If the old days you are thinking of are the late 1990s, you were probably using an "APS" camera. This is where the "APS-C" sensor size common in DSLRs today came from, but actually had three modes. The film frame size was 30.2 × 16.7 mm. When the full frame was used, this was called "APS-H" (with the "H" referring to HDTV ­— note the 16:9 aspect ratio). You could also select "C" mode (for "Classic), with an 3:2 aspect ratio the same shape as but smaller than 35mm film frames.

Or, you could pick "P" for panoramic, giving a wide 3:1 frame — these were 30.2mm wide, but just 9.5mm high.

But the thing is, although the viewfinder was masked, in every case, the camera recorded the whole "APS-H" frame and along with magnetically-coded information telling the film processor to crop as appropriate. The "panoramic" images are just the middle of the frame with the tops and bottoms cut off.

There were also "regular" 35mm film cameras which used the same basic concept — the panorama isn't really super wide, and the camera just masks out the top and bottom of the frame so the relative width is greater. These include the Kodak Cameo afm, Olympus mju Zoom, and Fujifilm Discovery 312 Zoom — I think all of these predate APS, but not by much. As Michael Clark notes, Fujifilm (in cooperation with Hasselblad) also made the much more expensive TX-1 and TX-2, which actually do expose wider panoramic frames — but those were quite expensive and command quite a premium even in the used market now. (And, they're somewhat newer, with the TX-1 released in 1998 and the TX-2 update in 2003.)

In any case, you can easily do the same "crop out the middle" thing with any image from a digital camera today. If you're using a large-sensor DSLR, you'll even have more imaging area to play with than the APS film frame. But even with an "APS-C" DSLR — or for that matter, a small-sensor compact — you'll probably be fine with the 4×12" print size expected from those film cameras.