My Toontown Journey 1: Humble Beginnings

a.k.a. How this game practically became my entire life

Feb 08, 2025, 09:00 PM AST

If this site's layout hasn't made it obvious to you, Toontown has played a huge role in my life and has shaped me into who I am today. For those who do not know, Disney's Toontown Online was an MMO that Disney created and launched on June 2nd, 2003 and famously closed down on September 19th, 2013, after having just celebrated its decade anniversary, but it is still thriving today thanks to numerous fan projects and servers, notably Toontown Rewritten and Toontown: Corporate Clash. "But Little Cat," you may ask, "How did you discover this game and how did it change your whole life?" Well, "quiet down small man" (or whatever you identify yourself as) and buckle your seatbelts. We're gonna go through a huge journey back in time in a series of blog posts as I try to explain everything that I could still remember. When you've been in the Toontown community for so long, you'll know quite a lot of history. I have no idea how many posts are gonna be, but I can safely tell you that we're gonna be in for a long haul. So, without further ado, let's crank the "Toontastic Time Turner" into full-gear and let's get started!

My Toontown Journey

Part 1: Humble Beginnings

(2004/5? - 2013)

When I was a little kid, probably around 6 - 7 years old at the time. I sometimes visited the Disney Online website, back when it looked something like this:

The "Disney Online" website, from Sept. 24, 2004 on the Wayback Machine

I have visited the Playhouse Disney, Kids Island and Disney's Blast quite often. But I have always been curious about the "Toontown Online" section for a little bit while now, I couldn't remember the first time I first saw it, it's kinda "always there" for me. I have clicked on it, and it took me to a page a little bit like this:

The Toontown Times main page from back in the day (taken from Toontown Rewritten's Toontown Preservation Project)

Eventually, My dad set me up with a 3 day trial account for me, and then the game started downloading, surprisingly, this is back when the game still uses the classic Flash intro that plays while the game downloads where the origins of the Cogs is revealed (albeit with the updated logo):

5 minutes later, the game finally started up, I created my toon and then I had to wait for another 5 or so minutes for the Toon-torial to download (this also back when the game downloads assets in the background). I completed the Toon-torial, played a trolley game, and then waited yet another 5 minutes for the streets to download. This went on and on, but I was having an absolute blast, destroying the cogs, making friends, completing tasks, stuff like that. And then my 3 day free trial expired, I didn't understand why at the time, but when my dad explained it to me, I got very sad; that was my first exposure to the many free trials of games the internet had to offer. But then I finally figured out how to create my own free trial accounts (I even eventually found out that going to the Virtual Magic Kingdom (VMK) website, I can register for a whopping 7 day free trial accounts instead of the usual 3:

A snippet of the VMK website highlighting the 7 day free trial offer. (From Wayback Machine)

I have no clue how many I've made in total, but I think it was over a dozen throughout the game's lifespan. But time passed by, and Toontown has deprecated free trials in favor of limited free accounts, where you can play all the way up to the Donald's Dock tasks. I created a free account back in 2011, and as for this account's Toon, I created a green cat with a green shirt and yellow shorts, but it still needs a name. Looking for inspiration, I looked at the family's cats we had at the time: Big Cat, and Little Kitty. I've decided to combine the two and name it, "Little Cat". And the rest, as they say, is history!

Little Cat, as it was created way back in 2011 (going by my now private YouTube videos; funny how this outfit is the old standard, even back then. lol)

Somehow, I have grown attached to this little (but not really little) toon, and has somehow stuck with me for a long time, to a point it became my entire online identity, even though I've been going through ventures other than Toontown (I've had other aliases back then but that's a story for another day). Fortunately, that's also when I finally gained membership. My mom used to buy prepaid cards so I can buy 7 month memberships, and whenever the card ran out, we'd go get another card and buy another one with it. At that point, I haven't become fully hyperfixated on Toontown yet; I was playing the game on and off, I would play the game for one month, and then forget about it for several months, but that will soon change.

I was very fortunate to witness the "golden era" of Toontown YouTubers back in 2012 and 2013. People like Smirky Bumberpop (SmirkyLive), Kong (The Random Toon Show) and Bingo (seagreenbingo) among many others were thriving the scene at the time, and I really enjoyed their videos and streams back then. And it encouraged me to stick around in the community and see what happens, and then one event proceeded to change my life forever. One day, on January 26th, 2013, the weekend before my first high school exams, I noticed an event on Google+, it was a building marathon Smirky himself was hosting that would take place later in the day. Interested, I've decided to attend the event. Smirky streamed the event, but unfortunately, it is now lost media. This was due to Smirky using Google+'s "Hangouts On Air" feature to do his streams back then (streaming directly to YouTube was a partner-exclusive feature back then; he got partnered later in the year though), but I remember some details of the event like it was yesterday. Having taken screenshots of the event definitely helped.

The event itself was simple, take down as many Cog Buildings as you can throughout in a couple of hours. And after gathering and meeting up, the marathon began. Not knowing where to go, I've decided to plunge to Donald's Dock and go to a random street. I saw Bingo (the seagreenbingo himself) and Jimmy, they were both about to go into the building, so I decided to jump in, giving birth to The Green Team! Mainly because we're all green toons, lol. Anyways, Bingo, Jimmy and I were having a blast completing buildings, chatting, and having a good ol' time. But then Smirky had to step out for a bit, so he extended the marathon until he got back, which turned out to last for four or so hours! But he told us to keep taking down buildings so we did.

