Speaker 1: Guess what, Mango? What's that? Will? All right? So I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about joining this V I P Lounge at Disneyland,
Speaker 1: you know, the one we were talking about, Club Club
Speaker 1: thirty three. I think it's called Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it sits right above the Pirates of the Caribbean right
Speaker 1: there in New Orleans Square. You get access to all
Speaker 1: sorts of memorabilia, all the perks. And I was actually
Speaker 1: just reading the other day that there's a chance you
Speaker 1: might run into some of the other rumored members like
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks and Elton John. Yeah, but isn't there like
Speaker 1: a like a decade long waiting list for it, supposedly,
Speaker 1: But come on, don't don't be a downer on this.
Speaker 1: And and and I'm gonna need to borrow twenty five
Speaker 1: thou dollars if you don't mind, but we can talk
Speaker 1: about that after the show. But you know, over the years,
Speaker 1: we've heard some pretty crazy facts like this and some
Speaker 1: of the other secrets of Disneyland and other Disney parks.
Speaker 1: You know, things like the secret basketball accord at the
Speaker 1: top of the matter Horn Ride, or Walt Disney is
Speaker 1: hidd an apartment above the fire station in Disneyland, which
Speaker 1: actually is still there by the way, So we thought
Speaker 1: it'd be fun to share nine of our favorite facts
Speaker 1: about Disney and its parts. So let's get started. Hei
Speaker 1: their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Speaker 1: man guest Ticketer. And on the other side of the
Speaker 1: soundproof glass, wearing his save Mr toad T shirt is
Speaker 1: our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I like that and
Speaker 1: I think that's my favorite shirt he's worn so far.
Speaker 1: And we've got a special guest with us in studio today.
Speaker 1: Mango right, Yeah, that's right. So we we've got the
Speaker 1: managing editor of the brilliant house staff Works dot Com,
Speaker 1: Alison Ladermook. Welcome Allison, Thanks for having me. Guys. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna dive right in. So we've got nine facts
Speaker 1: that we might not have known about Disney. So let's
Speaker 1: get started. As our guests, we're gonna let you go first, Allison.
Speaker 1: What you got? I am delighted to go first. So
Speaker 1: as you're just talking about, well, there is that private
Speaker 1: apartment that Wall and Lilian used to have in Disneyland,
Speaker 1: and one really cool thing that I loved about it
Speaker 1: kind of gave me the warm fuzzies. Was that what
Speaker 1: would be on the Disneyland premises quite a bit and
Speaker 1: he it was kind of like a small little spot,
Speaker 1: five square feet decorated. Yeah yeah, quite small, decorated in
Speaker 1: the Victorian era, filled with you know, some fun stuff
Speaker 1: for Walton Lilan to pass the time. Mango paying attention. Sorry, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard. It was a small apartment. In this very
Speaker 1: small apartment, there was a special thing that I think
Speaker 1: you would like. Do you know what? It was? A
Speaker 1: grilled cheesemaker. Yeah. Wow, pretty cool. Huh So one of
Speaker 1: the cool facts about this apartment. I thought that was
Speaker 1: your fact that there was a grilled cheesemaker. That's awesome though, No,
Speaker 1: that wasn't my fact. There's a better one. So one
Speaker 1: of the cool things, and I think you guys are
Speaker 1: gonna like this kind of gives you the warm fuzzies.
Speaker 1: It gives me the warm fuzzies was that Will always
Speaker 1: had the light burning on his apartment, and when after
Speaker 1: he passed in ninety six, Disneyland decided to keep that
Speaker 1: light burning on for him. So if you ever enter
Speaker 1: the park and you go by the Main Street firehouse,
Speaker 1: and you look up on the second floor, you'll see
Speaker 1: the light burning. And so it's kind of reminder that
Speaker 1: Walt Disney is still alive and all of us. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: so it stays. That's amazing. Yeah, I love that. That's
Speaker 1: really awesome. Alright, good, good, first fact, Mango, what you got.
