Podcast: The Ride - California's Great America

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Scott went to California's Great America! Hear all about his trip and this park that has had many owners! Cybermania '94: The Ultimate Gamer Awards Episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Tickets on sale for Podcast: The Ride's Big Vegas Groove Blender! https://thespacelv.com/event/podcast-the-rides-big-vegas-groove-blender Watch This Episode: https://youtu.be/epbp5Ssj4K8 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 All this, plus Scott's trip to California's Great America, on today's podcast, The Ride, where we know you can't spell Make America Great Again without Great America. I'm Scott Carrier, shown by Mike Carlson. I wish I could say you're wrong, but you're not. It's just true. I'm not making any assertions politically. Either way, Jason Sheridan. wrong but you're not it's just true i'm not making any assertions politically either way jason sheridan folks there's two there's one in santa clara there's one in gurney illinois it doesn't make any sense i don't get it but i do now i do sloppy branding sloppy branding folks the marriott

company drops the ball again messy marriott messy marriott um this did answer my question i was like how do we end up with two great americas i never knew i know really confusing i mean we could talk about this for a second here today we are talking about california's great america which i didn't realize was the official name it's gone through different owners being that first word in the name, but California's Great America, technically the name. Now, this is one of those things, because I always have trouble sorting out the great such and such parks, because there's a lot of those at Six Flags.

It's Great Escape and Great Adventure and then Great America, too. I thought, what is up with that? And this is not Six Flags Great America, but there is a Six Flags Great America. And I didn't know why, but it's because they both started at the same time. Like that was the brand name was Great America. And then because they were both started by marriott isn't that a weird thing in general that marriott had theme parks yes yeah and also uh it was funny how quickly they're like we don't want this anymore yeah pretty fast it's late 70s they're

putting these up by early 80s no thank you no thank you what surprised you about it that other than it's not just an easy print of money or did you just realize we are hotels and that is what we are yeah it's a good question uh uh it makes sense that a hotel company would say hey let's add some rides i suppose so it makes sense in that way but yes they build places they build buildings which you need in theme parks right um that said the marriott brand is pretty uh sterile i would say i have no particular associations with marriott red letters yeah letters are a little bit like dis, you know, kind of medieval looking. That's probably why they thought of it.

They're looking at their own logo and they're thinking, wait, you could put a silly kid's word in this font. Yeah. I mean, there was a Marriott hotel. I mean, obviously there's Marriotts everywhere, but there's a Marriott hotel by the airport that we would sometimes go and buy like a pool day pass and just go swim in the pool. I don't know why we did this actually in hindsight you can do that there's apps now they get day passes oh yeah tell you where you can in preparation for vegas i found an app too to get on guest lists for different pool parties and club events so you can you can filter it by decibel decibel level yeah there is a loud splittingly loud you can dial in exactly the number i think there's a sunday night late like loud pool party that i'm the most excited about

i believe it's a sunday night uh-huh so i i'm trying to get i'm i think i had signed up for the guest list by now so yeah i'm on i've seen those apps and i'm on a different app i'm looking at all the apps why why are you the most excited about it? I don't know. It just is. I like, as I've said, I like being in a pool with a lot of loud music. You have a couple drinks. And I don't know.

I like being in the water. I like it when it's really warm, like being in the water. And you still like this in a more germ conscious era in a post-covid outside outside i'm not going in like the middle of like a massive humanity sure somewhere but like but at some point there's a bro peeing on your knee well if that's i'm getting out of the pool i see something well if you see it but you're never gonna see it that's how it gets you that's the tax you pay to get like a super soaker Of like Well vodka Shot in your mouth

Yeah You know Cause there's kids peeing You gotta enter some Bro pee There's kids peeing In the family pool No I agree

Yeah that's always A concern with pools You're in pee It's no There's no There's no debating it This is what's happening When you work

It's just a matter of Is there like drugs In the pee And at the party I'm talking about There will be pee Full of drugs Are you worried That it's just a matter of is there like drugs in the pee and at the party i'm talking about there will be pee full of drugs are you worried that it's going to get into your pee mix with your pee and let's say you suddenly have a job interview that requires a drug test i know that i know that happens to you all the time commercial auditioning don't they very often give you a drug

test to make sure you can pee in the commercial? That's true. And because of my- They don't want filthy drug users and ads of any kind. And because I'm in my 30s, my urethra has widened too, which will let in more pee. It's going to let right in. Yeah, yeah. You're leaving yourself wide open. Vegas pee will enter my urethra.

So yeah, now that you say that, that's a concern. So I could just sit in a bench or something and enjoy from afar so i mean it's up to you i'm not gonna tell you how to live your life i'm just again i'm approaching with confusion because i still struggle to understand i'm just curious why this one was there like a photo well no is there a particular dj uh like marvin uh marvin globe dj marvin globe is spinning at this one DJ, like Marvin Globe. DJ Marvin Globe is spinning at this one. I would be excited to see DJ Marvin Globe, but no, I'm actually, the novelty for this one for me is that it's at night.

Oh, that's the reason. For me, yeah. Generally, these are during the day. So that's what is exciting to me is like, well, what is it like at night? Is this one on a roof? I don't know. Oh i'm not sure that's a good question i'll look into it further we'll click again on the app roof not roof make sure that's clicked yes um um i want the roof the roof is more fun yeah yeah i whereas i uh prefer pool with like free water and music at a very reasonable octave i do too yes this is i like that but i mean it takes all kinds it takes all kinds it takes all kinds that's so exciting

discover vegas that is readily available as an option what is like a pool where it's like oh you can you can get water so you don't get dehydrated the music is very you're shocked by the presence of pools well because it's him no no like chill pool i think i had mostly been hearing but were you were you ever surprised that there are chill pools in a city that's nothing but hotels uh no i i guess that's that's not what i was saying i was afraid that i would end up like oh this this hotel is pretty nice is the pool gonna be annoying and it wasn't which is it which one are you you're talking about a specific hotel park mgm okay it's mostly where i stay gotcha yeah they don't i don't think park mgm has a douchey pool party they have a high they have a different like club that is pool club

that's like closed right now where they would have like the dj's dj oh but that one is that at nomad dj's dj as opposed to jersey shore cast members right i they i mean the pool's all open so early so in the morning they're playing very low light jazz and then as the hotel wakes up then then they play clubbier music, but it's not overwhelming like Mike likes. Yeah, well, but I'm saying this, the place they had, the Nomad, whatever, that's actually, the music is louder,

but it's much more chill. It's not like a, it's not an annoying wave. Yeah, that's the hotel within a hotel. But you want annoying. Annoying is the box that you're checking. No, I understand that. I'm telling Jason for future if it was open. I do like the annoying thing.

I like both. I see. I'm a man who, if it was open. I do like the annoying thing. I like both. I see. I'm a man who I can take multitudes. Come see us in Vegas, though. Yes. Oh, please. Vegas rides Big Vegas Groove Blender, which at the moment

does not have a water component, but we are open to it. If there is demand, I'm open, yeah. we can discuss with the venue the possibility of flooding the venue. Yeah. I would be for it.

It might be in their best interest. They might want the Space LV where you can buy your tickets. The Spacelv.com might want to become a water venue from here on out. July 22nd. If they know what's best for them. Yeah, July 22nd.

But, you know, that's a trip that's in our future. I am excited to talk about a trip that is a little bit in my past because not only are we talking about California's great America and talking about some very interesting shifts of ownership. If you're a couple of weeks ago. A family vacation, which was very delightful. The most ambitious family vacation that I have tried.

The longest trip that I've taken in a little bit. It's the first in a long time that I've had to get out the big suitcase. All of my trips have been small enough for the small suitcase. And I got out the big suitcase and in cleaning it out i found a receipt for the schomburg bahama breeze oh can you how long it's been we were different man there were so many less children in the picture yeah um so many less uh bouts with covet 19 yeah zero at time. Multiple now in this group. That's right.

And for the world. So hearken back to a more innocent time, but with a kid in tow. And this was very exciting for me. His first flight, that was a big thing about this, which went really well. He's been talking about planes ever since. Planes that pass by,

which you might hear in the recording of this episode with an open garage door uh try to not mind it if you hear a plane i've been thinking instead about my son's excitement who every single plane he's seen since then he has said that's my airplane oh wow he's taking ownership yeah knows the planes he knows which plane he was on he knows the southwest colors uh. A huge experience in his life. So I'm coming from that one. He gives rave reviews to the general experience of riding on an airplane. So that's a big landmark taken care of.

In general, this trip was done partially because, let me take you back to the land of last summer anyone who subscribes to club three our vip patreon tier if you saw the video that i put together on twitter uh you know that uh my wife erin and i last year took a day trip there and back in the same day to san jose california where we went to rent a car take it through a car wash which looked like an old riverboat in campbell california which is one of the adjoining cities san jose campbell santa clara and then a bunch kind of in the same district uh legitimately one of the best days of the marriage of our lives it was so great up there and we noticed a myriad of family entertainment while up there as well so the gears were turning

this might be great to do with the boy uh could be great to do as just as a very easy unambitious flight because you gotta love that much like las vegas one of those like you're in the air and then you're down within the hour good for a kid who's skittish about flying and also like a great area where the airport is not in the bizarre place really far away where airports always have to be in big cities uh a bummer about traveling in general right doesn't that always that's a real kick in the morale i feel like when you're excited to get to the city and then like oh god where is this airport yeah it's never as close as you want it to be no but rarely yes yes but in san jose it is uh i don't know what it just this this area has a hold on us for some reason, especially after two really pleasant trips. And in the lead up to it, a lot of people were definitely asking, why though?

People from there were asking, why are you going to San Jose for four nights? And some of that was the lack of ambition that it's just, well, it'll be a little mellow. And we had some family up there who we got to visit, But also a ton of family-friendly stuff in the area, as discussed in the previous episode, the world's largest Chuck E. Cheese, where we got to take him. And I'm going to put a pin in that and talk about that in a future thing.

I'm also going to put a pin in Gilroy Gardens. You guys heard of Gilroy Gardens before? Does that sound familiar? Yes. It was new to me, but I watched some videos about Great America, and one or two of them mentions Gilroy Gardens, because the Cedar Fair connection, the previous Cedar Fair connection. Yes. Cedar Fair used to own them.

