Podcast: The Ride - European Vacation: Phantasialand

Episode Date: August 28, 2020

The European Vacation concludes with a look at Germany's Phantasialand. A compact, but hyper-detailed park filled with innovative coasters, fake rocks, and little bit of Hollywood magic. Gremlins Invasion episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! welcome in to the final podcast the ride european vacation a podcast hosted by three alfs i'm uh alf number one scott gardner joined by alf number two, Mike Carlson. Hello, I'm ALF number two, Mike Carlson. And I love it. Three. Jason, go. Oh, no, sorry. Say what you want to say, ALF.

I don't know. I was just going to ramble, you know. And then I was deciding, did I really, I should have said like, oh, hey, it's ALF number two or something. I guess we all should have had the impressions in the pocket. Jason, it's up to you what you want to do alf number three oh hey it's alf number three sounds good to me i just did that to follow up on something that we said we were going to do uh in an episode over on the second gate if you haven't been following the the side episodes the the side excursions we did a fun episode, came out a couple days ago

about the Alf and Gremlins ride. Did that with Joan Ford and that was a lot of fun. I guess we determined that we are all more like Alf than we are like Gremlins. That was what we... We are all more Alf, yeah. We relate more to Alf than the Gremlins.

We're not as crazy as the Gremlins are, but we're very low-key like Alf is and sardonic i would say casual like sandwiches and hawaiian shirts i mean it's truly it's not even that much of a joke it's no no not really accurate it's not even if you okay please go check out the episode but if you're looking for a great runner around that point i can't promise you that. I just wanted to make good on something we said we would do. Yeah, I appreciate that. But yeah, I'd say it's barely a joke, let's be honest.

No, no. We're just three elves. Further elaboration of why we're more like Alf. And also to hear about a crazy ride. That thing is nuts. I'm glad we got to talk about it. But today, we stay in the Western Germany area. We just go a little bit south down to a very delightful place called Fantasia Land.

I would have my knee jerk would have been to say Fantasia Land. But I found a fantastic 1991 video that takes you around the park that's hosted by a frightening orange monkey. I don't know if you guys met this frightening orange monkey. I didn't. Is this an original character to that video or is there a Fantageland original character? I mean, there are original characters and I definitely kept stumbling upon them. I didn't see him in any other context, but he was oddly upgraded to being the host of this video. A really kind of a shoddy puppeteering job for being your host. I got a lot of my content out of this video

and I recommend it. We'll post a link somewhere. But yes, from that video, I found a song that taught me that it is not Fantasia Land but rather Fantasia Land Fantasia Land I really liked the song

and I like the place a lot how do you guys any overall before we get into it thoughts on Fantasia Land is it possible for reality itself to be oversaturated? Like, reality to be HDR? Because this park is so...

There is so much detail in what I have seen of this park in such a compact space, too. It's overwhelming. Like, this park strikes me as like it is weird it is weird like some of the earlier ones we did but it is very full of substance like it feels very good yeah yes it feels it feels like just from looking at the website now the website i think is probably the best website of any of the parks we've examined through this European trip

as far as making you go, oh, this is a real place. This looks like it's a real destination. But I will say the website even hides the mystery and the magic. Yeah, that's kind of true. We were talking about things that we discovered along the way that they did not put front and center as here's big things in this park. Almost as if they were trying to shove them into the basement like they were embarrassed of them. And they should not be.

Yeah. So I don't know what their rationale was for doing that. But when you look at the website, oh, this looks like Pleasant and there's some roller coasters. But then you start going through the YouTube videos and you go, oh oh they have this is some weird robot shit this is uh they have it they really do i i don't think that this is so much the case in 2020 but i think that there was a sweet spot in this park maybe in the early 90s maybe if you went you know in the right venn diagram of a lot of these rides i think you could have gone there in like 1992 and seen over 500 robots. I really think that is accurate, which might be I think certainly there have been Disney parks with less robots than that.

So you really got to give them credit. Yes. And there's still there are still some robots. So am I totally wrong? Oh, no, there definitely are. I think maybe there's an insane amount in, like, 90s. At one point in time, yeah. I think there was, like, tons of, like, pirates level.

There's so many animatronics. And shows as well. My overall thought about this place, I think it's a great place to be ending the European trip. Because if I had to take a guess before we really looked into any of these places if we're gonna do a month full of europe episodes i thought we would find some surprisingly charming parks full of oddities that reflect the european culture and spirit and i also thought we would find lots of weird shady ripoffs of american rides and i and with italy it was mostly the latter category um and then you know a lot of odd charm i think in

in popeye village and chessington and pedo and i think fantasia land is the perfect blend of of all of it it's it's everything i thought we would find in europe yeah definitely some ripoffs here uh oh yeah and still yeah there's like expensive ripoffs but newer ripoffs as well in the last 10 years i found yeah they're still in the in the ripoff game definitely though also some rides that i think predated rides we have in america um and and and i also like we'll view this on a case-by-case basis and i don't want to put my views onto you guys but i think whereas the uh movie park italy uh you know fake universal feeling it just it almost like made me a little mad in its exploitation it's just the brazenness of the ripoff and i i i still like it i would like to go there but there's it doesn't feel as uh i don't know it doesn't feel as

exploitative the ripping off here it just feels like i don't know we like these rides let's kind of do this but take it into this direction it feels like if uh your dad and your uncle tried to build a pirates or a haunted mansion for you yeah with with every bit of sweet intention that you could imagine this is like you know when the beatles do sergeant peppers and then the rolling stones do that album where they're like wizards on the cover and it's clear that they're like oh we want to do something weird too but you know they're talented as well so how could you be upset with another talented group of people doing a weird thing clearly influenced by the other set yes yeah you know they're hopping on a trend you know the base but but it's not just uh i think they might admit it they might admit we were inspired by this

whereas the uh the modus operandi In that Italy park seemed like What are you talking about? Universal Studios Never heard of it Yeah, there's a different vibe There's a craft at least to this From like King Kong is in

Or was in Fantasia Land Still is I am cloudy on what's still there in places. I think I mostly know but I might get one wrong as we go. They have a map on their website which is not unlike the German

stereotype. Some of the stuff on the website is not very efficient. It's very detailed. There's a lot of layers to it but yeah a lot of layers to it but it yeah a lot of it is hidden and probably by just maybe by design to keep some mystery although even the wikipedia page is not very thorough like it leaves out some big attractions which they've yeah they've had this this place feels a little more to me like a Disneyland or a Magic Kingdom where there's tons of little oddities everywhere. It feels like a park of, I could be wrong, but like 30 attractions.

Whereas if you look to the website, they kind of only feature the top five. Yeah. Yes. I'm wondering. I mean, we really, again, we should really do our research. We should try to talk to PR, you know, and we should say, what's your philosophy here behind this? But we don't do that yet. We're still a small operation.

But I am interested if that's part of the mission. Like, let the wonder be experienced when you get here. Don't give it all away for free. Sure, sure. Well, basics. What do we know? This park was opened in 1967 um there's two people were behind it one of them i don't have the name handy but another one was richard schmidt who was

apparently a prolific producer of puppet shows on german television and i think his idea was very in the spirit of what Disneyland was going to be before it evolved and grew, where he wanted to house his puppet collection somewhere and then also have some carnival rides or merry-go-round or something. And, you know, a nice little afternoon place for European and German families. And it grew a lot. I think especially in the 80s, it seems like this place had a boom, which obviously increases its appeal to me. I think there feels like an inherent 80s-ness to it. You can really tell that's where it grew big time and came of age.

So he started it basically just as a puppet storage area. Puppet garage. Jay Leto's puppet garage. Does Jeff Dunham have a puppet garage? Oh, man. Like Jay does with cars, obviously. I mean,

that theme park also, if anybody has enough IP to make a theme park out of, I feel like if he took over the parking lot of the Venetian or wherever the hell he does Vegas shows. Oh my God. And did a little shady mini.

It's clearly a tradition. You know, Richard Schmidt did it and Sid and Marty Croft did it for several months in Atlanta. Yeah. Whereas if Dunham, like weird independent puppeteers have to try to do weird shady theme parks yes dunham hit us up we have ideas we'll help you out with this dunham fader you know oh yeah we'll take universal terry's got a massive uh a chunk of um is it treasure island or mirage

he has a giant theater he has has the Terry Fader Theater. It's the Terry Fader Theater in the Mirage. Yeah. Yeah. So where's Faderland? Where's Faderland? Do people even know who Terry Fader is offhand? He's like one of the more generic looking people who you would see gigantic posters of in Las Vegas.

There are about 30 to 50 i feel like maybe this is a little high but 30 to 50 names that you would go to vegas and go oh these are the biggest stars in the world because you see their posters so often and they all probably make 20 million dollars or more a year they're all probably very rich terry fader on that list uh my newest my newest favorite is tape face oh tape face yeah the australian uh performance artist yes tape faces everywhere he's at harris i've not heard of tape face you call yourself a vegas enthusiast and you don't know who tape face is i am shocked that I've missed this. He's a Harrah's guy. Yeah.

New Zealand. It's like a kind of silent comedy show or like he doesn't talk, but he puts tape on his face and stuff. I've never seen him. He might be. He might be fantastic. I don't know. I'm excited to see him whenever we're allowed to go back.

Well, I guess we can go back now, but I don't think tape face is running shows not a lot running right now yeah that was an early quarantined activity for me because i had been in vegas not too long before but when everything first locked down i was like hmm who who has sent best wishes to everyone has tape face yes tape face has said everyone stay safe, stay healthy. Well, when you said activity, I thought you were, were you putting a bunch of tape on your face? Well, yeah, I was, I was trying to, I was putting tape on my face. I was making like alcohol slushies with a teaspoon of alcohol in them. Do you, do you think with the right positioning of tape on on your face Could that supplant a mask?

Oh that's a good question If it's the right kind of tape I do think that would probably Be pretty effective. It also might be Effective at blocking any Air coming in. That might actually Be the situation that the conservatives Pretend is happening With a mask. We're restricting your air flow

There's no way. You're going to pass out because you're being deprived of oxygen. Tape face actually would have that problem. It would have that problem. Yeah, the conservatives got an early peek at the Batman trailer where the Riddler is taping a guy's face up. This is what they're doing to us.

It's like they're kidnapping us. Yeah. And put tape on our face. We're all forced tape faces. We're all at the mercy of Danos. The left are all Danos. We're all Danos. We're all Danos.

My last thought before we go right back to Germany is that what if tape face and bucket head teamed up? Oh, could you imagine? Could you imagine? And let's see is the bucket a good mask is the kfc bucket if you pulled it all the way down over your head because he has a mask as well and a bucket who but maybe that's also effective he has a way he has a mask too yeah he has kind of like a weird halloween blank like i forget what you call those

jabberwocky kind of jabberwocky masks i think i'd say maybe that more than the bucket i'm concerned about the bottom of the bucket like it's the same thing as bandanas right where you aren't covering that chin area right um so it's what's it's actually weird when you added up how many masks there are in vegas entertainer world so who who needs extra masks the least is it the jabberwockies um one of these guys maybe terry fader has a routine where that's very disturbing i think where they like uh force a person to be a living um marionette like they'll get like dad from the audience and then like make him be a lady and uh And I feel like that's maybe a fully enveloping mask situation. So, if Terry Fader turns you into a lady puppet, then you don't need an extra mask.

