Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. He there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are You?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: Originally I had planned to bring to you an episode
Speaker 1: about the quote unquote godfather of AI, doctor Jeffrey Hinton,
Speaker 1: that is still in the works. It is still on
Speaker 1: this way, but had a little bit of a family
Speaker 1: emergency that happened late last week and it's still kind
Speaker 1: of playing out. That has interfered with my ability to
Speaker 1: bring a new episode. Everyone is okay and slowly getting better,
Speaker 1: so I don't want anyone to worry about that. But
Speaker 1: because of that, my attention is somewhat diverted. So rather
Speaker 1: than go without an episode in two, I thought I
Speaker 1: would bring to you this episode that we published in
Speaker 1: September last year that is about the Great Movie Ride,
Speaker 1: the former ride at what used to be Disney's MGM
Speaker 1: Studios and now it's called Disney Hollywood Studios. And Jack
Speaker 1: Pattillo of Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter joined the show
Speaker 1: because he acted. He performed as a cast member at
Speaker 1: Disney as part of that ride and he talks about
Speaker 1: his experience, and we talk a little bit about how
Speaker 1: the ride works as well, and I grouse a bit
Speaker 1: about the gradual de theming of Disney Disney parks. But
Speaker 1: that's because I'm an old man and I get grouchy
Speaker 1: when stuff changes. Stuff is allowed to change. Parks are
Speaker 1: living things. Okay, let's get to this rerun episode and
Speaker 1: we'll be back with new episodes for the rest of
Speaker 1: the week. And yeah, that's it. Let's go, y'all. I
Speaker 1: got something special today. I've brought in a special guest,
Speaker 1: a guest that, frankly, I could have asked to be
Speaker 1: on Tech Stuff for numerous reasons. I could have asked
Speaker 1: him because he's a content creator. He's a podcaster, he's
Speaker 1: a co founder of an incredibly popular network of content.
Speaker 1: He is an organizer for massive charity events that work
Speaker 1: with organizations like Extra Life. I mean, the list goes
Speaker 1: on and on. But the reason I asked him here
Speaker 1: is because he's also a lifelong connoisseur of theme parks
Speaker 1: and a former Disney cast member. Welcome to Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: mister Jack Battillo.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, sheeez,
Speaker 2: thank you for all of the list of things I've done,
Speaker 2: I've never felt older than I do.
Speaker 1: Right now, how about it hit you with this, Jack,
Speaker 1: It has been twenty years since you worked for Disney.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Yeah, two thousand and two, man, it
Speaker 2: was spring of two thousand and two is when I
Speaker 2: was out there the first time. So I worked. I
Speaker 2: did the Walds New World College Program, which is a
Speaker 2: fantastic program. Highly recommend it if you're a college kid
Speaker 2: looking to not have responsibility for a semester. I did
Speaker 2: it twice. I did it back in two thousand and
Speaker 2: two and again in two thousand and five. And both
Speaker 2: of the rides I worked on are shut down now,
Speaker 2: which is sad. I worked over at it was Disney
Speaker 2: MGM Studios and now it's Disney's Hollywood Studios. I worked at
Speaker 2: the Great Movie Ride, which is now Mickey Minnie's Runaway Railway.
Speaker 2: And I worked at the Back Loot Tour, specifically the
Speaker 2: water Tank portion. Right, I got to talk about Michael
Speaker 2: Bay and Pearl Harbor, and that is now where Batsu is,
Speaker 2: where all of the Star Wars stuff is, or so
Speaker 2: it's I think between there maybe Toy story Land. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like in that general area. It's basically it's
Speaker 2: just walking path now where I was.
Speaker 1: Right, it's one of the hottest sections of the park
Speaker 1: when you're out there because there's absolutely no shade and
Speaker 1: it's just a massive cooking surface that has tourists on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I thought today we could talk a bit about
Speaker 1: the Great Movie Ride in particular, and talk because there
Speaker 1: were some really cool innovative technologies that were incorporated into
Speaker 1: that experience. But I also want to hear from you,
Speaker 1: as a cast member who worked on the ride, what
Speaker 1: the cast member experience was, because as someone who has
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 2: Sure my pitch for the Great Movie Ride after someone
Speaker 2: would walk up, after a guest would walk up and say,
Speaker 2: is this a ride? And it's like, it's called the
Speaker 2: Great Movie Ride. Yes, it is a ride. It's a
Speaker 2: slow moving tram ride through the movies. It's twenty two
Speaker 2: minutes long, never goes more than four miles per hour,
Speaker 2: and yeah, and there are live actors. It's one of
Speaker 2: the few. It's well, at the time, it was one
Speaker 2: of the few toured are excuse me, guided attractions, so
Speaker 2: like Jungle Cruise, the Kilimanjaro Safaris, over an Animal Kingdom,
Speaker 2: those that are really the only ones left at the time.
Speaker 2: King Kong Over at Universal Studios had it as well,
Speaker 2: and we were a guided tour. You had a host
Speaker 2: that would staying there and spiel and then at one point,
Speaker 2: you know what, it would change up. But it was
Speaker 2: a slow moving ride that takes you through some of
Speaker 2: the most classic movies of all time, from Singing in
Speaker 2: the Rain to Mary Poppins to kind of the gangster
Speaker 2: era Westerns, Aliens, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Wizard of Oz,
Speaker 2: all kinds of amazing things with us some really awesome animatronics. Well,
Speaker 2: when I described the ride, I would always say, this
Speaker 2: is the ride that Walt Disney would have made if
Speaker 2: he had access to these fancy animatronics. It felt like
Speaker 2: very much a classic Disney ride and I always love
Speaker 2: that and a lot of people they were fans. They
Speaker 2: weren't as big of fans because it's not a thrill ride.
Speaker 2: It's not a huge, you know, like where it's it's
Speaker 2: not a you know, like rock and roller coaster. It's
Speaker 2: nothing super super fast. But I liked it because it
Speaker 2: kind of it was informative. Look informative, you gotta learn
Speaker 2: a little bit about movies and uh and also it
Speaker 2: was got some spectacle, some like these magical things happen
Speaker 2: and and it's all over the course of twenty two minutes,
Speaker 2: so it tells a nice little story compact within the ride.
Speaker 2: And uh, I really really loved it, and it's sad
Speaker 2: to see it go. Mickey and Minnie is nice, like
Speaker 2: it's it's a fun ride. It's it's kind of cool
Speaker 2: that we got replaced by the very first Mickey Mouse
Speaker 2: theme park ride ever, which is kind of cool, and
Speaker 2: that's coming out to Anaheim as well now pretty soon.
Speaker 2: But uh, but yeah, it's it was a very special
Speaker 2: attraction and I and I miss it, but at least
Speaker 2: the facade is still there. I still have my memories
Speaker 2: of the Chinese theater out in Disney's Hollywood Studios and
Speaker 2: so h and there's there's lots of little fun easter
Speaker 2: eggs out in front, even even things that are still
Speaker 2: there to this day. But I don't know if there's
Speaker 2: any any Easter eggs inside of Mickey and Mini's of
Speaker 2: the Great Movie Ride, you know, like I'm sure there's
Speaker 2: something hidden away, squirreled away somewhere that I just don't
Speaker 2: know about. But yeah, it's it's It was good time.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of fun time. It was one
Speaker 2: of my favorite sort of times in my life. I was,
Speaker 2: I think twenty years old. I had no responsibility. I
Speaker 2: drove out from Texas all the way out to Orlando
Speaker 2: and had a great time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the the theming was phenomenal. You had,
Speaker 1: like you said, the Chinese Theater is the facade. They
Speaker 1: couldn't actually use Grahman's Chinese Theater as the name because
Speaker 1: Grammans 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 area,
Speaker 1: so you could actually see like the arc from Raiders
Speaker 1: of the Lost Arc and things of that nature. And
Speaker 1: you also were shown trailers for some of the movies
Speaker 1: that were going to be featured within the actual ride itself.
Speaker 1: And as you say, Jack, it told a story, which
Speaker 1: to me was was the thing that Disney did better
Speaker 1: than anyone else for the longest time. Now we've started
Speaker 1: to see other parks kind of pick up that torch
Speaker 1: and run with it, but for the longest time, Disney
Speaker 1: was just that was the king when it came to
Speaker 1: an attraction that also tells a story, and not only that,
Speaker 1: but puts the guest 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 as a cast member,
Speaker 1: what were some of your duties, Like what roles did
Speaker 1: you work when you were working on that ride.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when I was there, they actually were just
Speaker 2: bringing in a new system. I think it's called CRS.
Speaker 2: It was a computer system that they would give you
Speaker 2: a list of roles. So they had input a list
Speaker 2: of roles into this computer and the computer would track
Speaker 2: who needs to go on break, who needs to go
Speaker 2: on lunch, and stuff like that. So if you were
Speaker 2: on break, you know, once you're done you would go
Speaker 2: to this machine and you say I'm back, and it
Speaker 2: would print out a slip, and that slip would say
Speaker 2: you go to position A and then you go there,
Speaker 2: hand the slip off to that person. They would then
Speaker 2: move to position B and waterfall down to the person
Speaker 2: at the bottom. Wouldn't take break, which actually was pretty
Speaker 2: cool because you never stood in one spot for too long.
