Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you, y'all? I got something
Speaker 1: special today. I've brought in a special guest. I guess that. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I could have asked to be on tech Stuff for
Speaker 1: numerous reasons. I could have asked him because he's a
Speaker 1: content creator. He's a podcaster, he's a co founder of
Speaker 1: an incredibly popular UH network of content. He is an
Speaker 1: organizer for massive charity events that work with organizations like
Speaker 1: Extra Life. I mean, the list goes on and on.
Speaker 1: But the reason I asked him here is because he's
Speaker 1: also a lifelong connoisseur of theme parks and a former
Speaker 1: Disney cast member. Welcome to tech Stuff, Mr Jack Pattillo, Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, jeez,
Speaker 1: thank you for all of the list of things I've done.
Speaker 1: I've never felt older than I do right now. How
Speaker 1: about how about I hit you with this, Jack, It
Speaker 1: has been twenty years since you worked for Disney. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, ye two thousand two, Man, it was it
Speaker 1: was spring of two thousand two is when I was
Speaker 1: out there the first time I so I worked. I
Speaker 1: did the Walt Disney World College Program so, which is
Speaker 1: a fantastic program, highly recommended if you're a college kid
Speaker 1: looking to not have responsibility for a semester. I did
Speaker 1: it twice. I did back in two thousand two and
Speaker 1: again in two thousand and five. And both of the
Speaker 1: rides I worked on are shut down now, which is
Speaker 1: sad I worked over it. It was Disney MGM Studios
Speaker 1: now it's Disney's Hollywood Studios. I worked at the Great
Speaker 1: Movie Ride, which is now Mickey Mini's Runaway Railway. And
Speaker 1: I worked at the back lot tour, specifically the water
Speaker 1: tank portion. I got to talk about Michael Bay in
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor, and that is now where Batsu is where
Speaker 1: all of the Star Wars stuff is, or so it's
Speaker 1: I think between there, maybe Toy story Land. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like in that general area, it's basically it's just
Speaker 1: walking path now where I was right it's it's it's
Speaker 1: one of the hottest sections of the park when you're
Speaker 1: out there because there's absolutely no shade and it's it's
Speaker 1: just a massive cooking surface that has tourists on it.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And I thought today we could talk a
Speaker 1: bit about the Great Movie Ride in particular and talk
Speaker 1: because there was some really cool innovative technologies that were
Speaker 1: incorporated into that experience. But I also want to hear
Speaker 1: from you, as a cast member who worked on the ride,
Speaker 1: what the cast member experience was, because as someone who
Speaker 1: has had been on that ride many times throughout its run,
Speaker 1: including early on in the earliest days of Disney MGM Studios,
Speaker 1: I know what it's like to ride the ride. But
Speaker 1: what was it like to work on the ride? So
Speaker 1: first of all, can you kind of give us an
Speaker 1: overview of what the Great Movie Ride was? Sure my
Speaker 1: my pitch for the Great Movie Ride after someone would
Speaker 1: walk up after after I guess we'll walk up and say,
Speaker 1: is this a ride? And it's like, it's called the
Speaker 1: Great Movie Ride. Yes, it is a ride. It's a
Speaker 1: slow moving tram ride through the movies. It's twenty two
Speaker 1: minutes long, uh never goes more than four miles per hour,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, and there are live actors. It's it's
Speaker 1: one of the few. It's well at the time, I
Speaker 1: was one of the few UM Tour toured our excuse me,
Speaker 1: guided attractions, so like Jungle Cruise, UM, the Kiloman Jari,
Speaker 1: Safari's over an Animal Kingdom, and those are really the
Speaker 1: only ones left at the time. King Kong Over Universal
Speaker 1: Studios had it as well, and we were a guided tour.
Speaker 1: You had a host that would stay in there and
Speaker 1: spiel and then at one point, you know what, it
Speaker 1: would change up. But it was a slow moving ride
Speaker 1: that takes you through some of the most classic movies
Speaker 1: of all time, from Singing in the Rains, Mary Poppins
Speaker 1: to kind of the Gangster era, h Westerns, Aliens, Uh Raiders,
Speaker 1: The Lost Arc, Wizard of Oz, all all kinds of
Speaker 1: amazing things with us some really awesome animatronics. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: when I described the ride, I would always say, this
Speaker 1: is the ride that Walt Disney would have made if
Speaker 1: he had access to these fancy animatronics. Uh. It felt
Speaker 1: like very much a classic Disney ride, And I always
Speaker 1: love that a lot of people they were fans, they
Speaker 1: weren't as big of fans because it's not a thrill ride.
Speaker 1: It's not a huge um you know, like, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not you know, like rock and roller coaster. It's
Speaker 1: nothing super super fast, But I liked it because it
Speaker 1: kind of it was informative, like informative you gotta learn
Speaker 1: a little bit about movies and uh. And also it
Speaker 1: was you got some spectacle some like these magical things
Speaker 1: happen and um, and it's all over the course of
Speaker 1: twenty two minutes, so it tells a nice little story
Speaker 1: compact within the ride. And I really really loved it,
Speaker 1: and it's sad to see it go. Mickey Many is nice,
Speaker 1: like it's it's a fun ride. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: cool that we got replaced by the very first Mickey
Speaker 1: Mouse theme park ride ever, which is kind of cool,
Speaker 1: and that's coming out to Anaheim as well now pretty soon.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, it's um, it was a very special
Speaker 1: attraction and I and I miss it. And but at
Speaker 1: least the facade is still there. I still have my
Speaker 1: memories of the Chinese Theater out in Disney Hollywood Studios
Speaker 1: and so, and there's there's lots of little fun Easter
Speaker 1: eggs out in front, even like even things that are
Speaker 1: still there to this day. But I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's any any Easter eggs inside of Mickey and minis
Speaker 1: of the Great Movie Ride, you know, like, I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's something hidden away, squirreled away somewhere that I just
Speaker 1: don't know about. But yeah, it's it's It was a
Speaker 1: good time. It was a lot of fun time. It
Speaker 1: was it was one of my favorite sort of times
Speaker 1: in my life. I was, I think twenty years old.
Speaker 1: I had no responsibility. I drove out from Texas all
Speaker 1: the way out to Orlando and had a great time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, the the theming was phenomenal. You had,
Speaker 1: like you said, the Chinese theaters the facade. Uh, they
Speaker 1: couldn't actually use Grammins Chinese Theater as the name because
Speaker 1: Grammins wouldn't allow that, but it was the Chinese theater
Speaker 1: and it looked like it did back in the Golden
Speaker 1: age of Hollywood, complete with celebrity handprint and footprints outside
Speaker 1: in the in the sidewalk cement. And then you had
Speaker 1: actual movie memorabilia and props that were in the queuing
Speaker 1: area so you could actually see like the arc from Raiders,
Speaker 1: Lost Arc and things of that nature. And you also
Speaker 1: were shown trailers for some of the movies that we're
Speaker 1: going to be featured within the actual ride itself. And
Speaker 1: as you say, Jack, it told a story, which to
Speaker 1: me was was the thing that Disney did better than
Speaker 1: anyone else for the longest time. Now we've started to
Speaker 1: see other parks kind of pick up that torch and
Speaker 1: run with it, but for the longest time, Disney was
Speaker 1: just that was the king when it came to an
Speaker 1: attraction that also tells the story, and not only that,
Speaker 1: but puts the guests into the story. You're not just
Speaker 1: watching it, you're kind of immersed in it as you're
Speaker 1: going through all these different scenes. And Uh, as a
Speaker 1: cast member, what what were some of your duties, Like
Speaker 1: what roles did you work when you were working on
Speaker 1: that ride? Yeah, So when I was there, they actually
Speaker 1: were just bringing in a new system. I think it's
Speaker 1: called c r S. It was a computer system that
Speaker 1: they would give you a list of roles. So they
Speaker 1: had input a list of rolls into this computer and
Speaker 1: the computer would track who needs to go on break,
Speaker 1: who needs to go on lunch, and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So if you're on break, you know, once you're done,
Speaker 1: you would go to this machine and say I'm back,
Speaker 1: and it would print out a slip and that slip
Speaker 1: would say you go to Position A, and then you
Speaker 1: go there hand the slip off to that person. They
Speaker 1: would then move to position B and the waterfall down
Speaker 1: so the person at the bottom wouldn't take break, which
Speaker 1: actually was pretty cool because you never stood in one
Speaker 1: spot for too long. You were always moving around. It
Speaker 1: was always kind of fresh. You never really got tired
Speaker 1: of it. Um. But I mean we did everything on
Speaker 1: the attraction. The the main tour guides are the people
Speaker 1: the suspenders and the hat um. They would do everything
Speaker 1: from running the vehicles like dry or like driving the
Speaker 1: vehicles doing the spiel um, to all the to working
Speaker 1: the fronts like working entrance as well. So we would
Speaker 1: put on this orange jacket that would go on over
Speaker 1: our tour guide outfit and change our hats like this
Speaker 1: orange hat and that was like our our host spot basically. Um.
Speaker 1: The only thing in a typical cast member wouldn't do
Speaker 1: on Great Movie Ride was be the bandit or the gangster.