Okay. Okay, that's good to know. All right, back to... Back to Fantantasialand. I also just want to say this is in an area that I'm very fond of because I lived here. I studied abroad in this neck of the woods. It's kind of between Cologne and Bonn in Germany. I lived in Dusseldorf.

I studied abroad there and my girlfriend at the time lived in Bonn, and Cologne is a major city right in the middle. So I did this north-south trip many, many times. I really loved it around there. Loved living there for a while. And the only thing now is that I'm baffled why I did not ever learn

about Fantasia Land. Why did nobody tell me? It was, as I've said, the least theme parky and therefore most regrettable time of my life. But I had plenty of opportunity to go to Fantasia Land. I lived that. I had so many days free. I don't know why I didn't do it, and I'm upset. You didn't even know it was there.

No idea. No. Wow. Yeah, that's... We all look... Life is full of regrets. And some of them we'll take to our deathbed and we'll never be able to make up for them.

So maybe this is just one of them and you'll have to just learn to live with it. I mean, I could still go to Fantasia Land today, but I think there are rides that i missed that are closed forever um i i mean i i think that might have been my opportunity to go on galaxy or on uh i think race for atlantis was still open and uh now i'll never be i i was in vegas and the star trek thing was still going and I didn't do it. Me too.

And it's a tragedy because I love Star Trek and the whole thing looked awesome. I could have drank a Quarks bar and I'll regret it for as long as I live. Did everybody bail on theme parks in your college years? Is this consistent between the three of us? No. No. years is this consistent between the three of us well no in fact um you know my quote unquote study abroad was i did a semester in los angeles so i went to theme parks a lot to the point where my peers i think were concerned um how how many times i went to disneyland and universal so i was interning on the universe a

lot so it could pretty much get in free but it got in the that was the time of like buy a day get the year for free so like i was only there for three months but i could go whenever i wanted and i i lived down the street like i lived around the corner from universal so is this where you get your love of California Adventure 1.0? Probably. Yeah. I mean, that was like I did right before I went back east. And we did.

I remember like just being baffled by it because we did it in like before lunch. We had done most of the attractions before noon. So like you're in you're freshly in los angeles and anaheim and you're young and the world is ahead of you and anything is possible you didn't know what horror show los angeles would eventually turn out to be and you're you're seeing the the sun when you come into disney's california venture and you're like this is the greatest place I've ever been. You know, there was a lot

of like MGM photocopied signage essentially in the Hollywood part. That was very comforting to me. Wow. This horror show assessment is a little odd to me. Do you mean just like this year?

Or did you consider it a horror show being in los angeles yeah yeah uh no i i look i uh i make a bit of fun it was it hasn't been that bad uh there's a lot of good stuff about it yeah i love los angeles amazing city but it certainly takes a couple of years to get used to and there's some real weirdness like every now and i'm very good i can spot it immediately where it's like someone it's like uh someone's yelling at a car it's like oh there's a horse running down the street no one around like those little moments of los angeles weirdness did that happen i know what you're talking about when are you seeing a horse did

you see a horse running down the street alone? Yes. Well, I saw someone. Okay. This is Burbank, actually. I guess weirdness of Los Angeles County. I was cutting by the equestrian area in Burbank, and someone had clearly just gotten a runaway horse under control. And then as I was driving down the street, I saw a German shepherd walking in the lane

in front of me and i like had i was like fought like trying to get this protect this dog and like a bunch of other people were too just a day in la you know was dr doolittle in town what was happening i think what had happened is someone's course got out of control and then their dog ran away. So they had to get them back one after the other, which did happen. Right. But this doesn't seem like any way to encapsulate the experience of Los Angeles in general. This seems like one thing that happened. Okay.

How about the other time where I got off the the subway in hollywood and a man in a trench coat but no shirt on lunged at me and yelled i can't be alone anymore jesus yeah yeah uh yeah that is uh what do you think happened i think he just wanted a friend, but it wasn't going to be me. The next guy, probably. Yeah. I'm glad he didn't show up after the horse and the dog. You again? He was riding on the horse. So anyways, yeah, I'm upset I missed Fantasialand.

And I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure missed Fantasialand. And I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure where to get into it. I mean, it really is just there's an odd amount of attractions that just have a lot of interesting, odd culture to them. I mean, like one that might bear talking about right at the beginning just if you're talking good solid attractions is Terran this roller coaster that went in in 2016

this came up on the show before because I threw it in as kind of a could this possibly make it into the fake rock final four because I think the rock work was pretty strong on it it didn't make it into the into the competition the 16 but if you google it it looks fantastic um this i feel is a ride

that is absolutely disney and universal quality it's a multi-launch roller coaster the fastest and longest multi-launch coaster at least uh when it opens that might be hagrid's now but uh i mean this this ride seems legitimately fantastic yeah it seems like i don't know if it seems like yeah like a mix of like hagrid's and big thunder or something like that where it's like it's not a it's like not a ton of like i guess theming other than just like the mountains or the whatever you'd call these yeah would they would they what are these things are they what are they just rocks it's an old norse village is what it is so is it is it kind of um yeah is it cliff walls or uh they aren't man-made right i don't think so i mean i'm sure people are yelling if they know what this is yeah cliff

walls might be right let's say cliff walls i like the sound of that um yeah but it's very much like it's very much like it kind of puts it's enough stuff to make you feel like you're in a different spot in addition to obviously what is a very cool thrill element um with multi-launches. Yeah. Yeah. They have a lot of pretty sizable coasters here from like the big coaster manufacturer, B&M, and Velcom, I don't know how to say it, Intamin. And they all seem to have very nice sets. Like, it really puts to shame the American, like,

yeah, put the steel pylons up and put a bunch of gravel underneath. Like, just really make some of our American coasters look like shit. This is what, yeah, this is what, like, Six Flags either doesn't understand or doesn't give a shit about, and it's probably the latter. It's like, looking at this, I don't think this costs as much as Cars Land costs or something like that. I'm sure it's a little more expensive than a regular coaster because you're putting up different little pieces of rock and stuff. But it makes so much difference. It's so different. It gives you a vibe and it makes you able to separate this from other coasters in your head. You know, this is the one with the rocks and the the rooftop and the the

norse theming and and it's uh yeah a little little more of a little little transformative experience yeah and it makes like it makes it probably like 25 to 50 better of an experience like it is interesting like yeah six flags is just like uh yeah you're gonna get to see uh valencia uh when you get to the top that's what you're gonna see you're gonna see get to see Valencia when you get to the top. That's what you're going to see. You're going to see your car sometimes. Make sure it hasn't been broken into. You're going to see your car plugged into a service trailer charging like mine was. A regular extension cord, just an orange Home Depot extension cord.

You'll see teens trying to steal the hubcaps off the car and you'll be able to shout at them which is fun hey hey don't do the white car specifically please don't they look up give you the finger um keep doing what they're doing we talked a little bit of from alton towers the wicker man coaster and it's another one where like obviously that's a big impressive thing but it's not like it's some crazy ass robot it's just like this big cool looking structure that gives it a vibe and it would be really nice if six flags and other parks were just to like just put a little dressing a little set dressing it goes a long way yeah and just a theme just to let you know a little like hint of this is kind of a ride where

you go into the old west or into medieval times or whatever it is like yeah like the like the riddler's revenge coaster it's like i like that coaster i did it but like give us some of that gotham that uh batman forever architecture where like think like a big statue is holding the observatory up like well this is your second i think of the week i know it's begging batman forever content and i mean this i think is just your particular hang-up is uh i love batman forever batman forever land i love batman forever so much and that this is one of those movies where like if if people people were like, are you interested in watching new movies, or would you just like to watch Batman Forever all the time? I would say, oh, Batman Forever, I think. Like, if I had to choose never seeing Batman Forever again or new movies, I might go Batman Forever.

And I'm very excited at the idea that there's a three-hour cut of Batman Forever that was just talked about. What? Yes, there's possibly a full Schumacher three-hour cut of Batman Forever that puts back in the deleted scenes where there's a giant practical bat that's haunting Val Kilmer. It's a much darker movie, apparently. Then those scenes are on YouTube. Oh, okay. But yes, this this taron release the schumacher cut yeah maybe maybe that three hour cut finally get some leonard

cohen songs in there so we know to take this seriously if i don't hear a sad song, I don't know whether this is a film or not. I mean, kiss from a rose. Seal is my Leonard Cohen. Taron, also, as Jason, as you said, really, like all the legit, all the best coaster makers have done something in Phantasialand. And this one's by Int intiman who later several years later built the hagrid's coaster and it's it's similar in a lot of ways it does it's not the same level if you stop and do a little scene there's no robots or anything but it it feels a lot like hagrid's in that there's like there's kind of a downbeat and then you super speed up they just do a little bit with lighting and fog and that kind of thing um but they i don't know this feels to me like uh if you like the vibe of hagrid's and you want

more of it and maybe a more intense one because this one goes 72 miles an hour i'd really like to go on this ride but this would be more than pushing the amount of launch that i can be a queen of what is uh what is the speed of hagrid's do you a queen of. What is the speed of Hagrid's? Do you know offhand? I don't know if I have that down. 55 or something? Sounds like, I think 55. Yeah.

And Rock and Roller Coaster is that's the fastest that I've done and that gets up to 57. So this would be intense but it seems fun as hell it seems really really great yeah and it looks like that like smooth fun crazy like as long as stuff is smooth i can go pretty fast i think i'm with you yeah yeah i can't be i can't be shaken i can't be feeling individual nails um other awesome coasters there's something

called black mamba which i've seen described as the best inverted coaster in the world uh it has 10 near misses there are 10 parts of the ride where if you're staring straight ahead you feel like you're gonna slam into a wall or something and presumably you do not yeah so that sounds cool too is black mamba the one that lifts you up into a building so because maybe i'm not sure a couple of these go through buildings or tunnels and aesthetically like there it's not like there's show scenes in it but it does add like an interesting like oh it's dark and then the next turn is a total surprise but i feel like i kept seeing in passing that some of the designs of these coasters the buildings or the walls act as sound dampeners because there are residences

very close to this park yeah extremely it's in the town of brule which is pretty suburban like it i think this this park was like a big boon to that city but yeah it seems very sleepy around there and yeah odd that there would be lots of coasters right next to homes i think that really impacted the ride mystery castle which also seems like i guess in keeping with the rides we've been talking about it seems like it's it's the bones of a ride you know very well it's a drop tower but in order to dampen screams they do it inside so it's they and it's not all tower you it's not all riders around the same tower they're like you're up against the wall. There's four walls and, you know, four separate, you know, drops on either on all the sides with a little bit of effects.

Like there's lightning up at the top and, you know, kind of some music and some plotiness. And the tower itself looks really scary from the outside. It looks like a prison or something. This seems great. It's like it's a ride that you know but with 20 more effort in theming it seems really cool yeah almost the setup to dr doom's fear fall of like a pot of my experiments you know um but just yeah with a lot of inside neon or fake tesla coil kind of thing and it a little bit goes a long way that's the lesson for this park and for theming in general a little bit

goes a long way you don't have to go nuts but i'm i'm glad for times when they do um i guess in terms of um if we start transitioning from hey that's a good amount of theming to potentially confusing theming. One of the big headlines about Phantasialand is a ride called Colorado Adventure. I had a feeling this is the direction you were going. Yeah. Colorado Adventure is a mine train type coaster. It's like Big Thunder. It's steel.

