subject: From The Seat Of A Stroller [print this page] You've come a long way, baby, as the old ad tagline said. During every era in history, parents have had to transport their babies and toddlers around the place . Let's look at the history of the Orlando region of Florida, the site of the Walt Disney World Resort, from the perspective of baby strollers and their predecessors.
At first, when this part of Florida was occasionally visited by the Seminoles, there was no stroller rentals available: there were no strollers! However, the Seminoles passed through the area, visiting the lakes for the good fishing but not actually establishing a significant settlement in the area. And small people who nowadays would be riding in strollers probably looked out at the reflection of the sunlight from the surface of the lakes from slings and backpacks.
The first European settlers who explored the area wouldn't have bothered with stroller rentals or the equivalent of their day: they were mostly those of the Ponce de Leon type: military Spanish conquistador types. Later on, civilian settlers, men and women, came with their families. These children wouldn't have ridden in strollers, either. Instead, they tended to be carried, just like the Seminole babies and toddlers. Given the methods of childcare of those early days, they were probably well wrapped up, which would have kept away the mosquitoes, but would probably have made the young children fretful in the heat. Small children looked out from the arms of a caregiver - mother, grandmother, sister, aunt - as ranches and plantations were established, or else the children watched from the cradle - which would have been a home-made job rather than the pioneer day of a rental crib.
The ranches went up and the news got around the United States that this part of Florida had a balmy climate that provided a winter refuge. The dawn of the Industrial Age brought the trains and better roads, and it also brought the tourists. It was during this period that the way we transport our children changed forever. It was like inventing the wheel all over again: children started to ride in pushable and pullable wheeled carriages. This wasn't the actual start of stroller rentals. The tourists who came with small children came with their own paraphernalia for caring for children with them, which would have included a professional nanny and would probably have also included the newfangled perambulator or pram.
The first form of wheeled baby transport was invented by an English garden designer in the 1700s. These original designs were designed to be trundled around parks and gardens, and the inventor had the idea that they could be pulled by a goat or pony - if this idea had lasted, it would have made stroller rentals very different indeed! It wasn't until the 1800s that perambulators were made in the USA.
Looking for one of these prams today when looking for rental strollers would be pointless. These old-fashioned perambulators or buggies are now highly valuable antiques, now that they've survived over 100 years of carrying small children about the place. And most modern parents wouldn't want an old-style pram anyway. These very first "strollers" were large and, by today's standards, rather cumbersome. They tended to have a large hood, like the best of today's strollers, but that was all they had in common with modern strollers. The old prams were designed so that the view that the child riding in the pram had as their parents (and nanny) took refuge from the winter in this part of Florida was the bonneted face of the nanny or their mother - and, now and again, their father.
The view of the parent or nanny pushing the pram or stroller would have been the typical view for many more years to come. During this time, the town of Orlando grew up and a certain cartoonist made huge strides in animation. Characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck - and later Snow White - began to delight audiences old and young as they cavorted and sang their way across the silver screen. And the idea that would change the face of tourism in Florida was dreamed of: the building of the theme parks, one of which was the Walt Disney World Resort.
In the 1960s, by the time air travel was becoming more popular and bringing many more tourists into this part of the world, the view for those riding in strollers changed. People found taking big cumbersome prams in planes was a real hassle - one of the reasons why a lot of people prefer to rent strollers on vacation these days -. After hearing his daughter complain about these hassles, the aeronautical engineer Owen Mclaren designed something more lightweight and foldable that was more convenient for travellers. Mclaren invented the stroller as we know it today, more or less. Now the view from the seat of a stroller changed so the small passenger could see the road ahead of him or her, and sit upright while doing so.
After the development of the stroller as we know it, the Walt Disney World Resort sprang up, really putting Orlando on the map. From the seat of forward-facing stroller, children could be delighted as their favourite Disney characters waved and smiled at them inside the gates of "The Happiest Place On Earth".
But this wasn't the end of the story for strollers and more changes were to come, as any parent today can see. More accessories and safety features have been added to baby strollers. Brakes and restraint systems came along fairly smartly, as the benefits of these were obvious. The big hoods came back, but more and more changes were made to make the strollers tougher, easier to handle and easy to jog with. And - a must for parents with more than one child needing the stroller - double strollers were invented.
