Podcast: The Ride - European Vacation: Chessington World of Adventures with David Sims

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

David Sims (Blank Check, The Atlantic) joins us to discuss England's Chessington World of Adventures. A park filled with very delightful, VERY British characters! Sail on over to The Second Gate for a day trip to Popeye Village Malta! 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

DOG! Tally-ho and welcome to Podcast the Ride's European vacation hosted by three guys who are excited to learn there's a whole country that's like the Austin Powers Bar in Glendale. I'm Scott Gairdner, joined by Mike Carlson. What? Imagine the bar, a whole country of the bar. Okay, there's this really nice bar in Glendale that's themed to the film Austin Powers that I love.

And I'm surprised to learn that the location from that movie is actually a real place in real life I can visit. It is real and it is just as swinging. Wow, because that Glendale Austin Powers bar is so swinging and not shady at all. It's definitely, it's very not shady, very not sticky. It's a fine establishment that I'm sure will survive the pandemic.

Jason Sheridan, can you believe this? I just can't imagine a whole country that's as cool as that Austin Powers bar. Have you been to the Austin Powers bar, Jason? You know, I actually haven't. Okay. I don't know why you didn't go. I think I invited you.

I went with Anthony Gio and a biz biz biz friend one night i've stepped in several yeah i think he's a frequenter um and it's all day it's all um black light is that right or like maybe you might call it that i don't know if i don't know if it's like a cheaper version of black light maybe like austin powers liked uh he liked to be in a haunted house all the time like uh yeah like a velvet led zeppelin paint you know poster uh-huh any if you make it out to glendale and the pandemic is over and the austin powers bar is still there just take a look at it but don't stay long yeah it might be it might have been going this entire time by the way they might have never closed during seems very

possible if any bar was was to knock you would just go up to the door knock and say do i make you horny baby and they'd let you in if you had a secret word they know the obscure code very obscure um we we actually we are talking about a uh-themed environment that is a lot more ornate and well done, if you can imagine, than the Austin Powers bar. I think so. We'll decide as we go. We'll decide. The second stop on Podcast Red's European vacation, or I guess the third, if you will, you know, head to the second gate to check out the day trips. We just went to the Popeye Village and Malta and had a good time.

But we're talking today about a place that is Southwest of London. It's a place called Chessington world of adventures. I had never heard of this park. I don't know if you guys had before, but I'm glad I have now. And we were made aware of it by our guests today. Let's bring him in. He is a staff writer for the Atlantic and along with P with ptr legend griffin newman he hosts the excellent podcast blank check david sims is with us hi guys i just want to say something about this austin powers bar that i didn't know existed until you were talking oh really oh yeah it's called the electric

pussycat and i'm seeing here yes um that's correct you know so i just googled while you were talking just to see like all right what are they you know how austin powers are we talking two things one obviously britain just like this place just in general the whole vibe oh thing mostly black lights right black lights union jacks everywhere you know velvet and velour and like squiggly lines you know how like austin powers it's all like, you know, they love like zigzags. Oh yeah, it's real zigzaggy country and a lot of double-decker buses

both inside and outside. Right. Two, for my podcast, we recently-ish, I mean like six months ago now, went to something called Trolls The Experience that was like a sort of a themed, interactive,

whatever, inside park, like devoted sure pop up an activation uh inactivate yeah they they sure activate the heck out of you know an empty office in midtown and it had the basic it didn't have the same like items but the same visual aesthetic as this basically like a lot of purple and pink you know what i mean um and like in the dark does that kind of maybe get you around um you know having to do a very complicated themed environment right if it's mostly in the dark with just some splashes of color right so you don't right you know you can you can like that's that's cutting you a lot of corners right yes absolutely it seems like it yeah um i don't know about this trolls thing what else can you tell us about that uh it's basically

like you know it's the it's it's centered on the movie trolls so there's a lot of like lore and characters from those movies if you haven't seen them so if you're going in expecting like the toy trolls you're out of luck but they like do your hair and you have to like i don't know you make a like a mix tape and you you gather up some you know glitter and you have a dance party it's all very fun and when we did it it was three grown men and they very clearly like made sure we were alone like they were like you're not going in with a group of kids like you guys are going to have to deal with this by yourself we're going to sort of like hermetically

have you have the it was very everyone was very professional you can listen to our episode about it it was a very they did the best they could with three thirty something guys being like hey we're here for trolls the experience we hit a patreon goal so we have to do this. They were all very nice.

Wait, they do your hair? They do. You have to pay extra if you want a physical wig. Otherwise, you get a paper hat, essentially, in the shape of Troll. Okay. Yes. And did you not pay for the wig?

We did not pay for the wig. But I did get a lot of glitter on my face. I don't know. I did as much lot of glitter on my face I don't know you know I did as much as I physically could you got wrapped up in the spirit you I'm sure we're singing the Timberlake song

and branch I believe those are the names of the lead characters in trolls was hanging out with them did the trolls fart glitter they didn't in front of us because mostly it was just a bunch of like eager 20 something you imagine like broadway you know

aspiring broadway actor types like leading us around but i have seen both of those movies and they do fart glitter right okay they saved that effect they had that effect in universal studios i think florida oh that's impressive they must not know they didn't roll it out i guess to the uh startup experience whatever that experience was yes um this you know it's going to be exciting for we'll we'll all know the mythology very well when trolls world tour wins best picture at the Movie List Academy Awards. Is that the highest grossing of the year with an asterisk?

Or is it Sonic? Oh, yeah. No, Sonic's doing good. Right. Sonic still has... Yeah. He had those solid three pre-COVID months to all do itself.

Sonic was this year? Yeah. Jesus. Sonic was this year. He was the Valentine's Day surprise. You know what Sonic was this year yeah Jesus Sonic was this year you know what else was this year yeah Sonic and Doolittle Doolittle is going to be nominated

for best picture at least it's not going to win because maybe there was some problems with it but it'll be in the top 10 at 5 or 10 right there's some politics so yeah maybe it'll it's too polarizing to win but right it'll get a good chunk of nominations there's there's animal uh ass play in both troll and troll i guess trolls aren't animals i guess they're magical creatures i apologize to the trolls wait you can so farting glitter is ass play and reaching up into a dragon's asshole to get what was it again i think it was so long yeah yeah oh yes bagpipes were the button that was

the funny punch line after pulling out like multiple suits of armor seat i should have said seat play i apologize to all the oh oh yes yeah we call butt seats so we have to call them seat holes uh it reached into a seat hole covid covid has made me a dirt uh filthier in my language and i apologize well that's the old we as part of this european vacation we're getting uh we're getting a lot raunchier we're getting a looser european attitude i'm going through character development now and i'm becoming a little bit less uh uptight when it comes to certain material less of a brood i see yes it's my awakening it's my awakening with language and with sexuality so apologies david if it's uh we aren't you know it's the

most proper hosts support you on all your journeys thank you well um you're skeptical um you're imagining journeys that we shouldn't encourage him too much we want to encourage him but we don't want to push him too far um okay well before we get into the park uh today we're we're talking about this this partially because you know i uh david i listened to blank check and there's a there's a fact that comes up uh pretty sparingly it's it's always handled very tastefully if it comes up which is rarely uh and that is the the kind of obscure fact that you actually grew up in britain i did yes and of course anytime it comes up everyone's very charmed and very delighted to hear it and everyone's really nice to me about it everyone lets it pass in a very very sweet way griffin couldn't be cooler yes i did i did move to england at the age of nine and i lived there till i was 22

um in london in north london so yes i spent all of my adolescence there and certainly i've never been to, uh, you know, Disneyland, Disney world, like the, the, the,

the King American theme parks. Cause we just weren't here, you know, and like, you know, but I have been to Britain's excuses for theme parks. Some of which are very, some of like,

I shouldn't, I shouldn't, I shouldn't be too mean, but, uh, it's a little, that's what I was going to ask. You know,

you brought this, this main topic to us but i but i was curious any any since we haven't really done a lot of uh london or england or if you know knowing that um the three of us all really enjoy uh stupid inane themed experiences um were we to uh go to london or anywhere else in England? Is there anything else you would recommend in the world of the dumbest themed entertainment possible? This is the problem because I feel like you got... Like Alton Towers, which maybe you've dug up in your research.

I'm not sure. That's kind of like the king park in England of like... It's got great rides. That's sort of... If you're a britain and you want to go on like you know hair raising roller coasters that's where you're going to go and then thorpe park is kind of number two chestington is a a solid third like very much not challenging but i don't perfect i'm so glad that's our choice for the britain's third best

park right third best park same parent company yeah yes exactly three uh and honestly if you're throwing lego land in there like jessington might not be able to match lego land like which is another you know but like i don't like same parent company on that too i don't monopoly yeah really see now now you're you guys know more than me i did i did know that there was this this one parent company controlling so many of these places but there's not like a lot of places that have this sort of extensive really thought through theming right like the worlds with like characters and like all that stuff in britain at all i think i can't think of the best place to go for for that you know i think your your option would probably be Disneyland Paris or Euro Disney,

whatever, whatever it's branded as now. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Which is pretty, fairly close.

Yeah. Like that's, and like, that was a spot where when I was a kid, I think my parents were like, well, maybe we could go there, but it had such a bad reputation in the nineties is kind of like that.

The launch had sort of flopped and it, you know, they weren't really figuring. I feel like maybe it has a better rep now i don't i don't think it didn't when i was a kid uh i've made my mixed opinions uh known on on the podcast i uh there's some wonderful things there and i think it was designed with the best intent but man there is there is some trash there is some big time trash around that place. It was on the way up before the world shut down. Really?

It was getting some new stuff? Yeah. Well, they finally closed the Armageddon themed experience. There was a little corner of the park that's Armageddon and Aerosmith, which in Aerosmith did the song for Armagedageddon so it's really aerosmith alley and armageddon obliterates the city of paris in a scene that has nothing to do with anything else like it essentially a visual effects demonstration they're like oh let's check in with how's worth doing and you see paris getting nuked with a meteor is that right and then you don't see any like human fallout no from that no one even brings up like by the way millions dead from that like everyone's just like

we did it we blew up the asteroid and everyone's like waving american flags and like it's that it's funny that in paris they were like let's let's let's highlight this like let's bring this up it's cold callous destruction of our entire city um that's kind of true in a lot of disaster movies i guess that you just you see maybe stoic cities that we care about because it's in america or something but then they'll just toss off like mumbai is gone and everybody just looks down for a second and that's it that happened in independence day with chicago i think they say chicago has been destroyed but you never get to see anything right so when i was a little like young not that little

but when i was watching it i was like chicago destroyed we don't even get to see it we don't even get to enjoy wrigley field being blown up what a bummer yeah you're left out of the um and jason you got nothing right i just i just watched the scene. I just queued it up on YouTube and watched it. It's 30 seconds long. That's what Paris gets. Paris just getting blown up. Yeah, no, Chicago, I think, doesn't get anything. I vaguely remember where you're from.

