Podcast: The Ride - Autopia with Alison Rosen

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Alison Rosen (Alison Rosen is your New Best Friend, Childish) joins us to discuss Theme Park Mandela Effect, the smell of gasoline, and long distance calls made in giant phones. Billy Topit Episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever. Dog. Warning, the following podcast contains insider lingo, a giant speakerphone, walking in pursuit of cake, and children burning rubber. Allison Rosen joins us to race

around a track at a reasonable speed and talk Autopia on today's podcast, The Ride. podcast the ride welcome to podcast the ride the podcast about theme parks where we sometimes struggle to breathe over the heavy gasoline emissions from the power of our recording equipment. I'm Scott Gairdner. I fumbled there due to the emissions. Mike Carlson is here as well. Yes, I'm here. I'm also fumbling over the emissions that I'm smelling. I do. I will. I'm sure we'll get into it. I sometimes like the smell of gas, but just a little bit. That'll be a tease for

the episode for my take. Anyway. I guess I know what you mean. A little bit. It's not so bizarre. Jason Sheridan, opinions on the smell of gas. Beep, beep, zoom, zoom, Scott. I do like it. I know what Mikeott uh i i do like it uh i i know what mike is saying i do like it sometimes it's but i guess it might be time to go move on you know i think gas more

than uh exhaust is what i'm saying yes yeah gas itself versus exhaust and exhaust is what the autopia of course provides yeah yeah interesting okay well we'll parse these differences as we get into it hey it's the autopia today it's a big one it's an opening day attraction and we got a great guest to talk about it with us uh from the podcast allison rosen is your new best friend and childish it's allison rosen hello Hello, I don't care for the smell of gas at all Although I think farts are very funny And I have two young sons And they, and my husband and I, we all think toots are hilarious

But actual gasoline, no The other definition of gas, certainly That's gotta help, as I was telling you before, I newly have a baby, and you have to be comfortable with casual farting. I know just from that point. I imagine the farts don't go away as the years go by. Well, my kids are three and a half and one and a half, so we're still in prime fart territory.

I don't know at what age. At some point, they're going to get some kind of embarrassment about it i'm sure um and i already feel sad about that that's like a loss of innocence in a way that's childhood disappearing they're tooting their truth right now yeah but you got to get them in those etiquette classes at some point you know like every modern child in america you gotta have like you went to fork goes on this side jason you have to feel shame little lord fontleroy's etiquette school as a child academy yeah little lord fontleroy's academy i actually went to cotillion and i'm a very non i know that um that suggests that i'm a certain kind of

horrible irritating person i'm really not at all i just grew up in a place where everyone else was and i learned all sorts of dances that they said were going to come in handy one day you'll be so happy you learned like the box step and the fox trot and i i'm forgetting the other ones never and then people would say when and they would say at weddings i know the roger rabbit and that is the only one that i will break out at a wedding and even that i do sort of ironically even though i've had to admit that like there's not really no such thing as ironic dancing because to someone else you're really just doing the roger rabbit oh so yeah they don't they don't have a chart in front of them telling them your level see the the huge air quotes around it yes i'm pretending to be a person who does this

you're just doing it huh that's true you do kind of lose irony just as which is sort of a beautiful thing about especially at a wedding where the the like this the sincerity is off the charts generationally grandma's out there little kids are out there but um wait a minute yeah you were projecting an adulthood during which a foxtrot would come in handy and let people know that you are uh not some uh gutter trash that you are a acceptable high society person that's right i'm sidewalk trash sure not gutter trash um i guess yeah i don't know i mean i feel like cotillion when i did it was already a relic of a different time when that stuff was theoretically important but i think that the teachers and maybe some of the parents that enrolled their kids in it were

projecting a future i don't know i feel i grew up in orange county california home of the theme park that we're going to be talking about indeed but i feel like a lot there were there's areas of orange county where they kind of just did stuff because they've just always but that's just always how they do it right it's a little like high society yeah i had relatives in in like newport beach which is very uh like old money where though where's a foxtrot happening where where where what area of orange county thinks foxtrots are going to be in vogue again it was newport beach okay there you go but it's but it's really i don't think of it as old money i think of it as new money well there washmm. Mm-hmm. I think of it as new money. Yeah, all of California's- I was charting this Trump rally because the Beach Boys were performing at it, and I think

it was a young billionaire. He was a mid-20s guy who's involved in Oculus, I think. It was at his house, which I did note. Yeah, that's not an 80-year-old's house, despite having a band of 80-year-olds come to support an 80-year-old candidate. But it was just, I feel like it was only one of the Beach Boys. That's correct. And it wasn't Brian Wilson. Was it Mike Love?

It was Mike Love. Bizarrely, we talked about this on our Patreon podcast that's coming out. This is the second time in several days that parsing which Beach Boy. I mean, I'm happy with Beach Boy references as often as possible. But yeah, he's been like taking around a bunch of randos and bowling shirts for 20 years and calling them Beach Boys, even though I don't even know who they are. And I'm a big Beach Boys nerd. Are you?

Who's your favorite boy? Carl Wilson is my favorite boy. He's kind of the heart of the band, really. It helped him go through the tough times in the 70s uh you know it held the band together i feel yeah uh was a lot of beach boys talk on this theme park podcast uh it does end up happening yes that ends up happening i feel i feel i learned how to square dance in elementary school with the promise of well this is something you're going to be doing a lot. Yeah, same.

And I'm from the Midwest, and that, I'll be honest, I've never square danced since. Have you done a cakewalk? What, a cakewalk at, like, a bake sale? What are you talking about? Like at a, like, family fun fair. Yeah, but that's not like a dancing. That's just like stepping on.

It's kind, but it's a similar artifact of that time i feel that's true but isn't it isn't there just steps yeah is it it's kind of like um kind of like in my memory sirs is kind of like hopscotch and if you try to land on a spot where you end up winning a cake is that about right michael i think so but why does that have to do with dancing uh i just remember the same elementary school uh gymnasium floor like quickly pivoted from like oh we were just doing square dancing here and now we're doing a cakewalk at the fun fair you know the fundraising fair for the school the next day i feel like cakewalk though will come into play more in people's lives still to this day probably than square dancing that's my hypothesis i think that's right was the cakewalk

particularly easy easy enough so that it's a cakewalk yeah i i don't think it takes a lot of skill i think it takes a candy land level of skill so that children can play it. Yeah, it's not a dance of any kind. I don't know. It's just like sort of a game where you can win a cake. Yeah, but I feel like you're moving at the same speed as square dance. What?

Moving at the same speed? Yeah, child square dancing is going real slow. That is not a fast endeavor. You're do-si-do-ing and flipping arms and stuff. A cakewalk is stepping on things that say, I've won a cake. You were dealing with better elementary school square dancers than I was.

I could be wrong. If cakewalk fans out there, if I'm diminishing what you do, I apologize. Yeah, if there's a podcast Called like Cakewalk the dance Yeah Or cakewalk the game Get in touch

Yes please Let us know Please clarify Any experts out there Please Shame me We'll have a cake Cakewalk tip line

You can You can send in your Your Your steps I guess What you do Your protocols And we'll understand this And I will be shamed

Has there ever been An adult situation You've Steps, I guess, what you do, your protocols, and we'll understand this and I will be shamed. Has there ever been an adult situation you've, that sounds way more titillating than I mean. Just like any sort of social situation you've been in where you've thought, I wish I could do that dance, but I don't know the moves. Ooh, that's a good question. I feel like maybe I've tried to floss But in a small group of people I've tried to do the You know what I'm talking about The floss I can't do it

It's very hard But I felt like it looks fun And it looks simple And I've tried I can throw up a dab I can do that That's pretty easy But I have like

Felt like I've tried to floss In front of a group of people And I just I cannot I'm uncoordinated I can't do it I have like felt like I've tried to floss in front of a group of people and I just I cannot I'm uncoordinated I can't do it I have seen rallies or like I've seen it in in like mentioned in comedy sketches uh the cha-cha slide and I have I wouldn't even I don't even know where to start I have no idea how everyone knows that I have not encountered it don't they explain it in the song though i guess they kind of do but people are like ahead of it i feel you know they they like you it's hard to still like

it's like doing karaoke to a song you're you're experiencing for the first time still better to have like one run through it under your belt that's true a little bit yeah there was this there was people like celebrating in philadelphia and someone was in a gritty costume and when it says slide to your right he immediately slid to the left into a bunch of people he could not see so uh that is i feel like a preview of my future allison dancing you uh the you're lacking, the only time I've been in a situation where I thought I wish I could do that dance that everyone was doing was in actually a dance class. I took a class.