It's a park way south, basically. It was always framed to me as a garlic-themed theme park. I now have been there, and that's not not exactly right that's not the whole picture I'm gonna put a pin in that and talk about that down the road to the city of Gilroy California is is their big marketing is that uh oh it's garlic capital yes yeah yeah and said at some times of the year, I think you drive by and even just in passing by. It smells. Reeks of garlic. Yeah, yeah.

Not so much when I was up there. So maybe it's not all year round. But again, I got more Gilroy Gardens thoughts. I'll get into that later. Also really close to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk where we got to go only 45 minutes away. We had to go on a day where there were no rides open. So I have nothing to say about those dark rides that sounded really great i love talking about those a while back um but

you remember how that place had like the uh those they were built to be like like speaking speak of the devil like uh big dirty pools for 1920s people to use oh yeah i'm just kind of like big baths basically the height of entertainment back. I'm just kind of like big baths, basically. Yeah, the height of entertainment back then. Yeah, to stand around in a big bath. I don't know. They hadn't invented the word douchey, and I don't think they were calling it a pool party, but you might have, Mike, you might have liked being around back then.

I bet I would have. With your loud decibel splitting ragtime. Now, Jason can get into something like that. Some peony, some loud peony where he's partying, like raging. In that case, they just have to blast that through the biggest horn in the world. It's like, how little can we funnel that thing into the piano? And then how do we have to build it like a hundred times bigger than any tuba? Just blast that through the whole pool.

That's not what it is anymore. There is a pirate themed mini golf that might be the best mini golf I have ever done. So far, like animatronics climbing up a rope. There's a pirate that goes up and down like a Disney caliber climb cycle. If even a a disney hey i don't you know what indiana jones stays in one place he doesn't climb so uh this thing climbed many many feet wow um so i was impressed by that projections whole thing so cool so that's that's just all you know some of the background of uh of of being up here well one more thing I wanted to mention. I got to spend some time at a mall called Valley Fair,

a gigantic mall up there that is a super fancy mall. First of all, Eataly. You got an Eataly there. This is like the opposite of... Some malls die and just descend into... There's only three things open and one is the army and one is the navy but some

some just get gifted by the earth like all the the like uh fanciest restaurants so this mall thriving packed huge so big in fact that it is on the exact border of san jose and santa clara and it splits down the middle. So there's entire districts of the mall in one city and then in another, which I don't think ever had much bearing on anything until in 2014, and NPR did a story about this, San Jose elected to up the minimum wage

and Santa Clara stayed at what it it was i think that was eight and the other was 10 great amounts of money but two dollar minimum wage on san jose side so if you worked on the san jose side of the mall doing essentially the same job like and it's literally down to like shoe store over here shoe store over over here. One is $8 an hour. One is $10 an hour. In one case, there was a gap that was split. It was right on the line. It was split down the middle.

And the gap had to call one of the cities in question and say, what do we do here? And they said, well, you got a couple options. One, you could log employees' time on either half of the store like all right how much are they on san jose uh how much are they in santa clara is men's in san jose uh or his kids in santa clara how do you log that uh um which i i mean i they ended up choosing the option of just raising the wage for everybody thankfully the gap the Gap made the correct decision. However, I do really like,

I wish that they had had to operate for a while with the logic of like, that you could be folding a sweater on the exact line and you have to calculate the effort and time that it takes to get each sleeve. Or do you just fudge it? Do you like always,

do you do any work that you got to do on the San Jose side? How do you make that work to your benefit? Yeah, you would have to fudge it do you like always do you do any work that you got to do on the san jose side how do you make that work to your benefit yeah you would have to fudge it you would try to do everything you could on the more yeah the higher paid well i guess it's like if an employee or if a customer needs help like excuse me and you then you got to go like yeah yeah i gotcha over here please on this side yeah no but i'm looking at some shirts over yeah no bring them over here though or you go and like move the whole rag you just drag the rack into the other side and go yeah so here we're dealing with that's a good move that's a good like employee revolts assuming the managers would not stop is just like get

everything oh yeah over there yeah maybe there's just like one kind of like dumb stooge employee who doesn't realize what's going on yeah and you leave him to like ah i think it needs more sweeping over there in santa clara i see some dust bunnies okay yeah whatever you need skip poor guy yeah yeah yeah um sweet santa clara dummy wow um so funny anyway that's just that's some of the oddity uh that i got to like like uh truly great four days recommend the area in general uh but great america the main reason to go and also um something we haven't talked about with in getting to great amer, there is a ticking clock.

We don't know how ticking it is. We don't know how fast it's ticking yet. But a bizarre announcement was made that the land has been purchased. This park will be no more in two years, in five years, at least 10 years unless it all yeah goes away unless they decide this plan isn't happening or there's a big economic hit or something i'm not sure but a we a jay leno tonight show level bizarre two ahead of time announcement that great america will be retiring all right prologis it's yours buddy yeah hey you make it make it number one just like i did five years it's going away and uh rather go out on top this park we have to say is no johnny carlton

so cedar fair sold the land to prologis prologis a sinister sounding real estate concern you know yeah if they have a lot of real estate in silicon valley and everywhere then that's uh who yeah probably not yeah shady yeah i bet but who knows and so i i'm interested in this kind of conflicted how weird it is where it's like cedar fair owns the park prologis owns the land this had been kind of the case in the past where like santa clara the city of santa clara owed the land and then so and so around the park you know um but yeah they've been in this situation before when marriott when yeah cowards marriott got cold feet and bailed on the whole thing. I'm never staying at a Marriott. You can't trust them.

They might bail on me staying there. They might shoot me out the window. They're quitters. They're quitters. Yeah. If you work in Marriott corporate, we're on to you. There's a couple of things at play. One, this is the way they talked about Six Flags Magic Mountain back around 2008 or so,

that that land was going to be turned into condos. Ah, okay. It just never happened, which could potentially, Great America could be saved because the city of Santa Clara, I think, has said that land is only zoned for theme parks. Oh. Oh. Wait. Well, but they couldn't have, like, that would, they, I feel like there's already discussion of other things will be there, of offices or whatever.

Yeah. I imagine there's possibility. They're not going to build another theme park. Surely. But one of the other hurdles they've had to deal with over the years is the overflow lot for the theme park is the parking lot for the stadium where the 49ers play yeah levi's levi's stadium yes which you see when you park there butts right up to it um well which is maybe a good thing for uh offices or residences, right? To be where the action is. Yeah, potentially.

To be where the 49... I mean, because then you can get one of those, like... What's that thing in Anaheim they're building? They're building, like... I mean, we're going to get some new shoppertainment district. Yeah. Like, I forget what it's called outside of the pond, which has not been the pond for many years,

but it's got the the dumbest name i've ever heard yeah we did an episode on this sort of thing we talked about it came up it was definitely part we haven't done a whole episode about the forthcoming anaheim entertainment district what's the name it's so silly let me i'll try to find it because there already is something uh down there like there's a golden road brewery and there's a lot of apartment buildings right next to the angels stadium which has multi-use parking lots for the convention center for the theme parks you can build the world's largest golden road if you demolish great america oh that's true yeah the entire yeah the whole thing

brewery yeah uh one video i watched said that on the days when there are games they cannot open great america oh really yeah oh i've been to i've been to levi stadium for wrestlemania 31 oh sure oh really yeah ah so uh how was the venue it was very new at the time so it was it was cool so it was a high tech yeah like pretty high-end stadium yeah i think uh it was a big pain in the ass like it felt like they hadn't gotten their like uh letting people in protocols down because we were like outside for like hours what felt like but then it was fine when we were outside for hours, what it felt like. But then it was fine when we were in there. What I was looking up is called OC, lowercase, VIBE, all uppercase,

but not an I, an exclamation point. That is what the, mark our words, there will be so much analysis of OC VIBE when OC VIBE is open. Yeah. It's going to be a whole year, I think. And one thing for sure, OC VIBE uh it's gonna it's gonna be a whole year i think and and one thing for sure uh oc vibe it's definitely gonna open and it's definitely gonna open like in that initial pitch and concept art set yeah these projects always come to fruition exactly how they say they uh-huh yeah look better than they did in the concept art. Every business runs fantastically.

Jason, you don't want to run afoul of the same Toontown grass people that are going to be mad at you for judging a place based on blue sky concept art. Oh, that's true. So there's going to be people defending that strip mall. I just want to warn you. Well, due to recent mergers and finagling events,

those people are the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Saudi Arabia bringing you OC Vibe. No, that's not true. Oh, okay. Oh, I didn't know. But it could. It could be. You never know. Possibly.

So you're saying it is going to open exactly like it looks. They're going to get the PGA Tour. They're going to get OC Vibe. Oh, yeah. All the prize assets. By the way, I was in Toontown a couple weeks ago because I wanted to make sure I finally saw the whole thing. And there were still walls up by part of the grass.

What? I think they've come down like days later. But I went there to see it. You still haven't seen all the grass. I saw some new grass. But I don't want to derail us here. Well, again, we'll put a pin in that. But then I was like, but there's walls up for this other grass yeah it's like late may what's going on with this grass

i also i don't want to derail either but this is was part of my day i but a part of my day at great america was solo so that i could do grown-up stuff uh while the kiddo napped and then uh mom and kid joined and uh and we did kid stuff and what the i will say the most lit up he was the entire time there was when we found the simple pleasures of a plot of grass and it was the same grad the most artificial in the planet snoopy area and he it was going nuts and a lot of kids were going nuts and it was not lost on me that it is the the gross making him go nuts but again then i would go okay so these disney diehards are are getting militant they are canceling me slash us because we aren't super on board with something that great america planet snoopy has had for probably 17 years or so this is disney's innovation you

know where they have a big plaza of grass the empire center the big outlet mall by where we live there's the and that yes well yes a big chess set which my son loves um but you know what yeah you know what it has okay grass and a big chess set you know at disneyland had the one that had open i haven't seen the new grass but the one that was in question at the time you know what it had grass and no big chess set and nothing to do and yet people all the grass i will die for the grass and it didn't even it wasn't even up to the caliber of what the boring empire centers had for probably over a decade yeah and uh where are these people why don't these people have like they're dis

twitter but why aren't they emp twitter well we should be it's better yeah that's up to us to be yeah uh and disneyland is out of the excuse that great america has which is uh appears to be you know i've only seen it in photos and videos uh long stretches of asphalt yeah a little bit yeah yeah um it's not all the most charming. It is in a very charming area, I will say. And if you were on any ride with elevation, then there are nice lush hills to look at and parts of the park feel pretty nice, but other parts are very state fair, just big open tract.