Yeah, you don't see anything. You don't get any gratification. Yeah, it's just like, yeah, all those cities are gone. We don't have the budget. Offscreen. Offscreen. Wrote them off..i.p okay let's get on with this like a soap opera character yep i'm sorry they had to go uh um uh but so okay so you so you're implying that um you know themed theme parks are different themed entertainment is is different and perhaps uh like maybe a little a little lesser than in uh

in england i mean i don't want to be too rude because i'm not an expert i and i haven't been to alton towers or thor park since i was a little kid and like you know i'm sure they had you know with alton towers is on like um a big old there's like a big old castle there that they bought like so i think that's really nice you know like i think there's lots of there's nice things but i always think of those places and they would advertise constantly on tv when i was a kid because i'm a kid i'm watching kids shows they're advertising roller coasters to me it was always about like we got we just got the the gnarliest new ride like you won't believe how intense this thing is like that's what they were always leading with not like come to a magical universe and it's fun for the whole family it was like we're gonna you're gonna die you're gonna it's gonna be awful you'll be so upset after you do this and the kids are

like i gotta ride nemesis like i gotta ride this this insane thing that's gonna warp my brain well david since you bring that up i feel like i should let you know since you are a film writer alton towers in the last couple years introduced a roller coaster based on the wicker man wow that goes through the wicker man all right i'm into that that's kind of fun yeah that's cool by the way that's cool i'm assuming it's it's a wooden coaster right i i would assume yeah it's a wooden coaster that goes through the big wooden guy. I think generic. I don't think it's Cage.

I don't know that you get a lot of Nick Cage. I think you just get like smoke effects. They don't like throw toast at you. I'm trying to think of like the bees. No bees. No bees, right? Yeah. No writhing, bee-headed animatronic.

No, he's not punching women like like throughout oh that's right is there a I don't I haven't watched this montage of insane parts of that movie in a while but does he is he in a bear costume and punches a woman well because it's a neil labute movie neil labute famously chill

dude yes and he his like his like revamp of the original movie is it's like this is like a female only colony and that's why they're like be obsessed they're they're you know farming honey or whatever but it's all women and so when cage has to like start trying to fight his way out he's just like throwing women against the wall and punching people and he's wearing a bear suit for some reason. So it's not, he's not targeting women.

He just moves around to punch. Yeah. He doesn't have any problems with women. And if you look throughout all his works, he'll definitely not see anything like that. That would alarm you. I have the wicker man. Now is my background.

I just want the wicker man coaster. If you can see it looks intense. It looks cool. man coaster, if you can see it. It looks intense. It looks cool. It's badass. Google it. It is cool as shit. It is so cool looking. It's like a weird, they made this crazy wooden wicker man in the middle of a wooden coaster.

And at night, especially if you watch a ride through, it looks incredible, honestly. Wow. That's the thing. I think Britain's got good coasters. There's no you know national shame on that front i just think it lacks it lacks for the more thought through like themed universes whimsy fairy magic that's the type of you know imagineering we're looking for dark like whim like cute little dark rides that have more that's what

chestington brought to the table i mean maybe one reason also that britain is light on whimsy is that like britain's a fairly whimsical country and if you go to many a small town in britain it feels like you're in a theme park like they're very cute they have these old town squares you know there's lots of old architecture you can buy fudge like it's not that far from i don't know like whatever you say hello to paddington on your way to work he's exactly so so maybe that's why maybe that's they just that's just not something people really need from a theme park oh and how many theme parks and how many theme parks is the theme london now that i add up what you're saying like how many big bends are out

there how many little fave and like universal hollywood as a little fake uh london like if if if it is the place that theme parks are emulating then how do you go one step beyond that right and there's lots of old-timey villages you can visit where it's you know they got that here too that theme parks are emulating, then how do you go one step beyond that? Right. And there's lots of old-timey villages you can visit where it's, you know, they got that here too, right? Where, you know, pretend it's the days of yore. We're all going to go to a tin mine, you know, all that stuff. But I'll say this, you know,

since we're starting to, you know, talk a little about Chessington, this, I don't know why this struck me as very British, but they have three different attractions based on books. That doesn't happen in America. Very literary. Ew. Ew.

Ew. I mean, kids books, but still books nonetheless. All right, you got me back on board a little bit. Because there's pictures. Is Britain going to have like a Harry Potter world? Because that does seem like something that's sort of a layup. And I don't know why that hasn't been. Maybe it has, for all I know.

They've got that tour of the sets still, right? I think that's really all they have right now. Well, and they have something coming called the London Resort, which is selling itself as like a world-class theme park like trying to compete on the Disney and Universal level I'm looking at this looks fancy

wow I don't know why it's called the London results clearly not in London but uh right whatever I guess Disneyland Paris is not in Paris true right true but I guess London london that's a that's a national and it's a global brand everyone knows london yeah it's close enough but that makes sense to me that someone's like you know what there's a bit of a gap here for like a true

disney world style place where people could actually stay and, you know, have a great time. David, I had a question since you live there. If you could explain a little about how people kind of do vacations, because the Chessington website has a million, a million different spots where it is advertising. Come here for a short break. And I didn't know about short break. So from what I can suss out is a short break is one or two nights away and a holiday is anything longer than three nights.

Is that stupid and wrong? No, I think that's absolutely right. A short break is just as far as I would think of it as a weekend, you know, right? A weekend break. I don't, it is funny to think of that like you know i grow i grew up in britain and even though i always had an i was always the american like i always retained an accent etc like there's all these like idiomatic ways of speaking that you forget about such as saying like i'm going on holidays like things like that um there is this sort of obsession there's a place in britain a chain

called butlins i don't know if does that i assume does that mean anything to you guys no no which is i they're there i'm sure there are american versions of it but it's like you know that's a place you take your kid it's like a tented city where you will stay there's water parks there's rides and like it's it's gonna be a whole package deal like maybe for a weekend or longer where you can essentially just let your kids run wild while you go to the pub again not to stereotype the country i grew up in and i am a citizen of but that is absolutely i think how a lot of brits approach their holidays and like that's rooted in like what i think of as the classic british vacation because it's an island

nation that only really started entertaining europe as a great place to visit in the last few decades so like the classic thing is you go to the british seaside like blackpool skegness these kind of like margate these sort of you you know, boardwalk-y towns. And there's a Ferris wheel and there's a helter-skelter, you know, like there's stuff like that. Like that kind of bleak thing is, it was British seaside vacationing until eventually, I think it was like, oh, we could go to Spain.

Like, it's like an hour on the plane. Like, we can go to like U can go to like uh umbria like you know these beautiful like we can sicily like you know this is all incredibly cheap like once like low-cost flights started happening that's that sort of upended everything interesting yeah but you were you you found you think some of these seaside places there was something depressing about it closer to 1900 or so i mean again not i feel like i'm just coming on and i am getting in every stereotype that europeans have about brits but yes like they're incredibly depressing places like they're like a blackpool which is kind of

like the king resort town in britain and probably i think a lot of people still go there genuinely to go on holiday like it could be raining the entire time like the food is the food's not going to be very good like it's I don't know what you're getting out of Blackpool apart from that you can see the North Sea which is a freezing lake in between Ireland and Britain like it's a freezing body of water and like there's the very classic unfair british stereotype of like people going to the beach and it's that they drive up to the beach and never leave their car and eat a sandwich and then they drive home and like of course that's not really how brits experience the seaside but that's how europeans think british people experience pleasure that's how i'm going to the beach these days literally i've literally done this driven to the beach eating a sandwich

not gotten out of my gut that's how we have to do it now i feel so bad i want to clarify like britain actually has lots of good food the weather isn't so bad you know like all these stereotypes are a little exaggerated but at the same time you know in britain certainly people make fun of them you know like those these are the jokes yeah do you know because you lived in it you were uh blackpool has a uh fake eiffel tower uh see i don't know if it's is it i don't know if it's specifically supposed to be the eiffel tower but it's very eiffel tower tower like that that's kind of their thing they got the big tower Tower, but it's very Eiffel Tower-esque. It's a big tower. That's kind of their thing. They got the big tower. I forget what it's called. Blackpool Tower.

Something we could all do maybe is a future tournament could be fake Eiffel Towers. There are a number of those across Theme Park World at the Americana, again to bring up Glendale, home of the Austin Powers bar. Do you

have a knee-jerk what the best fake eiffel tower is me i've got to stand up for blackpool tower absolutely i mean like i don't know like i'm trying to i mean i think of vegas obviously where are other fake i think it seems like yeah vegas is a good one uh the disney world one's too small i think i think that one's not competing like all i think every lego land has a fake eiffel tower too i've been to i think i think that one's not competing like all every lego land has a fake eiffel tower too i've been to i think two lego lands they definitely both had them um the lego land we've not done one lego land anyway and there is yeah there's one in england as part of the same corporate umbrella is very nice i remember uh i went there a couple times i remember having a

great time at lego land lego is great like it's hard to argue with Lego yeah yeah people seem very fond of those places Dina do you think that you would have was your fondness for Chessington purely proximity or if all of these places were closer do you think you still would have chosen chessington for your theme park needs my fondness i was it was partly out of proximity certainly like as a teenager i

could just take the train there with i would not even need adult adult supervision like it was you know it's a day trip away but so was thorpe park which, you know, has more intense rides, probably like a better theme park overall. And as a teenager, I was such a scaredy cat that I definitely gravitated towards Chessington. Like Chessington was about the speed I could handle where like the most intense rides at Chessington. Even I was like, oh, OK, this isn't so bad. Like, you know, whereas like Thorpe Park kind of freaked me out a little bit. And like, there's also just like you guys know, like when you're a teenager and you're going with like four male friends to a theme park, there's that weird egotistical one-upmanship of like, well, I can do anything.

