Podcast: The Ride - Country Bear Vacation Hoedown with Guy Selga

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

Animatronic bear enthusiast Guy Selga (Touring Plans, The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland) joins us to discuss the bears' summer vacation themed show. Jamborweek artwork by Tona Grasa: https://www.instagram.com/grizzlyrojo/ The Jamborweek continues tomorrow at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever! Dog! Stay tuned with the Country Bear Jambor Week! We got Kai Selger from the Tour Plans website joining us. This episode contains California bears, secrets discovered via animatronic name tags, and the difference between theme park work trips and theme park fun trips. It's the Country Bear Vacation Hoedown on Podcast the Ride Country Bear Jamber Week Day 2.

This feels good, right? How long has it been since you just immediately got a new podcast i assume having devoured yesterday's which although despite it being exceedingly long well uh well wait i haven't been introduced i guess well yeah i'm keeping the names alive so i'll go go through them. I'm swinging Scotty Gairdner. Yeah. Seeking to speak is Big Car Owlson. And yes, go ahead. Sorry. Oh, I was just going to say, yeah, like the first episode of this was already longer than the first Get Back.

So we're already winning as far as doing content on very famous bands. So will this go long? Because I think the second episode of Get Back is actually longer than the first. So will we go longer than yesterday? That's really my question. And I don't know. I don't know the answer.

It's up to all of us to be little Peter Jacksons. We are little Peter Jacksons today. Little Peter Jacksons, including Jughead J. Son Bonnet Sheridan. That's right. The littlest Peter Jackson. Among little. Like three little ones, but you're the littlest. I do have, sometimes he would do interviews, I feel like,

around the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, and his hair was very frizzy and frizzed out, and my hair is very long and Peter Jackson. Well, I'll probably get a cut before that. So as we're recording this, it's kind of is your hair looks like you were like ready for like senior prom versus what peter jackson's looks like during an interview his is great this is wild he knows cameras are in front of him and he's still like this is fine he's on kemp do you you look like i'm ready you look like you're ready for the sadie hawkins dance you look like you're ready to go yeah well thanks i'll take it okay take it very good looking sharp jason yeah uh anyway it's day

two and today we are covering the vacation hoedown the seasonal overlay that they started doing in 86 there's so many fragments of different shows and pieces of the Country Bear Jamboree that we got to get to. And I know a fan of this particular iteration and the Country Bear Jamboree in general is seated over to my left. He is the Disneyland writer for Touring Plans and the co-author of the unofficial guide to Disneyland.

It's Guy Selgo. What's going on, Guy? Hey, thanks for having me. Walking in here, I thought we were going to talk about coming out of their shells tour oh man but from what i understand this is this is the showbiz pizza band close it's very close yeah oh wait see how he's all mixed up i thought he knew what all the things were go with it okay yeah sure uh anyway so billy bob he drinks gasoline or something um i believe so okay uh yeah there's little guys who pop up out of holes um i don't remember any of their name you probably do

know more about uh we actually haven't done that mitzi mozzarella yeah mozzarella okay i'm trying to beat you to the names yeah fats you know the four little shavers wow geez Wow Geez Why haven't we done We probably gotta do that one That's an episode Yeah we gotta get What's his name on the show too Just kidding The inventor of them

Yeah just kidding I don't know about that Guy thanks so much For being here Thanks for having me Talking about my Favorite attraction of all time Specifically the vacation version So I'm really happy to be here oh fantastic great great well okay so yeah

we had heard that you were a country bear fan i i even looked up i was like i think i googled your name and country bear i saw that you liked this one like okay that is perfect that's great so we will leave that to the side in our first episode and narrow in here uh also kind of funny how you came to be on the show when we were talking about who do we who is a country bear fan like a super fan even i mean yeah yeah really next level bear fan and somehow jason knew jason brought up your name when we were discussing people and then i was at disneyland a month ago drinking alone at the ant-man bar as is one's right to do i've done it a couple times it's a pretty good spot it is a pretty good spot just grabbing i guess i've only been there alone once but soon enough i was not

alone because i bumped into chuck and s, who are listeners to the show. My good friends. This is what I've heard. And so I started saying, hey, I think we're going to do this country bear thing. And they said, you got to talk to Guy Selga. He's a fan of this. And also he's the person who married us.

Yeah, I appreciated the wedding out in Phoenix. Yes, yeah, yeah. In another state even this is commitment uh a good friend good good helper uh so they spoke very highly of you and it was nice to meet them so there's a lot of there's a lot of love going around here um so it was like meant to be i feel like yeah between all of these these endorsements yeah um uh does real quick before we even talk to the bears i want to i want to let the audience doesn't know your job is to be at disneyland essentially yeah touring plans we uh we take

the guesswork out of trip planning and we uh help you save time and money in disneyland and walt disney world and disney cruise line and that sort of thing and we have our day-to-day itineraries that go where the crowds aren't, and we have every bit of information you could possibly want to plan a trip. Right. So it's your job to gather this information, essentially, on an almost daily basis. Yeah, and I'm the Disneyland dude.

Keep everything up to date over there and do a lot of blog posts and whatnot. I've been there for about 10 years. Jeez. So for that amount of time, you've been going to Disneyland, how often a week? It depends on what the needs of the company are. Like sometimes I'll be there every day,

but you know, sometimes it'll be a couple of times a week, but yeah. Wow. Wow. And then what is the divide end up being between like, are you having your Disney fun fun a little bit but like

observing things doing your work as well i'm good at uh in my brain flipping on the fun mode versus work mode uh switch when i'm at the parks so if like if i'm there with friends i can just flip it off and enjoy it like and really like disneyland never gets old i mean we agree yeah i also agree with flipping it on and off yeah like i we were there for a couple for the opening of marvel the opening of marvel and the opening of star wars like those lands were we're a little stressful like you're about you're about here can i finish what your point is what your point is i think you're gonna make is that when we went to the opening of Marvel, you had the work switch switched on. I did.

You are the kid. I've noted a number of times you saying, well, I'm here for work. The degree of stress to me. It was also very stressful. It sounded terrible. Yeah, of course, you had to have a reservation, wait in the line or a reservation for the ride to

get in the lane it was all kinds of chaos i mean i'm sure you saw a little of it if you were not there directly yeah no i was there the line stretched back to i think like little mermaid and yeah it was kind of unorganized they they they said the line was going to cut off yeah it was it was stressful yeah yeah yeah i remember seeing i was about to just say i remember seeing aerial pictures oh yeah you said little mermaid i apologize for that that word specifically but yes i looked really insane have you been there for like a lot of the initial it's like first galaxy's edge first rise yeah everything we're not big on you know being the first and getting all the blog posts out and like bragging lies we just want to get the data get the info yeah you're like just your your organization

is just like just the facts yes pretty much uh it's no frills it's like a bill moyer's pbs style you know it's not like a trashy fox news type place. We don't post rumors or anything. And you know, like, uh, being a Disney blogger is a, is a very negative job to have. I feel like it's easy to make fun of, but, uh, I,

I like being for turn plans cause I can say I'm a writer. I can say I'm a writer. Right. Right. Sure. Um, well, I,

yeah, I mean, being that you're just trying to, yeah, not like a, uh, go nuts with opinions that definitely puts you in a different category than a lot of these sites who are so full of complaints and weirdness.

Well, yeah, good for you. I mean, like, I'm trying to think of other stuff, just being that you're there so free. I mean, will it just be like, I'm just going to watch how a line works today for a while? Or if like focus on this attraction, that attraction? Yeah. So we have a team of data scientists.

And sometimes all they need is to sit on this bench in this walkway in the park and count how many people walk by. And then other times it's just ride this ride over and over and get the actual wait times. Because Disney's wait times are reactionary and get the actual wait times because disney's wait times are reactionary and are and we predict the wait times so they're they're posted away if it's 40 minutes that was the wait 40 minutes ago and so we predict the way right right yeah gotcha can i ask a question and maybe there's two inside and i'll have to cut this but since disney reopened after the pandemic disneyland opened i feel that each wait time is double what it actually is. They say it's like 75 minutes and it'll be half that. Yeah.

There's a lot of bloated wait times going on right now for sure. Okay. Because I have thoughts and theories about that, but I don't. We'll talk about that off air. Do we have to? What are you worried about something? I'm not worried. No, I'll talk about it.