Speaker 2: You were always moving around. It was always kind of fresh.
Speaker 2: You never really got tired of it. But I mean,
Speaker 2: we did everything on the attraction, the main tour guides
Speaker 2: or the people, the suspenders and the hat. They would
Speaker 2: do everything from running the vehicles like or like driving
Speaker 2: the vehicles, doing the spiel, to all the to working
Speaker 2: the fronts, like working entrance as well. So we would
Speaker 2: put on this orange jacket that would go on over
Speaker 2: our tour guide outfit and change our hats like this
Speaker 2: orange hat, and that was like our host spot. Basically,
Speaker 2: the only thing a typical cast member wouldn't do on
Speaker 2: Great Movie Ride was be the bandit or the gangster.
Speaker 2: Those were specialized roles that if you were the bandit,
Speaker 2: you were the bandit all day. If you were the gangster,
Speaker 2: you were I mean, you were the gangster all day,
Speaker 2: but basically those roles, but they would be trained for
Speaker 2: both of them. The cast members would be trained for
Speaker 2: both of those roles. At the time when I was there,
Speaker 2: college program employees are cast members couldn't be the bandit
Speaker 2: or the gangster. I think they changed that later on
Speaker 2: just due to paffing stuff, but that which was which
Speaker 2: was sad because I always wanted to be the bandit
Speaker 2: or gangster. But you actually had to be firearm trained
Speaker 2: in order to be either of those characters because they
Speaker 2: did have an actual pistol that fired blanks. And yeah,
Speaker 2: that was the one thing that I ain't gonna do.
Speaker 2: But you know, everyone everyone there was family. Everyone knew
Speaker 2: everyone like the It was a it was a healthy
Speaker 2: mix of these old timers that have been around. I
Speaker 2: say old timers, what are the people that have been around,
Speaker 2: you know for like five to ten years. We had
Speaker 2: a gentleman there who opened the attraction back in eighty nine,
Speaker 2: who was still there in two thousand and two, and
Speaker 2: then a bunch of college kids. So like basically they
Speaker 2: would keep it. We would keep it fresh because every
Speaker 2: six months or so there'd be new new blood and
Speaker 2: so it never got really boring and U and even
Speaker 2: when I was there, I did they extended one so
Speaker 2: I went from January all the way to August. So
Speaker 2: I saw like summer kids coming in and like the
Speaker 2: new batch of people coming in for the fall semester,
Speaker 2: and it was just fun. It was it was just
Speaker 2: a blast. And yeah, I mean there's some really cool
Speaker 2: things that the cast members got to do. Now. One
Speaker 2: one my first bit of trivia for you. So the
Speaker 2: vehicles themselves, they were on a track. You couldn't see
Speaker 2: the track. It was actually a there was like sensors
Speaker 2: in the vehicle and that the vehicle would turn and
Speaker 2: there was an invisible track kind of in between. There
Speaker 2: was nothing connecting the actual vehicle to the floor, but
Speaker 2: it would just kind of stay on top of it.
Speaker 2: I don't know the full technology behind it. So it
Speaker 2: was kind of like Rise of the Resistance where there's
Speaker 2: just like a trackless course, except there was like a
Speaker 2: line of metal or something. There was something keeping it
Speaker 2: where it needed to go. But the tech guys there,
Speaker 2: the engineers who worked in the attraction, which they actually
Speaker 2: we had a whole engineering bay where they would fix
Speaker 2: up vehicles and fix animatronics and stuff. Those guys could
Speaker 2: actually disable that and literally drive it around. Like hypothetically
Speaker 2: they could have taken one of these things out into
Speaker 2: the park and has driven it around if they wanted to,
Speaker 2: which would have been amazing, but but no, it's so
Speaker 2: that was kind of cool. And the vehicles themselves, they
Speaker 2: were seven rows there. There was two vehicles. There was
Speaker 2: basically it's technically a tractor trailer where you have the
Speaker 2: front vehicle had all the thes and everything in it
Speaker 2: in the back trailer or the back vehicle was literally
Speaker 2: just a trailer, had nothing in it other than wheels,
Speaker 2: and so the front wind would pull it. There were
Speaker 2: four speeds on it, so it was either stopped one, two, three,
Speaker 2: or four, and depending on where we were in the track,
Speaker 2: we would go those different speeds. And and also the
Speaker 2: track could it could it could actually activate different speeds,
Speaker 2: so like at some points, if you put it on four,
Speaker 2: it would just go, and then there were sensors that
Speaker 2: would trigger it to actually slow down the vehicle to
Speaker 2: a stop, so like you know, you could be focused
Speaker 2: on spieling and the ride itself would come to a
Speaker 2: stop and then you would throw it into park. Like
Speaker 2: it wouldn't just kick off on its own. You have
Speaker 2: to throw it in a park and restart it to
Speaker 2: get it to go again. And that was important when
Speaker 2: you were speeling going. It's like you know the gangster
Speaker 2: alley or bandit area and but yeah, goad man, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to think of all the easter eggs. It it's
Speaker 2: been twenty years, been two decades since I've been out there, man, So.
Speaker 1: Well, you're doing great. I mean, I can give a
Speaker 1: little more context with the ride system. So the system
Speaker 1: that was under essentially under the floor, really embedded in
Speaker 1: the floor was a guide wire that would emit radio
Speaker 1: frequency radiation, so just radio waves radiation. Radiation is radiation
Speaker 1: because it is part of the electromagnetic frequency, but it's
Speaker 1: not like radioactive. There is a dopay, yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: non ionizing. Don't worry, Jack, The Grave ride did not
Speaker 1: doom you, no, okayo. The it's just radio frequency radiation.
Speaker 1: So it's it's r F. It's like the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing you would use for walkie talkies or radios
Speaker 1: or anything along those lines. And the trams had within
Speaker 1: them essentially sensors that could pick up that frequency, and
Speaker 1: if the frequency would start to drift, like if it
Speaker 1: started to get too weak on one side, that was
Speaker 1: a signal to the tram that it needed to make
Speaker 1: an adjustment and turn in order to return the signal
Speaker 1: to its strongest point in the center of its sensors.
Speaker 1: So it gets a little weak on the right side,
Speaker 1: that means it's time for you to turn left because
Speaker 1: of your signal is actually moved big 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 something like two thousand feet long
Speaker 1: something like that. It was crazy long. It was like
Speaker 1: you said, twenty two minutes the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The vehicles themselves too, they were all electric, and
Speaker 2: so there were paths throughout the attraction at different points
Speaker 2: where you would stop that magnets would actually connect the
Speaker 2: batteries to the charger. So at the dock, the vehicles
Speaker 2: would park and an actual like magnet would pull the
Speaker 2: charger up to the bottom of the vehicle in order
Speaker 2: to actually charge up the vehicle. And that there were
Speaker 2: different spots throughout the ride that it would do that.
Speaker 2: So it would do it there at dock, it would
Speaker 2: do it in front of the gangster area, in front
Speaker 2: of the bandit area, in front of a Nubis, which
Speaker 2: was the scene where the like the bandit or the
Speaker 2: gangster would go up and turn back into the the
Speaker 2: cast member. And I want to say Wizard of Oz
Speaker 2: had one, and then the finale had one. That may
Speaker 2: be too many. I think we god have five vehicles
Speaker 2: running at the same time, so maybe not a Newbis,
Speaker 2: but but yeah, they were. There were a whole lot
Speaker 2: of them, and we would park them at night, so
Speaker 2: like they we would basically when we were shutting off
Speaker 2: for the night, you would take all the vehicles and
Speaker 2: put them in certain spots, park them and then they
Speaker 2: would just recharge overnight. Like I don't. When I was there,
Speaker 2: we never had a vehicle die due to battery loss,
Speaker 2: so that's I imagine it is a good sign. Because
Speaker 2: those things were big and they were very heavy, so
Speaker 2: moving them without power would be pretty tricky, I imagine.
Speaker 1: Right when you think of fourteen rows filled with people,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of extra weight on top of the
Speaker 1: fact that these things are so big and bulky. So yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if there's a guest like me. Pandemic has not
Speaker 1: been kind jacket carrying around extra pounds. But that is
Speaker 1: a great point. I love that you brought that in
Speaker 1: because that was something I did not actually come across
Speaker 1: in my research. I didn't even think about it, but
Speaker 1: of course it makes sense. I mean, if you're running
Speaker 1: on an electric vehicle, you have to be able to
Speaker 1: at least top off the charge a little bit so
Speaker 1: that you can run it for as long as the
Speaker 1: park is open, and as we know, Disney parks can
Speaker 1: be open for many, many hours. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: more about the Great Movie Ride and Disney Theme parks
Speaker 1: after this quick break. This ride system was originally developed
Speaker 1: over at the Universe of Energy at Epcot, another attraction
Speaker 1: that no longer exists. The Guardians of the Galaxy has
Speaker 1: 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 moving theaters. These did not have an actual tour
Speaker 1: guide as part of it either that they needed to
Speaker 1: be able to orient themselves properly to become kind of
Speaker 1: like theater seating for the movie sections of the attraction,
Speaker 1: and then go back into a configuration where they can
Speaker 1: move through the rest of it. So you had to
Speaker 1: have almost the sort of ballet of these large pieces moving,
Speaker 1: and they determined they couldn't use physical tracks. If they did,
Speaker 1: they would have to have a switching system to switch
Speaker 1: each one physically to where it needed to go. And
Speaker 1: it was just going to be too complicated, too loud,
Speaker 1: and too expensive, and so they had to invent a technology.