So you're in a train and it's a madcap train adventure with some fake rocks that's good um we understand what this is um but after it opened and up until 2013 this ride was called colorado adventure the michael jackson thrill ride yes i mean is this let me ask you this, Scott. Is this why we're doing this park? It helps. It definitely helps. I mean, hard for me to stay away from something. Something insane.

That contains the Michael Jackson thrill ride. That, when I first just saw the first two layers of the website and and was on the second thing i looked at was colorado adventure i immediately was like is this all this park has because the website is such a smokescreen like it's like wait are we doing this because we're gonna talk about colorado adventure for half an hour nothing but colorado adventure i mean the is, there's not a ton to talk about. No, there isn't. With it. And I was because I was disappointed.

I feel like I might have heard about this years ago. Oh, really? They named a ride after Michael. OK, so then does he do the the pre-show video or is it set to a Michael Jackson song? No, none of this. The theming is that it says the word michael jackson on the outside and then otherwise is an old west thing it's not even like there's stars or uh glitter like would be on his glove it has absolutely nothing to do with michael jackson did you investigate i mean

is there i mean i know there's footage of him on the ride is this something where he just was on the ride one day and said, I want it. I want to be on this ride. No, it was their opening day. He opened it, didn't he? Oh, did they not change the name at some point? Do I have this wrong?

Did it open as the Michael Jackson Thriller? I think, well, now I think it's they've dropped that. But I thought that was the opening. Yeah, that was the opening of the marketing for years yeah and and by it's a curious marketing strategy because you look at the sign and it's very not very farm just imagine you know a kind of rustic wooden sign for your roller coaster it says colorado adventure and then just kind of pasted on letters, the Michael Jackson thrill ride. The M looks bad. The M kind of looks like an N, so it's a little crooked, and it looks like Nykle Jackson.

To me, this feels like they heard he was coming and threw it up really quickly to make him happy. Hurry, get old Gus up to uh bang some letters onto that sign there are so many different like legends and and confirmed stories of like meetings michael jackson took like in the 90s and probably early 2000s like michael jackson was gonna buy marvel comics he had a meeting with stan lee and i just read michael jackson met with laura schuler donner to try to be professor x in the x-men movie god like oh yes that's in the big singer article i think yes that's true uh yes uh so i wonder if this is just a weird meeting he had that actually like bore fruit like it was just like yeah whatever you want i guess because

it seems like most of these meetings are people leave confused exactly what michael is looking for uh and they like anytime you read it's like yeah he he was he thought that he could just um like star in the men in black 2 movie was that right like did he think he was gonna have a much bigger part did he think like agent m was gonna be the the climax of the film i think it was like is he gonna have his like name on the poster uh will he be in sequels like it just seems like any meeting he had people just left confused and is this the one meeting where he was like yeah i want to have a ride and it's a choo-choo train and they were like oh okay and then like that was done like this was the only weird meeting he had that worked and some really severe efficient german guy just

said just put his name on the sign right it doesn't need to be more than that right you're overthinking it you're gonna get it up in the next hour the footage he didn't develop it yeah the footage of him riding it is very confusing because he has the hat he has like the the moonwalker hat and then everyone else in the car uh the train, has clearly been given cowboy hats, which they're waving like you do when you're riding a horse or on a bucking bronco, that sort of thing. But it looks like he just has the hat you associate with him, and he's wearing it going up the lift hill, and then he takes it off and he holds it for a while. And then he tries to put it back on as the coaster's picking up speed, and he realizes he has to hold it. And it's just a lot of him taking the hat on it off and then everyone

else never tries to put their hat on they're like these are props and we're waving it is very confusing yes did he not have object permanence did he not understand how things worked well i think we know for sure he did not know how things how things work i think that is 100 confirmed sure yes well he thought he could you know show his baby to uh a bunch of people outside his hotel without the baby tumbling seven stories to its death yes he so he might not know hats fine uh my question though is once they took his name off of it why didn't they replace it with another famous german celebrity like david hasselhoff or elf a great question yeah this ride is just yeah thrown to the gutter um unbranded it's just

some ordinary ride now who cares I don't know Is there even a Is Fassbender German I forget where he's from I like that pronunciation because everyone just calls him Fassbender but you're right if it is if he is It's obviously Fassbender Do people not say Foss

I don't think I've actually heard Foss but it's probably I think that's the correct pronunciation Yeah But it's always america fast fast banner that's how i say i'm assuming it's like fantasia land um if he ever wanted to just brand this place entirely false false band or land false false band or just retheme everything after his films make it all prometheus oh yeah um i yeah i don't know uh yeah this ride is now it has no owner that's the thing i saw one justification that people said that this ride had been adopted

by michael jackson i don't like the sound of that no i can't say i do the dream of anything being adopted by Michael Jackson. Yeah. There's got to be a good story about this coming together that we, I don't know if maybe it's impossible to find. Maybe there's like one old man who worked for the company that's like 85 and we have to like journey to germany to meet him to learn what happened but there's got to be some interesting weird story behind this somebody has

it yeah it's it's not public it just makes no sense they and they stopped calling it that in 2013 which implies that this was not a cancellation this is not like they recently stripped it of the michael jackson's name did they just think like oh wait he died he's not uh coming back let's just uh we can take this confusing thing off now can't we uh it's very possible yeah uh um but this isn't the only celebrity tie-in to this park uh because uh some friends of michael jackson are also very associated with it uh who also have uh you know a lot of a lot of flair and sparkles and i refer of course to sigfried and roy uh big sigfried and roy presence over the years at this park um in 1987 for the 20th anniversary sigfried and roy

started a tiger breeding program at fantasia land they basically recreated their setup at the mirage like it like there's the same tiger uh territory same tiger tank I don't know the phrase. Tiger tank, probably. I prefer tiger tank. Put some tiger in your tank, you know? But yeah, they, I don't know, Siegfried and Roy seem to be around a lot around this time.

There's no one more suited to be in a park called Phantasialand than than zigfried and roy yeah yeah big time um and over the course of discovering that i found a odd little rabbit hole um and i can't believe this rabbit hole in particular keeps going um so i was on a website that was in german so i i didn't understand the the bulk of it but there would be it was a timeline of the history of fantazio land and there was you know big keywords here's what we did this year uh you know just millennium for 2000 and it kind of gave me the gist of what happened when and for when this happened in 1987 the

timeline said in big golden letters sarmody uh you guys know the word sarmody audience if you didn't follow us over to the second gate we did an episode uh where we watched every episode of the terrible series father of the pride the dreamworks animated series based on sigfrid and roy and that had a character named sarmody played by carl reiner rip roy horn r.i.p also we didn't do that episode very long ago and both roy horn and the voice of sarmody carl reiner have sadly passed away um so yeah sarmody related to fantasia land and i jumped out of my chair like oh no this word because also if you didn't hear that episode sarmody is an incredibly unpleasant character all of the many homophobic moments in the series come out of uh sarmody's mouth um so i was a little unnerved to see Sarmody's name again.

And I thought, well, did they breed a tiger here named Sarmody? What's the deal? Why am I saying this word again? And then I found something that I can't believe the three of us didn't find in our previous Father of the Pride research. Do you guys know that Sarmody is an acronym no what do you know what it can now just picture it in your mind and you guess what it what it might stand for or at least what part of it might stand for sigfried and roy yep you got it masters masters of the Impossible?

That's it. Yes. Sarmody means Siegfried and Roy Masters of the Impossible. Whoa. This, you guys, was their magic word. We don't know enough about Siegfried and Roy to have realized that they didn't say abracadabra. They said Sarmody. Oh, my God. We look like such fools.

We just left that hand there's one listener this has been gnawing at them and they were hoping that the day would come where we would be shamed and that has happened all of a sudden as if magic sarmody we have been shamed oh my god i mean we i i have not felt so embarrassed doing this that we don't know that much about Siegfried and Roy, a topic we should be experts on. Yeah. Yeah. All three of us missed it. And not only that, that's not the only way that Sarmody has reared its head in Siegfried and Roy world.

It's not even the last time Sarmody has come up in an animated way. Oh, my God. Guys, turn your attention to the shared screen on zoom, where I'm horrified to say that there was another Siegfried and Roy animated series. This I remember. Okay. Okay. You did find this before.

Oh no, I just, it's all coming back to me from childhood. No, I didn't talk. I don't think I've talked about this on the show but go ahead yeah uh this show is called the full thing what sarmody means sigfrid and roy masters of the impossible uh here's a little scene when the dust demons are swept from the hearth and the kindling's been set a place the mages sit by the fire and recall a

once magic world called sarnoti a place of fairy queens and wishing wells of unicorns dragons potions and spells so sarmody is also the magical kingdom that they protect and by the way in this series sigfried and roy are jacked they all have they're like they they seem like they're six foot seven and have very broad shoulders they all look they both look essentially like um batman the animated series like the proportions of that bruce wayne slash batman that cartoon looks way better yeah yes yes only four episodes well way less successful oddly Siegfried and Roy animated series but there's two one Sarmody is their magical land and in the

other one Sarmody is a old cranky tiger who hates gay tigers yeah I think the first one's better I think the first series is better yeah wow I gotta see that I mean what is the if you had to put a percentage on your individual yeah i think the first one's better i think the first series was better yeah wow i gotta see that i gotta watch that i mean what is the if you had to put a percentage on your individual desires to watch every episode of this sigfried and roy animated show what would your percentage be uh rewatch in my case because i think i watched every episode i wow i think that show was one of the

ones so in like the the the golden era of Saturday, I don't know if it's a golden era, it might be the Bronze Age, but like Saturday morning cartoons when we were kids where like Fox and the WB and even like ABC, NBC, CBS were starting to get in the game. They would usually start around 8 a.m., 9 a.m., but then there would be weird syndicated ones

at like 7 a.m. And I think but then there would be weird syndicated ones that like 7 a.m and i think that's where it got dropped it felt kind of european that felt yeah or like not may or it was a joint production with england or france or something well there was and there was a lot of fantasy kind of where there was a pirates one there was a sinbad one the sinbad the sailor uh and and i think because you know those are in the public domain you just do whatever you want with pirates at sinbad you know right right um well what how much does anybody want to watch all the episodes of this uh yeah i would do it i would i would do this i would do it because it's everybody over 50% I'm at like 4% I think You said 4 episodes and it feels like

It's right in the sweet spot of when we were kids Which makes me more attracted To it It's just a rip off of an action show from The early 90s Sure sure I don't know I would watch one for sure

And then my percentage could change. Yeah, they would judge it off of the pilot, sure. It'd be less punishing either way, I think, than the other one. So, anyway, yeah, Siegfried and Roy, they were in the park a lot

seemingly, along with a guy named Heino. I guess if you're if you're german or or um if you grew up in germany i'm sure you know who heino is i did i didn't previously he's like a he's a blonde dude with perennial sunglasses and uh uh i don't know like the most one of the most successful german musicians of all time all i know is when i looked up uh fantasia land on getty editorial it's he i think he was there once a month i think heino had an apartment at fantasia land was he the uh that perfume guy that was always in epcot center you don't know wait what's that again what's that guy's name oh right

uh yeah i gotta look people are yelling right now because he's always there the gear you mean gear nest gear nest thank you jason the norwegian fragrance man yeah yeah he's like always he's like signing once a day he's like number one there mickey thomas is in epcot probably the second most out of the year from starship uh do they all get their own episodes then i guess do they count as epcot characters i think people would be very excited about the gear weiss episode if you're a weird world showcase person i think for sure yeah um i uh and one thing uh maybe this maybe i can kick it over to jason with this i do know that uh while roy was still relatively with it that they they went i believe to the premiere of this big dinner show that is a a uh a tentpole event that's

a must see at fantasia land and we were arguing about the pronunciation um now i don't remember the name at all would you like to give it a go uh i think i saw it read as uh this is a dinner show right uh fantasma fan yeah heima? I would guess Fantasima. But it's spelled F-A-N-T, like not F-P-H-A-N-T. Like it's got the F. It doesn't have the P-H. Right.