Well, the conspiracy theory is, sorry to interrupt. The conspiracy theory is that they're bloating it for Lightning lane to make it yes more appealing yeah oh okay okay so because because the guardians like it feels like every time i've been on in the last few months it's like 75 minutes 80 minutes and i'm i breeze through that line yeah and it feels like they're get they're priming people and getting them ready to go oh 80 minutes all right how much 15 okay yeah even rise of the resistance i've been timing that a lot this this week and last week since they put it on a standby weight and that's been 30 or 40 or 50 minutes under the posted weight sometimes okay yeah because i was giving this theory to somebody else i was ran into some friends uh and then i told them the theory

and they're like oh we'll check and then they two hours later they were like yes you're right it was half the time yeah so i feel like they're yeah i feel like it's real i feel like this is a conspiracy theory that's real yeah yeah it was kind of that same way in florida too because i got uh the florida and uh anaheim touring plans apps uh a month or so ago in anticipation of going down to florida and i did find like touring plans was usually pretty accurate like usually impossible to predict like phenomenon of like okay they're holding the entire standby line because there's a full family that doesn't know how to scan their lighting lanes the cast member is over and everyone's overwhelmed uh and it's uh disney plus day and no one knows what that means uh so weird phenomenon would pop up that

like oh no app could account for this yeah it's scary accurate sometime can i say something too about disney plus day yes i feel like uh at disneyland they had a big blue carpet out covering the entire entrance of the park well really into the train station and stuff okay i feel like that's a future like look at this weird thing that happened at disneyland 20 years ago disney plus day remember disney oh yeah it was just gigantic blue carpet like one of those like it's tailor-made for wasn't there a thing where there there was an olympic size swimming pool on main street yeah it's one of these oddities like really or like when chicken little was hovering over uh mgm

studios uh yeah totally that's gonna yeah when disney plus is dead and gone yeah the pod yeah the podcast like whoever is us in the future like that has a theme park like whatever nano podcast uh would just be like did you know there was like a blue carpet out for 20 years ago they're like oh that's weird and it goes it's a nano because it's like uh nobody needs headphones anymore it's like little nanotechnology allows it to just be in there and then some auction way down the line will sell pieces of the carpet for like two thousand dollars oh yes disgusting stinky pieces of the car and that yeah well i mean we'll all be like go and see it before it's auction and go oh it's a carpet i was alive yes yeah tell my grown child like you brought me out for this

i mean i consider there was an ebay auction for some of the inflatable castle cake yeah i remember panels not too long ago. And I was like, I don't know how well verified this is. And also this might stink like this sort of industrial rubber that was sitting in the Florida sun and humidity for whatever that was 18 months or so. Yeah.

Yeah. They should really disclose at an auction. If something's going to smell, if it's something's going to be smelly, something's going to be smelly. Good condition, lightly stinky, a little stinky uh is there a guy do you have like a is how often are you doing something that maybe you haven't done is it is it pretty much like it falls into a couple categories or like once in a while they're like we need you to count how many

people buy mozzarella sticks at the stage door even though i think I don't think they offer them anymore. It's pretty consistent on what I do for work, but it just depends on what the stats team needs at any given time. Like right now, for example, Rise of the Resistance just switched over to standby weight. So I've been told to go to the park and rope drop Rise of the Resistance and time the weights for the first couple hours of every day

so we can get a solid, uh, prediction set up for that, for the future. Gotcha. Are there any other people that are doing like your job for a different organization? I don't think so.

Um, I think a lot of them, a lot of the other non Disney wait time apps time apps just scrape disney's wait times and okay just be done with it so you're the only person that has your job probably in the world as far as i know yeah but then we have our florida researchers we have two researchers for walt disney world right yeah gotcha i was just wondering if there's like a group of like people like they're all doing a different but yeah yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You ever seen the episode of step-by-step at Disney world, where there's a character named flash,

who's trying to break a Russian guy's record of, uh, go doing all the rides and Disney, where all the rides and shops and, uh, restaurants and Disney world in four days. I haven't seen that, but that sounds like a TGIF,

uh, plot point thing that wouldn't happen. There wouldn't be a Disney, like NASA headquarters with a bunch of people in lab coats. And I guess, does that sound, do you think that if you watched that, would it resonate at all with your job? Or would you just think, well, this is wildly inaccurate.

Yeah, I'd probably tear up and it would probably be like the Bible. I'd get really emotional watching it would probably be like the the bible you know i'd get really emotional watching it finally feel seen yeah representation television um okay well uh to bring it to the bears uh yeah after several people had said that you were a bears fan i think i looked at your twitter and then indeed you had just posted this, this pile of merchandise that, uh, that you just come across.

Yeah. I, I mean, I was going to bring this up later, but, uh, Japan still really loves the bears out there. Yeah.

Yeah. And they regularly release merchandise. So recently they released a line of plates and trays and cutlery. Uh, well, this is new. It looks so like cool and vintage it's brand new like three weeks ago and so um out there they have you know the country bear theater where country bear jamboree plays and then they have hungry bear restaurant and it's it's all curry every dish there is curry so in this new line of merchandise was a curry bowl and like a a curry like a wooden yes i know what you're saying as i look at this their curry is pretty

good that's like it's pretty good yeah go to in that yeah yeah we ate there yeah yeah they used to have a curry house in in la here and it was the same company uh i think it was called house foods really oh really so it would be like my little bit of Tokyo Disneyland food here in LA, but they got bought out by a hometown buffet, and they closed all the Curry House locations. No. What? How evil is that?

I thought you were going to head for a COVID closure somehow, but I didn't expect that one. Even worse. Yeah, yeah. How long ago was it? I'm going to be so upset that I could have gone to that and I didn't. It was like a year and a half ago.

Yeah. God, does Japanese curry around? Maybe not that Japanese curry, but it exists. That is a... No, of course there's... Yeah, but it's a little piece of Tokyo at Disney.

Right in our backyard. You know, so also, sorry, the... No, go ahead. They love the bears. They're still releasing stuff. They just announced days ago they are going to sell Country Bear Jamboree branded packets of curry that you can take home. Really? Oh, wow.

Yeah. Wow. I swear. Look it up. That's so great. Bear themed curry. Because I know at Universal in Osaka, they have like cup noodle with like Spider-Man. Yeah.

It's Spider-Man themed cup noodle that you can take home with you. Yeah. Wow. So is that, I'm trying to think in Tokyo, is that uncommon where it's like they have, I mean, I guess like in the whatever confectionery or whatever they call the bakery or whatever there, but I'm trying to think,

is there other like food items that's branded with a character there yeah they'll they'll do um they'll do like they're they're moving through the food so fast there they're coming out with new stuff all the time and retiring old stuff like i remember they had um a couple a couple trips ago they had this chippendale like pastry and it was it looked like a peanut and one half of it was sweet and the other half was savory wow and then in Universal Japan especially like they they had the um it was like a jaws some kind of breading with a hot dog sticking out yeah and then like and then for backdraft they had a body bag with like a turkey leg inside it wow that's so good it's so good yeah body bag's kind of the

secondary element i think of when i think of back drafts kind of go to the fire first yeah really think of human human suffering the cost of arson of malicious arson and now you get to enjoy and enjoy it with your taste buds one more thing thing about in Tokyo, the Hungry Bear restaurant. In the lobby for Country Bear Theater, they have a napkin from Hungry Bear. And written on it is the lyrics to the Bear Band Serenade. So it's like Henry was in Hungry Bear having a meal and he jotted down the lyrics. It's so good. Because there's like a little glass case of paraphernalia and stuff.

That's very get back. Just, you know, he doesn't know where inspiration is going to strike. If it's at a restaurant than it is. Look at the napkin dirty. I think I met the napkin new. Cause we ate there,

but I missed it. No, it's, it's in the lobby of the show, the theater. Oh, I missed it there too. Then. It's here. they also have a cover of climb magazine where they were named oh yeah yeah i see i mentioned climb yesterday and there's something where is this the same thing

actually where like there's musical notation scratched out where like he makes the ears this is e and this is g yeah that's that's so cool it's a cool lobby uh um i mean so well this implies that you've seen you've seen you've been to japan you've seen the show in japan oh yeah uh was it exciting to see it there was the enthusiasm high that's what i found so uh i um i got i got legit emotional because so let me let me just let me just give a little history here yeah please uh i've had a disney Disneyland annual pass since 1994. And before that, I would go almost every week with my mom because one of her friend's dad was like an old-time monorail pilot

who could get us into the park for free whenever we wanted. So growing up, Country Bear Jamboree Vacation Hoedown was my country bear show. Oh, sure. Yes. Because they just switched over to it permanently. Right. And I didn't see the original show until I went to Disney world in 96 and 2008.

Those were the only times I saw the original show. Wow. Wow. Okay. Um, so yeah, it, and then it closed on September 10th, 2001, I think, which ended up not being the worst thing to happen that week. And then, yeah, going back to Japan, I think about 15 or 16 years later and seeing the vacation show again, it was mind-blowing.