Speaker 1: So necessity is the mother of invention. Later on, as
Speaker 1: I understand it, they actually replaced the guide wire with
Speaker 1: electronic pucks that essentially did the same thing. It just
Speaker 1: wasn't a continuous wire anymore, but served the same purpose.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad that you were able to work on
Speaker 1: it in that span of time. Obviously, it was a
Speaker 1: little different from when it first opened. The very first
Speaker 1: sequence that you encounter when you're on the ride after
Speaker 1: you've entered into the movie section is a Busby Berkeley
Speaker 1: footlight parade experience. When that originally opened, the characters that
Speaker 1: you see behind a scrim.
Speaker 2: The birthday cake, the birthday kid.
Speaker 1: Originally those rotated, right, you had yeah, every other one
Speaker 1: would rotate.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Buzzby Berkeley he was known for doing. He was
Speaker 2: actually a drill sergeant in the military, and he ended
Speaker 2: up making movies in Hollywood when they were all about spectacle,
Speaker 2: and so he would do these elaborate choreograph numbers with
Speaker 2: hundreds of people. And in Footlight Prey, there was a
Speaker 2: scene where it was a hole like it was a
Speaker 2: pole scene, so it was all these women in matching
Speaker 2: swimsuits and they would do choreograph dances and water and stuff.
Speaker 2: In one of the scenes they came out of the
Speaker 2: water in this sort of birthday cake looking thing. It
Speaker 2: was three tiers with women, you know, like in circles
Speaker 2: around it, and so we had that. It was the
Speaker 2: first thing you saw when you first pulled into the
Speaker 2: Gray Movie ride back in eighty nine. On it open,
Speaker 2: you would that was like you would go in, go
Speaker 2: through this beautiful proscenium, all a neon of you know,
Speaker 2: like because the idea is you're entering the movie. So
Speaker 2: it's like you go through the screen and you're part
Speaker 2: of the movie now, and yeah, right there on your
Speaker 2: right side. Initially, apparently there was water and there were
Speaker 2: bubbles and these these things would spin and it was awesome.
Speaker 2: They actually they weren't animatronics because they were just mannequins.
Speaker 2: Because there were so many of them. But yeah, apparently
Speaker 2: that was the big thing that would falter the most.
Speaker 2: It kept breaking over and over and over again. So
Speaker 2: ultimately they just ended up kind of walking in place,
Speaker 2: and I think initially they just they left the bubbles going,
Speaker 2: and then ultimately they ended up putting a scrim in
Speaker 2: front of it and projecting images of them kind of
Speaker 2: doing their different dances and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, I would imagine that trying to rig
Speaker 1: up a rotating fountain, which is essentially what you had there,
Speaker 1: is complicated on the best of days, and there are
Speaker 1: stories that there were frequent issues where there would be
Speaker 1: flooding and that would obviously be a problem for moving
Speaker 1: giant electric trams through. And yeah, you can understand why
Speaker 1: they nixed that after some troubles, but it is kind
Speaker 1: of sad because it was one of those nifty effects
Speaker 1: that you couldn't see anywhere else, and it also was
Speaker 1: the first thing you saw on this journey to the movies.
Speaker 1: Scaled back has slightly less of an impact, I think,
Speaker 1: as far as the effect goes, But then you move
Speaker 1: on and you start to encounter the various animatronics, and
Speaker 1: there are two major types in the ride the most famous,
Speaker 1: arguably being the Wicked Witch of the West and the
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz segment, because she was the very first
Speaker 1: A one hundred animatronic that Disney ever used. So like
Speaker 1: the Terminator, there are designations for different generations of animatronics,
Speaker 1: and this was the first of the A one hundred generation,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure you got schooled on all of that
Speaker 1: as you were joining the attraction.
Speaker 2: A little bit. I mean, we knew she was special
Speaker 2: because the amount of movement and like she had like
Speaker 2: dexterity in her fingers. That was a big thing, because
Speaker 2: she would point at you, which was great. It was
Speaker 2: interesting though, because she was by far the most elaborate
Speaker 2: animatronic at any of the parks for a while, and
Speaker 2: she was saddled up next to the Munchkins, who were
Speaker 2: some of the most basic animatronics. Citywhere And one fun
Speaker 2: one fun story is when before we opened, or when
Speaker 2: we were closing for the night, we'd still rotate the
Speaker 2: vehicles through and the show's scenes will still happen, but
Speaker 2: there'd be no sound. And so if you know anything
Speaker 2: about old Disney animatronics, when the servos to open the
Speaker 2: mouths would go, it would just make these clicking noise.
Speaker 2: So you'd pull in a Wizard of oz bey sitting there,
Speaker 2: it was quiet. Then all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 2: that'd be follow the Ellopic road, but you wouldn't hear that.
Speaker 2: You just hear the clicklick click click click click. It's
Speaker 2: from like all around you. It was really a bit disheartening. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that that was definitely weird, definitely strange that. I
Speaker 2: think that was probably the scariest thing outside of Toto.
Speaker 2: When Toto was off, she would just look at you
Speaker 2: like the she had like these crazy fangs. I think
Speaker 2: Toto is a female, but she would have these crazy
Speaker 2: fangs and she just looked like demented.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was. It was really weird. But uh, but yeah,
Speaker 2: that was fun. Uh. I've heard a story. I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's true or not. I have no way
Speaker 2: to verify this, but apparently so, you know, the Wicked Witch.
Speaker 2: She would move around a whole lot, lots of movements.
Speaker 2: She had her broom, she would pull and stuff. Supposedly,
Speaker 2: one day something got loose and she basically whipped her
Speaker 2: arm around and her wrists snapped and her hand just
Speaker 2: kind of dangled off and the hydraulic fluid in her
Speaker 2: wrist started just hosing down the ride vehicle in front
Speaker 2: of her, so essentially like she broke her wrist and
Speaker 2: it started spraying all of the guests with her blood. Essentially,
Speaker 2: that was one of the very few shut the ride
Speaker 2: down and just evacuate from where you're positioned. We would
Speaker 2: have multiple time where we'd have to shut the ride
Speaker 2: down because something like minor would happen where we just
Speaker 2: rotate through the people that were stolen the attraction. There's
Speaker 2: not enough to like, you know, kick people out, but
Speaker 2: occasionally a door would break and it's like, well, we're
Speaker 2: not moving, and you know, it was a thing where
Speaker 2: you would have to move out of a section for
Speaker 2: the next vehicle to move in. And when those happened,
Speaker 2: those are always fun. They're only happened to me twice
Speaker 2: over the eight months or so I was there, where
Speaker 2: you know, you would ask the guests to stay there
Speaker 2: and then you know, ultimately you'd have to go make
Speaker 2: sure like a manager would come by like okay, go
Speaker 2: ahead and clear them out and then they would open
Speaker 2: the doors. And I always made it a big point
Speaker 2: of any time, like the two times that happened they said,
Speaker 2: if that happens, you need to make sure your guests
Speaker 2: are happy. So if they want to go take photos
Speaker 2: with Clin Eastwood, let them go take photos with the
Speaker 2: cliniast would as long as they're not climbing on anything,
Speaker 2: they can do whatever they want. And so some people
Speaker 2: out there have some really good photos of like John
Speaker 2: Wayne and his giant horse and the you know, like
Speaker 2: standing over by Gangster area that it's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: you're not normally supposed to be there. So that was
Speaker 2: always a big thing, you know. It was always about
Speaker 2: like going out of your way to be like, hey,
Speaker 2: we had an issue. Sorry. You know, at the time
Speaker 2: I was there, a great movie ride didn't have fast passed.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like, you know, come come back
Speaker 2: when you can. We'd love to have you back. My
Speaker 2: dog is losing its mind downstairs.
Speaker 1: That's fine. Minus too, it's it's they're just they're just
Speaker 1: co hosting.
Speaker 2: That's fine, they're excited.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the uh, it's it's that also reminds me like
Speaker 1: I've only had that sort of experience happened at Disney,
Speaker 1: I think maybe two times once when I was this
Speaker 1: happens pretty regularly, but I was on the People Mover
Speaker 1: when the lights on Space Mountain were all on, so
Speaker 1: you can actually see the track, and it's it's insane
Speaker 1: how closely and tightly packed that track is, to the
Speaker 1: point where you're thinking, I'm going to ride this differently
Speaker 1: the next time I'm on everything's gonna get tucked in
Speaker 1: because it's wild.
Speaker 2: It's wild, like the re entry tube. You can just
Speaker 2: touch it. I can just reach up and touch it.
Speaker 2: It's like that should not happen. And like I imagine now,
Speaker 2: like legally that couldn't happen. I'm sure as grandfathered in
Speaker 2: by something. But like there's you can just reach out
Speaker 2: and touch stuff on that track, and when you're pitch
Speaker 2: black and you can't see anything, like you hit something
Speaker 2: at speed, that's not good. So I can imagine the
Speaker 2: amount of padding they have on all of the all
Speaker 2: the various support structures that you can't see.