Speaker 1: So this is one of the strangest things that's happened
Speaker 1: at the happiest place on Earth, and it's at the
Speaker 1: Beatles officially broke up there and so this is way
Speaker 1: back in December of nine, but that's when John Lennon
Speaker 1: actually signed the papers that officially dissolved the band. And
Speaker 1: there's a photo of him like signing the papers and
Speaker 1: in the background you see the uh, the Polynesian Village hotel.
Speaker 1: That is pretty crazy. I had no idea about that.
Speaker 1: Is that where they fired Eddie Murphy when it was
Speaker 1: the Clarence Is before. I don't know if you remember that.
Speaker 1: That's pretty interesting too. Alright, Well, I've got one. I'm
Speaker 1: going to start. Um, let's see which one I want
Speaker 1: to start with. Since you talked about them, you know,
Speaker 1: officially breaking up are almost officially breaking up there. I
Speaker 1: will start with a different kind of contract and that
Speaker 1: was one that almost happened. That is, Disney almost opened
Speaker 1: a park in St. Louis. So in the sixties, Walt
Speaker 1: himself was personally involved in coming up with the plans
Speaker 1: for a Midwestern park. It was going to have a
Speaker 1: theme around Old St. Louis and rides around the Mississippi
Speaker 1: River and the Old West animatronics of Thomas Jefferson and
Speaker 1: Napoleon would have talked about the Louisiana purchase. So all
Speaker 1: these plans were in order. It looked like they were
Speaker 1: going to move forward. And then Walt looked around and
Speaker 1: realized that he could buy a ton of swampland in
Speaker 1: Florida for a whole lot less money, and so they
Speaker 1: decided to go for that, and so in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: five they announced that they were no longer going to
Speaker 1: be moving forward with this, but we almost had a
Speaker 1: park in the in St. Louis. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Allison, you're second fact. Okay, So when the
Speaker 1: lights go down and all the guests are clearing out
Speaker 1: of Disneyland, and there's a whole another sort of life
Speaker 1: that comes on as night closes in, and so there's
Speaker 1: of course a hard working night crew that does things
Speaker 1: like repair and repaint and do all the things that
Speaker 1: guests have weirdly done to in the day. But there's
Speaker 1: also a whole lot of cats terrifying let's start prowling Disneyland.
Speaker 1: And the thing is is, um, the disney folks are
Speaker 1: okay with us. Why are they okay with this? To
Speaker 1: guys think, oh, you know, what is it? Does that
Speaker 1: anything to do with rodents? Absolutely? So they have about
Speaker 1: a hundred cats currently like roaming the grounds, and they
Speaker 1: take care of them too. Um. They've spayed and neutered
Speaker 1: the cats. They have permanent feeding stations installed in two
Speaker 1: of the parks, and they generally provide like routine veterinary
Speaker 1: care like vaccinations and things like that, maybe a little
Speaker 1: flea treatment just to make sure they're not transmitting those
Speaker 1: pesky fleas well. That I mean that that makes sense.
Speaker 1: You want to get rid of the smaller mice so
Speaker 1: that you can concentrate on the bigger ones. So the
Speaker 1: interesting thing is they've taken a little flak about it
Speaker 1: over the years too, because cat lovers have different feelings
Speaker 1: about trap and release programs and spaying, neutering all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So some people want to see the cats have a
Speaker 1: permanent home, while some people are totally okay with what
Speaker 1: Disney How's going on now? So these are just feral
Speaker 1: cats that are just around and kind of in hiding
Speaker 1: during the day and then they come out at night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although they're not totally in hiding, you can spot them
Speaker 1: and people do spot them and cat lovers do. And
Speaker 1: so there's a whole thing online, as you might guess,
Speaker 1: and it's called at Disneyland Cats. You can find him
Speaker 1: on Instagram. There's one particularly photogenic fellow and his name
Speaker 1: is Francisco hashtag Francisco Fridays. He's lovely. I caught a
Speaker 1: photo of him and he is bathed in a sunbeam
Speaker 1: and it looks like he's pondering life. He's got like
Speaker 1: this coat of brown and orange and that just like
Speaker 1: his coat, is glow. It's lovely. It looks like a
Speaker 1: lovely Disney cat. Well, despite the fact that I'm pretty
Speaker 1: scared of cats, that is sweet and finally a reason
Speaker 1: to go to Disney right right to see the cat
Speaker 1: exactly All right, Well, mango, what do you have next?