You know, some of the songs were in Japanese and some of them were different, like Trixie sings Achy Breaky Heart. Yes, i didn't know that till this morning that is so bonkers yeah it's so weird that one opened later it opened in 94 so they they gotta keep it relevant yeah relevant to then yeah um did you know at the time what you were going in for was it like like did somehow they say it's gonna be this one or did it just wash over you like oh i haven't seen this in decades yeah i mean i i knew we were gonna be there in the summer season so because they still show all three shows there they cycle through all three of them that is

wild they get in there they change those clothes unbelievable they put the sandwich in trixie's hand yeah they cover the sub um i that's that's so cool um did you find that the audience loved it yeah or there that that show is still very popular it's in a it's in a really prime location as well and it's also right off the parade route and parades are just massive there it's like one of the uh main forms of entertainment there so it gets a lot of traffic and yeah people are really into it and if they keep doing the merch obviously like people are buying it and it's popular because they um they they also released over the last few years a line of plushies of all the characters and then also for each of the shows the seasonal variety of the shows so it's like there's so many of these stuffed bears now and they're like 18 each and me almost a 40

year old man just having a big box of stuffed bears in my closet well i yeah i came back from japan with like it was unreal how many little bags I had because like they always have to give you one and like, like, geez, I am like, like the pile was like 50 deep and I'm in America. I'm not a theme park merch buyer at all. I was shy. Just like could not stay away from everything there. It was crazy.

Yeah. I got my sister the sun bonnets and the bathing suits. Oh, yeah. Which they have, of course. Good stuff. Are you so, like, there's so many different, I think we've talked about it a little bit on the show. There's like services now to get merchandise from Tokyo Disney

and have it sent here. Are you generally just buying it when you go there? Or are you in, got like some thing going on? I'm buying it when I go there. I mean, I haven't been since 2019 now because of uh you know obvious reasons this stuff yeah um but yeah i have some friends over there that are able to send me the stuff and i just pay an insane amount for shipping but i don't have to pay like the service charge that a lot of those personal shoppers do oh geez yeah it's a whole industry i've looked into yeah yeah not i'm not gonna

start doing it i'm saying yeah i just looked into yeah yeah not i'm not gonna start doing it i'm saying yeah yeah i looked into how it works yeah yeah i bought some i bought that popsicle shirt uh i did a free service for me yeah yeah yeah i didn't just like take a picture oh yeah you bought that for me yeah yeah right um yeah uh uh vacation hoedown specific although feel free also any just like bear stuff yeah yeah if there's anything that made you fall in love with the franchise although i guess what you were saying vacation hoedown was was your first yeah don't forget your uh i mean vacation and christmas when christmas would roll around which is also a great show but i'll keep i'll stick it to the i'll

keep to the vacation version um I wrote some stuff down. Oh, yeah. If you don't mind, we'll just get into it. Please. Yeah. So the original Country Bear Jamboree opened in Disneyland in 1972. It was so popular in Walt Disney World that where it had only one theater that in Disneyland, they built two theaters because they're like, this is going to be a hit.

People are going to love the bears, build two theaters. So that was really all that was back in that corner of the park in Bear country. It was a dead end, and it brought in the people for a couple months. But then it kind of slowed down. So they said, we need to do something about this. So Tony Baxter and his team were thinking about reworking the land, but that was going to take several years. And so these two young Imagineers came along and they said, why don't we just make a new Country Bear show that we can get together in six months or a year instead of 10 years?

So David Fyton and Michael Sprout were the two Imagineers. Okay. They were big fans of the Country Bear Jamboree, and they said, quote, those bears must get tired of singing the same old songs over and over again. They said this in the Disney News Magazine in an interview. So they pitched developing new shows to Marty Sklar, and they showed him sketches that showed, hey,

we can take these existing stages and bears and we can redress them and write new songs and make a new show. So, Marty saw the potential and he approved. So, the Christmas show was first, was the first one to come along. And it was a big hit. And so they pretty much immediately, like within months, approved another new show, which ended up being the vacation version. So they did that and it opened and it was also a hit. But ultimately, it slowed down again because, again, there was still no attractions back in that corner sure sure yeah still not splash mountain yeah and

so can i just say too uh some things i love about the vacation version is that it builds upon the lore of all the bears i feel like in such in such believable, like you can see, you can see Shaker being kind of like a duet artist singing with a little penguin or a little octopus. You know, Henry with his, with his old camp t-shirt on, you can see him being kind of nostalgic for being back in camp and still hanging onto the shirt. I don't know. I just. Outgrowing it a little bit. It getting dirty yeah it's starting to tear it all makes sense in the character it all makes yeah it's not like they just threw it up in the air and said well who cares about keeping consistent with the narratives that we've or whatever yeah the

character games of these uh different pairs yeah i love hearing that i like i did not know any of that that it was done by that it was developed by people who were fans of the original and now i'd imagine it because you that that makes so much sense that it's like it feels like a cool like you know uh hey oakley and weinstein on the simpsons like started watching it and then they were now they're running the show right now like what do we want the characters to do what a dream it was like a little mini version of that it's that's very charming i almost brought up the camp grizzly shirt when we were talking about merch because as soon as i saw that i was like they have to do a camp grizzly like they do all these throwback things uh you

are wearing is it the yesteryears yeah this is the yesteryears with Big Al in his vacation gear. So his flannel shirt and his little miner hat and whatnot. Yeah. His little teddy bear. Yeah, I have that shirt. So I think that would be a hit if they sold that shirt. Also, if they sold it as a half shirt, that would be very funny. Because, yeah, it fits him kind of.

You're going to buy the half shirt? Yeah. I mean, I don't know why I'd buy a half shirt. I feel like, you know, two tops, half shirts are very in style. That's true, you're right. X number of years. That's true. So to open the vacation show, they play The Great Outdoors,

a song called The Great Outdoors. Great song, probably one of my favorite Disney songs ever. Yeah. We were saying, I was saying, I don't know if you find this controversial, but yesterday I was saying, like, maybe a weakness of the original show is there's not like the hit there's not i agree grinning goes yeah and i think maybe great outdoors is as close as you come yeah and the christmas show has tracks in the snow which is also a banger of opener just a total bop so i'm such a big fan of Great Outdoors. I always have been.

I used to watch Country Bear Jamboree like multiple times a week at Disneyland. So a few years back, I was watching the Disneyland Fun sing-along tape. Oh, yeah. And they do their Great Outdoors on there. Yeah. They sing it on there. So I'm watching the credits and i see this name uh great outdoors by george wilkins and so i'm like i gotta look this guy up

he's a genius i don't know what else he's done but he's a genius just for the song so i write him and i'm like your song changed my life and so anyway he's, funny you bring that up because I actually didn't write that song. My colleague, Phil Barron, did. And I wrote a song called Great Outdoors for Winnie the Pooh, some Winnie the Pooh project. And so Disney credited it wrong. And then he had Phil also write me. And he said that even disney mixed it up and he they were sending phil's royalties to george for the song for a little bit and once they realized it they they got it all straightened out and i've seen um compilation cds and since then that have credited correctly so they they obviously

did fix it along the way you know this is wild. This is so deep. Oh my God. You communicated with these people and found this clerical issue. This is what's often so infuriating, like trying to research some of this stuff. It's like, okay, I went to a book. I went to a book by the company. I went to a primary, as primary source I could get,

or even like if you try to reach out to someone and you're like, oh no, the book's wrong. And it's like, okay, well I get someone doing like a GeoCities or a blog spot. They get a fact wrong or something, you know. But like when stuff like that is wrong or the company's paying the wrong person, it's just like, oh, well, what do you do? That happened with Horizons where like the big mural at the end, I had found like one very old blog that said it's in a cast member building backstage and i couldn't find anyone else i like emailed every reporter i knew like do you know where the painting is i've heard it's preserved and no one emailed a bunch of reporters i emailed yeah i emailed like carly and todd and i was like do you know where the mural

because i i couldn't find any other and then after that we put that episode out someone did tweet at me like hey another show just talked about this this is the cast member building it's in it is still there oh but i couldn't find any other i hadn't found anything else like after like a week of looking oh my god you think somebody would have snuck out a picture of it since right yeah it's also massive yeah yeah gigantic yeah right so yeah so so they yeah i i watched that sing-along too a lot i remember as a kid not no i knew they were the country bears but i was like what is this song from oh because i wasn't even aware of the multiple shows i had just seen the regular show

and it was only like maybe less than 10 years ago, right? It was like, oh, okay. And like I figured out what it was. But yeah, that is, yeah. Yeah. Great song. You bring up not seeing the original, or only seeing the original show.

