Figment Baby Bricker Meets Figment: Disney World Bucket List Goal 17 Years in the Making

It’s hard to believe that Baby Bricker was born two years ago. It feels like only yesterday that we were at the hospital welcoming her to the world. We just celebrated her second birthday back in the Midwest, with a gathering of our families from back home.

It’s still hard to wrap our heads around the reality that she isn’t really a baby anymore; she’s a very active toddler who walks and talks and has a big personality all her own. We haven’t shared a whole lot of family updates this year, other than passing references and scattered photos. Part of that is continuing to find our footing with our family’s privacy and what we’re comfortable sharing. (To answer the oddly angry emails I somehow still receive: Megatron is a moniker. Sadly, it is not her legal name…for now?!)

We are hoping to share more, though, as we have an upcoming family Christmas trip to Walt Disney World and other travels ahead. At minimum, we’ll have reviews of character meals and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, but I’d like to do a fully-fledged trip report. In the meantime, we wanted to share Megatron’s first time meeting Figment. It was both a full-circle moment for us and is something we first ‘teased’ way back in our pregnancy announcement in May 2023. After a comedy of errors over the course of multiple trips to Walt Disney World, it finally happened!

As long time readers no doubt know, Figment is my favorite Disney character and the original Journey into Imagination is my favorite attraction. Not just at Walt Disney World–anywhere, ever. I’d trade all future visits to Tokyo DisneySea for a chance to experience the original EPCOT Center dark ride with Sarah and Megatron just once.

While the current attraction is better than nothing, the original Journey into Imagination of my childhood in the 1980s through mid-1990s featuring Figment and Dreamfinder was something special. An exemplar of Imagineering on par with Haunted Mansion that has enduring popularity, despite being extinct for decades, because it showcased the pinnacle of Disney and humanity.

Figment embodied the best things about childhood curiosity. The character resonated deeply with adults who saw a little bit of their kids in Figment, and kids who saw a little of themselves in the character. He was whimsical and inquisitive, funny and endearing.

It was a similar story with Dreamfinder; the warm, jolly and eminently huggable figure who was one part professor, one part parental figure, and one part Santa Claus. Journey into Imagination’s success is simple: the ride showed us all the best of ourselves.

My fondness for Figment is well-documented on this blog. You’re probably already aware of that because every time there’s even the most inconsequential development on a ride reimagining, such as CEO Bob Iger mentioning the ‘future of Figment’ during the shareholder’s meeting, DTB is all over it.

We’ve been imploring Walt Disney World to reimagine Journey Into Imagination for years. Selfishly, I want our daughter to be able to ride a reimagined version of the ride while she’s still the ideal age; but I also want everyone who didn’t experience the original to see how this character can be so special.

This original EPCOT Center attraction and these characters were my one little spark into Disney fandom. My first foray into the Disney fan community was the now-defunct FigmentsImagination.com (available here via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine).

I found this website back in the late 1990s, after being disappointed to learn that the original ride closed. It was a way to keep the memory alive of the original characters and attraction that I loved, holding out hope they’d return.

Fast-forward about a decade to when Sarah and I returned from our first trip together to Walt Disney World, and my fondness for Figment was rekindled. I began scouring eBay for all things Figment and found an embarrassment of riches.

Not just heirlooms from the 1980s, but also a lot of overstock merchandise that was released to commemorate Figment’s return for the 2002 (current) incarnation of the attraction. I scooped up everything I could find.

My obsession with Walt Disney World became our obsession. Sarah had gone before as a kid, but she wasn’t hanging out on message boards in her school’s computer lab, poring over EPCOT Center ride rumors. I guess she was “cool” or something. Not anymore. Now we were both Disney geeks.

We returned to Walt Disney World the next year as true geeks, wearing our Figment shirts to meet the character known as Figzilla. The photo above is from August 19, 2007. It’s one of a series where I, a college dude, got quite excited to meet his childhood hero, a costumed dragon, in front of his girlfriend.

This is the trip that really put Walt Disney World over the top for us. Our first trip was fun, but this was magical.

Upon returning home, we were in even deeper when it came to Walt Disney World. My eBay collecting continued, and I eventually found a Figment baby costume in late 2008. I suggested to Sarah that it would be fun to save this for when we have kids (in hindsight, a pretty bold suggestion given that we were only newly-engaged!), to recreate the above photo. She was in complete agreement.