Speaker 1: Typically, Yeah, the only other time it ever happened was
Speaker 1: on Flights of Passage, the Avatar ride, where it just
Speaker 1: the the video shut down, maybe like we were maybe
Speaker 1: thirty seconds from the end of the ride. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was my first time ever writing it, so I didn't
Speaker 1: know at the time. But I was like, well, we've
Speaker 1: been going for a while, this thing was probably about
Speaker 1: to wrap up, and a cast member came on and
Speaker 1: there happened to be in the group that we were in,
Speaker 1: a VIP group who had a huge amount of money
Speaker 1: in order to do this, so they had us sit there,
Speaker 1: they restarted the ride. We rode the whole so I
Speaker 1: wrote I got to ride at one point eight times
Speaker 1: the first time, and then as we're leaving, they gave
Speaker 1: us all like like a priority fast pass digital fast
Speaker 1: passes because that was when we were getting to the
Speaker 1: point we're using magic bands. So yeah, Disney really does
Speaker 1: go a long way to trying to to make the
Speaker 1: guest experience magical, as they say they.
Speaker 2: Certainly certainly did. I don't know how much that. It
Speaker 2: seems like nowadays things are you know, if you gettle
Speaker 2: different is a way they get Yeah, if there's a
Speaker 2: way they can charge you for it, they're going to
Speaker 2: charge you for it. If you can afford for it
Speaker 2: to be magical. Yeah, I mean, I'm I still had
Speaker 2: my annual pass. I still you know, I'm a you know,
Speaker 2: multi year annual pass holder. I still enjoy going to
Speaker 2: the parks. I participate in the run Disney events. I
Speaker 2: do a lot of stuff through Disney, but it feels
Speaker 2: like as of late, they've kind of let stuff lied
Speaker 2: and that's frustrating to me as as you know, as
Speaker 2: an annual passal, as a fan. It's just like it
Speaker 2: feels like, especially right now, Disney is at a point
Speaker 2: where they think that like they're kind of sitting back
Speaker 2: and like, we're just making lots of money and people
Speaker 2: love all of our stuff, and I don't think they're
Speaker 2: looking down the road, like right now, literally down the
Speaker 2: road down I four. Universal is building a brand new
Speaker 2: theme park this opening up in twenty twenty five. That's
Speaker 2: gonna be the new hotness. And unless Disney literally announces
Speaker 2: something at D twenty three this week or next week
Speaker 2: that hey, we're gonna have something to counter that they're
Speaker 2: gonna be caught with their pants down. I think it's
Speaker 2: it's gonna be very interesting the next you know, the
Speaker 2: the mid twenty twenties of theme parks in Orlando is
Speaker 2: gonna be very very interesting. And I don't know how
Speaker 2: much longer Disney can just kind of rest on their
Speaker 2: laurels of what they've gotten away with so far, anyway.
Speaker 2: That has nothing to do with great movie ride, but
Speaker 2: that's a national side.
Speaker 1: It kind of does because there there been ebbs and
Speaker 1: flows at the Disney Yes, right. It all depends on
Speaker 1: really the executive leadership team and how they value investing
Speaker 1: in the parks versus kind of you know, coasting on
Speaker 1: that perhaps and focusing on other parts of the company,
Speaker 1: and that obviously changes on various regimes. There was a period,
Speaker 1: a dark period in the Walt Disney World past, where
Speaker 1: essentially all the executives who were in charge of the
Speaker 1: parks 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
Speaker 1: character but they didn't generate revenue were essentially stripped out,
Speaker 1: so that you had just very long shops on either side.
Speaker 2: The Mega Emporium. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So there are issues like that that have been going
Speaker 1: on for a while. So it's not like this is
Speaker 1: a sudden decline, but it's certainly the pandemic kind of
Speaker 1: brings things into sharp relief because you can see how
Speaker 1: things were going pre pandemic versus Disney's response to the
Speaker 1: pandemic and then post pandemic. I mean, I don't really
Speaker 1: think we're in post pandemic, but everyone, yeah, argue we are.
Speaker 2: So it's also, I mean the thing is now right,
Speaker 2: you know, right now, it's we're getting this bounce because
Speaker 2: we had two years of people basically not going on vacation,
Speaker 2: saving up all their money and I mean, or not
Speaker 2: go anywhere and saving up money. And now we're seeing
Speaker 2: people spend that money. It's like, oh, we we've been
Speaker 2: locked up for two years, Let's go to disney World.
Speaker 2: And so I think we're seeing this sort of this
Speaker 2: this false positive kind of thing where I think, like
Speaker 2: right now it's like Disney's like, oh my gosh, record
Speaker 2: profits and huge numbers going to the parks, and it's
Speaker 2: like that's not going to sustain I don't think. And
Speaker 2: you know, like tron is gonna bring some people back,
Speaker 2: but after that, it's kind of what do you got, man?
Speaker 2: I mean like cosmic Rewind was a lot of fun,
Speaker 2: but Epcot is a wreck right now, yep. And I
Speaker 2: mean then you see stuff, I mean, like you know,
Speaker 2: I love Epcot and seeing you know, Harmonious is a
Speaker 2: great show, but those barges, I like Eisner never would
Speaker 2: have let those barges be out in the water like
Speaker 2: that ruins so many sight lines and even like, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just I'm going off on a weird but it's
Speaker 2: kind of it feels like, you know, Disney from what
Speaker 2: I knew growing up, like I was, I went to
Speaker 2: Disney Parks when I was, you know, a kid in
Speaker 2: the nineties, and I have amazing rose colored memories of that,
Speaker 2: and then working there in the early two thousands, like
Speaker 2: that was sort of like the cherry on top. And
Speaker 2: now as an adult, I can go back and I
Speaker 2: can appreciate it from a different perspective. And I understand
Speaker 2: a lot of these decisions, but I don't think they're
Speaker 2: the right decisions to be made, you know. And so
Speaker 2: it's kind of like like, oh, well, you know this
Speaker 2: sort of the you know, you can have a one
Speaker 2: slice of cake now or wait, you know, two hours
Speaker 2: to have a full cake. You know, They're like they
Speaker 2: just want their slice of cake right now, and it's
Speaker 2: like no, no, you gotta get prepped for this day.
Speaker 2: You gotta have it over multiple years. You got to
Speaker 2: look at you know.
Speaker 1: Well, because if you get to a point where you
Speaker 1: have you dishearten people like yourself. And I'm also an
Speaker 1: annual pass holder. I'm also a Disney Vacation Club member.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so I have spent a lot of money
Speaker 1: with MoU's house. So but yeah, you start to you
Speaker 1: start to feel like the what you might have thought
Speaker 1: of as an investment before. It's almost like when you
Speaker 1: go to a really expensive college and then afterward you
Speaker 1: get a letter from them saying, hey, can you donate money.
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, I gave you so much money. I
Speaker 1: don't need to give you more money. We'll be right
Speaker 1: back with more about the Great Movie Ride and related
Speaker 1: stuff after this break. One of the things I found
Speaker 1: very disheartening personally from the old Disney MGM studio to
Speaker 1: what we are today with Disney Hollywood Studios is something
Speaker 1: that I also feel a f EPCOT, which is that
Speaker 1: you start to see kind of an eroding of identity
Speaker 1: in that when the park opened in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: it was very clearly oriented toward we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about movies and television production. The attractions all relate to that.
Speaker 1: We 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,
Speaker 1: and you had the backstage tour. You actually had a
Speaker 1: backlot where real productions were being shot, which honestly caused
Speaker 1: some problems because MGM initially didn't agree to that and
Speaker 1: that caused some licensing issues, but they worked that out.
Speaker 1: They stilled out of court. Ye, But it means that
Speaker 1: over time, you know, they have gotten rid of all
Speaker 1: the different elements, with the exception of they still have
Speaker 1: the Chinese theater facade, so that's still in the theme.
Speaker 1: They still have streets that are named after street in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, so that's still kind of in the theme.
Speaker 1: But other than that, Hollywood Studios doesn't have very much
Speaker 1: studios related stuff in it. It's more like Toy Story
Speaker 1: and Star Wars and that kind of thing. So I
Speaker 1: was wondering about your perspective on that too. Do you
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm crazy and I just feel like there's kind
Speaker 1: of a loss of coherence with Park identity, but do
Speaker 1: you have a similar feeling about that as well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I mean exactly that. I mean, when the
Speaker 2: studios opened, it was it was meant to replicate a
Speaker 2: working film production studio, you know. And so I mean
Speaker 2: even like the buildings, like you know, The Great Movie
Speaker 2: I had the building it's in it was like actually
Speaker 2: a stage number and they would call it like stage whatever,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah, and those still might technically be numbered.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's over time. I mean, I'm not one
Speaker 2: to like, I know, the idea that you know, the
Speaker 2: theme parks are meant to be like a living document
Speaker 2: where you can change it and you can alter it
Speaker 2: over time, but it certainly does feel like they have
Speaker 2: lost an overall tone. I mean, other than like you know,
Speaker 2: initially it was Disney MGM Studios and it was meant
Speaker 2: to be like here's how things are made, and I
Speaker 2: love that stuff. Like I remember going on the animation
Speaker 2: tour and I think they were working on The Emperor's
Speaker 2: New Groove at the time, and I think I forget
Speaker 2: what it was titled when I went there, but they
Speaker 2: had that big window and they push a button in
Speaker 2: it would suddenly go clear and they'd see all these
Speaker 2: animators working. I think they called it the fishbowl. The
Speaker 2: animators that they hated it apparently, but like being there,
Speaker 2: it was so cool and like the backlot tour I remember.