And that's one thing I've never gotten a clear answer on is why they gave up on it so fast at Walt Disney World. Because I think it only, the vacation show, i think it only the vacation show i think it only lasted there for less than 10 years maybe five or ten years 92 i read 92 so yeah there you go yeah um so what what happened there because they they still would switch to the christmas show up until i think 2008 but then they didn't want to pay the what i heard was like 50 grand to switch over shows that's what it caught like every time that's that's what i read on uh jim hill's some some ancient jim hill uh geocities but yeah they gave up on the vacation show so fast over there huh i don't know um i like it's

all you're already on vacation maybe there's more vacationers there you don't want to be reminded they're on vacation yeah and the stresses of vacation it's like a it's a double up of it's a hat on a hat or is it just like we don't need to spend money because more of these people are tourists and you're you're seeing more like fresh eyes on the show right yeah than you would on disneyland and it's not popular enough like in tokyo to warrant the price although in tokyo you get the sense they spend money because it's fun right which is nice and they don't do that as much in the american parks anymore well if they don't change the ending of a show about progress in the future from a ending scene where they say boy the

21st century is going to be great yeah why would they constantly change outfits on a singing bear show yeah that's a good point yeah but virtual reality and voice commands did eventually come back around they thought you know what if we just hold out a little longer the oculus is going to show up they're just waiting for laser discs to come back so going back to there being two theaters in disneyland's version of country bear jamboree yeah this is what i i think ultimately doomed the ride was because it took up so much real estate yeah yeah i think if it would have been in frontierland one theater it probably would have made sense to keep it around because even by the end of the 70s they

were already thinking of cutting the the the building in half and re-theming half of the show building to something else. What I read was one of the ideas was to make it something called Mark Twain Tonight. So they would have half the building would be Country Beer Jamboree. And then the other half, they would make a facade on it that would look like a building, and then inside would be called Mark Twain Tonight, which apparently was a one-man show at the time. Oh, so it existed. Yeah, and this was in 1982.

They wanted to make an animatronic version, or maybe a live actor, whatever, version of this thing called Mark Twain Tonight. Hal Holbrook? That's what's in my head. Was he doing the show? Yeah. Hal Holbrook, I think. so they're trying we gotta cash in all the kids are talking about the how holbrook mark twain your local performing arts center well before val kilmer also

val kilmer one yeah mark when you say mark twain tonight the first thing i thought of was oh it's a talk show parody at late night talk show parody with Mark Twain. That's what I thought, too. Which is, by the way, a great idea. Yeah. So, and then one of the other ideas was to retheme Hungry Bear as a hoopty-doo style venue and show, which, can you imagine that at Disneyland, how great that would have been? Yeah, I can imagine. Something like that.

Yeah, yeah. But then, like, were they still doing Golden Horseshoe then? Is it? Yeah, they were. Yeah. So they're, now they maybe have two Western entertainment venues. Maybe that's why they decided not to do it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's already covered a little bit. Wow. That is wild. Mark Twain tonight. You're bringing us some deep stuff here. I will.

Yeah. Mark Twain tonight will haunt my dreams. Yeah. Like Mac tonight, Mark Twain tonight. Like that my dreams. Yeah. Like Mac Tonight, Mark Twain Tonight. Like that also feels connected. I don't know. I guess that's the word tonight. Yeah, Mark Twain.

So there's animatronic stand-ups, and if Mark Twain likes him, then he gives him the wave over. He gives him the wave over the couch, and then slowly walk over. His big, stinky cigar, yeah. And it's like historical figures doing stand-up. It's like Ben Franklin doing stand-up or something. Like, it's not just a random. Sojourner truce.

It's Lincoln. Come on. It's also Lincoln. Yeah. Wow. That's insane. It's also, sorry, you were just saying it was like there's no rides over there too so it's like it's a victim of just traffic too i know they were saying like it's

also i've heard maybe tony beck just say the same like there's not enough traffic going there plus it's more of a local crowd so yeah it's more unusual to go to country bears a lot right like if you're a local because you've seen the show you don't need to see it which i of course i would disagree you don't need to see it more than once every couple months but yeah and you know even in the last few years the the show was open in disneyland i i can't even recall them running both theaters yeah sure sure yeah so you think well maybe can you definitively say i mean you were only eyeballing it then. It was not your job, but you probably know kind of like the flow and capacity of Winnie the Pooh. Do you think it makes sense from a strictly numbers standpoint? Like, did they make the right call?

Just in the dry, that's impossible. You're going to say, no, it's got to be bears. I mean, you know, poo is one of the least attended rides in the park. Just by eyeballing it, I would say. It's on a busy day. It's a 10-minute wait. I'm sure more people ride it than do country bears and the merch, obviously. It doesn't blow it out of the water, though. It's not like tremendously more people than country bears.

I think taking the merch into account, that probably offsets it. Right, that's what makes it smart. Photo ops. It becomes like this poo corner. Yeah, where poo corner is and where that poo store is, that was all Country Bear stuff as well because they had the mile-long bar where they had Max Buff and Melvin on the wall,

which are in the poo ride now. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're from the mile-long bar. And then they had Teddy Bear's Swingin' Arcade, which are in in the poo ride now right yeah yeah that they're from the mile long bar and then they had teddy bears swinging arcade which they still have to sign up for outside of the building oh yes yes yeah that's crazy um that's where they had hoof and henry which is why this did not come up yesterday somehow despite a very long episode yes explain hoof and henry this is great hoof and henry was i mean in spirit it's still there as like woody dancing woody or something in in frontierland right okay but it's this little arcade machine

you put a quarter in you tap the buttons and you make this little marionette of woody dance or back then it was henry and it was called where's the woody one i don't think it's in uh frontier mercantile in in frontierland oh my god you're bringing us things i've never seen in disneyland is it the same one as the pinocchio one on main street yeah same same thing okay okay and um you you can look at pictures too of the woody i mean it's still the country bear stage inside the woody arcade right really they just modded out the same yeah and they sold hoof and henry the the puppet in one of the auctions a couple years ago and he went for like oh one of those now yeah one of any auctions a couple years ago and he went for like 10 grand. Oh, one of those Van Eden auctions. Oh, geez. Right, right.

They also sold the marquee from the attraction. Yeah, we saw that, right? Was that at the big one where we did the show? Yeah, that was from the that's from Disneyland. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, that sounds familiar. So I found the original guy, the original dude

who did the woodworking. Raymond. Yeah, Raymond. Raymond. People start calling us Raymond. Everybody loves Raymond. And I'm like, hey, how much just asking. Just a ballpark.

Just a quote. Yeah, how much would it make to recreate that? And he said like i will recreate it down to the precise detail for like 10 grand and i'm like okay that's a little out of my price range but thank you he is so it's yeah hi boy if you won the lottery and you're here i follow him on facebook or i'm friends with him i think i'm like following him i didn't like friend the guy that would be weird right i'm following like his page and he does like a lot of i'm assuming you're following this as well yeah he does like a lot of these customs so he will like show like he did a poo one or something and it is just like

looks like it belongs in disneyland yeah he he did the the how i even found out about him was uh somebody messaged me and was like look at this and it was some family commissioned their own country bear marquee but it said said like the Smith family or something. Wow. I was like, wow. Yeah. That does sound cool.

This is wait. So what's, who's Raymond? I got to look up his last name. Yeah. I don't, I don't recall his last name. I have,

I, again, I follow him on her. I'll find it much more dignified than, uh, right after it closed. I found a picture on Yesterland of, uh,

where they just covered the marquee in a seemingly a garbage bag. A garbage bag. Yeah. Oh my God. There should be another picture. It's like a little printout that says like the bears are hibernating or something like that. Yeah. And they're taking their show on the road.

Yeah. There's a new come on back for the new ride. Yeah. Okay. Raymond Kinman. Raymond Kinman. Oh. And that's his.

Custom wood pieces. Huh. That's his. I mean mean that's obviously the picture of it but that's his like whatever you call it banner photo on Facebook I love my Disney wood he's got a website called woodcarver hold on woodcarverguru.com that's a good name

and he's got different pictures. There's like, I don't know if you can see this. Here's like Chip and Dale with like a laugh at Daniels. So whoever the Daniels are had this commission. Can you see that? With the Disney D. Yep. Yeah.

Font. So Scott, what are you thinking? You're going to get? I'm thinking maybe we all need wood versions of the three of us. As bears? Yeah. Okay. With the good boys.

With as close to a G as you can get to the Disney D. If you're a Patreon subscriber, if you would change your pledge from five to ten thousand. I would appreciate that. Geez. Wow. This is all crazy stuff um this is something about great outdoors uh i think one of the things that i it's very catchy obviously but i think lyrically i think it stands above the rest with the fun of like join us bears and suck up some air yeah there's something so uh like weird and brutal about that i was gonna say this was like to me it feels like it was almost the start of that 90s disney like

attitude a little bit where like the ride the ride scripts were like a little sharp you know like the dinosaur pre-show and the test track pre-show and all that kind of thing yes like they like jamboree vacation hoedown it's like a it's it's it's really quick it's quick-witted it's sharp it's fast i feel like a lot of 90s disney stuff was like that yeah i think it's funnier maybe yeah the original i might say some great lines some great delivery yeah i laughed too when i realized what the clothes like i was trying to as as you know i'm watching re-watching it more recently and i'm like okay yeah california bears that's very funny um uh uh what are the other singing in the rain ghost riders in the sky and i was like oh what's the closer and then when he when i slowly dawned

on me it's thank god i'm a country bear i thought that was so funny so good yeah to um probably a good percentage of our listeners that's a song by john denver and to those same listeners he was a singer long ago this is an old reference and not as old as some of the ones yesterday but well we have been talking about little jimmy dickens a lot and that's a much older reference yes uh his song was country boy though thank god i'm a country bear he didn't john denver more recent than tex ritter yeah yeah and bob wills yeah bob wills yeah He's like a modern artist compared to those guys. I'm also a fan of, and if you all don't join us, we'll chase you up a tree.