It was a little bit beyond my skills, which was just meant it was still beginner, but just a hard beginner. And everyone knew the dance and I just tried to keep up and i couldn't that's really the only but my cha-cha i did not fall back on that or my box step or my waltz my um god damn i'm forgetting some of the main ones that we learned in cotillion i cannot remember for the life of me but no i've never needed them like the the the beggar kicker like a dance where that you where

you could also use to like kick a guy on the ground right to kick a hobo the beggar kicker the um the finding deductions the um oh yeah the tax loophole that's a lot of fun step on my yacht those are these are cotillion steps not in my backyard Now those come in handy You do use those on the regular But Some of these other ones Okay wait so Orange County raised Yeah that's right and that's a theme park

Mecca not just Disneyland But Knott's Berry Farm some of the things that we Love and are missing right now So were you a Disneyland Regular or at least did you enjoy Going Was it a part of your childhood the things that we we love and are missing uh right now uh so were you were you a disneyland regular or at least uh did you enjoy uh going uh was it a part of your childhood yes um although i was listening to your episode with matt apodaca and he was saying that his mom would drop him off like would they would sometimes just be dropped off there to spend the day there yeah and that

was not my childhood at all i wish it were as an adult I look back and I think we were only like 35 minutes away why didn't we go more often but we would go on special occasions and maybe maybe once every other year or so just sort of for just because go. But oftentimes we'd go like for birthdays or pretty much birthdays. So yeah, it was always like I loved it. It was a huge special thing to be able to go. But I always, and I'm wondering if you've encountered this, if anyone else has ever mentioned this feeling. And this started when I was very young.

In the car on the way home from Disneyland I would feel like sad and kind of scared and then I would have trouble sleeping that night and it's like I was overstimulated it's like I had it was like Disneyland was just pure amazing fun and then like it's almost like when you hear people talk about coming off of Molly which by the way i've never done so i don't know but it's like i had experienced ecstasy and then i was returning to real life and it was too hard for me i completely know what what you mean i i mean i felt it big time from my childhood disney world trip i i've talked about that before just like like utter immense sadness because that's such a giant experience but even just the disneyland day trip yes i remember like specific sad songs that i listened to on the way home and just like well guess that was it for the year i guess just a year of bland misery is ahead of me now like i do

some of the saddest i've been yes absolutely yeah and i think it was knowing that it's going to be a while till we come back and this thing that i was so looking forward to is now behind us and i sort of remember like moving in the same way that you like enter the park and the you know the excitement swells just kind of like having that in reverse like going through main street and through the crowds and then we'd usually like hit the one of the shops on main street and like get candy or something and then taking that and going to the car and then slowly being among fewer and fewer people till it's like just my sister and me and my mom or my mom and my dad he usually didn't come with us so just just three of us in the car going home and it was like so everything felt very barren and late and sleepy yeah i i i had

only i probably went i think four times by the time i was 18 to disney world and that was it just we had four family trips because i'm from illinois um and yeah i think i would like count down how many days we'd have left this is probably i still am like this where it's just like i'm thinking of like the bad i'm just thinking of the glass half empty uh and I'm just like oh this is gonna be there's only one day left of happiness and then it'll be years uh and I think probably this was so psychologically damaging to me it's the reason I've been to Disneyland at this point like 200 times in 10 years because I got an annual pass and I was just like i can go down for two hours huh okay like i'm trying to correct a mistake that i felt like was in my brain it

was a child like i'm trying to fix it and it just won't fix but i think that is a thing when you become an adult and you're in charge of how you spend your time and you have your own method of getting there um that you're like oh i don't i'm not depending on you know the the whims of adults to get here i can do it myself so then you go nuts yes and i've yeah and that's yeah that's how i've chosen to go on go nuts is to go on big thunder mountain and then go home when i um i when i had a nine to five job i would go on sundays a lot and the end of the day sunday whether the it was like you know the park was closing or whether i was just about to leave like the drive back to la just felt like the bleakest thing in the world because like oh my god i have to go to my shitty nine to five job tomorrow. I was just at Disneyland.

What the hell? I think it is that. It's just like a case. It's a compounded case of the Sundays. Yes. Yeah, geez. It's like that phenomenon they talk about when people would see Avatar and they'd get depressed after because they wanted to live in Pandora. This is real.

Isn't it a joke? I don't know how. No, I forgot about it. These articles about people that would feel this deep sadness post seeing Avatar because they wanted to go back to Pandora. And that's Disneyland is Pandora. Unplugging and not getting to see Jake Sully again. Right.

All your friends, Jake Sully and the other ones. That's right. I also liked Knott's Berry Farm, although I think Disneyland was always a bit more special. But have you guys talked about the corkscrew on this show? No. Do you know what that is? Do you remember it? Not really.

I don't think so. It was a roller coaster. It was a roller coaster it was a when i when i realized you guys talk about not the very form i was like oh maybe i should have i should have suggested that as a topic so someday um but it's a roller coaster it's a roller coaster that used to be at knott's berry farm and it went upside down but it would twist like a corkscrew i'm looking at instead of doing like a loop-de-loop it would kind of flip over and i think that was the first i was afraid to go on montezuma's revenge but that was the first roller coaster i went on where i went upside down and then i felt so proud of myself that i like kept going on that one i don't know how long i don't know what when they stopped having it but

it was pretty fun 1989 it looks like it closed it's weird because i'm 23 so i don't know how i ever went on that did you fit it in i uh interesting uh yeah this looks intense so this was like a um uh you you felt like you would like scale the level of fear or overcoming fear and going on it over and over like like you're like you can't believe you're you're maintaining this level of bravery exactly that was how i felt because i was young when i went on it i also remember skipping parks being very afraid of space mountain a babysitter had taken us to disneyland and i said i was gonna go on Space Mountain and then as we got closer to the entrance I got really scared and I started crying by the way I feel like a lot of stuff from my

childhood was like that where I said I could do it and then as it got there I was like no I can't do it um and for example I said that I would take my sister to get her ears pierced and then once we got there I was like I can't I can't watch them pierce her flesh. Wait, not even your ears. You were just like hanging out. Not even my ears. No, I already had pierced ears at this point. And my sister was four years young.

I had to wait till I was 12 or 13 to get my ears pierced. My sister was four years younger. She got to get them pierced earlier but still not at the same time as i did and i said it's like to help her convince our parents i said i would accompany her but then when we got there i couldn't do it so it wasn't my ears but she got her ears pierced it was fine anyway so space mountain i started crying um and i i think i think i decided i didn't want to go on it so then the babysitter went with i don't know who um and i i think i think i decided i didn't want to go on it so then the babysitter went with i don't know who um and then like an hour later i did go though and then again i felt

super proud of myself sure yeah it's a good way to like as a kid like give yourself these little benchmarks and then see if you can hit them but boy the humiliation if you you don't and like what do you do instead like while your friends go on the humiliation, if you, you don't, and like, what do you do instead? Like, while your friends go on the scary ride, then you just like stand around or look at shirts or, and then like people have to come out and say like, it's okay.

We totally understand. It's not, it's perfectly normal, but you know, they're putting on a big show and they don't really think that. And then there's also, I was just going to say the scenario where like your friends make fun of you. Yes. Space mountain is complicated though because like uh there's two things at play one i feel like most kids build up coasters like that either go upside down or in the

dark like those are two very common like i don't know why all kids like you know or at least nervous kids like i was thought like if you go upside down if you go in the dark there's a chance that death is waiting for you there the other thing is like space mountain is like shorthand for like big scary roller coaster in popular culture like you know even just like on the news if like a pundit or something is looking for something they'll just toss out space so like space mountain is just in the lexicon as like a big roller coaster, you know? So it just builds it up even more. The 2020 election was a real Space Mountain-esque affair.

Florida Space Mountain. It's unpleasant. It's bumpy. It hurts your back. We're still in the dark about exactly how it played out. It's just a reality. Yeah. it hurts your back we're still in the dark about uh exactly how it played out reality yeah i said e-ticket ride to someone kind of recently and they did not know at all what i was talking about and i think it was greg fitzsimmons my childish co-host so he's definitely old enough

to know that reference but maybe it's because he wasn't living in California when it was like that. You guys know the reference, right? Oh, yeah. We do. This has come up before, though. This is where I start to, because we super nerd out on this thing and just start talking at like level 10 out of 10 of theme park nerddom.