I'll talk about my experience a little bit do is do we want to get some things out about the history of this place beyond the history that is uh that is doomed and then we will discuss whether or not the doom is justified if we need to save this thing if we need to rally against prologists and blow up the headquarters like cyberdyne do we need to do we need to save this uh blessed plot of land uh but but first history any anything we're uh excited to talk about the or that you learned about the the history of this place uh well the the carousel columbia is that what it's called yeah it's a two-story carousel uh if you've probably seen it and not realize you've seen it it's been in lots of tvs and movie

uh lots of tvs and movie tv shows and movies uh i i think that's very charming entryway like a nice fountain and trees and stuff like that always looks pretty good kind of an interesting counterpoint to a lot of those former paramount parks have the kind of wonderland which we just talked about has the big mountain others have the art of the you know eiffel tower replica yeah yeah but similar in that there's a big like kind of uh reflecting pool kind of thing like that that's the big um you know whatever landscaping to draw your eye um and the logo kind of uh like in the bushes in a topiary form um and then yeah i agree this carousel is is a really nice looking and a really great entryway and this so they have the same

thing at the six flags one one. So you recall this. You went there somewhat, right? A couple times. Okay. Not as many as I should because I was scared of most of the rides. But we went a couple times. I did the Looney Tunes stuff. But yeah, yeah.

This is basically the same. Okay. That's my memory of it. Very confused about that. You know, we copy and paste this same history. We just did it with Canada's Wonderland. Any of the Kings's parks king's island king's dominion there's been so much recapping of it was taft broadcasting and then it was uh and then there was a hannah barbara deal and then it became uh paramount and then and cedar

fair took it over so it's some of the same steps of all that but with the confusing thing that it was instead marriott at the beginning uh and then there was a divorce like the parent trap yeah one child went with um wait wait what was it first one child went with kings and the other child went with six flags right and they weren't allowed to see each other and i hope that they can get together someday and bring their parents the Marriott Corporation back together. Wouldn't it be nice if Marriott could buy them back?

Yeah. Bring it all back full circle. It's really gnawing at me that it's just not as it was supposed to be. These are in their blood these are Marriott parks and it drives me crazy that they don't get to be you up at night uh i i can't speak to the six legs one but i i will say having been like you know a regular king's dominion goer when i was a kid um i think the

different it it just seems like there's a little more care put into the design in King's Dominion and King's Isle. Like, you can kind of see just looking at pictures and videos that, like, oh, someone else built California's Great America. Uh-huh. Like, it's just a little less thoughtfully planned out. It's a little less themed you know you can kind of tell it's had a lot of owners because like a lot of stuff has changed or been updated you know that is accurate on the ground i will say i was wondering that i mean i can we can go back and forth between history and and my story uh uh and i what you just said jason about like that entryway and you're gonna pull

and you get that two-story carousel which is is very like that's a good theme park icon they couldn't do a castle they couldn't do anything really show-stopping but it's a really nicely kept up but it feels like you know that that nice big building on catalina or something just kind of like oh yeah you know kind of classic or historic even though it was only built in 76 this is a 76 park, I believe. Bicentennial mania, I think, is why it is Great America. Yeah, 76. I'm fairly certain.

But you go in, and that looks really nice. And it looks really nice in photographs. And it's what they stress on the website. And you see it in films like Beverly Hills Cop 3. They use that. This is the park where that was filmed or all the exterior stuff at least and then as soon as you get past that once you get around that carousel you're like oh no it's a six flags oh shit it's like that is a facade like that is a wall

for a minute keeping you away from what's behind it and keeping you in the state of like this is maybe a nice little northern california gem and i can't wait for my son to join me and see all of the wonder and charm oh no shit shit shit shit this is trash there are 40 competing signs all the music doesn't make any sense it's like a i feel like for a lot of it, there was just a loud MIDI of, you're a grand old flag. Oh, so annoying. Oh,

Jason just booked a ticket up there though. He loves it. That's his loud pool party music. They don't play anything patriotic. I love, I love that song. I'm a big mass effect guy. You know,

I know. Putting pins in things is the theme of this. Oh, man, we're just full. We're a regular pin cushion today. I've got so many pins. Like, we're conspiracy theorists. It's like this episode is a voodoo doll. But yeah, truly, like, it is a really disappointing thing because you're around the...

And like, I have the sense that this was a charming place at various times i think when it was kind of a relatively non-corporate park in the 70s in in bicentennial era i bet it was really nice um i got a shade of that when you know what was really nice to do was a skyway type ride they had like a gondola sky buckets kind of ride eagles flight i think it was a patriotic name or i think it has a different name depending on where you board but i was really looking forward to that i'd really like to do one of those because those those barely exist anywhere they don't have them at disneyland and the building that i boarded from had a really nice wood carved eagle that felt very american adventure uh or even like critter country

or something i was like well this little corner and there's some forest back there like like this corner of the park feels a little disney to me right and i so i think if whatever you found in the late 70s probably was very charming uh um my my mother-in-law dan i think really enjoyed this place as a teenager growing up uh i bet there was charm in the 90s Paramount era. I know you like those parks, Jason. There's something fun about that. As we were just talking, you know, the chance that a Klingon could be on the coaster next to you. I think they, like, pumped a little bit of life into all those parks and seemingly this one, too.

So I think there's been eras of this place. Yeah. But I don't think this on death row era is necessarily one of them. It's very funny that so many of them, it's like you got to ride the suspended coaster flight deck and it's like, branding looks really familiar. You look it up, it's like, ah, it used to be Top Gun.

Yes, it's another one of those. I forget how many of these there are uh in this world but another where it was a top gun ride and now it is called flight deck um which seemed uh very good but i did not go on this coaster i did not go on a lot of coasters and it was not for lack of trying i to my cry i know you might put me in the wimp category as you would have any right to do given my history however i tried i definitely tried um did you go on anything resembling a coaster i did i went on patriot uh in keeping with the thing i had to prove that i am one right um and appropriately i was in line next to a guy with a t-shirt oh good with drawings of you might think i'm going maga with this but in

fact i'm going t-shirt with joe rogan and chris talia what why are they like everybody in that podcast yeah anybody everybody in the avengers of the i'm just asking questions i'm not sure it was more the comedy side there could have been a theo vaughn i didn't try really hard to i i did not uh stare at this man's chest i think he is a person who would not have been comfortable to see this shirt i bet it exists um i i bet the right googling would, you know, Rogan, D'Elia, all stars of comedy and thought and freedom and not having your mind in a cage, man. That's what you Google. Patriot, though, I liked a lot. Brave for me, I would say. There's loops and there's corkscrews And It was

A five On the Famous Cedar Fair One through five Oh wow Okay Fear rank

Or thrill ranking Scale So I did a five I would like some high fives For doing a five Is that the scariest Coaster you've ever done? I wouldn't say so

It was not as intense As the one at Knott's that I was suddenly brave enough to do. That one's probably the most, and it's no rock and roller or anything. It's like fairly tense. I don't think Flight Deck is probably a little more ambitious than some of the other ones. Did you see the,

there's a single rail coaster there opened in 2018 called Railblazer. It has a red track. That looks insane. Yeah. The way it moves, like even just on video, it's like, oh wow,

that looks odd. I gotta, I, that, maybe have to book a flight because it's just like i haven't you've only done one or two of those single rail coasters yeah i've had trouble getting my head around what those are and how they work and but it's yeah it's it's wild i mean it feels very it feels like it's 3d printed or something it just seems so fluid and precise and bendy, twisty in a way you've never really seen a coaster be.

It moves so fast in such a way where you're like, is it out of control? Are those people in trouble? Yeah, that was not a candidate for me. I was not going to do that one. I really wish I had done a ride called Gold Striker, and I was even attempting to do it. It's right at the entrance, and it seems kind of in the family of Ghost Rider.

It's wooden but pretty, like, hefty and crazy. It's not a seaside kind of wooden coaster. It's a big boy. We're talking about a big boy here uh where it goes really fast 53 miles an hour i think which is almost in credit coasters top speed and i got into the line for it even where the first drop really thunders past you it's wild like the sound you're hearing over and over again is intense and scary but i wanted to do it i swear i wanted to do it this just became a case where um okay one of the one of the like pleasantries of other parks that

this place is lacking are accurate signs all like of wait times nor is there like an app i don't think that's really telling you anything so you're just trying to eyeball it. And I even passed by this right at the entrance, and I saw a sign that said, wait from this point two hours. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do two hours, because this is also the kind of place where you are not exactly getting top-tier queue entertainment. We can debate about skippable queues. I would love to see the

defense of most of the cues at a place like this or in fact a six but it's not what they do it's not what they're uh that's not their bread and butter no no uh um in fact in the the i did stick with it for a while i was in the line for a while I tried to take in some of the Q entertainment, which the only one I remember was the music video for that song. It's a quarter after one. I'm a little drunk and I need you now. Who does that? I don't know. I need you.

I don't know. It's out there. It's on all the time, but I don't know. I didn't feel like watching the music video and uh i scarcely see how it is relevant for a ride lady a i was right oh that's a lady a yeah i see is that now is that from post a or was it when there was pre-a when it was the pre-a i think antebellum was your old name oh shh don't say it so. It's not the solo artist who was already called Lady A. Oh, right.

They took Lady A. Yeah. Yeah. There was no other way they could have. They can't have just gone A Lady. We're a lady. A plus lady. Yeah, that would be good.

I like the name of it. That's like the name of a covers band that would perform on a riverboat. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. A plus lady. Yeah, that would be good. I like the name of it. That's like the name of a covers band that would perform on a riverboat. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. A plus lady. Anyway, I wanted to do this, but was there a front of the line pass option? This occurred to me when I was deep into my park visit. I was too deep.

I went and asked. It was $100. A little steep, I think. I think I could have done that for much less. Really good AAA deals for this place also. That's a little tip for you. Probably sent a Podcast the Ride press email. Yeah, geez.