Like, we're all going to do this because this is the scariest thing. And I was such a i was very i'm i remain as i believe listeners of my podcast will know we did a six flags episode i'm not a huge fan of speed or heights like those are not things i like i need to feel in my life like great heights and great speed and so you know like as a grown-up i'm just like great i i can avoid that and griff you know griffin newman my co-host he wants to take me to disney world i'm excited to do that because as he's kind of made clear to me like speed and heights are not really the the primary experiences there anyway like that that it's sort of a different vibe but uh yeah yeah they could be

if you were seeking it but yeah there is plenty of soft stuff to do uh yeah you're in good company here with that except for well you know jason's a speed demon and a height um devil i was gonna say miser you know truth hurts sometimes you know height? Heightenviser Jason Sheridan. Heightenviser. That'll stick. I like that. Yeah. Do you remember anything you were avoiding in Thorpe or something that you did or Alton Towers,

something that you like pushed your limits and did it and then hated it or something that is still as frightening to you and you'll never do? I'm now trying to see if they still have it. Thorpe Park definitely had a ride called X No Way Out, which I believe may be gone, which now that i say it a lot that is sort of a threatening like but that was a famously backwards ride one of those you know it goes backwards instead of forwards and i remember doing that like kind of whatever like you know i was being pressured into doing that and i like my experience with

roller coasters is always like you know if i do it it's it's fine it's not the end of the world i survived but i never have the feeling like it has just never sparked for me where i'm like oh you know what like i get it now i gotta do this all the time it was always more of a thing of like well i did it to say that i could do that i you know i did it to check the box colossus that was a big one i don't think i ever did colossus now they're all different now they've got something based around saw are you guys seeing this yes they have a saw because i looked up thor park i read up because they had like the same sort of website and as this one and they have saw the ride what which is just there's the little guy he's like taunting you yeah he's taunting you but it's here it seems like it's just an off the rack roller

with the saw logo yeah that's a waste of the saw ip well i mean you guys might know like you know chris rock is relaunching saw the exciting new movie spiral is coming to theaters next year I guess now do you think they'll seize the opportunity to like to you know make do kind of a prestige rebrand of saw the ride yes they'll add a different puppet

to the queue and that'll be it done deal yeah the puppet says I think I love my wife. Wow. Be careful. You might discover you love your wife.

Is Saw part of the Rockiverse? I think it is now, right? That's part of the deal. Wow. That's great. The Chris Rockiverse. The Chris Rockiverse.

I was like, what is Rock? And we just said Chris Rock, but I couldn't wrap my head around Rockiverse. Yeah. Well, if you have a better name for it i'd like to hear it scott i know no i certainly don't um i do i i'd prefer calling him not chris rock but the rock miser so that's why i got confused that's fine um uh okay but let's to head into uh jessington where you need not be afraid of well i mean there's frights there's definitely frights as well as delights uh yeah you could easily be startled by professor burp's bubble works we're gonna talk about

professor burp i mean peace do we just head right into it because the okay here's well my overall take not knowing anything about this park and starting to dig in um it you know we we just came for david the last episode we did was basically a uh uh in italy there's an entire rip-off universal studios where they're like uh you know pulling ip that they clearly don't have the rights to and they like use doc brown or mary poppins until someone complains and then they hide them in a shed and never use them again okay um it's just this very desperate grab for other people's ip they're just so chasing it and craving for it and it doesn't really didn't really work out uh chesington i feel like is full of original ip that is very delightful very creative very british in a lot of cases um i i

find this place so charming and i mean just what i view is like the primary three that really jumped out at me are like i think some of the most like original theme park rides we've ever come across so tell me the three i'm excited um well i mean we should kick it off with i mean certainly we could build to it but i i mean what we just what you just mentioned professor burps bubble works i mean if the audience isn't excited already by this phrase, I mean, we could, the very short sentence about it is that Professor Burp invites you to a tour of his wacky soda factory. Am I missing anything in the synopsis?

It had kind of a vague, I guess, Willy Wonka vibe to it, right? It's a water ride. It's a dark ride. You're in like a tube floating around and it's a factory making soda. So there's all kinds of bubble stuff. To be clear, it no longer

exists, which I was sort of sad to learn. I think I vaguely had heard this, but it was opened when I was like, yeah to learn. I think I vaguely had heard this, but it was open when I was, what, like, yeah, 1990, right? And it ran for like 15, 16 years. And when I was going there to Chessington, obviously Chessington had real rides. So like, you know, when you're with your friends,

they want to do, we're going to talk about some of them. But I remember when I was like 10 being like, I think that's the best ride. And that not being that controversial an opinion. Even among my friends trying to seem cool going on the nastiest rides. Like, they were like, yeah, there's something about Bubbleworks. Like, there's something about it that's just kind of a blast. It had a strobe light section.

I think that's what we all liked the most. At the end where they're like, we're going to show you how we, you know, whatever. Here's the final step to soda making. And then you were in this big open hall and there'd be strobes going. So all of the water looked crazy and you would, you know, wave your hands.

It's like big fountains shooting over your ride track. And you're in like a, they might even call them tubs. You're in this like circular round thing. So it's like a whitewater rafting ride that isn't rough. You just like casually float and spin. So you get different views of everything as you go. It's like you're in the teacups at Disneyland, but it's in water. Yes, exactly.

And right. And they like Chessington had like a log flume. Like it had actual water rides, but this was gentle. But still like it had atmosphere, which I guess most Chessington rides had less of. Most Chessington rides were pretty basic. I feel like and like you know maybe they had a little color they had like some cute

theming or whatever but like this was a like this was something where there there had been actual thought invested in like the progression of it and it always felt very satisfying at the end when

you went through the whole strobe universe it sounds great yeah I was gonna say it is like i mean if probably the based you know on the wonka willie wonka scene where they go through the boat and it's like an acid trip it feels like even like teenage even like jaded teens would be like man it's like being on drugs yes like it's crazy yes so like that feels like for teens that might have been the the appeal because it would it would like it look when yes so like that feels like for teens that might have been the the appeal

because it would it would like look when watching the video i feel like you know it messes with you a little bit that i think that's right that now that's exactly it as a teen you could still argue like well it's trippy like so that's cool yeah like that was kind of the way you could get into a pretend tub for professor burps bubble works and not feel like a fool. You'd be like, no, we actually got to do that. And the other fun is I remember it's right next to the Vampire, which is one of their rides that I think is still going. And so the Vampire would always be going right by you as you were in line. So there was it was like and there's a lot of trees around i just remember

it being the best area of the park in terms of you feeling like you're in an actual little universe maybe the most themes maybe the most like disney universal caliber little zone they had um i yeah i i think this this thing looks so delightful i think think it has the spirit of Willy Wonka without being a ripoff of Willy Wonka. I mean, it's certainly inspired by that, but very much its own little universe. Some details I wanted to point out that I like. You see a lot of posters of different experimental types of soda that Professor Burp is working on, such as Luminous Pop, the bedtime drink. And I think it says under that somewhere,

it glows so you can read with it. So if you're drinking this soda in the dark, it is also a nightlight. That's great. There's something, I don't have any further details about it, but something called jackpot juice. I assume there was some money going on there right like it was there's a yeah well yeah professor burp got bought out his contract got bought out by the

jones soda company with all their wacky flavors they outbid chesington they sort of generic genericified his operation uh not sure if jones kept the juice jacuzzi there's also there was like a tickle thing i remember like i guess that's to test like tickle test if the if the bubbles are tickling you and i don't i don't know like they they found every angle on this that they possibly could. Which is so specific, a soda. How do you think of dozens of jokes about weird sodas? Right.

And they did pull it off. I want to talk about a guy who I think is the main person behind this ride, a guy named John Wardley. And I found an interview. He, I think, did a lot of the rides that I've found so charming, the dark ride kind of things and a lot of stuff at Alton towers too. Uh, I found an interview with him where he's on the ride and kind of pointing out stuff. He explains the, the, the impetus of it, which was, uh, he, he thought about doing a ride about a brewery, uh,

seeing how beer gets made, but you can't really do that with kids. So this became a soda factory and then uh he does a little part of this so i think will be better coming from him i'm going to screen share here uh and this is him talking about a part of the ride that i think is is very fun uh and here's john wardley when we were considering the actual processes of testing the pop over there, that is the fart tester that tests the fartability of the pop. Now, we actually had a board meeting to discuss whether we could use the word fart. Oh, that was a good one, Matt.

That's that pretty much. With the hard egg, a bad bad egg i'm looking at the uh the fart meter here there's a man in a little chair who i guess farts in the chair and it propels him up like a carnival game like a ring the buzzer carnival game and he hits different levels of fartability um wait if i move the play a whiffy is one level of fartability whoop whoopie whoops i think it says bad egg heinz 57 sure what is that i don't know oh i see oh yeah That's why Heinz. Okay, okay. Because, you know, Brits are obsessed with baked beans. Right.

Oh. They love it. Oh, I get it now. I can't see what that top one is. Something about splitter. I don't know what it's. Pants splitter? Pants splitter.

Yeah. That's great. The big, like, fart joke zone of this ride and this like i love this stuffy guy like we talked about if we can actually use the word thought in a board meeting apparently a board meeting about british farts um how delightful um yeah uh this thing's so fun and then what happened with it is that they kept the same ride but they kind of couldn't keep it going unless there was a sponsor. Thus, it became a different ride, still a bubble-oriented place, still a bubble works, but now called Imperial Leather Bubble Works,

which is a phrase that makes no sense to me, but I guess you would know that's a variety of soap. Yeah, it's like a big soap brand in britain you know the all these british companies like you know they were formed in like the victorian era so they all sound like incredibly fancy imperial leather is just like i don't know it's like dove what's like a common soap here it's just a regular old soap yeah but dressed up if you put yeah grand and uh ye olde and victorian in the title then it seems like something um but so uh they redid it as now a a tour of a soap factory um which people did not like as it was just like a big ad for this brand of soap uh i i saw it referred to as

monotonous charmless and at best a highly irritating advert for its sponsor and among the people who hated it was this guy john wardley who really like disowned the ride was so disgusted by what they did with it and spoke publicly about how they removed all of the charm. Mike and Jason, this is a syndrome we've seen before. The creator of the ride being publicly disparaging of the bad redo of it. This is so much like Tony Baxter. David, we really revere this one Imagineer who's behind Splash Mountain and Star Tours and all this great stuff. I was thinking that anyway, and then the Season Pass

podcast, I think, had this guy on the show, and they referred to him as the Tony Baxter of Britain. That makes sense. Yes. Oh. And the ride itself is very, like, Journey into Imagination, trippy, a lot of fun stuff going on. It is very similar.