And it looks very weird. It looks like the entertainment before an Eyes wide shut sort of situation like i don't know here let me screen share i mean uh if you have seen like the uh uh uh if you have seen the guys can you see these guys these guys in blue uh doing the hands um yeah they look like in in pitch perfect to the bad guys the german bad guys from that um and then there's like like like computer guys like heisty guys with goggles and stuff. These are just some of the scenes that you can see online. It looks like 15 different cults have gathered to each perform their own musical number.

There's a variety of different weird little numbers that are all creepy in their own way. Yeah, I don't understand how you get from one to the other those images you just showed seem like two completely different shows i'd be very curious how they bridge it and some of it looks like thunder from down under some of it is just like jacked guys like dancing for you it's it's interesting it's a real variety show i'll say from the look of it you get a lot of different types yeah you get your like weird auto erotic asphyxiation starlight express you get your hunks you get your like ribbon dancers you get your acrobats and you get a supposedly a decent dinner as well. It's a dinner show. Yeah. Now I'm in. I was looking at, so I was showing the guy like two photos from this show,

but there's like six more photos that, again, look very much like they're from totally different shows all in a row on this website. And the other thing, that feels very like the European kind of weirdness, the other thing that's kind of weird on the website kind of related to this is some of the verbiage. Like, did you guys come across celebrate, which is like the word celebrate, but it's spelled C-E-L-E-B-R colon E-A-T

Celebrate and the location known as Musartium the word museum with the word art shoved in the middle they're so bad I can't believe they aren't going into Orange County

in a couple years or it's a late period Prince album Musartium county in a couple years or it's a late period prince album use artium yeah that sounds like it's uh it's 46 minutes of jazz fusion oh well he doesn't sing once art official age which was a pretty good album honestly late period no that's on the better end yeah yeah he he got out of the the um the nosedive i think but yeah it was rough around 97 or so the third eye girl album not as good though but artificial age pretty good yeah yeah yeah uh can i read some reviews real quick please over the show yeah yeah yeah so i, I think this is actually a pretty popular show and then look, just for the sake of comedy,

I found some bad reviews because isn't this fun? I'm not trying to say it's a bad show. I'm just, let's, I was amused by the way this person wrote.

So I translated this. It says, this person's talking about going to the show. Approximately an hour before the show, the actual auditorium which exudes the charm of an unrenovated train station,

and which also smells like that in some places, of nicotine and urine, to be precise, opens. And then this is just a great translation. With a little less luck, you come across a kind of bouncer who asks for the table number and does not use any manners most bouncers should be friendlier we had booked the second most expensive price category by telephone because the most expensive was already booked our table was at the maximum distance from the stage i.e at the opposite end of the station hall as is typical for a train station, it drew, which I assume smelled, like pike soup. And it smelled either of smoke or toilet. What does pike soup mean?

I don't know. I don't know if that's just a translation. Yeah, that might be a... But I like... Maybe it's like a... Because what's a pike? Is that like a dock? I'm thinking of like Seattle or Pike Place, right?

I don't know. Is it like ground up coffee beans ground up into a soup? Yeah, I hope Pike Soup is real. I should really, you know, just Google it. And let's see if it's a translation or if it's just... Oddly, the ultimate phrase in Germany. Pike Soup is real. It's a translation or if it's just Oddly The ultimate phrase in Germany Pike soup is real It's a real soup

Oh it's like an edible soup Oh yeah wait Pike soup doesn't look too bad Yeah maybe pike soup is good It either smells like pike soup Smoke or toilet This reminds me I didn't get the chance to bring this up on the chesington episode but i found a review of the hotels at chesington it's very complimentary but it kept

mentioning the detail that it's like came down here on a trip with my niece and it just kept saying trip with my niece a lot and i was like that is i don't think i ever went on a trip with an aunt or uncle do you think that's actually what was happening or that person was like with a young girlfriend and they were trying to deflect that was like a smoke screen yeah that's that's also yeah it seemed something seemed up he was 55 he's dating a 23-year-old. He's like, it's my niece. This is my niece. It's my niece. Nothing weird.

My niece. Just a 50-year-old uncle and a 20-year-old niece. That's right. Nothing to see here. Those ages are possible. That's sometimes the age separation. Sure. And that's the case here with me and my niece.

Did I mention my fun trip with my niece? Yeah, my niece. It's Europe. He's going through the park announcing that to everybody he's like yeah we'll have the pasta i'll have a pasta and then my niece over here what will you have niece niece would you explain your order to the waiter how many in your party well let me see it's me and my niece so uh that'd be two i guess that'd be two one two right yeah yeah it'd be two two is my niece who will be checking into the hotel yes yes uh my niece and i will be checking into the hotel isn't that right is that hey i'll let me just i'll make sure my

niece hears me hey niece niece oh see there she is she waved when she heard she responded she heard and she waved and responded. So yes, 100% niece. So just confirm. Obviously separate beds. Separate beds. One uncle, one niece. You never sleep in the bed with your niece. It's the uncle-niece.

I got the uncle-niece package at the hotel. Just wanted to make sure. It's a holiday. It's a short break. A short break. Short break for an uncle and a niece. Nothing to say here. and anise can i can i talk about some other shows yeah sure run across and this is what i'm talking about that i think these are i think a lot of these are gone now but there was a time where i think you could have seen hundreds and hundreds of of animatronics and um you know

maybe we'll start heading into the truly rip-offy zone of uh fantasia land uh because they have a lot of things that are pretty country bear-esque pretty enchanted tiki room-esque i saw videos where it is a bunch of flowers descending from the ceiling or like a animatronic character on a swing um and i when all these were open at once i mean this is peak animatronic maybe anywhere in the world uh i'm just gonna flip through some for for you guys uh this was these guys were open maybe they were going maybe in the 70s this is pretty old school uh the this is a family of there's a family monkey band they're they're called deke deke i want to say climb binski and i say climb because maybe is it climb because they're monkeys and monkeys climb oh i could be pronouncing it wrong though i'm not

sure but yeah we got a monkey banner like homemade instruments uh it was banjo on an accordion i mean this is really country bear-esque oh yeah um if you keep going down there's this other one i think the name of this is la scala i could be wrong though but here's some like showgirl gophers there's tons of animals in this show but a lot of them are gophers and gophers with full human female proportions often very scantily clad kind of like it's this is in this case they look very uh you know brazilian dancer i guess big headdresses and kind of sparkly bras um you got kind of a miss piggy but way taller in an elegant gown uh here you've got wow there he looks like another character of course the king yes this is the king we've

talked about the was he a rockifier passed away somewhere in chucky cheese world there is a an elvis dog is this a dog he there's he like a mountain lion what is he this character looks like a lion yeah i think um but anyway these are like these were all in the park at the same time and then let me show you one more of these uh sexy gophers i don't i don't feel great about This one this is very Can-can like Moulin Rouge Cabaret Here's what okay so Obviously we know now

I'm completely comfortable with any kind of Sexuality now We're at the end of the series You've made the full transformation Fully comfortable with anything Almost anything I will say though let me approach this from Where I would have been a month ago You've made the full transformation. Fully comfortable with everything. Anything. Almost anything. I will say, though, let me let me approach this from where I would have been a month ago.

This half gopher half lady has like realistic skin. Yeah, very smooth. And she's wearing. Not furry. Like a bikini and she has a female human female body with no fur realistic skin very like in a real like cabaret like kind of sexy pose and if i had lost legs you can't see in this current view i know that she is wearing bottoms but you can't see them in this in this view that i'm showing you yeah and if i hadn't gone through all this character development i would think this is creepy as hell but but in but currently i love it i love that this sexy lady gopher is out there doing her thing celebrating herself

and her body i'm so comfortable with this now but a month ago i would say whoever built this has some issues would you uh so would you uh hit this uh look uh would i if you're asking would i make love to this half gopher half woman well let you know what let's break it down let me i really need to break this down from an exercise is this an actual just gopher, or is this truly half-woman, half-gopher? You know what I'm saying? I think that might actually play into it, because if it's a woman with a little gopher, then that seems perhaps ethical.

But if it's just a gopher that's sexy, I don't think that's ethical at all well she's singing which is something that people can't do or i'm sorry people can do i had it reversed people could certainly sing gophers typically cannot so her having the will to sing implies that she is more human and has more of a human brain. Because it's just like a lady who went to a Dr. Moreau island and got a gopher face. Then, yeah, let's go. Let's hit the town.

You'll take a niece break. You'll take a short break with a niece with her, you know? This is just my gopher niece. My niece. With a gopher face. This is just my niece who's a gopher lady. Very common. A lot of people have nieces.

A lot of people have nieces who have a gopher. Yeah. So I think we would have to fully understand what's going on here. But if it's an Island of Dr. Moreau situation, then I think I'm on board. So you would need some kind of... What's the 23andMe? You need kind of an ancestry DNA sort of thing to find out what percentage gopher... Because it's some percentage.

It's at least five. If this sexy gopher would swab her cheek and send it away, then I could understand exactly what's going on here. If she was, for instance, just a lady gopher a real gopher that was maybe like came in contact with some sort of wizard and the wizard

changed the gopher just into this giant lady version then it's no way absolutely not that is just a gopher that was enchanted by a wizard and I will not take this gopher on a date that is if it was a wizard involvement no way i um this you're implying a scenario where this gopher woman is i mean i don't know this for sure but it seems like this is going to take a while to do all this

stuff it seems like she's willing to wait for you well she's into you and she whatever it takes if this all plays out over three months if it means uh making sweet love to newly um uh liberated european mike then it's worth it uh look i i appreciate her waiting for me uh and i think she'll actually respects that i want to take the time to figure out what's going on here so if this were all a monologue you know boys to men kind of you know like this would you you're laying out all the steps of this girl let's i want to make love but first it's got to be right Let me just get a swab girl Let me see how much gopher you are

What's the percentage Was there a mad scientist that Worked on a lady and made her Have a gopher face If that's the case then I'm in But I have to know for sure girl I've been dreaming about you Ever since I saw you sitting on a carousel

Horse in that German cabaret show Oh but here's the thing If a wizard was involved I'm out No offense We can have our fantasies but we can't make them reality If a wizard was involved Girl you just took a DNA test

Turns out it's 100% gopher So the deal is off's 100% gopher, so the deal is off. 100% that gopher. Go scurry away to your hole. You don't belong up here above the soil. It was nice to meet you, though. Bye-bye. We'll always have the fantasy, though.