And then we'll look at our social media and somebody will say like, hey, so I don't know what e-ticket means. And these guys just say it like we know and i don't is an e-ticket like an online ticket like when i buy on a computer and there's nothing wrong with that question they're correct to need that clarity uh and what is e-tickets are you would because you would buy uh rides piecemeal yeah yeah when you'd go to disneyland you would buy rides piecemeal. Yeah. Yeah. When you'd go to Disneyland, you'd buy a ticket book, and it had a different amount of each kind of ticket.

And I think they offered, depending on what you felt like, maybe you wanted to do the easier, younger rides, or maybe you wanted to do a lot of the bigger attractions. And the E-ticket rides were the roller coasters and the ones that went fast so to say something is a real e-ticket ride is like it's a real fly by the seat of your pants kind of it's a real space experience yeah and then your a is you go all the way down and your a is like a horse carries you 20 feet down the street that's that's one of the eight tickets yeah um yeah it's i feel like that maybe term is even like maybe people know it and kind of know what it means but don't know it's even from disney like it's been around i feel like i have seen it in

completely out of context for theme parks too well that was my that was why i was surprised that who again i don't mean to besmirch the good name of gray fitzsimmons if it wasn't him that's why i was surprised that this person didn't know because i thought that yeah like like you're saying it exists outside of disney it's just a phrase now right yes so yeah i guess i don't know i'd be interested in a polling if the pollsters can all switch over to maybe pulling this thing now i am interested to know like how yeah did that term move over because they haven't had the ticket books at disney for a long time now so it's interesting that has seemed like i see it pop up here and

there that it just like that it got so popular at the time that it's just lasted well do we need to do a glossary episode this is the question for the audience do we just need to do a glossary episode? This is the question for the audience. Do we just need to run through terms? You do. And that could be like you start with that one. If you're like, how do you get led into the podcast or add water with the glossary? Don't tempt me. Do not tempt me, Scott.

What other terms have come up that you need to gloss? Well, I mean, we talk ride vehicles. The word Omnimover comes up, which is what Haunted Mansion ride vehicle is and other things. I'm trying to think of. Do you know that term? Have you ever heard Omnimover before, Allison? I have not, no. Yeah, it's like Haunted Mansion where it never stops.

It's not like the Autopia where you drive up to a point and then you keep going. It's like one of the tracks that just is always going in an endless loop. Which other rides at Disneyland use an Omnimover? Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid ride. A lot that aren't around anymore,

like the old Adventures or or journey into inner space oh yeah yeah that was that was one um i guess yeah i feel like there used to be more i think i guess buzz lightyear is kind is on a kind of an omnimover right because it's got yeah it's that's on a sort of a convey like a escalator not escalator like a like uh at the airport you know what i'm talking about yeah oh yes the moving sidewalk is maybe the tell yes so that's buzz layer is like i guess maybe technically we haven't done the episode we don't know we haven't looked into if they technically call it an omnimover yeah i and and every episode stuff is revealed like for today's episode how at one point in time at disneyland there were three autopias

simultaneously which i never knew like i didn't i knew at some point there were smaller ones next to it or around it but i didn't know that there was a point in time where you could go on three autopias in one day and one of them had a name that is not really right that is that is extra problematic i to i did a little bit of research because i was like i don't remember that much about autopia although i do have a story about autopia but i don't and then i then a lot of stuff came back to me and all of a sudden it did come back to me that i remember there was like there was more than one at one point yes but the there being three that was you know way before any of our times yeah oh problematic one was very very long ago very shortly lived um i guess we'll get to that yes you you brought up

you brought up the utopia as a thing to talk about uh um yeah what's uh why why the utopia what's, why the Utopia? What's, any personal fondnesses for it or stories or experiences? Yes, so we always just went to Disneyland as a day trip. And I know that Disney World is very different for people. Like that's a whole, you go, it's a whole vacation. But when I turned six or possibly seven, I can't remember, we went and we spent the night in the Disneyland hotel,

either for one or two nights. And so we had like back to back days at Disneyland. And it was me, and it was my family. So my parents, my sister, and then my best friend, Brooke, and we were like inseparable. And Autopia was always what I was always fascinated with driving. I got my driver's license the day I turned 16. And so to be able to drive in a little car, even though it's on a track, was very exciting to me. And I always sat next to my mom. And I think sometimes she would let me steer. But the idea of being able to operate my own car, I mean, I could just like, couldn't even wait to do it. So I was hoping I was tall enough.

And you had to stand up to a thing to make sure you're tall enough to ride. And on that trip, I was just tall enough, like by a hair. And my friend Brooke was a few months younger than I was, but like a lot shorter. She was very short for for our age and i was probably average height so anyway it's like a six two six-year-olds or two seven-year-olds

i've just passed the clearance you get in the car i'm so i'm like shaking i'm so excited and i go to push and we're off and i go to push down the pedal and I realized though my toes reach the pedal I cannot get it to go without like sliding my whole I basically start to panic because I realize I'm actually not tall enough to operate the car and in order to get it to go I have to like slide my butt down to the edge of the seat but then when I push on the pedal it pushes me back into the seat so I've got to like brace my I'm like it bracing myself trying to push the pedal panicking and to get down low enough where I can actually make the car go now I can't see anymore I don't know why I didn't just say this isn't working but like somehow we had gotten the car to go enough that it was like I would have had to walk along the track to get back so anyway my best friend brooke

super resourceful a wonderful wing child climbs down into the the bottom of the car and just pushes the pedal and then i just steered it um but it was still i was still like sweating and panicking the entire time it was still a total nightmare so wow after that i decided not to go on that again until i was definitely tall enough wow geez so the fraction of an inch but it only got you to where you were operating that the way like the toys drive a car and toy story. Yes. It was, but it was,

it's, it's like silly and funny, but it was deadly serious to me at that age. And it was awful. Yeah. I think because it's, to me, it was as if I had like stalled out on the freeway.

The fact that it's a ride, the fact that there's actually, I mean, when I think about it, probably whoever the, you know, the person who sits at the, like the little control it's a ride the fact that there's actually i mean when i think about it probably whoever the you know the person who sits at like the little control station could probably have seen what was happening um but i felt like i was on the four or five and i couldn't get my car to go and i was going to get hit by other cars yeah i knew that way that you i'm sorry sorry about that just the way that you take off like you know, there's a big line of maybe 16 cars.

And if you are anywhere towards the front, if you're in the first five and then there's that go time, this one goes, this one goes, this one goes. And it's you. And you feel like suddenly everybody's staring at you. Like you have an inability to perform in any way or you haven't like exactly set up your body just how it needs to be and you know this is going to be a problem the entire time this is going to set the tempo for your entire run through the thing which is a long ride and you have to keep up the speed like this is a performance ride probably only the canoes is it is the only other ride where like you have to work so that stress you sit down and like oh my god we're not

i am not capable of operating this that must have been horrible it was truly awful it was really bad that's like night that's like if i think about it as a as a youth i would have been like that's my biggest nightmare because every you feel like everyone's watching you and then you also of course like as kids do like you blame yourself you're like probably like ah like i would just i would have melted down i'm sure at that point i would have i don't know what i would have done i would have it was like hid it was honestly like an abu grabe stress position because it's like either i can see or i can push the pedal i can't do both at the same time yeah no offense to people who've been through horrible things the actual sure the uh was your friend then in a point where are you having to avoid uh

kicking your friend or having or or having your foot right in her face i must have been like i don't quite remember the resolution i just know that she was down there pushing on the pedal too but i don't remember then thinking like oh phew i felt like it bought us a few more seconds you know even though somehow like i'm here now it all worked out but i don't remember what i did with my foot at that point i just remember being like i can't do it like there was a lot of like yelling and stuff Again I don't understand why I feel like adults should have intervened

Yeah there's so many cars I would guess that they're not doing a great job of like Making sure everyone is Has the ability to do it But also maybe There was an extra apathetic teen That day that Probably

Don't have time Once they started introducing like these other extra apathetic teen that day that probably yeah paying attention of time probably once they started introducing like these other variants like there's a junior autopia and it seems like the difference became well yeah littler kids can drive it because we put like a big brick on the pedal so that they can reach it it seems like a really like inelegant like it's just like attach let's put let's install like a high heel basically on top of this pedal and now then that you wouldn't have had that problem yeah i i don't know which one it was because this was when both of them i think there

were two of them at this point so it could have actually been junior autopia well but i still was a little bit too short i think there was a time and you guys correct me if i'm wrong where there was just like they were the same like what i remember when i went when i first time i went which is probably in 87 that it was just the tomorrow land utopia and the fantasy land utopia and they were the same much i don't think one was a junior right of the other i don't think what a weird thing though for there to be two versions of the same ride just in different like, was it that popular? I, you know, I guess at the time, at the time the park opened, the 50s, like the highways of America were like the pride of the country. And I was associate like opening Disneyland with like, man, there was a lot of trains everywhere but then those for the reading about all these autopias

i'm like oh i underestimated the sheer number of cars uh between these and the main street like uh kind of novelty cars that were just in that park pumping out that beautiful gasoline smell everywhere yeah right i think locomotion was a big deal to the for early disneyland yes and like moving people around and i guess autopia i always associate it with the autobahn um it's a portmanteau of automobile and utopia and it really was a celebration of the highway which is funny when you think about it like imagine that being you know a fun ride to just sit on on a highway um and when i turned 16 i lost my interest in that ride a hundred percent okay there was it held no excitement for me anymore once i could drive an actual car yeah without a rail once you didn't

have a rail on the railroads you know i and I remember doing that ride when I was too young to drive, but old enough to operate that car and thinking, what this really needs is for there to be no rail. That would be super fun. And I think it started without the rail, right? Right, yes. It did. It was, and no bumpers either.