Speaker 1: Those were specialized roles that if you were the bandit,
Speaker 1: you were the bandit all day. If you were the
Speaker 1: gangster you were something. I mean, you were the gangster
Speaker 1: all day. But basically those roles, but they would be
Speaker 1: trained for both of them. The cast members would be
Speaker 1: trained for both of those roles. Um, at the time
Speaker 1: when I was there, college program, Uh, employees are cast
Speaker 1: members couldn't be they bandit or the gangster. I think
Speaker 1: they changed that later on just due to staffing stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: but that which was which was sad because I always
Speaker 1: wanted to be the bandit or gangster. But you actually
Speaker 1: had to be firearm trained in order to be either
Speaker 1: of those characters because they did have an actual pistol
Speaker 1: that fired blanks. And um, yeah, that that was the
Speaker 1: one thing that I ain't gonna do. But you know,
Speaker 1: everyone everyone there was family. Everyone knew everyone. Like the
Speaker 1: it was. It was a healthy mix of these old
Speaker 1: timers that have been around. I say old timers, but
Speaker 1: the people that have been around, you know for like
Speaker 1: five to ten years. We had a gentleman there who
Speaker 1: opened the attraction back in eighty nine, who was still
Speaker 1: there in two thousand two, um, and then a bunch
Speaker 1: of college kids. So like basically they would keep it.
Speaker 1: We would keep it fresh because every six months or
Speaker 1: so there'd be new new blood and so it never
Speaker 1: got really boring. And uh and even when I was there,
Speaker 1: I did they extended one so I went from January
Speaker 1: all the way to August. So I saw like summer
Speaker 1: kids coming in and like the new batch of people
Speaker 1: coming in for the fall semester, and it was just fun.
Speaker 1: It was it was just a blast. And um yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's some really cool things that that the
Speaker 1: castombers gotta do. Now. One one my first bit of
Speaker 1: trivia for you. So the vehicles themselves, they were on
Speaker 1: a track. You couldn't see the track. It was actually
Speaker 1: a m There was like sensors in the vehicle and
Speaker 1: that the vehicle would turn and there was invisible track
Speaker 1: kind of in between. There was nothing connecting the actual
Speaker 1: vehicle to the floor, but it would just kind of
Speaker 1: stay on top of it. I don't know the full
Speaker 1: technology behind it. Um. So it's kind of like Rise
Speaker 1: of Resistance where there's just like a trackless course, except
Speaker 1: there was like a line of metal or something. There
Speaker 1: was something keeping it where it needed to go. But
Speaker 1: the tech guys there then the engineers who worked in
Speaker 1: the attraction, which they actually we had a whole engineering
Speaker 1: bay where they would fix up vehicles and fix animatronics
Speaker 1: and stuff. Um, those guys could actually disable that and
Speaker 1: literally drive it around. Like hypothetically, they could have taken
Speaker 1: one the things out into the park and it's driven
Speaker 1: it around if they wanted to, which would have been amazing,
Speaker 1: but uh but no, it's so that was kind of cool.
Speaker 1: And the vehicles themselves they were uh seven rows. There
Speaker 1: was there was two two vehicles. There's basically it's technically
Speaker 1: a tractor trailer where you have the front vehicle had
Speaker 1: all the motors and everything in it, and the back trailer.
Speaker 1: The back vehicle was literally just a trailer, had nothing
Speaker 1: in it other than wheels, and so the front one
Speaker 1: would pull it. Um. There were four speeds on it,
Speaker 1: so it was either stopped one to three or four
Speaker 1: and depending on where we were in the track, we
Speaker 1: would go with those different speeds and um and also
Speaker 1: the track could it could it could actually activate different speeds,
Speaker 1: so like at some points, if you put it on four,
Speaker 1: it would just go and then there were sensors that
Speaker 1: would trigger it to actually slow down the vehicle to
Speaker 1: a stop. So like you know, you could be focused
Speaker 1: on speeling and the ride itself would come to a
Speaker 1: stop and then you would throw it into park. Like
Speaker 1: it wouldn't just kick off on its own. You have
Speaker 1: to throw it in a park and restarted to get
Speaker 1: it to go again, and that was important when you
Speaker 1: were speeling going is like you know, the like gangster
Speaker 1: alley or banded area and um but yeah, god man,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm trying to think of all the easter eggs
Speaker 1: has been. It's been twenty years, been two decades as
Speaker 1: I've been out there, man, So well, you're doing great.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can give a little more context with
Speaker 1: the ride system. So the system that was under essentially
Speaker 1: under the floor, really embedded in the floor was a
Speaker 1: guide wire that would emit radio frequency radiation. So just
Speaker 1: radio waves. Radiation is radiation because it is part of
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic frequency, but it's not like radioactive. There is
Speaker 1: a difference. Um, yeah, we're talking non ionizing. Don't worry, Jack.
Speaker 1: The gray ride did not did not doom, you know.
Speaker 1: The It's just radio frequency radiation. So it's it's r F.
Speaker 1: It's like the same sort of thing you would use
Speaker 1: for walkie talkies or radios or anything along those lines.
Speaker 1: And the trams had within them essentially sensors that could
Speaker 1: pick up that frequency. And if the frequency start to drift,
Speaker 1: like if it started to get two weak on one side,
Speaker 1: that was a signal to the tram that it needed
Speaker 1: to make an adjustment and turn in order to return
Speaker 1: the signal to its strongest point in the center of
Speaker 1: its sensors. So it gets a little weak on the
Speaker 1: right side. That means it's time for you to turn
Speaker 1: left because of your signal is actually moving to your left.
Speaker 1: That was the basic idea. So it was really just
Speaker 1: following this this wire all the way through the attraction,
Speaker 1: which was almost like, uh, something like two thousand feet
Speaker 1: long something like that. It was crazy how long it was,
Speaker 1: Like you said, twenty two minutes for the whole thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The vehicles themselves too, they were all electric, and so
Speaker 1: there were paths throughout the attraction at different points where
Speaker 1: you would stop that magnets would actually connect the batteries
Speaker 1: to the chargers. So at the dock, the vehicles will
Speaker 1: park and an actual like magnet would pull the charger
Speaker 1: up to the bottom of the vehicle in order to
Speaker 1: actually charge up the vehicle. And then there there were
Speaker 1: different spots throughout the ride that it would do that.
Speaker 1: So it would do it there dock, it would do
Speaker 1: it in front of the gangster area, in front of
Speaker 1: the bandit area, in front of a Nubis, which was
Speaker 1: the scene where the like the bandit or the gangster
Speaker 1: would go up and turn back into the the cast member.
Speaker 1: And um, I want to say, Wizard of Oz had one,
Speaker 1: and then in the finale had one that maybe too many.
Speaker 1: I think we got a five vehicles running at the
Speaker 1: same time, so maybe not a Nubis, but um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there were. There were a whole lot of them, and
Speaker 1: we would park them at night, so like they were
Speaker 1: basically when we were shutting off for the night, you
Speaker 1: would take all the vehicles and put them in spart
Speaker 1: certain spots, park them and then they wanted to recharge
Speaker 1: overnight like I don't. When I was there, we never
Speaker 1: had a vehicle die due to battery loss. Um, So
Speaker 1: that's I imagine it was a good sign. Because those
Speaker 1: things were big and they were very heavy, so moving
Speaker 1: them without power would be pretty tricky. I imagine, right
Speaker 1: when you think of fourteen rows filled with people, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of extra weight on top of the fact
Speaker 1: that these things are so big and bulky, so especially
Speaker 1: if there's a guest like me. Pandemic has not been
Speaker 1: kind jack carrying around extra pounds. But that is a
Speaker 1: great point. I love that you brought that in, because
Speaker 1: that was something I did not actually come across in
Speaker 1: my research. It didn't even think about it, but of
Speaker 1: course it makes sense. I mean, if you're running on
Speaker 1: an electric vehicle, you have to be able to at
Speaker 1: least top off the charge a little bit so that
Speaker 1: you can run it for as long as the park
Speaker 1: is open, and as we know, Disney parks can be
Speaker 1: open for many, many hours. We'll be back with more
Speaker 1: about the Great Movie Ride and Disney Theme parks after
Speaker 1: this quick break. This ride system was originally developed over
Speaker 1: at the Universe of Energy and Upcot, another attraction that
Speaker 1: no longer exists. UH The Guardians of the Galaxy has
Speaker 1: has replaced that area, but it was called the Traveling Theater,
Speaker 1: and for the Universe of Energy, it was more it
Speaker 1: was more of a necessity because they had so many
Speaker 1: different uh moving theaters. These did not have an actual
Speaker 1: like tour guide as part of it either. That they
Speaker 1: needed to be able to orient themselves properly to become
Speaker 1: kind of like theater seating for the movie sections of
Speaker 1: the attraction and then go back into a configuration where
Speaker 1: they can move through the rest of it. So you
Speaker 1: had to have almost the sort of ballet of these
Speaker 1: large pieces moving, and they determined they couldn't use physical tracks.
Speaker 1: If they did, they would have to have a switching
Speaker 1: system to switch each one physically to where it needed
Speaker 1: to go. And it was just going to be too complicated,
Speaker 1: too loud, and too expensive, and so they had to
Speaker 1: invent a technology. So necessity is the mother of invention.