Here, have some kibbles. I'll put some caterpillars in your hole for you. Have a nice day. This song is just about feeding caterpillars to a gopher. The strangest slow jam ever recorded. So you can see that there. He used to be able to many years ago um do you guys have any uh any favorites in the legacy attractions you stumbled across oh legacy oh okay uh hey well

from any time well any just fantazio land favorites so one thing immediately that I'm excited about is Mouse au Chocolat. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I made reference to this, you know, this is a ripoff of the ride vehicle from Toy Story Midway Mania. Yes, the exact same. The double-sided, the way the little podiums, whatever you you want to call it the little front part and the little uh the weapon uh lower down onto you there's a little ball and a pole on the back of

it and you shoot at a 3d screen and instead of it just being these weird little cannons on toy story it's like uh uh what do you call these things the the frosting same question pastry bags pastry bags full which as a child i always was very fascinated and uh by these pastry bags i would imagine jason you as well you can make them folks you can make them real easy at home if you got ziploc bags you just cut one of the corners off you got your own homemade pastry bag right there have you done it uh i had to do it for like yeah with some school projects i think i did it because it was also a way to like do adhesive or like decorative like paints and stuff the same idea yeah um so you kept it around at home you just you fill it up with frosting once a month and oh after school snack too you know those ap classes you need that sugar boost um this this ride and i

don't know i don't know if this is accurate reminded me of like mouse hunt the nathan lane movie yeah they're like not just because it's about, but something about the sort of surreal aesthetic of it as well. Because the 3D film element is that you're shooting at mice that are trying to eat sweets. And you fight them by squirting more chocolate at them. Right, which seems questionable. Like you're only enticing them to stay. They want that chocolate. So the logic of this ride...

Yeah, I think so. They seem to just... From the events of the ride, they seem to just fight back. Like Jason prepping for an AP test, it only makes them stronger. Right. The graphics, not as good as Toy Story Midway Mania.

No. Um, but there's a style to it, and I don't hate it. I don't think it looks horrible. It's fun. There's a very fun little pre-show with a CGI kind of eggy man with a curly Q mustache, and then he transitions into live action, and, uh, he's got a big fake santa belly so when he sits in the vehicle and tries to pull the thing down in front of him he has a little bit of trouble has a little trouble squeezing in there um there's a lot of whimsy uh there's like the office there's

the office section which is fun with like a tired owner of the i guess is that what he is do you know what i'm talking about what is is um is this a a kitchen or a restaurant that's being taken over by these mice and is he the owner of that i think i think i don't know the specific i think that's what's happening because he's in like an office and it's very like cluttered and he's very like he's you know he's stressed out because of all the mice uh and he's showing you how to work the frosting whatever i already forgot the name of what is it frosting pastry bag pastry pastry bag thank you yes he's showing you how to work your pastry bag so um i think yeah this is great this is i think. Yes, it's cheaper, certainly, than Midway Mania, but it's definitely its own thing they figured out.

And though you might call it a ripoff, the ride vehicles were built by the same company as Midway Mania. It's a Dutch company called ETF Ride Systems. So they betrayed Disney. They went behind their backs and gave them the same vehicle um they also were behind the mechanics of the actual ride vehicles not the creative but the vehicles uh for one of the best rides in podcast thread history knights in white satin oh right yeah what a history uh for etf ride system it's interesting, though, that Disney didn't have an exclusivity with this, because I think that happens a lot. And that happened with Universal and the Harry Potter ride with the KUKA arm, where they have that ride system exclusively for like 10 years.

There's probably different terms of the agreement. So it is interesting. Maybe this was sort of developed even before Midway Mania, and they kind of bought it off the shelf in a way but it would seem that disney would want to own something like this for a while because you wouldn't think that like week if we had a theme park or if you know jeff dunham or terry fader wanted to do their own version they could have done it immediately in 2011 which is when i think this ride opened 2011 right right yeah yeah so pretty far after ratatouille the movie ratatouille it's also about rodents in a restaurant i mean it's not so far away from ratatouille in 2011 well so this is this kind of has the um i was thinking how a lot of the rides here have little

equations and this is kind of uh midway mania plus ratatouille and there's a number of other ones that are similar where it is this plus this i don't know if i don't know if you want to throw in a multiplied by or divided by yeah i don't know how complicated these equations are but there's that's that's the formula i feel like i love a lot of fantasia land rides yes a good example i think of of the x plus y ride formula is a ride that is not there anymore called silver mine and this is basically maybe you have to do percentages here maybe this is like one fifth knott's berry farm what's the mine one uh timber mountain calico no timber mountain timber mountain log ride yeah not the not the flume what's the other one oh oh uh calico mine ride calico mine train okay so

it's part that because it's like miserable claustrophobic you're seeing animatronics in really small spaces and you feel like you could reach out and slap them or if you stuck your hand out it would get dragged by the rock wall behind you and eventually just come clean off

but then it takes this turn that you don't expect at all because it's called mine it's silver mine and then so then four fifths of the way through you leave the mine you go upstairs and you crawl up to a an area that you'd have to call pirates of the caribbean plus mexico it's really weird it just completely is the vibe of pirates and you're in a little mexican town uh and it's got um something i want to codify i think you know we like fake rocks and i want to say i think we also like cloth fire um let's just it's not a lot of examples of it but pirates is one of them and this ride is one of them as well yes um it's on uh is it in um spaceship earth as well i think there might be some cloth fire

i don't recall a fan i i want to say maybe it's a small world and little in miniature yeah yes i think that's right yeah interesting let's say this here and now we podcast red likes cloth fire um i bet there's more cloth fire than we think yeah i think if you had now that we've put a name on it and we're on the hunt for it i think we'll start seeing it more and more a new innovation is steam fire steam fire like on um big thunder mountain oh where you project onto steam yes turn the steam into fire exactly and then they already have sort of had that effect on the indiana jones in japan when you get to that blows

the ring yeah yeah so so steam fire as well of a big we're big fans of i think also a fan of steam fire yeah yeah we i guess you could call it all fake fire but you do need to delineate between the two and maybe three. There might be multiple, multiple types. We'll, we'll figure it out. Multiple types.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, anyway, this ride is crazy. Uh, people should watch ride throughs of it. Um,

it's just like, I, it, it's so much of the vibe of pirates. It's almost impressive that you could take, you could capture the, the elements of what pirates is despite moving it over to a different theme in this case a little mexican village because it's debauchery uh it's

you know it has it's things on fire it's antics with the animals that are too close to houses is a woman chasing a donkey out with a broom um there is even in this ride literally a dirty foot pirate you go under a bridge and there is a guy with a bottle up there swinging around and you pass right under his foot they do it all it's really the difference is it's like mashing up versus like rip off it's like a girl talk version of a mashup where it's like, yeah, the, all the elements kind of work.

I can see where they rip. And this is exactly the same thing as this thing, but they've now recontextualized it. And I can't be mad. This is kind of cool. And they did it. They're at least, it feels at least a half the budget,

like maybe not more than that. And they're jankier animatronics for sure they do less we're not even close to jack sparrow territory but uh i i don't know i give i i found this thing charming yeah i like all of the things i kind of find like they like it may made it work with the budget and i'm not mad at the ripoff i can't be mad at the ripoff are we jason do you feel the same way i don't know why it doesn't almost doesn't make sense that we were like uh upset in a way for universal studios but i kind of love that they just stole all this disney stuff yeah well and honestly it's enough of a trend that I thought you were setting up a transition to a different ride,

to the ride Geisterikshaw? Yeah, a rickshaw? Well, rickshaw, yes, because the literal translation is ghostly rickshaw. And this is very Haunted Mansion to the point of it appears to be doom buggy capsules a ghost follows you home but the big big difference is that it appears to be as if germans interpreted chinese ghost stories yeah yes because it's in the chinatown section of the park scott the ride you were discussing is in the mexico section of the park uh the lands of course mexico chinatown mystery fantasy berlin and deep in africa wow that are the lands of this park

is every theme park in europe a nations of the world theme i feel like so many of them this is what they do yeah it certainly seems that way i i don't know why they felt the need to add deep in africa that feels very collodial but uh breaking from the format of all the other ones yeah what are you yeah also just naming two sections it's like uh this is mystery and this is fantasy those are the lands gave up um uh but yeah the ghost ghostly rickshaw i is incredibly again another ride that's incredibly detailed like has similar elements from the haunted man there's a big party scene yeah but again it's it's uh uh like chinese ghosts and culture and architecture and uh masks and it's and then they follow you

home of course they follow you home at the end they have that set piece it is uh just from the look of it and part of it is because it's not the most expensive right but it is scary as shit it is so creepy all of these things all of these little like a lot of the robots are like little which honestly makes it i think worse it almost like distorts your view of reality and you're like little creepy guys yes and it's like the skeleton it's like little skeletons and you're like like i uh there's a on their website is this one still open i want to say it's still open because i saw i feel like i saw something on there was okay yeah um they their official literature calls it europe's longest underground ghost train which seems like an attack on something else like is there a specific thing

in portugal or finland that's in their sites making some claim that's like 500 feet shorter they're like we're gonna stick to that ghost train you are the second longest underground ghost train i mean it's kind it's not really you're in the omnimover haunted mansion vehicle not really a train yeah wouldn't say so i think that might be like a european term of like haunted house, maybe ghost train. Because I kept coming across that, but. Maybe so. The phrase ghost train. Yeah.

Both of these rides we just talked about are really long. There's so many rooms. There's so many animatronics. This is what I'm saying. I feel like this place has been hidden from us in terms of pure robot coverage i would love to know the official number i feel like you'd have to actually check with someone who knew i'm not going to watch all the videos and do a count um that's that sounds hard um but i like it's it's crazy i give them that's a lot of what we're after i think is robots as opposed to

screens and oh my god so many yeah i was shocked as i outside of yeah i'm trying to think i don't think any other i mean it's more robots than universal yeah and for like all you like any you know any era of universal it feels like. It's a little more limited in another attraction that's not there anymore called 1001 Nox, like Knights. And I mean, the equation here, maybe let me just instead, let me let me break it down like uh okay this is a ride where you climb on a suspended ship like peter pan uh where you're where the track is up above you but it starts in a fake rock cave like the matterhorn and then you leave the cave and you spend a full minute outside looking over other rides in a very storybook land fashion but that whole time you're slowly approaching the mouth of a dragon and then you go inside the dragon where you're in a different scary type of cave that's more like

mr toad hell where it's red scary caves and then you end up looking at a bunch of miniatures that are like the size of the sleeping beauty dioramas but the miniatures are telling stories of arabian nights kind of stuff it has a vibe a lot like the sinbad ride in disney sea that's like five things all in one which is enough to make it completely its own original thing this is a really cool ride i think or was yeah it's like when you see those videos with quentin tarantino's references in his movies and there's 50 other movies and you go he's stealing a lot but he's taking them all and made a different thing out of them, I guess. In a blender. Yes, exactly. Right. I, yeah, this thing's cool as hell.

I don't know. I just think they took things to new levels. I don't know. Just charmed by this place. Yeah. Now, some stuff is just, there is one thing that is an exact photocopy in the sense that it ran at a lot of other parks. And oddly enough, this is not buried on the website. This does get a decent link on the attractions page.