Some mild bumpers. I don't know that you'd call, they called no bumpers either. Mm-hmm. Some mild bumpers. I don't know that you'd call, they called them bumpers. To me, they just look like strips of aluminum. But in the opening day Disneyland special, you can watch Sammy Davis Jr. bump Frank Sinatra and his son in an Autopia car, which is very funny. It seems like those early Autopiaia like you could have with a little like hitting it at the right angle you could have driven one off the track pretty easily i think

this happened all the time yeah i think it was very common for cars to be able to go off-roading uh if you could get enough speed um one one problem i i discovered in interviews with with uh with bob gerr who's a guy we talk about a lot uh that's in the guy who's like that's in the episode bob gerr is a pretty frequent term that this guy comes up a lot because he's like you know you you think about these disneyland attractions being like super high tech and just the most like military grade operations uh but it feels like an original disneyland they just had this guy bob gerr who's kind of like if your handy uncle went and fixed all the rides himself like if a ride broke down he just kind of like bang on it until it worked again it was like very ungraceful there's a lot of like imagineers who are like you know and

basically we wanted to capture what the story of peter pan was in the actual experience they're talking very like flowery terms and really trying to explain it and bob gris like yeah they wanted me to make a car that turned around 360 so i was like i don't know how to do it and then he like went into the garage in here i figured it out okay like he has no it's veryilitarian he was just like a guy Around who could do stuff Yeah yeah sounds amazing yeah yeah He was only 23 back then and he's still Alive now so he was he Actually went he I think of him as

Like this uncle figure but really At the time he was almost a Valencia Teen he was almost an Apathetic teen himself yeah Have you tried to get in touch with him We haven't but that we have i think he's pretty podcastable though i think he's i think it's possible i feel like we have a degree there's a degree or two of separation maybe we could yeah yeah i might make that work but we

could ask about some of this stuff like one of the ones that i found was that okay so today the cars have a top speed of about seven miles an hour uh when when the ride started the cars could go 11 miles an hour but only because they put on a part called the the governor there's a device that's the the governor strangely and that stopped it from going its real high speed which is 25 miles an hour. But Disneyland opens and they've never done this before. And it gets extremely hot very quick as it opened during the summer. So it gets into August and the cars start having problems and the governors start breaking. And if the governor breaks, then suddenly a kid can go all out of nowhere from 11 to 25 miles an hour, like getting a mushroom in Mario Kart.

Suddenly. Oh my God. So Bob Gurr says, yeah, if you were a lucky kid, suddenly your speed could more than double out of nowhere. So kind of the wild west. I believe governors in various forms are common in transportation.

My old Saturn, I think had a governor built in for going down the hill. And no one told me that when we bought it. So, when I first went down the hill at one section of the 101 and the car starts to slow down, I was like, Jesus Christ, what's happening? And it was a feature, not a bug. So, eventually, I got used to it but uh terrifying if you're not expecting it and now governors are pretty much around just to put a limit on the fun that we can have bastard newsome um now they just take away our freedom yes yes that's right they limit our breathing with their masks they suffocate us is what these this governor class does um there's a lot of uh we've just been mired in like

like most disney fans understand like okay we have to like figure out a way to do this safely and i hope that we can go back and forth and get these parks open again but there is a degree of this kind of thing i read a big article that was comparing governor newsom to frollo the bad uh bishop or whatever in hunchback of notre dame he is a modern day frollo who seeks to suffocate the citizenry. So the intersection of like Disney fans and conservative. Well, maybe it's not all conservative. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever that is.

Free speeches. General crank. Yeah. It's also possible. They're like one issue is opening Disney. And that's the only that's as political as they get. They have no nothing else that they believe. They didn't vote. They didn nothing else that they believe in. They didn't vote.

They didn't care about it at all. It's just they literally want to just walk down Main Street. That's it. I would vote if it was Beast versus Gaston. There I have opinions, but otherwise. What is going on with when Disney is going to open? And I had Carly Weisissel who you guys have on sometimes yeah yeah i had her on my podcast recently um and i i feel like i should i feel

like she might have said and i should know but i'm blanking do you know what's the latest on when it might open mike uh do you have your charts yeah we need to get color codes out with the way it is now with this the way way the covid spread is now and the way the charts are uh it's not gonna open ever until there's a vaccine i mean that seems to be unless something a miracle happens and like like like california has this thing they have in place is basically saying like the spread needs to be so low. Like there's needs to be such a small amount of transmission going on that then they would feel comfortable opening up again.

I don't know. I guess the X factor is if Disney, and this is what I said, I think months ago is if Disney like turns Mickey and friends into a rapid testing site, like you drive through and you get your 15 minute covid test and you wait like on chippendale platform and they go all right your car can go your uh no this one your son has covid you have to leave like i don't know if they're i i saw an

article talking about it i don't know if it's just logistically impossible which it might be i but i don't think disney land is going to open before we have a vaccine right but yeah disney will keep firing employees though to make the governor suffer they will keep uh firing people though until uh that they give in to what they want so i don't know we'll see i don't that's why there's that's why the stock went way up on the Pfizer announcement. Because, oh, maybe this is hope, potentially, that Disneyland will be open in any regard in 2021. Right. I wish we had less depressing news for you.

You ask us a question and we're like, it's not so good. Well, there's a pandemic right now. So, it makes sense that it's not wonderful news. Yeah. The vaccine news is good. Well, there's a pandemic right now, so it makes sense that it's not wonderful news. Yeah. The vaccine news is good, though. As of today, as of when we're recording this, the vaccine news is good and potentially, yeah, first half of next year. It's been very good.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we took my son Elliot for his third birthday. We took him to Disneyland and um it was so much fun it was really nice to be able to go with a child um my husband and I before we had kids we actually had annual passes at one point and we would go and we enjoyed it but it just it wasn't the same for I don't know how it is for you guys for For us, it just wasn't the same. And there were days where we would go and just kind of walk around and it would be crowded.

And then we'd be like, you know what? I don't really feel like being here. Yeah, let's go. Let's get something to eat and then let's go. We felt like we never quite took advantage of it in the way that we should. But then to take Elliot there, it was, to see it through his eyes, it was just amazing. And he had the best time and i mean we really didn't do very much but just even buying popcorn like the little the tiny little

figurine in the popcorn um cart like cart yeah just you know that cranks the machine yeah we've never really talked about those those are great he to him that was as exciting as anything else um so there's a lot of talk in our house about how you know we'll get to go back when and he says when the virus like b-i-r-i-b-i-r-u-s that's what he calls it um when the virus is over so oh they're very looking forward to that oh i want the virus to be over very much as well that sounds great we're like yeah any you have no idea what's gonna like spark his eye like what might grab uh uh i imagine like a a nap probably would at some point they probably conk out pretty quick but i think i wanted to grab a nap yeah he liked he liked that. He liked Mickey's house and Minnie's house.