Speaker 1: Later on, as I understand it, they actually replaced the
Speaker 1: guide wire with electronic pucks that essentially did the same thing.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't a continuous wire anymore, but served the
Speaker 1: same purpose. And I'm glad that you were able to
Speaker 1: work on it in that span of time. Obviously, it
Speaker 1: was a little different from when it first opened. The
Speaker 1: very first uh sequence that you encounter when you're on
Speaker 1: the ride, after you've entered into the movie section is
Speaker 1: uh Buzby Berkeley footlight parade experience. When that originally opened,
Speaker 1: the characters that you see behind a scrim birthday cake,
Speaker 1: the birthday cake, originally those rotated, right you had, Yeah,
Speaker 1: every other one would rotate. Yeah. Buzby Berkeley he was
Speaker 1: he was known for doing. He was actually a drill
Speaker 1: sergeant in the military and he ended up making movies
Speaker 1: in Hollywood when they were all about spectacle, and so
Speaker 1: he would do these elaborate choreograph numbers with hundreds of people,
Speaker 1: and uh in Footlight Parade, there was a scene where
Speaker 1: it was a whole like it was a pole scene.
Speaker 1: So it's all these women in matching swimsuits and they
Speaker 1: would do choreograph dances and water and stuff. And one
Speaker 1: of the scenes that they came out of the water
Speaker 1: in this sort of birthday cake looking thing. It was
Speaker 1: three tiers with women, you know, like in circles around it,
Speaker 1: and so we had that. It was the first thing
Speaker 1: you saw when you first pulled into the Gray movie
Speaker 1: right back in eighty nine when it open, you would
Speaker 1: that was like you would go in, go through this
Speaker 1: beautiful procenium all in knee on of you know, like
Speaker 1: because the ideas you're entering the movie, so it's like
Speaker 1: you go through the screen and you're part of the
Speaker 1: movie now, and uh yeah, right there on your right side. Initially,
Speaker 1: apparently there was water and there were bubbles and these
Speaker 1: these things would spin and it was awesome. They actual
Speaker 1: they weren't animatronics because they were just mannequins. Because there
Speaker 1: were so many of them. But yeah, apparently that was
Speaker 1: the big thing that would falter the most. They kept
Speaker 1: breaking over and over and over again. So ultimately they
Speaker 1: just ended up kind of walking in place, and I
Speaker 1: think initially they just they left the bubbles going, and
Speaker 1: then ultimately they ended up putting a scrim in front
Speaker 1: of it and projecting images of them kind of doing
Speaker 1: their different dances and stuff. So yeah, I would imagine
Speaker 1: that trying to rig up a rotating fountain, which is
Speaker 1: essentially what you had there, uh, is complicated on the
Speaker 1: best of days, and and there are stories that there
Speaker 1: were frequent issues where there would be flooding and that
Speaker 1: would obviously be a problem for moving giant electric trams through.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you can understand and why they nixed that
Speaker 1: after some some troubles. But it is kind of sad
Speaker 1: because it was one of those um nifty effects that
Speaker 1: you couldn't see anywhere else, and it also was the
Speaker 1: first thing you saw on this journey to the movies.
Speaker 1: Scaled back has slightly less of an impact, I think,
Speaker 1: uh as far as the effect goes, But then you
Speaker 1: move on and you start to encounter the various animatronics
Speaker 1: and they're there are two major types uh in the ride,
Speaker 1: the most famous arguably being the Wicked Witch of the
Speaker 1: West and the Wizard of Oz segment, because she was
Speaker 1: the very first A one hundred animatronic that Disney ever used,
Speaker 1: So like the terminator, there are designations for different generations
Speaker 1: of animatronics, and this was was the first of the
Speaker 1: A one generation, which I'm sure you got schooled on
Speaker 1: all of that as you were joining the attraction a
Speaker 1: little bit. I mean, we knew she was special because
Speaker 1: the amount of a movement and like she had like
Speaker 1: dexterity in her fingers. That was a big thing, because
Speaker 1: she would point at you, which was great. Um. It
Speaker 1: was interesting though because she was by far the most
Speaker 1: elaborate animatronic at any of the parks for a while,
Speaker 1: and she was saddled up next to the Munchkins, who
Speaker 1: were some of the most basic animatronics anywhere. And one
Speaker 1: fun one fun story is when before we opened, or
Speaker 1: when we were closing for the night, we'd still rotate
Speaker 1: the vehicles through and the show scenes will still happen,
Speaker 1: would it be no sound? And so if you know
Speaker 1: anything about old Disney animatronics, when the servos to open
Speaker 1: the mouths would go, it would just make these clicking noise.
Speaker 1: So you pulled in the Wizard of Ozby sitting there,
Speaker 1: it was quiet and all of a sudden, you know
Speaker 1: that'd be follow the Eleveic road, but you want to
Speaker 1: hear that. You just hear the click click click click
Speaker 1: click click. It's from like all around you. It was
Speaker 1: really a bit disheartening. Um. Yeah, and that was. That
Speaker 1: was definitely weird, definitely strange that. I think that was
Speaker 1: probably the scariest thing outside of Toto. When Toto was off,
Speaker 1: she would just look at you like that. She had
Speaker 1: like these crazy fangs. I think to it was a female,
Speaker 1: but she would have these crazy fangs and she just
Speaker 1: looked like demented. It was. It was. It was really weird.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was. I've heard a story. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's true or not. I have no way
Speaker 1: to verify this, but apparently so, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: Wicked Witch. She would move around a whole lot, lots
Speaker 1: of movement. She had her broom, she would point and stuff. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: one day, um, something got loose and she basically whipped
Speaker 1: her arm around and her wrists snapped and her hand
Speaker 1: is kind of dangled off and the hydraulic fluid in
Speaker 1: her wrist started just hosing down the ride vehicle in
Speaker 1: front of her, so essentially like she broke her wrist
Speaker 1: and it started spraying all of the guests with with
Speaker 1: her blood. Essentially, that was one of the very few, uh,
Speaker 1: shut the ride down and just evacuate from where you're
Speaker 1: where you're positioned. Um, we would have multiple times where
Speaker 1: we have to shut the ride down because something like
Speaker 1: minor would happen where we just rotate through the people
Speaker 1: that were stolen the attraction. That's not enough to like
Speaker 1: you know, kick people out, but occasionally a door would
Speaker 1: break and it's like, well, we're not moving, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was a thing where you would have to move
Speaker 1: out of a section for the next vehicle to move in.
Speaker 1: And when those happened, those are always fun. They're only
Speaker 1: happened to me twice over the eight months or so
Speaker 1: I was there where Um, you know, you would ask
Speaker 1: the guests to stay there and then you know, ultimately
Speaker 1: you'd have to go make sure like a manager would
Speaker 1: come by like okay, go ahead and clear amount, and
Speaker 1: then they would open the doors. And I always made
Speaker 1: it a big point of any time, like the two
Speaker 1: times that happened. They said, if that happens, you need
Speaker 1: to make sure your guests are happy. So if they
Speaker 1: want to go take photos with Clint Eastwood, let him
Speaker 1: go take photos of the Clint east wod. As long
Speaker 1: as they're not climbing on anything, they can do whatever
Speaker 1: they want. And so some people out there are some
Speaker 1: really good photos of like John Wayne and his giant horse,
Speaker 1: and then like standing over by gangster area that is like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you're not normally supposed to be there. So um,
Speaker 1: that was always a big thing, you know. It was
Speaker 1: it was always about like going out of your way
Speaker 1: to be like, hey, we had an issue. Sorry. You know,
Speaker 1: at that at the time, I was there a great movie, right,
Speaker 1: didn't have fast past. So it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: come come back when you can. We'd love to have
Speaker 1: you back. Just losing his mind downstairs, that's fine, minus too.
Speaker 1: It's it's they're just they're just co hosting. That's fine,
Speaker 1: they're excited. Yeah, the uh, it's it's that also reminds
Speaker 1: me like that I've only had that sort of experience
Speaker 1: happened at Disney, I think maybe two times. Once when
Speaker 1: I was. This happens pretty regularly. But I was on
Speaker 1: the people Mover when the lights on Space Mountain were
Speaker 1: all on, so you can actually see the track, and
Speaker 1: it's it's insane how closely and tightly packed that track is,
Speaker 1: to the point where you're thinking, I'm gonna ride this
Speaker 1: differently the next time I'm on everything's gonna get tucked
Speaker 1: in because it's wild. It's wild, like the the re
Speaker 1: entry tube. You can just touch it. I can just
Speaker 1: reach up and touch it. It's like that should not happen,
Speaker 1: and like I imagine, no, like legally that couldn't happen.
Speaker 1: I'm sure as grandfathered in by something. But like there's
Speaker 1: you can just reach out and touch stuff on that track.
Speaker 1: And when you're pitch black and you can't see anything,
Speaker 1: like you hit something at speed, that's not good. So
Speaker 1: you can imagine the amount of padding they have on
Speaker 1: all of the all the very support structures that you
Speaker 1: can't see. Typically, Yeah, and the only other time it
Speaker 1: ever happened was on Flights of Passage, the Avatar ride,
Speaker 1: where it just the video shut down, maybe like we
Speaker 1: were maybe thirty seconds from the end of the ride.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was my first time I ever writing it,
Speaker 1: so I didn't know at the time, but I was like, well,
Speaker 1: we've been going for a while, this thing was probably
Speaker 1: about to wrap up, and cast member came on and
Speaker 1: there happened to be in the group that we were in,
Speaker 1: um a V I P group who had spent a
Speaker 1: huge amount of money in order to do this, so
Speaker 1: they had us sit there, they restarted the ride. We
Speaker 1: wrote the whole so I wrote. I got to write
Speaker 1: at one point eight times my first time. And then
Speaker 1: as we're leaving, they gave us all like like a
Speaker 1: priority fast pass digital fast passes because that was when
Speaker 1: we were getting to the point we're using magic bands.