I'm trying to work that angle. Yeah, I know. A story about the, it's called the dying days of great america we want to come see how shitty it's gotten any press is good press you know a hundred percent that's true ghost rider is 56 miles per hour at knots wow wow that goes fs geez it's scary it's really scary no that was an intense i think the more i shaking think, is a thing that still freaks me out on. I don't like the rickety. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When Jason and I went on Ghost Rider the first time, it was like the speed kept increasing and kept increasing, and the whole thing is vibrating, which doesn't feel good. Yeah. Yeah. It's unnerving. It's good. It's a fun ride, but it's a nerve it's good it's a fun ride but it's scary there's there's also the the cedar fair uh trend and maybe i'm just a worry ward on this but like you have put your bag in this

little cubby hole this ikea furniture cubby hole and the thrill of will it be there when i get back you know that's right yeah i do this so seldom that I forgot the D. I had a visor with me. What am I to do with my visor on Patriot? I already forgot the name. Yeah, but thankfully there was no visor theft. Oh, okay. I tried it down the pants.

There was a moment before i realized there were cubbies i was trying to shove the visor down my pants and loop the visor velcro and through uh my belt loop belt loop yeah belt loop that was usually safe i used to do that it's when i was younger big fanny pack i mean i would have had to exit the the line Yeah Then try to Maybe ask Mr. Rogan D'Elia To Loan Hold my spot I thought he had a fanny pack on as well

And that maybe he would give it to you Yeah yeah He's probably plenty generous If I'd explained I was a podcaster too Oh yeah You might say I'm kind of in the same scene with those guys. Yeah, you are. Yeah, we use microphones too.

We've been meaning to have D'Leo on. We really, God, we always think about it. And then like, I hear he's a big Parks guy. Like, yeah, those guys are controversial. But a couple of weeks ago, we said that we didn't really care about the jungle cruise at Disneyland. So it's sort of a similar situation well we're saying things that like the public doesn't even want to

utter yeah we we said an episode was about canada's wonderland and then we mostly talked about toys that's like the kind of shit we'll do that's the crazy that's i'm curious i am curious if we if we missed anything about can Canada's Wonderland that was crucial. There has to be some juncture in this show that is like a... It's not the sieve. What catches a bucket beneath the... It's like a bedpan. Yeah.

The podcast The Ride Bedpan is what we'll call the episode, where we catch all of the loose droppings from topics that we, doesn't that sound pleasant to do? I think it should be, look, I've been advocating for doing all the episodes we've done already, do it again before we get to things like Space Mountain. I've been saying this for years now, and I think you just stumbled on a perfect framing device for it.

Oh, yeah. You just put two, like a fight, like big fights. Well, no, but the bed, I'm saying Scott just came up with a good branding. It's like, what do you like like uh fight like big fights well no but the bed pam saying scott just came up with a good branding it's like what did you say i'm away don't act like the two is a new idea you just thought you guys are begging for twos you're bleeding for two hundred percent but i'm saying you're a waste metaphor too your waste when you can't get out of bed call it two when you could call it a bedpan? When you can call to mind someone who's bedridden. Extra droppings.

Yeah. It's PTR leavings. Yeah, sure. Look what else plopped out of this topic. Great. Indiana Jones. The bucket's full. Parentheses or semicolon.

And then, yeah, leavings. Podcast to ride. Indiana Jones. Podcast to ride presents Indiana Jones the Podcast to Ride presents Indiana Jones, The Ride. Lawn Clippings. Lawn Clippings. Where The Ride is in there? Is The Ride in there because it's in our title,

or are we calling it suddenly Indiana Jones, The Ride? You know, that's the great thing about blue skying. There's no bad idea. You know what? That shows that we haven't talked about Indiana Jones inones in so long i forgot what the name of it is we have to go back over it back before we do a bunch of other stuff that is essential to cover on this show yes that's what approved i proved it just topic number one what is the ride's name this episode cannot move forward until we get clarity on that yeah we didn't probably talk

about it enough on that first episode we don't we just blast past the names we kind of say them and then we move on big mistake but we should we it's possible we could spend a good half an hour of every episode just saying the name yeah and pitching other names sure yeah blue sky it we're leaving money on the table yes we are um okay what basically what happened here was i just like there uh i was meeting back up with the family again uh and it was it seemed clear to me from the imprecise signs i had not yet reached the sign then who knows if i could trust it the sign that said there's 60 minutes i'd passed by the 90 but i had not passed by the 60 uh uh

kid's gonna be here soon i don't want to be like daddy's got coaster into do uh was it that worth it to me i wanted to go hit the grass with him so i had to bail on gold striker but i and and i had put um a lot of eggs into the basket of another ride again heading for it uh the closer possibly can i say real quick gold striker has a like an old prospector on like the logo for it which i really like that is enticing of course it does i like that but why are they playing lady a videos when that's the case no it should be like that should be what the vibe is it would be the easiest we could take a day and all of us take turns we only buy one pair of overalls one beard we don't need a shirt because we would only wear the overalls right we just the three of us just loop through different

prospector themed pre-ride videos yeah uh you know bucket of props bunch of gold coins maybe a lightweight mine cart pickaxe whatever it is we would knock out 10 in a day and distribute them i would do it for free i do it out of the kindness of my heart yeah and and i feel like i uh we would have to do it for free knowing the going rates for theme park entertainment and videos um but it seemed it's inexcusable that you have a prospector in your logo and not a prospector in a video 100 how could they should be people responsible for this should be the cedar fair people should be more ashamed than the marriott cowards of course this is this is this is shameful and we could fix all of this within a week or two. Yes. Oh, yeah. We can turn this place around.

Maybe that's what we have to do. Maybe we got to put our- Any six flags, we could do it too, by the way. Yeah. Because we've said this before. This is not some like classist thing. This is just like a major corporation with millions of dollars decides to let things rot.

And then- Yes. Seeming as inconsistent and incoherent. The money's going elsewhere. Yes. It's going to weird roller coaster haircut adventures and to clearing up lawsuits and stuff. You get a little bit safer.

You lift that morale a little bit. And what's going to lift the morale more than a lot of great videos? Reprogramming of music. Mike, I know you want to get in there around in Riddler's Zone and make sure that batman forever soundtrack is blasting meet and greet with chase meridian cut out meet and greet with chase meridian for sure i'll probably have to record sound alikes for the songs because we probably got sued if we they don't want to pay for a kiss from a rose so well that's well i you know i was gonna say lady

a is playing probably that's a. But that's some licensing agreement. Yeah, you're right. That's true. Possibly. So maybe it would be fine. By the way, it was through whatever in-house entertainment provider is getting the chance to do the ride videos, which is called Fun TV. So Cedar Fair made a deal with Fun TV, who made a deal with Lady A. Right. But I don't know what

magic mountain's doing i don't know if they have a deal with a fun with a fun tv competitor oh man that's a good question we got to figure out if they do because yeah if they if they yeah fun tv has a deal with the flaming lips to do put bad days from the batman forever or the offspring for smash it up i don't know is there an offspring song on there too smash it up i believe yeah to smash it up factor into the film the song is in the movie i believe when robin takes the batmobile for a joyride oh you briefly hear it as he like pulls up or something but it's not a big featured thing wow so you could you might call it smash it up robin's theme yeah you should call it that robin's rebellion the uh uh the

flaming lips song is in the is in riddler's hideout which is really a fun that's used very prominently yeah yes i remember when the flaming lips were getting more popular and i'm like do i know this band sure you do they're in the riddler scene of course do I know this band? Sure you do. They're in the Riddler scene. Of course. Certainly you know this. Okay. I feel like I missed something. I mean, I started getting into my day and I'm about to land at where my boy arrived, but I want to make sure we don't miss a couple of things

history-wise. Oh, well, I got an oddly enough one yeah at least in turns for us yes so one of the companies that uh marriott splits into eventually becomes that airport uh company hms host and an early iteration of it was the same. What was the one running those cheers bars that we talked about? Oh, that's why we know HMS host. Yeah. I will for sure.

Remember that in 30 minutes this time. Yeah. You're getting it. Make some room in my brain. HMS services. HMS. Corporation is very confusing. There was so many Marriott,

uh, uh, Marriott companies At one point or another I don't want to derail But you're more of a Sheridan Than Marriott family Yes? Sure I feel like we're more of a Hilton family

It's a little on the nose for us No, boo Just say you're a Sheridan family It's more fun Okay, great Yeah, you're Jason Sheridan That's what people want to hear. I'll cut out the other part.

Yeah, great. That's all right. Now everybody's excited. Hampton Inn Holiday Inn Express give you free breakfast. I'm having a great breakfast too, I bet. Oh, and it's good. The wettest eggs you've ever had.

Conado breakfast used to just be like pastries and cereal and coffee and juice and that at some point it expended out to like they don't have a kitchen back there so i don't know how they're making these eggs and bacon trays yeah yeah yeah um you know a complimentary breakfast where we stayed it was in the hilton family like hampton inn was Was it an Embassy Suites, possibly? I think it might have been Omelette Bar in the free Omelette Bar. Are you kidding? When do you find that? Now that's living.

That's great. Evening reception, free glass of terrible wine. So happy. Chef's kiss. Omelette chef's kiss. I have to say this, and it's another sidestep, but there's a big article about the reopening

of Casa Bonita. Oh, good. I don't know if you guys saw this a couple days ago. And there's so many things about it, because they spent like $40 million renovating it. Wow. An insane amount that they didn't expect. Jeez. And one part of it was at the kitchen, there were no stoves, because they steamed everything

for decades. So they had to install actual stoves with stovetops so they could cook things. I guess it speaks to how much people were fond of the place and the theming, that they tolerated steamed beans. Yeah, I guess. What do you mean? I can't. It's so hard for me to picture all that food being made with steam. I know.

Nothing I love more than a nice steamed carne asada. They brought, yeah. But the articles, I think it was New York Times, the article, they brought in like a top chef to come in and like do the new menu. And she's got like her own like liquor brand or something too, I forget. But it's very exciting if you read about it because it's the dumbest wow greatest place that's now been restored by some millionaires this is so by some by some of the richest people on earth who aren't using money for evil as far

as i can tell this and like quentin tarantino with the Vista and the new Beverly, he bought both of these great theaters and restored it. These are at least versions of very rich people keeping things open that aren't financially viable necessarily just for the fun of it. This isn't keeping it open, but Drew Carey paying for all of the writers' meals at Bob's Big Boy, a restaurant that at one point was in the corporate family of Marriott. Look at that. 50K a week, I read.