And there's like a little play area outside of like a little play yard, which really is nothing, is not more special than any little playground. But he likes playground. So he liked that a lot. We did Pirates of the Caribbean. He liked that, but he got water in his eyes. So he didn't like that um it's not good water to get in any anywhere near your body really yeah you know um

he did dumbo and he liked being able to control the car um what else oh small world of course yes is that kind of the the kid icebreaker i feel like i hear that a lot is the answer there's maybe like good first baby's first ride small world yeah that was the very first one we did so i think i mean popcorn came first and then small world yeah so yeah i think so it's very well lit the song is uh repetitive you know there's lots of bright colors doesn't go too fast you know if they like it you can usually get right back in line pretty quickly so it's i feel like it's got all the factors for like yeah especially like a under five year old to enjoy yeah and there's also a stroller parking lot basically pretty close to it where you can park your stroller and just leave it for a long time yeah yes which they've done a good job lately i think of making those not like the most chaotic

hell holes that have ever like i feel like theme park stroller zones are often a lawless land like they are like you do people just like push theirs into a pile they start stacking up triple decker like they get so nuts what's funny is that's the kind of thing that somehow i just was completely blind i had a real blind spot like i just it's like it was a color my eyes couldn't see i mean i remember being in a stroller when i was a little kid that you would rent my mom would rent a stroller at disneyland it was like this little green stroller i think that you could rent um so i sort of remember vaguely remember the stroller parking from that time and then even though it existed it didn't exist to me all all the way up until this most recent time that we went right right it's like unless you need it you just don't even

it doesn't even register for me it didn't at least yeah i agree with that yeah i anyone ever think about uh would if if it was not if this was not a bizarre thing to do if you imagine like what if i could be in a big stroller at disneyland today if someone could push me around in an adult-sized stroller yes yeah for sure thought about that. Yeah. 100%. Do you have to be dressed up like a big baby? I don't know. Scott, the rules of your hypothetical. I am going to call that the point where it gets weird. When I was saying if it's not weird, I think the baby, the giant onesie is the point where it gets weird. If I can wear my polo shirt but also just being a

giant stroller i like weird about that i like the idea of the big bonnet and the diaper but not the stroller oh like you're just dressed like a big baby you're free to do that whenever you want you could do that around your house right now that's a good hey you know what oh mike is leaving the zoom call um you are not free to do that at disneyland let's be sure let's be clear on that like you're not necessarily you cannot dress like big baby huey at disneyland what would happen i don't know i feel like the plainclothes cops i feel like they flag people pretty early on like hey they're gonna be a problem are there actual plainclothes cops at disney yes there's plainclothes disney security like that there was do there's a story a few years ago about people especially after um uh weed

legalization in california um you know now i think at this point they just go like hey man just take it back to your car and get in line but at the time it was very new um or it was still medicinal or whatever and some people got pulled out of line and there were plainclothes security guys and they were wearing like the baggy like darth vader with a mickey ice cream bar shirt like they were dressed like dads like to blend in with the crowd yeah they wow and yeah they would like i don't it's weird i'm not sure how many of them are there are because sometimes you hear like oh they're everywhere they can you know spring into action at a moment's notice and then there's been like especially a couple years ago there was like a weird like fight that happened

at disneyland in toontown right in toontown and there was like a weird like fight that happened at Disneyland. In Toontown, right? In Toontown. And it was like, they were nowhere to be found. I didn't see anyone for minutes. So I'm not sure. I think we've once or twice been like, I think that's one of them. Like, because they kind of stick out a little bit. It definitely feels like they're like doing dad cosplay.

Like, something's a little off and like they're alone like they're alone they're a dad but they're alone they say uh the way to pick out an undercover cop is look at the shoes like the shoes are always a dead giveaway the shoes are always wrong like it's always wrong it's either like like uh like sketchers dress shoes orthopedic dress shoe or like the shoes that like rudy giuliani was photographed in a month ago and everyone's like what are those oh like pilgrim shoes pilgrim shoes are like buckles yeah very odd uh shoes isn't that how you pick out an actual undercover cop too that's what i mean yeah that's how you pick out an actual undercover cop so i'm assuming i'm assuming it translates to disney uh undercover cops too so um like unless they just issue them like fluorescent new balances like dads

um you know something that i remember something that struck me um i remember when splash mountain was introduced and i remember going on it it was fine it was fun i didn't have strong feelings about it either way and then my husband and i were at disneyland and we went on splash mountain and i got drenched like soaked like i had to go buy new socks yeah um and change socks and it was just it was miserable and i want i kind of wanted to go home after that because i'm a ton of fun but i was like did how did i avoid getting so wet before did they change it well they can change the amount of splash at the end and but by what i well it's it's a little unclear it's a little unclear exactly like the numbers, but I know they can change the sort of the

splash at the end. But because now I'm taking it personally. Yes. But also there's a couple different factors. Log placement is a big factor. Yeah, I don't know where I don't know where I had been sitting before. Yeah, log placement can really make the difference between getting soaked. And then also and I think we haven't gotten a good answer for this. I don't know where I had been sitting before. Yeah, log placement can really make the difference between getting soaked.

And then also, and I think we haven't gotten a good answer for this. There's like the second biggest drop on the ride is the one where I think the most people get wet as well. So I think if you're in the front of the log at this point, and I don't know if this has always been the case, people get their pants soaked. The first two people in the log on that first drop, not the big crazy one uh they get their pants like soaked on that so i think there's now there's a variety of places where you can get wet it depends on i think in like the summer they might turn the water up on the big splash when it's hotter out and then it's all like log because i've been in the back of the log and escaped mostly unscathed and then i've been in

the front and got soaked on that first drop and then got pretty wet on the final one so i think it all depends if there's a there's many factors is what i'm saying i'm thinking back to like that photo that they take you know and like did we buy a keychain because then if we did i could look into the hole and i could tell you exactly where i was sitting yeah yes are you third are you fifth like where what is the the splash point but are you suspecting that this is a conspiracy and that you were being targeted by some splash operator i mean i wasn't but now that mike mentions that they can control it i am it's possible and what is it like? Do they hate my podcast? Do they hate my, my vibe? Do they hate my hair? Um,

I, you know, it's up to the operator. What is it? It's up to whoever the operator is at this point. Um, you know, I,

maybe they make a call. It would be funny if there was like a malevolent, like a evil villain in the control room. That's just like, like Ursula. It was Ursula. Ursula. And she's just like like ursula it was ursula and she's just like dictating to like more splash for this car i don't like this log full of people it's like ursula or it's like ashton kutcher yes yeah i get this on camera i also remember when and again this

dates me um when the matterhorn i think i remember when the matterhorn introduced the abominable snowman yeah that's about yeah yeti was not always in that ride right yeah there was a point i think like like late 70s i think is uh where he showed up oh yeah how do i remember that then i'm not sure what they also changed the the snowman at some point in time. They made a new... Yeah, it's changed a number of times. Yeah, he's been... They made it on the 60th anniversary,

like five or six years ago. They put like a very advanced one in there. But I forget. Yeah, I forget if we talked. We did the Matterhorn, right? We did one episode about that. Yeah, we did do it. Yeah, I was trying...

There's been ones I forget. Amazing. I had one the other day. Yeah. There's probably... theme park memories are very positive like memories good times with family and friends and also a lot of mandala effect yes or mandela it's mandela i believe is that right okay is that how you say but yeah it's a lot of that i have convinced myself that rides in my memory they're total mirror opposites where it's like oh god all the action happens on the left in this ride i have been picturing it the

right in the last 10 years yeah it's also possible on that manor horn episode we were like well of course the yeti first appeared in 1981 and like we were so very like authoritative we have people like oh these guys really know what they're talking about and then it just went right out of our heads like two days later well yeah because the yeah the two hours of work or whatever research you know and then you do it and then you move on to the next episode you got to make room for new factoids right yes yeah and then also now i'm just using you guys as my personal disney google yes there was a train ride where you saw dinosaurs ages ago right there still is that is the train yeah yeah i didn't know that maybe it was out of maybe it

wasn't working the last time i thought of trying to go on it or something it's funny you say that because i think it was a couple of years actually going to disneyland before i figured it out because you have to go on the Tomorrowland to Main Street loop. Am I correct, Jason? Yeah, that's right. There's one loop of the train, Disneyland Railroad, that takes you through Primeval World, which is this whole diorama, and it's like the Grand Canyon, and then it takes you back in time, and you see like big robot dinosaurs, and it's been there forever, and I didn't know it was there for a couple years but you have to go on that one stretch from Tomorrowland

to Main Street to see it. If you got on at Main Street and got off in Frontierland you would not or New Orleans Square you would not see the dinosaurs. I don't even know where you line up to get and this is not this is a completely different line

than the monorail right yes Yes but it's all kind of a mess By the Autopia As well it's all sort of crammed Around there and you could like you could easily Get in one line thinking you're Going on to the other ride I have a terrible sense of direction so this is

No wonder I can't find it but When you're seeing the dinosaurs Are you inside like is it inside a tunnel kind of thing yes it's yeah yeah it's all restored like it's all holdover stuff from the world's fair from the 64 65 world's fair that they like throughout the years have like uh you know kept it up and redone it and stuff there was a ride where you took a ford car and you drove it past dinosaurs and then they made it a ride where you'd get on a train and take it past dinosaurs. Neither particularly makes sense.

