Podcast: The Ride - Failed Parks with Jason Woliner

Episode Date: March 30, 2018

Podcast: The Ride combs through the remains of two failed theme parks: The World of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hard Rock Park. Two beloved IPs. Two parks that closed forever. With Jason Woliner (The Last Man on Earth, Eagleheart). Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/ 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

Warning, today's podcast may feature an abundance of mimes, urinal humiliation, a bare metal family called Bare Metal Family, and a park built on one man's dream, one man's rock and roll dream. Jason Walliner takes us on a magical mystery tour of the world of Sid and Marty Kroft and Hard Rock Park. It's Failed Parks on Podcast The Ride. Hello, welcome to Podcast The Ride, the podcast about theme parks hosted by three guys who aren't sure God exists, but we know if he does, he looks exactly like Dream Finder. We're all just God's figments. You guys concur, I think. You guys, Mike Carlson.

Yes, I concur. And Jason Sheridan. Hi. And I'm Scott Gairdner, and we're joined by a very special guest. He's a very funny, very talented writer and director from all of the good shows that exist. It's Jason Walliner. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Hello.

I'm very excited to be a guest. Yes, yes. Yeah, thanks for coming. I'm so excited to have you. And, you know, I'm excited to talk about this area with you. I mean, specifically what we, you proposed this topic for an episode, the idea of covering a couple I think you guys will concur that now that we've done the research, that we've put in the time and done the work, I am exploding with excitement to discuss all of these things. It really felt like a college exam that I was cramming for,

and I was like, oh, I only have an hour left, and I won't get this done. I'm not going to fail. I'm not going to pass. And I was having all sorts of flashbacks to my weather class, my weather 101 class. Weather? Yeah, I took a weather 101 class. Mike fucked up weather 101.

It was very difficult, and I never went to class. And I crammed the night before the final because the final was the grade, and I got a B, and I passed. But I had, like, nightmares about it. Geez. Well, the standards are higher here, my friend. We all have to collectively get an A-plus to properly attribute these topics.

I was saying before we started, I was feeling the feelings of nostalgia for a place I've never been to before. Like, oh, I wish I could go back. Wait, let me rephrase. I wish I could have gone. At all. Yeah. At all. Yeah.

At all. None of us have been to any of these places. They were, well, I mean, one was before our time and another was not open for long enough for anyone to get to go back in 2008. Yeah, we'll start getting into it. But Jason, you're a perfect person to talk about this stuff with. It seems like you're a fan of, well, well i mean it seems like theme parks in general but also like uh crazy uh poorly conceived disasters yeah i'm a big fan of just uh um bad ideas that uh have a lot of money thrown

at them or really just i mean both these aren't even necessarily bad ideas but just um just kind of things that didn't work out or uh you know just someone's vision uh that was seemingly executed without limitations and then uh was gone very quickly it doesn't seem like well ultimately like budget problems ended these places but it seems like there was a lot of money there's so much money involved in both of these thinking about what good that money could have done for just people human beings what was the it was like not to get too far ahead but like rock park we're talking about almost 400 million dollars and also when a movie i mean movies don't even cost really that much. That's like on the high end. And also when a movie fails, it just kind of goes away.

It's around. You see it like on iTunes. Like, oh, yeah, that didn't work out. When a thing like this doesn't work out, it's like still physically there in reality. And like the Croft one, you know, becomes something else. But the Hard Rock Park is still there. It's still there. As we speak, it was, yeah, it was briefly opened in 2008.

And now is, yeah, the space is obviously there and it's nothing. There's a church around there. Some of the land I figured out was bought by Medieval Times because they needed more space for horses to graze. So it's going to some use. But yeah, $400 million and it started with stuff that was already there. They gutted them all. There's so much to get into.

I feel like we should just start diving in. Yeah, where do you even start with these? Well, I mean, I guess we go backwards in time. I mean, in general, okay, to talk about failed theme parks, I could not make a definitive list of them. These might be the two of the most prominent. There's a lot of parks that close after a big run of time. We've talked maybe a couple times about the six flags that shut down

because of the hurricane. You know, parks close, it happens. Disneyland probably came very close to being open for just a few months and then closing all together um but i think it's very rare that you have parks like both of these that were neither of which was open for more than six months i mean what a spectacular failure just that's insane if you think about how long how much work goes into that and then it's done in six months how many years that's insane if you think about how long, how much work goes into that, and then it's done in six months. How many years?