It's exactly the same story, really, for what happened to those two rides. And stripping the ride of its wonderful main character, in one case, Figment the Dragon, in another case, Professor Burp. Professor Burp, which we love him now. Again, is he available? Can we now access him and make IP movie and TV shows with him? We would like to investigate that. Yeah.

Have we seen that he is now, there is a Chessington cinematic universe. He's connected to character on another ride. Really? Wait, I haven't caught that. Oh, I like that. So let me hear. I have it here There's a character named Zapp-o-matic

Did you see him? Did you find him? Yes, and this is on the ride The Fifth Dimension Right, which was rethemed to Terror Tomb So this says, although they only Got to know each other for three years Burp and Zapp-o-matic were incredibly close Friends. Zapp was his first

Friend, and they regular regularly met up every month after the incredible re-theme of the fifth dimension to terror tomb zap-o-matic mysteriously disappeared under strange circumstances in which he left the professor distraught and upset and i have a picture of his tombstone they canonically killed zap-o-matic it was yes i have it right here this is a fun robot character from a dark ride who they have murdered they have murdered the character because of a re-theme here i'll just quickly i was just about to say this all has a happy ending but I guess it's a lot more complicated than that what Zappomattox grave I have his headstone

oh that epitaph is like poochy sadly left this world for another dimension oh no jeez I guess maybe he survived like maybe they're trying to soften the blow for kids where it's like he went to another dimension, guys.

Don't worry. It's all right. He's not dead. I would argue that the headstone, though, is a bit traumatic. It is. Yeah, that was definitely Terror Tomb when I was attending Chessington. I remember Terror Tomb. That was like a laser gun shooting you know, shooting at targets ride.

Yes. Yeah. That's sort of, that's kind of Egyptian themed. Now, okay. Now there's two, there were two versions of this ride. Yeah. It became a shooting ride, but there was a version that was not a shooting oriented thing um that were you ever

there when there was a a character named abdab hmm uh remind me of abdab's role in in chess um okay so in so terror tomb uh i'll read a description i i copy pasted a harrowing journey through the booby trap filled catacombs with AB dab, a greedy tomb robber bent on stealing a priceless Emerald. So you're taking a tour of a tomb, but there's this guy who keeps yelling at you because he wants this Emerald to himself. Rings a vague bell.

Sounds like the British. So he's kind of like trapped there it sounds like essentially he's like constantly looking for this emerald yeah yeah essentially well and ends and ends up truly trapped did you Mike Jason you would catch this

ride or watch a video of it or anything I actually didn't watch a video I didn't know this is this is so great I think one of my favorite would you catch this ride or watch a video of it or anything? I actually didn't watch a video of this. I didn't, no. This is so great. I think one of my favorite moments, honestly, in a ride that I've ever seen, and I'll show it to you guys. That's build it up too much.

But so you're going through this too. Ab-Dab is just a crazy, creepy animatronic that people on YouTube have bought and are trying to like, people are like resuscitating abdab with, you know, like toss together electronics in their apartments, which is very creepy and odd and you can watch that. But, you know, the fun effects to this ride, there's like an ever flowing amount of snakes in this one part. Like it's like a spinning wheel that's covered in snakes that just goes in an infinite loop so it looks like thousands of snakes are pouring out but it doesn't stop abdab

he's still after the emerald uh you see a big uh like statue of anubis uh uh there's big scary heads and vortex tunnels there might even be a boulder like indiana jones uh it's all a pretty like serious scary scary ride. And then you get to, you're getting towards the end of this thing. And there's a lot of heads all in, in, in canting something.

And then I will play what happens from that point. And this we'll, we'll have to back up and explain it to the listener. But this will be, you know, probably more fun to experience visually. But check out what happens to AB DAB at the end of this the listener uh but this will be you know probably more fun to experience visually uh but uh check out what happens to abdab uh at the end of this attraction scary heads Let me pause and say, there is now a mummy playing guitar.

Oh my God. Playing heavy metal guitar. He has a light up headdress or collar or whatever you want to call it. And I'll play it from there. I mean, that's great. That's fantastic. Really good. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The way he yells ghoul is fantastic. Now you become a ghoul. This rules. This is unbelievable. You get a rockoul this rules this is unbelievable you get a rock concert at the end of this ride and poor abdab stuck in a what you think is

a tomb but then uh the lid raises up and it's covered in spikes and he gets locked in it and what that is is an iron maiden yep the metal music that we are hearing, Ab-Dab is impaled to death.

And I, it's like, again, multiple characters in Chessington die. Yeah. This rocks more than anything at Hard Rock Park. Yeah. I'd have to say so. Yes. That legitimately, is that the most actually rocking song made for a theme park attraction for yes specifically park specific i'll say right

now yes but i think i bet you're hedging your bets because you don't want to put it above aerosmith well of course aerosmiths changing the lyrics slightly to love in an elevator to love in a roller coaster and kind of counts as an original song to me. Sure. So I don't want to fully knock it out, but they're taught. Let's say they're tied. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so, uh, yeah, this is cool. Going to spike your brain, going to spit your soul.

You'll be a slave under my control. Dark stuff. Um, genuinely dark ride wow that that's that you know what that maybe takes i don't know does it beat the uh halloween overlay for the knots uh log flume ride with the the alien band at the end oh yeah that is that's really fantastic that's really fun there's a specific hallow song from the Timber Mountain Log Ride around Halloween time. And they're playing like a really jaunty, fun Halloween song. And it's like a bear and an alien.

And I think the bear turns to you and goes trick or treat. Yes, he does. He sure does. It's like one of the greatest moments in theme park history. So with these being so awesome, why aren't there more just creatures playing guitars all over theme park worlds this rules it's so good yeah i think yeah oh yeah where would be just a brainstorm what would be the best ride to just throw a bunch of guitars on the animals or the the robots maybe i mean obviously princess and the frog coming to splash mountain

but if you gave a guitar to all the animals on the riverboat at the end of splash mountain and they were all just soloing that would be pretty cool uh i mean rock and haunted mansion would be great that'd be a nice new overlay just all of them shredding just 300 ghosts 999 happy haunts and they can all shred they can all shred you could give a big guitar to the man or the creature who replaced the imperial leather bubble works the gruffalo that's right he's that would be cute metal the gruffalo right i don't know yeah the gruffalo is cool i like the gruffalo yeah we zoomed past that which is your your background david uh that's what this ride is now the gruffalo yeah it seems it which i have not been on the gruffalo river ride adventure which is what bubble works is now but i it's that

seems better to me than just like spawn con right like i'm sure that's a little more you know thematically whole it looks very charming uh the gruffalo book was published in the late 90s and it it kind of has a um uh oh god who's the where the wild things are a guy um marie sendak yes yeah marie's it has a sort of whimsical animation style like that. And I thought this, like, I couldn't believe, like, oh, this is very charming too. Like, we don't have, that was the happy ending I was alluding to. Like, well, if they redid Journey into Imagination

and replaced it with something, like in the way they replaced Bubbleworks with the Gruffalo River Ride Adventure, it's like, well, that's nice. This looks nice. It's maybe not as weird as the original one, but it's like well that's nice this looks nice it's maybe not as weird as the original one but it's like well this seems charming yeah yeah and better than a soap ad i'd say yes yeah for sure i'm reading like you know it has less animations and props so there's

some sort of consternation about that i think it's a lot more screens right which is a little less whatever unique but that's fine but apparently there's smell pods to make it smell foresty which that sounds cool so i do wonder that's one of the drawbacks obviously because we haven't been there does that forest smell like the et forest in orlando other famous forest fake smells we did a fake smell final four where we we argued which was the best smell so i would like to when we eventually revisit that i would like to have experienced the smell at this at this park yes just to make sure we didn't overlook it do you remember smells in the in the soda factory because i think there might have been like orange one of the classic theme park smells right there was definitely lots of smells um the it also like you know if it was

a hot day like it was like kind of just it was like cool and misty but yes i remember all smells like that and like i guess just also you know the joy of being in water like it was always like a nice sort of chilled out thing that you should do right in the middle of your visit right like to kind of like you know reset a little bit sure sure um that's maybe a good thing to ask if i was like do you remember anything else uh atmospherically uh about this place is there anything like non-ride that jumps out at you or do you remember like is food any good to this place? Food is bad. I mean British fast food is fairly underwhelming.

Like it's gotten better as it gets more Americanized, but that's like which is not a particularly charming thing. Like, you know, what Britain has to offer on the fast food front is fish and chips. That's always been like that's like the classic British fast food, like fish and chips that's always been like that's like the classic british fast food like fish and chips in a newspaper or whatever but i remember like the food being like you know totally ordinary kind of like you know chicken fingers right like and all that kind of stuff um and the i'm now trying to find a map like in the sort of like it was a slightly subdivided world and it had well I'm sure we'll talk about be no land when I was just gonna bring up

you know land yes but like you know it was it's more like a six flags where it's like the sun's kind of beating down on you if you're there in the summertime which you probably are like there's not a lot of shelter and there is a cool little um monorail thing like that you could sort of take around to look at stuff and there is a zoo but i remember the zoo being sort of a bummer again much like six flags like you don't really want to go to the zoo when you're at a theme park sure sure yeah yeah yeah do you have any do you have any memories of like just weird childhood stuff like drama between friends that would happen there because i feel like that was always kind of a pressure cooker when you'd go with your friends to a place like that for a long time it's what i that is what

i associate with theme parks is going with my friends and then the weird it's like how now everyone has to negotiate their personal comfort with the pandemic where it's like some people are like i'm not going outside at all and other people are like well i wanted to go to a restaurant and like there's all the weird arguments within that you know like you know it's like some kids just want to like ride the gnarly rides over and over and over again and like i feel like i was more of a wanderer i liked kind of the weird freedom you have as a teenager in a theme park where you can kind of like you know act independently and like you know i'm gonna go get some food and like march off by yourself and like that's all i remember about going to Chessington is like everyone fighting over the order of the day and how like, you know, we have to prioritize the vampire over the rattlesnake or whatever, you know, like the weird kind of. It's like a little fake town.

