Podcast: The Ride - Disney's America

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

We "celebrate" Forth of July by looking a Disney's America. A park celebrating America they wanted to build in Virginia by the Manassas Battlefield. Epcot's Splashtacular episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever Dog. Warning, the following podcast contains barn buffets, smokestack admiration, fun war shows, and most importantly, bad ideas. It's the Never Built Disney's America theme park on today's podcast, The Ride. Welcome to Podcast The Ride, the theme park podcast that dares to record meaningless, artificial pablum just five miles away from sacred cultural grounds. And by that, I mean Jay Leno's Garage. I'm Scott Gardner. I'm Jason Sheridan.

Hi. And Mike Carlson. Hello. I'm here, yes. Jay Leno's Garage, to me, is church. And would it surprise you to know that just 24 hours ago, I was explaining everything I know about Jay Leno to Zach Reno. It's not without a microphone present.

Not even with our audience having to. No audience. Big Dog Garage included. The obsession with cars. All the Mavis stuff. microphone present not even with our audience having to no audience big dog garage included the obsession with cars the all the mavis stuff we know that it's public you didn't know any of it none of it no he doesn't know a lot as he had a different childhood uh zacharino is a friend of the show saying the city walk he is now well he saved him he saved his status by being interested in all this oh he wasn't Oh, he wasn't interested. He turned you away. Wasn't interested.

Uh-oh, uh-oh. I don't know what to think now. But it sounds like he sat patiently and listened to you, which is all we ask of anyone, including our listeners. Yeah, he sat patiently because you were in a garage in a stacked parking spot and he had to wait for you to finish so you would back out because you were blocking his car. And I'm done. Okay.

See ya. So, yeah. No, I just explained that. I said the phrase or I said the sentence, I need to get to Jay Leno's garage within like 24 hours ago. I said that. So you're right. It is a holy experience.

Well, some of my Funny or Die friends, our friend Andrew Grissom, Ryan Perez have been there. We'll figure it out. We'll find out. Have we said this on air that that's our desire is to get to Jay? Oh, well, I said it yesterday, 24 hours ago. I said we need to get to Jay. And I don't know if we've put it out there.

I think we have. I feel like we have. I'm not even asking the audience to do anything because I think it's a matter of just finding the right number. I think we have to find a phone number to his home. Just leave a quick message. When we were writing Moonbeam City, my friend Tommy Blacha just got the desire, just didn't even announce what he was doing. He just picked up a phone, dialed the number for Big Dog Productions, which maybe we'd been been looking up and he just didn't even say the plan just there was a phone there bang bang bang a nice woman picked up and uh calling for jay and she absolutely would have put us through if he'd been there like there was not

even a suspicious who is this right just like i think it was like oh he's i think he's out driving and we went oh it sounds like jay All right, I'll call back later. We need. Yeah, show no fear. Act like you've been there before. Act like you belong there. Oh, yeah. You can use any hotel lobby or hotel amenities if you're casual about it.

Absolutely. That is a great thing about hotels in general. You can mill around. Public, private spaces so there's some wiggle room a lot of people coming through as opposed to people calling big dog productions which is maybe not that often so i think it wasn't that uh yeah uh but jay i've i've seen him on all these podcasts he does every podcast now he doesn't look like he's happy to be there necessarily but that's fine he doesn't have to be happy to talk to us has he not if he did dough boys it'd probably just be like you like

yeah i don't really like food you know i don't really like eating well i gotta find other stuff to talk about i hate to correct you on this because i just watched a full howie mandel interview with jay leno yikes where howie mandel and his daughter talked to jay and jay explains that what he likes to eat is pizza, hot dogs, and hamburgers. Oh, okay. So actually a perfect guess. I don't want the Doughboys to scoop us,

but I would be happy. Yeah, we'd all be happy. Yeah, yeah, I know. We'd be begrudging. Just like, yeah, no, I'm happy for them. I'm really happy for them. No, they got Jay and yeah. Hey, look, they're the guys.

They did it. They're the guys, you know. And then you just turn around and you kick the wall silently like silently oh god damn it tall boys oh you should be better dreams of your life you bottle it all up and nothing but nightmares be better and i'm slapping myself if you can hear it be better as podcasters um so so do it to ourselves yeah he pizza hot dog hamburgers he does not eat vegetables that's what i was yeah he has odd habits i know and he doesn't drink coffee yeah

okay we have to put a stop to this asa i i knew i was getting myself in the trouble with a big problem when you bring it up what i was saying was that it's and it's actually true we are the distance from jay leno's garage is going to help people find us, but in what direction? That I can't say. We are the same distance away from where Jay Leno keeps all his cars as a Civil War battlefield was to today's

topic, which is Disney's America. We are celebrating a very happy 4th of July weekend by talking... Yeah! Aren't you? Absolutely! We are celebrating a very happy 4th of July weekend. Oh? Yeah, aren't you? Absolutely. No, I think we're all...

Everything's going great. We're feeling great. We're optimistic. This episode was recorded in April 2022. It's fitting we're talking about a canceled Disney project. Right as, you know, Disney's america right as america america is wrapping it up coming to a coming to a stop um yep yeah uh they they got through their uh their process happened a little a little faster this was a a project that was announced, planned quietly, announced, and then taken back very quickly.

And I feel like this is a big one. This is like a big part of lore that we've never talked about. I feel like it hasn't even come up in little ways on the show so much. Yeah, here and there, but nothing major. Yeah. Yeah. Haven't tackled the whole thing. And probably also one of the biggest unbuilt projects, you'd have to think.

Yeah. A completely separate part in a place that does not have a Disney presence. Yes. As opposed to Westcott. Right. Or like some idea of a Disney World park that wasn't done. Yeah. This was their idea to enter into a whole market that they clearly have

not entered into that being near washington dc in virginia and uh if you live around there have been there you've noticed there is no disney park there it really is it boggles the mind like if this would have been built and had been a success like would they have just started building parks five miles from other historical sites around the world around the america like there's a lot of places where uh horrible things have happened that's right and maybe the land is less desired and it is just uh fields and i suppose like hmm i'm trying to think how often i believe the Alamo is just kind of right next to a TGI Fridays. I remember being shocked when I went there. Like, oh, it's here?

I thought it was down in the middle of a field somewhere, but it's kind of right near bullshit is what I recall. But usually, yeah, they're out in the boonies, these sites of terrible things. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, who knows what would have happened if Disney had this had been a success but little parks everywhere uh i i my dad mentioned this a while ago and i asked him about it over the weekend because i knew we were recording and

he said yeah your mother and i were really uh looking forward to this park uh and i was like oh because it would have been two hours away, two hour away drive. And he's like, well, that, and we had joined the vacation club by this point. And, you know, we also, you know, we liked going, you know, to the museums and stuff in DC, but almost more importantly, you could just do it. He's like, if you're going down to Virginia, you just do a loop. You hit a bush garden, you hit a King's Dominion,

and then you could have this. And I'm like, oh, this is where it comes from. This is where I got it. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Absolutely. Proximity.

Proximity. It could have been a way worse idea. And he would still have been like, well, that being said, we can hit all the parks. I'm sure there was just like a 500 word piece in the region section no he wasn't section in the philadelphia inquire or something reading the detailed descriptions of the leaked pamphlets and things that we presumably have gone into yeah yeah no there's there's a lot of odds and ends out there and a lot to to parse through um including i know we were all checking out the executive summary of rezoning application am i right folks which i learned is essentially just the brochure uh reformatted to be 28 8 a

half by 11 pages uh with like two paragraphs on each page because executives are not the brightest don't like to do a lot of reading yeah you read the what's the name of it again this is uh the executive summary of rezoning application when i was just searching for disney's america documents and it's kind of the same concept art that's everywhere else there's just a little more detail about the uh uh economic benefits and the environmental impact gotcha okay but it is like 20 20 pages with maybe a few paragraphs on each page most of it big pictures and the description of like you know ebbets field recreated right okay so a lot of dry copy which we'll be reading in full to you, the listener.

This is, let me, I'm going to say a strong phrase that I think is a phrase, like, I was like, I recall people saying this, and if I Google it, are there results about this? And this is not necessarily an accurate phrase of what this park was, but it certainly went around, and that is the idea that Disney was going to build a civil war theme park right yes definitely was said it got boiled down to that like that was the broad strokes if you weren't paying a lot of attention to it yeah not really accurate but a little that would have been kind of part of it certainly not the only part of it. Not the whole part, just the nighttime spectacular. Just, yes, their Fantasmic was battleship, real battleships, was a real battle.

The Merrimack, the monitor. That is one of the most insane. That is one of the weirdest things. There's so much. Of all the weird things. First off, let's talk about the elephant in the room. This is probably the the weirdest things. There's so much. Of all the weird things. First off, let's talk about the elephant in the room. This is probably the darkest source material.

American history, the darkest source material for a Disney attraction. Darker than Snow White, where a girl is poisoned? The ride was too scary. Oh, have you ever been to Latin American country trying to have a democratic election? You know, no fear. The thing is, though, for guys like Eisner and, of course, Walt, American history was such a fun, vibrant story that was less dark than the history of the x-men or something like yeah yeah

it was just all yeah triumphs and there was some sadness but ultimately old guys out on the frontier yeah so so ultimately you know these guys were like yeah this is the best source of material ever this would be amazing they pulled a lot from i mean americana in history was always a part of disney's tv yes of course movies and the parks because there of course was american adventure in all the presidents by then and and i almost feel like if we like if this idea probably made more sense to us kids who had been to the parks and stopped to appreciate the oh yes well they tell the tale yes a burgeoning nation and but if you didn't know that they had done anything in this regard at all you probably just went huh what are you talking about like

and they're going to get that so wrong like unbelievably wrong yeah and they probably would have but then some of the trouble seems to have come from going too overboard and saying you know it's going to be warts and all we're going to show all the warts and then you go why do i want to go on a vacation and see all the warts go on rides about warts yeah it gets tricky because it's like you know there's probably room for the more fantastical version of american history if the most of the population understands most more of it understands more of what actually happened yeah i mean i think you hit the nail on the head mike because i i was using the phrase americana in my notes too because it's dead on for americana like it's dead on for the uh high school history book version the kind of rose color rose tinted lenses version you know of of stuff that you often see at museums

or um battlefields or national parks that that sort of thing yeah the rah-rah superhero version of yeah american history we aren't gonna we aren't gonna start talking about howard zinn are we that kind of episode we're doing i truthfully only ever got a few chapters in in college and i did not finish no but no i look i wouldn't we're not talking about books we're too dumb to read books on this podcast for jason who reads a couple book who reads sometimes usually their lord's it over us usually their paperback books are mystery novels and he's reading them at a pool finish a greg rucka thriller an hour before i got here but yeah all that to say that's somehow better than describing everything you know about jay leno to your semi-listening friend i don't know. The listener can be the judge of that. But yes, all that

to say, you enter in a weird thing where it's like, you either do the fun version is what like people on vacation want to do, but then you run into the problem of like, you're really making this look in a way that people like, you're not making this realistic. You're not showing anybody. So if you do that, then

it sucks because there's a horrible tragedy and sadness and monstrosities committed in the history of America. So like, how do you how do you make that work? You can't make that work. And it especially doesn't work when we really learn the soft version of all this stuff in school. So it's like it's impossible. It's like an impossible equation to make the complete correct formula. I think so and i think they only started to get worse at figuring it out as they went but i think this is the you know the history

of this has gone over a lot and we'll we'll certainly go into it but what i would like to bring to the table and just to you know what we what we can do, I think, especially about Disney's America is really think about, would we have liked anything here? Would anything, would any aspect have worked? Because I think we'll try to piece what we can from concept art and from what the brochures said. And we do have to remember this is Imagineers on fire in the mid 90s we're getting checks from eisner

sure and it seems possible that there'd be a thing or two there's absolutely something we would like yeah yeah i'm not i'm not uh yeah i'm as far as thrills and chills and imagineering when you see some of these pictures you go well this looks like it would have been a fantastic ride yes and some of them it would have been a fantastic ride without the context and then some of them i think the context was fine i think it's like oh yeah that seems like it would have been in epcot or that would have been somewhere else and sure yeah if it was yeah if it wasn't look these like patriotic attractions in previous parks like epcot got to come out without being scrutinized by a bunch of historians and people

mad and newspapers and stuff and as soon as you run anything through that lens it's it all seems sort of awful and also if I could add like in an alternate dimension where this got built you know we'd all have been there we all would have your dad was already making the plans well we live this other version where we've all oddly been to uh this air this part of virginia to prince andrew county is that it uh uh we where we've been there a ton and uh that's like a big part of our life well every once in a while we got to go to virginia right yeah industrial revolution they oh man i think about in our lifetime how many moments in in uh our past the recent past in in history uh history sense how annoying this place would have been after the 2000 election in the uh aftermath of 9-11 in the patriotism uh flourish the iraq war any presidential election and nowadays it would just be a war zone oh my god just picture the the beet red

like used car lot guys just going like keep all the parks closed but you gotta open to america like in the middle of covid do we come on there would have been a there would have been a break-in and an attempted coup for the closed park if it had remained closed during covid oh yeah in the same way that might have happened there a shaman who broke into the disney's america and sat in the industrial revolution car waiting for it to go. Go, make it go, make it go. That's a quick thing I don't want to forget about. The closure, this park,

they were estimating it would have been closed two months of the year and then they bumped that up to four months of the year. Well, that's the final blow, I feel, is like, well, yeah, that it's just not feasible,

ultimately, weather-wise. And they got it wrong the first time they looked at it yeah um i also just want to say this is not this park is not in prince andrew county this is in prince william county i very unfairly somebody's got uh named this area of the country after i don't even think about it disgraced uh we are recording this on the day of galane's sentencing yeah that's what you got on the brain that phrase was bouncing her up but let me not disparage this place as being prince andrew county haymarket haymarket virginia adjacent to the manassas battlefield the site of the first and second battles of Bull Run. Yeah. The first major battle of the Civil War, seemingly.

So they ended up there. Well, so, okay, why does this happen at all? We set our scene in a post-Euro Disney world. Eisner is still enthusiastic about expanding the theme park empire, but wants to figure out how to do it cheaper. We cannot keep making increasingly more and more expensive and fancy Magic Kingdoms.