Speaker 2: I like the original backlot tour was like four hours long.
Speaker 2: It was wild because there were so many different things.
Speaker 2: Actually they would take you around in the tram but
Speaker 2: then there was a walking portion where they show you
Speaker 2: special effects and how they were made. I got to
Speaker 2: ride on the bee from Honey I shrunk the kids
Speaker 2: and they did a whole green screen thing and like
Speaker 2: I got to be on it and they like splice
Speaker 2: me into the movie. It was awesome. I love that.
Speaker 2: But like the water tank portion was there and then
Speaker 2: slowly they started removing it. Like then they actually had
Speaker 2: I think The Mickey Mouse Club was shot there for
Speaker 2: a bit. Back in two thousand and two. One of
Speaker 2: the states over by over By the back lot was
Speaker 2: actually the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? They actually
Speaker 2: had a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire replica set
Speaker 2: when they weren't shooting in la or New York. When
Speaker 2: they weren't shooting in New York, they would come down
Speaker 2: and Regis would come down and they'd host the show
Speaker 2: from Florida. But when they weren't using it for production,
Speaker 2: they would actually it turned into an actual, like an
Speaker 2: attraction people could go to, so you could actually play
Speaker 2: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and see how it
Speaker 2: was made. It was one hundred percent exactly what they
Speaker 2: used in the show, which I thought was really cool
Speaker 2: and one of my favorite stories. When I worked at
Speaker 2: the Backlots who Are in two thousand and five, By then,
Speaker 2: the whole walking portion of the attraction was gone. It
Speaker 2: was just the water tank section and then you would
Speaker 2: move on to the tram tour which would take you
Speaker 2: through the residential area and then it would take you
Speaker 2: over to Catastrophe Canyon. But the walking portion was gone,
Speaker 2: but the buildings were still there, and in the employee
Speaker 2: restroom area there was an entrance like there was basically
Speaker 2: a back entrance into the walking portion where they would
Speaker 2: have like I think when they finished it, it was
Speaker 2: the one hundred and one alimations live action stuff, so
Speaker 2: they showed how they did all the animatronics with the
Speaker 2: dogs and everything. But every single time I would use
Speaker 2: the restroom, I would check that door and it was
Speaker 2: always locked, always locked, every single time I was there
Speaker 2: for six months, always locked. Literally my last night I
Speaker 2: was working there, checked the door and it opened, and
Speaker 2: I was like, like I opened the door and it
Speaker 2: was just like, oh my gosh. And I walked in
Speaker 2: and I they if you remember, it was kind of
Speaker 2: like a pit where it was a circle and you
Speaker 2: would like they all the guests would be around the
Speaker 2: circle and they'd look down into this pit and then
Speaker 2: a cast member would show off all the tech. They
Speaker 2: actually had like foot plates where they would step on
Speaker 2: things to make things trigger, and all the plates were
Speaker 2: still there. All the animatronics were gone, but all the
Speaker 2: plates were still there, and all like the shelves and everything,
Speaker 2: and then up they had all of this storage of
Speaker 2: old props. So like I remember when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: I saw Johnny five from Short Circuit too, like the
Speaker 2: gold one. He was up on one of the like
Speaker 2: up on one of the big racks, and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, and a lot of that stuff was
Speaker 2: still there, like a lot of the props were still there,
Speaker 2: and it was just like one of those moments like
Speaker 2: I did it. I cracked into it, and it was
Speaker 2: one of my favorite things. One of my favorite memories
Speaker 2: that in right before I did my when I got
Speaker 2: my last clock out before i'd go actually clock out
Speaker 2: from the computer. I had them hold the next backlot
Speaker 2: to our show, the water Tank Show. I adam hold
Speaker 2: the show, and then I did a flip into the
Speaker 2: pool and then I walked out and so uh and
Speaker 2: then my manager just came tearing around the corner because
Speaker 2: he heard someone had fallen in and I'm just dripping wet,
Speaker 2: and he's like, what happened. I'm like, oh, I dove in.
Speaker 2: He goes, oh, come on, and I'm like, it's my
Speaker 2: last day, and he's like, all right, well, thanks for
Speaker 2: working here. Because I was. I was. I was. I
Speaker 2: enjoyed what I did. I love performing, like if you
Speaker 2: can't tell, I enjoy being in front of in front
Speaker 2: of people. And you know, that's that's what really drew
Speaker 2: me to the Great movie Ride was the idea of
Speaker 2: performing and actually having like I can affect someone's enjoyment
Speaker 2: of an attraction. And I love everyone I worked with,
Speaker 2: but there were a few people that was like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: Like I like, when I'd see someone hosting one of
Speaker 2: the like hosting a ride, I'd be like, oh, those
Speaker 2: people aren't going to get the best show. Because you know,
Speaker 2: you can read a script so many different ways, and
Speaker 2: some people would kind of just go through the motions
Speaker 2: and it's like no, whereas like I, you know, put
Speaker 2: some put some drama into it, you know, put some
Speaker 2: effort into it. And I would love doing that. And
Speaker 2: I also just really enjoyed talking in microphones and that
Speaker 2: was always my thing in the pre show area, and
Speaker 2: that where the theater was, which is still Mickey and
Speaker 2: Minnie's what you go through the Chinese Theater. You go
Speaker 2: through you enter in through them the main doors of
Speaker 2: the Gramma Chinese Theater or the Chinese Theater, and then
Speaker 2: you turn left and everything like basically all of that
Speaker 2: hasn't been touched at all, Like that was all exactly
Speaker 2: how it was when it was a great movie ride.
Speaker 2: But as soon as you kind of around the corner
Speaker 2: is where it all sorts sort of changes. You eventually
Speaker 2: do a couple of switchbacks and then the cast member
Speaker 2: will tell you to go to like, you know, go
Speaker 2: to theater one, go to theater two, go to theater three.
Speaker 2: All of those were empty, and that's where the big
Speaker 2: theater was, and that's where the big projection theater was.
Speaker 2: With the trailers you were talking about earlier, but there
Speaker 2: was a microphone at that at the booth for that one,
Speaker 2: because that's where you would basically hold people before you load,
Speaker 2: because the dock was the next door. You'd have a door,
Speaker 2: it'd open, you'd load them up, and you close the door.
Speaker 2: Watch the movie, you know, five minutes later, reopen it,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. Do that over and over again.
Speaker 2: But that microphone on that desk, for some reason, made
Speaker 2: my voice sound so good. I love that microphone so
Speaker 2: much because it had like it really picked up the
Speaker 2: base and it just sounded good to speak because it
Speaker 2: was like a theater and so it sounded so nice.
Speaker 2: And my biggest compliment I ever got was when I'd
Speaker 2: be there, you know, hosting in the right before load
Speaker 2: and I do my spiel at the at the podium,
Speaker 2: like you know, like in just a few moments there
Speaker 2: the ridea will start or whatever, and people would come
Speaker 2: down and say, like, I thought that was a pre
Speaker 2: recorded thing. I didn't realize that was you doing it live.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, thank you very much, very kind
Speaker 2: of you. So that's why we had I don't know
Speaker 2: what it was about the acoustics in that room or
Speaker 2: that microphone, whatever it was, that that magic it was.
Speaker 2: It was awesome.
Speaker 1: It's gotta be great to have you on the mono
Speaker 1: rail and you can give the speed just before the doors.
Speaker 2: Oh oh day, last part. Yes, it's my one line
Speaker 2: of Spanish. I know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that is also again 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 pre recorded and pre programmed animatronic figures
Speaker 1: like the Wicked Witch of the West, And I thought
Speaker 1: that was just brilliant because it really brought that immersion,
Speaker 1: that magic in there, showing the incredible ingenuity of 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 you could have
Speaker 1: a range of motion with the old pneumatic systems that
Speaker 1: the Enchanita tiki room had. You had two positions. You
Speaker 1: had opened and closed right, like, the beaks would open
Speaker 1: and they would close. But you couldn't halfway open a
Speaker 1: beak because you're using an air piston to do it right.
Speaker 1: It's a solemn noise and an air piston. And if
Speaker 1: you've ever listened carefully in the Inchennitigi room, you can
Speaker 1: hear that air, you know, propelling everything that's in there.