I'm talking about Pirates 4D. Pirates 4D is a 4D movie starring the great Leslie Nielsen and Monty Python's Eric Idle. Theme park legend Eric Idle also. Theme park legend Eric Idle. Yeah. And so I looked a little into the make. So this was produced by Bush Entertainment Corporation, the entertainment wing of the anheuser-busch company back in the 90s who of course at the time ran bush gardens and seaworld at the moment i believe just bush gardens but they produced this string of 4d movies that would just play almost on a circuit of it would play at bush gardens and see where places and

then they'd license it to other places uh movies like haunts of the old country and something i am very interested in uh not least of which because of the people involved rl stein's haunted lighthouse a 4d movie starring christopher lloyd huh written written starring christopher lloyd leah thompson and michael mckeon whoa so i i that one we might have to dig into a little more yeah we haven't done any of these lesser uh more overlooked uh theme park 3d yeah because every now and then people do i believe i saw either pirates 4d at bush gardens williamsburg but i'm pretty sure i saw haunts of the old country but they would just like they they spent a chunk of money to make these movies with like you know big stars in them i believe uh pirates 4d also played the wisconsin dells michael i believe eric idol wrote pirates 4d i think that's possible i believe i read that i could

be wrong guys uh arl stein's haunted lighthouse was directed by joe dante director of gremlins that we just covered were you building to that fact i'm sorry if i jumped on it what well i another one interesting to me the writer of haunted lighthouse is sam ham the writer of tim burton's batman what crazy wrote a short run of uh batman comics that introduced the character of Henry Ducard, Batman's mentor, that I believe Liam Neeson plays for some of Batman Begins.

Yeah, it's a fake out. It's a fake out. Raz Al Ghul, as they say, even though I always thought it was Ra's Al Ghul because of the animated series, but that's another podcast. That's another podcast. So, there's some interesting stuff in the bush entertainment corporation uh pipeline we gotta do that's a

full we gotta do all of those yeah um and pirate yeah go ahead go ahead well i was gonna say uh the other thing about pirates 4d the plot is one of the gr grimest things i've ever heard yes do tell so uh leslie nielsen is the captain of a pirate ship and right at the beginning he says ah i have not returned to pirate island in five years and as they arrive on pirate island they start falling into like comical you know slapsticky traps and it is revealed the previous crew of this ship was left to die on pirate island and the survivor was a child who has laid all of these traps to get his revenge and in the end ends up becoming the new captain of the ship captain davey it's so child's revenge it's a home alone pirates yeah

because they wanted a lot of antics I mean it's a lot of like cannonball shot at the screen door hitting people flying Leslie Nielsen flinging a door open and hitting someone in the head sure sure but if home alone had an extremely dark

backstory like if the if the uh you know sloppy bandits what are they the wet bandits well they change they change sloppy bandits is good too what are they in the second way what else are they called uh yeah what are they aren't they the the feathery bandits the tarred bandits bandits? Why am I having a problem? People are yelling. Wet bandits in which one? They're in the first one, the wet bandits. Sticky!

Sticky bandits. Sticky bandits. Alright, I got it. I did the yelling for the audience. Pirates 4D, I mean, yeah, this, when you look at this wiki this was open in bizarre locations across the world across different theme park brands from sea world the bush gardens to the luxor and now it seems like it is only open in fantasia landantasialand now the exclusive home of this proud work of Eric Idle.

I assume. I watched most of this. Jason, did you watch most of it? I watched the whole, yeah, I watched it. It's only like 15 minutes. I will say Eric Idle, theme park legend, but is he attached to the most unpleasant theme park things that exist? I didn't love Pirates 4D.

I think I would have liked it as a kid. Yeah, I think... It's not that bad. It's not bad. It's not... No, it's not that bad. And it doesn't... I think it looks like they spent some money on it.

Like, that's the thing. It seems like the theme park wars of the 90s, it does seem like Busch Gardens SeaWorld was trying to compete a little with these 4D movies. But also, there's a brief period of time where Dave and Buster's had 4D theaters, and they would probably just shove them in there if they paid for the licensing, you know? I guess it's just because poor Eric has an association with figment. That's really what drives it down. And let me assure the audience, which I like, but is also, you wouldn't be wrong to call parts of it unpleasant, at least. Yeah, and as a kid I was scared of it, but people do like that, so I really shouldn't tar and feather Eric Lytle here. I'm flipping through his filmography.

Oh, certainly, yeah um i'm flipping through his filmography also and i'm reminded that he is a recurring character uh throughout the film that this series is is titled after national lampoon's european vacation uh as i recall his part is funny he's a guy riding a bike oh yeah yeah by chevy that being said just i just want to give a quick uh i guess anti-shout out to that film we titled it after i don't know if you guys agree i think that is such an unpleasant movie like the weird eating nightmare at the beginning and the fashion montage with that song new looks driven down down A street floor Am I crazy? I like

I had a discussion With our friend Ryan Perez Who called that A rotten film I thought He really nailed it Am I crazy?

Are people Furious though? That I'm saying? I haven't seen it In years But that feeling Is correct I think seeing it

When I was younger I definitely like Felt it was very unpleasant There's stuff i obviously the eric otto stuff is a funny runner because he's like very polite every time he gets hit yeah that's all that's all funny i like his and like the game show john astin game show traffic second time we've talked about john astin this week too because he was that's right he's still alive teaching was teaching theater we have an excuse to bring him on i'd love theme parky enough i mean whatever there's no reason not to have eric idel and john aston both on but the only reason is uh lack of ability to get a hold of them

it's the biggest obstacle um anyway not to not to dwell on on that if i'm wrong please yell at me and uh uh cancel me but not permanently um you can cancel me for a day yeah um yeah uh what else weird stuff oh oh in that neck of the woods um you know movies that slid in and out um so uh i don't think they have it anymore but for a while this is one of the other theme parks that has a very epcot-esque gold geodesic dome uh it's like half of a spaceship earth essentially which i always like seeing those anywhere and i was never sure what was inside them the monk the monkey hosted video that i watched uh has a funny moment where it it shows you the dome and then it says and in here you can see cine 2000 and then it cuts to cine 2000 and it's imagine if you were in the uh

if you're in la the uh the arc let the cinerama dome and you were standing on the floor of the cinerama dome just watching a video of the pov of a roller coaster and everybody goes ah it's just the weirdest lowest rent like a simulator but it's a simulator where you just stand i think you get dizzy so fast this seems like the laziest thing let's just play a video of a roller coaster instead of building one yeah um but then they put in something that i think has a little more value an attraction called race for atlantis which i think we could just touch on and maybe deal with later because race for atlantis is the same movie that played in an imax theater in caesar's palace in the mall

shops at caesar uh if you've been to that mall you know that there is a show where a bunch of statues come to life and that's called called fall of atlantis but that's just part of the story the rest of the story was told through this uh simulator attraction which uh i saw a poster for that said the imax 3d ride that makes every other thrill ride obsolete. Very bold claim. Very bold. Especially when this thing itself is obsolete. It has not been at Caesars for a long time. It made it at Phantasialand from 94 to 2016, and now I think this dome is gone entirely.

I think we should loop back around to this one because I think aesthetically it's very interesting from what I watched. I it's a it's a very it feels like Flight of Passage meets Star Wars prequels. It's a very like odd fantasy design scheme. And I'm also intrigued because it has a villain named Gastlius. And I would I would like to know more about gastlias but we could do that as part of some vegas block but anyway it was it was here too and still open in france i believe so it's still still hanging on but yeah race for atlantis i'd love to uh

dig into more yeah that sounds great um i'd like to talk about, while we're talking the magic of the movies, the website invites us to rediscover some old classics on an attraction called Hollywood Tour. Yeah. I mean, this is the star of the show, I think. This might be the fiesta resistance of this park. Look, does it have maybe some of the best roller coasters in the world yeah sure that of course how many parts can you say that about but hollywood tour seems like

something special well and i would describe this equation as great movie ride plus universal tram tour plus pirates of the caribbean again even though we already have pirate rip-offs maybe we have a pirates rip-off and we have pirates 4d this one is yet another piracy ride but it's weird they splinter everything off so the the town and the drunkenness and the fires and the revelry is moved over to silver mine this ride just uses the caves essentially it starts in the caves they're more well it's and it's also a mix of the rainbow caverns which is now attributed at the start of big thunder it's all of that at the same time because it's the pirates caves but they're now like rainbow much like that scene at the hill lift on big thunder absolutely and and a lot of these elements also show up in a different ride in this park called

chiapas which is an incredibly steep log flume that ends in like an aztec temple where it appears a party is happening it's like yeah that ride looks great um yeah yeah it's it's like a um i saw it on their site as a mexican archaeological site so i think you're uh you know they're digging for artifacts or something but then there are a bunch of uh statues or busts that all light up with lighting effects and music and that's a ride that like it has a backward section and then flips around to go front facing again, like the Norway ride. Steepest log flume in the world. In the world. Yeah.

It's got kind of that double bounce like the Dudley Do-Right ride. That ride, that looks just legitimately fantastic. As does River Quest, just to give that a shout this looks like a pretty unique rapids ride where you know most rapids rides are sort of rustic or it's you know it through it's through the forests or you know the cedar kind of area this is like you're in some scary tower and there's a big cyclone on the top of a building and there's an elevator that delivers you to a drop that like again just super unique these water rides seem really awesome but didn't want to take away don't want to take away from uh from hollywood tour hollywood tour yeah which has a also i i what i would describe is a plus up

from pirates where clearly the drop is based on pirates and you go into a cavern right after but as you're barreling down the drop you're heading towards a wall of water and it moves out of the way at the very last second before you land like if they put that in today in our pirates you'd say that's great that's a huge improvement yeah that is and even if they like i guess i mean there are different colors in the rocks i was gonna say if they made the little more colorful rocks you wouldn't be mad either i don't think yeah you can light that up that'd be cool um yeah that is a that is a neat little trick it's much better than the now gone ah but they do tell tales with seeing uh you know it's not blackbeard or davy jones it would switch

every now and yeah it's usually davy jones but then they threw blackbeard on for like the fourth movie which we just watched and it's really like you got ian mcshane and like you're not going to use him that much okay all right movie very strange i don't think I think there's things about the refresh that I like fine um but that's not one that always felt very plotty it felt like let me let's just like stamp some exposition you mean the the barb of the addition of the mist and do tilt yeah it sucks it's like it's like we have to like re-explain and it's like i'm really glad that's gone that's like of all the things to take out i think that's the thing to take out oh yeah and the new thing they put in is a nice little fun thing a great illusion obviously probably done pretty cheaply but still

pretty effective and does a little uh narrative kind of explanation sort of of what is going on in the ride. Yeah. Actually helps ease you into the world. Yeah. Yeah, super cool. But pirates, I think, might still rank behind Hollywood Tour as the best cavern-born boat ride because unlike...

Alright, so you're in caverns and you know, do you go see some skeletons and some ships and stuff? No. You see a lot of nothing for a while, and then you see a 1950s film crew making a movie. It's so weird. It's so weird. Why are we in caves for this?

Yeah. I don't know. Is the cave supposed to be a set? Oh. I mean, I think at some, is the cave supposed to be a set? Oh. I mean, I think at some point you go on to a set. Like, the big one with, the big thing that, like, stuck out to me, and I forget if it's the first or second scene you see, but you come around the corner, there is a helicopter going up and down.