That's crazy. I mean, that seems impossible. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. To be like, we're going to spend $400 million, but if it doesn't work immediately, we're walking away. Like, they almost seems suspicious to me. It seems like maybe something was going on that we don't know about. One of these parks did it not just once, but twice. That's true.

Oh, God, yes. Yeah. It almost feels like we're obliged to talk about the first one at this point in the way that the theaters before Coco had to show that Frozen short that no one liked. Like, we got to get through it. Although that's not true. There's a lot to talk about.

Topic number one, failed park number one, the world of Sid and Marty Croft. This was open from May to November 1976. It cost $14 million to build, which in today's money is something like $60 million, maybe more. I'm not sure if my inflation is right. But $14 million, a lot of money back then. So Sid and Marty Croft, you know, as the... You might not know. Possibly not at this point in time.

But if you don't know. Yeah, well, these characters have not been sufficiently rebooted and are not constantly part of our lives, but Sid and Marty Kroft made all of the crazy, trippy, puppet-centric children's shows from the 1970s. H.R. Puffin stuff. The Bugaloos. Lidsville.

Land of the Lost. Oh, Land of the Lost. That's probably the most prominent one because there's been a movie in the last 10 years. Very well-received film. A well-received film. But at the very least, you've heard that title. Yes. You've heard it.

And a 90s. There was the Nickelodeon 90s one, which I didn't care for the actual series, but excellent theme song and great performance from Timothy Bottoms, who played George Bush on That's My Bush and in a serious George Bush 9-11 movie as well. He was like goofy George Bush and then serious George Bush. Hey, the guy looks like George W. Bush. Take what you can get. Yeah, yeah.

He's got range. He's got range. He'll joke or he'll cry. But so, as I say, the Bugalus, anyone know what the Bugalus actually were? Sounds like a band. Yeah, they had songs. I've heard, my mom has forced me

to listen to some bugaloos i think at a certain point are they sort of monkeys s because i know your mom is a yeah she loved the monkeys and maybe that was their attempt uh was i was just watching one called there's there's one that's like very much like a love bug uh inspired you might say you might say Show like an alive VW. I don't know this one. It's also a bug, I believe. It's called also a bug. Another bug.

A bug where the rights aren't tied up. I'll say this. And we had a discussion about characters on the last or one of our last episodes with Evan Susser. I like the way these characters look. This is the compliment I'm going to pay to the Sid and Marty Croft universe. I like the way they look, and I like that they exist. And that's what I can say about them. I will agree with that, because I was just watching a lot of these

and not really being too familiar with them, and they do look really funny. Yes. Like, they look really stupid and weird and there's something naturally funny about about them um and also like hr puff and stuff which is i think their most well-known uh character um i noticed he can either move his mouth or his arms that i think when he's talking he has to pull his arm out of his arm and move his mouth with his arm. And there's always one part of his mouth that kind of bunches in a little bit

that you can see his clenched fist around his mouth. There's something very kind of charming and homemade about them. And by all accounts, it looks like that translated to this indoor theme park. Also, a quick note is that McDonald's stole the look of these characters for the McDonaldland game for Ronald and Grimace and the Fry Guys and everything, and they were sued by them. If you look at those early 70s commercials, it looks exactly like these old Sid and Marty Krofft shows.

Even the Mayor McCheese looks exactly like one of these characters. Well, I looked up. This is an actual quote from a legal document that ruled on this. And the Crocs were victorious, by the way. Of course, yeah. It worked out better for them than the McDonald brothers in The Founder. Well, that's true.

Which I would highly recommend. Ray Kroc screwed us again. The little wolf into the hen house. Those lines are said every scene. Yeah, pretty much. As I said last time, two years ago, we let a wolf into the hen house.

I love the founder. I really love the founder. The crops were victorious and this I love the founder. I really love the founder. But there is a... So, okay, so actual... Yeah, the Crofts were victorious. Noting the similarities between Mayor McCheese and H.R. Puff and stuff. Both lands are governed by mayors who have disproportionately large round heads dominated by long, wide mouths.