Speaker 1: UM so yeah, it doesn't he really does go a
Speaker 1: long way to trying to to make the guest experience magical,
Speaker 1: as they say, certain certainly did. I don't know how
Speaker 1: much that. It seems like nowadays things are, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're little different. Yeah, if there's a way they
Speaker 1: can charge you for it, they're going to charge you
Speaker 1: for it. If you could have for yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm so I still have my annual pass. I still
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a you know, multi year annual pass holder.
Speaker 1: I still enjoy going to the parks. I participate in
Speaker 1: the run Disney events. I do a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: through Disney, but it feels like as of late, they've
Speaker 1: kind of let stuff slide, and that's frustrating to me
Speaker 1: as as as as you know, as an annual pass
Speaker 1: as a fan. It's just like it feels like, especially
Speaker 1: right now, Uh, Disney is at a point where they
Speaker 1: think that like they're kind of sitting back and like,
Speaker 1: we're just making lots of money and people love all
Speaker 1: of our stuff, and I don't think they're looking down
Speaker 1: the road, like right now, literally down the road down
Speaker 1: I four Universals building a brand new theme park that's
Speaker 1: opening up in that's gonna be the new hotness. And
Speaker 1: unless Disney literally announces something at D twenty three this
Speaker 1: week or next week that hey, we're gonna have something
Speaker 1: to counter that, they're gonna be caught with their pants down,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's gonna be very interesting the next
Speaker 1: you know, the mid of theme parks in Orlando is
Speaker 1: gonna be very very interesting. And I don't know how
Speaker 1: much longer Disney can just kind of rest on their
Speaker 1: laurels of what they've gone away with so far. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with a a great movie ride,
Speaker 1: but it kind of does. It kind of does because
Speaker 1: there there have been ebbs and flows at the Disney parks. Right.
Speaker 1: It all depends on really the executive leadership team and
Speaker 1: and who how they they value investing in the parks
Speaker 1: versus kind of you know, coasting on that perhaps and
Speaker 1: and focusing on other parts of the company, and that
Speaker 1: obviously changes on various regimes. There was a period, a
Speaker 1: dark period in the Walt Disney World past, where essentially
Speaker 1: all the executives who were in charge of the parks
Speaker 1: came from retail. They came from places like Banana Republic,
Speaker 1: And that was when we saw Main Street in Magic
Speaker 1: Kingdom get gutted, where all the things that used to
Speaker 1: be there, like the Penny Arcade and things that added character,
Speaker 1: but they didn't generate rev new We're essentially stripped out
Speaker 1: so that you had just very long shops on either
Speaker 1: side the Mega emporium. Oh yeah, yeah. So there are
Speaker 1: issues like that that have been going on for a while.
Speaker 1: So it's not like this is a sudden decline, but
Speaker 1: it's certainly the pandemic kind of brings things into sharp
Speaker 1: relief because you can see how things were going pre
Speaker 1: pandemic versus Disney's response to the pandemic and then post pandemic.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't really think we're in post pandemic,
Speaker 1: but everyone else seems to argue we are. So it's also,
Speaker 1: I mean the thing is now right, you know, right now,
Speaker 1: it's we're getting this bounce because we had two years
Speaker 1: of people basically not going on vacation, saving up all
Speaker 1: their money, and I mean, we're not going anywhere and
Speaker 1: and saving up money. And now we're seeing people spend
Speaker 1: that money. It's like, oh, we we had we've been
Speaker 1: locked up for two years, Let's go to Disney World.
Speaker 1: And so I think we're seeing this sort of this uh,
Speaker 1: this false positive kind of thing where I think, like
Speaker 1: right now it's like Disneys like, oh my gosh, record
Speaker 1: profits and huge numbers go to the parks, and it's
Speaker 1: like that's not going to sustain I don't. I don't think,
Speaker 1: and you know, like Tron is gonna bring some people back,
Speaker 1: but after that, it's kind of what do you got, man?
Speaker 1: I mean, like Cosmic Riwan, it was a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: but Epcott is a wreck right now. And I mean,
Speaker 1: then you see stuff. I mean, like you know, I
Speaker 1: I love Epcot and seeing you know, Harmonious is a
Speaker 1: is a great show, but those barges, like Eisner never
Speaker 1: would to let those barges be on the water, like
Speaker 1: that ruins so many sight lines and even like, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just I'm going off on what you're changing. But
Speaker 1: it's kind of like it feels like, you know, Disney
Speaker 1: from what I knew growing up, Like I was, I
Speaker 1: went to Disney Parks when I was, you know, a
Speaker 1: kid in the nineties, and I have amazing rose colored
Speaker 1: memories of that, and then working there in the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's, like that was sort of like the cherry
Speaker 1: on top. And now as an adult, I can go
Speaker 1: back and I can appreciate it from a different perspective.
Speaker 1: And I understand a lot of these decisions, but I
Speaker 1: don't think they're the right decisions to be made, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's kind of like like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know this sort of you know, you can have
Speaker 1: a one slice of cake now or wait, you know,
Speaker 1: two hours, I have a full cake. You know, They're
Speaker 1: like they just want their slice of cake right now,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I don't know, you gotta get prepped
Speaker 1: for this day you got. You gotta have it over
Speaker 1: multiple years. You gotta look at you know well, because
Speaker 1: if you get to a point where you have, you
Speaker 1: have dishearten people like yourself and my I'm also an
Speaker 1: annual passholder. I'm also a Disney Vacation Club member. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so so I have spent a lot of money with
Speaker 1: Mr Mr mouse House. So but yeah, you you start
Speaker 1: to you start to feel like the what you might
Speaker 1: have thought of as an investment before. It's almost like
Speaker 1: when you go to a really expensive college and then
Speaker 1: afterward you get a letter from them saying, hey, can
Speaker 1: you donate money. I'm like, dude, I gave you so
Speaker 1: much money. I don't need to give you more money.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more about the Great Movie
Speaker 1: Ride and related stuff after this break. One of the
Speaker 1: things I found very disheartening personally from the old Disney
Speaker 1: MGM studio to what we are today with Disney Hollywood
Speaker 1: Studios is something that I also feel affects Epcot, which
Speaker 1: is that you start to see kind of an eroading
Speaker 1: of identity in that when the park opened in it
Speaker 1: was very clearly oriented toward we're gonna talk about movies
Speaker 1: and television production. The attractions all relate to that. We
Speaker 1: have experiences that are about sound effects or visual effects.
Speaker 1: We have an animation studio, a working animation studio where
Speaker 1: you could actually see animators drawing cells of upcoming movies. Um.
Speaker 1: And you had the backstage tour. You actually had a
Speaker 1: backlot where real productions were being shot um, which honestly
Speaker 1: caused some problems because MGM or initially didn't agree to
Speaker 1: that didn't. That caused some licensing us but but they
Speaker 1: worked that out, they settled out of court. But but
Speaker 1: it means that over time, you know, they have gotten
Speaker 1: rid of all the different elements, with the exception of
Speaker 1: they still have the Chinese theater facade, so that's still
Speaker 1: in the theme. They still have streets that are named
Speaker 1: after streets in in Los Angeles, so that that's still
Speaker 1: kind of in the theme. But other than that, Hollywood
Speaker 1: Studios doesn't have very much studios related stuff, and it
Speaker 1: it's more like toy toy story and Star Wars and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um. So I was wondering about
Speaker 1: your perspective on that too. Do you Maybe I'm crazy
Speaker 1: and I just feel like there's kind of a loss
Speaker 1: of coherence with park identity. But do you have a
Speaker 1: similar feeling about that as well. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: exactly that. I mean, when when the studios opened, it
Speaker 1: was it was meant to replicate a working film production studio,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I mean even like the buildings,
Speaker 1: like you know the Great movie right the building is
Speaker 1: in it was like actually a stage number and they
Speaker 1: would call like stage whatever, blah blah blah, and those
Speaker 1: still might technically be numbered. Um, but yeah, it's over time.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not one to like, I know, the
Speaker 1: the idea that you know, the theme parks are meant
Speaker 1: to be like a living document where you can change
Speaker 1: it and you can alter it over time, but it
Speaker 1: certainly does feel like they have lost an overall tone.
Speaker 1: I mean, other than like you know, initially it was
Speaker 1: Disney MGM Studios and it was meant to be like
Speaker 1: here's how things are made, and that I love that stuff.