Then there's a cowboy shooting a gun. Then over to the left, there is like a film crew. And then straight ahead, there is a giant spider. So it's a cowboy shooting a gun at a giant spider. I have no idea what the helicopter is doing.

Did John Peters have something to do with this ride, is my question. It's the scariest villain, giant spider, scariest bad guy.'s the scariest uh villain uh giant spider scariest bad guy in the scariest killer in the animal kingdom yeah there's cowboys if you don't know we're talking about kevin smith has a story about john peters the producer trying to get a giant spider into a superman movie and eventually uh he got a giant spider into wild wild west which was a robot spider

and if you want to hear that story take 25 minutes and have the words fuck and flick a bunch more that's right check it out what else say speaking of directors right at the top of it you see a really

miserable dead looking Alfred Hitchcock is that what that's supposed to be i had that written i think so yeah um i don't know he's uh and there's no other ip per se it's not like this is then a great movie ride where you see marilyn monroe and carrie grant i think the only sort of recognizable one is hitchcock who seems like he's at the moment of dying. Like you were at frame one of a heart attack.

Well, that's the most exciting frame, I think. It's about to start. You don't know what's going to happen. His eyes lit up. Here we go. I will say with all of these rides, I'm sure if you go on them,

I think if we were to go on all of them in person, we would notice the junkier elements more because there's a fully exposed industrial ceiling a lot in this ride and a lot of other rides. When the boat is turning a corner, there's just some loose, dirty pipes and clearly water-dam water damaged, uh, walls that are pretty visible. It's the pipes in the walls for the third man from the end of the third

man. We got some, we got some for proud design choice. Yeah. Uh, you, uh, you see it,

there's a Tarzan section, much like the great movie ride. And then, uh, and then you see a boat. There's a Tarzan section, much like the great movie ride has. Yeah. And then you see a boat, and then as you pass around the corner, you see rising over it the great ape, King Kong. King Kong is also in this. So it's the King Kong. And there's kind of a Jaws at the beginning, too.

Yeah. There's a quick shark there there's um uh my favorite uh thing a a alligator pulling a water skiing monkey uh that's pretty fun i missed that's in the that's in the tarzan section here i'll i'll show you i i just really uh really enjoyed this um he's pulling the monkey there's another monk the monkey above has a like a carrot on a stick or something that's making the gator swim around that's that rules that's great yeah um that for i i love that frankenstein there's frankenstein's frankenstein's monster on the on the trip it's after slab uh which honestly is like one of the only like very worried about uh not getting that universal epic universe

horror land now because they're probably going to build that park in Orlando or it's going to take a while so maybe this is the best representation of Frankenstein we have because the rumor was it was going to be Frankenstein's castle in a crazy e-ticket, maybe kooka arm that's also a roller coaster ride with all the monsters. And you'd finally get some insane classic universal monster things. But until then, we'll have to just go to Germany to experience Frankenstein. Well, for a while, the title was held by Frankenstein playing a keytar

or whatever in the Beetlejuice Graveyard Review. Right. But that's not a ride. So I guess if we're talking ride depictions of Frankenstein, it'd be this movie. Are we? Okay. Is it? Are we touring an underground movie studio?

Are we touring the movie mines? Is that what it is or is this like a magic cave where all your movie dreams come to light what what is it hmm i think from what i understand is this park has very limited space so they have built the longer dark rides underground underneath other attractions oh yeah this is under another ride that's right yeah this is a basement literally a flooded basement

I cannot find a justification for why the generic Wizard of Oz scene appears to imply that Alice's house in Kansas is in the woods and all of her friends are at the house too. It's just kind of a lot of elements

of Wizard of Oz just thrown together. The video's a little hard to parse, but is there... I feel like I only saw a Glinda and not a Dorothy. There's a Scarecrow and a Glinda. Isn't Dorothy on the porch?

Like on the side? Yeah, yeah, I'm looking through the YouTube right here. I think she's on the side of the porch. You see her kind of when you first come in, but she's not like pointed. The main show scene is looking head on at the building, and she's not looking out that way. She's on the porch looking off.

This is not Dorothy. This is Dana. Dana, American farm girl anyone could wear a dress like that what are you referring to straw man they're not ruby they are sapphire dana uh mr ape the gorilla teeth the shark all of your hollywood favorites this is the one thing where it's like all right you're not on the license for any of this crap okay that's fine you get one you get one you're a senior swinger uh that's not tarzan king kong had the fake king kong has some very funny eyebrows he kind of has like can you share a screen do you i don't recall his eyebrows oh okay hold on

yeah one second i want to make sure you see his eyebrows i want to know that they're funny yeah they're i'm waiting to laugh oh you'll laugh i put you on the spot i'm sorry i just want to miss out on these eyebrows you see them yeah yes it's bog don from breaking bad yes there you go they're like two feet tall by these proportions and also like his pecs are very strange well he's like he looks like yeah he looks like he middle of his like pectorals he looks like he fell asleep on the beach wearing a bikini top yes left some tan marks yes i guess and that also implies that if when king kong tans that it changes the darkness of his hair well i think maybe the hair looks like it's like a bad dye situation oh that's revealing what's underneath yeah he

looks like maybe he's like either gray or balding or something. And he did like a really bad like shoe polish job on the top of his head. It is receding. You're absolutely right. So maybe he let himself go on the top, but he wears a hat and on his pecs, but he wears a bikini top. So he's mad at these sailors or whatever because they interrupted him without clothes on. He hadn't put on his look yet. You know my secret, I'm balding. Yeah, there's a lot.

I don't know exactly what he looked like when the park opened, but, you know, look, we all age. We're all decaying. He has spindly fingers, too. It's very big-footy fingers. Yeah, he looks like he also could be just like some sort of old-time catskill comedian maybe like he's like still doing shows he could be in vegas he could be like opening for rich little in vegas

he's peter gallagher what he is that's true too oh yeah uh what if we fused an ape with peter gallagher and then grew it to 30 feet and gave it where give it werewolf fingers oh and look at this this is one of my other another thing i've decided i like in theme park world green cities i love my dark ride green cities give me give me uh cloth fire and green cities yeah man this is a good ride and it seems like i feel like this is on the chopping block like they're you like you said they hid it on the website it's like buried all the way you have to keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling to find out if it's even there it's like they're embarrassed of it they shoved it in a basement and they should not be there should be front and center in the ads i mean if i were to go to this place this is the first thing i would go there first thing because i'd

be worried it'd be broken by the end of the day they should have a big picture of king kong's weird eyebrows on the main page to like entice you because like if you looked at it you'd be like oh it's a nice park seems like it's got some cool coasters some nice food but i don't know if there's any like character to it and then you'd see like a big janky king kong robot head and you go something for everyone here yeah hell yeah i mean this is that feels like the best thing at the park to me the only thing i'd like to name check really really quick uh all these rides are kind of in the dark so you can't there's not a lot to say about them but i really like that there was uh there is a roller coaster that has shifted hands a couple times and it started in the 80s as space center where it was very space mountainy uh so i like the vibe of that space

center became temple of the night hawk and today is crazy bats those are three of the Nighthawk, and today is Crazy Bats. Those are three of the best ride names I've ever heard, and it's all the same ride. That's great. Can I quick name check Feng Zhu Place? What's that? No, I didn't. This is a type of ride that I don't think we've talked about a lot. It's a madhouse.

Yes. It's like, I'm reading from wikipedia it's an op designed to be an optical and physical illusion consisting of several rows of seats attached to a swaying gondola with a rotating drum so it's sort of making it seem like crazy stuff is happening as it's rotating it creates the impression that the rider is turning upside down where the room is actually moving around them so feng shhu place is something i thought was interesting because to me it feels a lot like scott your favorite ride and not or experience mystery lodge oh hey yeah it's very much like raven yes it's like people like there's obviously actors they record at a certain point they fight

and there's a whole narrative going on and in in a madhouse which i mean the name madhouse is a great name what else is a madhouse are there examples of madhouses absolutely are more examples uh the american ones they're merlin's mystical mansion at clark's trading post in lincoln new hampshire what are you talking about i'm not sure if some of these are still there. Houdini's Great Escape at Six Flags New England in 1999. They had something like that at Great Adventure, too, where the room goes upside down. You are seated, and you think you're upside down,

but it's the room has gone upside down. And this is something, I've been to this place, but it was not there. Noah's Incredible Adventure at Noah's Ark water park in Wisconsin Dells. Oh yeah. We got to hit that one. We definitely got to hit that one. Um,

there's so, yeah, I mean, my friend, yeah, we're going to do that. There's so much Tommy Bartlett, you guys.

I have no idea. Tommy Bartlett is so interesting. Tommy Bartlett. All I'll say is Tommy Bartlett's Robot World. And now it's changed the name of it, but it was literally like you'd walk through, Tommy Bartlett had thrown together some tin cans with googly eyes. And yeah, here you go.

And that's your happiest memory. Oh, my God. I loved it. Wow. Yeah, okay. That's a a great one let's build that up his name haunts me tommy bartlett poseidon fury was going to be at islands of adventure and it was going to be a madhouse i believe that's what i'm reading here unfamiliar with this genre in general i'd like to know more about madhouse madhouses yeah yeah i think there's a fun house here too i forget what it was called'd like to know more about mad house mad houses so yeah yeah i think there's a fun house here too i forget what it's called but like there's so many rides through with the

and things that are gone and still here and uh the other thing that we haven't talked about they have like a lot of like um some disney parks they have two hotels built into the park the hotel mataba and hotel ling bao and they were scheduled for a whole new land for 2020 which is i don't i'm sure has been delayed uh called ruckberg that was gonna have this charles linberg hotel charles linberg this capsule hotel wow um whoa which that's crazy it's it's all steampunky and then they were gonna have this fly coaster which is an act i don't know what it's an acronym for but it's a flight coaster like um tatsu where you're lying down it's a first launching flight coaster man eats with a hotel built into it and oh my god this with a and the like coaster would go by like the patio the upstairs like

roof deck or something now would i have maybe not uh named it after the aviator who flew to germany to get a medal for herman goring yeah i might have gone with amelia erhart but that's just me what are you gonna do well you're not we're not in charge of anything yet until we get it employed by dunham or fader yeah sure called fader land until we all come up with fader land we'll get some advice we'll get some counsel from john binkowski of hard rock park before too oh yeah yeah he gives us a crash course and how to open a open a park that makes it at least six months yeah did they start building that jason do you know it's yeah it's pretty far along it seems like from the pictures i saw um but i don't know they have an opening date yet the reality is i

feel like anything that's with the exception probably of a splash mountain redo which is obviously not started anything that is already like 25 to 50 done will probably get in theme parks but almost everything else is canceled for the next few years that's i would guess what's gonna happen i think so i think that's accurate nintendo land though construction out here for us still moving along though yeah we're very lucky and they were like they were gonna open secret life of pets like the week of yes we were you know it was a funny moment was uh um it we i i keep like a document of episodes that are coming up and like well around this week we'll do secret life of pets around here we'll do marvel uh the pandemic starting and need deleting those from the won't be uh needing those at the who about a europe trip that could be uh different that's something else we could do

we could we could still talk about the pictures of josh demarro installing the quinjet at the top of the avengers campus which i'm sure we all saw well my favorite thingro installing the Quinjet at the top of the Avengers campus which I'm sure we all saw well my favorite thing of like the Quinjet has been placed at Avengers campus except the fact they're all standing in dirt pathways it's like you have not you have not paved the walkways

yet so let me know when cement arrives yeah let me know when the water is hooked up um all right i think we're i think we're heading to the end here i've totally forgot one more thing though oh my god in in the world of of ripoffs they have a at least i don't know if they do anymore they had a just full-on star tours ripoff called galaxy oh yeah yeah yeah uh which let me screen share that it was so down to the elements of the ripoff look at this host look at this flight attendant wow that's just exactly original

star tours it's the same weird flippy hair the wardrobe actually actually oddly looks more similar to the current the alice and jenney voiced robot who they have now. Um, but they did add a new element, which was it, which is, uh, you know, it's not Chewbacca,

obviously who, uh, you know, it's, it's not, uh, Ewoks bumbling in the, in the ride vehicle and the safety video.