It's like a little fake life for you to live as a teenager, right? Like you get to pretend to be a little grown up for an afternoon. Now, see, I mostly went to theme parks with my family, and everyone knew what everyone else liked. We were all very cordial about it. If me or my brother wanted to do different stuff, usually one parent would take one, one would take the other. So the one or two times I went to a theme park on a school trip, I just remember going like, you're all insane.

There's an efficient way to do this to make everyone happy. And I was immediately, I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to go off on my own because everyone's being really weird in this heat. Jason, was it just that they weren't catering to your every whim? Well, it wasn't catering to my every whim. I was just like, well, guys, this, it was things like, well, this has a shorter weight and that has a longer, why don't we do the shorter weight one first?

And trying to convince like six or seven-year-olds, it's like, well, no, then we'd have to double back, not six, six or seven graders. I was going to say, you're going there by yourself at six. Like trying to convince like, well, no, if we do this first, we're going to have to double back. That doesn't make sense. We're going gonna be crisscrossing the whole thing um we only have six hours you know um you just unlocked a memory for me which is taking like it was some like we won a the

classroom won a contest or something and got to go to disneyland uh my dream that's great but then we get there and it's like a six hour thing. It's pretty short, not nearly enough time for me. And I swear the consensus of the class of 11 year olds or whatever was we got to spend like an hour and a half of this in the starcade. You're fucking kidding me. How dare you do this to me? I'm like remembering the faces of the kids now who were like, no, I want to be in the arcade all day. I think I snuck away.

I think I like left the chaperone so I could go on the people mover. I was so curious. Yeah. I was not supposed to be on my own, but I'm like, well, I'm going to go do the monorail at Hershey park and I'm going to get a chili dog.

And then I'm going to ride the super duper looper. And we broke protocol. We like disobeyed adults for the, at hersey park and i'm gonna get a chili dog and then i'm gonna ride the super duper looper and we broke protocol we like disobeyed adults for the we were bad kids in a way for the first time at theme park you know what you were doing like you were you were being a little grown-up that's how i was too it's like you're like guys let's be efficient about that's exactly how i was whereas i feel like some kids you know it's it's like candy. They're like, I have to do the best thing first. We have to do it right now. Like, I don't care how long it takes.

Which, when I was a kid... I'm in it for the long haul. I have the long game in mind. Yes, yes, yes. Me too. Scott, what year was it? Was there a hot arcade game that year that was Mortal... They didn't have Mortal Kombat in Disneyland, did they? That doesn't seem right. Street Fighter? God know was it just a were people just cruising usa where was it just a

cruise in usa i would have been well i specifically remember i think it was like 96 or 97 because i remember all of tomorrowland was construction walls because they were uh like all it was like nothing but plywood it was very very depressing, honestly, around. And they had just closed EO, which made me think about all the weirdness with that. It was just a very sad time to be there. And I was made more sad by all these arcades. I think I maybe said out loud,

you have arcades at home. You can go to an arcade anytime. Yeah, I can go to the arcade. It was an arcade like 10 minutes from my house. Who cares about arcades? I can play Street Fighter whenever we see each other every day at school we hang out

on the weekends we're at Hershey Park like once or twice a year let's get our priorities in order folks I'm gonna be angry about this decades from now yeah anyway this is why all the media you consume ladies and gentlemen is so weird because it's all made by weirdos like us.

Odd, odd angers that we hold on to. I actually, you know what? Maybe this is fine in terms of remembering, like pulling out specific uh memories i found a uh from a website called surrey live uh i found a fairly uh spelling and grammatically uh questionable listicle called uh 15 things you'd remember if you uh if you i don't have in front of me if you grew up going to chessington i didn't write down all of them but i'm curious to throw these out and see if you agree of course did do you have memories of these things yeah uh feeling really queasy after going on ramsay's revenge 20 times in a row yes i certainly never went on ramsay's revenge 20 times in a row because that's an awful idea but that was the hottest ride when i was a kid that was the what the advertisements led with.

I don't know if you guys saw it, but it's sort of like, you know, it's like spinning, you're in a thing, you're spinning you, and then there's a bigger arm that's also spinning you, and there's water. I'm bad at theme park lingo. I assume there's like a word

for the kind of a ride Ramsey's Revenge is. I think, does it still exist? I was trying to remember i don't think i have the terminology either but yeah you're like it good it's it's they call it a top spin ride on there you go whatever that means that's the kind of thing we should have more at our disposal and yet i don't that's fine nobody's it's it's a glorified flat ride it's glorified kind of carnival ride with a few effects right exactly and it would be it was kind of dressed up in you know because they i believe uh that's

also where the the tomb blaster and the you know the um the rockin mummies were there was a whole like kind of like ancient forbidden kingdom zone you know like and so yes ramsey's revenge was that's like the barf ride that was the ride that made you barf and directly opposite it was a ride called the magic carpet that like even when i was a kid it doesn't exist anymore was so obviously wildly unsafe and then we would look at it as a kid as kids and we'd be like i don't i don't think that anyone should be getting in that thing and then they closed it kind of like quietly so oh no I don't think anyone got hurt on it but it was

it was just one of those very old fashioned it would just go round and round and round and then stop and like smash your face into a bar like it was it was just it was no fun it was like a ride because they're like I always forget the one in knots that they closed down where you went on it and you were like this hurts right it was like a ride because they're like, I always forget the one at Knott's that they closed down where you went on it and you were like, this hurts.

Right. It was like whiplash the ride. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Here's a, this isn't pain. This isn't something that would last, but you know, maybe for a little while. The tense in this article, again, very strange. You spent the rest of the day walking around with a wet bum

after going on the Dragon Falls ride. Sound familiar? A wet bum? Any wet bums? Oh, a wet bum. A wet bum, yes. Yes, to be British about it. I'm sure you say bum.

You do. Oh, wait, we've been saying seat. We should change the lingo for this episode. Should have been bum. You do. Oh, wait, we've been saying seat. We should be, we should change the lingo for this episode. Bum all the time. Bum play. Yes, I mean, sure. The dragon with the dragon's fury. Now I'm trying to remember what it was called.

The dragon falls, right? That was it. That was the log flume. You have to do that late because otherwise you will be wet all day. Jason, how do you feel about a wet bum? You like wet feet. I know that. You like wet socks.

You like that. I think, yeah, I think a wet bum is more uncomfortable. I think that might be worse to me. Is there any reason why anyone would like that? I specifically like a sopping wet bum sex stuff i guess you know what was that jason i said sex stuff you know probably there's probably someone out there everything's a thing everybody's into something i'm open to it now that i'm so free with my body and mind so So I'm open to the idea of it.

I just haven't experienced it and liked it yet. Mike's got a big wrench just opening up the fire hydrant on his street and taking a step in front of it. Shaking my butt at a fire hydrant that's open on the street getting launched a few feet to get a wet bum worth it as far as i'm concerned sure as mothers and children stare and point and you say you wouldn't get it it's a european thing i've i've grown as a person um one more of these.

This seems obscure. I'm curious if you, this seems very obscure. The chewing gum tree in the vampire ride queue. That feels like something too deep to remember. I do not remember that. I do remember the vampire, which I definitely rode. And that was always next to the bubble works. And it was and it was it

was you know your feet are dangling one of those which at the time was still a novelty i i know that's like run of the mill now um i do not remember a chewing gum tree don't really know what that would have to do with a vampire that that whole area was called transylvania it was sort of odd that bubble works was there because bubble works didn't have anything to do with transylvania but uh but for whatever reason that Bubbleworks was there because Bubbleworks didn't have anything to do with Transylvania, but for whatever reason that they were next to each other and Chessington was like, it's Transylvania, the vampire.

So I remember, you know, some you know, some crosses, right? Like, you know, some like some gravestones maybe. Maybe that's where they buried the alien guy, but I do not remember. Oh, yes. So could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's where they buried the alien guy but uh i do not remember oh yeah so could be yeah yeah yeah it's a robot buried in a vampire's cemetery um there is a uh i think the tree was

just used like people just put gum in this one place all the time which is disgusting and why and why would you put more gum there and touch other gum as you do so bad but anyway uh there's also i think that area also has something called i noticed on a map vampire's burger kitchen uh pretty good restaurant name i dig that which is listed as being on leatherhead road hey good name and uh uh counts cauldron maybe too man i like all these um good. But where do we head from here? Maybe over to Beano Land. Yeah.

I just wanted to ask, did everyone see a video of Zapp-O-Matic? Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. I did. I have something queued up. Were you going to bring up something specific? Oh, okay. Well, it's just a video.

He's terrifying. He's so terrifying. Is the video what you're showing yeah yeah i believe yeah he'll be on frame here in a how do we describe um yeah what what what does zap-o-matic look like he reminds me and it's not quite right but he reminds me of like a return to oz type character oh like he's a little tiktok-esque he's taller he has kind of like a what would you call it a some sort of scarf is it a cravat technically what english what english neck dressing does zap-o-matic wear um what would we yeah I guess it's a cravat. Like, yeah, a loose fitting tie. It looks like basically like a bandana

that's not around his face. An ascot? Yeah, sure. It's not quite an ascot, though, is it? I don't know. It's funny to think like that when they opened this, because this was the first edition, right? So the fifth dimension.

They were obviously like sci-fi is the thing. We got to have aliens. gotta right and then they quickly pivoted to like ancient egypt in the 90s which is not a pivot i would say like you would automatically guess like what was hot in the 90s was like tombs but i guess i guess they were tombs were kind of hot as theme park areas right maybe not so much movies but like that was just kind of a classic theme parky thing like a haunted tomb type it's it's one of the themes I suppose it's like yeah yeah you've got yeah as we said you got a lot of things are London themed and a lot of things are egypt themed i mean chasington is technically themed to like areas of the world there's like an english area and a mexican wild west area pirates

cove uh yes there's unfortunately they may have changed this but there was one say a mystic east which uh i feel like they should probably spruce that up uh i don't know if there's so many theme parks have weird like east story and uh yeah those should all start getting dismantled um can i uh let me play this quick clip of zap-o-matic uh a lot of so this ride the fifth dimension this was a this was a dark ride. And it was open for about a year. And then guests started complaining that the plot was too confusing. And what I'm going to play you is from the second version. So this is a little snippet of the less confusing story.