We first got our bronze spinning star during the first hour or so:

Another hour and so later, we've gotten our silver spinning stars:

And finally, in the third hour or so of the grind, it happened, we all got our first ever gold star!

Yes, we earned our gold star just by doing nothing but by taking down buildings on Donald's Dock. I have no clue how that have happened, but it happened! And we didn't stop there, we kept on doing a few more buildings until the event was finally over. We made it to the very top of the Toon Platoon, which technically made us winners of the marathon!

We have even made it to the Top Toons section on the game's website the following day!

This was the first time that any of this has happened to us, and because of this, I've become True Friends with both Bingo and Jimmy, solidifying The Green Team! Oh, and bragging rights (Bingo soon posted his perspective screenshots of us earning our stars and mentioned us out on his first ToonsCollab entry video that summer).

So yeah, that's how I got hyperfixated on Toontown...yeah I was a weird teenager back then, but let's be honest, who doesn't want to be stuck in the game after getting a chance to make friends with a popular YouTuber? I've started attending every Smirky stream until TTO's closure, and I did actually manage to true friend him soon after answering a pop quiz correctly in chat or something. But yeah, that's how I started making myself more involved in the Toontown community and basically made myself stuck there. I became a mod of Smirky's Google+ community (and today, I am a mod of his Twitch channel, funny how things lined up. lol), and made some friends in TTO and communicated to them through both G+ and Skype, it was a wild ride.

Fun fact: I saw a group of people in TTC back in the day talking about popular Toontown people, and I decided to join them as Little Cat, and they immediately recognized me as "popular", this is because of me being friends with him and appearing on almost every single one of his streams. Was this my first touch of fame? I'll probably never know.

Other than that. There is not much left to talk about regarding my involvement during Toontown Online's lifespan. I've made some friends, we as the community celebrated Toontown's 10th anniversary, witnessed the opening of Toonbook, and more.

First day of Toonbook (June 2nd 2013)

I was having a really good summer that year, taking a much needed break from my first year of high school; hanging out with my Toontown friends in and outside the game. Life was good, until the unthinkable happened. On August 20th, 2013, I was in-game when it was announced that the game is closing for maintenance, although weirdly enough, no in-game notifications were sent.

The exact maintenance message displayed at the Toontown website before the "bombshell".

So I went to the tunnel in Chip ‘n Dale's Acorn Acres to a small group of Toons who are "escaping the maintenance" as usual, although I knew dead-on that we were gonna get kicked off anyway, but unusually, the game did not kick us out. Logins were closed, sure, but everybody already online at this point could still play the game, so in a sense, we have successfully "escaped" the maintenance. Throughout all of that, I was also casually hanging out on Toonbook, and then the bombshell hit.

Toontown Online Closing Announcement (August 2013)

Literally everybody was distraught, myself included. Petitions were started and signed, people have cried out to Jesse Schell to save the game, but they all bear no fruit, the game was dead-on set to close, very depressing to myself and many other people who have played the game growing up. I visited Smirky soon after he finished recording his now famous closing video, and somehow managed to appear on its thumbnail.

Smirky's "Toontown is Closing September 19" video, with myself on the thumbnail

I remember logging into Toontown on closure day, it went like this: In the morning, I hopped on for a bit before having to go to school. This has proved important because for some odd reason, some people couldn't log back in hours before closing, but people who have logged on in the morning could. They have said this is the cause of hackers, but that claim has never been confirmed. Anyways, I stood in the Donald's Dreamland playground, watched the fireworks go off one last time, and then realizing that the game haven't kicked us out yet, I went exploring a little. I talked to Bingo one last time via whispers before logging off for the last time himself. The very last thing I did is going into Toontown Central, going and entering the bank, and right when I was about to go back out, the servers had shut down for the last time.

Last known recorded footage of Little Cat moments before closure. He was seen walking toward the bank.

I thought "Well, that was it. The game is finally over, well at least we have the community, right?" Then I opened up Toonbook and the first thing I saw? This:

The reveal announcement of Toontown Rewritten from Toonbook

My exact next thought was: "Oh my god…". I've actually known about private servers a little bit thanks to Club Penguin, but I have always wanted to see what a Toontown equivalent would look like, so seeing this was very exciting. But we would have to wait a bit longer to see Toontown Rewritten in motion. But, what did I do while waiting for TTR to come out? Well unfortunately that's where I'm bringing this journey to a halt, for now. If you think this post isn't remotely at all interesting, I don't blame you. My 15 year old self didn't know the first thing about coding yet, but it'll all change eventually, don't you worry, the good and interesting tidbits about me will come.

In the next chapter of "My Toontown Journey", we will see how Toontown Revolution (ugh) came about, and how I managed to become part of the Toontown House (later renamed to Next) team, both despite not knowing how to code at all. If you're interested in seeing how a script kiddie somehow accomplished some things while doing nothing, Stay Tooned, I guess. See you next time!