But they're all interesting rides, though. And it's fun. Look, with the power of Ford and good quality Detroit, you know, made in Detroit and wonderful gasoline. You can ride the highways of America. You can drive by dinosaurs. You can do whatever your mind pleases. You can see where the gas came from. You can see Awesome-O, the dancing robot. Another memory, I believe it was in Tomorrowland.

There were these phone booths where it was speakerphone, but this is before, again, I'm 23, so it's weird that I'm able to remember a time before speakerphone, but there was a keypad on the wall, and you would just dial it, and then it was like speakerphone, and it was so cool. Does anyone remember this? Yes. We have never talked about this,

because I would go in there with my mom, and we would call my grandma and say, guess what? We're in the giant phone. And I don't remember where it was or what it was or why. You wouldn't go in there to make a call you needed to make. You would use it and call someone just because it was cool. They had it at Epcot, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You wouldn't do business there, no. What is it? Like the Hall of Inventions or something? At Epcot, it was, I after spaceship earth it was like the exit area at spaceship earth yeah i feel like it was around space mountain no maybe around i looked up disneyland giant phone and i found nothing that's too confusing of a google so phone maybe how sad is that you're just gonna get like a mickey mouse with a speakerphone function phone exactly it's products this is this is very difficult wait wait at&t giant speakerphone this was at epcot mike you're correct but they're all right att giant speakerphone episode coming soon was one at disneyland i swear because i've never

been to Epcot. I wonder. Yeah. No, no, no. You're correct because I did this. Cherished memory hitting giant buttons. Feeling like I had shrunk and was next to a regular sized phone but I was very small. Scott? Yes. I'm going to say yes. No.

I don't believe so because I remember it from being very little before there was interventions. Someone settle the bet for us us when was there a big phone I'm searching Disneyland now see I looked up AT&T giant speakerphone but then again I just find an actual product I just find like a you know a bunch of wholesale phones for my office and I don't have an office the one on Epcot that you just found and then can you put that name in and then search disneyland at&t giant speakerphone was the attraction at epcot and here's wait here's now it's on my mouse mice chat someone is saying huge phone at epcot i don't think it was called wait a minute it looks like there was something called

colossal communicator circle vision speakerphone booths i'm looking on mice chat um it used to be where the and someone is just asking people about it used to be where the buzz light year is now the people move yeah that feels right circle vision pre-show room um yeah circle wait what is circle vision though isn't that where um america sings was uh no circle vision we've also never talked about it's where you would go see 360 movies that were shot on nine cameras that all fanned out from the same point and they would show you shots of the grand canyon stuff like that yeah i didn't really yeah it was never my favorite thing do you guys like movies right the one in canada at epcot is circle vision oh they have a ton uh france china i like the idea of the technology i like the idea of it uh but i've never been like super hyped on Circle Vision.

Mm-hmm. No. I think it was like a hot air balloon movie. Giant phones though. That's what I associate it with. Yes. That's the kind of thing. Now you of course see hot air balloons also in Soarin' but that's not what we're talking about. This was an old analog way

to see big hot air balloons. You could talk on a speakerphone after. And then talk on a giant phone, but that's not a TNT giant speakerphone. I'm not finding it, but I know it was there. I'm afraid if we keep helping you uncover buried memories, eventually it will lead to darkness we're just one tick away from something wait a minute something grim you heard bad news on the giant i was in the ice cream parlor and i realized i was looking right at zodiac i was looking at the

zodiac killer himself well that's if we keep digging maybe we'll find some unsolved murders we'll find some that'd be cool yeah i find some. That'd be cool. Yeah. Yeah, I called my grandma on the giant speakerphone and some other voice picked up. And then my grandma got murdered. It was Richard Ramirez, the night stalker. It was a future phone exhibit. It had glass booths with speaker phones and seating for about six yeah seems right but did you like it or do you just remember it because i feel like that's where

i am i'm like was that good or not it was cool i don't know that it wasn't nearly as exciting as you know all the other stuff but sure for me a thrill was when i got to the age where i could go with friends and parents as well but it would be like okay you guys can go off on your own meet us back here at this time like not having to be tethered to and i don't mean my parents didn't have actual tethers or anything but not not having to be with my mom the whole time um to experience like a little bit of what felt like independence because then it felt like anything could happen i mean i remember for many years feeling like i'm probably gonna like meet my boyfriend i didn't have a boyfriend but i'm gonna i'm probably gonna get one from going to disneyland i'm just looking cute uh sure i didn I didn't look cute, but I was, you know,

that's what I mean about like it felt like possibility. I mean, I was like a chunky kid who made my own Michael Jackson pins. There weren't a lot of young boys digging my style, but I still felt like anything could happen at one of these theme parks. If I was away from my parents. Yes. I remember the same phenomenon. And I do think maybe,

maybe in my head, I was like, the way you get a girlfriend is you lock eyes with someone. And then you're a girl, you boyfriend, girlfriend, like it would just like happen like that. Cause it would also like take Any of the work out of like

Hey you have to meet somebody and they have to Like you and you have to not be a Weird 13 year old like all That was gone so you'd imagine this magic And it would of course be special When you would away from your parents because then Then you could really be yourself I guess I don't know

What your head thought For that hour and a half in a line you'd meet somebody fall in love and then say I have to go back and be with my parents but before I go I have to tell you you know who rode this ride on opening day Dan DeFore

Ozzie and Harriet's next door neighbor pretty cool right that would have been your opening never forget that exactly what would make people fall in love now don't don't confuse him with the man info with uh william frawley who played uh fred mertz fred mertz on i love lucy it's fred he is not tan to four uh i i was glad we're all dating somebody uh currently yes yeah yeah um this is where we were at we've only gone deeper down we've we've gone all the way we went so far down this rabbit

hole at 13 when i thought maybe i could will a girlfriend into happening i don't think i was gonna tell her about william frawley who played fred mertz on i love lucy i do think i was had some shame about it and now it's gone now lindsey my girlfriend is just hears about william frawley every day well sure and probably giving it uh you know factoids right back because that seems like in her lane as well uh not as much you know no't want to. What are her thoughts on Autopia? Lindsay? Yeah. We never go on it.

Okay. We never go. Let's talk about this. Allison, I think there's a pretty big opinion among theme park fans that uh people have nice utopia memories this is cool it's a nice place to experience that driving freedom however it is so much land there's so much land there we're all becoming greedy daniel plane views like look how much land and we could get maybe like a big new roller coaster there if we just got rid of that Autopia? Where do you fall on this discussion? Well, it does seem like a simpler ride from yesteryear. I don't even think,

now I sound like a get-off-my-lawn old man, but I can't imagine young kids are that excited about driving even because it seems to me especially with like lyft and uber and things like that pre-pandemic it seems like i know a lot of people who have 16 year olds who don't who opt not to get their license on their birthday like this thing where that was like the only way to have freedom is to get my license when i turn 16 and then i can you know it's not like that anymore so i i just doubt that that ride would be nearly as popular now that's fair yeah um i just laugh because it's like the world of tomorrow as in pitched by disneyland at the moment is just a a giant gasoline spewing car ride next to a giant water eating like yeah submarine ride

uh and it just that is such a huge amount you could build a whole other land at that area it's funny too to look back like the year 2000 when chevron started sponsoring autopia and they kind of at that point like combined the areas of like the Junior Fantasyland Autopia and Tomorrowland Autopia made one long one and their vision for the future was just tiny gas guzzling cars

like tiny stinky cars. We run into of course Disney, Disney obviously wants to project a future, a futuristic futurism type of vibe of like oh this disney obviously wants to project the future a futuristic futurism type of vibe of like oh this is gonna be wonderful in the future but as we of course learned in the epcot ride the universe of energy sometimes their their thinking is not so forward uh sometimes they go yes isn't this wonderful? The land of tomorrow. By the way, we need to get a bunch of money from this car company. And the only way they'll do it is if it's a gas engine.