That's insane. Drew paying at Bob's Big Boy. Drew, thank you. He helped my wife win on Price is Right, and now he's helping the writers win this terrible, to help to make their their price right in this fight sure i needed to make that rhyme of course um i have a little history thing yeah the paramount era actually well paramount's not really part of this beverly hills cop three uh we have discussed this the park wonder world has come up um in the fake theme park final four um as a movie this is a

boring movie that i've watched too many times it is like an action film for grandpas um i don't get them too excited uh but as a like theme park tribute it's great i like seeing now that i've been there i like sort of being able to spot okay now i know the display of the land i know where this is oh that's something they added that's not there um i actually appreciate the way they were able to take it from something that's more of a regional six flags and like make it feel elevated like disney um i i feel like uh they understood that difference that to make it pop on film and be more of a magic park we got to add this and characters and theming and such um i didn't know that oh oh sorry i also i forgot the ride is gone i was so sad to discover that the ride is gone where george lucas did his cameo

yeah where axel pushes him out of the way and he says, hey, hey. So I really wanted to recreate the hay with the exact right background, but that ride is gone. That's where, honestly, a big set piece is there on some swinging buckets kind of thing. It's all gone. Should have been a historic site for what George did, but it's not.

Not too far from Skywalker Ranch, I believe, at least in the same part of the state. Gotta be why they got him, right? Yeah. Pretty easy commute. Yeah. Um,

okay. I now, um, I want to click on some things to send to you guys. Uh, as I mentioned this, as I mentioned another film that shot up there right around the same time, potentially the same year.

Uh, this is a film called getting even with dad of course um this was a movie with mccally culkin and ted danson i recall it as a movie one of the movies that gave me that formative early thought in your in any child's life when they realize, oh, movies can be bad. Like one of those for sure that's like, wait a minute, but I liked Home Alone. Why doesn't this? How could this be bad? Yeah, yeah.

How could a movie be bad? I, okay. Oh man, this texting might not work out so good. Let me get off the Wi-Fi because there's something that's important to send you um this movie um the use of the park in the movie is basically let's kill a bunch of time and send the kid on the kids into the ride and the dad and his friends are not and they don't like going on all the big roller coasters um So they're, you know, everybody's like, they can't handle the speed,

and they're stumbling around after, and they're queasy. It's pretty typical stuff. But there's something that I almost missed. It's like a blink and you miss it, where you think it's just Macaulay and dancing on rides, but if you look close, at some point i was looking like wait a minute what's going on with their faces and they're trying to do the thing where uh it works better in cartoons right where the thing is so fast the ride or the centrifuge is so fast

that your face is getting blown back. Your cheeks are shaking. They attempt a different way of conveying this. And it's, oh, it's coming. I'm so sorry. It's going so slow here, but we could just cut it out. Let's pick it up when you guys see the stills from this ride that are being sent to you right now. From the scene, rather oh there you go mike got him jason any sign oh my gosh man what is this makeup i yes they used prosthetics oh my god to do

it at first i was like did they put in like lip pieces to make their lips really wide like something you'd have to wear at the dentist but no they did like squishy they're given like almost like the the bottom half of animal face they look like rat creatures it looks like a rat version of macaulay culkin macaulay culkin looks like steven tyler in one of these shots too he does you're right now we know steven tyler looks exactly like macaulay culkin with extensive extensive facial prosthetics oh my god this is awful this is like brazil or something this is something like yes it's i think it's like dr moreau a little bit moreau yeah these if you didn't know that this was supposed to be

ted dancing and macaulay culkin riding a roller coaster if these creatures just emerged from shadow in a scene you'd expect them to just be screeching in horror. Maybe they go eat from a bucket of gruel. It's like they got hit with Joker gas or something. Oh, yes. And they got the permanent smile. Oh, it's like, doesn't the Joker do that to Jerry Hall? Like, well, I fixed her up good.

Yeah, she has a smile. He kills Jerry Hall. Oh, he kills Jerry. Okay, okay. But she has a smile too, I think. oh he kills jerry okay i think but she has a smile too i think because it's something the joker would do i know yeah he does that to the newscasters in the movie we're talking about the first movie yeah well yeah it's pretty jokery also just combined with the like with the it just it looks like mccally's eyes are completely black

like it looks like he is he's like consuming to some plague i mean it looks like mccally's eyes are completely black like it looks like he is he's like consuming to some plague i mean it looks like he's midway between in like a werewolf transformation yeah there's this that's the most um like brazil skin stretch scene or uh i'm trying to think of another movie more modern movie i was going to say Star Trek Insurrection, but that's not as universal, is it? Well, I was going to say it's right around the same time, but Beetlejuice, when they realize they can, like, when they're ghosts and they can, like, fuck with their faces.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Alec Baldwin makes his head real long. Yeah, yeah. Those are all good comparisons. Why did this need to happen? This shot is five seconds long. That was my question, yeah. head real long yeah yeah those are all good comparisons why did this need to happen this shot is five seconds long that was my question why did they put them in prosthetics and then make make this you made this child go on a roller coaster wearing the shit on his face

making him look like a rat boy they thought it was funny i guess yeah they were funny let's make this kid look like a fucking rat boy a little rat boy this A little rat boy. This kid thinks he's so big. He thinks he's got more money than we do. He's the hottest box office drawing of the decade. Let's see how he feels when he's a little rat boy. See what he can buy with rat bucks. Oh, they won't sell anything to a rat boy.

No more takes rat bucks. Oh, you're a hideous abomination. Sorry, rat boy. If you can're a hideous abomination. Sorry, Ratboy. If you can get some high-res photos of this, you can mock up a movie poster of this and be like, Macaulay Culkin is Ratboy and make it look like the 90s. And people will go, well, that is him.

What is his front? They'll know it's fake, but they'll be like... Is this one of those Shazam things? Does anybody remember when Macaulay Culkin made a Ratboy movie? Is this AI? Maybe this is AI. I'm looking this is ai he's the best ai i've ever they did ai that looks like terrible prosthetics ai really knows yeah particularities um well try to prank your friends try to make your friends think there was a rat boy movie um that's that i i also this is i can't believe how much there is here but i can't

not bring it up did you guys come across a ride in the history of this but i had to move i have more stories from this trip and i moved them to the second gate mentally because like uh-oh we need some space for this like i'm just going to say it. Say it, yeah. Survivor the Ride. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you come across this now? Did you?

Yeah, when I was looking through it. Yeah, yeah. I barely caught it. Survivor the Ride. Yeah. Huh? Not the band. Right.

Which, although I have the tiger with pretty good basic roller coaster music. Yeah. That's licensed. Any theme park can get that license. No. This is an official CBS licensed ride. This was the ride based on Sensation TV series Survivor.

Yeah. Huh? Yeah. What did you say? Six? I think so. Yeah. So.

All right. Just imagine what Survivor the Ride could be. Just try to, you know, because it's like, you know, it's perilous situations and you're on an island. Yeah. And maybe it's a rafting ride. It could be that. Strong water. I've never watched the show too much, so I can't pull any big specifics, but it's a rafting ride it could be that strong water cup i've never watched the

show too much so i can't pull any big specific but it's certainly a vibe you could see why it would be a ride yeah of course uh uh there's plenty yeah the location would be good for some sort of themed entertainment it's got all the like you know dad likes palm trees so the ride is palm trees and like it checks a lot of boxes there's a water park being the survivor water park you know something in that family um no this is a this was a spinner this was like a big it's like a big roulette wheel looking thing that on a little roller coaster track that goes up and down in a hump and up and down so it's's like, it's not, you know, it's like an elevated, I don't want to just say off the shelf.

It looks like probably be a fine ride to have. The ride is there now still. I passed by the ride. It's called Tiki Twirl. Oh yeah, I saw that ride. Unless it's called, maybe it is closed now that I've said that, I'm not sure. But you know, so just a ride that you would,

so how do you turn something that now is just generically tiki twirl into survivor the ride and to do this seemingly all right you guys will know this name when i bring it up dave cobb is the name yes uh yes like uh on twitter seems like a very friendly guy. Worked in Universal and Warner Brothers Dubai Park and the Men in Black ride. And I think the main way this Survivor ride is remembered is via his YouTube channel where he himself has posted the pre-ride video.

And I will say for his, like they clearly thought, okay, we can't just do this with our limited resources and our fun tv we need to get somebody who knows how to take a property and put it and i i remembered oh i think i've heard him talk about this on something on season pass or some other podcast i'm not sure uh where so i commend him for the work he did to like all right limited budget we're gonna make the best that we can out of it and i could see why he put it on his youtube channel great that said this is the most conflated pre-write video okay so this host the hosts of this are ethan zahn and jenna maraska space survivor heads will know that they are from the show from it as far as i can go um here is them explaining what you need to do

to get on survivor the ride do you have what it takes to be a survivor here's your first challenge just up the pathway you'll be assigned into a survivor tribe when you reach the challenge platform further down the path your tribe will be divided into four groups, orange, blue, purple, and green. Once assigned to your color, enter the challenge platform and take your place on the color you were assigned. Your challenge is for your tribe

to make as much noise as it can. You see, the louder you are, the wetter the other tribe on the ride will get. Anyone care to... Huh? Did you process any of what you just heard? Or I heard orange, and they said tribes, and they're going to put you into different teams.

Yeah, you got to get four different colors, and you got to make the most noise, so that way the other team gets most wet. Jason got it. Jason got it. Jason knows. You got to follow your tribe make noise get the other

get them wet right and then what this means is that there are sensors under you and you so like you're in the line but then you're into

in a little like pre-show part where you get another video where these same hosts teach you like a clapping and stomping pattern and they record your noise

and off of that they determine who made the most noise and there and who made the least noise and the tribe that got the made ah the tribe that made the least noise will get the most wet so when once they're on the ride they get sprayed with a bunch of water from a tiki face right got it yeah okay now let's learn the rhythm stomp your feet in time with the drum next you'll add hand claps hold on can i try to do that can jason try to do this? Can Jason and I try to do this real quick? Go back to the start.

It keeps looping. Just try it from here. Wait. Get ready. Ready? Get ready. My original try name was Baran. You mean boring. I'll say Jabiru. Then I'll say Baran. Then you answer. Ready? Jabiru. Boring.

What? It's like advanced drumming or something. Jabiru. Boring. Jabiru. Boring. Boring? Jabiru.

Boring. Jabiru. Boring? Jabiru. Boring. Boring? Jabberoo Boring. Jabberoo Boring? Jabberoo Boring. All right. Well, okay. Listener, who made the most noise? Team Mike or Team Jason, vote with your... Shout to the person next to you.