Speaker 1: Like I remember going on the animation tour and I
Speaker 1: think they were working on The Emperor's New Groove at
Speaker 1: the time, and I think I forget what it was
Speaker 1: titled when I went there, but they had that big
Speaker 1: window and they push a button and it would suddenly
Speaker 1: go clear, and they'd see all these animators working. I
Speaker 1: think they called it the fish bowl. Uh the animators
Speaker 1: said they hated it apparently, But like being there was
Speaker 1: so cool, and like the backlot tour I remember, like
Speaker 1: the original backlot tour was like four hours long. It
Speaker 1: was wild because there were so many different things. Actually
Speaker 1: they would take you around in the tram. But then
Speaker 1: there was a walking portion where they show you special
Speaker 1: effects and how they were made. I got to ride
Speaker 1: on the bee from Honey I shrunk the kids and
Speaker 1: they did a whole green screen thing and like god
Speaker 1: to be on it and they like splice me into
Speaker 1: the movie. It was awesome. I love that and um,
Speaker 1: but like the water tank portion was there and and
Speaker 1: then slowly they started removing it. Like then they actually
Speaker 1: had I think The Mickey Mouse Club was shot there
Speaker 1: for a bit um back in two thousand two. One
Speaker 1: of the stages over By over By the back lot
Speaker 1: was actually the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. They
Speaker 1: actually had a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire replica
Speaker 1: set with when they weren't shooting in l A or
Speaker 1: New York. When they weren't shooting in New York, they
Speaker 1: would come down and Re just would come down and
Speaker 1: they'd host the show from Florida. But when they weren't
Speaker 1: using it for production, they would actually it turned into
Speaker 1: an actual, uh like an attraction people could go to,
Speaker 1: so you could actually play Who Wants to Be a
Speaker 1: Millionaire and see how it was made. It was a
Speaker 1: percent exactly what they used in the show, which I
Speaker 1: thought was really cool. Um and one of one of
Speaker 1: my favorite stories when I worked at the back Clods,
Speaker 1: who were in two thousand and five. By then, the
Speaker 1: whole walking portion of the attraction was gone. It was
Speaker 1: just the water tank section and then you would move
Speaker 1: on to the tram tour which would take you through
Speaker 1: the residential area and then it will take you over
Speaker 1: to Catastrophe Canyon. Um. But the walking portion was gone,
Speaker 1: but the buildings were still there, and in the employee
Speaker 1: restroom area there was an entrance like there was basically
Speaker 1: a back entrance into the walking portion where they would
Speaker 1: have like I think that when they finished it, it
Speaker 1: was the one Dalmatians live action stuff, so they showed
Speaker 1: how they did all the animatronics with the with the
Speaker 1: dogs and everything. But every single time I would use
Speaker 1: the restroom, I would check that door, and it was
Speaker 1: always locked, always locked, every single time I was there
Speaker 1: for six months, always locked. Literally my last night I
Speaker 1: was working there, checked the door and it opened and
Speaker 1: I was like oh, and like I opened the door
Speaker 1: and it was just like, oh my gosh. And I
Speaker 1: walked in and I they if you remember, it was
Speaker 1: kind of like a pit where it was a circle,
Speaker 1: and you would like they all the guests would be
Speaker 1: around the circle and they looked down into this pit
Speaker 1: and then a cast member would show off all the tech.
Speaker 1: They actually had, like footplates where they would step on
Speaker 1: things to make things trigger, and all the plates were
Speaker 1: still there. All the animatronics were gone, but all the
Speaker 1: plates were still there, and all like the shelves and everything,
Speaker 1: and then up they had all of this storage of
Speaker 1: old props. So like I remember when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I saw Johnny five from Short Circuit too, like the
Speaker 1: gold one. He was up on one of the like
Speaker 1: up on one of the big racks, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, and a lot of that stuff was
Speaker 1: still there, like a lot of the props were still there,
Speaker 1: and it was just like one of those moments like
Speaker 1: I did it. I cracked into it and it was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things, one of my favorite memories.
Speaker 1: That and right before I did my when I when
Speaker 1: I got my last clock out, before I had go
Speaker 1: actually clock out from the computer, I had them hold
Speaker 1: the next backlot tour show though, the water tank show.
Speaker 1: Adam hold the show and then I did a flip
Speaker 1: into the pool and then I walked out and so
Speaker 1: uh and then my manager just came tearing around the
Speaker 1: corner because he heard someone had fallen in and I'm
Speaker 1: just dripping wet, and he's like, what happened. I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: I dove in. He was come on and I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's my last day. And he's like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: thanks for working here. Because I was. I was, I was.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed what I did. I love performing, like if
Speaker 1: you can't tell, I enjoy being in front of in
Speaker 1: front of people. And you know, that's that's what really
Speaker 1: drew me to The Great Movie Ride was the idea
Speaker 1: of performing and actually having like I can affect someone's
Speaker 1: enjoyment of an attraction. And I love everyone I worked with,
Speaker 1: but there were a few people that is like, oh man,
Speaker 1: like I like when I'd see someone hosting one of
Speaker 1: the like hosting a ride, to be like, oh, those
Speaker 1: people aren't going to get the best show because you know,
Speaker 1: you can read a script so many different ways, and
Speaker 1: some people would kind of just go through the motions
Speaker 1: and it's like no, whereas like I, you know, put
Speaker 1: some put some drama into it, you know, put some
Speaker 1: effort into it, and I I would love doing that.
Speaker 1: And um, I also just really enjoyed talking microphones and
Speaker 1: that was always my thing in the pre show area,
Speaker 1: and that where the theater was, which is still making
Speaker 1: minis what you go through the Chinese Theater go through.
Speaker 1: You enter in through them the main doors of the
Speaker 1: Grandma Chinese Theater or the Chinese Theater, and then you
Speaker 1: turn left and everything like basically all of that hasn't
Speaker 1: been touched at all, Like that was all exactly how
Speaker 1: it was when it was a great movie ride. But
Speaker 1: as soon as you kind of round the corner is
Speaker 1: where it all sorts sort of changes. Is um you
Speaker 1: eventually do a couple of switchbacks and then the cast
Speaker 1: member will tell you to go to like you know,
Speaker 1: go to theater one, go to theater two, go to
Speaker 1: theater three. All of those were empty, and that's where
Speaker 1: the big theater was, and that's where the big projection
Speaker 1: theater was with the trailers you were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: But there was a microphone at that at the booth
Speaker 1: for that one, because that's where you would basically hold
Speaker 1: people before you load, because the dock was the next door.
Speaker 1: You have a door, it opened, you load them up,
Speaker 1: and you close the door, watched the movie, you know,
Speaker 1: five minutes later, reopen it in etcetera, et cetera. Do
Speaker 1: that over and over again. But that microphone on that desk,
Speaker 1: for some reason, made my voice sound so good. I
Speaker 1: love that microphone so much because it had like it
Speaker 1: really picked up the base and it just sounded good.
Speaker 1: This because it was like a theater and so it
Speaker 1: sounded so nice. And my biggest compliment I ever got
Speaker 1: was when I'd be there, you know, hosting in the
Speaker 1: right before load and I do my spiel at the
Speaker 1: at the podium, like you know, like in just a
Speaker 1: few moments there to ride will start or whatever, and
Speaker 1: people would come down and say, like, I thought that
Speaker 1: was a prerecorded thing. I didn't realize that was you
Speaker 1: doing out live. And I'm like, oh, thank you very
Speaker 1: much and very kind of you. So that's why we
Speaker 1: had don't know what it was about the acoustics in
Speaker 1: that room or that microphone, whatever it was, that that
Speaker 1: magic it was. It was awesome. It's gonna be great
Speaker 1: to have you on the monorail and you can give
Speaker 1: the the spield just before the door. Yes my my
Speaker 1: one line of Spanish. I know. Yeah, well the the
Speaker 1: that that is also again the getting back to the
Speaker 1: story part of the Great Movie ride, the fact that
Speaker 1: you had this sort of this interactive element. I thought
Speaker 1: one of the most fascinating things as a guest riding
Speaker 1: the ride was that this was an experience where the
Speaker 1: tour guide that you were with was interacting not just
Speaker 1: with other humans, but also with some of the animatronics
Speaker 1: as well. So there was a lot of different acting.
Speaker 1: There was acting off other cast members, and there was
Speaker 1: acting off the prerecorded and pre programmed animatronic figures like
Speaker 1: the Wicked Witch of the West, and I thought that
Speaker 1: was just brilliant because it really brought that immersion, that
Speaker 1: magic in their showing the incredible ingenuity of the the
Speaker 1: engineers who created these these devices. Getting back to the
Speaker 1: Wicked Witch, of the West. There was a point where
Speaker 1: she was augmented. She was already really advanced by the
Speaker 1: time that the attraction open. She was the most advanced
Speaker 1: animatronic that Disney had up to that point. They had
Speaker 1: developed a system a little a couple of years before
Speaker 1: they unveiled her called Compliance. And this gets back to
Speaker 1: the hydraulics you were talking about. The hydraulic system allowed
Speaker 1: for smooth movement and analog movement, so so you could
Speaker 1: have a range of motion with the old pneumatic systems
Speaker 1: that the encanted tiki room had. You had two positions.
Speaker 1: You had open and closed right like the beaks would
Speaker 1: open and they would close. But you couldn't halfway open
Speaker 1: a beak because you're using an air piston to do
Speaker 1: it right as a solemn lead than an air piston.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever listened carefully in the incanned Deegie room,
Speaker 1: you can hear that air uh, you know, helling everything
Speaker 1: that's in there. And that old system was brilliant. The
Speaker 1: reason they called it audio animatronics is they would record
Speaker 1: audio tones on originally it was filmed. Later it would
Speaker 1: be magnetic tape and the audio tones would make a
Speaker 1: read vibrate that would close a circuit, and that would
Speaker 1: allow the circuit to activate the solenoid or the pneumatic
Speaker 1: valves that would then have the beaks open and closed. Brilliant, easy, uh,
Speaker 1: simple solution, except for the fact that you have all
Speaker 1: these tubes everywhere. Um. But they never went with hydraulics
Speaker 1: for the birds because like the Wicked Witch example you
Speaker 1: gave Jack, they didn't want the birds to possibly mess
Speaker 1: on guests if there was a hydraulic leak. You know,
Speaker 1: air doesn't leak or I mean, it's not gonna drip
Speaker 1: on you, so you're fine. But yeah, once you get
Speaker 1: up to the Wicked Witch, she was on hydraulics, and
Speaker 1: the compliance was meant to be kind of a shock
Speaker 1: absorbing system so that you could do these more drum
Speaker 1: attic movements, but you wouldn't put so much stress on
Speaker 1: the figure that it wears out in like a season
Speaker 1: and you would have to do a full refurb on it.