We expected to hold onto the costume for a few years, but as explained in our pregnancy announcement, it ended up being well over a decade. Much of the rest of my Figment collection was downsized over that time. The Figment costume was almost a casualty of that, but always granted a reprieve.

I honestly don’t even know why we held onto it for so long, even after it seemed clear we wouldn’t need it. Maybe we knew in our heart of hearts that there was more of our story to be written? Maybe it was fate, Figment-style? I wish there were a neat bow on that part of the story, but there isn’t; it just happened.

Taking a step back, this whole story is nevertheless kind of crazy. We meet this character, my childhood comes rushing back to me, and this becomes a ‘core memories’ trip that gets us hooked on Walt Disney World. We come home and buy a Figment baby costume.

We hold onto the costume for a baby who doesn’t exist and a Figment meet & greet that doesn’t exist for 17 years. Then against all odds, the baby is born and the Figment meet & greet returns with the span of one month in 2023. Perhaps “Figment Fate” is a real thing?!

I’m even more inclined to believe Figment Fate is a real thing because we tried to have Megatron meet Figment on many visits to EPCOT over several months and trips last year before the Figment costume would fit her. None were successful.

This was documented at length in our Trip Report: What Went Wrong During Baby Bricker’s First Visit to Walt Disney World. Suffice to say, babies are incredibly sleepy and temperamental creatures. Between that and the limited set schedules for Figment, there just wasn’t enough margin for error, and we failed to meet Figment.

That ended up being fine by us. It was really important to us that she was awake for her first encounter with Figment, as all of the meet & greets she had done up until that point while awake have been special and fun, whereas the ones she’s done while asleep have not. Our only concern back then (this was while she was still a baby) is that she’d subsequently enter a phase when she’d be scared of characters and our window would close (temporarily). That’s already happened with some rides.

Fortunately for us, character meet & greets are something that have only gotten better as she’s gotten older. At least, the fur characters.

She’s very familiar with many of them thanks to regular exposure via stuffed animals, books, Town Square at Disneyland and rides on “it’s a small world.” I’m not even kidding about that last one. Woody from Toy Story has become one of her favorite characters, and in trying to ‘trace’ this, we realized she saw him on “it’s a small world” and she loves everything about that ride.

Still, there’s inconsistency; not all fur characters are equally beloved–or beloved at all. Figment is tall, is not soft, doesn’t have a meet & greet at Disneyland, isn’t in “it’s a small world” for some dumb reason, and his Little Golden Book has fallen out of favor. Her only regular exposure to Figment is via the Big Fig in our bedroom, who is the keeper of pacifiers.

While there was still nervousness about her reaction to Figment, “failing” at previous attempts to meet him turned out to be another instance of Figment Fate. She finally fit into the costume. She could also walk up to characters on her own (or in the case of Mickey & Friends, run up and hug them).

We knew our window for this was limited, as there are only a few months of the year when the weather is appropriate for such a costume. So on one blustery day, we headed to EPCOT first thing in the morning with the Figment costume in hand, and got her dressed up with plenty of time to spare before his first meet & greet set started.

Somehow, between the time she got dressed up and the short walk to the Imagination pavilion, she fell asleep again! (I swear she doesn’t sleep an abnormal amount, all of this was just luck coupled with being in a cozy costume that’s conducive to naps.) Undeterred, we opted to head up to the DVC ImaginAtrium to wait out the nap. We’re no strangers to loitering in that lounge, so this was nothing. 

Once naptime was over, it was finally Figment time.

I’m so glad we waited (or rather, Figment Fate intervened so many times), as we lucked into one of the best meet & greet experiences ever. We arrived right as the set was winding down, and the Cast Members ensured we were the last guests to meet Figment. Other guests were equally accommodating. I guess it’s not every day people see a cute toddler cosplaying as her parents’ favorite Disney character!

We waited a bit longer this way and were happy there was a line, as it gave Megatron more time to get acclimated while watching Figment meet other guests. Once it was her turn, she was fully warmed up to Figment, and excited to walk up to him for the first time. Words don’t really do this justice and I’ve already written a lot of them, so here are a ton of photos that tell the story:

It was worth the wait. Whether you start the clock from the time we started trying to meet Figment or when we found out we were pregnant or even ~17 years ago when we first had the idea to plan ahead for this moment. There are so many things in life you hype up in your head that disappoint under the weight of the wait, expectations, etc.