Shout Mike or Jason's name to the person next to you and see how loud they spit on you. That's the at-home version, and see how loud they spit on you. That's the at-home version, yeah. How loud they spit on you. My words don't make sense anymore. I got lost in that. I don't know if I'm coming out of it. Yeah, you might not. I mean, I admire

they're trying to do something here because you can't look. Like, Survivor, I'm not a big Survivor guy. I've watched maybe two full episodes in its 20 year history uh i've mentioned a friend of mine john was on one season so i saw some of those uh but these aren't things you can do in a line for a ride these are well yeah and challenges they show a bunch of people all like happy, smiling, doing the chants together.

I contrast this with who I saw as the main audience at this park, which I would describe as teenagers practicing their public swearing. Teenagers getting used to how does this work? Yeah. How loud do I yell fuck and does shit work in every setting? And then it's kind of a minor to that major, I would say, public punching of their friends in the arm. Yeah. That is mainly what people are concerned with doing in this park.

So it's hard to imagine those same teens going, Jabaru, boring. But again, this is not Dave Cobb's responsibility. The whole thing with these, you put it in, and then you're not responsible for what the audience does, or in most cases, doesn't do. That's still a blue sky to think that that's going to, the audience is really interested in doing that. All right, everyone, get ready to stomp and clap.

Remember your tribe name. I mean, they're all similar rhythms,omp and clap you have to remember your tribe name i mean they're all similar rhythms but three rhythms you have to do simultaneously it's hard for us yeah it's like the hands hand scanning putting hands in the air i think now we're at like 50 i feel like people put their hands in the air on the guardians ride and that's much simpler than this and that's all you need i don't need everybody if only one of your mugs does it that's fine oh okay put your put your hands in the air and clap like this clap clap all right let's learn the channel buddy i'm gonna say jabberoo and then groot's gonna say groot okay and then Groot's gonna say Groot. Okay. And then you go uh uh. Are you familiar

with a four on the floor rhythm that a disco drummer might play? That's what we're gonna be doing here. Just watch this basic drum tutorial. It'll work at home too. Maybe you could pick up the sticks when you get back to your house. This is Casey and the Sunshine

Band. I want you to copy the drum pattern identically, okay? And we're going to sit here until you learn it. If not, we ain't getting on this ride. You know, you could perform CPR by doing the rhythm of staying alive.

Keep that in mind, too, if any of your friends get too shocked when we're getting into the gantry lift. Dave Cobb's YouTube channel, a lot of great theme park stuff on there. Also notable for a few years ago, uploading the most thorough video record of the Islands of Adventure Preview Center at Universal Studios. Oh, yeah. Your favorite. Everyone was thinking it.

The sacred text. Your favorite show. Everyone besides Jason was thinking the sacred text your favorite show everyone besides jason was thinking sacred jedi texts the sacred jedi video video texts um the people in that video also god bless them but like okay now's the time my tribe was named this uh it's a boring so it sounds like more like boring um these are not the most... Look, they didn't read teleprompters on the show, but they are a little stiff, and their chemistry is nil, which is why I was surprised to learn

at the time of this recording, they were dating. They look like they'd only just met each other. It's the chemistry of Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton on Twister. And yet, they were filmed together and they they were together so so that's survivor the ride an ambitious uh is that the right word yeah yeah i wonder what i commend them for trying what's your dream survivor ride i mean i don't know if i have jungle cruise i guess yeah i think so yeah as a boat that

kind of takes you around there's two boats at the same time when you're competing against the other one okay okay yeah jungle cruise boat with tribal challenge yeah and jeff probst is the host of the pre-ride video really yeah yeah and a really realistic jeff probst uh robot oh yeah like the shaman of song at the end of it yeah yeah it's the most advanced animatronic no uh no naked kiss remember the naked guy richard hatch richard hatch of course his name is he in prison one of them was uh money laundering or something yeah one of them went for financial crimes never saw it but, but I know that man's name. I'm sure it's Richard Hatch because he's got the same. I was right. This is, I knew this.

Richard Hatch was a gigantic sperm donor. He thinks he has fathered 200 children. Wow. Because he donated his sperm hundreds of times at the cryobank in Fairfax, Virginia. Post-survivor? 30 bucks a pop. No, before, I think. Oh, pre-survivor. No, this was Fairfax, Virginia. Post-Survivor? 30 bucks a pop. No, before, I think. Oh, pre-Survivor.

No, this was college. Yeah, yeah. So he has hundreds of children. Wow. Yeah, I thought, I was like, let me make sure there is a Google footprint of this. And in fact, it's him saying it. Yeah, I did it.

I got 200 sperm babies. Wow. That's wild. You would think he would go for a lot more after Survivor, too, so he should got back in the game. Got back. Hello, old friends. sperm babies wow that's wow you would think he would go for a lot more after survivor too so he should got back in the game got back hello old friends richard uh can i just confirm did you say that survivor uh ride opened in 2006 yeah that's another good point so they like that was when they were wrapping up the viacom tie-ins.

Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, I know. Kind of weird to do a new one around then. Yeah. Something new, that deep, that far past 1992. The only time they ever did anything new, really. Well, you did have Italian Jobs Stunt Coaster. I always forget, which you can also learn about on Dave Cobb's YouTube channel.

I think he was part of that as well. I don't remember which parks had Italian jobs, stunt coaster, Canada's wonderland. I don't know. Well, I did. Let us know for the droppings episode.

I remembered a detail about this cause it was at carowinds and King's dominion. And I've always talked about like there was a motion simulator theater, 1993 theme to the Tom Cruise movie days of thunder yes and it was very exciting and i loved it and then a few years later the theater uh that it was in at those parks renamed it to the paramount action fx theater and it debuted with a ride called jane's bond 007 license to thrill and then after that another go yeah we got to cover all of these yeah yeah i think some of them are online there's some generic ones called dino island 3d meteor attack but then a ride based on stan lee's seventh portal wow the web comics

company he established in the late 90s early 2000s that very quickly declared bankruptcy there's a deep dive on on stanley's other superheroes we slap his name non-marvel okay characters including those uh the character stripperella who did have a tv show and many other like many others there was a massive uh uh push at dc there was a run of specials of you'd call it one shot called stanley creates the dc universe so it's all the dc characters but stanley redoes their origins like well what would stanley's batman looks like you know i've never read those i didn't either they didn't you guys haven't read them they didn't look great i was a kid that wasn't so interesting

so at that point we had seen so many stan lee's blank yeah you know so anyway say because that quote like could you imagine if stan if scott have you ever thought about if Stan Lee thought of Batman? Why no? Would you like to think about it? Absolutely not. Go away, sir. Can I push you off a platform or into a lake? What if Batman just sounded like Stan Lee? Well, all right, that I'm unportable.

They should have let him. He was a very old man. What if Batman was a very old man? If pow boom i make the the difference between me and the other batmans is i make the sounds there there was a good series of picture i forget who posted this on twitter someone was like has anyone have you ever looked at the pictures of stan lee before he chose to become a cartoon character and he is just a bald man in a dress shirt oh yeah yeah look he didn't have the yeah pretty quickly after that i think he went to the naked stanley picture and uh huh then there's a naked stanley picture that he took on the marvel

couches yeah fully full frontal i think it's in front of his he's got a pillow i think he's got like a whole pillow in front of it probably it's cast to be the one sir i'm leaving this one it's you just do it quick so just look up uh oh it's already in your history it's in your most recent there he is he's naked with a comic in front of him oh it's a comic yeah that's good well you know it's stan you'd expect no less he's probably 55 here and it's 1970 the action theater now presenting an up-close look at stan lee naked so action theater presents stan lee full frontal well the uh the james bond one too i it's a flip of a coin either it's like, it was a big deal because they got Pierce Brosnan,

or more likely it's James Bond shot from a distance or in a hazy profile, and they did not get Pierce Brosnan. One or the other. It has something to do with Pierce Brosnan or not. Well, you've led me to my final destination. Not my final destination of my trip i mean what happened after you know the rest of my day was going on kids things uh he liked the grass we went on uh all he wanted to do with was carousels so we went on carousels and none of the carousels

had music oh no yeah so that that nice beautiful carousel we're praising at the beginning you get on and it's silent really yeah so that's great uh and then another one then like a snoopy one and there's not even the peanuts theme play just silent carousels was there was there ambient snoopy or charlie brown music very general i think i think i don't know famous peanuts theme could have been or it was still i think it's just that point park wide again and again nothing but it wouldn't surprise me uh um i so you know little disappointments uh throughout i was actually one to one really quick um i remember during the pandemic we did an episode about Snoopy theme parks and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

And in that episode, I was pining for a ride called Camp Bus because it was the most boring, bad pandemic time. And I was like, we're going to be out of this someday and I'm going to get my kid on Camp Bus and it's going to be glorious and we're going to share a father-son moment together. And that's Knott's Berry Farm is what I'm talking about.

And I haven't talked about this in the show, have I? I don't think I have. I don't think so. We went on Camp Bus. It was exactly what I pictured and more. It could not have been better. We were in the front row. I have pictures of he and I just like shaking our heads around like maniacs.

The ride went up in the air and it gives you a little thrill. There's like a little whoosh, like just enough for for it get a little bit of butterflies in the tummy and he looked at me like he could not believe what it just did not scared just like whoa things can do that and i'm like yes they can son i have much to show you this was a victory of all victories i never got to say this yeah bus such it's so funny that i pegged it on the show and then like oh it was everything i wanted camp bus i will love these words for the rest of my life so we get to planet snoopy at great america where they have the same thing it's the same ride ride mechanism. It's just a vehicle. It's on big pendulum arms and it swings up and down. And this one

is called Flying Ace. And it's the same except it's creaky and loud and doesn't give you a thrill of any kind. It's much slower. He didn't care as much. So just comparing the two, it's the exact same ride and yet just

enough not good maintenance just a little it was it was no camp bus so i have some negative things to say about things in this park but uh that gets us to this this point which is um this actually let me i'm gonna go all the way back this is became the first thing that i did of the day. After making one and a half passes through the entire park, trying to find a coaster that did not seem to have an insanely long, unthemed line. But I had my eye on this anyway, just from the website. And Jason, you brought it up, and it's in the place you were just talking

about, the former Action Theater. This is the only park that still has the Action Theater. It's the exact same layout as King's Island. I remember seeing it in 2005, the same building. And the Action Theater is now home to something called Mass Effect New Earth. And this is a coaster park. If you like this park, I think it's probably on the strength of the coasters. It is not a dark ride park at all nor is this a dark ride but i lit up at it because wait a minute this might be the

one thing with theming and a story and i bet it's a little janky but maybe that's a little bit fun to talk about um mass effect i don't know one thing about this very successful video game series. Are you guys players of Mass Effect? What do we know about Mass Effect? Never played it. I'm just vaguely familiar with what it's about and photos of it and little videos of it. So I'm vaguely familiar, which is, I think I know where this is headed. I have watched my brother play it.