Speaker 1: So this the brilliance to me of the engineering process
Speaker 1: was not just that they were figuring out new ways
Speaker 1: to animate these characters in three dimensional space, but they
Speaker 1: were also already thinking about, if we do this, it's
Speaker 1: going to cause more wear and tear. How are we
Speaker 1: going to address that so that we limit downtime and
Speaker 1: the amount of money we have to spend on maintenance.
Speaker 1: And it's that kind of engineering that I find really fascinating.
Speaker 1: Um And later on they would introduce the A one
Speaker 1: thousand animatronics. Those are the ones you see in places
Speaker 1: like Galaxy's Edge, you see it over on the Smugglers
Speaker 1: Run ride. Um, you know, Hondo is is an A
Speaker 1: one thousand figure. By that time, you've moved away from
Speaker 1: hydraulics and you're into pure electronic systems that are all
Speaker 1: precisely computer controlled. I had read that in the days,
Speaker 1: the Wicked Witch days, the programming those things was a
Speaker 1: painstaking process and it could take up to eight hours
Speaker 1: to program one second of animation on one of those.
Speaker 1: And when you think about the amount of animation the
Speaker 1: Wicked Witch had in particular, that's you know, that's someone's
Speaker 1: year right there. Yeah, yeah, well, well, I mean, like
Speaker 1: think before I forget about it. What one interesting thing
Speaker 1: about the Wicked Witch area, the whole Wizard of Oz area,
Speaker 1: was it was one of two portions of the ride where, um,
Speaker 1: if we were had a busy day we we had
Speaker 1: an we had an A show and a B show.
Speaker 1: So the the way it worked was in on busy days,
Speaker 1: you would run both shows, the A show of the
Speaker 1: B show. The A show would be your bandit, uh,
Speaker 1: your Bandit show, so your cowboys show, and then the
Speaker 1: B show would be the Gangster show. We could run
Speaker 1: without the A show. You could run just just are
Speaker 1: just gangster if you wanted to um. And what would
Speaker 1: happen to was, you know, as if if you're running
Speaker 1: to two vehicles, the first vehicle would kind of speed
Speaker 1: through the first couple of scenes, so you would go
Speaker 1: through the the you know, the you know footlight parade
Speaker 1: was uh Singing in the Rain and Mary Poppins. You'd
Speaker 1: kind of just careen through it, honestly, like you wouldn't
Speaker 1: slow down at all, because what you're doing is you
Speaker 1: were making space between your vehicle and the B vehicle,
Speaker 1: and so you would both kind of land at the
Speaker 1: portions of the show where you'd interact with another cast member.
Speaker 1: You'd you interact with the bandit or interact with the Gangster,
Speaker 1: and then you would both move at the same speed
Speaker 1: up until the switch happened. Back over at Indiana Jones
Speaker 1: and then the B A vehicle would then just a
Speaker 1: hahull butt to catch up to the A vehicle and
Speaker 1: by that time you would then both enter into the
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz area. So that was that was the
Speaker 1: one scene where you'd have theoretically four vehicles or I
Speaker 1: mean two two vehicles but attractor trailer, so four you know,
Speaker 1: platforms of people on there. And if you had a
Speaker 1: full show like that, there was actually a microphone off
Speaker 1: to the side because the witch was designed to interact
Speaker 1: with just one person, and so she would always point
Speaker 1: at the driver of the first vehicle. And so if
Speaker 1: it was just if you're just running a show where
Speaker 1: you didn't have the other if it was just running
Speaker 1: a B show and you only had your one car,
Speaker 1: you would just use your microphone for the vehicle, you know,
Speaker 1: that the one that actually feeds through the speakers. But
Speaker 1: if you had both vehicles, if you had all four
Speaker 1: of them going this the back car so the B show,
Speaker 1: they would they wouldn't be able to hear you obviously
Speaker 1: on your microphone. So we had a separate microphone that
Speaker 1: you would step off the vehicle, pick it up, and
Speaker 1: it played over the p a inside of the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz sections, so in munchkin Land will play over
Speaker 1: the p A so all everyone could hear you on
Speaker 1: that as opposed to just your vehicle. So I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of interesting tech stuff that you might might
Speaker 1: find kind of that's amazing. I didn't. I mean I
Speaker 1: knew about the A Show and B Show because I
Speaker 1: had ridden the ride enough times and by the end
Speaker 1: of it, you essentially only saw the B Show. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: they weren't. They never had a capacity that was enough
Speaker 1: where they needed to run both really uh and also
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, then you have half the number
Speaker 1: of cast members who have to be in costume and perform,
Speaker 1: which gets us into it that that that's LaBrie Slocal
Speaker 1: are just gonna complain about this. They sall back away.
Speaker 1: But you got the cool fire explosion if you're on
Speaker 1: the that was that was the one thing there was
Speaker 1: an awesome, awesome So it was basically bandits robbing a
Speaker 1: bank in the Old West and they would throw dynamite
Speaker 1: into this door. So that I can go into that
Speaker 1: a little bit. So on a show, if you were
Speaker 1: the you know, the tour guide, the bandit would pop
Speaker 1: out and you'd like take over your vehicle, and so
Speaker 1: you would you would hear that someone's robbing the bank,
Speaker 1: so you're like, oh, robbing the bank. Let me go
Speaker 1: see what's going on, and you jump off the vehicle,
Speaker 1: and then an animatronic would actually pull a gun on you,
Speaker 1: and you'd be like, oh, you have to kind of
Speaker 1: stick your hands up and then you know, then then
Speaker 1: an actual human would come out and they would need
Speaker 1: to have an interaction with them, and then at one
Speaker 1: point they get distracted, so you run into the bank
Speaker 1: and then the bandit would then throw dynamite into the
Speaker 1: bank and then the whole thing would explode in fire,
Speaker 1: which is a really really cool effect, and they did
Speaker 1: it a whole lot and it never seemed to have
Speaker 1: any issues, which is wild. But one neat thing is, uh,
Speaker 1: the doors, Like so they're swinging doors to go in
Speaker 1: and out of the bank. Those doors were like six
Speaker 1: inches thick of fire padding and everything, and as the
Speaker 1: as the cast member the tour guide would actually go
Speaker 1: into the bank and they would have to push a
Speaker 1: button on the inside basically saying they were clear, and
Speaker 1: so once you would hold you would hit that and
Speaker 1: then the cast member outside would hit the other one.
Speaker 1: And that would trigger the explosion. Basically say that it's
Speaker 1: okay to go. It would be like the green light
Speaker 1: to go. I think that was the case. I could
Speaker 1: be wrong on that, but I'm pretty sure we had
Speaker 1: to hold a button on the inside to basically notify
Speaker 1: the system that everything was okay to go. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a fun show. It's like having the nuclear
Speaker 1: key where you have to insert it at the same
Speaker 1: time the same time make sure that everyone is on
Speaker 1: the same page. Yeah. Yeah. For those who are wondering
Speaker 1: what we're even talking about. As Jack was saying, the
Speaker 1: way the ride would progress is that you would stop. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you were the A Show, you would stop at
Speaker 1: in the western section, and then this scenario would play
Speaker 1: out and the bandit would take temporarily take over your tour. Uh.
Speaker 1: They found the aliens section very upsetting. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: if you were the B Show, you did the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing, except it was in the Gangster movie segment,
Speaker 1: which was a little further back, and the gangster would
Speaker 1: come in and take over your tram temporarily. And in
Speaker 1: both cases it gets resolved in the Indiana Jones Ish section. Um,
Speaker 1: a little past that, where you know you have uh
Speaker 1: both of both the gangster and the the Bandit end
Speaker 1: up being too greedy and they try to get a
Speaker 1: sacred jim and end up being fried, and the tour
Speaker 1: guide magically returns and apparently from the dead. In the
Speaker 1: in the eight story version that was that was always
Speaker 1: like that. The scene was amazing. I loved it because,
Speaker 1: first of all, um so the way it worked was
Speaker 1: there's music playing over the p as it's called the
Speaker 1: newbist scene is what it is is where the big
Speaker 1: gym is, and so the the ganger, the gangster of
Speaker 1: the band would be like, you guys, wait here, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna steal that gym, you know, and they
Speaker 1: then they they'd walk up the stairs and the music
Speaker 1: would play, and there's a lightning bolt, like a certain
Speaker 1: like lightning bolt. When they heard that, they would hit
Speaker 1: a little button like a little like arcade button on
Speaker 1: on the actual scenery, which would then trigger the Halt Unbeliever,
Speaker 1: which is like this big, you know, booming voice, and
Speaker 1: then the team or the cast member would then react
Speaker 1: to that and then they'd be like whatever, and they
Speaker 1: put their hand on the gym. Smoke would go and
Speaker 1: the smoke dissipated, it would reveal the skeleton standing there
Speaker 1: like reaching for the gym, and then you know, it
Speaker 1: turns out like, oh, that was actually your your your
Speaker 1: tour guide was the the other person. Um. That was
Speaker 1: a neat effect because that was actually it was a door,
Speaker 1: so it was a rotating door that the smoke would
Speaker 1: the smoke would you know, there's enough of it to
Speaker 1: to you know, cover the door, and then it would
Speaker 1: it would spin around and then the the you know,
Speaker 1: the band of the gangster would hold the door closed.
