Here’s the Story Behind ‘I’m going to Disney World’

I’m going to Disney World! The Super Bowl has become quite the spectacle. There’s the crazy expensive commercials that run throughout the game, the overdone overhyped Super Bowl halftime show, and of course, the actual game.  But one thing has become synonymous with the big game,  and that’s the player on the winning team who gets to utter the most famous words on Super Bowl Sunday:  “I’m going to  Disney World.

Here’s some history behind the icon saying via Deadspin:

Before Super Bowl XXI, Disney agreed to pay two opposing quarterbacks $75,000 dollars each to say they would go to Walt Disney World if they won the Big Game. Phil Simms and John Elway got the same check, but the New York Giant wound up going to Mickey Mouse’s kingdom.

“Phil Simms, you’ve just won the Super Bowl” a 1987 Disney ad read, “what’re you doing next?” You bet your ass he went to Disney World. Shit, for $75K you’d go anywhere too.

Simms was the first NFL player to start the tradition. Later that year, more championship athletes committed to go to the theme park. After leading the Los Angeles Lakers to an NBA championship, Magic Jonson said he was “going to Disneyland.” And in the fall of ‘87, Frank Viola told cameras he was “going to Disney World” after winning a World Series with the Minnesota Twins.

The magical tradition has held up in the NFL pretty much since then.

Check out the first ever ad below:

Even Mahomes was chomping at bit:

FOX’s Terry Bradshaw asked the famous question to Patrick Mahomes as soon as he won last year’s Super Bowl MVP. “[This is] something I wanted to say my whole life,” Mahomes said as orange and red confetti rained down on stage, “I’m going to Disney World!”

It’s definitely a special moment Disney engineered.

If it happened organically, now that would have much cooler.  . .

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