It's like a sci-fi RPG kind of game. I don't know any specifics about the worlds or the beat. I think you can customize some avatars. I think that's part of it. So you mean like most video games? I'm just naming features that I know. You're just saying what he knows. Yeah, I'm just saying what I know.

I know the story. You go to a place that is not your house. I'm sure there's online elements. Yeah. So, well, this is where i'm at you know more than me i don't know a thing but isn't that where you want to be right and this does this not take me back to going on star tours and i've never seen the star wars movies it's kind of perfect if you think about it yeah um this is what you want this is a chance to experience yes an ip with fresh so ride i leave it to you bring me into the universe tell me what i need to know and at this point i am desperate because again it's a big park i've done one and a half loops i am pretty tired it's hotter than i

expected and i just want to get on something so it is 145 and i walk up to the the ride which has a sign strangely which has specific times like it's the water world stunt show or something it's like i think this is a simulator that's just going all day but instead it says showings at 11 1 2 uh 3 whatever. That's odd, I think. But I think, you know, this time's out just about right. It's 1.45. Maybe I get in for the 2 o'clock show

of Mass Effect New Earth. The first thing I pass is some big black plaques that are in memoriams to people who died in space. That's scary. That implies some peril. I wish I could say more,

except in the photo I took, the plaques are extremely dusty and scratched up and impossible to read. And that's not Imagineer dust. No, that is not carefully placed haunted mansion dust. I think, I'm pretty sure that those are the elements.

Then I moved to the next part of the queue where I am next to some trees, and I am watching some screens, again playing Fun TV. Fun TV in this juncture is stills of rock and roll artists informing me of things like Dave Matthews Band released their 10th album,

Walk Around the Moon, on Friday. That is fun. Thanks for telling me. What else you got? Compilation of Willie Nelson's 90th birthday concerts last month are getting a limited theatrical release okay well i don't love that uh tense i think you messed up a verb in there or something but i'll take it what a fun fact thanks fun tv then they play the full trailer of Disney's Little Mermaid. Oh. Then about to release.

I don't understand why that's playing here, but all right. Hey, it's better than looking at nothing. Also, side note, my phone is dying and I need to get a hold of Aaron soon. So an option for me is not looking at my phone or being entertained by anything on my phone. So I leave it to mass effects to entertain me um the next part of the queue i encounter is a uh a 16 year old uh in a bright red polo like they'd make you wear at an amc theater right and he is uh he's been out in the sun uh his face is as red as the shirt, and he is dripping with sweat.

I see his name tag. I don't want to say his real name, but it was a very put-upon name like Erwin. It was in that family where you're like, oh, Erwin. Everything okay, Erwin? So let's say Erwin. I walk up to Erwin, and he calls me forward, and he says, I know it says two, but it's going to be two 30.

Are you okay with that? Yep. I'm going to have to be, I'm tired of walking. So, uh, yes. Uh, sign me up Irwin. Okay. And he looks up at the, it's hard to describe. It's kind of like tiered waiting areas.

Five of them, not like bleachers, but just like big concrete, you know, that step up stadium style for a theater that's going to come right after. So when the doors open, you can go straight ahead into the row. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes, for sure. So he looks up at the tiered waiting area

and he goes, okay, okay. Two, four, six, eight, 12, 15. okay okay uh two four six eight uh twelve uh fifteen uh he's like counting every person in the entire uh waiting area before he can let me up there and determine okay you can go into go into row five uh and i go up into into row five um row five is bedlam there are just a bunch of people meandering around i mean it's not so it's just like you know it's like a uh for a 3d move our country bears would be people aren't organized yet nobody's standing on circles and there are no circles or numbers there is no particular like way to organize the people and that's okay except that it really seems like erwin down there needs people to be on

some numbers so that he can count them and figure out how many people went into every area right because i start staring at erwin and every 45 seconds he does another round of like like counting everybody in the entire i watch this reset so many times and i'm looking at my row and it's mostly teens and they're all milling around and some of them are behind the others and then they shift around and start punching each other in a new way so erwin's previous count cannot be his new count he's got to do it again um so oh making it all the more stressful is that and i discovered this before i ran around the corner there's like

big plumes of smoke bursting out too of this area and seemingly getting in erwin's face and this seems to bother him and that's adding to the stress of erwin and then i get up into the into the like waiting area and the smoke is still coming and i'm like is somebody vaping around here is some asshole making it harder for erwin and just doing big billows of smoke over and over again that's disrespectful then i realized it's coming out of the ride itself there's some like vent next to a big future cyborg guy i don't know and smoke keeps emitting and it makes erwin jump every time. Even though it's presumably, look, he had the energy of first day. It could have been his first day.

Yeah. But also it could have been, I don't know, his third month. I cannot, I didn't sense that this person was great at handling stress. I'm not sure. Yeah. So I, again, phone's almost dead. I can't look at the phone, so I have to use what's around me to entertain myself.

I turn to the TV sets. The TVs are playing nothing, so that's not going to do anything for me, not going to bring me into the world of Mass Effect. I look above me at the filthiest light I've ever seen. I look down at my 3D glasses, which are scratched to the point of non-visibility. They are so scuffed up and stained as if somebody has just breathed fog onto them right then and there yeah uh interesting uh

um then i i realized my main entertainment here is gonna have to be poor erwin and i look down and he is counting and counting and then every once in a while people will come up and he seems to have a handle on the situation and he seems to be leading them up to a particular place but then they will hand him a pink piece of paper and the pink piece of paper destroys Erwin's world oh no okay

and he has to take the piece of paper go to the nearest podium and by podium I mean trash can he has to roll the pink piece of paper out on a trash can look at it very carefully look at the fine print whatever it teaches him shows him that these people have a right to be in here right now and he's got to fit them in even though there's a lot of other people and he doesn't know how to count them so after every big piece of paper another round two forces he is getting so so stressed um adding to all this here's another

nice thing about this park they don't have updated signs that tell you how long the weights are and they also don't have signs that say you must be this tall to ride what they have are poles poles that are not mounted and that don't have a bottom poles that and just that just have their color coded and the color coding tells you if you put it up to a person if they are tall enough to ride or not so as all this is happening as he's counting people looking at pink piece of paper and smoke is going off then he'll like stumble a little bit and fall back into the pole and the pole will go flying oh man keeps falling clunk clunk, clunk. Just put a sign up there. Can this park not afford nails? How

hard is it to just put an arrow once and then Erwin doesn't have to fumble with a sign. How is he going to help the humans defeat the aliens at this rate? I do not have a good feeling about our trip to this new Earth. Nor do I know what it is or why I'm going there.

Things are finally coming to a head with him. At some point, I watch him mouth just the big word, Shit! It's so clearly shit. And then he gets a phone call, but the phone that he has to answer is on a little table, and he has to get down on his knees to answer the phone call. And he's in like

clean nice khakis because it's a movie theater uniform and he's on and like uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh and then he gets off and i see him start to mouth an f he is going for a bit and he like winds up as if he's gonna yell to the heavens but then like a cute girl passes by him who's his co-worker and then he like plays it cool. He stops the right in the middle. Like everything's fine with me, Erwin. He's really trying to like, because maybe, I don't know, maybe that's I could date her if I show my management skills are good enough. So then he forms a new plan.

And the new plan is to yell to the person next to me all the way in the back hey can you count how many people in your row but he's deploying the guests now to do his job again great america i say it just puts some splotches on the ground it doesn't have to be anything you don't have to design like a special mass effect shape no one knows what it is just like dump random splotches of paint on the ground and tell people to stand on those and now erwin can do his job he can get the girl and he doesn't have to make us the guests do the work for and the guy who he points to just goes me really loud and then erwin realizes what he said like wait yeah that doesn't make any sense I can't make you do it it's my job and eventually things are finally uh the spotlight is taken off of Erwin because the pre-show video starts and I'm so excited because I can finally understand

what is going on with this new earth will there be some sort of effect on my mass what do i need to prepare for with this ride so the video starts and then it stops and then it starts again and it says htmi signal lost and then there's a big pause and then the video starts again and the video is very quiet and all of the teens swearing at each other are very loud and luckily i'm the closest to it but if you're all the way in the back you're not here in one portion of this video but luckily i'm in prime position i filmed some of it there's a logo that tells you that you are getting on mass relay getaways okay so it's like a star tour is they're going to take me to the stars and then this thing happens it's like a very pleasant travelogue okay i understand this This is going to be one of those rides

where you think it's a nice trip somewhere, but then things go horribly wrong. I understand this. It's still so quiet, and when it starts, there's people who, they introduce their names, and they're too quiet to hear. What I heard was like, Hi, I'm Richard Kahn, and I'm Sarah Pluto,

and we're going to take you all the way to octus and beyond did you did your names have like comet and pluto in them i didn't hear them well enough to know is it octus did you say why is this so quiet just turn up the volume um it gets a little louder as i am taught that you are going to uh terra nova that must be the new earth that's in question and they start telling me about the great things at terra nova amenities may include hover cabanas anti-gravity massage then i'm sorry i'm gonna take my best guest four-star gourmet ion fish for dad i'm not not positive about ion, but it was something like that. It was a science word.

Okay. I couldn't tell you. So dad's going to, only dad and not mom or kids are going to like the ion fish. I like the way they're presenting this so far. I'll be honest with you. I mean, I'm in at this point. This is mythology. Ion fish.

Do you play Mass Effect? Can you confirm our ion fish? Is that your health? Like you get your health meter back up if you eat those? It's your Popeye's spinach. Make sure you catch enough. Yeah, tired dads love ion fish. The main difference between Earth and New Earth is on Earth you have fish.