Listen, good news. This gas company has got to pay to redo the whole ride. We just have to include their characters, the Chevron cars, Dusty, Sparky, and Susie. People like the Chevron cars, right? Everyone knows and loves the Chevron cars dusty sparky and suzy people like the chevron cars right everyone knows and loves the chevron remember from the commercials the chevron cars you could see all you could be in your friends yeah that's one of the things i would put when we're talking about should it go should it go away forever is like they have cars with names and i didn't know until i was looking today for information yes yeah so and chevron chevron said they were surprised by the popularity because

for like years they then sold the cars in the gas station but since honda took over the sponsorship it's all awesome now baby awesome oh and bird i don't know who they are at all awesome oh and bird have you you haven't done the ride with awesome oh and yeah this would have been the last three years you would have had to have gone to the utopia and seen awesome it's not at disneyland anymore is it oh yeah it is still there oh very much still there yeah for now unless we get our our wish to banish it burn it to the ground yeah yeah a version didn't know this how did i not well it's because i haven't been there except for that i haven't really been there in the last wait that's not where never scratch everything i said for the record nothing i'm saying is making sense um

i was unaware that it's still there i have not met awesomo and bird but next time i go i will acquaint myself with them oh awesomo is the uh robot honda built in the 90s that would like go around to schools and like uh tech conferences and dance it's kind of like what do we know though what type of dance did that awesome learn in robot school was it cha-cha slide was it cha-cha slide a simple box step he could probably pull off a rudimentary box step maybe a grapevine no no need for a cake walk as uh robots cannot Jason's robot though can do a cakewalk that he's been building for years he brings me the cake that's his secondary function he wins the cakewalk

as his primary function the secondary function he delivers the cake to me um yeah so wait is it is there because there used to always be a really long line for autopia is there still a long line is it still popular there seems to be a wait every time because once in a while we'll go like, you want to go on Autopia, I guess, and we look and it's like 30 minutes? No. Not for this. It feels like it should be five

minutes, but it does feel like it's always still a pretty big wait. Is the seatbelt still a leather strap? It is a strap. I don't know if it's leather.? Kind of a boring line. It is a strap, yeah. I don't know if it's leather. It's like a vinyl cloth strap. It's like a big, it goes over at both people's laps.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not with like 10 little studs. There's so many studs, if that's the word. It's very uncomfortable for, I am 6'3". And it's the opposite problem that you were talking about. I barely fit in the car also. No, I don't have a problem.

As much as it's fun once in a while, I go, oh, you know, we haven't been on Autopia in a year or two. And then you get in there and you go, why are we on Autopia? So, yeah, but I do think... Yeah, it hurts my legs. I do think kids... The idea of it is fun but i do think it doesn't live up to even the promise because because the the technology of it is still basically the same as when um autopia opened and now the kids have been on radiator springs racer and sure

that's the cars land ride at california venture and sure they're not controlling it but the ride is 50 times better so i can't i could imagine kids are like yeah this is kind of cool i'm kind of driving it but then they go and they go but i can go see mater and we go faster and we get to see cool stuff so i bet i don't know i bet kids don't love it like they used to for and we've talked about that already today. The kids can feel it, whether they can articulate it or not, that it's not as sophisticated as most of the rides now they're going on.

I would imagine. Yeah. Nor is it as exciting as go-karts, which you can actually drive fast. And if you are seeking danger as a kid, then maybe you get that fix with a go-kart. And certainly not with a seven mile per hour

governed vehicle on a rail. Yeah, I got nailed. Like I pulled into like to, you know, exit the ride in a go-kart once and the kid behind me did not brake and just nailed the car. And it sucks. It sucks on autopia and like it's not going very fast at all the long line by the way comes from how much of a pain in the ass

it is to get people in and out of those cars in a quick fashion like that sucks yeah yeah yeah um i mean maybe a way to spice this thing up if they don't intend to get rid of it maybe they need to bring back an idea from the past and one of my favorite things i discovered about this attraction that there was uh police officers that there were highway patrol officers on in the original autopia there were 40 cars and two of them they painted black and white and they would deputize autopia employees to drive around and chase down kids who were making trouble and trying to hop over the rails or trying to turn the car around entirely which did happen one time like some kid figured out the one way that you could turn the car around entirely before the rail and then he started driving around and hit another car

see now that's fun now there's some stakes yes yeah yeah maybe you gotta make it dangerous again maybe we gotta go back to the wild west yeah which that i think the police officer thing i mean that's so insane i think it didn't happen very often i think people were not necessarily like fearing the highway the fake highway patrolman i think it was mainly that like they would say to little kids hey you want to ride with me in the police car and that would seem like a little special trip but um yeah maybe we bring stakes back we bring back koi highway patrol we give you the ability to do a full turn and start you know coming heading it to incoming traffic they do like disneyland like events disneyland

after dark you know two hours three hours you pay an upcharge fee but yeah maybe on one of these it's it's retro night and they just take off the divider thing in the middle for that, just that event, so you can drive it like kids drove it in the 1950s. That was one of my things that made me nervous about this riding a kid. I thought I was going to get in trouble the more I hit the safety rail, the rail under the car. I was like, you're really not supposed to hit that. That's just in case of a

bird like i don't know why i got this in my head one of my parents probably without thinking it was like hey don't do that just keep it straight keep it straight like you were doing like operation rules the video the game operation where you can't hit the sides while you're operating i guess so i mean there there's a certain kind of kid that just makes up like the punishment, like death is around every quarter. Everything is a source of worry. And then they all go into the entertainment industry. And that's how we are here. So, yes, you really that's.

But, you know, you don't get a score at the end. No one judges how many times i will say i was looking at the florida i watched the uh florida one which i they you know a lot of the utopias around the world have different names florida they call i believe the current uh iteration is just called the tomorrowland speedway and it is filled uh with a number of giant white spheres and like metal art, like installation. It looks like Richard Serra metal art painted white. Yeah. Why?

What's that about? I don't know. I mean, it's kind of futuristic. It's the only futuristic looking thing um they briefly had a a sponsorship with the indianapolis motor speedway in the florida one and i have no recollection of that like they put in some more like car racing specifics for that um well i don't know what do we do i don't do we try to turn it around or do we bail do we uh do we just bail on this you think bad i'm sorry i'm sorry to autopia and i'm sorry to the autopia lovers among us of which i claimed that i was one since i'm like i want to talk

about autopia but the more we talk about it the more i've decided it's an idea whose whose day has come and gone like no one really cares about cars that much, and the exciting things are, like, electric cars, you know? Yeah. So, I mean, I guess maybe we could turn it into a bunch of Teslas. I think, yeah, people have talked about Tesla. I do think there's, like, we do, so another term we'll have to talk about is plus-up, which is when you make a ride better,

when they, like, add something that's newer. There's probably a plussed up version of this that is like wi-fi controlled vehicles that you can control but they they keep you on rails but like not with an actual physical rail so they can prevent you from hitting a wall just because the car won't be able to do it. There is probably some crazy, crazy expensive version of this that has like the Tesla self-driving technology, but it has to always work. Oh, and that works so well.

That's great. Finally, a ride that just catches on fire for no reason as opposed to when they occasionally catch on fire for a reason. Again, stakes. Yes. Stakes. That's fair. for no reason as opposed to when they occasionally catch on fire for a reason again stakes yes stakes that is that's fair i i think in tokyo they didn't they make them electric in tokyo before they closed it there and it was like right i don't know pushing a million but then they closed it the ultimate move of the future they gained land and put in beauty and the beast and fun stuff like a next generation beauty and the beast ride but it was cost prohibitive it was insanely expensive to convert

all those cars to electric i and we've heard old imagineers talk about you know the transformative thing that happens for kids on autopia when they get to drive for the first time when i was a kid i drove i liked it i don't feel it was transformative. I don't feel it changed. It was cool. I liked it. But I much rather would go on Pirates. Like, I do because there were Pirates on that ride.

Like, I liked driving. I like steering. But I also knew this isn't a real car and I'm not on a highway. So, it's like... Well, before the internet and cable television, all you had to do for entertainment, you go down to the malt shop or the drive-in, you meet up with Corn Pop and Soda Head,

and that was transformative. You would do this whole thing. But nowadays, kids have cable TV and the internet, and they don't need it as much. Who are Corn Pop and Soda Head? Are those your friends? That's Joe Biden's childhood. One of them is Joe Biden's childhood.

Right, right, right. Yeah. Yes. Hey, nothing but respect for my president and his weird old friends. I love them now. Soda Pop's Secretary of State. Secretary of Transportation.

Corn Pop. Put him in. Corn Pop's secretary of state Secretary of transportation Corn Pop Put him in Corn Pop's gonna fix coronavirus It's better than what we've had It is Yeah without having met Corn Pop It is better than what we've had I prefer Corn Pop to Squee Yeah

So Yes a plussing up of Autopia Would have to be some crazy thing with technology that to me doesn't seem perfected yet. Would you accept also, all my pitches are just bringing back old ideas like the Highway Patrol. Apparently, Bob Gurr designed a bus that there would be some, he at least just drew it and that like there'd be a bus that a bunch of kids would go on. I think I like that too. Put a bus out there. Put a bus, you're saying?