Speaker 1: And that old system was brilliant. The reason they called
Speaker 1: it audio animatronics is they would record audio tones on
Speaker 1: originally it was filmed. Later it would be magnetic tape,
Speaker 1: and the audio tones would make a read vibrate that
Speaker 1: would close a circuit and that would allow the circuit
Speaker 1: to activate the solenoid or the pneumatic valves that would
Speaker 1: then have the beaks open and closed. Brilliant, easy simple
Speaker 1: solution except for the fact that you have all these
Speaker 1: tubes everywhere. But they never went with hydraulics for the
Speaker 1: birds because like the Wicked Witch example you gave Jack,
Speaker 1: they didn't want the birds to possibly mess on guests
Speaker 1: if there was a hydraulic leak. You know, air doesn't
Speaker 1: leak or I mean, it's not going to drip on you,
Speaker 1: so you're fine. But ye know, once you get up
Speaker 1: to the Wicked Witch, she was on hydraulics, and the
Speaker 1: compliance was meant to be kind of a shock absorbing
Speaker 1: system so that you could do these more dramatic movements,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't put so much stress on the figure
Speaker 1: that it wears out in like a season and you
Speaker 1: would have to do a full referb on it. So
Speaker 1: this the brilliance to me of the engineering process was
Speaker 1: not just that they were figuring out new ways to
Speaker 1: animate these character in three dimensional space, but they were
Speaker 1: also already thinking about, if we do this, it's going
Speaker 1: to cause more wear and tear. How are we going
Speaker 1: to address that so that we limit downtime and the
Speaker 1: amount of money we have to spend on maintenance. And
Speaker 1: it's that kind of engineering that I find really fascinating,
Speaker 1: and later on they would introduce the A one thousand animatronics.
Speaker 1: Those are the ones you see in places like Galaxy's Edge,
Speaker 1: you see it over on the Smugglers Run ride. You know,
Speaker 1: Hondo is an A one thousand figure. By that time,
Speaker 1: you've moved away from hydraulics and you're into pure electronics
Speaker 1: systems that are all precisely computer controlled. I had read
Speaker 1: that in the A one hundred Days, the Wicked Witch Days.
Speaker 1: Programming those things was a painstaking process, and it could
Speaker 1: take up to eight hours to program one second of
Speaker 1: animation on one of those And when you think about
Speaker 1: the amount of animation the Wicked Witch had in particular,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's someone's year right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, well, I mean, like think before I
Speaker 2: forget about it. What one interesting thing about the Wicked
Speaker 2: Which area, the whole Wizard of Oz area was it
Speaker 2: was one of two portions of the ride where if
Speaker 2: we were at a busy day, we'd had an we
Speaker 2: had an A show and a B show. So the
Speaker 2: the way it worked was and on busy days you
Speaker 2: would run both shows, the A show of the B show.
Speaker 2: The A show would be your bandit, your Bandit show,
Speaker 2: so your Cowboy show, and then the B show would
Speaker 2: be the Gangster show. We could run without the A show.
Speaker 2: You could run just just band or just gangster if
Speaker 2: you wanted to. And what would happen to was, you know,
Speaker 2: as I, if you're running two vehicles, the first vehicle
Speaker 2: would kind of speed through the first couple scenes, so
Speaker 2: you would go through the the you know, the you know,
Speaker 2: footlight parade, Wizard uh Singing in the Rain, and Mary Poppins.
Speaker 2: You'd kind of just careened through it, honestly, like you
Speaker 2: wouldn't slow down at all, because what you're doing is
Speaker 2: you were making space between your vehicle and the B vehicle,
Speaker 2: and so you would both kind of land at the
Speaker 2: portions of the show where you interact with another cast member,
Speaker 2: you'd interact with the bandit or interact with a gangster,
Speaker 2: and then you would both move at the same speed
Speaker 2: up until the switch happened back over at Indiana Jones,
Speaker 2: and then the B vehicle would then just a haul
Speaker 2: butt to catch up to the A vehicle, and by
Speaker 2: that time you would then both enter into the Wizard
Speaker 2: of Oz area. So that was the one scene where
Speaker 2: you'd have theoretically four vehicles, or I mean two vehicles
Speaker 2: but attractor trailer, so four you know, platforms of people
Speaker 2: on there. And if you had a full show like that,
Speaker 2: there was actually a microphone off to the side because
Speaker 2: the witch was designed to interact with just one person,
Speaker 2: and so she would always point at the driver of
Speaker 2: the first vehicle. And so if it was just if
Speaker 2: you're just running a show where you didn't have the
Speaker 2: other if it was just running a B show and
Speaker 2: you only had your one car, you would just use
Speaker 2: your microphone for the vehicle, you know, the one that
Speaker 2: actually feeds through the speakers. But if you had both vehicles,
Speaker 2: if you had all four of them going this the
Speaker 2: back car so the B show, they would they wouldn't
Speaker 2: be able to hear you obviously on your microphone. So
Speaker 2: we had a separate microphone that you would you step
Speaker 2: off the vehicle, pick it up, and it played over
Speaker 2: the PA inside of the Wizard of Oz section. So
Speaker 2: on munchkin Land, it will play over the PA, so
Speaker 2: all everyone could hear you on that as opposed to
Speaker 2: just your vehicle. So I'm trying to think of interesting
Speaker 2: tech stuff that you might might find me chemical that's amazing.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I mean I knew about the A Show
Speaker 1: and B Show because I had ridden the right enough
Speaker 1: times and by the end of it, you essentially only
Speaker 1: saw the B Show. Yeah, yeah, they did, they weren't.
Speaker 1: They never had a capacity that was enough where they
Speaker 1: needed to run both really uh And also I mean,
Speaker 1: you know then you have half the number of cast
Speaker 1: members who have to be in costume and yeah, which
Speaker 1: gets us into it that that that's LaBrie Slope and
Speaker 1: we're just going to complain about this. These all back away.
Speaker 2: But you have the cool fire explosion if you're on
Speaker 2: the show that was that was the one thing there
Speaker 2: was an awesome, awesome So it was basically bann Is
Speaker 2: robbing a bank in the Old West and they would
Speaker 2: throw dynamite into the store. So that I can go
Speaker 2: into that a little bit. So on an A show,
Speaker 2: if you were the the you know, the tour guide,
Speaker 2: the band would hop out and you'd like take over
Speaker 2: your vehicle and so you would you would hear that
Speaker 2: someone's robbing the bank. So you're like, oh, robbing the bank,
Speaker 2: let me go see what's going on, and you jump
Speaker 2: off the vehicle and then an animatronic would actually pull
Speaker 2: a gun on you and you'd be like, oh, you
Speaker 2: have to kind of stick your hands up and then
Speaker 2: you know, then then an actual human would come out
Speaker 2: and they would need to have an interaction with them,
Speaker 2: and then at one point they get distracted, so you
Speaker 2: run into the bank and then the bandit would then
Speaker 2: throw dynamite into the bank and then the whole thing
Speaker 2: would explode in fire, which is a really really cool effect.
Speaker 2: They did it a whole lot and it never seemed
Speaker 2: to have any issues, which is wild. But one neat
Speaker 2: thing is, uh, the doors, Like so they're swinging doors
Speaker 2: to go in and out of the bank, those doors
Speaker 2: were like six inches thick of fire padding and everything,
Speaker 2: and as the as the the the cast member the
Speaker 2: tour guide would actually go into the bank and they
Speaker 2: would have to push a button on the inside basically
Speaker 2: saying they were clear. And so once you would hold
Speaker 2: you would hit that and then the the cast member
Speaker 2: outside would hit the other one and that would trigger
Speaker 2: the explosure or basically say like it's okay to go.
Speaker 2: It would be like the green light to go. I
Speaker 2: think that was the case. I could be wrong on that,
Speaker 2: but I'm pretty sure we had to hold a button
Speaker 2: on the inside to basically notify the system that everything
Speaker 2: was okay to go. But yeah, that was a fun show.
Speaker 1: It's like having the nuclear key where you have to insert.
Speaker 2: It the same time at the same time make sure that.
Speaker 1: Everyone is on the same page.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. For those who are wondering what we're even talking about,
Speaker 1: as Jack was saying, the way the ride would progress
Speaker 1: is that you would stop. If you were the A Show,
Speaker 1: you would stop at in the Western section, and then
Speaker 1: this scenario would play out and a band it would
Speaker 1: take temporarily take over your tour. They found the alien
Speaker 1: section very upsetting. And then if you were the B Show,
Speaker 1: you did the same sort of thing, except it was
Speaker 1: in the gangster movie segment, which was a little further back,
Speaker 1: and a gangster would come in and take over your
Speaker 1: tram temporarily, and in both cases it gets resolved in
Speaker 1: the Indiana Jones Ish section little past that, where you
Speaker 1: have both of both the gangster and the the bandit
Speaker 1: end up being too greedy and they try to get
Speaker 1: a sacred gym and end up being fried, and the
Speaker 1: tour guide magically returns and yeah, apparently from the dead
Speaker 1: in the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's movie magic.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That was that was always like that. The scene was amazing.