We have to find a way, and in an effort that eventually turns into, I don't know, it's like a club where kids go. It eventually gets whittled down to that. But at this point in time, it's like, is there a way to do kind of a halfway? A place that's nice, but let's be reasonable here. Iser's like, what if the Disney store sold you a grilled cheese sandwich? What if you could buy paintings near a Disney store?

Yeah. What if you could learn about timeshares near a Disney store? The Disney decade starts up here and then gets to the timeshares? I don't know. Also like America. Disney, really, the rise and fall of Eisner's Empire. It's going to be very similar, yeah. So, he's trying to figure out what are different types of regional experiences that we can do in different types of markets that we can cut into and i think somebody in the operation encourages

him to go check out colonial williamsburg have you guys been to colonial williamsburg hell yeah brother no i have not oh multiple times you're saying i i would have been in this as a kid or even now um i have been to the Betsy Ross's house multiple times. I've been to Ben Franklin's house multiple times. I think four times to the Gettysburg Battlefield, the Valley Forge Battlefield. Wow, look at this. Plymouth Plantation. It's just in the air.

It's just, if you grew up in the Northeast, it's, you know, a long weekend trip or it's a day trip or it's it's just in the air it's just if you grow up in the northeast it's you know a long weekend trip or it's a day trip or it's your field trips sure yeah uh so uh yes uh plymouth uh williamsburg was usually lumped in it's very close to bush gardens and it's a little farther from king's dominion but still you do that with the family that room of stuff yeah yeah and as a kid what was your were you into it did you think this is the boring stuff i want to go back to disney i mean i was a pretty nerdy kid i was pretty bookish kid and i liked the historical stuff i did like it but i knew it wasn't push gardens and i knew it wasn't disney world and i was like oh this isn't i like this but it's not Disney World and it's not that my Hanna-Barbera

friends aren't here like they were a few days ago so if you combined Williamsburg into some rides I mean you are the exact target audience age wise demeanor interests wise you're the target audience

for Disney's America so part of colonial williamsburg not just that it's this preserved historical town and it's got the little activities and here's what life was like back then but also you can stay there that was a trip i did as a kid like you can stay in little cottages and like in a in a colonial house so eisner starts thinking how do we do this exactly near them and undercut them? You know, the mini premise of California Adventure, which is like, what if we have all the things California has, but we have it? Maybe people don't do the other thing.

Not realizing you can't replace the ocean or Hollywood in general. Yeah. ocean or hollywood in general yeah um so uh they start looking into that but weather is the first thing they ironically weather is the first thing this isn't going to work and it wasn't near enough to an airport that's a big thing for them so they look at a lot of sites they land at in the washington dc area and because that's a big hub and is the fifth biggest tourist market at the time, right behind Vegas, and it was kind of underserved in a theme park fashion. So, makes sense.

They go to Haymarket, Virginia, a town that was entirely set on fire by the Union Army in 1862. It was bugging me why I knew that term. The Haymarket, yeah, right. The Haymarket Fire, I guess, was in your head. The Haymarket Fire, yeah, because it should be noted

the Union Army lost both battles of Bull Run. Yeah, well, as they, well, yeah, I'll say that later, but yes, yeah, there's a lot of things represented where the right side did not win. Yeah. Well well and to that okay so the big thing in the area the manassas battlefield battle bull run happens here this is the place where tom these uh general thomas jackson became stonewall that name happened

because they held firm and it was a place where 868 soldiers died sure horrible blood bath sure place but disney doesn't build there let's underline that very strongly okay he is not building on top of the battlefield yeah this will come up uh many times they instead choose a site that oddly is owned by exxon exxon is part of this i don't know why they bought a bunch of land there i don't know why nobody was mad that they bought a bunch of land there and then was mad at disney instead but uh so so they did they buy up all the land secretly repeating the disney world's formula the the sure to succeed again now formula of not being transparent yeah about the biggest company in the world buying up land and what it might do to the surrounding areas to get it cheaper yeah yes yeah yeah um in a in an instance of you know history doesn't always repeat itself but it does

rhyme universal's epic universe being built on land that was once owned by lockheed martin that's what that was yeah huh it's like all these companies buying houses now i mean i think just bad evil companies buy things all the time they They're just buying land. They are owning as much land. Trading them between each other. Trading them between each other. Yes, exactly. And we only like it if they build fun rides there. Otherwise, we look down on the entire thing.

But there's one thing you could do for us, and that's a ride where the monsters come out. We will hug the boot and not be mad at it. If we go, woo, like if we can go, wee, that's what we like. Then we're not mad. So they buy up this land and start the plans of a, now here's where we, I think, where we start to go awry a little bit. This is a park.

It's definitely a park, but it's also just kind of a general resort facility that'll have a couple of things. And in judging would this have been good or not, I saw that Disney spokesman described it as a six to eight hour experience. This is a red flag.

Because they tried to open MGM Studios that way, and in a way they were kind of hoping maybe you might get away Because they tried to open MGM Studios that way. And in a way, they were kind of hoping maybe you might get away with it on some of those cheapo on early California Adventure or the Disney Studios Paris Park. Like, it's fine, right? It doesn't have to be a full day. It doesn't have to be an 8 to 12 packed with 100 rides. We can get away with that, can't we?

The answer is no, they can't can't yeah it would be interesting i mean when the parks are close to the other parks that are much better that's extra bad because you have something to compare immediately compare it to but i guess i don't know if it's something if it's in a new spot oh if they're resetting what your expectations are. And if this is like this hybrid that's like a living museum or something. Perhaps. And the idea seemingly is that it would be, or at least what they suddenly started saying once they got caught and people were not immediately thrilled that they were moving in. It was like, well, you do this and then other stuff. Then you take a bus to Gettysburg. It's one of five things, and you'll still do the real history.

You'll do the stuff. Don't worry. Maybe you stay at our hotel. Maybe that's a deal we can cut. To put it in perspective, the budget allocated was $650 million, which is $1.05 billion in modern terms so this park would cost two rise of the resistances uh that is about also uh 650 million at the time that is half the budget of euro disney oh boy and i believe they alluded um in the defunct land video which everyone go check that

out there's very good defunct land about this that like disney's already starting to see the budget overrun in euro disneyland yeah yeah oh definitely yeah and i and then it becomes a counterpoint to everything that's happening that they're trying to sell you on they're trying to sell virginia on we're gonna do what we do and we're gonna do it here well what about what's happening in paris haven't you lost a billion dollars that's a whole weird a cultural chernobyl okay they started throwing eggs at us what were we gonna do uh and then they really ended up in the same i mean for eisner who this is like a kind of a one-two punch of his dreams of affecting the culture, right? And like leaving not just some frivolous park, but like something that matters, that's a part of the fabric of the society where we, he was like trying to be this kingmaker and culture effector.

Right, which I'm sure, yeah, because he was doing the intros for things on Disney TV, so he just kind of had a Walt, a little idea that he was Walt, and he's going to do the same thing. And basically what he meant is that a bunch of people would go here and leave with a plush of Donald Duck and a tricorner hat.

That's essentially what he's going to do for the world with this park. But I'm sure that is the reality, but I'm sure in his head, it was very fantastic because he wrote a book about how much he loves going to summer camp growing up. Yeah. He loved Chattaqua, the adult education place that was a big influence on like the Disney Institute being built. Yes.

His book about summer camp. Imagine how boring that Yes. His book about summer camp. Imagine. His book about summer camp. How boring that is. I'm trying to figure out if he knows. The audiobook's only four hours long, but it does say abridged, and I can't tell if he reads it.

Are you upset by the abridged? You want the full thing? I'm a completist. I like unabridged. Especially listening to audiobooks. I'm sure the things missing might be the photographs. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure the things missing might be the photographs. Don't get me wrong.

I want him to describe photographs on the book if he wouldn't mind. Yeah. Here's me in little shorts. When we swam, we had to wear little red shorts. Previous years, they made the boys swim naked. I'm not sure when the policy changed. Only the Chicago boys were comfortable with it. They were told this will make you feel at home. Strip naked. The Chicago boys did it without asking without being asked there you go the chicago boys said is this is this what you want sir they said this is the chicago way

chicago boys there they go stripping naked yet again um so here you know and we could do this in any order we want but just you know because there is all of the there's the back and forth that how this was perceived and and the fact that this they were not welcomed with open arms and a lot of people were mad and they didn't get built but what i i just want to make sure that we devote substantial time to what the hell was this going to be. Because you do have concept art. You do have some breakdowns of what it is. There's even a whole other version where it all changes a little bit.

But just because we have to judge as theme park fans, we have to judge this as a theme park or whatever the hell they were going to try to call it. Sure. have to judge this as a theme park or whatever the hell they were going to try to call it so let's let's step through these things and does this do these things sound fun to us sure um you enter through and also if anybody you know i i have the brochure in front of me if there's any particular copy or anything anyone wants to read sure um let's, we start our journey at Crossroads USA, meant to represent the 19th century. It's their main street. It's where you enter

the vivid tapestry of American history. An 1840 train trestle bridge marks the entrance to this territory and supports two antique steam trains that visitors may board

for a trip around the nine territories. That's one thing to point out. It for a trip around the nine territories. That's one thing to point out. It's not lands. It is territories. Disney's America has territories. Yes, and there's a train. There's a steam.

There's two trains. So Jason has to be like, well, at least there were two trains. Two trains. And there's steam, of course, because it's back in the old days. So it's still steam like the Disneyland train. There's steam. You're a fan of's back in the old days. So it's still steam like the Disneyland train. There's steam. You're a fan of steam. I'm a fan of steam.

I'm not really wild at how dirty everything looks in the concept art. Or just how many pictures have smokestacks in there. Like, ah, imagining America. Get some smokestacks in there, my man. That's an important point. I mean, are we seeing industry way back in the background is that is that the uh the rise of industry you're right it does seem yeah this town is not crossroads isn't a good town like any old town is not good like there's

you know well like people are like horrific things happen every day in crossroads usa in reality but you know when this art maybe is too indicative of what it would have been like by the time this you know got fully planned and built it would have been a much i think shinier presentation they would not really let this look like it might have been back then this is a disney uh the disney coat of paint that would have absolutely been here and then this and all the smoke would have just been i think steam it wouldn't have been putting smoke into the air but in putting steam and it would have looked cool more steam can't complain about that there's a burbank water and power that just pumps like it looks like steam out it looks like

the world is ending literally from the five like if you're looking at the five and i don't know what that is no maybe it's smoke maybe it's steam i don't know it looks scary as hell but i forget about it and then when i'm going coming out of flappers i see it again flappers comedy club trips to flappers when jay performs at this place called flappers right by downtown burbank we got boats uh putting around like that hotel rooms yeah so this is the colonial williamsburg idea where there's lodging here there's little there's little suites to stay at so we still at this point have not had a proper hotel in the theme park this is the first time that there are going to be scattered and this is

this is actually a little interesting in a way like grand california isn't really staying in the park it's staying on the border of the park but this would have truly been like you had there's an upstairs room above the the tricorner hat shop shop yeah and you stay there like people actually which this this gets you into that westcott territory of you're in a disney park that is closed and then what do you do that's weird and don't you have to pay admission to get in so it's so going in and out is weird like can you it would just feel weird to like go down to the walgreens and then come back and have to enter a Disney park at 2 a.m. Yeah, it's a good... I bet that there would be one turnstile or whatever you would call it now that you call it.

What do they call it now that it's not a turnstile? It's not? A touch point? A touch point? A tap point? What the fuck? A tap point? Well, turnstile is...

That indicates you're turning because you're using that like mechanism that like is used on a subway but now that it's just you tap in at disney world i'm talking about it is a okay it's a touch point it's a jason's right touch point oh man that we're gonna use that all the time we're gonna use that phrase all the time so yeah so now that it's a touch point there would be one lot touch point line open at all times that you would scan in. And it probably would start like at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. is when like the new day would begin. So I bet your ticket lasted from 7 a.m. to the next 7 a.m. Okay. This is a guess. But yes, it would be funny like going to that touch point at 4 a.m.

if you wanted to leave the park and come back. Or there might be a different exit for the hotel. You want to see Peter Pan today? Well, first you got to stop at the touch point. Hey, quick stop at the touch point. Oh, my magic band isn't scanning at the touch point. Okay. Yeah.

No, I'll be there. Yeah. Just like 3.15, meet scanning at the touch point. Okay, yeah. No, I'll be there. Yeah, just like 315, meet me at the touch point. 315 at the touch point? Yeah, yeah, 315 at the touch point. Okay, just wanted to make sure. Is there only one touch point at the front of the park, or are there touch points anywhere that you use a band, like getting on a ride?

I think any of them are considered touch points. But only Florida has touch points. We they're only touch, only Florida has touch points. We are supposed to be getting magic bands out here. Oh no, no. It's complicated enough. I don't want these fucking things. You're anti-magic band? I think I, isn't it more complicated?

You'll still be able to use your phone app. Okay. I think if you want, you'll have the choice to use your app or magic all i know i don't i don't know much about this i just know that in my periphery all right suddenly everybody's got these wristbands at disney and suddenly getting into disney world parks is a two months ahead of time oh well that's insanely complicated operation these don't go together these are uh i don't think that has anything to do with MagicBand.

MagicBand is actually, I mean, it's tracking your every movement and your heartbeat, and it knows everything about you. It knows every touchpoint. It knows your deepest fears and your deepest desires. But other than that, it's really kind of a pretty easy way to get your fast passes and then to use a touchpoint to get in the park. So I don't think that complicates it so much. It actually makes it a little simpler from having to fumble with your phone and get your fast passes and then to use a touch point to get in the park. So I don't think that complicates it so much. It actually makes it

a little simpler from having to fumble with your phone and get your fast pass out because like your fast pass is immediately just on your Magic Band and you just scan it.

Okay. I guess that doesn't sound so bad but their association with touch points makes me not a fan of them. Sure. It was the last time I was there

did at least once a day mine and my fingerprint not work, and they had to flag someone down with an iPad and go like, okay, do it on the iPad. Alright, and one more time. And let's try one more time. And then eventually it worked.