Let's see if you get the gist of what this ride is from this. As I told you i am zapomatic and i was sent in here to repair this tv but would you believe it there's a gorg in here horrible creatures gorgs horrible um so we got that he Zappomatic is a TV repair robot. He's now the ride's called the fifth dimension, which so that what that means is going into a TV. Right. And of course,

yes, your TV contains dimensions. And, and then, but when you know what, there's a, there's a gorg. And I don't think you get any more info about what a

gorg is horrible exactly apparently or there yes you're right you do you get the info that they're horrible creatures what year Scott is the video you just played does it say 88 okay because I have a I have a I was going to play the exact same clip

but a different year and they shoot it like it's a horror movie a little more. Oh, okay. Wait, is that? That's a little hype. I'll put it up just to show you. Yeah, sure. I'm hyping it up a little too much, but you'll see what I mean.

Especially this made an impression on me that I found. As Mike said, it's like this scary return to Oz creature, and he's in front of a weird, uh, like a frightening grid, but that's not symmetrical. It's all like amorphous and it's, it's all,

it's all very, uh, uh, it's kind of like lawnmower man, a little bit, a lot of green, a lot of laser grids. Okay.

So here are the indie grids. Audio, audio, not as good jesus so that's why i was really scared of him they zoom in on his creepy eyes that that is that is a better video for that angle he's basically a robotic jack skellington right and only his head is moving really like everything else is pretty limited so it almost seems like he's kind of like stuck or zombified or something yeah tied up or

like and in an uncomfortable position yeah so it looks like, yeah, he's about to die and only one part of his body's working. We don't have to be scared anymore because he is dead. Yeah. Oh, you're right. He's been killed. Why are we upset that he's dead? We should be celebrating this.

You know what? Yeah, good, Zap-o-matic. Stay in your doom. I feel bad for Dr. Burp. Because they were friends. Professor Burp. Professor Burp, I'm so sorry. He doesn't deserve to lose a friend.

Well, if Zap-o-matic's gone, the Gorgs are just going to run rampant. They're just going to run roughshod over this place. Well, yeah, because he was the one monitoring the situation. And here's what the plan is. This is how you're supposed to help control the gorg population. It's hiding in one of the five dimensions from the video. And it's definitely not in this one. At least, I don't think it is.

Now, if you can find the gorg, I can make a laser gun to destroy it. But only you have the power to fire the gun well that's settled then i'll go to the workshop and get busy and i'll leave you to find the gorg it's out there somewhere jesus whoa that was that was a dramatic ending. Yeah. Lightning strikes. Only you have the power to fire the gun. You have to create the gun first. I'll build the gun, but only you can fire the gun. He's also barely giving you time to respond.

He's just like, anyway, so you fire the gun. Got it? Okay. There's not a lot of call and response here are you prepared to fire the gun it's it's like it's the warning getting on a plane for like are you ready to uh use the exit road yeah people exit the all right good all right in case of a crash landing are you prepared to fire the gun i guess wait guns are involved yes hurry this plane is full of gorgs over that endless loop

this is all like yeah harrowing it's such a hero in star wars a gorg is like what they it's like the little um froggy creatures that jar jar eats on tattooing i remember that oh that's fun right i don't know that is fun could that be the same thing as gorg found in some sort of myth yeah maybe right yeah maybe that's where george lucas got the idea i don't know do you think there's a lot of children around this time who went on this ride didn't even really perceive it and then like to this day have uh nightmares where zap-o-matic type faces appear to them through the clouds and and gorgs and swamp spinies that's another thing that shows up zap-o-matic holding like holding a gun out to them and be like you will be the one to fire this you only you you have the power for queen and country but zap-o-matic how do you have the power to

build the gun but not to fire it it seems like are we talking about your hands because if you have hands to build you have hands to fire I was not programmed to kill right there's that Asimov's law of robotics like means that you have to

pull the trigger even though he can make you a gun only little boys and girls can kill. For Albion, for the king. Perhaps you'll develop a taste for it. Perhaps this won't be your last kill. I'm not encouraging you to do so. I never would.

I'm merely a builder man. But if you need more guns, let me know. Her Majesty's Secret Service is always hiring young children. Zapp-o-matic was recruiting for the British government. Zapp-o-matic was recruiting for the circus. Like Twitch. Zapp-o-matic was on Twitch. He kind of looks like, remember when there was that fake meme

or fake sort of scandal about kids seeing some video of a creepy demon that was like telling them to do crimes am i the only person who remembers this yeah that's what he looks like that's familiar yes yeah now i can't remember yeah wow i guess i hate zappalmatic i mean i didn't you know it's it's all it really shows you the power of film. Momo. Right, there we go. Momo, yeah. Momo is a demon telling children to do bad things? Yes. Momo is not Slenderman.

Momo is a different demon telling children to kill people. If you Google Momo, you will see, there's a vague similarity to Zap-O-Matic just because of the stretched mouth. Jesus, I'm afraid to see Momo. Momo's a little scary. Oh, I know Momo, of course. Oh, Momo's like a frightening cartoon version

of Shelley Duvall in The Shining. I was going to say, it shows you the power of filmmaking because I didn't hate Zap-O-Matic until I saw Mike's angle where it zooms all the way in and the, the, that,

that closeup now is very scarring. And yes, I'd have to agree. I hate Zappomatic. But again, he's dead. Yes. Yeah.

Thank, thank God. And now I'm, I'm not upset by that. And, uh, yeah. Hey,

kids out there, if you have nightly nightmares about Zapp-o-matic. What he forces you to do. Now, yeah. Now at Chessington, they just have nice stuff like Elmer's Flying Jumbos. Everyone's favorite patchwork elephant. Right? We all know Elmer the Patchwork Elephant.

Jumbos. Elmer is. Do we like Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. Dumb hoes. Elmer is, do we like Elmer's better than Babar? Probably is less like colonial overtones, right? I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Elmer just kind of looks like a Heffalump or Woozo. Right.

Okay. A quilty beast is there right is there any babar representation in theme parks hmm do we know off the top of our heads is there like a google there might be like a french one maybe i don't know no i don't think so and uh uh here's an article from 1989 that says plans are underway for a babar theme park but obviously that did not occur and and also where is the representation of muzzy the uh the language teaching monster from uh it was ubiquitous on nickelodeon uh for so many years where's muzzy oh yeah hashtag where's muzzy where are the Hashtag where's Muzzy? Where are the refrains of... That's it.

That was the phrase. I was trying to remember the phrase. Burned into my brain. Muzzy. Yeah, yeah. How have we not said the word Muzzy on this show yet? That's the first instance, I think. I don't know.

There should be a Muzzy land where all the rides are available in multiple languages. What was muzzy? Whenever you saw clips of it, it looked frightening. Like muzzy looked extremely depressing. Yeah. Muzzy seemed like an experiment gone wrong. You remember muzzy, David? I do remember muzzy only as a commercial i don't think i ever

participated in muzzy's language learning uh but uh yeah do we know anyone who who did muzzy like did muzzy teach anyone french like what did he have successes i've never heard anyone like well i did muzzy and that's that's why today I am a UN diplomat. Most people in that room, almost every one of them. Now I'm thinking of Park Asterix. I'm thinking of European parks. I mean, maybe you guys are doing Park Asterix. I have no idea what your European adventures will take you on.

Do we spoil it or do we not? I don't know. I'll leave it ambiguous. like that that is sort of like if there were a barbarian that's like a specific french cartoon character with some international uh fame who gets a whole theme park yeah yeah right did you have any of the did you grow up with i guess okay you were there from nine, so it wasn't like so much early cartoons. But do you have like affinity for characters who we would not? Yeah.

I had a younger brother, so he was watching all the kids' cartoons. So like Postman Pat, I don't know if you guys know Postman Pat. No, I don't. He's a mailman. British kids' cartoons are pretty good, at least the classic ones, because they would do a lot of puppets, a lot of stop motion. It's the BBC, so there's that sort of veneer of class to classic British cartoons. Postman Pat's very gentle.

He's a mailman. He has a black and white cat. He drives around in his mail truck, and the biggest disaster would be the bridge is down. He's got to like go around it something like that like you know very very low stakes chill relaxing sure sure

there's also like pauses there was like the weird stuff like the clangers which is like their little like you know felt mice who live on the moon and like they they talk like like all that stuff where you would watch it and be kind of bewitched,

even as a nine or ten-year-old. I'd be like, what is this? What's going on here? There was nothing like that. I had grown up on a steady diet of Cartoon Network cartoons about people shooting each other, which I was like,

that's children's entertainment. That's what I'm here for. I would like to see the guns. Yeah, David, do you have an opinion on who was better, that's children's entertainment. That's what I'm here for. I would like to see the guns. Yeah. David, do you have an opinion on who was better, Mr. Conductor on Thomas the Tank? Was it Ringo Starr or George Carlin? I, unfortunately, I grew up with Carlin.

So he was, to me, I understand. I mean, like, it's, and I was a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan, and a big Shining Time Station fan. So, unfortunately for me, it's Carlin. Maybe not unfortunately, but I wish I had grown up with Ringo just because it's such a cool thing. Right. I mean, I think that's... Look, they're both great choices.

Sure. I know Alec Baldwin was in a recent... Yeah, I think in the film, there was a movie where he's the conductor. I have not seen it. But I haven't seen it either. But I just took him out of the running because I went with the two classics in my mind. Get back in the train yard, you little pig. You disgusting little piggy.

You call yourself a caboose. Right. He was the conductor until he retired from public life, of course. So he had to run. But then, of course, as we all know, Alec he retired from public life, of course. So he had to run. But then, of course, as we all know, Alec Baldwin retired from public life. Yeah, we see those headlines every six weeks. Like, I'm not doing the conductor again. I can't.

They ask me. They ask me so over and over again. And I can't. I can't. It's hell for me. I can't do it. He got fired from the Sodor Railway because he kept trying to play words with friends while he was conducting

I'm trying to think of every Alec Baldwin scandal as quickly as possible Alec Baldwin crushes the larynx of a local photographer and then it's like I'm retiring from public life I do love his mr. conductor voice hello I'm mr. conductor

I am the conductor. And he makes that little purse mouth. Which everyone loves to look at. So Mr. Conductor. It's like, it's such an accurate Mr. Conductor that he does that O mouth. Emmy deserving. Emmy quality performance.