Speaker 2: I loved it because, first of all, so the way
Speaker 2: it worked was there's music playing over the PA's and
Speaker 2: it's called the Anubis scene. Is what it is is
Speaker 2: where the big gym is, and so the ganger, the gangster,
Speaker 2: the band it would be like, you guys, wait here,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna steal that gym, you know, and
Speaker 2: they then they they'd walk up these stairs and the
Speaker 2: music would play, and there's a lightning bolt, like a
Speaker 2: certain like lightning bolt. When they heard that, they would
Speaker 2: hit a little button like a little like arcade button
Speaker 2: on on the actual scenery, which would then trigger the
Speaker 2: Halt Unbeliever, which is like this big, you know, booming voice,
Speaker 2: and then the team or the cast member would then
Speaker 2: react to that and then they'd be like ah, whatever,
Speaker 2: and they'd put their hand on the gym. Smoke would go,
Speaker 2: and the smoke dissipated. It would reveal the skeleton standing
Speaker 2: there like reaching for the gym, and then you know,
Speaker 2: it turns out like, oh, that was actually your your
Speaker 2: your tour guide was the the other person. That was
Speaker 2: a neat effect because that was actually it was a door,
Speaker 2: so it was a rotating door that the smoke would
Speaker 2: the smoke would you know, there's enough of it to
Speaker 2: to you know, cover the door, and then it would
Speaker 2: it would spin around, and then the the you know,
Speaker 2: the band of the gangster would hold the door closed.
Speaker 2: So it didn't because it was just on a little
Speaker 2: magnet and so like if if they just kind of
Speaker 2: walk through it, it would swing and then sometimes swing
Speaker 2: back or be like halfway open, so they would have
Speaker 2: to hold it closed and then and then you reveal like, hey,
Speaker 2: it's me, and then you'd run back down and then
Speaker 2: add another lightning bolt. You would then start your vehicle
Speaker 2: up to get the timing right. And some of the
Speaker 2: more some of the more like, I mean, you have
Speaker 2: relationships with all the people there, and so some of
Speaker 2: the people like to mess with you. So some of
Speaker 2: the gangsters or bandits, they would like to take the
Speaker 2: microphone cable and just wind it all around the steering wheel,
Speaker 2: and so you'd go to grab it and it was
Speaker 2: just stuck and you'd have to sit there and not
Speaker 2: like lean over it and like talk into the microphone
Speaker 2: by your wheel while you're trying to unwind it and
Speaker 2: stuff that was. That was always fun. But that was
Speaker 2: a cool scene. That was a really neat, really neat
Speaker 2: bit that movie that that wasn't really any specific movie,
Speaker 2: the Anubist scene, but right before it was Raiders the
Speaker 2: Lost Arc, which was awesome. And then you know, Alien
Speaker 2: was fantastic too. That little the goofy stuff in the
Speaker 2: background is always super gross. I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, the the effects on the ride were uh,
Speaker 1: like I said, it really was pulling you into the
Speaker 1: experience as if you were in the fiction of those movies.
Speaker 1: It is, by the way, in no way, shape or
Speaker 1: form at all similar to actually being on a movie set,
Speaker 1: but if you had been magically pulled into the movies themselves.
Speaker 1: It was like that. Uh and yeah, 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 throw
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 throw rides too, Don't get me wrong, I love
Speaker 1: a good throw ride. Loved Guardians of the Galaxy needed
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes to recover after I wrote it, but
Speaker 1: I loved it really.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I love that ride. Man, I ride that
Speaker 2: all day.
Speaker 1: I've jack I've reached the age where where where thrill rides.
Speaker 1: I have a strict limit, and after I hit it, man,
Speaker 1: I cannot go past it. Actually, the worst though, are
Speaker 1: for me the ones that incorporate VR elements or screen elements.
Speaker 1: Those can get me a little.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for a forbidden journey over at Universal, I have
Speaker 2: to look at my feet during the screen portions. I
Speaker 2: can't do it anymore. Like even like Simpson's ride, I
Speaker 2: get a little like a little queasy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My wife and I we made the mistake of
Speaker 1: we decided to do park hoppying back when you could
Speaker 1: easily do that. You can still do it today, it's
Speaker 1: just not as easy.
Speaker 2: And we did.
Speaker 1: The Flights of Passage first, so that's a VR based ride.
Speaker 1: We hopped over to Hollywood Studios and in Star Tours
Speaker 1: it's another VR ride. We hopped on over to Epcott
Speaker 1: and we did sore in which we usually were 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 like acute motion. Sickness,
Speaker 1: but more like, yeah, I don't feel right. And then
Speaker 1: we decided to get all the heat and went into
Speaker 1: the China film, which is a three hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: degree film. The screen is completely in a three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty degree arc, which is amazing in itself and
Speaker 1: I should probably talk about that technology at some point.
Speaker 1: But that disoriented us to the point where we spent
Speaker 1: probably the next three hours just sitting in the World
Speaker 1: Showcase and people watching because we couldn't. We were afraid
Speaker 1: to move.
Speaker 2: So yeah, living with the land man, Yeah, living with
Speaker 2: the land After doing sore In, let it cool off
Speaker 2: a little bit, see how the plants are made.
Speaker 1: Or maybe the the well what's now the three Kabaetto's
Speaker 1: ride but used to be the River of Time ride
Speaker 1: over in Mexico. That's always there's never a line for it.
Speaker 1: It's always cool. So I like that one.
Speaker 2: I was told, I don't know if this is true
Speaker 2: or not. I imagine you might know, because you know a
Speaker 2: whole lot about animatronics. When Great Movie Ride shut down,
Speaker 2: which was about five years ago at this point, I
Speaker 2: think I don't know exactly when it shut down. The
Speaker 2: rumor was that the Wicked Witch the eight hundred. A
Speaker 2: one hundred animatronic moved to Pirates of the Caribbean and
Speaker 2: now it's Red. So like supposedly Red is the old
Speaker 2: Wicked Witch from movie Ride. Is that true? Do you
Speaker 2: know if that's true?
Speaker 1: I cannot say if it's true or false because I
Speaker 1: don't get the answered that. But I can tell you
Speaker 1: I mean Red is an A one hundred figure. So
Speaker 1: Red is of the same generation as Wicked Witch. Whether
Speaker 1: it's exactly the same a skeleton underneath, I am not certain.
Speaker 1: There's no reason it couldn't be. It certainly couldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because these the big innovation of a one hundred was
Speaker 1: that you had far more options when it came to
Speaker 1: programming the figure and a much larger range of motion
Speaker 1: if you wanted to have a very expressive figure. 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 an animatronic that was altered by the company Sarcos,
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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she might, she might turn. I mean, just looking
Speaker 2: at a photo of Red her her right hand she's
Speaker 2: holding she's holding a gun, so her right hand is
Speaker 2: really not moving much and her left hand is holding
Speaker 2: the bottle and she moves it a lot, which similar
Speaker 2: to the Wicked Witch. She had her broom in one
Speaker 2: hand and then her other hand was pointing a lot.
Speaker 2: So I've been told that's her. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's true. In my headcan and one hundred percent that's
Speaker 2: the Wicked Witch. And then I guess they made another
Speaker 2: one for the Hollywood Park or the Anaheim Park. But
Speaker 2: but yeah, I like to think, you know, she she
Speaker 2: landed over there.
Speaker 1: I'm totally cool with that. Yeah, I think I'm gonna
Speaker 1: adopt the same head cannon because Pirates is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite rides. I love the Great Movie Ride. To
Speaker 1: think about that legacy living on under a different costume
Speaker 1: and skin, I think is brilliant. So I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with that too.
Speaker 2: So a lot of people would say that the so
Speaker 2: at one point you go to Casablanca and in Great
Speaker 2: Movie Ride, and there was a plane there. It was
Speaker 2: basically recreating the scene that you know you know, there
Speaker 2: are problems don't amount to a hill of beans. And
Speaker 2: so there was a plane in the background that would
Speaker 2: like slowly spin up and stuff, and a lot of
Speaker 2: people said, like, oh, that's actually the plane from the movie.
Speaker 2: They would use that as fact. That was not the
Speaker 2: plane from the movie. One hundred percent was not the
Speaker 2: plane from the movie. As a matter of fact, the
Speaker 2: back of that plane ended up over at Jungle Cruise.
Speaker 2: So there's a crashed plane in Jungle Cruise, and the
Speaker 2: rear section of the plane is basically they split in half.
Speaker 2: Put half a Jungle Cruise half at movie ride. So
Speaker 2: you ever hear that fact that is a lie. That's
Speaker 2: one hundred percent a lot.
Speaker 1: I do love that both halves of the plane were
Speaker 1: existing in cast member guided attractions. Yeah, like that's one
Speaker 1: of the beautiful things about Jungle Cruise. It's a very
Speaker 1: corny ride, but it's still a ride where you get
Speaker 1: to see someone going through performance and if they haven't
Speaker 1: reached the Skipper Dan part of their career, then they
Speaker 1: can really be a lot of fun. Like you say,
Speaker 1: it all depends on who you get and what kind
Speaker 1: of mood they're in. I mean, all human beings, but
Speaker 1: hopefully you get someone on a good day. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: heard one rumor that that plane might have been used,
Speaker 1: not obviously not in Casta Blanca, but possibly in one
Speaker 1: of the Tarzan films. But whether that's true or not,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's just again, there is a Tarzan
Speaker 1: section in the grit Or. There was I can't use
Speaker 1: the present tense anymore in The Great Movie Ride, but
Speaker 1: they did use the plane in that one. I had
Speaker 1: to go in the Castle Blanka section. Stick around because
Speaker 1: we have a little bit more about The Great Movie
Speaker 1: Ride and Dizzy and Dak Pattillo to talk about, and
Speaker 1: we'll do that right after this break. This has been
Speaker 1: a great talk. I've really enjoyed it. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: your time. But one thing I really want to talk
Speaker 1: 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 know and love today. And you
Speaker 1: have two great co hosts. You've got Jeff and b Ka,
Speaker 1: so You've got Jeff, who's an old grumpy man like myself.