Speaker 1: So this is the story I never would have found
Speaker 1: without the wonderful Stacy Conrad, but she told me this
Speaker 1: crazy fact about how Walt Disney actually kidnapped Richard Nixon. What. So,
Speaker 1: this is when Nixon was VP, and apparently in nine
Speaker 1: Nixon visited Disneyland to dedicate the whole new mono rail
Speaker 1: system while had built, and when he and Walt took off,
Speaker 1: the Secret Service was caught off guard and they were
Speaker 1: just standing out on the platform outside, so they weren't
Speaker 1: inside the train. But here's the funny part. So they
Speaker 1: like raced around the Secret Services all worried, and then
Speaker 1: as the train starts pulling into the platform, the Secret
Speaker 1: Service starts like chasing to to catch up with the train,
Speaker 1: and then Disney takes off again. Apparently as the train
Speaker 1: was slowing like, Nixon's daughters were so excited that they
Speaker 1: started yelling again again. So you know, Disney Disney, of
Speaker 1: course keep them happy. That's pretty great. But what's the
Speaker 1: weirdest part about this is that the mono rail had
Speaker 1: only been tested one time to that point, so imagine
Speaker 1: ears were actually worried that it might break down or
Speaker 1: even catch on fire with Nix and his family on board. Wow,
Speaker 1: you know, it's even more weird than that, with that
Speaker 1: I also have a Nixon related Disney fact of our
Speaker 1: I'm facts. Two of them are related to Nixon, and
Speaker 1: mine is a little bit different, a little bit less fun.
Speaker 1: And that is the fact that he delivered his I
Speaker 1: Am not a Crook speech from the ballroom of Disney's
Speaker 1: Contemporary Resort hotel. Did you did you know this? I
Speaker 1: never knew this until we were digging stuff into this.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy three, he's buried in the Watergate scandal. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a gathering of the Associated Press managing editors there
Speaker 1: and it's it's some sort of conference, and he decided
Speaker 1: to take this opportunity to go speak to them, and
Speaker 1: he sits down for one on one interview and that's
Speaker 1: where he delivers that famous quote of I Am not
Speaker 1: a crook. That's the Beatles and Nixon. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: it's just a big history that happened there. All right.
Speaker 1: So it's our last fact of the day, Allison, you
Speaker 1: got one more for us? I sure do, And this
Speaker 1: is a good one. Okay. So in Disney gets together
Speaker 1: with co Tex or rather Kimberly Clark, who, as we
Speaker 1: all know, is the big multinational corporation, and they make
Speaker 1: a lot of consumer products, and co Tex in particular
Speaker 1: is a maker of women's hygiene products, like you know,
Speaker 1: things like liners and pads and tampons and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So they get together and they're like, yeah, let's let's
Speaker 1: do this thing. Let's tell let's tell young women the
Speaker 1: story of menstruation. And so I watched the film a
Speaker 1: bunch of times on YouTube. There is this bunch of
Speaker 1: times I did, Yeah, absolutely, it's uh. There's this lovely
Speaker 1: um lilting narration throughout, very practical to a lot of
Speaker 1: common sense. She is uncredited, which bummed me out because
Speaker 1: I wanted to find out who she was. Um. And
Speaker 1: so she takes you through the whole She takes young
Speaker 1: females through the whole story of menstruation, and there's I
Speaker 1: thought it should be a good refresher course. Honestly. Was
Speaker 1: this distributed somewhere or like or where where was this?
Speaker 1: It was shown to millions of kids in health education classes.