Oh, well, here. If we're talking about, know sort of odd british children's characters uh what the hell's be no land what's going on okay let's roll up our sleeves because i feel like this is the big thing we have to tackle i'm gonna uh change my background here wait one second because i oh yes take us to be no land i found a british comic yes so all right now where is it wait a second i gotta find this so yeah so the bino and as far as i know it still exists all right here we go yeah still going yeah all right uh is is like i used to read it it's a little like paper cartoon that comes out every so often uh is it weekly that seems crazy it must have been

it is weekly yeah crazy because it's like weekly magazines weekly comics magazines are still very popular in britain that's how they got comic books over there after the war exactly and so it's existed for forever and it's like i don't know it's probably like 16 pages long and it's sort of like one page for every one of the characters. Maybe the small characters get half a page. Dennis the Menace is the big character, but it is the British Dennis the Menace who has no relationship to the American Dennis the Menace. I think they were created independently and it was just because dennis rhymes with menace uh but like well i feel like the america they both have slingshots but like the american dennis the menace is pretty chill

like i don't think of him as like a dangerous boy he's kind of just like a bit of a prankster whereas like the british dennis the menace is terrifying like he has black hair and this red and black stripes he has a dog called nasher who is like who bites like that's why he's called nasher and he like i mean and this is why i changed my background his enemy is a boy called walter the softy uh who is uh you know wants to like have tea parties and like do his homework or whatever like he's like a nerd but he's specifically coded is like an effeminate little boy like and and i don't know if britain has caught up to this and is now like okay all right we're gonna like tone down the softy stuff this is all this is

essentially just a comic about a heroic boy bullying a poor little effeminate boy but like when i was a kid it was 100 like dennis was like right readers you agree with me walter the softy he's gotta go we're gonna get him like that was that was 100 the vibe of dennis the menace and then there are other characters i mean there's roger the dodger there's billy whiz there's uh mini the minx like it's like a lot of prankster kids it's that sort of like post-war british fantasy of like kids just like roaming around causing trouble you pulled up a background uh the you're not really understanding what bino land is and then my explanation that i'm offered is a sign that says no softies that's wall with a cross through

it okay that's Walter the softy who this I remember her name but another softy I suppose and there's little yeah they're they're smiling and there's flowers floating near them which I guess is what makes these characters softies that they smile

it's like if the cartoon Doug was about Roger the bully yes yes and he was the hero unambiguously the hero right and you were just like yeah I want to see him beat the shit out of Doug fuck Doug which like I almost admire it like it's not like Dennis the Menace in America where it's like yeah this kid's pretty anodyne like he's not really causing any trouble dennis the menace in britain is like i am on the road to jail like that is what's happening with me i don't want to go to school i just want to beat people up i want to be the kid who if you see me coming around the corner you like cross the street dennis the menace uh brit Dennis the Menace, the star of Trainspotting 2.

Yes. I mean, and like there's other characters, the Bash Street kids, I really liked them, I remember. And they're definitely pranksters, like they're a bunch of school kids who cause trouble. But Dennis is the only one I think of as being malicious. Usually they're more just pranksters or trying to stay one step ahead of as being like malicious usually they're more just pranksters or trying to stay one step ahead of the grown-ups or whatever i'm looking at be no land itself though

which i do remember visiting and it you know it was basically just like a pretty simple like they had you know some uh what do you call them dodger cars what do you you know what geez is what is there a bumper car here right which they call roger the dodgers dodgems yeah roger the dodger was like he's a little kid but he's like a huckster like he was always like swindling people out of their money uh i don't know why

he's called it i love that especially uh and there was billy's whizzer which was like one of those you know spinning you sit in a chair and you spin around rides. Like the rides themselves seem pretty basic, but they just were sort of given the Beano skin. The Beano skin. The Beano's so weird.

It's just such a great example. And when I was a little kid and I moved to Britain and I was like, look, I got to get into British culture if I'm going to survive at school. Like I'm going to need to know, what these kids are interested in. So obviously I got into soccer, got into football, because that's the easiest way to have a conversation in Britain is to just know about football. But the Beano, I was definitely buying the Beano to be like,

I guess this is what they like. And I was, like, watching Saturday morning cartoons. You know, I was just trying to sort of, like, get acclimated to this new kid culture. Did you get into it successfully, or was it just, like, were you just tolerating it to get by? I think I got into it.

I mean, the Beano, I think I quickly realized, like, oh, people don't talk about the Beano. Like, I think I soon was like, I guess this is not cool anymore. I would still buy it just because i don't know it was a kid it was a comic book i liked any comic book but uh jason worries oh i was gonna say i the con the the conflict for me is that walter the softy is the antagonist but from what i was reading um one of the other big weekly magazines, I think, for kids is called Dandy.

So Dandy's cool, but softies are bad? I'm so confused. It's a fair question. I don't know why it was called Dandy. Dandy was like the other Beano. And its main character was Desperate Dan, who is like a cowboy with a giant chin i encourage you to google him i i was just looking at desperate dan yes who eats cow pies which is like a whole pie with horns coming out of it because he's like so he's like some weird post-war parody of americans where it's like

these americans they're all giant and all they do is eat and they're like these sort of like you know consuming all consuming colossus people it's very strange he's kind of like paul bunyan type i guess yeah yeah i'm looking at other characters like lord snooty lord snooty yeah he was not familiar did yeah he was not cool by the time I... He's like a classic Beano character. Right. Biffo the Bear. Yep.

Okay, was he popular at that time? Nope. Those are like original Beano characters. Ivy the Terrible, she was a big deal. She was like a little kid, even smaller than the other kids and caused even more chaos um but you know where did um go ahead sorry where did oh i was gonna say where did dan dare run

did that run in the or that ran in something that was its own thing but yeah that right because that was like that's like action comics right that was i think that's like very cool in the 60s and 70s and then britain has that legacy of comic, because 2000 AD, right, obviously, like all that stuff. Yeah. Its own little sort of universe. And so it's nice that there was a Beano Land,

but I don't remember Beano Land really being that exciting. It doesn't look like it. It didn't even last 10 years. They kind of got rid of it. Is it gone now? Yeah, it's gone um yeah well does it make does it make any sense that in the 2000s they go how do we get kids in here i know bino bino it doesn't help that in america bino is like anti-fart medicine right like that is what

bino is here yes i don't know why it's b know and we know this place this park will do entire attractions based on soaps so why would they also do um why not do an entire themed land to uh flatulence medicine i'm looking this is like the no go ahead yeah i was just gonna say it's like the english toon lagoon which is in orlando which is all king fisher's syndicate comic strips i guess you could maybe argue those are a bit more relevant but how much more relevant i'm not sure how much more relevant dagwood is in america but it's that kind of thing though where you're like does this just exist because it's always existed like i know like when i was a kid i read the funny pages i don't so much anymore but right like as a kid

you're just like yeah i get it dagwood he likes big sandwiches like that's just a thing that will never change like and if they got rid of it would be a problem but like does anyone care about dagwood anymore has dagwood caught up with the times yes he's dagwood making commentary on what's happening in the world today like is dagwood in quarantine like for all i know he is i don't know honestly now you've got me intrigued i would like to know how is he getting his food how is he getting his big sandwiches they still is blondie still preparing them right is he like not ordering take take out he won't do take out he wants to wipe everything down before has there been a shortage in big olives i'm looking i'm looking at uh it looks like dagwood's still going to work and arguing with his boss so i guess he's

not respecting quarantine at all well well dagwood and blondie unfortunately are one of the couples who have broken up in the midst of quarantine so they did not they did not make it oh god yeah i are it'd be funny if you looked in all of the classic characters are dealing with covet 19 like comics unilaterally have decided yeah we're gonna we're making it happen in this world we gotta show the reality well i just tried to go a week back in blondie and it asked me to go premium and i'm now i'm genuinely wondering how much it costs to get unlimited blondie in my life like a blondie streaming service oh my god we have to we have to i'm on the same website we

have to figure out how much this costs we're all gonna share a subscription is that allowed share a go comics subscription no no we have to give it directly to blondie right yeah we're only paying the cia we're gonna piecemeal it um if you learned in comics world that uh uh john arbuckle was past COVID-19 from Garfield. Cats can get it and transmit it. Right. And Odie's safe, thank God. But Garfield's been miserable lately. They're all just staring at each other.

They had to quarantine. They went to different houses. Right. And for a while, they were putting Clorox onto the lasagna. It was like a weird, you know, they were like, and then it was like, oh, we don't have to do that. But the first few weeks were really stressful. It's like I didn't know we were getting information from Garfield was watching different YouTube videos than John was. Look, OK, normal. Yes, she left the city.

She she went in quarantine with the barnyard pals, but she quarantined for two weeks, okay? She's not a super spreader. Leave the box when Nermal gets to Abu Dhabi. Leave the box outside for a full 24 hours before bringing him in, excuse me, because you don't want the virus living on the Nermal box. I used to hate Mondays, but now I don't even the virus living on the normal box i used to hate mondays but now i don't even know what day it is anymore i guess i hate all days i have an answer for how much this service

costs hit me blondie plus it is two dollars a month or twenty dollars a year that's not that much it's got six sixty thousand comics like i mean we're all charging more than that for the patreons you know what i'm in quarantine i'm not really going out much i'm just gonna go to the first issue of blondie and the first ever strip and i'm we're just we're going through it all yeah that's where this is heading we are gonna end up doing crazy things like yeah i read i read every bino i went back to the beginning of bino i didn't enjoy one second of it i didn't understand it i'm just i have nothing to do a new podcast where we read a bino every week and talk about it we're all gonna have we're all gonna like do all this nonsense comics from 1931 all the way up till now we'll all have multiple every

one of us is gonna have five podcasts by the end of this there's no other choice deconstructing foxtrot i mean like here's crazy crazy and Ignatz and Jason Sheridan here's what's weird about being a or here's I guess this is the biggest indictment of being a land is that it was turned into an area called wild Asia with all rides intact

so like there was not a lot of work that needed to be done to revamp be no land into wild asia really all the same you know it has whatever uh bumper cars it's got a spinning around ride it's got all the stuff it's it's better themed i'll give them that like it all looks like ruins it's not that far from like joe roadie animal kingdom some of it's kind of well done which interesting you bring that up scott because there is a hotel here ah there's two wings of the hotel there's the newer azteca hotel and then the safari hotel which seems very much like a more a budget conscious is the nice way to say it version of the animal kingdom lodge like you get views of

the the giraffes and the animals and stuff and this safari uh i'm seeing you can hotel the gruffalo you can have a gruffalo room with it is pretty well themed room over your your uh your bed wow yeah um and in the in in our one of our traditions on the show is making sure to distinguish between very similar named things uh chesington has a few things that we we indulge in on the show uh one they have a lot of long-named rides like the gruffalo river ride adventure their safari ride is called zoofari dash ride into africa but i want to be very clear that it is not the restaurant in the hotel that's zafari bar and chill so zoofari is not zafari they just changed the second letter. But those are different things.