Speaker 1: I think he and I were born a week apart.
Speaker 1: And then you've got b Ka Youngin, who has a
Speaker 1: totally different perspective thinks of you two as her dad's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Manual Pass is definitely
Speaker 2: one of those things where I was looking for something that, like,
Speaker 2: what could I make a podcast about that I'm passionate about?
Speaker 2: And if you have only heard me on this podcast here,
Speaker 2: you can tell that I love theme parks. And so
Speaker 2: I made a pitch about, like, hey, let's do a
Speaker 2: show all about theme park attractions and then let's go
Speaker 2: into it. And we've been doing it now for about
Speaker 2: seventy episodes, and it's been so much fun, and the
Speaker 2: theme park community, like because you know, obviously there's a
Speaker 2: big theme park vlogging community, they've been so friendly and
Speaker 2: I was so nervous getting into it because like I've
Speaker 2: been listening to you know, like theme Park Stop and
Speaker 2: defunk Land, Yesterra World, you know, all of these amazing shows,
Speaker 2: and I've had the opportunity now to talk to these
Speaker 2: creators and everyone is so friendly and so nice and
Speaker 2: just being in this space has been so much fun,
Speaker 2: and I think we're kind of finding our footing now.
Speaker 2: We're having a really good time with it. We're more
Speaker 2: of a lighthearted kind of look at things, but if
Speaker 2: you want to find out more about a specific attraction,
Speaker 2: we go into it. We do ride throughs, but like
Speaker 2: you said, we do interviews. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: we recorded one today with a woman who was super
Speaker 2: knowledgeable about Halloween Horror Nights and the lore of Halloween
Speaker 2: Horror Nites, and so we did a whole we're doing
Speaker 2: a whole episode on that, and it's just it's a
Speaker 2: lot of fun because you know, we, like you said,
Speaker 2: we've had imaginears on We've had people designing rise for
Speaker 2: Universal and hearing the stories about what goes into the
Speaker 2: making of these attractions. Like we've oddly enough, we've talked
Speaker 2: to two different gentlemen who had to pitch Steven Spielberg
Speaker 2: on attractions on different ones. One for one for Velosit Coaster,
Speaker 2: the Drass Park themed one, our Dress World themed one,
Speaker 2: and then one for Men in Black. So it's like
Speaker 2: and like hearing their story. Apparently Steven s Fielburg is
Speaker 2: a super nice guy, so that's cool. That's good to hear.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, it's been so much fun, and you know,
Speaker 2: if you want to listen to it, I'd love for that.
Speaker 2: That'd be fantastic. We are Annual Pass. You go to
Speaker 2: YouTube dot com slash Annual Pass, or find us anywhere
Speaker 2: you get your podcast Spotify, rovertroosterteeth dot com slash Annual Pass,
Speaker 2: like wherever you want to go to find it, Please
Speaker 2: give it a listen. It's it's a lot of fun
Speaker 2: and you know, as long as people are listening, I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep making it. So that's the the dream
Speaker 2: at least, you know. Any the whole goal was to
Speaker 2: get my parent company to buy me a ticket to
Speaker 2: go to a theme park. So I still pay for
Speaker 2: my annual Pass, I'll say that much. My Disney annual
Speaker 2: passes so well seek for.
Speaker 1: iHeart and I have yet to leverage that into concert tickets,
Speaker 1: but it's always in the back of my mind. Jack Uh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Annual Pass is a great listen. I highly recommend it
Speaker 1: for people to go check out. It's first of all
Speaker 1: you will I can't think of another word to describe
Speaker 1: Jack's performance an Annual Pass besides exuberant. I think that
Speaker 1: that is that is the appropriate word to use. Your
Speaker 1: ride throughs are so enthusiastic. That's what I love most
Speaker 1: is that it's it's like, imagine the friendliest Carnival barker
Speaker 1: walking you through the traction that you've always wanted to
Speaker 1: be on but you haven't. And and I look forward
Speaker 1: to hearing a lot more. You've had some great guests
Speaker 1: and and and all your topics are always fun, and
Speaker 1: it's always fun to hear the interaction between you and
Speaker 1: the other hosts. So definitely do check that out. Are
Speaker 1: are there are there any theme parks or tractions that
Speaker 1: you're eagerly looking forward to that you haven't experienced yet,
Speaker 1: either ones that are on the cusp of coming out
Speaker 1: or just ones that exist but you haven't managed to
Speaker 1: get there.
Speaker 2: Man, I mean, really a lot of stuff outside the US,
Speaker 2: That's what I want to do. Like, I mean, I've
Speaker 2: been fortunate enough to go to Disneyland Paris and you know,
Speaker 2: Disney Studios Paris. That was great. Actually this year we
Speaker 2: went to Thorpe Park in England, just south of Heathrow,
Speaker 2: which was really cool. We get to go on the
Speaker 2: saw ride and like the Walking Dead, the ride is
Speaker 2: like really intense. But apparently Alton Towers is the European park,
Speaker 2: so we got to go order to the London Park,
Speaker 2: so we got to go to Alton Towers next. But
Speaker 2: anywhere in Japan, Shanghai, I mean, there's so many amazing
Speaker 2: things and a lot of stuff, Like you know, I
Speaker 2: try not to watch ride videos on stuff that I
Speaker 2: would like to go on someday. So I watched the
Speaker 2: tron light Cycle ride through because I'm like, I'm probably
Speaker 2: not gonna go to Shanghai anytime soon. And then of course,
Speaker 2: like immediately later they're like, oh, yeah, we're gonna put
Speaker 2: a Nepcot and that was six years ago, so we'll
Speaker 2: see if it ever actually does open. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean I love any sort of theme park. I love
Speaker 2: small little like family mom and pop parks. I love
Speaker 2: the big ones. I'll ride anything. At this point, I've
Speaker 2: pretty much given myself up where I'm like, I don't
Speaker 2: I don't fear being on an attraction. I love them
Speaker 2: and so that's a blast, so I will do anything.
Speaker 2: Like so we so many people like, oh, you need
Speaker 2: to come to this park like I would love to.
Speaker 2: I would love to, Like I'm never gonna say no,
Speaker 2: like I'm always I'm always up for whatever I want
Speaker 2: to go to stuff. So I'm actually going to six
Speaker 2: Flags Great America, the one near Chicago later this month,
Speaker 2: and then ideally we're going out to Halloween Horror Night
Speaker 2: sometime either towards the end of September or October. So
Speaker 2: I'll be back out in Florida hopefully soon to go
Speaker 2: to some parks and you know, make that annual pass
Speaker 2: pay for yourself.
Speaker 1: If you get down to six Flags over Georgia, you
Speaker 1: can you can ride what was formerly known as the
Speaker 1: Monster Plantation, and then I'll tell you all about the
Speaker 1: problematic history of that particular attraction, because that that has
Speaker 1: undergone a pretty massive thematic change, as you would imagine,
Speaker 1: from an attraction that was previously known as Monster Plantation in.
Speaker 2: Georgia, then it became Splash Mountain. So it's all good, Okay,
Speaker 2: it's okay.
Speaker 1: We'll make that Princess and 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 yeah, feel free
Speaker 1: to come back anytime. We'll talk theme parks till the
Speaker 1: cows come home.
Speaker 2: Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Anytime I get a chance to talk theme parks, I'm
Speaker 2: up for it.
Speaker 1: Once again, I want to thank Jack Pattillo for coming
Speaker 1: onto this show. You know when he co founded Achievement Hunter.
Speaker 1: That was back in two thousand and eight, the summer
Speaker 1: of two thousand and eight, which is the exact same
Speaker 1: summer that this show launched. So he and I have
Speaker 1: been in related business for a very long time. He
Speaker 1: has seen phenomenal success and has done amazing things. Seriously,
Speaker 1: you need to go and check out his charity work
Speaker 1: because it's truly inspiring stuff. It got me to participate
Speaker 1: on my own, not in any big way, many times,
Speaker 1: so check that out too. It's for a good cause.
Speaker 1: It's for children's healthcare, which is obviously a great cause.
Speaker 1: And yeah, check out Annual Pass as well. It's a
Speaker 1: fun podcast. And if you love theme parks and you
Speaker 1: love learning more about the attractions and what they're like
Speaker 1: and trivia about them, 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 iHeartRadio app. It's free to download.
Speaker 1: Navigate over to tech Stuff. There's a little microphone icon
Speaker 1: you can click on, and there you can just leave
Speaker 1: me a message of up the thirty seconds in length,
Speaker 1: or you can reach out to me on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff HSW and I
Speaker 1: hope to do more interviews in the future. They're a
Speaker 1: little challenge because you know, scheduling can be you know,
Speaker 1: it's tough. People are busy, and so I will do
Speaker 1: my best because I love having someone else on the
Speaker 1: show to talk to, get their perspective, learn things that
Speaker 1: I can't find out just through, you know, research on
Speaker 1: my own, because these are the people who are actually there.
Speaker 1: I want to do more of that in the future.
Speaker 1: If you have people that you think I should have
Speaker 1: on as a guest, send those my way. I can't
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