I love the bite. There's more literal bite in this song. Also, for Trixie's song, they really got rid of all the making fun of her for being a bigger bear. She's just singing about, I'm going to eat, and everyone's like, hell yeah. You do you. Yeah. I think that's pretty awesome.

Well-deserved. Yeah. That's the song. In this one, it's the song about, wait, what is it? If heartaches were fried chicken, I could buy them by the pound or sell them by the pound, yeah. And she's got that sandwich. Yeah.

That plastic sandwich sandwich the sub i that's that i just that is like such an appealing i know i couldn't eat that but don't you want to eat that specific this plastic sub yeah did they ever they didn't they didn't sell that a country or a hungry bear did they oh i wish that would yeah that would be that's a bit submerged i would but there was a video i was watching that really maybe was the same one of the show where it like really like feels like it features the sub like it feels like i feel like the sub is really taking up like three four quarters of the frame yeah there is a shockingly good multi-camera yeah yeah recording of this show on youtube. They get right up in there. Like home edited.

They're like walking around right up front. Like, yeah. Yeah, very watchable. Yeah, absolutely. You brought up a video. Look up this video. This annual Passholder party in 96 was legendary. What was the deal?

There were several behind the scene ride experiences. So you could go underneath star tours and see it, the simulator moving. The best thing though, and the thing I was obsessed with, I think I did it five times. You could go up on the stage of country bear jamboree and it was when the vacation version was,

was installed. And you can look up a video of people walking through it. And there's several pictures out there of people posing with the bears. It's just amazing. That's actually how the Country Bear Jamboree fandom found out it's a raccoon. Sammy the Raccoon is a skunk in the vacation version. Yes. But they never name him.

Oh. So in that video and in those pictures each of the bears each of the characters have name tags on and the skunk has a name tag randy so nobody knew it was randy nobody was really on the stage to know that was randy and this wasn't even realized until maybe like five years ago in some country bear facebook group or something wow wow well yeah it's not said in the show not sitting in the show yeah geez well so you got to do you went on stage with them yeah you uh on stage and and a little bit of backstage yeah well then they weren't moving no not moving no so how was it because you were a

younger man at that point was that creepy at all at all i mean i was 13 so i was okay i was probably like at that age where i should be aging out of cringe but i was just more into it than ever right yeah yeah so um well i'm also just interested in this event in general because this feels like this is they'll never do this again yeah and i don't think they ever really did it again after i mean they had annual passholder parties after right right yeah no no behind the scenes stuff but you don't get to go to the bowels of a ride anymore yeah man that's cool yeah that seems beyond like it's too cool now they because then now the events are all just like here's a button they were yeah a couple years ago they were doing it where like if you got up at 6 a.m and paid us 500 you could eat on the Jungle Cruise. Was that right?

I don't remember. Like outside on the bank of the, it's not in the boat, but you could pay to do that. And then there was a Haunted Mansion one, right? Where you could like pay them $800 and eat. Yeah, I think that was a Club 33 one. Okay.

You could eat in the portrait hallway. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, there's pictures of that one. Yeah. Okay. And Bob Gurr was in the graveyard scene. I remember seeing pictures of okay he was just hanging out yeah just hanging out lying in a grave and he sat up hello i've never seen that ghost before uh wow so that's always i did think about like as a kid i

was like i would love to sing on the stage with these animals but they really couldn't make that come true i guess that would be logistically too hard you know we didn't talk about yesterday was the opening special this might have come up when we talked about the opening special a couple months ago but uh you get the whole show essentially in the 71 disney world opening special and glenn campbell gets to be on the stage right it's to actually perform with live your dream finally rescued him from the swamp underneath the uh monorail beams he's just singing verse after verse of a song he's making up on the spot wish i had a flare with me all i have is a camera and a sound guy do you guys know where we're going yeah on your own glenn Wish I had a flare with me. All I have is a camera man and a sound guy.

Do you guys know where we're going? Yeah. You're on your own, Glenn. Other songs. Obviously, hey, like, now why is it that I like this one more than the other one? We got California Bears. We got a Beach Boys. I'm a big Beach Boys guy.

I did forget this, though. I think I've let it... There's a bunch of odd little Beach Boys Disneyland connections that pop up. There's still a picture of the Beach Boys in the Lincoln area. Oh, yeah, yeah. In this great America. I was there with my friend.

He said, there's a picture of Edward James Olmos? Like, I don't know that. Really? I did know that. That's one of the more little obscure corners in general. Anyway, the Beach Boys are hanging out there and the Beach Boys got a song covered by an even better band.

The Sun Bonnet? The Sun Bonnet Trio. Another family got together, started harmonizing, you know, just this family fun. And then it blew up, took off. And a great backdrop behind the sun bonnets as they sing California Bears. It's all the bears relaxing on the beach. Yes. So good.

Yeah, the stuff on the screens is really under, I don't know, underrated, but so good. Like so funny. Yeah uh like the on the road again stuff is all it feels like i feel like there's too much going on you got to see it a couple times yeah yeah oh the slides yeah they repurpose the slides yeah right yes well i love how they made wendell kind of this i don't want to say pathetic but you know like the pathetic dad trope they kind of gave to him in that and the christmas show right yes yeah uh he's just kind of like a bumbling fool but but so endearing yeah that's a great joke where an over it sounds like an overhead voice is yelling at wendell no flash photography like sorry that is really solid i remember that kind of tricking me as a kid like

did something activate some robotic voice that would play if you did something wrong in a ride and then when they say and that means you wendell like oh okay it's part of the i think i i think i bought it well and after he takes the picture it shows the picture of the audience on this on the slides and it's all bears so are we are we bears watching the show i think we're bears is the idea yeah there's like a premise to this that we didn't even know that wasn't even established in the 70s yeah similar to you put on the bug goggles and it's tough to be a bug yeah or like avatar or something wow it's predates avatar and the transformation and the hookup that's where they got the idea from it has to be it has to be for the movie yeah not just the ride but the films james cameron got the entire universe from this one moment from this

one bear photograph it predicts the design trend that like yes you are the star of the ride like you are spider-man you are helping star of the ride. Like you are Spider-Man. You are helping Spider-Man. You're not just an observer. Verify yourself on this ride. You verify yourself. This is, okay, this is the only thing that could probably be misconstrued as a bit of criticism for the ride.

And I so apologize for even getting close to that. It feels a little too new sometimes when I watch the videos. I like the feeling that the show is going to break down a little bit or that the puppets or the robots look like the head's going to fall off. There's something to that that is cool. Do you disagree, agree with what I'm saying? The vacation one specifically?

I'm saying the vacation one. Sometimes I see all the outfits look a little bit too modern for me, for my taste. The outfits that were put in in 1986 are too modern for you. A little bit too modern for me, for my taste. Those outfits that were put in in 1986 are too modern for you. Exactly. A little bit too modern for me. And I like seeing the original version of the show on the video because I feel like the

I keep saying puppets. The robots are like. You keep saying robots in the animatronics. Yeah, but we say robots in the show all the time. You're going to hit him for that? That wasn't that weird. I'm just teasing because you're going in on yourself i'm just joining the fun it's a complaint on every episode finally it's been addressed i was upset you know what i was like why do you keep calling them robots i go because

we say yeah whatever um but yeah i like there is something i like about the old one because i like imagining that it's been there for 100 years that's all i'll say that's the closest thing i can say to a criticism that said as a compliment this show really moves at a quick pace like yes oh yeah nice clip it's a great it's a great show i love the show are you at all upset that we are maybe i i will say i have definitely landed at i like vacation hoedown better i definitely do that used to be a controversial statement i feel like with the generation before ours but yeah i am firmly vacation is a better show and christmas is also a very good show

crazy it's not great i'm not upset uh i like the original better because i just the older the older it gets especially you know the closer to bob wills and little jimmy dickens you get i feel like i feel more of a connection to that like what feels like another world of like old-timey country music music recorded in a tin can exactly and then like yeah bob like as long as that's in the it feels like it's recorded like yeah 200 years ago since you brought up criticism mark davis who was the designer of the show he did not like the vacation or christmas his wife alice davis also an imagineer also disney legend um said why do they have to change things why can't they just leave it so you know. Jason says that in therapy every week.

