Have you heard of this story? A married couple is going through some old family pictures, when he sees his dad pushing him in a stroller in the background of her family picture taken at Walt Disney World. They didn’t know each other then (he lived in Canada and she in Florida) but fate or destiny drew them together.
I wonder how many other times since Disneyland opened in 1955 that this has happened? Any math wiz’s want to take a shot at the odds?
Video with the picture from WXII TV!
I find this story fascinating. I’m no stats wiz, so I can’t do the math on this one, but my guess is that the odds are actually greater than they seem at first glance. Nearly every time I’m at WDW I run into someone I know – old college friend, ex-coworker, former neighbor, etc. It only makes sense that over time some of many thousands of strangers you encounter at WDW would eventually make it into your life somehow.
I’ve had very similar experiences running into friends and family from out of state just randomly in the park. It happened more at Disneyland because I was there more frequently, and because pretty much everyone has to visit Disneyland at some point in their lives.
That’s like something out of Lost right there!
What are the odds that two kids who randomly appear in the same Walt Disney World photo would get married years later? http://bit.ly/cA2k6Y
Running into someone you know is no big deal. What is amazing is that not only did they not know each other, but the other was caught in the photo. This happened to me once as well. My family went to Disney one year and there was a kid that was in my class (many years later) that was in one of the photos. Just think of all the people you meet that look so familiar but you have never actually been introduced…
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I have a good one too. Many years ago an employee of my husbands invited us to his wedding. We couldn’t make it because we would be on vacation. He did not tell the employee where he was going. We headed to Disney and we were there for the 4 th of July. Disney had to stop people from entering the park because it was over 1 Million people and very over crowded. And who does my husband run into while we are waiting in line for the Jungle Cruise? The employee who’s wedding we couldn’t attend the night before. Disney World is a few miles away from home. It’s in Florida and we’re all from Illinois. Now there’s some odds for you. 1 in a Million!!
I remember the NBC sitcom “Mad About You” doing an episode with this same theme in which the couple (Helen Hunt/Paul Reiser) is to supposed to have crossed paths as children at the Museum of Natural History.
This is such a cool story. I’ve run into people I knew there before,but this is almost unbelievable.
i was in Paris (near the Moulin Rouge) the week before new years (and I’m from Florida) when I ran into a good friend of mine who (was living in Spain at the time). She had gotten a space on a tour to Paris due to someone’s cancellation at the last minute. Had we taken even 5 more minutes to look at the last store window, or lingered a couple more minutes at dinner, we would have missed eachother.
What are the odds of running into a friend when you are out of the country? I love stories like this.
Look at it this way. Say there are 100 childhood pics of you in amusement parks and public places, and each one has 10 people in the background. That’s 1000 strangers in your photo album. If there are 100 million potential mates for you in the US, that means the chances are 1 in 100,000 [that is, 1 – (.99999999)^1000] that the person you marry will be in your photo album. So it might happen to hundreds of couples at any given moment.
Right — if we don’t care who the lucky pair is, it’s a dead certainty to have happened to sometwo (hey — I invented a word!). The really unlikely part was *discovering* the coincidence. Who ever looks at photo albums?
I agree with Scott… well, I agree that is isn’t as big of a deal. The world can definitely be smaller. Two coworkers of mine (based in Los Angeles) bumped into each other in Spain. Same things happens at Disney parks.
But THIS story, when people discover that even though they lived far apart, they’ve met before… THAT is a bigger deal.
ADORABLE. Married couple discovers they were both at Disney World at the same time as toddlers: http://is.gd/cIEui
zomg. I want this short to turn into a (wicked violent) Mortal Kombat reboot SO. HARD. http://is.gd/cIEui
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My dad literally bumped into a neighbor from his small town in Arizona while walking down the sidewalk in Tokyo, and I always see someone I know at Disneyland, but this story has them all beat.
I dunno, it doesn’t seem that unlikely. It’s a small world, after all
This woman I was dating and I were active in a high school youth group albeit we lived a good 1200 miles apart. Every winter there is a convention bringing together high school kids from across the continent — and we were both in attendance. We never met each other at that time but happened to have some friends in common. But I had a great time nonetheless. I mean, I was in the cheesy convention video that they produced! (This was the late ’80s.)
Fast forward about seven years: we’re both out of college and dating each other. As we’re departing to go out to dinner, somehow the topic of that convention comes up. And she mentions that she has that cheesy convention video because she’s in it.
Weird.
So we cancel our dinner plans — and go back to her apartment to unearth this video. Sure enough, we’re BOTH in it — pretty prominently at that — and in consecutive scenes. I had seen this video many times as had she — but we didn’t know each other.
We got married about three years after that. This October will be our 12th wedding anniversary.
I mean, it’s not a stroller picture at Disney World, but still…
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A big thanks to @boingboing & @jezebel for my 2nd biggest day at The Disney Blog. They linked to Disney Kismet story http://bit.ly/cA2k6Y
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I’ve got a similar (but not quite as cool story) as this one. In 1995 I worked at WDW as a cast member, representing Mexico as this is where I’m from. I did a lot of jobs there but one of my faves was crowd control, where I would stand in front of the Mexican pyramid and assist guests. Often they would have their photo taken with me too.
Fast forward a few years, when I’m now living in the UK after getting married. One of my first jobs was working in a travel agency, and one day a customer just ‘felt’ that he’d seen me somewhere before. I mentioned I hadn’t lived in the area for long and I didn’t recognize him, so couldn’t figure it out.
A few months later he came back into the shop to tell me he’d worked out the mystery – I was in his photos from a holiday to WDW! I was posing with his little girl in front of the Mexican pyramid, as I used to do.
Again, I think the real coincidence here is that we found the photo, not necessarily the bumping into each other, as I must have met thousands of people in the time I worked there. Weird huh?
The Disney Blog: "Disney World Destiny for Married Couple" http://bit.ly/aXgJcY
It’s not that uncommon. The demographics don’t vary much for people that go to Disney Land.
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This kind of thing is to be expected.
It’s a Small World.
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It’s not impossible, just very improbable.
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