Speaker 1: So it didn't because it was just on a little
Speaker 1: magnet and so like if if they just kind of
Speaker 1: walk through it, it would swing and then sometimes swing
Speaker 1: back or be like halfway open, so they would have
Speaker 1: to hold it closed. And then um, and then you
Speaker 1: reveal like hey, it's me, and then you'd run back
Speaker 1: down and then add another lightning bowl. You would then
Speaker 1: start your vehicle up to get the timing right and um.
Speaker 1: Some of the more uh, some of the more like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you have relationships with all the people there,
Speaker 1: and so some of the people like to mess with you.
Speaker 1: So some of the gangsters are bandits. They would like
Speaker 1: to take the microphone cable and just wind it all
Speaker 1: around the steering wheel and so you'd go to grab
Speaker 1: it and it was just stuck and you'd have to
Speaker 1: sit there not like lean over it and like talking
Speaker 1: to the microphone by your wheel when you're trying to
Speaker 1: unwind it and stuff. That was that was always fun.
Speaker 1: But that was a cool scene. That was a really neat,
Speaker 1: really neat bit that movie that that wasn't really any
Speaker 1: specific movie. The the Anubis scene right before it was
Speaker 1: Raiders the Lost Ark, which was awesome, and then you know,
Speaker 1: Alien was fantastic too. That little the goopy stuff in
Speaker 1: the background is always super gross. I love that. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: the the effects on the ride were, uh, like I said,
Speaker 1: it really was pulling you into the experience as if
Speaker 1: you were in the fiction of those movies. It is,
Speaker 1: by the way, in no way, shape or form at
Speaker 1: all similar to actually being on a movie set, but
Speaker 1: if you had been magically pulled into the movies themselves.
Speaker 1: It was like that. Um and yeah, that's it was.
Speaker 1: It was one of those rides, very charming ride as
Speaker 1: you as you say, It wasn't exactly like a thrill
Speaker 1: ride or anything. But again, like to this day, my
Speaker 1: favorite ride at Disney is still Pirates of the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: I like the story based rides. I mean I like
Speaker 1: the thrill rides too, Don't get me wrong. I love
Speaker 1: a good thrill ride. Love Guardians of the Galaxy needed
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes to recover after I wrote it, But
Speaker 1: I loved it. Man I I love that ride. Man
Speaker 1: I ride that all day. I've jack I've reached the
Speaker 1: age where where where thrill rides I have a strict limit,
Speaker 1: and after I hit it, I cannot go past it. Actually,
Speaker 1: the worst though, are for me the ones that incorporate
Speaker 1: uh VR elements or screen elements. Those those can get
Speaker 1: me a little. Yeah for a forbidden journey over Universal,
Speaker 1: I have to look at my feet during the screen portions.
Speaker 1: I can't do it anymore. Like even like Simpson's ride,
Speaker 1: I get a little like a little queasy. And my
Speaker 1: wife and I we we made the mistake of we
Speaker 1: decided to do par copying back when you could easily
Speaker 1: do at You can still do it today, It's just
Speaker 1: not as easy. Um. And we did the Flights of
Speaker 1: Passage first, so that's a VR base ride. We hopped
Speaker 1: over to Hollywood studios and in star tours it's another
Speaker 1: VR kind of ride. We hopped on over to Epcot
Speaker 1: and we did soar in which we usually we're totally
Speaker 1: fine on that, but it turned out that that was
Speaker 1: one screen based ride too many, and we both kind
Speaker 1: of felt that that lingering motion not not like acute
Speaker 1: motion sickness, but more like I don't feel right. And
Speaker 1: then we decided to get all the heat and went
Speaker 1: into the China film, which is a three sixty degree film.
Speaker 1: There the screen is completely in a three si degree arc,
Speaker 1: which is amazing in itself and I should probably talk
Speaker 1: about that technology at some point. But that disoriented us
Speaker 1: to the point where we spent probably the next three
Speaker 1: hours just sitting in the World Showcase and people watching
Speaker 1: because we couldn't. We were afraid to move. Uh so
Speaker 1: yeah with the land Man, living with the land after
Speaker 1: doing sore and let it cool off a little bit,
Speaker 1: see all the plants are made, or maybe the the
Speaker 1: well what's now the three Cabaatros ride but used to
Speaker 1: be the River of Time ride over in Mexico. That's
Speaker 1: always there's never a line for it. It's always cool.
Speaker 1: So I like that one. I was told, I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is true. Or not. I imagine you
Speaker 1: might know because you know a whole lot about animatronics.
Speaker 1: When Great Movie Ride shut down, which was about five
Speaker 1: years ago at this point, I think I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly when it shut down. The rumor was that the
Speaker 1: Wicked Witch, the eight hundred animatronic moved to Pirates of
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, and now it's Red. So like supposedly Red
Speaker 1: is the old Wicked Witch from Movie Ride. Is that true?
Speaker 1: Do you know if that's true? I cannot I cannot
Speaker 1: say if it's true or false because I don't care
Speaker 1: the answer to that. But I can tell you I
Speaker 1: mean Red is a an A one figure. So Red
Speaker 1: is of the same generation as Wicked Witch. Whether it's
Speaker 1: exactly the same uh A skeleton underneath, I am not certain.
Speaker 1: There's no reason it couldn't be. It certainly couldn't be,
Speaker 1: because these the big innovation of A one was that
Speaker 1: you had far more options when it came to programming
Speaker 1: the figure, and a much larger range of motion if
Speaker 1: you wanted to have a very expressive figure. Uh. You
Speaker 1: know the fact that if Scarlett the Pirate is in
Speaker 1: fact the former Wicked Witch of the West, that means
Speaker 1: she's also and Animatronic that was altered by the company Sarkos,
Speaker 1: which is mostly known as a military and industrial robotics company.
Speaker 1: So what I'm saying is, don't mess with the woman
Speaker 1: Pirate because maybe she's a terminator. I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she might, she might turn. I mean, just looking at
Speaker 1: a photo of Red her her right hand she's holding
Speaker 1: she's holding a gun, so her right hand is really
Speaker 1: not moving much and her left hand is holding the
Speaker 1: bottle and she moves it a lot, which similar to
Speaker 1: the Wicked Witch. She had her broom in one hand
Speaker 1: and then her other hand was pointing a lot. So
Speaker 1: I I have been told that's her. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's true. In my head, can in a hundred
Speaker 1: percent that's the Wicked Witch. And then I guess they
Speaker 1: made another one for the Hollywood Park or the Anaheim Park,
Speaker 1: but uh yeah, I likely think you know, she she
Speaker 1: landed over there. I'm totally cool with that. Yeah, I think. Uh,
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna adopt the same head cannon because
Speaker 1: Pirates is one of my favorite rides. I love the
Speaker 1: great movie ride. To think about that legacy living on
Speaker 1: under a different costume and uh skin, I think is brilliant,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna go with that too. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people would say that the So at one point
Speaker 1: you go to Casablanca and in a great movie ride
Speaker 1: and there was a plane there. It was basically recreating
Speaker 1: the scene that you know, you know, the problems don't
Speaker 1: amount to a hill of beans. And so there was
Speaker 1: a plane in the in the background that would like
Speaker 1: slowly spin up and stuff, and a lot of people said, like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's actually the plane from the movie. They would use
Speaker 1: that as fact. That was not the plane from the
Speaker 1: movie a hundred percent was not on the plane from
Speaker 1: the movie. As a matter of fact, the back of
Speaker 1: that plane ended up over at Jungle Cruise. So there's
Speaker 1: a crashed plane in Jungle Cruise, and the rear section
Speaker 1: of the plane is basically they split in half. Put
Speaker 1: half a Jungle Cruise half at movie ride. So do
Speaker 1: you ever hear that fact? That is a lie that
Speaker 1: I do love that both halves of the plane were
Speaker 1: existing in uh cast remember guided attractions, right, like, like
Speaker 1: that's one of the beautiful things about Jungle Cruise. It's
Speaker 1: a very corny ride, but it's still a ride where
Speaker 1: you get to see someone going through performance and if
Speaker 1: they haven't reached the Skipper dan Uh part of their career,
Speaker 1: and they can really be a lot of fun um.
Speaker 1: Like you say, it all depends on who you get
Speaker 1: and what kind of mood they're in. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: all human beings, but hopefully you get someone on a
Speaker 1: good day. Yeah. I heard one rumor that that plane
Speaker 1: might have been used, not obviously not in Casablanca, but
Speaker 1: possibly in one of the Tarzan films. But whether that's
Speaker 1: true or not, I don't know. It's just again, there
Speaker 1: is a Tarzan section in the or there was I
Speaker 1: can't use the present tense anymore in The Great Movie Ride,
Speaker 1: but they didn't use the plane in that one had
Speaker 1: to go in the Casa Blanket section. Stick around because
Speaker 1: we have a little bit more about The Great Movie
Speaker 1: Ride and and Disney and and Jack Pottilo to talk about,
Speaker 1: and we'll do that right after this break. This has
Speaker 1: been a great talk. I've really enjoyed it. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate your time. But one thing I really want to
Speaker 1: talk about before we wrap up is your podcast, Annual Pass,
Speaker 1: where you dedicate episodes to all things theme and amusement
Speaker 1: park oriented. There are episodes that are about specific attractions
Speaker 1: or shows. There are interviews with people who have worked
Speaker 1: at these various places or have even invented some of
Speaker 1: the attractions that people no one love today. And uh,
Speaker 1: you have two great co hosts. You've got Jeff and
Speaker 1: b K. So you've got Jeff, who's an old, grumpy
Speaker 1: man like myself. I think I think he and I
Speaker 1: were born a week apart. And then you've got b K,
Speaker 1: a young gun who has a totally different perspective and
Speaker 1: thinks of you two as her dad's. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Mannual pass is definitely one of
Speaker 1: those things where I was looking for something that like,
Speaker 1: what what could I make a podcast about that I'm
Speaker 1: passionate about? And if you have only heard me on
Speaker 1: this podcast here, you can tell that I love theme parks.