Yeah. And just pack 10 kids on a bus. Maybe one was a tractor, one was a bus, one was a plane taking off. I don't know. That's interesting. Oh, they should all be different. One's the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Yeah, one's like a Red Bull can.

The Red Bull car. Perfect. Yeah. Oh, weird like Flugtag stuff. Oh, yeah. Like those, they can partner with, do you guys know these mini brands? Have you encountered these?

They're these little like blind box ball things that you open up and there's like a tiny thing of like Brillo pads or like tiny thing of Arm & hammer baking soda and they're just like plastic replicas i don't know that sounds fun what what's i kids like uh opening since trading card kids like blind boxes you know they like the risk it's hard to find these things i think gen z is going wild for the brands gen z is going you heard it here first folks gen z what if um speaking okay gen z makes me think is there some it stakes

is what we keep coming back to that's what we're talking about is there some way to like have this ride also have a lesson and the lesson is don't text and drive that's good yeah like there's some what how does this play out like you're like like they do they tell you like i don't know how they make you get on your phone and start using it but maybe you're just like passing by other cars that have crashed into trees because they were texting you're seeing like a trail of of blood and accidents and gore that all and all of it comes from uh people well it's funny you say that scott because the morning of the day of my senior prom we all had to go outside and watch a little play of a wrecked car with some faked bloodied students i did too i did too did too. Did you do this too?

This is more weird high school shit than we had to do. They staged a drunk driving car accident and the fire department was next door to the high school. So they got a fire engine to come and pull up in front of the high school next to this accident where students had supposedly died. And they're like, okay, you can have your half day to get ready for prom now. Have fun tonight. We had a helicopter land on the football field

to pretend that there was a drunk driving accident. Yes. Whoa. My high school sucked. Sounded cool. We didn't do anything. Boring.

There were no threats, no threat plays, no hell houses. They pulled a sheet off and they had made one of the students look like he had gone through the windshield yeah yes yeah everyone people covered in blood and meanwhile all of us are totally desensitized with it because all the upper class were like oh you got to watch a fake car accident set up. And then you can go home for the day before the dance. Who got to be the kid who had went through the windshield? Very, just weirdos.

I don't know. I don't know. Were they weirdos that went to your school or were they weirdos supplied by the city? Yeah. I know exactly. We're in weirdos that went to your school or were they weirdos supplied by the city? Yeah. I know exactly which student was through the windshield of my school. It was not the drama club kids. Oddly enough. The kid who went through my fake windshield was like, hey, it's that funny guy who everybody

likes who dances at the basketball games to get everybody psyched up oh it is like a crowd yeah like like it's a beloved guy who like he's like got a lot of energy and like everybody and I guess that's what they're the narrative reason for making us all go he's dead he's

been killed yes uh weird it's weird that you did that, too. This is bizarre. God. Very strange. Okay, what if then, I'm trying to think of, like, teenage characters who could exemplify any of this. And when I think of, like, what's a Disney movie in high school, I think of a goofy movie.

And I don't want to inflict pain on the characters in a goofy movie. But what if you're like, what if it's like Max's driving test or he's prepping for it and he's like seeing what's happening to his, you know, his classmates who aren't focusing and who aren't like, like being respectful of the rules of the road. So you're driving around and you're seeing like, you know,

dogs and stuff who are probably like crashed through the windshield like the polyshore one the can exploded the whiz is everywhere there's yellow on the ground i like the morals you're trying to give uh kids here and it ends up with a happy ending. Like he decides to, like Max learns to focus and then you listen to the nice song at the end. And he knows to keep his eyes on the road

and his hands on the wheel. Do we all sign off on this? It's like a Mr. Toad vibe. Yeah. That's good. There has not been a good new disney morality play a long time and i think this like blood on the concrete is the way to bring back a great disney tradition uh look i'm gonna think about that um it's just it's an idea i i don't know. But lacking that, do we say it's time to retire the Utopia

and put something new in there? Yes. That's my, yes. I feel that's a lot of real estate there. We can have something transformative somehow for children, but also fun. High-speed rail. High-speed rail simulator.

That simulates the Los Angeles to Las Vegas trip that we want. Yeah, it's a bullet train. Yeah, yeah. New bullet train attraction. Allison, anything you want to see go into that land? Is there a type of ride? Is there a franchise? Are they going to do something with Frozen?

Do you know? They've talked about it. We're not sure about that. They have one at Epcot. They changed this ride, the the maelstrom around to be frozen but there's been a i've heard rumors and this is now all pushed back you know and maybe canceled because of covid but the rumor was they were going to carve out a chunk maybe of the utopia and back where that the subs are and they would make like an arendelle and a full new Frozen ride and then very smartly

use the backdrop of the Matterhorn to look like Arendelle. So when you were in that air, like little mini land, you would kind of feel more immersed because you'd see the Matterhorn, which thematically blends in. I think that would be cool

because my son is super into Frozen right now and uh i feel like almost all toddlers go through a frozen stage so that would be neat um i personally all pete's dragon is disney right yeah i know there's not like a real clamoring for pete's dragon but i always love pete's dragon so if they want to make a pete's dragon ride i could get on board with that uh that would be very cool they seem to be very like synergy focus new stuff which is a bummer for us who like the old but they did a new we all know new pete's dragon oh redford baby right everybody loves it live action Pete's Dragon that we all remember. So we'll put in an animatronic Robert Redford.

The only Pete's Dragon stuff in the park is still if they bring back the electrical parade. Oh, right. There's the big dragon, yeah. That's probably for now the only thing we're getting when it comes to Pete's

Dragon I think so Frozen's a good vote I know I just I everything's been pushed back at this point and I don't know if that's

coming within five years or more that would be my guess yeah yeah we shall see I you know I realized as I look

just one more time at my notes that there there is a tradition that there was a part of this ride where everybody got hurt a lot and they called it blood alley oh to do something bloody and and you know uh and violent would be in the tradition of the atopia right um let's rename it blood alley um i don't have anything about that um you know maybe like big car pileups you know like the bumpers used to like um like if you look at pictures of the old cars the bumpers would be kind of like hooks right and i think that there's some story where one of the the hook like bumpers got caught on a tree which caused that car to get stuck and then

the car behind in the car behind and the car behind it. And then like 20 cars that were all hooked together essentially. And somebody had to go and like shut them off one by one, move them one by one. Um, sounds like it was, uh, a tough ride to work.

Scott, you are reminding me a thing I wrote down, uh, when the Chevron, uh, sponsorship was going on the announcement about like keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle and so here's how to make it work uh and the guy the voice says i'm dusty the autopia car to make us go push your foot on the gas and just hearing the voice say to make us go uh i find

very unsettling so maybe the cars like talk to you or um can scream if like they get nudged or something if we're talking about upping the stakes to make us go don't make me scream

but please don't make us hurt please uh that's good that's a good plus up for sure that's fine to me yeah yeah look something they gotta roll the dice big or else um you know the the public is speaking and i think there'll be a

big outcry after this episode um yeah to uh either frozen or new blood alley new blood alley yeah i think we're i think we're agreed i think we've come to a consensus uh alice and rose and you survived podcast the ride um thank you so much for being here thank you for having me absolutely uh let's let's exit through the gift shop is there anything you'd like to plug please listen to my podcast alice and Alison Rosen is your new best friend And childish

Oh, and I have a book out It is called Tropical Attire Encouraged And Other Phrases That Scare Me Wow, hey, fantastic Oh, geez Cool, well, yes Check all that out Thanks for being here

As for us, you know Hey, we're on the social medias Help us with any questions we didn't come up with the answer to uh during this episode if you can remember what the phone was for us or for us and fill in some memory holes uh uh and besides all that we got three bonus episodes every month at uh the second podcast right at the second gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride um hey we never said the name of the the the bad one oh that's true it's called the the it was called the the little person autopia which would

be the more correct term yeah even at the time we bleep when i said it even at the time it didn't make much sense it was not aesthetically like doesn't roll off the tongue well it's just for kids it was like a weird way to like it was like we're calling kids that like or just call it the kid autopia why use that cars were cute cars were cute it was an off the off the shelf ride too it was not like original disney design um and i wrote down that it replaced what was there before, which was a bunch of tables and umbrellas. So I guess even with its bizarre name,

it still was an improvement. Maybe that's that episode. Maybe that we covered it so that we don't have to put out an episode with that weird word in the title. So we just did it yeah two ever once you're you're welcome everybody hey great took care of that other difference topics coming to the second gate and at the main feed we'll be back for more next week thanks for listening everybody bye bye forever dog this has been a Forever Dog production.

Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.