Well, yeah, what's everyone else's problem? Six million people in the world are assholes, and I'm just there just trying to do my thing. I was zinging him back for that robot remark. Zing. Yeah, no, I assume if I sat down with Mark, I would say, don't these costumes look too new this is new this is modern music mark and he'd be like yeah you're right you gotta go to the old school this is crazy this is when why do things have to change this is the this is often where the i'm not we sometimes we certainly have our things where we

don't want them to change but i feel like overall don't you feel like we land in like this is the opinion of the like backwards theme part i'm not against the show being i love the idea that there's multiple shows i'm just saying if i had we're i'm just trying to feel out all my thoughts on it and that's just a thought i have about the newer shows but i like i wish there was a new show every month. Yeah. I wish the bears were singing Gangnam Style. Like, I want. So, yeah, a couple things. And I say this every time anybody puts a mic in front of me. I say, Pete Renaday is still alive.

The voice of Henry. Disney. If you're going to do a new show, do it now. He's like 95. Wow. Get a microphone over there. Do a new show. Yes.

And also, this is also from, I think it was Jim Hill posted this rumor years ago, probably like 10 years ago now. He said one of the ideas being thrown around for a country bear modernization was called a bearican idol. Where the bears would sing modern songs and the audience would cheer for which songs they liked right or performers oh my god and you know who knows that could have just been somebody's napkin pitch yeah probably never even got far but that's the only modernization of the show that i could find oh my god baby you're a firework come on let your colors that sounds great i'm not that sounds awesome i would love that i you know what i think we like that i think i would eschew i don't want judges in the audio i don't want uh big al as randy or whatever oh maybe i do as i'm saying it because i if they had done that and then it's still locked in place and it's

several generations of american idol judge ago like they have not like no paulo was so long ago uh but i think we maybe we want the modern songs in the jamboree setting maybe that's the ultimate yeah like a country versions of of yeah modern songs even to sections in in a show now where you would have like the younger bears in the show play like a modern a couple modern songs for the kids in the audience oh baby oscar finally grows up there you go oh he's like a yeah he's in his max goof uh he's like he's 15 or coming of age yeah he looks he is wearing like a scout uniform and his teddy bear has a little kerchief in this show it's very cute yeah yeah yeah i have the little plush of that uh oh wow they just released a plush where oscar's little teddy actually squeaks too which i thought is a

such a nice wow that's a great touch yeah um mike what you want is like you want to like a boy band going on. You want Bear TS. Yeah, I mean, I do want that. You want a seven-member bear band. I always forget. What's the band? That's the band that's on that Mickey special from a few years ago. Oh, yeah.

Mickey Breakdances. It's like my favorite clip on YouTube. Other than seeing Mickey drum, it's my favorite thing, like Mickey in a suit does. I love watching Mickey drum, especially in Tokyo at the Big Band Show. There's a lot of numbers in NCT 127. Yes. Mickey's 90th Spectacular.

Mickey breakdances with that band, and I love that. Did you make Lindsay's mom watch it again this Thanksgiving? No, we had too much Beatles to get through. But I have made her watch that. I want the Country Bears maybe to just recreate. Can we just program all eight hours, feed the audio of Get Back into, and it's just noodley, like it's as slow as that documentary often is. Yeah, just watch the whole

bear show with also can you dub though i kind of want the voices too yeah the acoustics ain't great at twickenham the technology can't we go back to apple the technology exists for them to do that right where it just transfers it um i think some things we haven't said yet a lot of uh stage time for the five bear rugs yes in this show yeah they get featured a little more i feel like they get uh swept swept under the rug a little bit on the other show even though they're in the back don't they did they all sing as opposed to in the previous like aren't they more instrumental in the first one and then they all get little moments and yeah ghost writers in the sky yeah and and really the opening uh great outdoors also they get like a couple words here and there yeah um i think the ghost writers

in the sky is very charming and it helped save that song for me which has been tainted for a long time by its uh inexplicable uh appearance in blues brothers 2000 oh has anyone ever seen that i haven't actually yeah i somehow haven't i don't say inexplicable in the the songs in there that makes plenty of sense to me but it's just this like long jokeless and then like the sky opens up and there are literal ghost riders it just like how have i never watched an awful thing how did why did a studio finance this there was a nintendo 64 game about blues brothers 2000 i remember reading about a nintendo power yeah do you play as them do you know anything about it i don't know anything about oh my gosh

in that level of graphic oh my god yeah well it's like the worst we gotta go are they what we're doing in the new year i mean there's there's a there's a blues brothers episode for sure that's they perform in theme parks there's plenty well then we've all we also discovered that there are like there are alternate Blues Brothers touring. Showers. Yeah. Yeah. So they've licensed or whatever, or they have a, what would you even call them?

Like sub-Blues Brothers touring. But then also you can still see Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi touring as the Blues Brothers. You just have to make sure to check the casino schedule to see which version of it is this is just like two younger guys like performing the old stuff or is it danny and jimmy well i saw for ghostbusters afterlife the the media tour for some reason dan ekra just starts singing on so many of those interviews suffice it to say those have gone around a text chain of ours. Yeah, yeah. Well, he still looks great.

He's still got it. Yeah. I always add it. Loves a little spooky. I'll wait a little. This will get the kids into the sea. Yeah, this movie for babies. Let's put this old man swinging his hips up there cool very old man doing a gravelly robert johnson cover well bill murray tries to remain in the

literal shadow he like like can i just be in the dark and move around am i a supportive enough friend if i do that um uh speaking of things kids would be like i know young jason would have been very excited to see swinging teddy bear come out and do singing in the rain you know what this has been this has been sticking with me since yesterday i feel like i'm watching performances because we discussed how do you say the name sometimes i'm watching henry and i'm like he's kind of saying swinging teddy barra i think it depends on what you're do you have a ruling on this guy i mean i don't have the twang i'm a i'm a california boy i got the surfer accent right so you know you couldn't possibly yeah that's what i can't tell is if that because you only

hear henry say it and there's the twang yeah Yeah. Yeah. It's confusing to me. And it's spelled A. It's spelled B-A-R-R-A. Probably bear. I have Shazam. No, I'm saying the opposite. You know, I'm saying it's Bara. You're mumbling. Yeah, it's probably what I think anyway.

No, no, I'm saying I'm Shazam Kazaming. I'm confusing. I'm convincing myself it's Bara because she's a bear. Yeah. But it probably is Bara. Maybe. Yeah. I know because it's after, because she's a bear. Yeah. But it probably is Barra. Maybe. Yeah.

I know. Because it's after, because it's Theda Barra, the old actress. Right. Which this is, I don't know how this, I don't know how you didn't bring that one up. Yeah. How did. Theda Barra reference. You had your shot.

I know. Well, one thing's for sure is that the vacation show really hammered home how horny Henry is for Teddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no doubt. Even a little more so. And the first one's already a little, yeah, yeah. Wait, now I forget. How does it go further?

What is the flirtation? Well, the Christmas one is come up and sign my cast. And he says, soon as I find a ladder, I'll be there. That's similar to the first one, though. That's similar. He has a ladder in the first one. He says, I i find a ladder i'll be there that's similar to the first one though that's similar isn't the ladder and he says like i'll see if i'll get a ladder i'll be right up and he says that in the first one and then he makes the noise i think i said yesterday uh he was like there's some really really intense noise he makes yeah like some grunting lustful noise peter rented a dug deep for that one. Yeah. That came from the soul.

Yeah, we need to get him. Whatever he desired. As you were saying, Disney needs to get a microphone in front of him so he can do that again. Yeah. We need to get a couple more of those on tape. Can I say something about a voice actor?

The great Frank Welker is in this show. He's Melvin in this, and he's Randy the skunk. And Frank Welker, I'm so obsessed with and uh impressed by uh he's been fred and scooby-doo since 1969 he's abu raja and the cave of wonders in aladdin he's the mars attacks aliens i didn't know that till recently one of the craziest sounds you ever heard in anything none of these things sound like each other i feel like i used to only know him as like if the simpsons needed a monkey or something like

he's the the best animal guy yeah but his just other voices and stuff are so great in theme park world uh zerg and buzz lightyear mr eggs in kitchen cabaret and uh Megatron in Transformers. He's Megatron in everything but the movies. So in the ride as well. And just when you say putting microphones in front of these luminaries, I've been plugging in a ton. I apologize. But the new show Saturday morning, All-Star Hits is out.

And we got to work with Frank Welker. It was a Zoom. zoom we couldn't even see him i don't know what he looked like but like this was like such a dream to get him would he do it uh uh and in like it's not it's although he oh he did do some animal stuff for us too which ruled i forgot about that uh anyway if you check out the show is up on netflix check out episode six. He plays a character named Ronnie selfish. It was a huge deal to get to and have him to be a villain and do crazy laughs. And then like bring some of the Megatron. Uh,

we're all nerding out a ton. Uh, uh, so, uh, uh, uh, earnestly thrilled about that.