Not this. Our daughter meeting Figment for the first time was everything we hoped it would be and more. We’ve had several full-circle moments in two years (time flies!) of visiting the Disney Parks with our daughter. Moments that have felt like flashbacks or déjà vu or nostalgia trips.

It certainly helped that Megatron was enthusiastic about meeting Figment. About halfway through our wait in line, she started waving at him almost non-stop and was grinning ear to ear by the time it was our turn. She proceeded to ‘phone home’ with him, gave him a nose boop, and clearly recognized the character from home. She had a lot of time with him, but she still wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Figment when it was all over–always the sign of a successful character encounter.

So we didn’t say goodbye. We played around in the ImageWorks post show and headed outside to marvel at the jumping water fountains. She’s already enamored with these, unsurprisingly as they have a timeless lightning-in-a-bottle simplicity to them and continue to stir the imagination to this day. I only wish the same could be said for ImageWorks–I’d trade that lounge in an instant to get back the Rainbow Corridor and original ImageWorks for all guests to enjoy.

All in all, it was a spectacular afternoon with Figment and we ended up spending more time around the Imagination than we have in years. It was the bulk of our day at EPCOT, in fact, which was perfectly fine by us!

Few things warm our hearts like seeing Megatron interact with characters. And no area of Walt Disney World is to home to as much nostalgia for us as Journey into Imagination. Even after all these years, Figment still stirs up our emotions. Taking our daughter to meet the character that has been so formative in our fandom was powerful–nothing short of magical.

No matter how cynical I might be about anything else related to Walt Disney World, that melts away when it comes to Figment and Journey into Imagination. I’m instantly 8 years old again, seeing the character for the first time when we both shared similar senses of childlike wonder and innocence. I cannot explain what it is–as it defies logic or objective reasoning.

Figment may “only” be a costumed character, but there was something special about this. I don’t know how to fully articulate it. But the experience stirred up so many memories, especially given the character’s childlike curiosity and wonder coupled with our daughter displaying those same attributes.

Cheesy as it might sound, it was like a ripple through time, seeing our younger selves in her while simultaneously enjoying this thing we’ve loved for decades…all anew.

It seems like that’s a big part of parenthood, seeing the world through the eyes of your child–but also seeing them through your own eyes, and watching that imagination and curiosity shape them into the person they’ll become. It is constantly surreal, in the best way possible.

Walt Disney World is like a heightened version of that all the time, and for everyone. This might sound similarly schmaltzy, except Walt Disney himself recognized this 70 years ago in his 1955 dedication speech for Disneyland, calling it a place where age relives fond memories of the past, and Fantasyland as a timeless world of imagination where make believe is reborn for the young and the young at heart.

Visionary as he was, Walt probably couldn’t have known just how big of a role nostalgia would play in his parks some seven decades later. How what he created would become so central to the lives of so many. The source of so many moments and memories, and sentimental storylines that ripple through the decades and across generations of families. It’s really remarkable when you step back; and it’s also easy to see why fans are so passionate about every little change and thing in the parks. Those little things are the stories of our lives.

This is one of those “if you know, you know” things that we discussed back in our first Baby Bricker Walt Disney World Trip Report and again in Little Things We Love About Walt Disney World. And I’m betting that most of you know exactly what I mean here. Walt Disney World is a truly magical place, with excellent attractions, incredible restaurants, exemplary Cast Members, and so much more. All of that is great, and it’s the hook that gets you there in the first place.

It’s these indelible experiences we have with family and friends, longing for those nostalgic trips down memory lane, and these little things around which so many amazing memories have inexplicably formed that keep so many of us coming back to Walt Disney World year after year, decade after decade. We’ve had so many of those with Figment since the 1980s, but it’s safe to say this is a new #1 top memory at Journey into Imagination. Kind of amusing that it happened with the subpar version of the attraction that we so badly want to see reimagined!

Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!

YOUR THOUGHTS

Thoughts on Baby Toddler Bricker’s first time meeting Figment? Anything else you’re interested in reading about with regard to Megatron, small children or young families in the parks, etc? Interested in a family Christmas at Walt Disney World trip report? Anecdotes of your own about first visits to the Disney parks? Any other questions? Hearing your feedback is always appreciated, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!