It's this guy, um, who looks like kind of a green Michelin man. Um, or like they took they took a sumo wrestling novelty suit and threw a go to green paint on it um you you watch his antics i love this guy an angry family who has to like were forced to sit next to this guy who by the way let me check my notes oh yes he is uh alex from galax is the name wow alex from galax love alex from galax um yeah big puffy arms this girl is so pissed off to be next to alex from galax um as much tension as if you were being taken along on a false niece trip.

Yeah, anyway, so much crazy IP. Alex from Galax. It goes on and on. So many robots. This place is absolutely insane. And I think a perfect... I mean, I've seen... Look, there's been some criticism of us.

Look, we're not going to be able to get to everything. We haven't been to these places. I already regret that we haven't talked about the McDonald's. Was it Chessington, the McDonald's? Yeah, the McDonald's. The nonstandard McDonald's. We missed the nonstandard McDonald's in Chessington. Kind of medieval McDonald's.

Yeah. Yeah. Any other big regrets that we've become aware of? I mean, please let us know. Please shoot us a tweet or an email. If we missed something big, we can collect all these things. Things we missed, or maybe we'll go to Europe again and talk about them. I saw that we, and I think there was a criticism, it was valid.

Somebody said we did not devote enough time to the fifth dimension in Zabomatic, and I completely agree. I feel like we hit that pretty good. I think we needed 20 to 30 more minutes at least. I spaced on that, like the writer of that ride was Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yeah, there's a lot.

We missed big stuff. But you know what? We want to get to these places you know we want to also leave some room for when we go and experience obviously we won't get to experience zap-o-matic but you know maybe zap-o-matic is his own uh patreon spin spin him off somehow well i mean maybe that that brings me to sort of a um an overall question uh for you guys uh some of these things in the are in the past, you've got to take them off the table, but of the

places that we have discussed here on the main feed, or the second gate, you know, Alph and Gremlins we can't do, but that leaves five. Five places that currently exist. If you could only go to one of the five, which one would you choose?

Okay. I want to work through my my i want to show my work here a little bit i think jessington if they still had professor burp and zappamatic that's high up on the list the problem is they're gone that one suffers a little more from the the really cool things are in the past as charming as that park scenes and that ruffalo ride but yeah might be with you and the dumpy and the dumpy you know movie land movie world it's fun yeah i'd love to be there i'd love to be there right now eating that club sandwich that they were advertising i'd love that but the dakota stick oh my god i'd love to get one of those dakota sticks in my mouth um and then learn a little bit more about the male anatomy um show us how illustrate how comfortable you

are with your sexuality using a dakota yes i will uh so but that's you know what so it comes comes down to malta village it comes on to this place what's the is there one more am I forgetting Tato Park of course Tato Park Tato Park is great but it's not like what I want from Tato Park is probably a one on one interaction with Mr. Tato for a few hours

that's really what I want we spent so much of the episode talking about him Mr. Tato and we like the ride. They seem nice. They seem cute. But it's not like I want to be best friends with him. I want to go walking around telling women that their underwear is showing with him.

I want to help him on his quest to stop indecency. Modest up this world. Yeah, modest up this world. So the place itself doesn't do so much for me so it comes down to popeye village or this place i'm between these two as well so you know i think i gotta give it to i think for me fantasia land seems like so rich and so full of substance like and the other thing i mean i don't know the euro exchange rate seemed pretty reasonable for like the the quality that of the build you know and

yes and and it also feels like they're adding stuff to fantasia land like you just showed like it feels like it's trying to stay somewhat relevant and i would argue of course getting rid of some of the other robot rides that are crazy bad move but this thing you showed me this hotel looks insane it's got a good mix of old crazy stuck in time robot rides a new mix of cool coasters it looks very nice i think it's this is a slam dunk i would love to go to malta village but i think it's a slam a slam dunk i would love to go to malta village but i think it's a slam dunk this is this is the winner are we all saying fantasia land i think so wow fantasia land fantasia land you are the winner i don't think we knew there was gonna be a

competition but you're the winner of the european vacation i agree as well and just to say i loved living in this area so much um and one other thing i'm the the drinker of the show the beer in this area oh my god uh that that was my favorite thing i got to live there before i was 21 in america but i went to europe and could drink at 20 and pay one euro and get like the best beer i've ever had wow like the cheap beer it's a they'll give you this massive thing for a single euro uh uh so if the if the beer is anywhere close because i because i have to take eating into account too and the food at a lot of these places seems a little miserable admittedly um i mean i'm not sure about food at fantasia land but seems like some you some big old bratwurst

and stuff but if the oh Jason Sandwiches tied with rope A sandwich tied with rope That looks delicious honestly That looks really good Actually we watched a video Aaron and I watched a video where there's a big

French Parisian section where they're making fresh crepes That looks delicious Did you see this? a French Parisian section where they're making fresh crepes. That looks delicious. Did you see, did you see this? Rutmore's Tavern desire for honest cuisine. Oh my God. I had made up my,

I'd made up my mind before Rutmore's Tavern. This looks great. This is, this is absolutely the quality of the Harry Potter restaurants. Oh my God. These desserts are unreal. Bratwurst. Jeez, those jams look so great this is like solid lunch man then like what schnitzel yeah oh my god yeah this also if you i there's a uh it might be the case on this menu too uh i saw a rooftop bar called the dragon bar in the china

area and the drink assortment went on and on and on it went there were so many varieties so many types of whiskey and vodka and beer of course um you know and to get to be close to this this area i like so much cologne and dusseldorf, I would absolutely, this one legitimately, after talking about this, I think I do want to actually go to Western Germany and check out Phantasialand. Congrats, you win. I also just want to point out that many of you were

just showing Mike contained the phrase pork knuckle. That was a loose side of that. That was a staple of the Sheridan house growing up, I assume, Jason. Well, sure, you know. Your mom would just wrap all of your actual knuckles in pork. Go on.

If you're going to go have some lunch, you say, I'm going to go get smacked by some pork knuckle. He's feeling pretty rammy. He's full of pork knuckle. Yeah, too much pork knuckle yeah too much pork knuckle too excited well then that means that you survived podcast the rides european vacation what a blast uh one more stamp of the passport could clunk and what do we have here it looks to me like a DNA test from the gopher woman. And wouldn't you know it, there is a big green checkmark that says more woman than gopher.

So, Mike, you are a go. What does it say? A percentage. Does it say a percentage? Is it 51% woman? 49% woman? It's 72. 72% human woman pretty good honestly pretty good so yeah i think you gotta go for it and after this journey you've been on of of sexual liberation you learned what sex is um you still want to participate in mr tato's plan to modest

up ireland but uh you i think you've made incredible progress thank you yes i feel different i feel better as i said before i feel good and better which is what we're all saying during this time of quarantining and pandemic we say it so much you almost get tired of saying you get tired of saying i feel better and you get tired of saying i now feel willing to have sex with a gopher woman. I mean, this is, look, this is a time Marissa Strickland is going to marry a potato chip or a potato. And I'm at least going to have a sexual congress

with a gopher faced woman. With a Moulin Rouge top-handed gopher woman. We have made so much progress here. A lot has happened. Yeah. It's been a special time. It's been a special month. And thank you all for listening.

And let me just say, you're going to want to remember this time. You're going to want to hold on to August 2020 and all of our growth for as long as possible. And that is why you've noticed these stamps that we've been getting. And these are not just for us. They are also for you. If you go to RT Public, we are now offering a sticker set of all of the passport stamps. They're less passport stamp and more trunk stamp.

What did you call them, Jason? I called them like steamer trunk stickers. they're less passport stamp and more uh a trunk stamp what'd you call them jason like i called them like steamer trunk stickers that's how you used to stick you see all the the trunks back in the day it's stickers from traveling around the world on them to show all of the places that you've been just like robert evans used uh when he was carting around a bunch of cocaine and a non-existent letter from Henry Kissinger. So we're tributing these great trunks and this great era and this great series.

And you can go find all of those on RT Public as a set. Just to recap, you'll get the logo for the series made by Aaron Gairdner, my lovely wife. The Dakota Stick from Italy. Robert Altman as Popeye from Maltata jason the heidmeiser from the uk mr tato's wedding proposal from ireland elf cardi b style from germany uh and of course the positive dna test that allows my uh entry into a relationship with this gopher woman i mean who wouldn't want these stickers these priceless heirlooms uh hey we got you we got you some souvenirs souvenirs that you

have to pay for just like souvenirs real souvenirs yeah yeah yeah yeah just usually people come back from europe and don't you don't then charge you for the souvenirs that you uh hey but look you know that's the only way we're gonna get it we can't just mail out a bunch of stickers to every listener to the show um we'd love to but we can't so check that out on TeePublic uh uh as well as

that we got merchandise of the uh of the logo of us small world style in the little boat that Aaron did uh this has been so much fun. Please email us, uh, or, or tweet or DM,

get us the info about things that we missed in this series that you would like to hear about. Also, please let us know where we should go next. Do we do a Europe tour? Do we go, uh, do we go to Asia?

Do we break that off as China and Japan? Uh, do we, uh, stay close and go to Canada? I think we've completely missed Canadian parks. There's so many possibilities. Yes.

The sky is the limit. And the sky is the limit now that we don't even have to visit. So maybe, you know, if quarantine lasts for another decade, we can go anywhere. I really hope we are not playing that clip what you just said in a decade boy remember when we said that it seems like just a joke yeah i hope not i hope not i i really hope not uh but i hope that we were hopefully i i feel the three of us like we got to i i feel like

metaphorically we got out of where we live and i hope the listeners did too imaginary vacation i i had a great time and hopefully we can go to these places for real especially fantasia land congrats on winning um boy a lot of fun that that was a butt uh any any closing thoughts no i i think we've said it all i i'm i'm i'm i'm tired but a good tired yeah yeah we might need a vacation from our vacation we might we might not be doing an episode for labor day but uh we'll bring out a fun episode from the archives uh but otherwise uh thank you for taking this journey with us and uh mike uh uh you're free to go share your love well look i'll keep you everyone posted about that uh i definitely that'll be something you'll hear a lot about

this will come up a lot yeah all right uh thanks for listening everybody uh it was a fun vacation we'll see you back in america goodbye bye bye forever dog this has been a forever dog production executive produced by mike carlson jason sheridan scott gardner 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.