Um, and you didn't have a chance to ask him about any of the bears though. No, no, no. I don't think I knew the, uh yeah yeah uh i'm gonna say it's tough on a zoom uh but i yeah i hadn't done my country bear jamber week research yet i scarcely knew he was randy or that randy's name was randy right now we know we know so much that's uh very cool can i i want to bring up a slide that i like um this slide that shows the statue of liberty is a bear oh yeah good stuff uh yeah really good does it imply i mean

we don't have to get too bogged down in this but does it imply that it's a bear a complete bear world like we were saying when the picture so like when we enter there we all become sort of bears and we are just it's like a window into their universe yeah it's exclusively bear but it history played out in a similar way obviously like bear france gave us that statue the french bears gifted it to us uh i have to imagine that history played on a similar way yeah um yeah and it greets bear immigrants coming from the bears from other nations yeah they seek to be everything of americans americans yes uh so so it would yeah it would seem to imply an alternate timeline uh that i'm interested in yeah yeah i want i want to go there yeah um i also want to just let's stick with the history

and convert hall of presidents controversial as it will always be from now on just make them all bears what a great idea that's right and you have to think of puns for every yeah that's true sounds like we could do that though yeah yeah i have to stare at him for a while. But, you know, of course, when in doubt, it's just Joe Bairdon. Yeah. For, you know, he's already Teddy, so he's covered. But I guess it would be Franklin Roosevelt if you needed to do that. What did you say, guy? Think of something different.

Take the Teddy away, because that's too obvious. You're right. It's already, yeah. And, you know, when they say Theodore, so they they use the proper names in that show so they wouldn't even let you get away all right theodore roars of those yeah uh all right so that's an overlay mark davis be damned that's an overlay we're demanding um what his doodles of the hall of presidents were much more whimsical they were all it was yeah like millard fillmore was like uh like putting out a fire with his butt fun little hijinks yeah yeah more presidents butts were on fire in the mark davis version of hall of president martin van buren is trying to like steal a picnic basket um what other

shit i mean those are the songs i i noted i i singing in the rain's a lot of fun yeah um that's a good outfit i like that you're right it's very it's very modern it's bright that uh the like slicker that um it's a great outfit again i don't the outfits are really good i'm just saying for my personal taste yes it is it feels like a more modern outfit um i like after there's is it is it like does this the rainstorm kind of build to a torrent and then it goes dark and that's maybe when uh ghost riders in the sky happens there's just a sequence in it where then it gets very dark and there's that like night cricket chirping atmosphere for a little bit that i think that's just a tone that disney does so well that i'm so nostalgic for um it's i feel like american adventure is stuff like that and the you

know the beginning of the blue bayou and pirates i just uh i like my disney cricket chirps it's always great we hear oscar speak for the first time in that in that part because they say oscar you want to hear a story a scary story right yeah it's like that's all we need is that all he says in any of them do we think i think so wow it's a one-line wonder we don't know who his voice is probably not sure it's probably not documented very well yeah yeah just like so much about this I think so. Wow. It's a one-line wonder. We don't know who his voice is, probably. Not sure. It's probably not documented very well. Yeah.

Yeah. Just like so much about this version of the show, there's nothing out there. Yeah. I've asked Imagineers over the years, like, do you know anything? Do you know anyone who worked on this? No, nothing. Like, nobody knows anything about it. It was just a quiet little project. That's so interesting

yeah you would think yeah i guess when when was there a shift even in just like somebody's going to be interested in rides and the history of it obviously like there's a lot of stuff from haunted mansion pirates but it does feel like that's a switch just in culture in general like we should document everything and even back whenever this when these two were made it's like no one's gonna ask us ever about this ever again yeah i'm curious about what the first thing was also that kind of got the ball rolling that made disney realize people were interested in that sort of thing yeah i don't know that's a good question i'm gonna say i yeah i mean it all feels like mid-90s seems like when all right like comic cons are getting bigger and

like star wars isn't going anywhere people are only going to be more interested in this and it's not niche it's not just what nerds are into yeah it seems like like from that point like yeah nobody's outgrowing all the things they're obsessed with that they grew up so start start having some stories and keeping track of some stuff oh i was gonna say for the public yeah i think that that timeline sounds about right but i mean the disney archives i mean that was kind of they've been saving a lot although you always hear the stories about that guy date is it dave smith yeah like they were gonna just get rid of a bunch of stuff and he like saved it from the incinerator i mean his story sounds like quite a story and like maybe it'd be interesting to see a movie

where you get to see what a young dave smith was like uh i don't know if you know where i'm going with this jason but there's there was some discussion on our socials of who looks like a young dave smith oh and that's oh man right here the dream oh i'll do it have you seen and like i must have missed this oh man people had fan cat you're being you've been fan casted as disney archivist dave smith i'll take it you know i lost out on jughead i lost out on i don't know pugsley there's probably been some adam's family is there an adult pugsley show coming soon i how would they i guess they're animated that yeah sure animated yeah um but uh yeah no i'll do it i'll do i'll do yeah happy happy to do it look at the photos it is pretty good yeah i see it i'll take it i saw there was there was like an hour special in the archives recently went up on disney plus

yeah yeah i feel like he wasn't his hair wasn't so unkempt though so you might have to trim i'll hit up floyd soon enough okay you know give me the dave smith you'll say you know in the photo i gotta walk i gotta walk along alameda i gotta walk in front of this lot a bunch um you know we haven't talked about rufus the disembodied voice rufus that is stomping around and that has to solve problems in the show um i forget if i said yesterday that that feels like one of the more Muppet Show-ish elements. Just like stuff's going wrong and now this huge character's got to go take care of a tech problem. Rufus is this whole, I'm no expert on this.

Backstage manager kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. But isn't this a character who even predated? I guess, no. All right, Disneyney bear country only ever existed uh before the country bear jamboree but when you walked into bear country there were big growls and that was this character rufus a bear that you didn't see yeah but it wasn't he wasn't

in the show yet it was a cave and you could hear a bear snoring. That's what it, Oh, snoring. Okay. Okay. Which you can still hear on, on a splash mountain that you go by rare bears, little hut thing and snoring bear. And that's the same snoring zone. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. Okay.

That's cool. That's an interesting, like mythology jumping, like it was just in the land ambiently and then ended up in country bear. And now is in characters. Don't jump. You are attractions that you're giving us so many things to annoy people that we'll be there with soon oh yeah oh did you know this is the bear sound from what they're like okay yeah i i don't know if uh

any of you remember the show at all but that it was a really convincing sound when when rufus would roar and moan and complain because it was, it was behind you up in the balcony. And so it would be like, hit the lights Rufus. And you would hear like stomp, stomp, stomp from one side of the theater to the other behind you really convincing. And I remember as a little kid,

I would always like look up and behind. Oh yeah. You thought you were going to see something in a second. It was so convincing. Like really shook. Yeah. That's so cool. Uh,

one good context. Cause this, some of these things get lost when you just watch a video. Yeah. Yeah. Effective. It was so convincing. I really shook. Yeah. That's so cool. And good context, because some of these things get lost when you just watch a video. Yeah, yeah. The effect of it was in person. Anything else you haven't called out? Like just favorite moments or little things characters do? Oh, wait.

Big one. Two different worlds. Yeah, yeah. That's right. You know what I'll say about two different worlds? So that's the shakeraker terrence uh he's singing to an octopus and we saw that in japan and that's the one that i'm gonna make sure i should probably make sure but i think it's that's one in japanese yeah and the difference is uh and

it's kind of the same with the christmas show too the octopus it has an articulated mouth and sings along with the song in the Japanese version only in Japan no that was not it was not that way wow yeah in this one it was just that sound which is such a great sound that was like like that kind of thing and I'm sure somebody was going to bring this up but Dolores the octopus is in the queue for mission breakout oh yeah yes yes yes crazy honestly I forgot it but i didn't know that i swear to you i would have passed the light detector i knew that yeah i just was forgot and i was gonna say it's the name of the octopus yeah uh i was gonna say though that like even

not even know i mean you could tell what the the song was about in in uh the japan version but it's so funny and it was so funny in japanese, too. Just the characters and what's going on. But yeah, you're like, oh, this octopus and bear are in love. And as the curtain is closing and the light's going out, you just hear him say, I thought you were going to help me sing. So good. Wow, wow. It's a pretty perfect, like, you know, that's like an opening.

