have viewed, on a single visit, 20 pages or more…more than 3,000 of you have been to the site 9 times or more…and three of you (at most one being my mom) have come to the site more than a hundred times!

And yet despite that–I still keep the first time family visitor, unsure if they will ever return, and not really wanting to read 20 pages, at the forefront of my thinking and writing.  My hope is that for many of them, just following the instructions on the home page will be all that they need!

My special thanks to all those who have used the comment form on the site, all of those who have emailed me at davidhobartyfv@gmail.com, and all of those who have provided kind words–a few of which you can see on the lower left.

Moreover, while I’ve had visitors find their way to me from links from almost a thousand urls, I especially wanted to thank the following websites (in alphabetical order) for kind words, traffic, or both !

answers.yahoo.com
chipandco.com
coronado_springs.tripod.com
dapsmagic.com
disboards.com
ehow.com
everythingwdw.blogspot.com
forums.wdwmagic.com
militarydisneytips.com
mouseplanet.com
orlandoflorida.net
passporterboards.com
stumbleupon.com
tourguidemike.com
TouringPlans.com
travelwithkids.about.com
viajandoparaorlando.com
wdwdailynews.com

Thanks to all of you…but especially to you!!

Dave

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1 comment

1 Steve { 04.20.10 at 7:13 am }

Dave,

Congratulations! It’s evident how much work you put into your site. I know what it takes, my site is going on two years also. I’ve enjoyed looking through yours, great job!

Steve

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