On New Earth you have ion fish. So remember, you got to get your blaster out but also be fishing at all times make sure you catch enough fish and then it's interrupted and then a different two soft voiced news reporter comes on hello it's been neil phonak reporting neil phonak is that it i don't know anyway he says that things are not good on terra nova it's that kind of thing oh i'm scared what am i gonna do by now it's been 45 minutes from the time i stepped into the skew to this point so i am ready to find out so i get inside and there is a big screen and a bunch of look it's 40x chairs it doesn't look super fancy but i'll take it i'll take whatever i can

get happy to be inside i want to get my eye on fish i'm so excited yeah there's also the production value of a little like bridge platform in the center of the screen and there is a performer out there okay this is like a t2 3d i get to see a guy. Yeah, they got an actor. There is an actor in the, I mean, that's beyond what I expected out of this simulator thing. And he's talking to us. He's got a spangled Star Captain's uniform on. He seems a little nervous,

you know, like an Irwin of the skies, basically. But he's gonna get us through it. I was really waiting to see if Irwin would then also be the actor uh like the popeye village i watched a ride through this and i was like oh my god is erwin the captain oh no i am sorry to say we left we we leave erwin outside at this point i wish there was more to the erwin story i just i wish him well and i mostly wish him circles on the ground so he doesn't have to count over and over tough job not his fault great america get your act together um no different guy who is a little bit comfortable with an

audience and he's telling us like boy you guys are in for a treat to head to terra nova and hey you might even meet commander conrad reynolds well i hope so boy i look up to that guy a lot all right well uh and then suddenly we are off we are on a high speed mission to terra neva we're going through like a big loading dock area and we almost missed something and there's like a hologram lady there and it's full of danger and music and loud sounds and excitement and then eight seconds later the ride stops it goes black it goes totally black for a second i thought maybe we hit something and that was something in the ride but no clearly it becomes this is just gone so now uh erwin too the more comfortable erwin has to stall improvise something that I had to do as a Universal Tour guide.

Of course, yeah. But I didn't have to do it in Universe of Mass Effect. So all he has at his disposal are the boring things that I've been telling you, the listener, about for the last 10 minutes. He has to say, like, well, what are you guys going to do when you get to Terranova? I think, you know what i i you know this guy looks like he's excited for daddy or looks excited for that ion fish it came back wow i was so glad i clocked it before but you you're gonna like it this guy right here he's gonna be maybe having extra portions of ion fish hey do any of you folks know how to plug an, what is it called, an HDMI cable in?

Unfortunately, we are still on regular Earth, not Terra Nova, Terra Oldva. And here we are still at the hands of cables that we get from Best Buy. So if you know anything about, if anybody, any former Geek Squad members here, you mind helping us out? So he also then, he just, part of the stall is that he gets really wistful about like, I gotta say though, Commander Conrad Reynolds, this guy, he, I just really admire him.

He's so, they really are a great commander, aren't they? He says. Okay. I don't know if that was a, yes. Is that like a forward thinking language? Yeah, maybe. Pronoun wise? Or did he just talk weird?

I'm not sure. No way to know. But he gets really emotional about Conrad. It makes me even more excited to meet Conrad Reynolds. So I'm very excited when the ride starts again for one frame, then eerie silence, then a new voice, someone less charismatic than Irwin or new Irwin gets on and says, unfortunately at this time, do some difficulties.

We're going to, you got to, you got to gotta go you gotta you gotta get you wow you have to leave and that is the end of that experience for me there was no ride there were no ion fish there was no conrad reynolds yeah uh i watched a little girl burst into tears at this situation more nicer or i'm sorry more charismatic erwin as to like ah i really we didn't want this to happen we wanted to go but it's safety is important you know i'm so sorry i just hope i hope the rest of your day goes better and then we all file out our offer nothing we don't get right pieces of paper like Erwin was being handed by other. We get nothing. For what now has been an hour of my time, I'm not compensated in any way.

The families get nothing. My reward is exiting quietly through a dark hallway with occasional cutouts of characters I did not get to meet in mass effect new earth i don't know why there's a big lizard captain i'd love to know i still haven't watched a video of it you shouldn't i don't yeah in a way i don't want it jason you did what did i miss uh there's uh bad guys uh the screen has uh your cannons show up the ship ship starts blasting. Guys, you're flying all over the place. Do you remember anything about, did you meet Conrad Reynolds, and was he as valorous as lore has told? Okay, see, I think I met a friend of his,

and I thought he called us Conrad Reynolds. Weird Conrad Reynolds? I could have misunderstood exactly what was going on because video of 3d screens not in 3d you're catching 50 that's interesting because i was gonna say maybe conrad reynolds was like a performer and they could just change gender so you would say they're just because you could depending on who it was but if it's also the audience that's interesting we shouldn't investigate this they might have been mistaken and calling you that i don't know this is shane too because uh this is apparently the

last operating action theater yeah they're all gone with a long lenny and briefly had the fantastic world of hannah barbara when that left universal i forgot briefly got to have another another rides droppings yeah here you take this we don't want anymore yeah wow that or there this i guess it's at six flags but i that's similar to that justice league story i have we actually got to go on the ride but another situation where we walked into the single rider and the guy's like oh uh single single rider single rider and we were like like oh uh single single rider single rider and we were like yeah and then there's a full line of people and he goes oh right this way and he just ushered geo and i onto the ride without this without the glasses how do i make

this go away yeah exactly what's the fastest way to make this inter everyone is taller than me and madder than me and hotter than me temperature wise they're everybody someone will clock me in the face if i don't wrap this up quickly this is uh so that so for a while i'm like that was my day i don't know if i have time to get on anything else luckily i did but that's essentially i missed what is probably a really good wooden roller coaster. Yeah, you could have waited, yeah. Because I had so much greed for lapping up ion fish that

it blinded me to the potential problems of my journey, and I never made it there, and I'm stuck here on shitty old earth. It made you appreciate your wife and child more. I took them for granted thinking about that. Big plate of iron fish.

Here I was thinking so much about my love and admiration for Conrad Reynolds. I didn't stop to think that A, Conrad Reynolds might be me and 80 other people, depending on Irwin's count. And B, that I have a wife who is every bit as valorous as Conrad Reynolds could ever be. You know what they say? They say, give a man an eye on fish.

He'll eat for a day and teach a man to eye on fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. So what does that mean for me? I guess... It means you have to find your What you just said Your own Conrad Reynolds In your own life

Is more important than Someone else's journey to meet Conrad Reynolds The eye on fish are what Are the rewards that I reap When I Or once I've sowed them Which do I do first?

Yes Sow then reap Yes What do you do when it's fish? There's gotta be there's a lot in the bible about fish so it's probably i could i could clear up a lot about this i think if i uh i i i need to go to church clearly that's what i was what i'm learning future church well that's that so if you can imagine by the end of all this i had some not so great feelings about great

america it also came to pass that at the end of the day i was like i cannot wait to not have dinner here oh the joy of not standing in a crowded subway line that's twice as expensive as so i uh we got out of there and went to italy and it was glorious especially in the wake of of all that. And I don't know. At this point, Jason, you were saying maybe you want to go. Maybe you've got to try that new coaster. How do you feel after everything I told you? I don't know.

It is kind of a morbid interest in the way, very much of like, there's like one or two charming things, there's one or two like really new things, and the rest is very similar to a dying mall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And not a fancy mall. It straddles two city lines and has two different pay grades.

One of those old shitty ones. No Eataly. There definitely is no Eataly. There's a big michelada station and uh um and a very chaotic starbucks i'm starting to think that i i don't know my my final statement on all this i've complained a lot about this place i had some fun it was nice to watch erwin and i guess erwin you really made it the day special um at the end of the day even after all that what i i would say um i would still recommend get up to santa clara

go to norcal uh get up there take your family up there then turn around go way south and get to gilroy gardens a vastly superior theme park. Wow. An incredibly superior theme park. Wow, what a tease. No mere garlic theme park is this. It's wonderful. It's great at Gilroy Gardens. If you could only pick one, of course go to Gilroy Gardens. And you know what?

The only way to make it better, somebody from Gilroy Gardens, offer poor Irwin a job. I know that's not his real name, but figure out a name that's close. Get him down there. That's the only way to make the gilroy gardens experience better get the best entertainer they have that'll make a great what a great tease for the future so that's that gilroy gardens uh incredibly charming place and we'll talk about it on the second gate this place i might have to say do what you're doing burn it to the ground for insurance money wow I hope everyone

if you grew up there and you have nice memories I hope go fuck yourself sorry you had a dumb childhood and you were wrong and we are right

Scott doesn't want to save Barney Oldfield's Redwood Rally is that even there? that is an attraction that used to be called Barney Oldfield's Speed called barney oldfield speedway barney oldfield yeah i don't know i think this is like their uh uh old time cars uh also one

of the lands in that has since changed names the the land names uh this was very funny to me the one of the lands used to be called the great midwest livestock exposition and county fair that is too many words for a theme park land i think it's now just norcal county fair barney oldfield a real guy a real racer oh wow how about that how about that i i hate to say it i don't think it's enough to tip My opinion I am going to have to pass at this time Am I glad I went up there Hey it helped fuel this trip which was a wonderful trip But so much for the wonder

Gilroy Gardens that's going to be on the second gate As for this you survived Podcast the ride thank you for listening We walked right into it This is Great America I think we're putting this out I believe On, on 4th of July weekend, where next week we'll be off on the main feed, but in the middle, wet your appetite with a little bit of garlic and a little bit of talk about Gilroy garlic.

And more from the trip that I had to cut from this, notably lacking in Chuck E. Cheese thoughts. Always a bad thing to not. So if you want your Chuck, you're going to have to go to the second gate, pal. You're paying for that. Open them wallets. These horrible voices we've accumulated

from Mickey Mouse, Chuck E. Cheese. It does get worse and worse. Horror show after horror show. Hey, I'm Chet to like, yeah, Enjoy my voice I sound like what Macaulay Culkin the Rat Boy looks like Hey, merch is available

In our Tee Public store Find us on the socials at Podcast The Ride Go to Podcast The Ride The Second Gate Or Club 3 at Patreon.com Slash Podcast The Ride For the previous NorCal thing For the car wash that's on club 3 Gilroy Gardens

coming to club 2 second game which we've never called it till right now but again my brain's breaking from rat boys and and survivor stomps so better wrap it up here 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.