I don't want to get onto a big tear here. However, the theme park thumbprint operations. Oh, we haven't even why why it's probably a whole episode but like yeah universal a mess never does it work never and why do they need it how is this better than showing an id or just showing that i have a fucking ticket for their park that i paid for like lockheed martin owns the patent on like a thumbprint tech or a fingerprint technology they were having dinner with the president of universal

resorts they made some sort of a shady 500 million dollar deal and that's why we have to like be uh go through like police questioning or police ideeing to get into Universal now. Yeah, I don't really know the answer to it. Disneyland, just what they look at our annual pass and they see if our face looks the same. That's all they do. Seems like it works. Look, is there a Mission Impossible way of breaking that code by printing a complicated mask and putting it on?

Probably. However, I mean, that's like generally the brief look at the face does its job. You know what? It is weird. Like here, touch this point,

touch this dirty little point. It's a dirty little one. A thousand people have touched it before. Put your finger on the dirty little point and scan into universal studios um yes it is weird it's uh everyone has touched it you know everyone has touched it it's weird everyone has no choice but to put their dirty little finger in this one little area and there's not even room to move around it's so it's so stuck in this one it's like not even a big area for your uh finger to imprint well it's not in universal it's different it's uh

feeling poles you got to put your finger on the feel oh yeah right right it's not confused the brands uh uh yeah so i am not pro fingerprint but i am mostly pro magic band okay i would touch point i love the touch point you love it really makes it opens up the space when you're going into the park i feel in disney world love the touching points um so unclear how the type the touch point system would have been figured out for your stay in crossroads usa the next in my list is... Oh, here, I'll go off of their brochure. President Square, which represents 1750 to 1800. President Square, I don't know why that makes me laugh so much.

Kind of like Baker's Square. It's like Baker's Square, it just feels like the Simpsons version of it. We're going to President Square. Yeah, they kind of inadvertently with this pitch came up with the america town restaurant from the episode of the simpsons where they go to tokyo yeah it's uh it feels like the parody of it for president square even though it's not even that funny of a it's not that funny i don't know why i'm laughing um well the idea i mean a place where

like i mean it's like Avengers Campus, but here you meet all of the presidents. Hey, John Tyler down here. Calvin Coolidge. Calvin Coolidge is wearing his casual outfit on Thursday from five to nine. Then he changes back into his presidential suit. Is that first term Grover Cleveland

or second term Grover Cleveland? Wow, Andrew Jackson's wearing footie pajamas the presidents operate on like a baseball team's uh system where it's like well on some days they wear their home uniform some days they wear away other days they wear throwback sure from the future what they be they're dressed as angels as they are today in heaven was there any um there wasn't there was no talk of uh uh keeping president square in a tight timeline like galaxy's edge right where it would only have been 50 years out of all the all 200 plus that america's been around it's only the newer president only the newer presidents which is everyone's favorite president yeah right they were yeah oh yeah i think we can all agree no matter what side you're on the best

presidents have been the last four or five yeah only the best um the uh well yeah not a lot of newer stuff now that you say that i guess not i uh uh well. So the President's Square celebrates the birth of democracy and the patriots who fought to preserve it. Okay, so that would take you up to the mid-90s, not so much today. Through the magic of audio animatronics technology, guests may meet these American heroes in Hall of Presidents. The Hall of Presidents is here. And potentially, according to different stories as I saw, that's just, it's fully moved. We robbed the people of Disney World.

Maybe. Really? It's possible they could have done a copy, but that's a lot of robots to remake. Rebuilt or replicated. They hadn't gotten that far in the decision making process. That's interesting. If they had to ship them all and then what would have gone there?

That's still like, would you re-theme the whole Liberty Square and Disney World? What do you do there? Maybe something fun? No, no, no. That's not what I wanted. Something fun. I'll say it again.

Sleepy Hollow Dark Ride. Ichabod, Legend of Ichabod, of the Headless Horseman, Chase. Sounds good to me. But there's not room for that there. I mean, that's a good idea for a ride. Maybe. It's a big theater.

It is a pretty big space. If you knock that out and anything. I guess if it's a smaller dark ride, maybe. Yeah. If it's like a Toad size or... That's fine. Yeah, hey yeah hey mad cap that's not bad hey they shared a movie ichabod and mr toad that's true yeah yeah mad cat yeah spider-man and transformers fit in a pretty compact sound stages i bet they're bigger though maybe i'm wrong

they probably are okay well we'll take a look. We're looking at it very strongly. Yeah, put the Headless Horseman in everywhere. Yeah, sure. No, that is a good, that's a fun, scary property. Surprise, he's not in this park. That's like a fun, there's not a lot of American folktale stuff or tall tales. I would say zero. It's all literal. Yeah, like why did they need to decide on that it's only, it's real historical figures in the history and that's it?

That would have maybe gone away quickly too once the park was opening in a huge disaster. Like, I'll bring some fun in here. Cut one of the president's heads off or something and say he's the headless horseman. I feel like they'd get trapped, like with Hall of Presidents, with this park in general,

and like the Hall of Presidents now, they can never demolish it where people would be apoplectic well they can demolish it right now the hall of presidents i think they could maybe demolish it now right you think so i think so yeah because think about like who's gonna be like whoa they're taking it out because of biden yeah i don't think i don't think anybody's fighting that look i voted for the guy but you know they're tweeting about it and then that's the end of it yeah no no no there's i think i that's my feeling is that like they're not gonna there's not gonna be too much if they go oh by the way uh it's closed we're working we're repairing it again oh it's taking

forever uh-oh oh you know what by the way oh some parts oh we don't have them. Oh, it's over. It's gone. In an unprecedented move, we've teamed up with our competitors at Universal Studios for the Hall of Presidents presented by the Minions. The Hall of Minions. That sounds good. Keep the bodies, minion heads instead. Keep them in the fun. And you got powdered wig minions and 1920s minions yeah all of it could be the hall of precedence which sounds even worse that sounds like there are there are titles of

what comes later that are about as dry as the hall of precedence i would say also uh recent history has shown us that precedent means nothing as opposed to vibes. Jason, as I made the light joke, I went, oh, what a dark thing to say right now. Let's get out of it. Let's get away from it as fast as we can. Oh, good. Well, we'll get away from it and go into the Native American section. Oh, come on. Do we skip it?

Do we skip it? Oh, no. Okay. All right. There's an insane detail in it. Okay, yeah. That kind of undoes whatever good intent was there. Is that in the middle of the Native American section,

which I believe would at least partially hit on the trail of tears. Like they didn't say it would hit. The wildest thing is that what they were going to put in Native America was a Lewis and Clark raft ride? Mm-hmm. In Native America? What? I guess they were like, well, those are some fun,

that's some fun America IP is Lewis and Clark to throw in there. So let's do that. We can all look, yeah, hey, they're making a fun movie about them with Chris Farley. That's right. Is that way? No, they're like equivalents, right? They're like. Yeah, they're making a fun movie about them with Chris Farley. That's right. Is that right? No, they're like equivalents, right? They're like...

Yeah, they're not. No, they're not Lewis and Clark. But they're abouts. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they were like, these guys are going to be hot. These real life people were going to be hot. Well, probably.

If anybody's mad that it's Lewis and Clark and there's bad things in that history, we'll change it to the Almost Heroes characters as soon as that's a big hit. Do we know the names of the Almost Heroes characters? Do we dare look it up? We don't. Feel free. I'm going to look it up. And you could even keep talking,

and if it's not good, I won't even say it. If it doesn't make me laugh, I won't say it. We can move on to the not-fully-cooked Civil War fort. Uh-huh. The next not- cooked land um okay yeah so this is all right the civil war fort allows guests to experience the reality of a soldier's daily life fun inside that okay yeah let's real quick in the old 200 years ago why like yeah i don't know that's the the problem with these you go to the fields and you think about you reflect and you're mournful but you don't get

to find out like how bad the shoes were they had to wear this is an experience that is solely for going to as like a historical site as a kid, you're like, as Jason was saying, you're a little antsy for a real ride, but you're trying to put yourself back there, but as a kid, you can't visualize what going through horrors are like. Which is why, look,

it's probably inappropriate to put it there, but the Lewis and Clark ref ride is something. Has there been one thing in the list so far that we were like sounds good the train a train but there's they've had trains before i like honestly i'm pro the smoke coming out of the stacks you guys were anti so you like the you walk in and see a lot of smoke and you're excited yeah it reminds you of going to flappers reminds me of flappers and i like the idea that there's a chimney sweep that has to go up and go to work. So, yeah.

So, at least, yeah, the raft, there you go. At least, yeah, that will give you a little thrill. Yeah. Reality of a soldier's daily life. Not so much. Then we go into Disney's Circle Vision 360 to transport you into the center. I mean, first of all, it loses me right there. I don't know how you guys feel about these 360s.

I think these are all bummers. I think this is a genre of bummers. I'm probably making somebody mad. There's one that I don't know is kind of a little fun. I like the timekeeper one. But in general, those are like, I have to stand to get, when you're a child, the most tired being on the planet, and like, I have to just hold

a rail i don't get to sit yeah you can't i'm so mad at the 360 they're too high to lean for a kid yeah it's awkward yeah do i put my my little soft neck on this or do i do i just sit probably somebody will yell at me i certainly don't sit on the rail because then somebody will definitely yell at me. Probably my mom. I hate the... I did not like... We've never talked about a 360 movie. Yeah, I don't...

I'm sure I saw a 360 movie when I was a kid and we went to Disney World. But I have seen them as an adult. And it's a great... It sounds great, doesn't it? It sounds fun to have a 360 movie. But the reality of it is it's superfluous. It doesn't work. It doesn't make sense.

Show me what you want me to look at. I don't need to be jerking my head back and forth. That gets old after like two tries where you go, oh, I can turn around and I can see behind. Then you stop doing it. Because they do kind of direct you a little. Because how do you not? I mean, the filmmaker given that assignment is like, okay, yes, but there's a reason why you point one way when making a movie.

I'm going to kind of, sort of guide this in one direction. It should be like the IMAX where it emerged. It should be like 270 or something. 280. Not 360. We don't need something 280 not 360 we don't need all the degrees we don't need all the degrees it's too many degrees folks too many degrees uh i i like them okay i don't give them much thought and their hours are so odd nowadays i haven't seen them yeah i don't need them to go away i'm just i don't make a point of them i think it was kind of

killing two birds with one stone back in the day where they could develop a new technology, test it out, put it somewhere in the park where they can build the theater from scratch. I think at their best, these sorts of theme park movies, like Impressions de France, they end up a little odd. They end up absurd or unique, like they've stumbled into being an art movie but then at their worst they're more like um oh i was telling you guys earlier about harmonious

life and i thought the actual show with all the singers and performers and stuff was great there was also a weird short film in there narrated by krististen bell that's one of those disney things oh where they try to use shots of people from many of many walks of life doing many activities and they try to have something for everyone but not offend everyone and there's just a bunch of nothing really yeah so it ends up becoming like a thing an alien made. So I think that... Here is a book report about humans and Earth. But all that said, they might have been on to something because eventually the Gettysburg Visitor Center built a massive new visitor center,

which does include, I don't think it's a full circle vision, but like a 180. Okay, I like 180. Sure. 180 is good. I think it's longer yeah it's longer i could use a few more degrees honestly because then i'm really immersed more sweet spot is somewhere 180 not enough 50 ish 240 240 is where i feel like it's right but i 180 is good i'm into 180 okay we're getting there i see yeah this, if there are Circle Vision stands in the audience, we have lost them all.

I think Jason honestly gave the biggest insult to Circle Vision by saying, I don't even really think about it that much. Wow. That's so dismissed. That's cold. That's so dismissed cold. That's like Chuck, spoiler alert, better call Saul, when Chuck tells Jimmy he doesn't care about him.

I don't even care about you. Oh, I thought thought you were gonna say i paid them the biggest compliment no no you probably do like them the best i know i know but i can't remember outside seeing i think i saw the canon one like eight or ten years ago you know yeah yeah i would rather have people talking about me in a slightly negative way than somebody going, I don't even think about him ever. You want to be negative? Have you guys seen Fantastic Planet? No. Don't get me started. I don't know what you mean at all.

It's the movie that's in the land pavilion where the Lion King environmental movie used to be. Oh, yes. Where Symbiosis was. Yeah, yeah. Clearly, we're playing in the territory of all these things this is what this park is gonna have oh yeah uh all my favorite aspects of all these uh uh so yeah you get to go in the center of civil war combat that's great and then uh

outside you may encounter an authentic reenactment of a period battle. More battles. I mean, at least, I mean, yeah, this is something that could potentially be somewhat historically factual. And also, I guess, is something to look at if I'm just basing it purely on, like, you know, something visually interesting. Whoa, that guy had to throw down his fat back and hardtack to, like, start firing his rifle. Mommy, mommy, the soldier's hardtack. Can we get hardtack and fatback? No, Jason, we already have some at home.

You know that. We're always stuck. We get them in bulk from Costco. You have your hardtack at home. Oh, this one's coughing a lot. Oh, no, he's the sick one. He stubbed his toe. He's on sick one. He stubbed his toe. He's on death's door from stubbing his toe.

Look away, Jason. Look away. This is too realistic. No cure for a stubbed toe at that time. Writing a letter to his wife on the battlefield. This is the end of I. That's how he talked. But the big centerpiece of this is alluded to earlier.

A thrilling nighttime spectacular based on the historic confrontation between the Monitor and the Merrimack. A real-life battleship battle that is being presented as a spectacular. As they're phantasmic or they're like, you know when Universal had one that was like a ripoff Miami Vice?

That was the first one in Orlando. It was like the fake Crockett and Tubb. These guys with the ripped shirts are going to ride around in speedboats. In this one, it is real warships firing at each other. The lights are out and it's time for the reenactment warships to start shooting the hell out of each other. This is funny as hell. I don't know who didn't even if it was just presented and like

and then at night we sit and quietly watch a reenactment of the battle of the like even though it's just a different presenting presentation of it versus and then prepare to be dazzled by the lights and spectacle of two battleships as they shoot colorful fireworks out of the top of their whatever they call them of merrimack tasbik

hey look at those battleships like here we go like it's crazy it looks like these two parts of the country aren't getting along let's see how how it goes. What are we going to do? Uh-oh, there's an alien woman that jumped over to the bushes. Hello there. I have turned brother against brother. Look out as these two battleships dazzle you with a firework display like you've never seen. America was nothing but love until I showed up. I planted the seeds of hate in this otherwise perfect nation.

I don't even know what they're fighting about. It's hard to tell. I'm not sure. We've stumbled on the best twisted idea for this whole place, is explain away every bad thing that ever happened in America with an alien woman that won't tell you her name. Which, if you don't know what we're talking about, we did an episode on a epcot show called

splash tackler where an unnamed like rita repulsa type pops out of the epcot bushes wreaks havoc on mickey and friends who are you none of your business i real quick side note i completely forgot to text you uh and i guess we should really do this on second gate but i have to do it now so we we talk about on this episode and this is a good ad for the the second gate go to patreon.com where we have a bunch of bonus episodes but we talk about how mickey has guards in this particular epcot show and they have mickey silver like big chrome on their chest and on every limb of their body yes they're on stilts the intense which we made we posted the videos of guards and then i'll stomp stomp yes and it's so crazy because like where's mickey of guards and

why are they like he's comfortable with his face being like the image as they use like their mickey clubs to beat people like season seems a little uh very dystopian dystopian and grizzly here's what i noticed as i'm driving by the disney lot on the gate instead of spikes they have little mickey heads oh yeah oh yeah yes so that's in the real world if you try to get in there you could get impaled on mickey's metal head but i made that point in the episode that the you know the the soldier should have told mickey I think you're going to want a spear, right? Yeah. The impaling is going to go better with a sharp point.

I don't care. It's my face. It's the brand of the thing. We wanted to bludgeon, is what I said. I want to bludgeon. It's better. Don't try to climb the fence. They'll bludgeon themselves.

If you bludgeon them, they can't have an open casket funeral like Goodfellas. Like Joe Pesci's mother in Goodfellas and joe pesci's mother and goodfellas corpses but i drove by and i was like oh my god look look it's little metal head protecting the protecting the empire with his metal uh weapon with this and it seems more friendly which one that seems more friendly than spikes. It seems less. Yeah, yeah. Here, come on in. Come get a closer look.

As it rips my chest open, it does seem nicer. You're right. As I fall on it, trying to scale the fence. God, I have not thought about how funny that is. It's so funny. Protecting the border with big, blunt Mickey heads. Drive by, if you're in Burbank, drive the disney studios and see mickey's face protecting the empire mickey's head i should say wait this is so again let me all right look i looked up some

some stats if you can believe i didn't have the civil war stats already in my brain uh the the battle this is based on uh the first time that uh ironclad warships fought each other. Right. After this, there were no more wood ships. Everyone rushed to build their warships out of iron. And it was considered a draw. However, the Confederates lost seven. Seven soldiers died.

Union lost 261 so it's a draw where astronomically more of the side that i feel like we are rooting for i think that's right uh i believe you are correct uh so so yeah it was it was historically it's listed as a draw is what you're saying or they were going to present it as a draw in the disney show i think well the the ships uh in real life the monitor and the mirror both survived okay so that's why so that's it's considered a draw now oh yeah sure we lost 200 more people but human beings but if you're just going off of ship numbers it was a draw so which is maybe look this is an issue that they have in general with this but with anything civil war and the part if you're depicting something where the confederacy wins

yeah that doesn't feel great certain battles they did so that's gonna come up right or this it's like maybe that's why they picked this one okay we have we know that the nighttime spectacular has to be a real life battle where human beings with feelings died but we all right well can we soften the blow by at least making it not a sweeping confederate victory yeah i see i see what you're saying here yeah that's a it feels like uh people really racked their brain to try to to solve this equation of like how do we and they and still they came up with one of the funniest things i've ever heard it i feel like eisner this is it's it's this it's that great eisner hubris where he didn't think there was the possibility of a wrong answer

yeah this was still he had not had a he it was all hits at this point so he's like whatever it is is gonna be great we he just kind of threw out we got a blend history and fun figured out you will you always do love you imagineers this came back love it merrimack tastic i'll be there front row never occurred this might be weird tonally yeah yeah yeah yeah i believe he said he thought they'd be, like, picking them up and putting them on their shoulders. Like, they'd be celebrated. But the reality is when you, just in the metaphor, when you throw something against a wall to see what sticks,

there's going to be stuff that doesn't stick. Perhaps maybe, perhaps there is no sticking. Yeah, or sometimes there's no sticking. In this case, truly, that is the end of the story. There was nothing stuck. Did I say, by the way, that this is all, this thrilling nighttime spectacular is over Freedom Bay? It's that aspect of it.

Another, like, Simpsons joke or something. Yeah. Freedom Bay. Oh, yikes. So, yeah. So, I really, was the idea that, like, there would be, like, purple fireworks or something shooting out, or were they going So, I really... Was the idea that there would be purple fireworks or something shooting out? Or were they going to, I guess, keep it realistic?

And it would just be plain... Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, just the colors of flares. Right. What shot out of the Titanic to try to get people to rescue them. Red? So, would they be red? Or would they be yellowish, I suppose? I mean, I guess the boat battle

at the Pirates of the Caribbean looks pretty good. You're right. That's a good point. That's exciting to be between for 20 minutes. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I guess I'm saying like,

it feels like this would be a Disney firework show. Because it's not real combat between two subs. It has to just be explosions. Oddly, the Monitor and the Merrimack fired all kinds of colors out of the shit that was built into these new warships. And weirdly, they fired it up in the pattern of one big circle and two tiny circles. Oh, wow, okay. This is historically accurate. It's closer to that penguin sub

from the Batman 66 show, probably, where they could shoot multiple colored weapon charges or whatever. That'd be a water spectacular. Oh, yeah. So this is straight. The Civil War aspect is very strange can we think of like what would you put here say you're an imaginary and michael eisner is just like

like he threw the words at you that we just said and he was like figure out what the nighttime show is and you're like trying like what would you what could you even possibly do here it's over okay we'll go for it. I was going to say, I got it. Based on something I've done in the past, it's 4th of July every night. Yeah. In the same way, it's New Year's Eve every night

at Pleasure Island. It's 4th of July every night at Freedom Bay. That's great. Yes. Freedom where it's always 4th of July. Philadelphia, they shoot off their fireworks down by the Delaware River. And so there's plenty of cities and towns that shoot off the fireworks over bodies of water.

The best fireworks, 4th of July fireworks I ever saw, might have been in Cape Cod or somewhere, but they used old war cannons. And that was part of it. And that was neat. That was cool. That's all you have to do. It doesn't have to be a real battle. That's insanity and also they were going to have the the i think the next

one in the order is an ellis island kind of area which i think would have had a statue of liberty sure why is it not just fireworks over the statue of liberty why did it ever enter anyone's mind yeah a real battle has to be portrayed yeah yeah i don't i don't know because again it's filling the role of phantasmic because that was the language they used. We have not brought up one possible way to take this, which is that all of the soldiers

are Disney characters. Well, look. Gene Chip? Yeah, Bill. Yeah, I... You know, Scott, you would have been an award-winning editorial cartoonist in 1994 because there are some very tedious uh newspaper cartoons from this time period of like uh mickey like shitting on the constitution or something oh if you have that send that to me

i would like to see that here Here's an amendment for you. This one's for you, Gigi Allen. I think, was there one with Abraham Lincoln and his big stovepipe hat and some Mickey ears on it? That's actually pretty funny. That's pretty cute.

That's kind of cute. Every possible, every monument nobody cares about, they're putting Mickey ears on it. Yeah. The worst defiling that could ever, this is what they want to do. Literally're putting Mickey ears on it. Yeah. The worst defiling. Whatever.

This is what they want to do. Literally put a Mickey hat on everything. They should have gone the other way. As I said, they should have like justified everything by just making them all Disney characters and completely rewritten American history. You have involved a lot of like giant fish and crabs and living candelabras. Yeah, Beauty and the Beast characters would be involved as well. So the We the People, can I read from the brochure on this? Framed by a building resembling Ellis Island,

We the People recognizes the courage and triumph of our immigrant heritage from the earliest native settlers to the latest political refugees this i think they actually like it does sound a little um severe for a theme park but this does sound uh nice it sounds uplifting it sounds inspiring uh Again, nowadays, half the chunk of the country would be apoplectic about this idea. Yeah, and it's not presented like, it doesn't say like, you're gonna go on

a rip-roaring ride through the immigration process or something, which is, it doesn't seem right, like the spectacular. I'm saying that yeah, they're presenting it in the right way. Or in a more reasonable way. Ellis mean, because a lot of Ellis Island was just like, do you not, you don't have consumption?

Okay, good. Your name is now Stephen, Harry Stephen. On you go. Stamp. Well, you're right that this might have been just kind of a nice, like, subtle nod to the immigrants

who have added to the fabric of America. But then you have to, then there was the turn that happened at some point in time where it was, we're doing it with the Muppets. It's going to be the Muppets. Yeah. There was the introduction of the Muppets. Which may,

I don't know, which could, I even am seeing somewhere said that that's inside the Statue of Liberty. That you go see a 3D Muppet immigration movie. Yes. Really? I missed this completely. I mean, now we're talking.

Well, sure. Was it Statue of Liberty? Is it like Miss Piggy? No, I think it is the normal Statue of Liberty from the outside. Okay. But you go inside and it's full of reference. How much better if that was like a six-story Miss Piggy Statue of Liberty?

Yeah. Yeah, certainly. But again, the offense that might have been taken by, you've put mouse ears on Lincoln and put a pig's face on a woman's face on this gift from France. Right. Where is the biggest fake Statue of Liberty? Is it in Vegas?

Oh, that's interesting. Is that that big? Oh, in New York, New York? Or is it like a Lego one? Yeah, right. Is there... I always... I don't know that I ever thought about it in the theme park way, but I always kind of was fascinated by the end of Ghostbusters 2 with the Statue

of Liberty walking around. Maybe that's your spectacular. The end of Ghostbusters 2. Oh, now, okay. Jackie Wilson. Oh, yeah. That would all be awesome. I love the end of Ghostbusters 2.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if Disney doesn't own it or whatever, but I don't know. Figure it out. Yeah, figure it out. And figure out how to make a giant Statue of Liberty that walks around. Oh, man.

Afterlife 2. Do you think the Statue of Liberty is going to walk again? It's a little Easter egg that the fans might recognize. Do you remember that there was a big statue of liberty? Somebody, they go over to the Statue of Liberty. There's a big, like, somebody put a big sheet over it and they pull it off and they go, it's the Statue of Liberty. I remember it from the second movie. Oh. I mean, the second story I heard. I think it's the Statue of Liberty. I think we'll see. I mean, we're giving this an ideal way for free so yes put it in there which debt which dead people will be reanimated in the next america's dying to know which bodies

will be puppeted around there's no there's no telling uh uh so yeah statue of liberty walking around is is a great idea if they could figure that out yeah well i don't think they were going to do that but yeah i know i'm saying you're you're right yeah they should have done it something with the muppets maybe uh i don't know um sure i mean they have that history thing now that's fun. Where do we go from here? Enterprise? Enterprise. Another extremely grim, darkest. Lewis and Clark and the Industrial Revolution,

two of the actual rides, probably two of the grimmest. But the Industrial Revolution ride that took you over like a big thing of lava might have been cool. So, yes. It's like about, all right. So, it's industry and ingenuity and innovation. The old factories and blah. But then, yes.

It's the only thing in the park that sounds kind of exciting. Yeah. The Industrial Revolution, a high-speed adventure through a turn- the century mill that juxtaposition but that's great that's what you like about like yeah this is what we don't get anymore yeah this is what we'll never get from disney or universal well yeah this original ip it's where the ip isn't a marvel movie right the industrial revolution right it's a time in american history great it's a concept it's an idea and it's a time in American history. Great. It's a concept. It's an idea, and it's a thrill ride based on it. Fantastic.

I think fantastic, honestly. Yeah, yeah. I'd be excited about this. And then, as you said, culminating in a narrow escape from its fiery vat of molten steel. Yes. They kept pushing this at every turn, and you come face to face with a bunch of molten, with a big pot. I'm not sure that this was something that would happen on a daily occurrence at a factory where your head would just breeze by.

I mean, you get close. I guess that's true. People were probably getting killed because of unsafe labor conditions. Yeah. No one wanted to build the ride, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the escape. That's a good point. Ride it out. They would have had to figure out how to square that circle where it was like, the ride is about you almost dying in a factory 150 years ago, which is a very real possibility if you lived back then.

Yeah, in one way or another yeah yeah so gradually die from whatever you're breathing or with your yeah uh your encounter with a fiery vat of molten steel and uh uh i wonder i always i'm always i'll say this i don't know i've said this before i'm a sucker for when they do like either steam and water with light behind it to make it look like it's some sort of fire. Like, like I'm big thunder on the, when they updated it out here and I've seen it,

I guess Harry Potter, uh, the dragon, when you get blasted by the dragon. Well, I'm probably saying is because it's like, these are more steam punky, but it's in the,

that makes it in the world of 1800 stuff but i really like in disney sea journey of the center of the earth and 20 000 leagues into the sea so if it was anything like like that just makes me think okay we know disney built cool stuff with 1800 or that geyser mountain probably would have been cool yes yes i think this would have been pretty great all right like just knowing that if like if you if you try to imagine the vibe that unbuilt things had or things that were built to have or and big thunder is kind of an 1800 like i think this this one with with that team at that time would have been pretty fantastic sure yes yes it's got all the things that like people who like this stuff like in 2022 you go i can't

believe this is here i can't believe they made this thing it's legitimately fun to go on the effects are cool like it just checks it seems to check all the boxes yeah that of something we would be like well that park was a terrible idea but you know what that one ride the industrial revolution ride was really good and you're gonna love if you like this if you like that orange light with the white like you know fabric blowing to simulate fire you're gonna love the mascot of disney's america mrs o'leary's cow oh yeah antics mrs o'leary's cow gets up to in chicago do you think though that you know that disney if again this was a success they could have built a whole O'Leary's cow gets up to in Chicago. Do you think, though, that Disney, if, again, this was a success, they could have built a whole O'Leary's cow amusement park in Chicago area at this point?

Oh, with Clarabelle? Fireland. Clarabelle is Mrs. O'Leary's cow? Or she's friends with Mrs. O'Leary's cow. Oh, she's friends. Okay. And she does something to help or hurt. I guess help.

She would have to help she doesn't start the fire that burns down most of chicago it's cow town it's a play you meet a bunch of cows some fictional and one real yeah horse is there horse horse collar uh uh and the other trying to sleep with the cows yes yeah yeah he's trying to make love to the various causes that's right uh so yeah um you then get it so so here we that's something if nothing else if nothing else revolution uh you get to a ride where you escape poor conditions and right horrible like a knots ride oh yes that's. Misery. I don't know if it would have had that aspect that you look at hundreds of people with horrible lives. Yeah, yeah.

And those knots rides we're talking about, which are Timber Mountain Log Ride and the Mine Cart. I never remember the full name of it. What is it called? Calico. Calico. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, you see animatronics of people

who probably are like 30 years old that look 80 from the the hard lives they've lived they look miserable they're like it's really it's legitimately they're both scary i think especially if you're a kid yeah and they creak they're so rusty rusty and that's an accident genuinely scary worry like this tunnel is too narrow if they have to get us out of here it's gonna take a long time yep yeah we're gonna need jaws of life here uh but that at high speed great i so now i'm thinking maybe we're cooking we got we'll see if we take that into uh victory field which is simultaneously i mean they namechecked the Wright Brothers early on in the descriptor,

but then it's also kind of, so this is 1930 to 1945, so it's Wright Brothers, it's early flight, but then it's also World War II, which, you know, I don't know what World War II attraction is. You at least are in the territory of exciting aerial ducking and diving but kind of with the specter of this is a real thing but there's nazis there's nazis talking about nazis which though i guess in their in their favor nazis have been you know portrayed in media and fictionalized so much even though nazis in a disney park is probably not a good idea it's certainly been portrayed more in a variety of ways well i think they skirted it because i saw one thing that said uh one of the concepts would have been the world's first dueling inverted

coasters and it would have been called dog fighter and it would have been biplanes so we're back in world war one baby just the kaisers the troops do americans know why we joined world war one no i don't uh i know we got in pretty late yeah yeah so a bit more attention to two glazed over one bunch of old, inbred world families fighting each other over territory. That's what I think it was. Could Snoopy be on the ride with the World War I flying ace? That was the character, right? I mean, yeah.

Oh, the Red Baron? Yeah. I think those theme park rights are booked up. Wait, wait. Red Baron was the same as the World War I flying ace? Those are two separate characters. Am I wrong? What? Wasn't the Red Baron, though? Wasn't the Red Baron who the

World War I Flying Ace was fighting in Peanuts? Oh, he's not the Red Baron. And you never saw the Red Baron? Am I incorrect? I think I'm... I'm not 100% I mean, I'll look it up here. Red Baron World... I mean, you talk amongst yourselves while I do this. Okay. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm seeing Snoopy versus the Red Baron. There you. I mean, you talk amongst yourselves while I do this. Okay.

Oh, yeah. Well, I'm seeing Snoopy versus the Red Baron. There you go. I bet this is a very common. This is a Frankenstein, Frankenstein's monster. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't think you ever see the Red Baron. I'll say this about those little Snoopy. If you've ever seen these little pieces of parts of the, I forget which movie or even which show that that's in but they're very upsetting to me i never liked them i they're like silent snoopy is like having a dog fight on top of his dog house with an unseen red baron character as a kid i did not know anything about history i was confused and the whole thing was upsetting to me why are they getting away from these uh these cute

giant headed children yeah i like the giant headed children i like snoopy but i do not like seeing him in a dog fight in world war one which i understand the creator is much older than me yeah but now other ideas of rides i you know it's unclear what i, that sounds really good. Dogfighter sounds pretty great. I saw a mention of a VR-aided parachute jump from a World War II fighter jet, which sounds sort of like a VR-aided parachute jump from a World War II fighter jet. That sounds like a precursor of the... sort of the idea for the Avengers e- but e-ticket i yeah certainly does

which yeah another thing that'll never happen will not happen uh yeah yeah it's not like the avengers one looked like it was going to be started in a quinjet and then i just uh burped uh then you fell then you fell out of it uh you parachuted of some super scientific parachute or something and then fought the villains in some big, maybe 360 circle vision style. Too many degrees for you? Maybe too many degrees, honestly. Try better.

So if it was 240, yeah, maybe that's why I got canceled because there were too many degrees. Yeah, you've been protesting the Madison Square Garden sphere. The MSG sphere coming to Vegas. Yeah, the test one that's over by the Burbank Airport here. It got wrecked because I was on top of it. That's right. You were taking the pieces off.

Yeah, I was mad that this was going to be 360. Now, here's another. And we'll get into this a little later but i it all some of the history that's attributed to this park is the idea that some attractions were developed for that found homes elsewhere and i i don't know i can't find the exact documentation of it but but certainly some sources say that soren was potentially a concept for this park. I saw that, yeah. Which, hey, pretty cool.

Let's think about that. If it had Sorin, which kind of saved California Adventure a little bit. Yeah, so Sorin was the big hit. It was really all on the back of Sorin when that was the major thing that they had. So you got Industrial Revolution. You got Industrial Revolution. You got your raft ride yeah and then you have a soaring over civil war battlefields like that's the only issue yeah or is it is it a world war ii fight yeah right it's kind of mushing up soaring

for your life world war one and two probably Probably some of the California, like commercial aviation, probably in there. Well, it's going through. Maybe they go through every war. They go through every aerial war. Up until today's. And then they update it with. With the same soundtrack, though, that we have now. Yeah.

Well, if you look at. The inspirational music. Did everyone pull this one? There's kind of one drawing with like each land kind of just in colored like i saw a different one basic one um it all conveniently stops right at the uh the world war two uh the victory of world war two basically like 1945 it seems to be the most recent oh yeah yeah yes it's not a more recent history. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they've just taken off the board, like the complicated, they've taken off the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, women's liberation, like all of the later 20th century recent history. They're like, we're not going to touch it. There's got to be an Epcot for this place, you know, in the future plans when they're talking about building it. So they have to leave something on the table for later jason i look the 2010s we're gonna be you know full build out was gonna happen in like uh the 2015 2017 the imaginers were so excited about vietnam uh theme park attractions but they were like we can't do it yet we need to wait for that second park before we can we can find the fun the two songs yeah so right there they it's a reverse galaxy's edge honestly they

it's it's not future stuff it's past they they cap it there sure in the past yeah yeah um we're getting towards one that really breaks my brain and uh it it is this not the land in general uh state fair we are finally at we need an excuse to get some rides into this thing there have to be rights here uh so you know so now all right this is very familiar we're at like it's a recreation of an old pier of Coney Island type with a big Ferris wheel and a wooden roller coaster. Okay, so again, sounds familiar. This eventually becomes Paradise Pier. This is the beginning of this Eisner premise of like,

just a place with rides, for God's sake. Rides that we can not, we don't have to invent the basic mechanism of what the ride is we don't have to change like physics as we know it in order to accomplish something innovative here just the cheapest rides come up with some bullshit to explain why we have cheap rides here in the past 1920s yeah great fantastic Great. Fantastic. All right. Phew. All right. Start building these basic rights. Then we get to, oh boy, amid a backdrop of rolling cornfields, fans may have a hot dog and take a seat in an authentic old-fashioned ballpark and watch America's legendary greats

gather for an exhibition all-star now this i love all right all right yeah this is so funny i don't know about you michael but the older i get the more baseball i watch it's something that's clicked in my biology that's i i don't have that yet but i do like going to a baseball game. If baseball is on, I will watch it. It was the first thing I ever wanted to do for a living. It probably lasted six months. It probably didn't last very long. It probably also ended after I realized I'm not a good athlete,

and they pulled me out after I pitched one inning in first grade, and it ruined my confidence for another decade. Oh, yikes. I thought I was doing fine. My memory is I was pitching the first inning because like my parents were like let him pitch one of the innings because he really wants to be a pitcher so i pitched an inning and then the coach was like all right great you did great uh back to right field and i remember being like what i thought he did okay oh no ruin these coach

standards impossible coach is a real nice guy. I will say that. But, yeah. So, no. Baseball. But I like baseball. And I would watch it if it's on. But I am not watching more yet. I'm trying to keep up with all the professional wrestling I watch, honestly.

Oh, sure. There's too much already of that sport that I enjoy. But this is fantastic. This is a big premise to unpack this is so this is an athletic event that is a theme park show yes how does this work i don't know what do you mean because it can't be scripted right but it's hired it's hired baseball players so is this just like is it truly just a baseball game it can't it can't be a baseball game yeah there's no way it's a baseball game well you know what you can probably script a

baseball game it just has it can't be a full length game i guess professional wrestling has taught us you can script mostly you can you know yeah you lock stuff out sure now it is pretty hard to aim a baseball yeah that's the issue in wrestling there's not a an item that you don't have like you can yeah unless maybe there's a way to throw but if there's like an air cannon that's hidden in front of the catcher or the ump that like they pretend to throw the ball and then the guy pretends and then there's like a sound effect of a bat cracking. Like a stunt show.

Exactly. It's simulated. Don't worry, folks. They're not actually playing baseball. Right. Yeah, they'll shoot a ball out, but it's coming out of like a PVC pipe or something, and it's shooting it so we can get it in a pinpoint exactly where they want it to. Like throwing the Spider-Man robot. They can get it where they need it for the story.

So when the babe comes out, because you know the babe has to close this thing. There's no way. Well, here's the other premise. This is an all-star game in the 30s and 40s. So yeah, that implies it's the best baseball players from old baseball all playing together. Now, I don't know where any...

the exact years any of these players played. Like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, I don't know. But I assume they're there. Lou Gehrig. How many can we name? Is that the end? Is that the list? Jackie Robinson. Jackson.

Yeah, I know some more Chicago Cubs, but I don't think they're... I'm going to tell you right now, Ty Cobb's first one cut. They're not dealing with Ty Cobb. History's most racist man, Ty Cobb. Oh, is that right? I believe it's in the Ken Burns documentary. Because Ty Cobb comes up a few times and one of the times is a guy in the stand calls him

some sort of slur ty cobb climbs in the stands starts beating the man up and someone says stop stop he's crippled and ty cobb's response was like i don't. Yeah, so kind of a villain who still has a number of baseball accolades named after him. But if that happened in this show... It would be like... He's the Vader of the show. He's the Vader. Boo! Boo Ty Cobb!

All right, let's boo the cheating Chicago White Sox team from that one season. This, I can't... I'm trying to really wrap my head around what they would do. Because the theme park show, 20-ish minutes, right? 15, 20 minutes. These games are, what, a minimum eight hours? Eight hours long.

Eight and a half. Yeah, I guess you could maybe get like a 30-minute show at a theme park. 45 is pushing it. It better be really good like the Aladdin show at California Adventure if you want to go that long. But what if they were thinking beyond this? What if they were like, we're just going to play full baseball games with people. There's no way.

Yeah, who would? Little League. That's your entire day get two games two or three two maybe three games and if they played like six innings or something maybe they did baseball though do they always play nine innings usually okay it's been historically been nine well i know that but i'm saying like in the old days was there ever a time when they played uh two innings well yeah conveniently uh yeah they looked it up and yeah it used to be uh used to be one and there was a buzzer that rang after 10 minutes everybody got one at bat and they also

sang a song before they swung yeah they saw sang a song that introduced them and who they were and what team they were on all right i got a pitch for this show i think it'll work you get all the mat you get the mascots you get baseball mascots okay you get mr met you get the philadelphia fanatic and they tell you the history of baseball and a pepper's ghost uh it's mixed in with pepper's ghost scenes on the field big plays on the field so that's how you replicate it because some players can like babe ruth calling it. Because some players can, like Babe Ruth calling a shot, like some players can hit a ball to a certain part of the stadium, and they're usually once-in-a-generation talents.

They're like Babe Ruth or Shohei Otani. So you're saying somebody can't do the Babe Ruth shot exactly three times a day. That's why the PVC pipe is there to shoot the ball out yeah some sort of uh energy some thrust some sort of um um air blast yeah so and but a pvc pipe can also shoot the ball in the same part of the stands and everyone lines up early to get in that same part of the stands because every show you shoot out the ball someone gets to go away with the free souvenir that's disney though they're not gonna do that this isn't a chucky cheese show on the pier they're not gonna give

things away one baseball like four or five baseballs a day it's up jason it's like those coins it's like then they give you a little souvenir coin or something maybe maybe but they also could do it where like you don't seat everybody in like right field in the bleachers and that's where the ball goes so they could collect the ball at the end. That's true. Yeah. So, I don't know. I could see it either way.

I could see it going either way. It's also dangerous to shoot a ball into the stands. That is very true. Yeah. Now, my father caught a foul ball at a baseball game a few years ago. Wow. And if he hadn't caught it it would have given one of us brain damage it was yeah pop we were behind home plate he didn't want to he had

no choice we were behind home plate and the thing shot up which is a big net way oh god there's a big net there whoa and it went straight and it came straight down on us wow and he barehanded it geez really yeah hey that's a good dad pretty good wow wow when i was a kid that was my problem with baseball i i had seen like one or two like news reports about like a child died after getting hit by a baseball in a little league game and i was like that's gonna happen to me i'm not graceful i'm not good at catching these fly balls. I'm really not good at it. They don't often come very far into the outfield. And I was just like, I'm either going to get killed or I'm going to watch these two coaches kill each other.

Did you play sport, like baseball, Scott? Yeah, I made it to like coach pitch. Okay. What year is that? Kindergarten? No, like second grade. grade okay that's about where we were at maybe did you ever see two dads almost go at it no because i did oh boy oh yeah i saw i did too it's like at one year it's like every other game it would it did it's so funny because it was

so upsetting to see as a kid and thinking about it now it is so funny and doesn't make any sense anybody like would any tooth uh damage if we lose a tooth there wasn't any like like uh beating within the inch of someone's life but it was just like screaming and i don't some maybe some pushing and then it's funny now to imagine that those guys are younger than me right now yes yeah yeah and like what was going on in their lives i think it's funny that sports come up so seldom on the show that this this is essentially is like baseball has come up as a topic let's do well let's all do our thoughts about baseball yeah i i i we have to have talked about based no I guess we probably didn't have to

think about it have I talked about how my favorite player was Andre Dawson on the Cubs I watched the Cubs like hardcore for a year when I was like in first grade and I loved Andre Dawson and I was so excited and we met Mark Grace from the Chicago Cubs too at

Woodfield Mall which I believe I brought up on the Woodfield episode it came up via malls it did end up there Jogger Cubs 2 at Woodfield Mall, which I believe I brought up on the Woodfield episode. All right, all right. It came up via malls. It did end up there. It treasured and horsed in there. Via malls. Thank God.

It was through some nonsense somehow. But we got to talk to some Imagineers who worked on this and figure out what the plan was. I want to know everything about how they were going to do baseball games. History, baseball games, ghost. They were going to do Field of Dreams every day. Field of Dreams every day, that's a home run, if I can steal. I mean, it is, if you can figure it out.

What does it mean? You walk from the cornfield, you walk out of the cornfield. That's what you build. You build a baseball dime in the cornfield. But then what's the show, what do they do? I think there was going to be songs. This is what I think. There's a lot of songs. There's a lot of routine.

You do the seventh inning stretch. You do take me out to the ball game. There's so many rituals associated with baseball. So it's a compressed baseball game? Like right field, right field. I'm aiming for the... I don't know why it's so sad. It's like Les Mis or something.

We're going to the right field. Yeah... I don't know why it's so sad. It's like Les Mis or something. We're going to the right field. Yeah, I don't know. I think there were going to be songs. That's my guess. We're going to do Right Fielder's Anthem. Everybody... So there's less playing and more an original song about every position. The concessions sell themselves.

I mean, the concessions are a goldmine. Oh, yes. You do hot dogs. You do Cracker Jacks. You're Disney. Ice cream, the concessions are a gold mine. Oh, yes. You do hot dogs, you do Cracker Jacks, ice cream in the little helmet cups. They didn't sell that back then, though. In the 90s? No, no, no. It has to be

period specific. It doesn't matter. You think they would sell the little plastic helmets? Nowadays, I think they would. Well, not back then, though. Blue Sky, I bet they weren't going to do that. They would sell it the old-fashioned way with a cone. That's my guess. Yeah.

But maybe I'm wrong. It feels very Galaxy's Edge where they wanted to remain period appropriate. Okay. That's my guy. That's just from reading some of the material. This is my guess. Well, it's a lot of like, you know, like Jason has a nice idea. What if there was helmet?

No, that is too fun. No. We can't do it. No. It's fun. And speaking of that mentality, family farm. Family farm pays homage to the working farm, the heart of American.

Visitors see how crops are harvested, learn how to make homemade ice cream or to milk a cow. Ah, wow. No, no. That's not a touch point I want to figure out. You don't want to, yeah. Jason, I think, would have liked the cow part because Jason loved the animals,

as we talked about. Big Thunder Ranch. I did. Was one of his favorite places they got rid of and they had, was it a cow there or was it a horse? I mean, they had a horse at Disneyland, obviously, but they had goats.

Yeah. They had, didn't they have like one cow? Am I crazy? I think they would kind of rotate. Yeah. People in and out. So I think they would kind of rotate people in and out. So I think that Jason would have been involved in this. Now, Scott, I think you're talking about a section of a park

where you would learn how to live with the lands. And I think maybe this is what is triggering you here, is that this is very similar. Have to buy some house. There'd be a house. There's like a sad- looking boy and a dog. That's right. And there's grain waving in the wind.

Yeah, the same from the, it's the other side of the field of dreams. Oh, the side of the field of dreams. Oh, that's great. So they're getting two uses out of the grain. All right. You can repeat the grain. And if you look closely,

when you turn around, when you're walking, you could see the baseball players come back through and walk on the other side of the grain uh go back to hell vloggers like vloggers would just be furious of like disney has had another fumble again the mites have come for the grain at the court bordering these two territories just put some fake ones in yeah uh michael eisner demanded real grain i will say this the the description of this though does not excite me like baseball like historical baseball players playing a game or anything there's nothing the word hootenanny in the barn the for the phrase

doesn't appear anywhere you're missing something you're missing something we have the it's not as crazy as we're going to do daily baseball games but there is a there's this talk of maybe a barn dance and there is talk of okay if there wasn't already the insanity of a baseball game we'd be meditating on this more which is that there would be a show you would basically you would get to visit a country wedding you go to a wedding at the i do like i go to a wedding in a barn i do like that that is i do enjoy the sound of it yeah you want to sit at a wedding an old wedding in a barn of people you don't know well okay what does that mean what are we dealing with here are they all performers are they actually hosting real weddings every day it can't be because it's in the past they can't unless they

can find enough people who want to do period weddings every day oh which may be they might be able no i think this is a show in the show we have the show that is baseball and the show that is wedding the show that is wedding but it's a country wedding it's a country red and it's a barn dance is the barn dance related to the wedding not a barn it might be after the and i think it's a country red and it's a barn dance is the barn dance related to the wedding it might be after the and i think it's possible that a buffet that happens after is technically the catering of the wedding oh this is like a tony and tina's wedding sort of show oh so if we're in that territory oh imagine a disney this sounds better now that jason put it like that yeah i when the the imagineers located in glendale california we're coming up with real authentic country weddings

so maybe it's like the hoopty do review in which is in florida which is like a barbecue uh thing and a southern show maybe it's like this but that's fun right i think that i've never seen either i think it's fun i'm surprised i haven't seen it because it seems like it's like this but that's fun right i think that i've never seen either i think it's fun i'm surprised i haven't seen it because it seems like it's right up my alley so if it's fun like that then yes this sounds like a great idea now is it possible they just want to show you exactly how an old wedding was and how like maybe they're doing a full catholic ceremony in the church and you have to go through an hour of like the scripture which if you've ever done this i assume you have the full catholic in the church wedding probably it takes blocked it out you know what i'm talking about yeah i know what you're talking

like we've all been to weddings where like it's not yeah the ones yeah the fake ones we all do where somebody's friend does it somebody's friend does it they make a little joke that's not what weddings are no one is speaking latin but i've even i've even been in a church for a wedding where my friends have been like cut off like telling like the priest like we don't want this we don't want you to talk about this let's just say a couple of the nice passages and then let's get the show on the road here we're in the church for my family and that's it let's get us but then i've also been to the ones where they do the full like mass the full like catholic mass before the way part of the wedding yes i think that's the full

of the real if you're doing a real catholic wedding i think i think correct me if i'm wrong audience that you do kind of a full mass beforehand and then the wedding goes on and boy it drags that is because that's an hour right there exactly then you have to do other then it's the wedding and then you go to a different place to enjoy yourself uh so if they're trying to be appropriate like period appropriate perhaps uh they would do the full mass here i don't know i'm not exactly sure i don't know that a full mass is really a part of a country wedding well as i said it i said in a barn i shouldn't assume i don't know the religion of these of a country people that would hypothetical oh it's something bad oh they're bad maybe it's a

full bit is there a full baptist like uh ceremony before the actual wedding itself i don't know there's well there's a section where somebody's relative uh shames the bride and groom for having looked into each other's eyes before before getting married the preacher is uh wait did you did you guys watch that i remember watching this in the middle of the pandemic the robert pattinson tom holland movie oh god what is it called it's based on like some dark series uh a is it called? It's based on, like, some dark series. A really dark writer, and it's, like, in the, like, middle of, like, the border of Kentucky and

another state, and that is the one where Robert Pattinson said, I do not need a dialogue coach, and he's a preacher, and the voice he comes out with, it's kind of like this. Like, it's so, like, like Scott Townsend doing the Queen of england sort of uh but he's like a fire brimstone kind of con man preacher oh all right and that's what that's what it should i mean that would be a hell of a show it should be like uncle

baby billy oh yeah doing the wedding from righteous gemstones yes uh so there's a version there's a fun version and there's a less fun version so who know again we don't really know right like we didn't we know these and like okay we these details are all out and readable but who knows what would have been cut who knows that yeah i don't think they were exactly doing the math yet of how these shows are gonna work it might all have been cut. Yeah. It feels like what would have happened was, basically, it's just like a dining hall buffet style.

There'd be a stage, and they'd be like, here you are. We're at Judy's Wedding. We're here for Tony. It's more of a backstory than you actually... That's my guess. That feels like the easiest way to do it from moving from one venue to the dance hall and to the this that seems that seems like that would have been cut but um here

is the concept art from that uh executive uh summary of the farm i don't know if it's in the brochure and well i think it's a nice picture it's not the most inspiring piece of theme park concept art. It is just a painting of a farmhouse and some fields and a barn. It's well weird. It might be not the nicest land you've ever seen, but we make a good honest living here. This is definitely, yeah. They probably had to

illustrate it like that because they wanted to show like this is realistic. We're doing it real. It's not like Mickey's barn. It's not. Mickey's wacky barn. It's not Piedmont Kent's barn. No, it's not for some reason Superman's barn.

Do you think hijinks happen? Do you think like a big hose has comical leaks in it? No. Kids get shot in the face and get cooled in the summer? No, no, no. Our silo is used to store grain. There's nothing wacky going on here. A thrilling through line where the whole family

is like, is grandma's pie gonna cool in time for dinner? And then a surprise from two towns over. Surprise twist where some visitor named Jason takes it and sneaks away with it every day.

Oh no! They carved code! They carved hobo code in our fence post! That's how we knew to get the pie! Jason faces off with a crafty coyote over the pie. So, if this one

sounds familiar to you as well, you know, early California adventure at a farm is it a crazy fun farm no it's a farm that you look at and appreciate what farmers had to do and have to do to this day so a lot of these odd eisner ideas are born here and maybe as a result of all this eisner's amped everything that we just said eisner genuinely i mean he was portraying this and his biography this whole uh second this whole chapter about it like this completely was a passion project this is like a home run to him it loves every bit of it dying to get it done

so we got it and they came in to virginia with model full plan all right here you go everybody how much do you love it boo tomatoes boo um instant bad reaction and and here's where it gets odd is that okay the response because it seems like as time went on because they're like all right the city was not mad that they quietly bought up the land city i think happy that's gonna bring jobs sure it's gonna be good for the for the area this is a good thing um residents i think happy for the same reasons this could and and I think, had tried to make a mall happen on the same property, on that Exxon land,

and it fell apart because a bunch of historians and people trying to preserve the grounds got angry at it, and then it didn't happen. So if that happened for some mall that is not related to a firebrand, like lightning rod kind of company, imagine what happens when the Disney name is attached.

Yeah. It's, it sounds like there's so much, if you've watched, there's a great Defunctland video, of course, about this topic that we are featured in. And I will be honest with all three of or all three of you i am also by the way think there's an extra host that's not here uh i forgot that we are in this video a while back it was so long ago it's such a different world i go oh yeah there's a defunct video i should just kind of watch this in the background while i'm just to refresh some of this stuff and the first voice i hear is my own it's you you're eisner

eisner i'm eisner. I'm Eisner. I think I did a bad job, honestly. I think my Eisner's a little better now. It's not great, but I really was like, I hated how I sounded on this. But I truly am surprised. I was trying to be Eisner

and you beat me out. We both auditioned. Yeah, yeah. We both sent our takes. We both auditioned for Kevin. I don't think I had a choice. I was pervert Congressman Larry Craig. Is that who you were?

Yes, I was watching it again, and I was like, who is Jason again? And then Jason is Larry Craig. Larry Craig, the wide stance man. We all remember the wide stance man. I don't. No, it was a bathroom stall thing. It was a bathroom stall. It was like cruising in an airport, right?

Yeah, no. It seems harmless nowadays. Right, right. No, it was a yeah it was quaint um well that's fun that's a good part that's at least a meaty part um so yeah that i mean the video is great takes you through all of it but so one important thing about when this happens i mean undeniably eisner is inspired by Ken Burns and that we are in the wake of Ken Burns' Civil War. It's Ken Burns mania out there, which means it wasn't just Ken who got some fame off of this thing. The historians, the historians are rock stars or as much as you can be for being a Civil War historian. So David McCullough and Shelby Foote

are recognized once in a while when they're going to the market. Right. But these are suddenly, more than ever, these are names that are trusted. And when these people got on board with the rebellion, with the group that is trying to stop this thing from getting built

they lend so much um you know credence and weight to they're everybody's making these impassioned arguments that are essentially like this is the end of all of america if we let this like as if this is like the the ultimate battle for our culture like the hyperbole of these people was was totally insane yeah um david mccullough and uh what's the other one doris kearns goodwin kind of perennial non-fiction bestsellers doris kearns goodwin used to be on the daily show a lot she wrote that uh team of rivals book about like lincoln filling his cabinet with a bunch of uh rivals um so yeah did you catch the bit about uh disney's attempt to show we're we can do american history we're pretty good at it where they showed them the american

adventure in epcot and they're like well what do you think and they were like no that was your attempt they were warmer towards the hall of presidentsidents. But just the idea of like, we got this in the bag. We're going to show them the American adventure. Yeah, it was deep into the process, and things are going badly with the historians. And Eisner's like, but you know what? You don't know. And he now makes a point in his book,

which had not been updated since 1982. All the presidents went over better because it was the latter day version with my angelou and acknowledge some of the darker stuff eisner's book says that first stop of that little trip of like see we can do real stuff was the making of me the martin short film that we did a picture an episode about uh that's a disney sex ed film which i was trying to remember the that's okay so they thought all right so historians you're gonna calm down about this and then they sat him down in the theater and watched some to watch martin short say remember that sperm my dad

yeah center larry craig's like oh i like it tell me more i like and all the when when reading about the historians it really makes it seem like they're the avengers of historians like they've teamed up like they say they teamed up which makes me like and then the historians were presented and the historians to me and maybe just because i have comic book brain but they feel like the watchers or the Eternals or something. Oh, yeah. The historians are here to stop the Disney company. And, I mean, they helped, certainly.

Yeah, yeah. In the end game Infinity War, that was Disney versus everyone else. I would say the historians did help the team they did come through those portals at the end and helped and they're facing off against like a handful of congress people and um the governor virginia sure the people on disney's side right some local residents yeah yeah um well the whole the campaign was kind of mounted by this now this is some of the issue i think that i have with it um all right you know look we went through it a couple of those rides sound okay but this place sounds pretty annoying and i

am sure there would have been the issue of why are we trying we're getting a firework show out of this horrible conflict with very serious issues at the core of it there would have been those problems with this place and that's what public perception like that's the hill that this all died on but i do think that a big aspect of the campaign against disney's america was wealthy property owners being concerned what this would do to their property value and to the like is it going to make a bunch of trash pop up around here right i mean i saw the term nimby not in my backyard that is kind of the and this is eisner's point and can you take eisner at his word and should you possibly not but what he comes down to in his book and anytime

it comes up is like well what i didn't realize is that there were these incredibly wealthy families all over virginia and that they went and called the historians and hey can you help us get this thing out of here and then so maybe it was like a not in good faith they didn't care so much about the like i don't look philosophical issues just like i would not say i know the motivations of the eternals or of the avengers or the x-men i don't know the motivations of the historians but i will say uh anytime something happens in this country if you just dig a little bit it's usually because some very rich people either didn't want something to happen or did want something to happen so i will So I will believe that. You're belying that story seems plausible for that?

So that story seems plausible for that reason. Well, I think just commercially in culture, Disney was shorthand for commercialization, for like entertainment run amok, capitalism run amok. Sure, yeah. That is less of a concern nowadays. Because everything is. Everything is Disney. Everything is just, everything is run amok. And Disney owns everything of a concern nowadays because everything is everything is Disney everything is just

everything is run amok and Disney owns everything yeah Disney owns everything yes yeah we are well past amok not out of the shoe anywhere yeah

we're well past like there's tact and we can all agree this was good this is our respectful history this is our past as soon as YouTube

put that song in the iPod commercial it was all over as soon as Vertigo as soon as Vertigo was in that the ipod commercial it was all over as soon as vertigo as soon as vertigo was in that ipod commercial you think it was that was oh i thought you meant putting the album on the no that was after that was after yeah yeah i'm talking about hello hello we're at a place called vertigo in that uh i think it was that song yeah remember that early with the uh black and fluorescent like people in the is that what

you're talking about with the dancing there was there was but they were dancing in all the ipod commercials i feel like okay but i don't know i could be wrong that might not have been the end of everything yeah i don't believe so but um i just remembered it being a big moment when like a band was going to use their song for a commercial or something what oh so the you're saying the perception was that you too was you too had sold finally selling out yeah you too had sold out this extremely could i get a quick rogue punk band yeah yeah that's they were they had been completely pure up until that point and then it was all over um i in comparing and contrasting then and now uh like so there's like quotes about what this thing was going to do that were just so uh melodramatic uh here's one conservative columnist charlotte allen says that disney's

america will bring about nothing less than the certain destruction of all that is left in Northern Virginia of a traditional family and church-centered rural way of life. Huh. Huh. This is going to destroy. Then I was like, what's up with Charlotte Allen? I never heard that name before.

Here we go. Looked her up on Twitter. I can't tell you how many times she has retweeted Scott Adams in the last three months. Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow. Every day, Scott, there is a new Dilbert-centric issue in America. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, like evolution denier, besides all the expected transphobic racist stuff. So she probably wasn't upset that it was going to make history look too kind to to like the presidents and stuff she was probably worried that like like the they would sell a little mermaid with the penis cover or something like she was probably worried for like that weird puritanical thing i'm guessing this is my guess i don't know her i just know she retweets scott adams this is new information yeah yeah so she was worried disney was going to corrupt it's one of those that i love that there's so little culture on that side of things that everyone has to pretend they love dilbert now we love lee greenwood and

dilbert we're fine with that we have we don't need beyonce on our side we prefer to read Dilbert and then guffaw at it. We've got Dennis Miller and Adam Carolla. Hollywood is quaking in its boots at this new... Oh, Jason. What is it called? The Gina Carano movie. Yeah, the Gina Carano movie.

Everyone calls it the Gina Carano movie. Something on the prairie is what it's called, I think. It's all quiet on the prairie. It's called Gina is Back. Gina is Back. Scared, Hollywood. No, we don't. Actually, we stopped thinking about her the second to this.

There are hundreds of movies no one's ever heard of made every day here. We are supposed to be scared because you made a sub Redbox. No one cares. I mean, just so articles are just insane uh uh you know what could there would there have been some problems with this would this have been on the weaker end of disney park very possibly but like oh my god i i frank rich was writing about how this is going to bring prostitutes and drugs to the area yeah famous disney byproducts yeah and then he says will colonial williamsburg itself a doctored imitation of history and

a precursor of disneyland add audio animatronic colonials to its cast of actors which which i say that sounds awesome you go to colonial williams's a bunch of colonist robots walking around? Great. Yeah. What would be the problem with that? Walking around, yeah. Yeah, this would be better. Yeah, look, I don't think this would have sunk the country if this was built.

No. This would have been something to laugh at constantly. Yeah, like, is it still there? This would have been something that was hilarious there's still the industrial revolution so actors still have to do the baseball shows there's four people in the stands the the the nighttime spectacular it's down to one battleship the other one's been broken for 10 years but they're still pretending it's there it's been in b mode only one ship they just say it's there in the distance,

but you can't see it. You hear sound effects. You hear it, but you can't see it. Pull the ship up, I'm trying. But yeah, no, this wouldn't have rotted our brains any more than hundreds of other things that rotted our brains as kids. No, no.

And as proof of that, the whole thing... Okay, so again, let me go back to a point from the beginning. By the time this got to America at large, and what is it that plastic Disney wants to do? They want to build on top of a Civil War battlefield? Even these historians are writing like they want to remove real history and replace, put synthetic history wrong this was some plot of land that exxon had they weren't going to do anything to the battlefield

they were not going to touch it um really strange that that became but like as eisner talks about that was when you've lost the battle of perception you're sunk and that's whatever we thought got up in a press conference and look exxon hope there was oil under here there wasn't so they sold us this land is not the land that you think it is yes yeah should have like he should have eisner should have got got out there in the way that jay should have got out there jay leno early on when he was having a few with letterman howie mandel says he should have gotten out there and defended himself against david letterman that's what how he's very insistent on. Howie Mandel says he should have gotten out there and defended himself against David Letterman.

That's what Howie's very insistent on, and that's what Eisner should have done here. Should have gotten out ahead of it and drawn a big picture, a big map, and shown where everything was and defended himself. Yeah. Well, he did is the issue. He said some stuff that got him in hot water, I would say.

All right, so you're saying Jay Leno was right to not defend himself in the early 90s. You're saying Jay's point. Yeah, he won. I don't know why Howie Mandel is backseat driving. You should have fought Letterman. Why? He won. You're right.

Why are we going over this again? And mainly, Mike, why are you watching it? I've recently upped the amount of punishing content I've been watching. If listeners think you've heard too much about Club Random, I I've recently up to the amount of punishing content I've been watching. It has been. If listeners think you've heard too much about club random, we get a new alert personally handed to us from Mike every week. Oh,

John McEnroe's on. John McEnroe's on club random. I don't know what happened. Oh, I think you have whatever Charlotte Allen thought was going to happen to Virginia. It's happening to your brain. Something's wrong with my brain. I'll be honest with you.

Your brain is power. I feel like we were just talking about John McEnroe just being a guy that's around. Yeah, we talked about it on the Calpacus episode. Yeah, yeah. And then days later. That's why I sent it. Yes. No, no, no.

I did that. Yeah, yeah. Because recent McEnroe discussion. Recent McEnroe. No. Okay. So, no. it yes no no i get that out yeah yeah because uh recent mackinrow discussion recent mackinrow um no and okay so no eisner he went on the defensive big time he when the notion of these historians who he's going up against comes up he says to the washington post in the same interview where he said the thing jason brought up of like oh they were gonna be raising up everybody's gonna be raising us above their shoulders.

Yeah. Then he says, I sat through many history classes where I read some of their stuff, and I didn't learn anything. It was pretty boring. I guess I can say that I object to some of their stuff. So Eisner does go, oh, the historians have a problem? Snooze, boo. Yeah, we make rides where you get to sit on an elephant, okay?

So you want to come at me and say we're the problem? Michael Eisner gives the most Homer Simpson-like response to the historians. Like, boring. I got to ask, Mike, which ones did you read? Tell us, because when I was in history class, we were all reading the same bullshit whitewashed history textbook that everyone else was. Yeah, I didn't know that he was reading the books of the people who he was fighting against. No way.

That's madness. Now there's some revisionist history from Michael. But it all put him on the defensive, and there was a full-page article in one of the big newspapers with a big picture of Eisner. I'm sorry, a full-page ad. The picture of Eisner that said, the man who would destroy history. Little did they know, if they just waited a little longer, we'd have a few of those. It's a different CEO.

It's a different 90s CEO who would be the man who would destroy history. Yeah, the man who would destroy history. Sounds like a great novel that Jason would read. Oh, yeah. Sounds like the man who sold the world. Yeah, The Man Who Would Destroy History. Sounds like a great novel that Jason would read. Oh, yeah. Like a great kind of pulpy novel. Sounds like The Man Who Sold the World. Yeah, sure.

It's a very cool title. It is a cool title. I'm going to use it if they haven't. But now they have to go fight with Congress. This group is powerful enough to now Congress has to hear about it, and they have to talk to somebody named Senator Dale Bumpers. And that's all right. You know,

we all punish ourselves with it. Did I watch the full five hour C span? I did not. That seems horrible. That seems awful. There's some fun quote. I feel like perjurer did for his video. He had that odd run about just like a guy saying,

well, I don't know if Mickeykey's gonna wear blue or gray that was jason's line in it yeah you read that part larry that's larry craig yeah oh no kidding okay okay um so it's this is bad this is just awful for pr frank rich is yelling at him and david mccullough's yelling it's it's just going great. Over the course of this, one odd thing that happens. So one of the things that they're getting hit with is it's going to be sanitized, whitewashed history. So an Imagineer, Bob Weiss, who is a major figure today and in Imagineering Story, he goes on the defensive and he says, This is not a Pollyanna view of history.

We want to make you feel what it was like to be a slave or what it was like to escape through the underground railroad oh yeah everyone pretty quickly started tugging on their shirt collars for that one everyone was like and pretty quickly the uh i this the the slave attraction or exhibit museum uh was like everyone the question is was there even going to be such a thing had they even gotten so far as to figure out like is there literally you are a slave i mean i hope not that doesn't say again it's a thing that you could do in a museum and it would be very affecting and moving in a museum but really weird to do it in a disney right because you're like getting charged like a hundred dollars it's going into dis Disney. Right, because you're getting charged like $100 that's going into Disney's pocket, and then you're buying a turkey leg.

Yes, the for-profit nature of it. Yeah, if they want to do some really expensive, highly-imagineered thing that gives you a nice history lesson and puts you back in that period, all right, sure. But you're buying Donald in the tri-corner hat on the way out like all of that stuff surrounding it is what makes they not just do it's an old timey town why do they ever think they needed to do any of this or tackle any of like these are only they got hornets nests well they got the it's what we've been saying the hubrisris starts. It starts there, and then as they start running into the reality of all of this,

they try to keep correcting, and then you end up with this like, what are we doing here? Oh, a thousand percent. Well, to get into that, yes, this Bob Weiss quote ruined everything. He's obviously still a major Disney figure, so he was not thrown under the bus. But he left after this. Oh, really? He was one of the main people oh and if you recall he started his own company remember they know this guy's in

Imagineering story Bob Weiss is did he leave no no I'm saying he left and I always heard I forget where I read that he left to like let why don't you let the heat die down like he he was senior vice president so he could easily start his own you know consulting company and then that one dive video we found was credited to his company production oh that's interesting and then eventually does come back and i think helps save some other projects oh that's crazy i think uh recently kind of retired into a consulting visit you know when they kind of put people out to pastor and they're good they're gonna be a consultant or they're gonna be a liaison oh sure yeah yeah um well he got sort of like railroaded on this and

weisner said that's a person who does not usually talk to the public so don't listen to him uh uh so now they have to start go well okay we can't just say stuff like that if we're not gonna and that doesn't say so anything that we present to the public now has to be much more manicured and they had to really start thinking of things these things through the lens of history um one big thing the the name the name itself disney's america was trouble for them because that implies like ownership or it's our version of america they thought they were like people were going to be like disney thinks they own america yeah like which is i guess they do in some ways so oh yeah sure so you don't want to invite that yeah you don't want to invite that thought um but they have to start backing off of

that and we end up with they imagineers keep developing and it turns into something else and now it's called disney's american celebration some of the thought behind all this is okay we have to look at like they're looking at each attraction one by one they go okay can we have the fun if but i'll say like is it insulting to not deal with the issue at that foot here uh like the lewis and clark ride we can do that but maybe we should not also be talking about manifest destiny yeah that's part of it no it doesn't sound right it seems like a little heavy to tackle in a queue for a you will get wet ride yeah a ride a ride where you're going to get your pants wet. Like, you don't need. But other ones, they determined,

you know what, we cannot figure out this balance. This is in Eisner's book, The Industrial Revolution, The Roller Coaster. They decided it would trivialize and even demean the attempt to portray the steel mill realistically. I mean, this is, what are we doing? Again, what are we doing here, folks?

I mean, that's what you lose? We're a little bit concerned about the portrayal of Native Americans and stuff, but we're actually very concerned about the steel mills. Don't want to offend the mill. The mill itself. The buildings. The buildings will be offended, which we care more about, which I guess is really, isn't that just capitalism, baby?

I mean, if they really want to talk about positives coming out of the Industrial Revolution, the organized labor movement, the five-day work week with the weekend. It sounds like kick-ass rides. It sounds like kick-ass rides. And also, disney has benefited from those things as people have more leisure time and more money uh they also in house aren't

the craziest they're not really wild about unions yeah fire you know here's what i say uh unionized imagineering they have that reputation where like they hire a bunch of people for projects and then they fire them all like they've been getting away with that for way too long oh yeah that's true history of it for sure um so we we start changing it into american celebration no more stew don't want to offend the mill no it can't happen uh um it all just becomes like i mean and some of this comes from jim hill and there's a Collider article that I think Drew Taylor wrote. So there's details about this, and we don't have time to go through all of this. But like, literally, I don't know how they make these calculations.

It's not the little colonial town you enter anymore. Now you enter through an area called democracy, and then it has things called America, a user's guide, the American Free Speech Forum, and the American Hall of Fame. What? What's happening? Why would you want to do this? And then they stop referring to them by the crazy Roaring Twenties kind of names, and it just becomes family, creativity, and fun. Work. All right.

So I think we did everything there is to do in service and sacrifice do you want to go have lunch at work well can i read the streets of america the food please options this is truly one of the weirdest presentations chicago chicago style pizza los angeles hispan Hispanic and fast food. New Orleans, Cajun. New York City, Jewish deli food. St. Louis, barbecued ribs. San Francisco, Chinese.

What? Again, you've tried to, you've broken it down too far. This park, I think a big thing about this park, it shows the limits of like everything's a story. Everything's an adventure like maybe maybe go back to the drawing board you know where can you buy hard tech is what i would say well obviously at the civil war oh okay at the fort where you can sit in the bleachers for the battle of the monitor and the merryman you would just nibble on some hard tech i'm sure they'd get

great wholesale prices at heart for hard have you ever had hard tech i i think uh i was shown to me at one of the many i didn't say have you looked at hard i i think i don't know if i've ever eaten hard well let's get you some fat back is just really fatty bacon, essentially. Okay. We're going to get you some hardtack for Christmas. Sure. Okay. It's like a thick biscuit? Yeah. It's like a...

It lasts for a really long time. Okay. But I'm not going to give it to you right away. I'm going to buy it, but I won't give it to you right away because it lasts so long. Oh, that's fair. I just want to test it. So you'll get it for next Christmas. Buy it this Christmas and give it i can age

it if you want aged hard to like a like a year and a half aged um up to you you know i'll think about it one thing this was going to have was just the land a new version of the land again you're what you were saying about yeah and i get to see a fire they just would have had a land this sounds even more boring than the life of america it shows the profound changes that can happen in a single day a single year and in a thousand years what is this who is coming to the we're cutting the mine car coaster that's done done. We're putting in the life of America. And then in work, there's a tour of factories like Crayola Crayons. I like that.

Ben and Jerry's. I mean, I guess seeing- The Crayola Crayon Factory, I would go to once a week if it was near here. I guess so. Yeah. As a kid, I was obsessed with that. Like the Mr. Rogers video where they would show you how the crayons were made. Oh that was a tour that was in pennsylvania one of them oh did you do it i i i am not sure if i ever got it sounds like you didn't up there i don't think i did i think my

brother did on a school trip you would be talking about it yeah i would remember it yeah then you got disney's america live where you could listen to a 1940s-era swing band concert at the USO Bandstand. All right, it's losing some of the hosts, but not all. Jerry's Crayons and a big band swing party? Jason Sheridan's going to be right there. He would never move to the West Coast. Nightly Dorsey Brothers. I watched the Legends of Baseball play, and I watched the Legends of Swing Swing. Waving my little pennant that says Dori Brothers. I watched the Legends of Baseball play and I watched the Legends of Swing Swing.

Waving my little pennant that says Dorsi Brothers. It's so funny that this thing evolved into being way tackier. It's tackier sounding to me. Yeah, I guess so. I think it's a cleaner name. Disney's American Celebration.

I don't know. I think that's kind of a clunky corporate... Yeah, I get why the people were criticizing the other one, but it's a... I don't know. I like it better. Do you guys want to hear a little bit of thoughts from the man himself, from Michael Eisner, about this?

He talked to one Terry Gross about this very issue, and there's some interesting parts of this discussion I love the words Disney's America I think it describes exactly what it is it's a park it's a park that teaches history using Disney techniques I think the Museum of Tolerance or the Holocaust Museum more accurately in Washington uses a lot of Disney technique. A lot of Disney people worked on that.

All sorts of walkthroughs and use of multimedia effects. That's what I thought it meant. I didn't think it meant that Annette Funicello was going to be the queen of America. So it was a long walk to get to americanette i mean again like we're finding ways to appeal to most people in this room swing music and that is the answer they didn't want to do it they didn't want to do a net uh yeah so he again the issue is those those things are not making Disney massive amounts of money and selling tacky plush. Uh-huh.

Sure, similar people work on museums and work on exhibits and work on things that are imagineered in some way. We did the Van Gogh thing that has been going around a couple months ago. Oh, yeah? And that's very imagineered in some way. We did the Van Gogh thing that was been going around a couple months ago. Oh, yeah? And that's very imagineered. There's music. There's like it's presenting his art on the walls and like a movement.

And honestly, it was in 360 now that I'm thinking about it. Oh, and yet? And I felt it was too much. Honestly, I felt it was too much. Too many degrees. And I'm not doing this for the bit. I remember going, yeah, it'd be better if it was like 240 or many degrees i'm not doing this for the bit i remember going yeah it'd be better if it was like 240 or 250 wow but it was still pretty cool to see and it's so

his point is is correct that similar people who do work can present historical moments in a in a classy way it's just that it's this was not going to be hit he when he started getting real defensive it became like you know we're not even going to be hit he when he started getting real defensive it became like you know we're not even going to make that much money off of this thing we're doing this for you yeah right we've gotten pretty bad at a few things okay so then all right we're already at disney's american celebration where it's now it's a swing band venue like and then the news hits that it's got it has to be closed four months out of the year. Then he has a massive heart operation and Frank Wells dies.

And this is kind of documented in this very interview and in the Perjurer video. He just didn't have the heart for it. He didn't have the stamina for the fight at this time. So they back down, but we're very like, we're going to not do it here, here, but we're going to do it somewhere. So you didn't, look, we're doing a historical park. No, we are not backing down.

Then, of course, years have gone by, and they have not. Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, Frank, maybe if he had lived, Frank, he was always presented in all this material like the good cop, essentially, Eisner's crazy cop. So I wonder, yeah, would he have talked Michael completely out of it or would he have figured out a way to do it and have smoothed out relations with government and press and everything who knows i'm just saying it's it's interesting to think about um but yeah he never he never got to see it look i'd like to think he would have said stop yeah i sure he'll build some rides somewhere i i feel like he would have been very again too because you know we talk about elements of this showed up in the parks you know a lot in

in california adventure there was the one proposed like when nots berry farm was up for sale yeah they were like oh well we could do this we could buy and do disney's america there a big reason being they had a recreation of independence Hall. And that seemed to be a big driver. Look, they already have an Independence Hall. We might as well buy it, redo all of it, bit by bit. We'll keep Ghost Town basically the same. We'll keep another air... They have

Rapids. We can make that the Lewis and Clark thing. Mystery Lodge. Oh, Mystery Lodge. And there's Johnny Rockets there. Like there's sort of the Native American. Right. Yes. So, and there's Johnny Rockets there. And that's American as apple pie. It's a perfect recreation of the 1950s. Right. And the Knotts family said no.

Basically, no. This is, I find this story fishy. I find it really strange that Knotts would say no. Disney comes in. Here's money. No. What year is that? Do we know i think

they were uh in dire they weren't in dire straits yet where they had when they sold they were just thinking about selling it they were like yeah mulling mulling it over but they they were maybe like they wanted knots berry farm to be kept like we want to sell knots berry farm we don't want it to turn into some yeah they wanted it pristine much like the Manassas uh battlefield was kept pristine by the National Park Service which okay so this brings me to this perhaps my final point is the whole like we need to band together we the homeowners who don't even live in this county need to team up with historians who don't seem to understand what Disney's actually going to do we need to protect up with historians who don't seem to understand what disney's actually going to do we need to protect our precious manassas which nothing is going to happen to

and something is happening five miles away from it uh i was like what's going on over there today two miles away much closer within two miles of the precious manassas battlefield there is a golden corral and a cracker barrel so hell yeah like all that shit suddenly went out the window fountain baby golden corral oh yes god you've never seen a commercial golden corral there's a big chocolate fountain i have never been i've wanted to go with jason for many years and we've never found the time oh you got it haven't rushed back to buffets quite yet we have not been back to the fountain based area big chocolate fountain i think i maybe i heard they stopped running the fountain during covid i hopefully it's back though that's the only change shut off the valve we don't let you put your face in it anymore for some reason

yeah they found there was a lot of covid in the chocolate so they had to turn it off because uh uh it couldn't be it's better to have uh still chocolate than moving chocolate oh yeah it moves all the particles around exactly the covet alive um there's also again closer to the field than disney's america would have been there is a mall called bull run plaza and that contains an olive garden and a trampoline park oh awesome so and by the way i'm not against any of these things i like all of this bullshit but like what how come those are all fine much closer than this would have been there's a lot smaller footprint i suppose they. But a closer footprint. And also, if they're so like,

it's the synthetic history, and we are not preserving, oh, and now Bull Run Plaza with the Marshalls and the TJ. That seems like it'll be a very nice tribute to those who died that day. The park would have been bigger. That's what I think.

They would have been bigger and more. They had all sorts of blue sky an rv park homes uh oh yes i guess you could argue they thought perhaps yes this would become like disney world and they would slowly take over dc oh yeah yeah possibly if you if it's like an infection you know if you let it if you let it fester here for a little bit, they'll take over. Don't worry, the bacterial infection didn't take, but the viral one did. And then where would we be at

if Disney had fully imagineered all of Washington, D.C.? Would it have been better than it is now? All those statues would be talking. We know that. Well, we'd like that. Lincoln would say, Heidi. That's true. That seems like more fun to me

it does seem like more fun uh uh the the fence outside the white house would have little mickey faces on it so you don't jump it because you get impaled on one of them as it will if uh eiger runs that's yes that's a good point we're not out of those uh woods i hope he has those on his mansion mans Mansions. Interesting. Is this there today? If they built it then, is it there today? Is it radically changed?

Because something Drew Taylor pointed out, everything that made it into a park later, the farm and the old timey theme park, that all has changed. We've gotten rid of all that at California Adventure. So it was a park that was only the stuff that was like oh we gotta change this fast yeah it's a very good question because it's still had i mean river country i guess is the closest thing to a closed disney park right am i thinking of any is there anything else that's right that's like the closest thing to any like disney ever admitting defeat essentially yeah um and that isn't obviously that crazy of

a situation because it's a couple like slides and it's not that big and whatever but they did let it rot which there was of course video footage of which they did not like uh getting out there but they didn't protect it that much so obviously they didn't care so much but uh it is an interesting question because i don't think no disney does not want to lose they do not want to close a park they don't want to have to level rides and like yeah that's the end game isn't it yeah and it's the optics of we're going to bulldoze the park called america it's like yeah i think they would have they would have been pouring money into this sinkhole still to this day. And maybe it would have, I don't know,

I'm just imagining, maybe in some weird way they end up selling it to the government and then it kind of becomes non-profit and they stop running expensive stuff. And then it's just like, oh, you kind of tour some of the the like buildings they've like put up there but maybe the budget's been way pulled back and they started building houses on some of it sure yeah like blank land they redo one of the rides to uh born on the

fourth of july mission access va benefits sure they do yeah they update it in that way of course so yeah i feel like there's some there's some weird middle of the road solution that uh yeah to where like technically it's still alive exactly that we did not close the park and we've never closed the park never we technically still own some of this but it's it's just like we're just saving it's just saving face we're just saving face the buildings are operate you can still buy a hot dog there you can you can the baseball stadium there you real games are not played there you yeah sure it just is a genuine state yeah it's just a stadium now yeah or it's just like a little look where we won't we don't have anyone doing it but we won't stop you from putting on an old scratchy uniform around the bases well

that's great you want to put on the show feel a disney dream weddings is like you go to the base you put on old-timey baseball outfits and get married to home plate why not it's all a baseball way now it's all right so umpire marries you today disney's america would be mainly a baseball wedding baseball chapel yeah baseball stadium chapel and the umpire what marries you he's ordained i now pronounce you safe but it's a full rebuild they build a new casey's quarter yeah yeah the wedding. Casey's Chapel. Yeah, Casey's Chapel. The wedding reception is hot dogs. Casey at the, what's the thing?

Altar. Altar, thank you. Am I the asshole for having Casey and Mickey and Minnie at my wedding, but not paying for the hot dog buffet? Well, it might have been worth it. It might have been worth it to build the most expensive baseball altar of all time. What an insane history, though. And thanks for going over it with us on this joyous Fourth of July week.

You survived podcast thread. First, like, marathon, one in a minute, but there's so much to go over and uh i hope it was i hope this was an educational but fun yes a blend i hope that it was was both so historians aren't offended but that it was a it was almost as fun as almost getting burnt by a vat of right it was a meal if it was a, it was not a full Leno hot dog hamburger meal. There was some of that, but also a little vegetable in there. So it was a good

balance. A little bit of what Mavis has to do, which is putting a little bit of broccoli into Jay's hot dogs. Or when Jay is sleeping, she drops a little broccoli in his mouth. Tiny pieces into Jay's mouth while he's sleeping. Have you heard this?

Jay, you're having a nightmare. Have you heard this? You have heard about this. You have. Now, Jay, wake up. They haven't heard about it. Wait, wait, wait. I didn't say that. You can find us on the social media podcast.

The Ride. Merch is available on our T-Public store. And for three bonus episodes a month, check out Podcast The Ride. The Second Gate. Splash Tackler's over there. A bunch of stuff. One more bonus episode every month. Also on our new tier, Club 3.

You'll find an episode there next week. We're taking a little late 4th of July break. But we wanted to give you... We had to hit you with some patriotic shit before we took our well-earned break. So, great. Check out Patreon and thanks for listening. Goodbye.

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.