That's a very confusing one. Is it because they have pizza? Like za? Mm. No. No. The answer is no. It looks like a pretty regular old place.

Yes. They have an English breakfast in buffet form. You can do a full English in a buffet that's a thing at european hotels i believe right they include breakfast in your stay uh at least here it is i don't know if it's widespread uh but you don't necessarily get a big cow pie a cow pie much bigger than you like desperate dan would eat no but the guys from Madagascar are around sometimes, it seems like. Why is Desperate Dan desperate? Is it for friends?

I mean, he has plenty of food. It shouldn't be food. One cow pie, you'd have to imagine, could last him a week. Right. Well, we'll have to investigate that further uh he i'm looking at another i'm looking at another thing where he's there's other foods around him one of them is owl hoot juice okay uh and also wait you guys should just see this too let me let me share the screen this is some very odd i've been dealing with weird sodas.

Got owl hoot juice. Got Rocky Mountain rock cakes, grizzly stew, cactus soup, and rattlesnake rings. And a whole family of mice are like eating underneath him. Like, do you think there's so much runoff from a desperate Dan meal that there's like colonies of mice? And he's got a cactus in the shape of his own head. Well, yeah, he's a pretty cool guy. I don't think I like desperate Dan. I don't know if Dandy still, I think Dandy died.

I think Beano survives partly maybe just out of like nostalgia, like it's sort of like an institution. But I think the dandy is now defunct okay does it have does dandy have a tombstone yeah yeah they buried it next to zap-o-matic um i guess if if we're winding down here i think you know a question we're um trying to figure out um because with this whole europe, we're covering places we haven't been to. And we're wondering if we were, if any of the three of us were to take a real European vacation

and, you know, eight years or so from now, were we to go to the place you live for a long time in England? Is this worth, is it worth a trip to Chessington? Should we make time to actually go there? Were we to do a British vacation? I think yes.

I think you should do it. And I think part of the argument is that you could very easily combine it with Thorpe Park or Legoland, like any nearby British theme park. Like there's a few down there. If you had to, well, no, I think it's worth it. I think it would be better to go to Chessington for this show than Alton Towers where you would just ride a bunch of, you know, very professional rides. But maybe there's a little less weirdness to dig into.

If you're going to Britain, Chessington, it's a day trip. Like, you know, you can be in London, you can do other stuff, and then you can're going to Britain, Chessington, it's a day trip. You can be in London, you can do other stuff, and then you can devote one day to Chessington and easily conquer it. Sure, sure. If we were to go to Chessington, what kind of flowers would we lay at the gravesite

of Zappomatic to pay our respects? Poppies? Do you lay a poppy? Do we wear the poppy? That is, of course, a classic in memoriam. Yes, for Brits. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

We could start a tradition. We could turn Zappamatic's grave into, like, kind of a happening scene, like Jim Morrison's grave. Oh, yeah. You know, where people, like, drink and party and have sex on it and graffiti it and stuff although i think it's probably been blocked from doing that for a long time but um yeah uh you know we can turn it into a spot of uh rivalry yeah it sounds uh smashing i i will say i feel like they're trying to keep away too many guys like us because when i tried to look up like book your trip and I tried to do more than one night,

it broke the website. Okay. Like it would not let me put it. Maybe you don't want to do that. Yeah. It's like, all right. All right.

Back off podcaster. So they made the decision for you, I guess. So perhaps one the decision for you, I guess. So perhaps one night and no more is suitable. Cause they give you the second day free. A lot of these British parks right now are doing like buy a night and then you get a second ticket for the day you check out. I will say real quick,

I was on the website looking around and I know this is probably just a change of terminology from us to Englandland or it's just a difference um but it says a magical short break awakes oh wait excuse me uh and it's santa claus and it says plan ahead and make your family's christmas wishes come true with a magical short break at chessington world of adventures resort your overnight festive package includes access to the resort's christmas event meet and greet with father christmas in his grotto hey cool they don't just like half they may have stuck to father christmas that is still what father christmas and he has a grotto he's got a grotto not a cabin he has a grotto so he's got a grotto all the guys are in there you know jimmy in the grotto looks like i'm reading it looks like they're not making you wear a mask right

now but they there are certain rides that you have to wear a mask on such as the gruffalo river ride adventure you have to wear though you do have to wear a sex mask in Santa's Grotto. Yeah, that's like a nice wide shut thing. You got to wear like a Harlequin mask. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

All the stars, everybody's hanging out there. Professor Burp is hanging out. And they'll be, you know, he set up, since he got kicked out, he set up his juice jacuzzi in Father Christmas's Grotto.

And then sometimes there'll be just like a little bit of a little bit of a bubble up and people go oh geez professor burps farting again and desperate dan is in the corner just eating a big pie prince andrew he can't sweat though he has a problem he can't be sweating though so you won't know if he's nervous or not oh guys

sorry we didn't even mention a connection to a very recent episode we did before we went abroad Chessington is owned by merlin entertainment which owns alton towers madam to sew lego land gardaland in italy and sea life aquarium and i bring this up uh because sea life aquarium was one of the attractions slotted for the american dream in beautiful new jersey oh the mall the new jersey mall oh wow

this and merlin entertainments was going to create the new jersey mall aquarium uh have you been david have you been uh bothered by this american dream thing in any tangible way being out on that coast i haven't been bothered by it. Is it going to start affecting my day-to-day life? Is that part of the plan? How I imagine it is that all New Yorkers are just furious about this thing all the time. Throwing rocks at it. Yeah, right.

Like it stinks. It's emanating a smell that makes its way to your apartment it's near the like the the giant stadium right the metlife stadium right i have not i have not been affected by american dream uh well i'm praying that you will have the opportunity to go there and uh to see some fish i guess right uh and uh i don't know maybe you know santa's Grotto could get built there as well Seems like a good way To attract some people As their mall

Fails into case Awesome This has been a lot of fun Indeed a world of adventures To check out David Simsey's Revive Podcast The Ride Thanks for joining us On our European expedition Let's exit through the ride thanks for joining us on our european expedition

uh let's exit through the gift shop is there anything you'd like to plug i mean thank you guys for having me it was really uh a delight to find a way to fit into this podcast uh which i i host blank check griffin and david's a movie podcast i'm sure griffin has mentioned it uh obviously when he's on, um, where we go through directors, filmographies and yeah, you can read, I'm a film critic at the Atlantic.

You can read my stuff there. Not that there are many movies to write about right now, but we're doing our best. That's me. Yeah. Are you doing like, do you have to like come up with a thousand ways to do like, remember when,

and, uh, yeah, 1999 movies and blood from a stone at this point uh i think you should just keep writing about doolittle until the pandemic is over i will yes that's what i'll swing back around to do a little yeah a 10-part essay on extraction um uh well and i'll say and hey uh we just found one bino land is uh is waiting for you i'm sure i'm sure you're gonna enjoy i'm gonna explain the bino to everybody as many essays as possible uh

and uh oh wait guys i forgot we have to get uh now that we have covered england we have to get our passport stamped and there it is cook Cook chunk. Uh, what does, what does that look like? It's, uh, well, I think this actually resembles, uh, Jason.

I think this is Jason and his new mode as the height miser. Oh, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's like a new form of, of Jason.

He's got very high hair, just like the heat miser, uh, from, uh, whatever that Christmas thing is. Rankin Bass thing. Yeah. He looks great. And his eyebrows are going up real high, again, indicating how much he loves his height. And he's smiling a big smile that honestly kind of resembles our pal the

wait I forget the name of the robot Zappamatic he's smiling a big Zappamatic smile you know what I'll take it because I've been really worried this whole time staring looking at Walter the softy going like oh no another theme park character

I resemble Walter the softy no you're your own character I resemble. Walter the Softie. No, you're your own character. You're the Heidmeiser. I'll take it. Although I thought you should play... Who was the guy who would trick people from Beano? Roger the Dodger. I thought you were more of a Roger the Dodger, Jason.

Oh, that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. So, honestly, although Jason could play any of the Beano characters, let's be honest. You know, on my 1,000 episode Beano podcast, you know, when we all have conflicting Beano podcasts, Beano dissection podcasts. Sure. There'll be plenty of time to sort all of this out.

Hey, as for us and for the rest of our European vacation, keep following us and our progress on Twitter, on Instagram and our Facebook group. And you can join us for bonus day trip, day excursions over at the second gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride.

We just went to Popeye Village. Also not that far out from Griffin's last appearance on the show i don't know if you know this griffin griffin broke the record we always knew it was his to break longest episode now over on the the second gate about race through new york with jimmy fallon where's your guys uh record at at this but you've you've gone over three hours god and we just just yesterday we did another one that was insanely long and it's like one of those things where like now it's just like well if we do under two hours we're

gonna like i mean what are we even doing here like it's we used to do an hour long episodes and it was fine i don't know what we've done to ourselves bruce springsteen concert just as good we all have just as much talent and charisma we're all going to do it as a Super Bowl halftime show there will be some we're still stuck in this in January the Super Bowl

halftime show will be just like cutting to different podcasters now a thousand zooms halftime show will be just like cutting to different podcasters now a thousand zooms oh boy well anyway yeah lots of hours of content available over there hey and if we missed anything about any of these parks be sure to

let us know and email us at podcastradio gmail dot com anything else Mike and Jason no I just just keep in your prayers, I guess. Yeah, and watch out for gourds. And watch out for gourds. Watch out.

Gourds? Gorgs. Oh, I don't know. Gorgs. Okay. It is gorgs. Watch out for gorgs. You like watch out for gourds.

Well, you never know what's going on in those squashes, you know? Decorative gourds are very scary. Decorative gourds. Good tip to live your life by. All right, see you next week. We'll go elsewhere. And we're actually going to stay around this neck of the woods, perhaps the British Isles, if that's a little bit of a clue.

And we'll talk to you next week. Bye-bye. Bye. Forever. Dog. This has Bye. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson,

Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com

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