Speaker 1: Very interesting. It's pretty wide ranging too. Once you get
Speaker 1: through the actual mechanics of menstruation. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: advice that comes with it, and they do a little
Speaker 1: myth busting, which I particularly dug um as brs exercise,
Speaker 1: it's good for you. Um do in fact, shower when
Speaker 1: you're going through menstruation. That's a good thing as well.
Speaker 1: Um and some other stuff. I just got a kick
Speaker 1: out of it. Well that is super interesting, Okay, I
Speaker 1: know it's crazy that Disney was in the sponsored content
Speaker 1: game exactly. Alright, mano, you got one more. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: mine is strangely an underwear related fact. And uh so
Speaker 1: this is a headline I found from two thousand one
Speaker 1: and it caught my attention. It was in the l
Speaker 1: A Times and it reads, quote new contract gives Disney
Speaker 1: workers clean underwear. So apparently, thanks to their team Stares union,
Speaker 1: Disney employees negotiated a new contract where they received individual
Speaker 1: underwear and they no longer had to wear the communal
Speaker 1: underwear that had been supplied. So basically this is how
Speaker 1: it worked. Like you get your goofy, your mini mouse costume,
Speaker 1: and then you wear it for the day and then
Speaker 1: you turn it back into Disney Services for laundering. But
Speaker 1: something wasn't working because enough people got license scabies that
Speaker 1: they had to change their rules. And now employees not
Speaker 1: only get their own underwear, they also get to wash
Speaker 1: them themselves. How sweet. Wow. All right, well that's kind
Speaker 1: of a scary fact. But I decided to also end
Speaker 1: with a bit of a spooky fact as we're getting
Speaker 1: closer to Halloween here, and this one has to do
Speaker 1: with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. So according to
Speaker 1: Jason Searle, who's the author of a book called Pirates
Speaker 1: of the Caribbean From the Magic Kingdom to the movies,
Speaker 1: they apparently used to use real skeletons in this ride
Speaker 1: when you would go through it because they were worried
Speaker 1: that like fake skeletons or fake bones wouldn't look real enough.
Speaker 1: So they worked with u C l A. I know, yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's not a real skeleton. Everything else here looks
Speaker 1: super real, but not those skeleton bones. And so they
Speaker 1: worked with u c l A Medical Center in order
Speaker 1: to get real bones. And this was this was the
Speaker 1: case for a little while until they decided that maybe
Speaker 1: this was a little bit insensitive to be using these
Speaker 1: actual bones from real dead people, and so they decided
Speaker 1: to return the bones. But apparently there's a lone skull
Speaker 1: and crossbon is looming in the headboard in that scene
Speaker 1: where a long dead pirate is sitting in a bed.
Speaker 1: I think he's clutching a magnifying glass. So that's the word.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true, but that's what they
Speaker 1: say that that's the lone skeleton, real skeleton still in.
Speaker 1: I love the idea that, you know, like some people
Speaker 1: don't neate their bodies of science, if you could just
Speaker 1: tick the box that donates your bodies to like Disney,
Speaker 1: I would totally do that. I mean, give your organs
Speaker 1: to better causes, right, but when it comes to the bones,
Speaker 1: like sure, that'd be awesome, be forever remembered as part
Speaker 1: of a ride. So I'm going to Disney World. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you guys been to Disney World. Yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: to Disney World. I've never actually been to Disneyland. Yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. But Mr Tristan over here is passionate with
Speaker 1: his same Mr Toad. I hope it happens one day, Tristan.
Speaker 1: Good luck with that, alright, Mango. So those are our facts.
Speaker 1: What do you think we gotta give out a trophy today? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I feel like you present some good facts,
Speaker 1: and I had some good facts. But I really love
Speaker 1: the feral cat story along with the you know, the
Speaker 1: menstruation story and the lamp one, so I feel like
Speaker 1: Allison really deserves it. Alright, congratulations, your first visit here
Speaker 1: and you get the trophy. Oh I'm thrilled. I like, hey,
Speaker 1: you couldn't quite figure out what you were, but thrilled
Speaker 1: is what you decided on. Quite thrilled. That's terrific. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with a full length episode tomorrow. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening.