Podcast: The Ride - Disneyland Opening Day – July 17, 1955

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

On it's 65th anniversary, we take a look at the chaos of Disneyland's Opening Day. Closed rides! Movie stars! An equally chaotic television broadcast!  Ivan Ooze episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever! Dog! Warning, the following podcast is about the first operating day of Disneyland. A quaint day with nightmare mice, adultery, drug use, and a mysterious entrepreneur known as the Ladder Man. It's Disneyland opening day 1955 on podcast The Ride. To all who come to this happy podcast, welcome. Podcast The Ride is your podcast. Here Scott Gairdner relives fond memories of the past.

And here Mike Carlson may savor the challenge of the future. Yeah, there you go. I'm savoring. Great. With the hope that it will be a source of Jason Sheridan to all the world. Sorry, can you start from the top? We weren't we weren't ready oh no shit start it over to all um i can't do i need to i need to have the religious leaders uh here with me to uh every republican politicians the religious leaders yeah yeah full color guard from 48 all 48 states um we're uh uh we're referring to the uh the opening day ceremony that that was uh that was a little rendition uh

of walt disney's opening speech on disneyland's opening day july 17th, 1955, which if you're listening to this episode, the date is released. Today is July 17th, 2020. So exactly 65 years ago was the opening day of our mecca of Disneyland. So we wanted to devote an episode to talking about the opening day, the televised ceremony and all the other chaos that ensued.

That's what we're doing here today. Of course, the idea was that Disneyland would be back up and running on this day. Like, if you... Maybe we think about July 17th more than anybody else, but when they announced when it would be reopened post the pandemic, post the pandemic, now that the pandemic is over, it's wrapping up. Yeah, they were going to reopen the park on July 17th, and they forgot that viruses do

not care about anniversaries. So that is no longer the plan. Very inconsiderate of the virus not to imagine how nice it would have been to reopen on this day but the virus is a mean jerk it should really stop to acknowledge all the anniversaries i think we're close to a uh um what year would it be 35th anniversary of back to the future and uh they didn't give us the virus give us no time to celebrate we didn't get to go back into the theater they didn't pull up a delorean outside the theater whatever shady guy owns the deloreans that go to screenings i don't want to sidetrack

but how many shady guys do own deloreans yeah i'm not sure how big of a business is that um because i don't i don't sense that the delorean is like an especially rare car on the the full scale of things so they must be kind of easy to get them and to put all the doodads all over it well that's time for ebay i think you think you just get a delorean on ebay right. I think we can get it in a couple of days. Not every shady guy owns a DeLorean, but every guy who owns a DeLorean is a shady guy. That has never changed. That was the case back when they were rolling them out. Okay.

I have four top choices here on eBay for DeLoreans. They're all obviously pre-owned they're not making them new uh what do you think the cheapest one is let's do a quick uh souvenir smackdown great the cheapest one and the most expensive one uh jason what do you think uh i'm gonna go low i'm gonna say 15 000 okay is what? Is the most expensive or least expensive? No, it's the lowest. That's the lowest? It's the cheapest.

Okay. We'll go lowest. Maybe I take the lower tack then, because maybe one of them's kind of in bad shape, so maybe we're closer to like $12,000. From what I'm seeing here, the lowest one is $32,500. The most expensive is $75,000. Wow. Okay. Now, are these Back to the future modded out it doesn't appear to be back to the future modded out okay that's for us to do and for us to make a

good living going to cons and uh and screenings in hollywood forevers Right. Slicking your hair back and driving up in that DeLorean. Yeah. Everyone admiring you. Mm-hmm. You're the king of the world in that moment. Whoa, look at that guy. He must be in his late 30s. As you get out and shake hands with, you know,

the Back to the Future royalty with Claudia Wells and Bob Gale and the second girl. He never comes to anything. It's so rare that you get a visit from Back to the Future screenwriter Bob Gale who seems to have a lot going on.

I guess maybe I've been suppressing my, just to clarify Back to the Future, my to clarify, Back to the Future My favorite franchise, Back to the Future 2 My favorite film I guess I've been pent up and feeling like Back to the Future Events are sort of shady Have you guys

Has this thought registered with you guys before? Well The reason I recognize what you're saying is true Is because Jason and I I assume Jason feels the way I do Have been going to comic conventions and fan events for our whole lives basically so there's just a level of that with a lot of these things where it's like there's something off about a lot of them

sure something wrong yeah the only real changes i can denote since like the mid 90s is that you can't smoke inside anymore and uh places have square readers on their phones uh everything else is still the same level of shitty yeah there's so there's a whole so i recognize what you're saying but i actually don't maybe know these ins and outs of the specific types of back to the future events maybe i just went to one i like watched them all screened at the new art or something and i was like i gotta get out of here this is this is too many movies to watch in a row first of all have you guys done that and enjoyed it like it's all right all the lord of the rings here we go i've only done like the two toy stories back-to-back

and those the first one's 90 minutes I think and given that I was like well it's a little long but I've never done like oh watch all 22 Marvel movies before the new Avengers comes out and you're like I have no thank you this was hazardous to your health I think yeah Jason any marathons in your your

past just double I love double, especially like not like directly tied together, but like double features where it's like this pairs well with this. But I think after two movies that that's that's very good. But then I think you really get diminishing returns on that third movie. Yeah, sure. Sure. Well uh stunning anti-marathon stance coming in hot top of this episode uh um but we're you know yeah we're here to talk about a uh um a pretty crazy day a chaotic day uh maybe the most chaotic day in, in Disney parks history until, uh, this week in 2020. Um, I think the only time that it's matched the literal opening of the park,

it was the, the reopening of, uh, of the magic kingdom. Um, you feel like if you heard stories about Disneyland opening day was crazy. I mean, there were like,

there were people passing out and vomiting and and their heart rates were up really high, and then they just still stayed in the park. It seems like stuff from 1955. Yeah, I could see that. You'd imagine that people would be like, no, it's the opening day, I'm staying. Whatever I'm spreading around doesn't matter. I'm fine.

Sure. I want to see bob cummings i gotta see bob cummings i came here to see bob cummings here's since we're talking about this i'll share one of my favorite uh anecdotes i came across uh i believe i found this in the la times article from 1999 about Roy Disney, because Roy Disney had to cobble the money together for this insane endeavor. And he was sitting outside in his catalog, admiring the throngs that crashed the invitation-only event with forged tickets. Roy was told that kids who had been stuck in traffic jams were relieving themselves in the

parking lot he just grinned and said god bless him let him let that urine flow he got a like somebody was like yeah there's kids peeing in the parking lot and he just got a twinkle in his eye and said oh that warms my heart he got That is one of the few moments of levity I have ever heard that Roy Disney, I feel like Roy Disney was able to relax like once a year. I feel like where you were going with that story is like he got a gun from his glove compartment and he walked over to the team.

No, the guns are on camera. No, yes, we will. You're right. I shouldn't have saved the gun jokes for later. guns are on camera you're right i shouldn't have i should have saved the gun jokes for later you're right you're teasing there's so much there's so much good stuff i mean there's so much good stuff on the operational end there is amazing things happening on what is a technological marvel this television broadcast yeah how do how do we sort through this i mean yeah so we're we're gonna talk about just how chaotic the day was but you get a real sense of how chaotic the day was from the opening broadcast dateline disneyland uh which was a live what 90 minute two hour a

pretty lengthy broadcast on abc 90 minutes sunday night during the disneyland slot which by this point yeah disneyland the show had been airing since a year prior since 1954 and it was one of the ways that they built the funds to build the park and also kind of trained everybody to know what's going to be up with this park when it's open you'll see adventure land frontier land fantasy land tomorrow land and that's how they grouped all of the programming within the show so by the time all of these themes have a genuine place to go to uh and experience them people are so curious what the hell's going on with it yeah i my i think we should start with the broadcast and then weave in or then get to the operational stuff. In the way that Walt was so focused on the broadcast, did not know about much of the chaos. Oh, really?

Oh, so he was informed after the fact. Because he's performing. He's on camera. And he is not informed about a lot of the stuff until later that day and the following day. Which if you've established the reputation as like America's uncle and you have to be charming. There's never a day in your life that's more important. It's your name and the title. You have to be a charming character on television.

You're probably going to be thinking about that and not operations issues and things lighting on fire and not yeah not kids peeing in the parking lot oh which would be funny if like in the he was getting like briefs briefing like about everything that was happening and in the middle of the broadcast he was like and if i did another kid pisses in the parking lot i swear to god we're shutting this whole thing down take that gun out Roy you fire it in the right spot they'll never pee again Roy go get Betsy get Betsy Roy do what you know you have to do

we don't talk a lot about Betsy the Disneyland gun famous part of the original lore yeah I think that's gonna be the majority of this i guarantee you i guarantee if you ask your parents or older relatives who is betsy when you were growing up who did you know named betsy on tv they would know davy crockett's gun oh yeah yeah oh wait oh wait it is betsy is because there's the ballad of old Betsy is the... Yeah.

Oh, I forgot that there was a real Betsy. There's a song about a gun in this opening day special. Oh, yeah, it's performed in full. That's one of the big dance numbers. It's about a gun. The biggest show-stopping number, I think, in this whole special is about a gun. It's about a gun the biggest show stopping number i think in this whole special is about a gun it's about a rifle just to say this at the top a recurring theme or something i like to talk about on the show is how because i grew up loving 70s 80s 90s disneyland specials the

kind that are catalogued by doug jones wonderfully in the specials he's made, that these clips that I devour. Let me coin a term and say I think what I like about these a lot is that it is a window into chaos Disneyland. Everything is so perfectly manicured now and you don't get glimpses of chaos Disneyland. Things going wrong, people flubbing lines people making inappropriate jokes um and i i yearn for more chaos disneyland and never was there more chaos disneyland than on july 17th 1955 this is i think it's only chaos i think this may be what percentage of this broadcast goes the way they wanted it to like 20 it seems like it i i i for the for the vibe everyone seems like they're just so stressed out the whole time yes and i'm a man yeah i i would imagine that yeah 20 maybe feels

like yeah we nailed that about that but still i feel like it's possible like every every single thing in their minds and every scene went wrong everything they planned did not go to plan because some of this is famous and some of it's recapped a little bit i mean disney has certainly made it part of the lore and they will do specials now that show you moments of chaos and art link letter the host not knowing where he was or where his microphone was some of this stuff they have owned other parts of it they have not owned some of which are genuinely upsetting i had you guys ever done this had you ever sat down and watched the full i'm gonna watch dateline disneyland today i think i watched

clips but i guess i didn't watch the whole thing through until we were prepping for this just clips yeah clips for me too i mean and i have to say the research on this one it there there's a line in the special where art link letter says walt you've made a bomb out of barnum today and i that stuck with me for a couple reasons one i was like wow even in 1955 we were whitewashing the cruelty of pt barnum um the other thing is that there's still a lot of urban legends i feel about this i could not find every article lists a different number there's a website that i found an official disney website called like public affairs disneyland public affairs that has a timeline of big events at the park and they had different numbers than the history.com article or like the atlantic like slideshow of pictures

so there there's still a lot there's a lot of myth making around this day what number uh are you referring to specifically the number specifically of like they were expecting like they were some numbers said they were expecting 11 000 and then on the broadcast they said there are 15 000 here with the forge tickets and the people hopping the fence you see the number 28 000 a lot and then disney disneyland clocks the number on their public affairs website is 28 154 jeez expecting 11 they got 28 and some of the manifestations of this were that um one the tickets were apparently very easy to counterfeit seems like they were just printed out there was no type of watermark and certainly not a hologram um i found a story that there was a some of the tickets had a blank space that said how many people are in your

party so people would just fill in the blank space 70 all right all right gang come on in and then the other thing is that there was a man with a ladder uh just letting people over a fence and charging them five dollars in a very homer simpson-esque homer land or when he charges that guy by the axle for the parking for whacking day uh does he charge for the pool or the trampoline yeah the trampoline i think he charges for yes well and then it becomes the centerpiece of homer land uh oh right yes you're right i yeah there's a fort made out of uh dirty mattresses um but like how but how long could this guy have been in business there's four sides to disneyland there's only so many places he could be a man just had a

ladder for long enough to have like maybe gotten what a thousand people in we have to find we have to see if we can really dig deep and find out who the ladder man was i also want to find we we need to reach out to the searching for sugar Man people and see if they would like to collaborate on finding the Disneyland Ladder Man. The Disneyland Ladder Man. Looking for Ladder Man. The first podcast, the right documentary. If we could find, yeah, like, I mean, Ladder Man could be alive. Could have been a very young man at the time.

Did he then make a little business out of it and cross the country like he did the same thing for woodstock he uh he like anybody who was not allowed into altamont because they had a knife he found a weak spot and let only knife holders in uh he let uh berlin wall he let people over the berlin wall with his ladder he did some good he actually it wasn't all bad with ladder man he reunited some families that's right he was so yeah he's he traveled the world allowing people to climb his ladder he did not believe in walls and he would be so frustrated with the trump administration walls are what he hated

the most no matter where they were he was a true patriot in a lot of ways at disneyland ladder man and things were different back then disneyland was very sparsely landscaped much of it barren and brown so there was a huge but there was a little baby berm i'm amazed they even had a wall all around it in that uh sense like it's impressive that they even had got one done because all of disneyland was built in a year and a day it was literally one year and one day and now kind of any project takes at least three. They gun it. Yeah. It's pretty wild, which is why it's it's funny to look at that opening day aerial map and go, well, well, you know, a lot of it is just blank.

Like the fields that is where the the Matterhorn ended up or Autopia is kind of a lot. They paved some of it and the rest is just undecorated. No trees. I do that. Yeah. If you went to Disneyland after having gone to Disneyland now, you'd be like, oh, this looks like shit in a lot of places. Our standards are so high.

Signs that said to be open soon. Yeah. So, yes, it is surprising that there wasn't just like a big section of fence they forgot to put in and there was no need for the ladder man it does seem like that would be you would you would believe that you'd believe oh yeah we forgot to put like 20 feet of fence over in the back hopefully just like hang a tarp over it no one will notice that like you can't you can just sneak under the tarp and they also guys i Sorry, they couldn't afford a security guard either to block the 20 feet.

Just Roy wandering around back there. Telling children, pee, pee wherever you want. Pee wherever you gotta go. I love it. Roy loves it. Roy loves peeing wherever. Did you guys come across the weeds stories? This is another thing where i'm like wait what should

i don't know which to believe because there's a story about because they had the canal boats which we now are now the story land storybook canal boats and now there's little dioramas and stuff at the time there were just boats that went around a little canal of brown unwatered grass there was just nothing there wow there was well there the one story is that there were just weeds so walt said put the latin names for these weeds on signs like it's an exhibit and then there was another story where they said go out and like there was landscaping not done they said go pull weeds from the parking lot and replant it in the park so again so much myth making even the number of rides i could not find like the disneyland public affairs website says 18 attractions were open touring plans website

lists 14 attractions and at least three attractions were down on dumbo was not up and running rocket to the moon wasn't working and peter pan wasn't really working either so i don't know where if the number if some places count what's actually running and what's not and the mark twain was open but flooded a little bit at some point a little bit um toad had a an electrical outlet uh surge like toad was down for some of the day because it was just one outlet powering the entire ride there's just one outlet um and then the best part there was a gas leak that shut down a lot of the park for part of the day jesus did it like smell of gas? Were you walking around just a field of weeds

that smelled like gas? I, presumably, but, like, carnivals smell like gas sometimes anyway, so I think people were used to it. You gotta think, like, 10 years before, they were rationing stuff

for on the front lines in Europe, so they're probably like, hey, this is better than air raid drills and if you if they were in tomorrowland by the autopia it smelled like gas anyway they're for sure that's true they're for sure were people in the park maybe a lot of them who just like killed men in within the the like not the decade but like 10 years prior they're for they're for sure people who like killed in war oh yes not only are you correct on that but we'll get to it a little later there's people who've killed on both sides who were in the park that day i don't know

i don't know to what you refer and i'm scared. Oh, there's some amazing, there's some amazing historical characters in this broadcast, man. Yeah. It's wild. I like, there are people that just show up for a two second cameo in the special. Like,

it's like, oh, there's Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis jr. And they like whiz by and that's it. Yeah. Well, one Sammy Rams, Frank on the Autopia. That's what it is.

He kind of like, yeah, kind of runs into him. But I wonder like, yeah, who else was there? And maybe just wasn't even on camera. Is it part of the lore that Tony Baxter was there? Am I making that up? Or am I thinking of Marty Sklar? I feel like some major imagineering person sklar was working by that but i think he was working oh wow i'd begin the career or maybe

not i could be wrong huh um yeah who knows um who knows who was conceived at this event on holiday hill yeah yeah over on the classic original disneyland makeout spot if anyone came to this podcast hoping we would clarify a lot i don't think it's going to happen and i would actually like to put new rumors out into the world about this day so just keep on your toes is what i'm saying oh yeah who would have been born around 1955? Births in 1955. Can we spread a rumor? This is too long of a list. Wait, I saw a wrestler, Chris Adams.

I don't know who that is. I need a celebrity. I want to think of a celebrity who we can say was conceived in a wild fit of passion on top of a pile of weeds. Rowan Atkinson rowan atkinson was conceived at disneyland on opening day in 1955 i think that is for sure if people want to isolate me saying that and clip it and then send it around as if did you know like that would be good so wait i guess though shouldn't I be looking at who was born in, like, April 1956? Okay, you're right. Everyone scratch that.

We need to get exactly right so that it lines up. Yeah, because people will poke holes in this thing all day. Right. Now, I bet, that said, I bet people were, like, a little bewildered and confused. So, like Mr. Bean, you can find people in the background of this broadcast going like, oh, hmm. Oh, you know, probably. Yes. All right.

That's good. That's not a rumor. That's for sure. That for sure happened. Oh, here. O.J. Prosecutor Chris Darden was famously conceived. Chris Darden was conceived opening day at Disneyland in 1955, July 17th.

It was wild. There it is. The Dardens really went at it. For sure had it. So much legend. I mean, we could talk about one of the, you know, probably the most famous piece of the lore, which is that the cement had been so recently poured that it had not hardened and so throughout the day it was so excruciatingly hot that it was melting again and that women's heels

were melting back into the the end of the ground yes that um i'm curious about how this played out uh was it like two women or was it uh 300 how many shoes were lost did somebody take those and keep those and immortalize them in sort of a uh grammids chinese manner was yeah was there yeah full slate a block of cement with high heels stuck in it and walt's, take that to my office. Put that in there. I don't want you to tell anybody, but put it in there and leave it in there. My shoe, this whole thing was just a big scam

to try to get a collection of shoes. Yeah. Walt wasn't no lady's shoes. How else am I going to get a big pile of them? He was a lot like a Quentin Tarantino. He was a lot like a Quentin Tarantino type good just like tarantino's movies go back and look for all those foot shots in every disney movie you'll find them well and leave leave the cement i want it to not be hardened by the time we open what are you talking about walt shut up listen to what

i'm saying don't question me we're well on track sir it's gonna be it's gonna be dry by may ain't nothing to worry about you fool no keep it wet keep it oh so wet but sir the lady's heels yes exactly the story i had always heard about the eels was then they were given moccasins because they were only sold, the only like shoes readily available. They sold moccasins at Frontierland. But then as they're narrating up and down Main Street, I believe it's Art Linkletter who like looks at the Emporium and goes like, you can buy any oldfashioned thing you want in there like buckle shoes and i'm like wait there's other shoes they did have other shoes that's good detective work yeah yeah you could get buckle shoes you could get like pilgrim shoes well like no like because they said they pin main street as 1900 like set in 1900 so you could get you know this this is 50 years later it's a little bit in the

you know that's 50 years before they were already romanticizing the the turn of that century um i think they were like you can get like because you could buy all sorts of weird crap on main street we should we should make a definitive list at some point about all the weird crap you could buy in the first few years yeah I wonder if what's the best um I cause you don't see a lot of pictures of everything in those gift shops and I

think it would blow everyone's mind what they sold in Disneyland brassieres they sold ladies brassieres my ears are aflame yes i had phil or ib pro souvenir glass bottles of aspirin i believe braziers coffee tobacco pretty insane that it was the wizard of bras yeah that does like what that doesn't against like Walt's like conservative puritanical vision. Like, well, that is interesting that that was.

I mean, I guess it's just more of his. I guess he had to approve it. He had to sign off on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll do a full. It was run by.

I was going to with the Hollywood Maxwell brassiere company. So strange. Yeah. But who would like uh why would you just need one all of a sudden and where did were they hoping to get the reputation of being a great place to buy bras could you get men's underwear on main street well i think all stores were less like you know the brow store was probably less like Victoria's Secret and more like a hardware store. All stores in the past looked like hardware stores.

I get that it was sort of a more functional store. Still, could you buy a pair of underwear on Main Street if you were a man? Like briefs, white briefs. Could you buy it on Main Street? I'm searching this Yesterland article for i i don't i don't think so because of course at least not at this shop uh because it's saying this article saying how many men hesitate to enter the shop um they're uh they and they're very polite in doing so they remove their hats upon entering the store what a strange what i do if i go into a victoria's secret i remove my

hat and so in a show of respect respect you put it over your heart yes i i just i close i put it over my heart i close my eyes and then i wander around uh just say ma'am to perhaps to no one in case there's a case there's a ma'am in front of you. Yeah. But yeah, could you... Yeah, you would get like... You couldn't get a suit on Main Street. You don't know. Like drills, hammers. Right.

If you need to put up a picture frame, you can get some equipment to do that on Main Street. Like, why? It's weird not a shop to wait for uh jack rather seen briefly in this special to finish that old dizzy land hotel to get some man stores up and running right um so we'll investigate that further yeah yeah bizarre main street would definitely be a great one uh um oh, you know what I think about the heels? Just first of all, it's just a weird reminder that this is when the people did wear heels to Disneyland at this time.

And now the only time you see that happen is on Dapper Day is like the dress up day, the fancy dress up day. That's sort of unofficial that they do, but that Disney embraces a little bit. And why this is a photo op that's waiting to happen they should for dapper day lay out a bunch of wet concrete so that people can recreate that moment yeah that's true i mean you know it's probably you could go one step because this is always trying to make some more money you could go a step further and be like have your heels immortalized in concrete and then you have to pay like a hundred dollars for it and you could get everyone

to take that home as a little keepsake and then you can upcharge everybody and i think that would be you know i think that would be very successful yeah um uh a tough thing to take home a heavy thing to take home sure sure yeah you also need like a thing to wheel it out, like a dolly, essentially. Okay. There's some other things that you have to think about as far as cost, but I think you could make it a small little piece of concrete and then that would be really... They could contain it. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. Merch ideas, though. You know everybody's talking about it. If you're like wearing heels there, you're thinking about it and you want the full experience um i and you they should all and so they should also like uh take water out of the park on those days too um that's a that's kind of another famous one that the uh this is often gone over how there was they had walt had to choose between having drinking water and and toilet like yeah right toilet water i think

so yeah i've read that i wonder if that's completely true across the board but that i did find consistent across most of the articles you did did. Okay. There was a plumber strike going on and they either need it. The bathrooms finished or the water fountains finished. And I think he went, people can buy Pepsi and Coke. Um, uh, but we need bathrooms.

Fat, a lot of good. It did those fucking kids. Uh, yeah, they didn't take advantage of the only water in disneyland being toilet water yeah the only water in disneyland was toilet water on opening day how soon was it they got the drinking fountains up and running yeah people didn't drink that much water back then that's what cigarettes were for good point yeah that gives you energy can't get you through the day a nice hot day in southern california just smoke as

many cigarettes as you can walt was like yeah they were like walt we we won't have drinking fountains and he was like well we do we have whole milk and cigarettes and they're like yeah of course he's like great we're fine now that is not not in the broadcast i there's probably people smoking in the broadcast but there's behind the scenes footage of them setting up for the broadcast and we saw some very funny shots where the guy first off he's drawing the frames on the ground in chalk which was odd that he wasn't using a pencil and paper but he there's there's people like figuring out this camera needs to go here and we need to be able to see this and they have not put out their cigarettes like they cannot even stop smoking for 30 seconds of behind the scenes

so do you think every cameraman everybody holding the boom mic just everyone has a cigarette in hand i think everyone has a cigarette i think most of the on-camera talent is probably a little lit from flasks i it was just a different it was just a different time back then you can't have gum in the park but you gotta have a smoke you know the only reason our leg letter didn't have a cigarette is just, or the reason they did all those didn't have cigarettes is just because they had conflicting endorsement deals. Yeah. Like, I can't be on camera with somebody smoking Marlboro because I'm with, you know, Worthington. I forget the names of these cigarettes.

Yeah, Danny Thomas had a different cigarette brand than Bob Cummings. So that was a big problem. Can you imagine if you were at disneyland and it smelled like a casino which i mean i know i think for a while but yeah you're on like space mountain and it's just a thick cigarette cloud waiting in line like that would be something and yes it was it was probably the reality up until what 20 years ago um what's well people were smoking i don't not maybe not in the line could you smoke when when was the last time you could smoke in the line of like a ride that's a good question that's maybe been a while i think i have no i have no idea jason go ahead well i can tell you i can't tell

you an exact date but i can tell you so jane found and got me uh a vintage caribbean beach resort baseball cap and from the same seller got a pair of caribbean beach matchbooks like that would be in your hotel room or in the lobby of like, here's your matches, you know, to light up your cigarettes. Wow. So like fun, silly themed hotel for children.

Well, you want to relax at the beach, right? You know, you need a Chester. You need a long L and M. So that was 89, 90 about one year,

I think. And I couldn't be mixing up hotels, but I believe we were going to the Polynesian. And I'm sure my mom's going to be mad because I got this wrong. We went into a room and it was supposed like, it smelled like smoke, like crazy. And we went back down and we were like, it's like cigarette smoke. And there's crazy, like, could we get another room? And they said, fine.

And we went to another room and we were walking around and we opened up the closet and it smelled like piss. It was so strong. The pee, like somebody, like a kid had peed in the closet, like a child had peed in the closet. And I can't remember if we, if they just came and cleaned it or we moved. I don't remember. You just came and cleaned it or we moved. I don't remember. You sure it was a child? You drink a couple pineapples, you know? You drink a couple pongoos, you know?

I am not sure it was a child. Absolutely not sure. That's how Mr. Toad smelled at this time. Like, you know, there were long lines everywhere. People had to pee real bad. And just as soon as we're indoors, it's a little dark. Let her rip. at this time like you know but like there were long lines everywhere beth people that'd be real bad and just as soon all right we're indoors it's a little dark let her rip yes the disneyland this is a thing i've thought about before the disneyland smells this day because disneyland is so obviously it's so specific and they've they've figured out how to put pump fake smells in and blah blah blah but what does everything smell like opening day is it just like toxic paint cigarette smoke

drying cement and gas yeah and the and ever been people with cigarettes and cigars, I can't imagine the level of flatulence can't be great from an audience of people who are only drinking Coca-Cola. What was public farting like back in 1955? Was that more common, do you think? Or just like unable to be helped? Everyone's diet was so bad there was no way to to excuse yourself it just would come out or did you repress it so hard because that's you know that's the devil's air so keep it inside uh children would be uh children would be given the belt mercilessly if they let out a public

fart. No child farted in public until 1987. That is a fact. That's another rumor we're putting out that's true. So isolate what Scott just said and attribute that to us as a fact. They're about no child farting.

Yeah. But they are encouraged to fire guns in public yes i but uh by the way and this will sound like a stat that we're making up according to yesterland disneyland park stopped selling cigarettes anywhere on property in late 1999 they sold them still in yeah i i'm assuming they had sold stop selling them in park years earlier but i guess maybe yeah you could get them at hotels still probably up until then oh yeah that's my guess i don't think you could get a pack of cigarettes in 1999 in a disney park but maybe i'm wrong maybe there was one spot you could get cigarettes and they were singles they were just they were they were just one-offs uh you know

with a character on it there's there's lumiere light up with lumiere was there a fan outrage when cigarettes were stopped they stopped selling cigarettes at a gift shop was there a huge with their petitions the geocities breaking disney to stop selling cigarettes what's next kodak film yes the answer is yes disney strips civil liberties i have the right to at the last minute hop on a skyway car with a stranger and smoke the entire way. Smoke a pack on the Skyway. The old advertising campaign for the Skyway. Ashing them on the people below. Kids getting ash in the eye.

Ow! Stop crying! Stop it! ash in the eye how stop crying stop it the old like gallon milk the the like the old version of like the drinking a gallon of milk challenge is like can you smoke a pack of cigarettes on the skyway very impressive with you and your friends how many did obama get through that's a good question i don't know if he completed the challenge another degree of uh i don't know how fast he went well i always thought the obama story i thought he was alluding to smoking reefer on on the skyway i'm not sure he leaves it ambiguous

he yeah scott looked it up and he clarified at least with a joking way that it wasn't but who knows yeah who knows he might have been being cute i uh i mean, maybe a good segue from presidents at Disneyland way before they were presidents. Oh, Ronnie Reagan. Old Ronnie Reagan. If you don't know, this 90 minute broadcast live from the opening of Disneyland was hosted by Art Linkletter. Still, you know, around in our childhoods. What would kids say? The darndest things whose

latter day host we will not discuss yep do you remember i do i know what you're talking about bob cummings a popular actor from the time and another popular actor ronnie reagan um oh ronnie which ronnie reagan ronald reagan was elected president 20 years after this aired. Like, 20 years, is that right? A little more, 25. A little more, 25. Donald Trump was elected president 12 years after The Apprentice started airing. What I'm saying is we as a people have always been very stupid.

Like, Americans have always been dumb. Also in this special, i kind of made the connection last night i was like you know i think back then people in the in their entertainment were a little more cavalier with their gunplay maybe partly because they had the reasonable expert expectation they could go to public squares or schools and not be open fire on. Anyway, shortly after taking presidency, Ronald Reagan cut a bunch of federal funding for mental health programs, and we don't have that expectation now.

I'm sure those things are unrelated. Hey, all I know is he is quite the charmer in this special. That's all I know from Ronnie Reagan. Shut up with your politics, Jason. He seems nice and cute. At least he's not a philanderer like some of the other on-screen talent. It's a matter of when you want me to pull the trigger on Bob Cummings because I'd say half of what I have is about Bob Cummings.

Oh, well, I'd say let's just get into it because I feel like Art Linklater... Was Linkl later the one on the monorail like did he host the opening of the monorail and all that stuff too i believe i don't remember like he was sort of he was sort of disney's guy and kind of volunteered volunteered is like hosting and producing talents for this yeah and um all i remember is that nixon of course is at the opening of the monorail so reagan is at the opening of disneyland and nixon is at the opening of the monorail a lot of strange presidential interactions except for donald trump i don't think donald

trump has ever set foot on in a disney park hmm right and you've i assume you've searched yeah i i believe that i've made that specific search but like wouldn't wouldn't we know i think i mean he's been in we know with universal photos he's a universal guy yes he's a universal guy is what we're saying he likes that more he thinks disney's too for kids he likes the more adult themes of universal yeah he loves horror nights folks we love it they've got hop they've got hop's friend terrific trump very good yes um the last thing i have about art link later before we get into like a full dissertation about bob cummings because i am very curious about bob cummings deal uh link later apparently was offered the chance to invest in disneyland said no pretty clearly realized his

mistake and and like volunteered to help with the hosting and the production of this sort of thing and when disney wanted to thank him because it seems to imply that he was not paid for this um uh link later asked for disneyland's camera and film concession for its first 10 years a request that was quickly granted so he got a taste of anyone buying film and cameras for the first 10 years of disneyland whoa wow that's a smart plan that was a good call yeah geez wow that's a good little back-end deal he sorted out there yeah geez very crafty um i think he's like the most icon that's the part of the special that i knew the most i think was his opening he's up on the you know on the main street train station and uh uh when it they say we're cutting to art link letter and then it cuts to the big planner of mickey in the first slide

that's not art link letter that's mickey mouse and then he's describing kind of what you're going to get into and i the one that's always stuck in my head is uh you know i forgot the rest of the sentence but uh you know a big with a big package all wrapped in whimsy most pronounced w of whimsy um this is like the only part that goes well is art link letters kind of opening address and he meets waltz and describes what you're going to be seeing uh 29 cameras uh with and he describes the production of this live special it's amazing they admit this he says uh what you're gonna see is gonna be like imagine if you were trying to cover three volcanoes erupting at the same time and you didn't expect any of them yeah they also had to borrow cameras it was hard to get cameras back then they had to borrow

cameras from everywhere other networks other networks and studios and like now you could probably find 20 cameras in southern california at the universal studio between universal studios the film division and the local mbc affiliate you could come up with 20 cameras easy yeah but they yes art is makes it very clear this is probably going to be a shit show we apologize ahead of time this is what we're trying to do is insane for what our capabilities are yeah they have nothing like this had ever been attempted this is like by far the most complex thing ever televised at this point yeah boy the ambition to open this park at all even doing it and then like should we just kind of like have someone talk about it no no live special parades live multiple

movie stars live dance numbers they're attempting like what you know greece live ended up being that they could pull off still with mistakes a little bit you know in 2016 or whatever and they haven't done like a fully live special for something opening since like like this since i mean even the stuff that might be kind of live it's like there's a ton of pre-tapes and there's a ton of yeah other things going on light magic was partially live partially live that was partially chaos though it was like as we said a lot more chaotic than uh they usually are and the special was padded full of just the walt myth the same making stuff same shit uh um uh start with ms he went to the do we have to do an episode about do we ever have to address

these things the and he went to the carousel and he was mad at the car that's a funny aspect of that i actually saw a tweet about this that he was like is that griffith park carousel that's still around that he's staring at this like this piece of shit i'll top this in my sleep i fucking hate this carousel this shitty carousel is for kids, not for kids and adults. Step one, burn this to the ground. These carnivals are trash. I hate

this. Step two, build a park where the carousel is the worst ride. I'll show you carousel. Phase two after Disneyland was that he was going to blow up every carnival and carousel in america to punish it for being bad get secret agents get his pal ronnie reagan to pull his government strings to track each carny

get on the train cars stab them in their sleep dump their bodies on the road yeah it's definitely like a class it's definitely in hindsight because that is always that story you always hear that and you go oh that is nice because yes some of those amusement parks are like a little bit low rent and that is nice for a family to go to but then if you think about it it's like well they didn't have the money you had you maniac like yeah it's like people build a nice thing to try to get families to enjoy it and it's like they didn't have as much money that you did because you were walt disney you idiot like it wasn't some like they weren't like being it was an affront to families they were making a nickel at a time they went they hadn't like made a bunch of movies and

gotten you know money from the war from the government right they couldn't some carny couldn't go to bank of america and get a 50 million dollar loan borrow borrow against your other vacation house borrow on your life insurance borrow against some movie bonds um the other thing is uh if you watch there's a recent defunct land that talks about the history of coney island you are reminded of the fact that back in the past everything was just constantly burning down all the time is that what so what was coney island destroyed a lot well coney island was a lot of different attractions and like different parks and mini parks and side shows and all this stuff and a number of them just like went up in flames either from just like a freak accident or like as we say

burn it down for the insurance money or again someone just flicked a cigarette a loose cigarette a loose cigarette at some wet paint and it's just like uh-oh this is gonna be a disaster yeah because they're using a kind of paint that is not used anymore that's extremely flammable turpent is loose, like puddles of turpentine on the ground. Asbestos fuzz everywhere. Just get gasoline in their hair. Everything is either made of gasoline or asbestos. So Walt was out looking at that carousel and dreaming,

I want a place where I can go and take my daughters that isn't constantly on fire. And past the opening day, he achieved his dream. where I can go and take my daughters that isn't constantly on fire. Mm-hmm. And past the opening day, he achieved his dream. Because, and I didn't see, this is one of those also that seems in dispute to me. I saw reports that said that at some point part of the castle caught on fire. But are we sure? And was that opening day or is that just, like, how could that also have been even on top of everything else the castle caught on fire i feel

like we do have more concrete information about that yeah you would have to imagine a bunch of weird uh crazy shit happened in the first six months and maybe some of that has all been folded into the opening day legend i think so yeah the opening months i saw some

crazy stuff of like a few like most of the Autopia cars were destroyed just from people crashing into each other or walls. Here's something I had never heard of before. This was not opening day, but this was in within the opening months. A tiger and a panther in a circus parade broke loose and staged a quote furious death struggle on main street usa what what people need to be thinking of the opening of disneyland more as action park yeah like oh my struggle that's right which animals again a tiger and a panther my god so terrifying just clawing just ripping each other's throats out my god even the number of viewers of the broadcast uh it was i

saw some places cited as 90 million and that might have been worldwide but history.com listed the domestic viewers as 70 million which is a big deal when you think that the population of America was 165 million. Oh, my God. Over. But according to some numbers, over half. Yeah. Wow. Jeez.

Either even if it's only 70 million. Oh, my God. Uh, here, can I, maybe I can do a quick calculation. Um, that is,

that means that, uh, the, the current level of remaining subscribers of Quibi is 0.01%. The opening, uh, the viewership of the opening day audience of uh opening day of disneyland that then that's in the low number yeah maybe but it'll get there it'll climb

um i uh with just in terms of uh combining things and urban legends you know the special ends with as you said uh jason uh art link letter saying you made a bum out of barnum and they uh art and uh walt you know walk uh arm and arm over towards the castle and if it i wish that in that exact moment is when you wish upon a star starts playing and that's the end of the broadcast that then a uh a tiger and a panther had tumbled out mauling each other briefly one throws the other off onto walt disney who's pinned on the ground slides into the moat art has to dive in art tears his shirt off he's ripped drags a wet walt disney they're calling for f Fess Parker to come over to try to help. Bring Betsy!

Betsy! Bring Betsy. Fess, Fess, is Betsy there? Well, now that begs the question. Of the on-camera talent, some of the people mentioned Edie Fisher was there, or Eddie Fisher, excuse me. Eddie Fisher.

The male. Not cousin, and not Edie from Grey Gardens. Eddie Fisher, Demi Reynolds, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Danny Thomas, and of course, Aunt Jemima. So I have to think Frank Sinatra seems like the type who had a gun on him. So probably could have stopped the feral cats you know yeah well Sinatra I would assume Sinatra had a guy

at least with him that at least had a guy yeah yeah he just would have snapped yes and somebody would have yeah taken care of him right exactly he would have also done that if some kid looked at him the wrong way yes from the stories sure I've heard yes he brought the panther

i think that was that was part of his security detail frank traveled with a panther hey charlie keep me safe buddy yeah frank and there was probably frank was probably walking around with a glass of whiskey all day at dis. They probably looked the other way for that. That was the original drinking. He's the only one who was allowed to drink liquor in Disneyland up until Galaxy's Edge. Oh, yeah. There's the rules and then there's the Frank rules. Yeah, the chairman was allowed to do what he wanted.

The chairman could do what he wants. It's like since we talked about Atlantic City, there's that story about Frank sinatra and d martin when they were helping open atlantic city casinos uh went into the casino at like 3 a.m or something and demanded the poker dealer deal cards by hand which is incredibly illegal and the pit boss had to go like oh oh, okay, it's Frank Sinatra. Yeah, I guess so. It's Frank Sinatra. Again, incredibly illegal to deal as if you were playing at your home and not from like a card distributor. Oh, no weird. And Frank gave him a pack of all kings. Yeah. Okay, we got to do what he says.

You make freaky mad. That's another aspect. If anybody has a good record of what Frank did all day at Disneyland, I would love to know. I would love to know. Tracking him. Yeah, absolutely. He had a son with him. He had Frankie Jr.

Frankie Jr. Yeah. Yes, correct. Who he used to make fun of when he would tour with him. Yeah, that's another thing. Yeah. Yes. Correct. Who he used to make fun of when he would tour with him. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's another thing. Release the Panther.

Bite his crotch. He made, it's like the scene in Talladega Nights. He made, when Gary Cole makes Will Ferrell get in the car with the Panther. Yes. Or whatever. Is it a tiger? Is it a tiger? I'm mixing up the tiger

and the sex panther from Anchorman, I guess. Oh, yeah, yeah. I, uh, yeah. You know, there's another guy who was here. That's an odd little sidetrack that I found. There's a lot. Art Linklater several times

gives some audio real estate to pointing out Don DeFore. There's Don DeFore, who's one of those names who's sort of lost on you today. You know, clearly big in the 50s. And obviously, because then I'm like, who's Don DeFore? And he says, my old friend Don DeFore, Ozzie and Harriet's next door neighbor. Next door neighbor. I wrote this down, too.

Yeah. Not previously aware of don defoe but then i like like well i gotta find out some info about don defoe and why was he here and why did they make a point of because you you see him on the autopia and at the the launch of casey jr the circus train which they called several times casey jones jr there's a lot of getting things wrong. They got things wrong all the time on this thing. They call it the Autotopia. Ronnie Regan.

Irene Dunn, the actress who christens the Mark Twain, calls Art Linkletter Walt. So many mistakes on this. She was drinking from that bottle before she christened it, probably. Can I still smash it if it's open? And then, I mean, that's one of those standard things, too. Then she tries to break the bottle and the bottle didn't break. I mean, it was just that sort of granular, everything going wrong.

But anyway, Dawn DeFore, I was like, what is up with Dawn DeFore? And what a delightful thing that I discovered let me do a quick screen share with you guys and tell you that Don DeFore not only was it the opening day in 1955 but in 1957 opened up in Disneyland

Don DeFore's Silver Banjo Barbecue Restaurant he is the only person, the only real person, to operate his own private establishment within Disneyland. And I'm showing you a Yesterland article where he's holding a big banjo. He's beaming. He's in a barbershop quartet kind of hat.

He's so proud. He's like the happiest guy I've ever seen. Silver Banjo Barbecue restaurant sounds great honestly who's verne defore uh friends and i think his wife worked there too this was a legit family restaurant by this celebrity it'd be like if you know a popular sitcom star that if eric stone Street ran a ramen place in Disneyland. My pitch was like Richard Karn's pizza in Tomorrowland. Home Improvement's Richard Karn. Nobody makes it like Al.

Pretty great. It actually shared a wall with the Aunt Jemima Pancake House, as aforementioned by Jason. This is the reason that they can never redistribute Dateline Disneyland officially. They did put out a DVD of it a long time ago. And now if they do, they will have to cut the reference to that that they had for a very long time. Jim and Lendis did a very interesting look back at that on their Disney dish. So I would recommend that too. Well, and she, let's just say, she doesn't just like wave from a distance.

She shows up in a musical number and dances. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. In this special. They say, and here's Aunt Jemima. In already a very chaotic, chaotic musical number. All of them are because the cameras aren't equipped to film them correctly. And also now dance is filmed on television, you know, with a lot of angles and things to cut to.

And this is just like blurry cameras that like if you move your leg too fast, the camera fuzzes out like you kill the lens. It's like this is no way to film a dance number. Yes. It's not like, oh, shoot, I'm forgetting the name of the band that Mickey dances with that I love on that Disneyland special we talked about a year ago or so. The K-pop group? Yeah, yeah.

What's that name of that band? With the numbers. Yeah, shoot. Don't recall. Not as good as that yeah ncis8675309 that's correct this uh um where was i oh well here colorful characters and this will also take us into um you know one one of the dance numbers um the best guy who appears on this special is one of the hosts, and that is Bob Cummings. It occurred to me that I've heard that name my whole life as a Disneyland

nerd. And I think as soon as I found out about this, obviously, you know, when I was a kid and I heard about that special, I knew Ronald Reagan was our link letters around in our childhoods, but who was Bob Cummings? I did not really know.

He is an actor from the Bob Cummings show uh he was in dial him for murder uh you know pretty good respected actor he won an emmy uh four months prior to this special so he was on top of the world um bizarre facts about this guy uh his godfather was orville Wright, like the inventor of flight. Orville Wright. And he flew in the military. He was and also was a flight instructor for a long time. Very interested in piloting. And he, in fact, when they started giving out official flight instructor licenses, he was number one.

He's the very first. Bob Cummings, flight instructor number one. That's wild. Very strange. And then the bizarre fact, I just can't wrap my head around this sentence. He was an avid pilot and owned a number of airplanes, all named Spinach.

What? Is that a mistake? Was that translated from another language all the airplanes he owned were named spinach all named spinach yeah i i tried to i googled it further a little bit and yeah it's like spinach one and spinach two i don't really how many did he have um i don't know three at least you can watch some video of spears there's somebody flying spinach around right now spinach is still around in good shape um really there's like harrison ford owns spinach um he could not sure leno perhaps he's not into planes planes to hate split in? Yeah it's like a car in the sky Yeah no I think Scott's right

I think Leno hates planes That's why the cars is to you know Make sure he's trying to get flight ended Altogether Leno hates planes fire and rescue He loves cars He hates fire and rescue Why'd they do it?

Why does he have know the franchise? Anyway, I guess all of his planes were named Spinach because he was a staunch advocate of natural foods. And he was all about health in general. And I think as he started getting into this stretch of his career where he's trying to do so much, he's trying to act on tv and film and host specials like this he uh starts complaining about a lack of energy uh and him being a health food person like how good what is it what's just a good natural way that i can get my energy up and this is in 1954 the year before this this is starting and he's complaining to uh to his friends uh fellow celebrities, Rosemary Clooney and Jose Ferrer Ferrer, who recommended a doctor. I believe. Am I getting this right?

The doctor is named Dr. Bryce Hutchins, a very Troy McClurey name. Maybe I'm getting the name wrong. this is uh this doctor um recommend there's a lot of celebrities at the time we're going to this doctor uh who are also complaining about a lack of energy and he made a concoction that gave all the celebrities of the time all the energy that they could ever want um and over the course of the years what has come out is that this concoction contained a substantial dose of methamphetamine. And let me make sure I have the right guy. Dr. Bob Cummings, because you can find a list of like everybody who was using this doctor. And it's like literally every celebrity of the time, you know, including like Judy Garland.

It is OK. It is Bryce Hutchins. No, no, no. He changed his name to Bryce Hutchins. I'm all over the map. I'm sorry. Here. Trying to find this doctor.

Who is the Max Jacobson is the doctor and if you look at his clients lauren bacall ingrid bergman leonard bernstein bob cummings rosemary clutie judy garland elvis presley uh nelson rockefeller elizabeth taylor everyone who was famous in this era was on meth the same man was giving all 50 famous people just injecting meth straight into him wow um including vitamin. Vitamina Vegemin. Try Vitamina Vegemin for all you need. Oh, right, right. Including JFK. JFK was on this same doctor's meth.

He was quoted. This isn't even made up for urban legend. This is a quote that people, aides around JFK, express concern about. Maybe you shouldn't be on whatever this weird thing is that gives you all the energy and makes you crazy. And he said, I don't care if it's horse piss. It works. It was it was later observed that JFK's leadership, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis, improved greatly once the treatments were discontinued.

So for the first two years of the presidency kennedy is out of his fucking mind on meth and then the stuff that we remember him for uh was done uh without the assistance of meth wow all this to say that undoubtedly if bob cummings got on this concoction in 1954 he certainly was still on it uh for a big event like this. You have to assume one of the hosts of the special during the special was high on meth. Wow. Bob Cummings is methed up in this special. He was super methed up. And let me go even a little further.

Let me go backwards and say, you know, the story is like, well, the doctor insisted that it was only this and this but it actually contained meth but the shit that he admitted to is crazy too because he said no no no this is perfectly natural my injections it consists only of vitamins sheep sperm and monkey gonads

wait a minute gonads hold on a second here hold on hold on hold on all right all right vitamins got it yes yes makes sense fine sheep sperm and now do you mean how do you get sperm without semen what is your method of extracting just the sperm without the substance that it... Are you like plucking just sperms out? The instruments would be so tiny. This is beyond 50s technology. Exactly.

How would that be the case? Yeah, I don't know. So you have to admit there has to be some semen in the sheep sperm. Has to be. You cannot get sheep sperm without getting full sheep. And also, how are you getting the sheep sperm in general well there's only one way i know of so something that that has to be what the he's having maybe the doctor's hiring people to do it but something that tom green would have done and freddie got fingered whatever the tom green the Tom Green of the day was.

Probably Bob Cummings. That's what I didn't say. It was kind of a gross out show, the Bob Cummings show. It was mainly him jerking off farm animals. Well, we know he's a little horned up this day. That's for sure. He is. Yes, yes.

Mike, do you have any more questions to answer? Yes. Yes. And we'll get Mike. Are you done? Do you have any more questions? Yes. Yes. OK. The last one you said is actually the most confusing because the other two are very I get I get the other two just in concept how you would get like. Yeah. Chiefs. Monkey. Monkey. Gonads. Is that what you said? He gonads. OK, so gonads. That's the thing I hear. That means testicles, am I correct? I think so. Which, like, I feel like you only hear the word gonads very slangy colloquially. Like, would a doctor say gonads? Was that more common in the old days to use that instead of balls or testicles?

And also, is he making some sort of concoction in a cauldron what is like this sounds like he's casting a spell sperm of sheep and gonad of monkey yeah a dash of meth will make you feel funky uh so how much of a gonad is in is it how much like is it a piece of the ball in each in each uh serving do you do you grind it up and put the ball in whole or is it something you steep it in is it like a bay leaf is it uh just add to the flavor or is it act part of the actual recipe yeah and how again and then the question of how do you get it? How do you get it? Was there a big push to neuter monkeys? And he was paying doctors?

Bob Barker broadened it out. But his initial what he wanted you to do is spaying and neutering started with monkeys. Pet monkeys. And then as people stopped owning pet monkeys, he had to make it be for dogs, too. And even Bob Barker, if you slow it down, if you really listen and you turn the volume up, he'd say, spay and neuter your pet,

and then give them to a doctor and make money. You can hear that if you really slow it down and speed it up. So that's very strange. Isn't Red Bull, is it still or was there at some point in time in which red bull involved uh testicle uh the power of testicles bull testicles um is there is that made is that like a weird um urban legend there's for sure results as i look up does red bull contain sperm from bull testicles but i don't think that it does anymore i think that might be or or you know some energy drink

did use testicles like years and years ago that sounds like you a really got a childhood rumor you'd hear like yellow five yeah what do people think yellow five was that was a coloring and mountain dew that people thought like decreased your sperm count has that been proven that it's not i i didn't say it's i don't know it's been proven either way but i think it's a thing where you had to have like an insane amount of it uh-huh um the uh since you mentioned a monkey there is a really quick shot when the parade is going on of like a monkey and an organ grinder on main street yeah did you notice if the monkey has does it have balls still uh the kinescope footage is so hard to tell you know this poor

monkey was like with the old school like uh the italian guy, like, it's your big day. You're going to be on TV. You're going to grind at the organ on television. Oh, it's a big day for you. And then, like, excuse me, Mr. Bob Cummings would like to meet you, sir. Oh, wonderful. No, he just wants to talk to the monkey. Oh, okay, that's unusual, but...

And then he goes off back to... He needs his energy. Oh, you mean he needs him to clap around and dance to give him energy? That sounds fine. Yeah, something like that. Monkey leaves to go meet Bob Cummings, returns 15 minutes later. What happened to his gonads? Oh, no.

And Bob is like, you shut up. I'm full of energy and I'm ready to host. I didn't do shit. You can't prove nothing. I didn't freshly squeeze them like they were grapefruits. All right, now put me on. Get me on air. I'm an entertainer.

The greatest in the world. This isn't a Hitchcock movie. I can get away with murder in real life. Wow. The past was crazy, right? Yeah, what this all shines a light on is that the 50s were bonkers, which brings us to what Jason alluded to. And this is, I think, all this is crucial backstory

for what is maybe the most memorable, strange moment of the live broadcast. So Bob Cummings is around. He's introducing people. Nothing's going awry. He's just smiling big. Why, he's even in the parade with his wife and children. Let me repeat it. Bob Cummings and his wife are seen earlier in the broadcast.

And then later in the broadcast, it cuts to another dance routine, the third or fourth in the thing. And this one's kind of like a cowgirl roundup type dance routine. And it's fun. It's a big hoedown. Everybody's having a blast. And then all of a sudden it cuts to a weird angle and somebody's back is turned and you can't quite see what's happening. And then that person turns around and it's Bob Cummings who makes a face

like he was caught as does the woman who he was clearly just making out with she is one of the cow girls in this dance number and bob looks a little like oh whoops the girl looks terrified she is so upset to be caught on camera and just runs out of frame as fast as she possibly can. Is this supposed to be like a bit? That's what I said. But then I found a news story from KPCC, one of the local public radio stations, from 2012. And they are treating the Cummings incident as like,

no, this is real. How did he not just get immediately like fired or nowadays that would be a career killer and they're like they just didn't have it in 1955 like what if they cut to a abc special and regis was making out with cinderella it's what he always wanted that was the dream we know we know but what if it actually was on camera during a live broadcast and we knew we know about his wife we it's what joy right joy yeah we know we saw him with joy and then 45 minutes later he's got his tongue on cinderella well i would love it is what is my answer i don't want to cause any meryl strife to the philbins but what a great show that would be purely conceptually as far as tv moments it would be one of the

greatest tv moments of all time it would be better than the moon landing by far better than the moon landing yeah there's another there's another piece of context that we have not mentioned yet because we got the plumber strike we got the counterfeit the all the extra people the the water pipes aren't working um uh there was one other big thing going on while all this is happening and cummings is like gassed out of his mind on concoctions. Oceans. There's a heat wave. There's a heat wave going on.

Going over like 100 degrees or just an insane heat wave in Southern California. Southern California known for being hot, but like it only once or twice a summer does it usually get that hot. Honestly, right now it's in the high 90s in the san fernando valley um but there's a heat wave everyone's out of their minds there's only three restaurants there's like popcorn and cigarettes and coca-cola a chicken of the sea thing like i i don't know that so you're saying that there's scorching hot tuna is the available food today. Yeah. With coffee and Pepsi Cola.

And whole milk and cigarettes. Yeah. All right. I got my cigarettes. I got my flaming hot tuna. I got my coffee. Sizzling. The tuna is sizzling from the sun. You can coffee. Sizzling.

The tuna is sizzling from the sun. You can hear it crackling while. I have freshly extracted these monkey gonads. Get me on TV. I'm ready to go. So this is what you're dealing with, and you're're dealing whether you're just a guest or a broadcaster with miles and miles of cable and then you turn around and you see the site i just sent you guys through text message just the scariest goddamn donald duck you've ever seen i will

describe this right now so there's a donald duck that is in what I would call like a velour jumpsuit that would simulate like what Donald's shirt and bottom half where the seat is. And then orange leggings with sort of little duck bills sticking out. Then what I would like as if Donald had a trachy out of me like his neck something's wrong with his throat and then a Donald Duck head on the top and the Donald Duck head actually looks okay in my mind and then to the left you see some other characters including Mickey who has his head off and a woman

holding the head who's in the outfit. It's like a nice looking outfit woman it's like any of our grandmas but younger yeah she has taken the head off i assume this is in full view of all the guests i yeah or i think what this might i think the context of this might be before the um fantasy land um opening moment where you know all the characters do a little dancing and kids run out of the rides and stuff this might be like right before the cameras cut to him but still even that I don't think they would do

they would never have a head off out in the park right and I'm realizing I missed like Chipper Dale's head is also off right here as well yeah and that's another thing not only is the broadcast fully available on youtube the worldwide press was here including life magazine who if you need a good photo back in the day life magazine was like the source for photography and i believe is now owned by the

getty photo collection so there is amazing quality photos of this opening yeah i i have one actually to screen share with you guys i i uh this is um original mickey and minnie and you know we could probably do an entire episode discussing uh the bizarre appearances of these early characters but um this uh the the rumor that i heard on some pocket maybe jim and lynn even is that these were uh hastily borrowed from the ice capades like yeah i think we've talked about that before yeah ice capades yeah uh so that's what these are the only that was the only place that suited characters that really existed um so yeah they're just it's essentially just mickey and minnie are in black sweaters and pants with uh just you know shorts and a skirt um and then

you know i think what the unifying thing with the bizarre donald throat and the characters we're looking at right now um i think disney had not figured out how to gracefully make, you know, what do you call it? Scrims for the people inside to see through. There is nothing graceful about what we're looking at, which it just looks like Mickey and Minnie both have just like crevices, like big scar, like chunks of their face carved out. Like it looks like they had cancerous moles removed right before they started filming and a bunch of them like mad like sir this is this mr mouse this is the size of a golf ball and you will die before day's end if we don't tear it out right now all right but i gotta get out there disneyland's opening i know sir i'm so sorry but we have to do this all right if you have to you will die

mid-dance routine if we don't take this saw to your face i like me that mcminney's ear is like it's like i think it's just peeled back here in this picture too where is it yeah there's kind of like a look at her face kind of got pancaked and then there's just like a loose hose around there's a loose hose on the ground one foot to the right of Mickey who as we've said has extremely limited visibility yes you would think that would be an easy one of like it get

that hose out of the way but maybe that hose was like giving water to a toilet. Maybe there was like a kind of a like a lo-fi solution to a problem. There's urine coursing through it right now. Yeah, there's draining urine. If Mickey tripped and fell, it would make the hose just spray pee all over the cowgirls next to them in this photo. Correct me if I'm wrong. Real quick to go back to Minnie's face.

Does it appear that they quickly tried to draw on eyelashes to Minnie's face? Because that's what it looks like to me they just like got a pencil and were like both mouse heads are the same let's put a bow on Minnie and try to draw eyelashes and they had like maybe a number two pencil and that was the best they could do very asymmetrical eyelashes and just like massive lips like bee sting in your allergic lips it's pretty crazy mini in general looks like if your three-year-old who's just started to draw says i i drew a picture of you mommy and you look like a monster it's like the most unflattering thing you could imagine but you have to say it's perfect you made me look so pretty i love you james cameron handed this photo as reference to like the avatar cgi artist it's like okay when the navi fight the big mech suits at the

end this is their battle paint. Make it look like this. One right, one between the eyes, a bunch above the lips. Wow, yeah, yeah. I also, there's also this weird photo, which is Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds force-feeding a soda to an astronaut. They don't know.

They're gacked out of their minds. They were both on the meth list. They are both on the meth list. These are Carrie Fisher's parents. Was Carrie a rat? Let's just say it. Eddie and Debbie were hopped up on meth and sheep sperm and conceived Carrie in a field that day.

Right after they force fed Coca-Cola to an astronaut. To an astronaut. A space astronaut. Sounds like a special future astronaut. Bob Cummings just tossed them a full monkey gonad. Have fun, guys. Again, I keep drawing, tying it back to like, can you imagine if all the stars of tgif

were methed up on one of these regis specials like going through the park lawlessly just like making making performers drink i'm ben savage but i recently just realized I'm the devil you over there worker I have a Fanta I have an orange Fanta that I need you to drink glug it Ben Savage is my name and also describes what I am

have you seen that fanny pack I need I left I left an Epcot fanny pack here it's very important I get it back i'm a dead man if i don't get that back just celebrities with opening of animal kingdom driving by the monkeys and their lips watering they're all pulling the emergency stop let me out let me out let us out here well the 80s specials like the circus and world showcase or whatever that one is the

celebrities are all like really slow because they they the drug of choice was eludes so everyone's just really that's a good point you can really you can tell the where what the most popular drug is by whatever disney special is occurring i also by the way just to like not only have crazy fun and laugh at this bob cummings like crazily struggled with this thing through his whole life and in fact it got so bad that he had an intervention that was pulled together by art link letter so just that as context watching this special that two of the hosts one had to do it a uh uh an intervention for the other and then the third became the two of the hosts one had to do an intervention for the other and then the third became the president

of the United States. It's insane. So bizarre. Another thing to point out about the Reagan thing, when Bob Cummings at some point says about Tomorrowland and we take you all the way to the future of

1986 Tomorrowland is a future where one of the hosts of the special is the president isn't that weird yes it's very weird i i have to think too they went 1986 because 1985 that would be 30 years in the future. But that's too close to 1984. So, yeah, 1986, whatever. 1986 will never come. That'll never happen. So, yeah, we're safe.

So far away. Safe to say Reagan did not usher in that Tomorrowland. No. I, though, I mean, I maintain that the perfect Tomorrowland is and always was 1986. They got it right the first time. Tomorrowland peaked in 86. With the current troubles of Disneyland, I don't think it's going to get better anytime soon. So it just always should have been 1986 land and never changed.

Can I transition since we mentioned the Tomorrowland? I have two big things about Tomorrowland. One is kind of the obvious one. There's a Walt blooper in the broadcast where he is introducing the land of Tomorrowland. And he starts his introduction. He nails it. But the camera is like a hair late on him. So the camera guy is going like, start over, start over.

And Walt, kind of annoyed, hits it again to restart his introduction. Yeah. And that is live. This is a live broadcast. So that blooper is in there you'll see art link letter stumble on his words a few times pretty much keep it together but like art probably a little annoyed by being caught on camera having to redo like and he's a pro he nails the words he's trying to say i think that that might have been a chain reaction spurred by cutting to bob cummings making out with the random dancer him getting caught because he he recovers

and go like okay well whoops we're having fun here hey we're gonna kick it over to ronnie reagan and i think that's when he says the name weird and then it i think it cuts to the wrong thing i think that legitimately caused a chain reaction that led to this walt fuck up yeah because there's a weird that cuts away from tomorrowland for a color guard like ceremony and then it cuts back to tomorrowland and this is what i had this is what i was alluding to earlier uh one of the few seemingly filmed in advance things i think it's filmed in advance i could be wrong but we meet dr heinz haber yes haber and he tells us about nuclear energy and uh tomorrowland again the ride wasn't working on opening day so but there are some science exhibits, and Disney was doing a lot for NASA.

Disney was doing a lot of informational things. So who is Dr. Heinz Haber? Well, he would go on to become the chief scientific consultant for Walt Disney Productions. But a few years before that, Dr. Heinz Haber was fighting with the German Luftwaffe during World War II. Oh, no. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. And was a scientist and was one of the, I thought, hmm, German scientist, 1950s. Let me Google a certain phrase. Go ahead. me google a certain phrase go ahead yes indeed dr heinz haber was one of the scientists gotten out of europe as part of operation paperclip the uh american intelligence program to poach scientists for our purposes and for the budding nasa program to get them out of europe so the soviet union could not get them you might also recognize dr heinz haber's friend in some other disney specials uh dr verner von braun i actually don't know if he was a doctor he probably was he was a rocket scientist he made the helped make the v2

rockets that were used against the allies in World War II gotten out of Europe and helped start NASA. What helped propel NASA forward? A series of Walt Disney Productions documentaries about space and the atomic age. So just a few short years before this, a lot of the American personalities were fighting with the allies and some of the german on camera talent were fighting with the nazis whoa wow uh yeah that the past was weird the past was weird but you saw the optimism at the introduction of the special because there's a very like optimistic we're all one the american way of life which is they make sure to note is god-loving and god-fearing yes they

mention world peace we're concerned about world peace we're concerned about brotherhood so everyone was just kind of cool of making television specials with former Nazis back then. That's just that's how we got to the moon. That's how we got to the space. So Nazi scientists, guys on camera cheating on their wives because they're so hopped up on monkey gonads and meth. Future. Disneyland was born. Disneyland was born this way. Everyone's imagining, of course, it's just wholesome.

Because everyone's myth-making about Disneyland and the company and Walt is all, everything's wholesome and pure. Everything's wholesome. Wow. Wow. I, jeez. Wild. Chaos Disneyland.

It's, I don't know. Do we miss this? do we pine for this when it was just well i mean i think we haven't even we've barely touched on i think the most chaos disneyland is the full frontier land sequence oh sure yes okay yeah and i think we all want to talk about that um well you probably more than me i certainly have some quotes picked out but if you want to take us through it well i mean this starts they kind of go land by land in the special but uh my favorite part of this is just when they transition into the frontierland segment and they cut to art link letter holding a gun and then he turns to a kid he turns to all these kids this is clearly kind of loosely scripted

because he's like what do you want kids and all the all the kids are like we want davey crockett and he goes all right i'm gonna give you this gun robert and he hands the kid the gun the kid fires the gun in the air and that causes d Davy Crockett and friends to ride in on horses. And they talk about some trouble they had with Native Americans, and Davy Crockett's idiot friend got his gunpowder wet. But still, they reached for old Betsy. Okay, so imagine Regis, a kid goes, I want to see Timon and Pumbaa. And Regis goes, I got a gun here for you.

Here's the gun. Fire it into the air. And then Timon and Pumbaa will come. Fire another round. They didn't hear you. Get your whole, empty your clip. And when they're done dancing, I'm going to take their gonads. Regis needs energy regis did you think regis had was always on meth during his career or did he have that natural energy maybe he was the first so people were like they're like somewhere backstage

so he's like so so what kind of gonads do you use uh is it a hog or a uh gorilla what do you uh actually no no gonads what it's a miracle how could somebody have this much energy without the help of gonads boy you'll work forever kid would you say your name again was regis regis regis fest get out there fest parker They called you five minutes ago Oh shit Suck it on wine So Fess So Davy Crockett comes out At this point

Right he like immediately Who's with him again I'm forgetting already Is it Buddy Edson Was that his partner On the show I forget the character names It's like comic relief character And then Jason, was that his partner on the show? I forget the character names. It's like comic relief character. And then, basically, Jason, maybe you know this more specifically than I do.

I'm just recapping from memory. But he basically tells a lighthearted story about how he just killed some Native Americans. Yeah. With some words that we don't like that are still the names of certain football teams. Yes. Yeah. Yes. some words that we don't like that are still the names of certain football teams yes yeah yes uh which i i guess i guess because of the show everybody was just like we know who's good and bad in this situation yay uh i don't think there was much nuance to the character at this time yeah probably not kind of not i think it still took a few years for like spaghetti western sort of like you know a little more thoughtful westerns there was very briefly i

told like just telling jane about like in ithaca had the has the full sterling archives he did do a one season western that was like twilight zone kind of social commentary in a western setting really and america uh they did not want to think we want our myth we want her fake stuff they they want the myth cowboys and indians were that was the avengers that was like the most popular entertainment of this time period right even though i mean it was about like the the distance we are in time from the disneyland special is the distance the disneyland people were from uh the wild west kind of give or take absolutely yeah weird yeah that's true yeah it's so yeah so i mean they're they're pining for 55 years earlier on main street.

Of course, they're going to be romanticizing like 60, 70, 80 years earlier in the, in the American West. Right. Which then the ballad of Davy Crockett was the biggest song. That was,

that was the song of the summer back in 55. That was, that was get lucky at this time the liso of it sarah and i like that i was just like are there offensive lyrics and that's yes all right verse two almost immediately they're like boy crazy um i what was there anything else weird about that that dance or do they just kind of sing it and i mean it is a song about a gun as you said so then they sing a song and a dan have a dance number about the gun that he just talked about uh killing uh native americans but it it

heightens so much like they're first off it's very clumsily set up. Then dancers come out and, and dance around frontier land. Then it kind of cuts around the corner, transition around the quarter. The Disneyland jazz band comes out and then they, yeah, then they introduce Aunt Jemima who comes out and dances.

So from a child, a child firing a gun starts a chain of events for a massive music number where there's probably people scream like not screaming but whisper screaming like get out of the way get out get move move those guests we need that the dancer's got to come that jazz man's got to come like it's just a lot going on wow wow yeah it's it's insane um and it is i correct me if i'm wrong the most ambitious thing they did in this special seemingly seemingly we're gonna make like disney's been they've been prepping and remastering the they're gonna do the like you know the ultimate anniversary re-release on disney plus of of dateline disneyland the

opening day special and someone will listen to this podcast and go oh wait right none of it is viewable anymore none of yes we're gonna release the special was five minutes long and we're gonna show it to you on disney plus now for we i guess that's just the way they did things back then special Specials were five minutes. So here it is unedited. There's so many disclaimers like may contain

cigarette usage, outdated racial depictions, a man who shot down your great uncle, off-screen meth use, on-screen meth use. On-screen wife cheating. I mean, there is funnier, more wholesome.

Like, I sent you guys some picture. There's pictures of the golden horseshoe. There's children being handed what looks like very heavy mugs of root beer. And in the lower portion of the frame, there is very clearly an ashtray. Because there's just ashtrays everywhere no gum please smoke i mean jason can you you can you imagine you as an old-timey boy having a big mug of root beer in the golden horseshoe opening day doesn't that look nice i seemingly possibly possibly glass mugs maybe plastic they look They look like glass to me. There's Tomorrowland.

Tomorrowland, which with the ride not working, is literally just the world of tomorrow, is chairs outdoor in the shade and a worldwide clock. Yeah. Cool. A couple exhibits, but mostly chairs in the shade. There's one part of the special that they can show. In fact, it'll be just this.

This part is perfectly wholesome. And you talk about pining for, you know, a time that feels very far away now, but wasn't at the time. Art Linkletter is talking about turn of the century, Missouri, as portrayed in Main Street. And this one phrase is, boy, I couldn't relate to this. I guess I don't understand what life was like in the 1890s or whatever, because what the hell does this mean? So there's a, it's like a Wurlitzer store, like a place where you could buy instruments, another one of these bizarre, could you just buy a full organ at Disneyland? Yeah. But I don't know if that's just for show or if they had instruments,

but Art is kind of recalling the era. And he says, if you were courting a gal, that's where you'd buy your mandolin or your banjo and start tuning it up for the Sunday canoe ride. Oh, you kid. 23 skidoo. It's Sunday canoe ride so the uh to use you know slang of the 2020s is that a thing the is so like in that it's codified enough that we all know the sun it's not a sunday canoe ride it's the sunday canoe ride as if this is a thing you do every sunday or that was just court

it you would court that's how you court it this was the the car the the previous this was uh tinder of its era you would go on a canoe ride and if you were if the canoe flipped if you were pushed out of it that's a no and the courting was not not successful. But if your song is sweet enough, Oh, my little gal, Enjoy you make my heart go 23's a good do, then perhaps you get a second date. And then you'll get lucky

as the song from 50 years, 100 years later. That's what will be recalled in a hundred years get lucky to each other get lucky with a kiss on holiday hill that's what i mean by parents parents were so overbearing at the turn of the century uh young people had to paddle to the middle of the lake to do hand stuff in a canoe you had to get you got to get a mandolin as a smoke screen and like oh we're just gonna play the mandolin in a canoe honey where are you going today i'm gonna play a mandolin in a canoe oh okay all right have fun sounds quite awesome i'm not concerned in the least the mandolin i bought on main street but then but you would maybe have to

contend with a jealous father scuba diving waiting in the middle of the lake and popping up with the gun with betsy with that fire in a hole in it you better get swimming, boy. Betsy the Disneyland gun. Not with my daughter. But then if he said, will you marry me? If he made it right and proposed marriage while the canoe was sinking, then that was okay. He would help patch the canoe and steer them to shore so they could start having children. Immediately. Get to it. how old are you guys 14 and 13 sounds good that gives you plenty of time to have like 11 kids oh the past yep yep here's here's another uh past thing as alluded to at the beginning walt gives the speech, which is very famous.

The plaque is on the flagpole at Disneyland. And as part of the ceremony, he is surrounded by leaders from the three major faiths. Catholicism, Judaism, and Protestantism. All three. All three of them Got it Check Check

Check As far as I know It's only three And there they are What else I'm in kind of A grab bag mode At this point

I mean So much fun I Art Art Well the Autopia Art goes You know

On the Autopia Women drivers Are given a little special space on the highway. Really? Which I think is a joke. That's in there? It's in there. And he says it, though, in such a straight way as if to say like, oh, you know, like in real life, how women need more space. He says it almost to the point where it's just fact and not a joke.

So I really don't even know what he's talking about. What? Yeah, no idea. The Autopia, which was chaos, obviously. Sammy hit and Frank. There was no guide rail at that time. A lot of the Autopia cars were involved in the opening day parade, and they all conked out.

They were running for 15 minutes and then like out all gone because it was so hot so bob gerr had to run around and hand start each and every one of them before the live parade that 90 million people are watching uh california governor goodwin knight speaks who is a buddy of Richard Nixon, who was Republican governor of California. How soon after this was Reagan the governor of California? How long did he have Goodwin Knight's job? Reagan governor.

67? Jesus, he was governor 12 years later. Oh, my God. The number of the Trump. Yeah. Goodwin really leans into like god-fearing nation we're a god-fearing nation uh all these figures of authority to talk the same way the like minister the governor there was just like if you were a community figure there was just one way to talk yeah yeah yeah there was one that rings in my head a lot the way is it's used in a lot of clips is uh the

ronald raggett saying all activity on main street as he's and now i just said that's like i you could wake me up in the middle of the night and say what did robert raggett say in the special and say all activity on main street as haste just firmly lodged in my head as is another quote here's a not everybody talked the same way because we haven't talked about i mean god knows i've given plenty of time on the show to this but let's acknowledge it uh my favorite thing in the world my favorite moment in disney special history happens in this very special which is that all of the children are lined up outside the castle and then a knight pulls up who i wonder is it supposed to be that that is the knight's voice doing this um like is it coming from him i'm not sure but this is the opening of fantasy land

my my very favorite thing which i feel like now i'm gonna fuck up if i don't uh open the fantasy land castle in the name of the children of the world perhaps blowing out the mic i can't not do it it makes me so happy to hear it's the greatest thing um that's the highlight yeah i did now i've i've since we mentioned that on the show i've become very fond of it and i've you know you know, I shout it in many occasions. I said it when I went into Tokyo Disney the first time, when Galaxy's Edge opened the first time. Um, I,

I shouted it as my son was arriving. Open the birth canal. For the, in the name of the children of me. Very, very touching moment. Every every all the doc. They had a tear in their eye, I assume. I got a round of applause from the doctors.

They didn't know what you were talking about, but they loved it. They loved it. And then Aaron kicked me in the face. Mid childbirth. Yes. Mid child face mid childbirth was so annoyed bleeding from the nose bleeding through a mask yes you're right I did have to do it through a mask what happened is this from the baby

no you got kicked well when Disneyland reopens I think we know who should be first in line. Yes. To do it. They not only this, they should hire me. It's the only way to get the spirit back. They should hire you. Except I don't want to be there.

Jesus. No, no, no. You have to be there. First in line. Well, I'm going to be nervous to be there, and I'm going to be nervous about my health, and there's only one workaround to that. I need to make my own concoction of meth and monkey gonads. And sheep sperm.

Sheep sperm. Don't forget. Don't forget the sheep and the vitamins. And the vitamins. The last little dusting that makes it special. Anyway, after that happens, then not to overlook the rest of the opening of Fantasyland, which is Bedlam.

It's madness. Just like all these children just sprint into the castle with all of these bizarre, grotesotesque rudimentary characters just waving them in just furiously go go go go go kids just running all over the drawbridge and then just like you know like straight into the line the peter pan line they all just like pile up they're like hitting each other's backs they're so desperate to get into the thing uh they all the kids jump on to the teacups with again another bizarre character the the the the what the march hair that the house of wonderland hair is so frightening it's very donnie darko-esque this this rabbit that appears to you in your dreams

is waving children on who just like pile in haphazard nobody's letting them in carefully nobody's opening the door closing closing the door for them. And then like the rabbits are just spinning the teacups. The ride starts and there's still a technician out there. He's like helping buckle in one of the kids and then it goes and he kind of jumps. Jesus. They, to 90 million, to an audience of 90 million people presented the most chaotic ride safety

scenario there was yeah there was i mean it was still probably safer than those trash carousels you'd find in a griffith park probably much safer still things with their disgusting benches yeah that disney just has a million facsimiles of it's like oh it's walt's bench it's like all right man yeah yep this thing could collapse at any minute it just like the wood just tears my leg open now i need now i need shots okay sure scott the fantasyland segment is bombastic but what about the like full two minutes where they cut to ronnie reagan talking to jack rather and his wife and they seemingly just plug the coming disneyland hotel and then just have small talk for a while thank god i must

stop paying attention if you can imagine that i i jack rather of course owned the disneyland hotel ran it for many years uh because walt the story is that walt ran out of money to build a hotel so he asked his friend to rad hotels jack uh rather uh in the 50s was producing television shows and then just like in that weird sort of boardroom so it's like oh you're gonna produce television shows you should just have a bunch of hotels too oh sounds good i'll do that like this weird this weird thing where he just has a bunch of hotels uh and and they just talk about what the disneyland hotel is going to be and he's like oh you should bring nancy and the kids like oh we'll do that when are you opening oh september oh we'll have more stuff in january

oh we'll be there in september it's just like a cocktail party conversation that they're broadcasting to millions of people it's not interesting it's the original uh jimmy fallon and lin-manuel miranda just shooting the shit no friends in real life the friends in real life whoa oh my god jack rather and ron and Ronnie Reagan have the most epic bromance. Oh my God. This is an incredible 90 minutes that took longer than 90 to go over. I think I, for many years, have been overlooking what a delightful thing this is to watch, which is on YouTube, by the way.

And I imagine some of you listening are going to want to check it out after this you get so much it is it is more jam-packed than any disney special could ever be yeah it is i again i yes i've seen clips but when you really sit and watch it there are we probably only hit like a quarter of how funny it is it is so fun it's something that yeah yeah i mean i mean the way the bob cummings getting caught plays out is so funny all that mixed with here's one more thing i forgot about which is just that this is by no fault of their own but when you know that it starts with it's a it's a black and white newsroom they cut to and it's a flurry and people his phones ringing and loud typewriters and people are handing papers off and this kind of like a

stressed out guy in a white shirt and we take you now to disneyland where the immortal mickey mouse will be opening his dream park and it's so severe and just like with the people running all around i'm sure this is what all news broadcasts were like at the time. But just viewing it now in the 2020s, you're like, well, it feels exactly like the Kennedy assassination. It's just like the same vibe. It's like it's alarming that what you get after this then is just nice dance numbers because you expect to be told. And it is official. Mickey Mouse dead today.

Donald Duck being sworn in. Wipes the deer, gets his composure back. And then what would it sound like when he gets sworn in? I solemnly duties jesus christ how can this be this bad oh we do voices on the show sometimes people are like hey that impression was kind of good donald duck just we did all three of us just shit the bed still eluding us um i but i had i could have improved that was weeks ago whenever that happened and uh i have yeah i wanted to improve but i have not yeah um so yeah well well we all need to look within and better ourselves um, well, our, our impressions are the audio equivalence of that original Donald

Duck costume. Yeah, that's a good point. Just as odd and shitty. Yes. Yeah. Um, well, have, have we missed anything? I mean, this was a great day day 65 years ago. A day to honor.

A day that the only way a July 17th could have been more chaotic is if they opened the park mid-pandemic. So 1955's title will remain as the most chaotic July 17th there ever was. I mean, again, as far as my notes, yes, we're done. But again, if you really got some time, watch this special and I'm sure you will find a hundred things we didn't even talk about. Yeah. And look up the Life. There's a lot of good slide

shows. The Life magazine photos are really something. We'll post some of them on Twitter. But really something to see. I of them on twitter but uh really something to see i am i am wiped out from my blood sugar feels like it's at a very low low level i do need some sort of medicine or something a little magic cocktail from a guy they call dr feel good Dr. Feelgood. Yeah. Well, can you procure these things? I guess just Google sheep sperm.

Well, I mean, we know how you can get sheep sperm. It's not that complicated. It's just a matter of if you want to do it. And if a farmer will let you. Yeah. The monkey gonads, you might have to know a guy yeah um wouldn't recommend no we'll start making calls as as for now you survived podcast the ride an episode that made a bum out of barnum um and for more uh barnum bum worthy content you can check out our Twitter our Instagram and

Facebook and the second gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride where we just did a very fun episode this week you know as us being a theme park podcast you obviously all were waiting for our episode about the villain of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie

Ivan Ooze sorry we got to it so late us the theme park podcast but uh yeah go check it out um and uh what else what's what's the what's the sign off way to uh what's something from this special to that's a good question let's see here we could all right Scott I'm gonna hand you this gun

so take it back when I fire the gun that will signal the end of the episode and the start of all our listeners being uh unnerved being mad at us all right goodbye everybody enjoy bye forever dog this has been a forever dog production executive produced by mike carlson jason sheridan Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com

and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.