Speaker 1: And so I made a pitch about like, hey, let's
Speaker 1: do a show all about theme park attractions and then
Speaker 1: let's go into it. And we've been doing it now
Speaker 1: for about seventy episodes, and it's been so much fun,
Speaker 1: and the theme park community like, because you know, obviously
Speaker 1: there's a big theme park vlogging community, they've been so
Speaker 1: friendly and I was so nervous getting into it because
Speaker 1: I've been listening to you know, like Theme Park Stop
Speaker 1: and defunct land Yesterworld, you know, all of these amazing shows,
Speaker 1: and I've had the opportunity now to talk to these
Speaker 1: creators and everyone is sole and so nice, and just
Speaker 1: being in this space has been so much fun, and
Speaker 1: I think we're kind of finding our footing now. We're
Speaker 1: having a really good time with it. We're more of
Speaker 1: a lighthearted kind of look at things, but if you
Speaker 1: want to find out more about a specific attraction, we
Speaker 1: go into it. We do ride throughs, but like you said,
Speaker 1: we do interviews. As a matter of fact, we recorded
Speaker 1: one today with a woman who was super knowledgeable about
Speaker 1: Halloween Horror Knights and the lore of Halloween Horror Knights,
Speaker 1: and so we did a whole we're doing a whole
Speaker 1: episode on that, and it's just it's a lot of
Speaker 1: fun because you know, we, like you said, we've had
Speaker 1: Imagine ears on. We've had people designing Rise for Universal
Speaker 1: and hearing the stories about what goes into the making
Speaker 1: of these attractions, like we've Oddly enough, we've talked to
Speaker 1: two different gentlemen who had to pitch Steven Spielberg on
Speaker 1: attractions on different ones, one for one for Velocity Coaster,
Speaker 1: the Dress Park themed one, our Dress World themed one,
Speaker 1: and then one for Men in Black. So it's like
Speaker 1: and like hearing the stories. Apparently Steven Spielberg is a
Speaker 1: super nice guy, so that's cool. That's good to hear.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, it's been so much fun, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to it, I would love
Speaker 1: for that. That'd be fantastic. We are annual pass. You
Speaker 1: go to YouTube dot com slash annual Pass, or find
Speaker 1: us anywhere you get your podcast Spotify, rovert, rooster teeth
Speaker 1: dot com slash annual Pass, like wherever you want to
Speaker 1: go to find it, please give it a listen. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a lot of fun and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: as long as people are listening, I'm gonna keep making it.
Speaker 1: So that's the dream, at least, you know. Any the
Speaker 1: whole goal was to get my parent company to buy
Speaker 1: me a ticket to go to a theme park, so
Speaker 1: I still pay for my annual pass, I'll say that much.
Speaker 1: My my Disney annual passes so work for I heart
Speaker 1: and I have yet to to leverage that into concert tickets,
Speaker 1: but it's always in the back of my mind. Jack.
Speaker 1: Uh Yeah, Annual Pass is a great listen. I highly
Speaker 1: recommend it for people to go check out. It's first
Speaker 1: of all, you will I can't think of another word
Speaker 1: to describe Jack's performance a Annual Pass besides exuberant. I
Speaker 1: think that that is that is the appropriate word to
Speaker 1: you when you think that you're right throughs are so enthusiastic.
Speaker 1: That's what I love the most is that it's It's like,
Speaker 1: imagine the friendliest carnival barker walking you through the attraction
Speaker 1: that you've always wanted to be on, but you have it,
Speaker 1: and and I look forward to hearing a lot more.
Speaker 1: You've had some great guests and um and and all
Speaker 1: your topics are always fun. It's always fun to hear
Speaker 1: the interaction between you and the other hosts. So definitely
Speaker 1: do check that out. Um are are there are there
Speaker 1: any theme parks or attractions that you're eagerly looking forward
Speaker 1: to that you haven't experienced yet, either ones that are
Speaker 1: on the the cusp of coming out or just ones
Speaker 1: that exist but you haven't managed to get there. Man,
Speaker 1: I mean, really a lot of stuff outside the US.
Speaker 1: That's what that's what I want to do. Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been fortunate enough to go to Disneyland Paris and
Speaker 1: you know, Disney Studios Paris. Um. That was great. Actually
Speaker 1: this year we went to Thorpe Park in England, just
Speaker 1: south of Heathrow, which was really cool. I got to
Speaker 1: go on the saw ride and like the Walking Dead.
Speaker 1: The ride was like really intense. But apparently Alton Towers
Speaker 1: is the European parks, so we gotta go ordered to
Speaker 1: the London parks, so we gotta go to Alton Towers next.
Speaker 1: But anywhere in Japan, Shanghai, I mean, there's there's so
Speaker 1: many amazing things and a lot of stuff, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I try not to watch ride videos on stuff that
Speaker 1: I would like to go on someday. So I watched
Speaker 1: the Tron light Cycle right through because I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: probably not gonna go to Shanghai anytime soon. And then
Speaker 1: of course, like immediately later they're like, oh, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna put in an Epcot And that was six years ago,
Speaker 1: so we'll see if it ever actually does open um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I love any sort of theme park.
Speaker 1: I love small little like family mom and pop parks.
Speaker 1: I love the big ones. I'll ride anything. At this point,
Speaker 1: I've pretty much given myself up or I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't fear being on an attraction. I love
Speaker 1: them and so um that's a blast. So I will
Speaker 1: do anything, like so with so many people like, oh,
Speaker 1: you to come to this park like I would love to.
Speaker 1: I would love to, Like I'm never gonna say no,
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm always I'm always up for whatever I
Speaker 1: want to go to stuff. So UM, I'm actually going
Speaker 1: to six Flags Great America, the one near Chicago, UM
Speaker 1: later this month, and then ideally we're going out to
Speaker 1: Halloween Horror Nights sometime either towards the end of September
Speaker 1: or October. So I'll be back out in Florida hopefully
Speaker 1: soon to go to some parks and you know, make
Speaker 1: that annual pass pay for itself. If you get down
Speaker 1: to six Flags over Georgia, you can you can ride
Speaker 1: what was formerly known as the Monster Plantation. And then
Speaker 1: I'll tell you all about the problematic history of that
Speaker 1: particular attraction, because that that has undergone a pretty massive
Speaker 1: thematic change, as you would imagine from an attraction that
Speaker 1: was previously known as Monster plantation set in Georgia. Um,
Speaker 1: then it became Splash Mountains. Okay, we'll make that Princess
Speaker 1: in the Frog one day. All right. Well, well, Jack,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on the show. It
Speaker 1: was a pleasure having you on. And uh yeah, feel
Speaker 1: free to come back anytime. We'll talk theme parks till
Speaker 1: the cows come home. The pleasure is all mine. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Anytime I get a chance to talk
Speaker 1: theme parks, I'm up for it. Once again, I want
Speaker 1: to thank Jack Patello for coming onto this show. You
Speaker 1: know when he co founded Achievement Hunter. That was back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, the summer of two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: which is the exact same summer that this show launched.
Speaker 1: So he and I have been in related business for
Speaker 1: a very long time. He has seen phenomenal success and
Speaker 1: has done amazing things. Seriously, you need to go and
Speaker 1: check out his charity work because it's truly inspiring stuff
Speaker 1: and it gotten me to participate on my own, not
Speaker 1: in any like big way many times, so check that
Speaker 1: out too. It's for a good cause. It's for children's healthcare,
Speaker 1: which is obviously a great cause. And yeah, check out
Speaker 1: the annual pass as well. It's a fun podcast, and uh,
Speaker 1: if you love theme parks and you love learning more
Speaker 1: about the attractions and what they're like and and trivia
Speaker 1: about them, it's a it's a really fun listen, So
Speaker 1: check those out. If you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with me and suggest topics that I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of Tech Stuff, tell you what you can do.
Speaker 1: You can download the I Heart Radio app. It's free
Speaker 1: to download. Navigate over to Text Stuff. There's a little
Speaker 1: microphone icon you can click on, and there you can
Speaker 1: just leave me a message of up the thirty seconds
Speaker 1: in length, or you can reach out to me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W.
Speaker 1: And I hope to do more interviews in the future.
Speaker 1: They're a little challenging because you know, scheduling can be uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's tough. People are busy, and and so
Speaker 1: I will do my best because I love having someone
Speaker 1: else on the show to talk to get their perspective,
Speaker 1: learn things that I can't find out just through you know,
Speaker 1: research on my own, because these are the people who
Speaker 1: are actually there. I want to do more of that
Speaker 1: in the future. If you have people that you think
Speaker 1: I should have on as a guest. Send those my way.
Speaker 1: I can't promise that I'll get them, but I can
Speaker 1: at least try, and with that, I'll talk to you again,
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an I heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. H