Those curtains open, and you see that tableau, he sings that line and like all right i know everything i need to know about this yeah now i can just sit back and enjoy it it's just a perfect like it's all contained in that first line and yeah yeah view most of i guess almost all the numbers just because the bears look funny and it's the music's fun and like they all play probably really well in any language like yeah you still go oh that's funny i don't know what they're saying but less melancholy this show except poor chelsea yeah yeah sad but then you know that achy breaky heart is so funny i will try to isolate a clip of that because that's in japanese like well the first half is in

japanese the second half is in english oh okay vice versa whatever okay uh just a funny song to hear any of in japanese and what a and so it's still that like in 2021 um long past billy ray's relevant that's i love that though one thing i wanted to bring up that i love about the vacation show is that each bear's little section of the stage got dressed in rather than just being a normal curtain backdrop like shaker and and the octopus are are on a little dock by some water and earnest is out with a little campfire and his violin has a hot dog on the end of it. And I just love that everybody gets their own background and it looks really nice, really dynamic. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's a great detail to point out. And it's really nice that what these overlays boil down to is just like playing dress up. And then when they install these that just a crew gets to come in and put a scarf on this one and a shirt on this one and uh there's something very like charming and lo-fi about it yeah gomer's piano has a clam on it a big clam yeah yes yeah when he's in like one of those kind of frayed straw hats, it's all the pieces are flying all over, I think. Can I just bring up one?

This is going to be so in the weeds, just so nerdy, highly nerdy. In the American version of the Vacation Hoedown, I think it's Bunny, Bunny, Bubbles, and Bula in their swimsuits. Bunny is wearing sunglasses. In the American version, the sunglasses are over her eyes. bunny bubbles and be like in their swimsuits bunny is wearing sunglasses in the american version the sunglasses are over her eyes in the japanese version they are above her head i have a lot of japanese followers that i've accumulated over the years so i put the question out to them on twitter one time and i got a lot of responses

and somebody said they think it's because in Japan, they associate people who wear sunglasses with the Yakuza. Oh, wow. And so in the show, they wanted her to have the sunglasses up. But then I responded back and I sent a screen cap and I said, Gomer wears his sunglasses in the Japanese version and the American one. Oh, interesting. What does Gomer get up to at night? You don't know.

He's the quietest one yeah what's he staying quiet about was it literally like they were like well these are these people are too young to be in the yakuza but gomer yeah maybe yeah like he could be so it's all right like it would it honestly it was really more of an issue of like it made it unbelievable it wasn't an issue of they were worried about the bears being affiliated with the Yakuza. How many bears has Gomer killed? That's the big question you come out of the show with. In Bear Japan. I mean, he's got those fast hands to play the piano.

He probably stabs and shoots pretty fast. Oh, that's true. He's also piano wire. Oh, he's got plenty of it. Perfect. Just string that back up. Wipe your hands of it the police yeah they go why you have all this piano wire here and he's like well i'm a piano player that makes sense to me yeah be on your way sir wow that's crazy that's so funny um wow wow um well what else anything Maybe we're heading towards the end here.

In terms of the show in Japan, we mentioned, oh, it'd be interesting to ask Imagineers about making this. I would be so curious to hear the Imagineers who worked on the Tokyo version of how did you decide what songs to swap out? Is it just these songs are more popular in Japan? And also, how did you decide?

Like, cause there are chunks of it in English and chunks in Japanese. I, all the banters in Japanese, but some of the verses on the songs are in English. Yeah. And of the three shows, it's the most changed from the English version.

Yeah. Like it has a whole new ending number. I forget the name of the singer. It's an american song uh called vacation v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n like that's oh v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n oh they sing that really they sing that in francis yeah they sing that in japanese my question yeah connie francis connie francis they sing that in japanese in the japanese show okay but that's the closing one oh okay and then the walk the walkout music

does like an instrumental of that instead of the uh thank god i'm a country bear huh this is pretty so even so like within your overlay you've like it's already different for all the overlay reasons and then japan there's all other set of overlay yeah differences this is really this is why there should have been camera crews when they were putting this all together like in the get back sessions and now we would watch eight hours i mean we would all of us would watch eight hours of like just going like which song is it gonna be which today what song should it end with gotta do the connie francis number japan loves loves Connie Francis. It's a well-known fact

that Japan loves Connie Francis. Well, I am trying to think like closing thoughts here. I mean, I do like this thesis that this is maybe the strongest one. I think it's that there's so much that's funny

about it um i i see why you're passionate about this one specifically for sure i mean but you could make an argument for the christmas show too also a lot of the same things can be said it's sharp witty funny yeah yeah quick anything you want to call our attention to specific i have not done my deep dive on it yet do you have a favorite moment of the christmas oh wendell shooting out the lights and you and you hear this is another thing lost to watching on youtube you hear the bullet bounce around the show oh okay because henry calls it out watch out for that old squirrel gun wendell and then it goes and it shoots out the lights you hear the lights going out all right and then it's dark and he's just like sorry so

he has another another one of those moments like the no flash photography thing where you say sorry yeah yeah oh that becomes just a great he's got a little more of a little character game yeah do you have more yeah is there like really like do you have more bear fandom even like that we might not know like dig digging deep in your fandom of country bears you know like you're on facebook groups or something do you know of like what is the fandom like in general because i actually am not on these groups yet yet yeah i when i did have facebook i was in a facebook group like one of the members on there has uh like one of henry's hats and another guy has uh the banner from when the show premiered and it was like go watch the country bears he has that and and but that like i said that's where the randy sammy

thing came from um but really there there's not like a website or anything where all the that's country bear fans yeah yeah um just a lot of people on twitter will tweet about it. But yeah, I can't think of any central hub. Okay. I'll investigate. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I think, not to get off on a whole tangent, but just quick thoughts.

Being that you love the mythology in all the shows, any thoughts on the feature film? Oh, I can't stand it. it thank you i think it's so bad um like almost nightmarish okay well i can see costume wise yes yeah yeah yeah understandably but hey they tried yeah uh-huh people put effort the hairs were laid onto suits yeah uh complicated puppet mechanisms people lost sleep scott um one thing we we neglected to talk about one of the big al oh yeah you're right two big al songs uh-huh and now no longer like you're you're not just doing the text writer cover getting our own like new big alp stuff um yeah do we um this is what maybe this is one where the other one i would not sure because

blood on the saddle is so funny but what yeah what do you guys think of the big on my way to your heart in uh america and then um in japan it's i've been working on the railroad yeah oh okay i don't know that so yeah these are fun but it's yeah i i do like the the dogs howling in in the in his song in the american version i think yeah that's funny and kind of spooky and he's got the little teddy bear on his backpack i think like aesthetically he he looks better and funnier but yeah i mean blood you can't beat blood on the yeah yeah that's the yeah for sure um it's so funny that we keep going, what do you think of this? Has anybody been like, no, I don't like this bear singing this song? We all like a bear singing.

What bear singing what song would we go, no, bad? I think of 90 minutes of it. I don't particularly like bears singing. Okay, fair enough. I see, I see. Related to this show in the previous yesterday's show okay okay i guess i guess we may be explored but these bears the bears yeah yeah you know the bear they could sing the phone book that's right be upset and they should yes bring them back let's get them programmable to do whatever we want any whims but maybe we just make them do this show because uh it's it's so charming yeah sorry real quick one thing i wanted to bring up there are still remnants of country

bear jamboree in disneyland even though the show's long gone yeah yeah which is over 20 years which is um and they just added one recently when when you get off splash mountain there is a sign that's like sammy's recycling corner and it's talking about recycling because it's it's the ride sponsored by ziploc right so it's all yes so they you get off the ride and it's like a painting of sammy standing there going like recycle everyone wow and it's new yeah like new within the last couple years wow yeah well that's so there's so there are obviously fans keeping it alive and imaginary yeah and i want to know who present yourself i just i have so many questions yeah make yourself well yeah if you're listening or if somebody knows who did it email us yeah yeah um no and please

guy correspond with them and then come tell us how it went down, because your correspondences are fantastic. Your deep facts are fantastic. Thank you for sharing it all with us. Guy Selga, you survived Podcast the Ride. So happy you could do this. Thank you. Yeah, what a blast. Let's exit through the gift shop. Is there anything you'd like to plug? Touringplans.com and touring plans on all social media platforms and my own personal twitter at guy selga g-u-y-s-e-l-g-a right on and you can go there and look at those plates look at those curry bowls and spoons uh i tweet about a lot of

dumb stuff sure that's good that's better not like our twitter no that's so. That's better than Twitter. No. That sounds very different. It's for work. Yeah, we are working. Hey, so as for us, the Country Bear Jammer Week, artists courtesy of Tona Grasso. You can find more of Tona's work in the show notes. The Country Bear Jammer Week, courtesy of our own Mike Carlson. Thank you, Mike. Thank you.

You can find us on the socials at Podcast Thrive and keep up with everything going on this week. Merch is available in our T public store. And tomorrow, I believe the main feed goes into hibernation, but the hootenanny continues over on the second gate, which is at patrion.com slash podcast, the ride. So come see where patreon.com slash podcasttheride.

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