They are assisted by keystone cop characters. Both lands feature strikingly similar scientists and a multi-armed evil creature. A judge had to hear that. And it sounds like he's dealing with a land dispute or some kind of territorial... Also, they will have sashes um right yeah probably yeah i know puff and stuff has a big blue sash i don't think i knew till this that

puff and stuff was the mayor yeah i knew i learned that recently and that he i think it's a he is a dragon did you know that what yeah it was a full um reference rip ripoff, to Puff the Magic Dragon. I saw this in an interview with Marty Croft, I think. They really didn't even take the puff out then. They took the puff, yeah. They just took the puff and applied it to a different dragon. Because it seems like most of their time is spent denying that these were all references to drugs. And so people were like, which is, Mr. Show did a sketch called The Altered State of Drug-a-chusets,

which is where a lot of people our age, I think, discovered. Even are aware of this stuff at this point. And yeah, these shows were just synonymous with psychedelic drug use. And then I think for the last few decades, the Crofts' main job has been denying that psychedelic drug use. And then I think for the last few decades, the Croft's main job has been denying that they were drug references. But so Puff and Stuff, he said, was a reference to Puff the Magic Dragon,

which I think also was a drug reference. Yes. Yeah. Sort of. Yeah, yeah. Like thinly veiled. Get that in front of kids. Which also, a little tease for later, the Knights in White Satin, the trip like thinly veiled. Get that in front of kids, which also a little tease for later,

the Knights in White Satin, the trip. Oh, man. Some druggie stuff being put in front of kids. The trip part of that makes me so angry. Instead of the ride, the trip. I just, I can't. There's a lot of infuriating. There's like 40 things you could name about Hard Rock Park

that are without any attitude or addition or infuriating. Anyway, to keep talking about H.R. Puff and stuff. Well, that's one of the things you get to do in this. You get to go to specifically H.R. Puff and stuff's world. You get to go to Lidsville. Well, so to set the scene a little bit, the world of Sid and Marty Krofft became the centerpiece, the big ticket attraction

at an attempt to revitalize downtown Atlanta, an area called the Omni Center. They needed a big... It was offices and a hotel and stuff, and they needed something to pull people in. There was an ice skating rink, but then the big thing ended up being the world of Sid and

Marty Krofft. Which was famous for having the world's longest escalator. To get to it. Eight stories. It's all indoors. Right, it's an indoor theme park. Probably the first. Their slogan is, now all the fun is indoors.

What a joyous phrase. Someone pointed out, like, as I was reading this, someone pointed out that, like, the Crofts were responsible, you know, back when there was only three TV channels, and I guess PBS would have started around this time as well, the Crofts were responsible for the main kids' stuff that wasn't Disney. So, like, is that why it's so beloved? Because there just wasn't a lot of other stuff?

Maybe. Or isn't that beloved? Or as I say that. If you didn't want to learn, if you didn't want to sit through Sesame Street because you might learn something, if you just wanted pure escapist, meaningless adventures, then maybe that's where you turn.

But yeah, way before, because Disney wasn't making specifically Saturday morning cartoons. Maybe the only live action kids shows of the 70s. There was an article that pointed out there were no kids channels specifically. I mean, look, IP was scarce. Let's be honest.

We didn't have IP coming out the ears at this point. I know. So they had to take what they could get. I don't know what I'd do without IP nowadays. I know. We all love IP. There are days I can forget to drink water for hours, but I got to have some IP in there.

But if it's got, you know, Turbo the Snail on it, you'll drink from a glass. It'll remind you to stay hydrated. So the picture of this park, I use it in quotes, looks like the hotel I had my senior prom in, basically. It looks kind of like a hotel. I mean, it's a building. It has different offices in it. It's part of a hotel.

The way it looks. Yeah. It's really weird and and gray and and miserable and i stayed in this hotel the the conan show did a week uh from atlanta and this is where they put everybody up so i stayed in that hotel for like a lot of i feel like i want to say like nine nights or so i was there for a long time it was like it was weird and sad and you felt kind of claustrophobic to be just the balcony of the hotel room overlooked just a big indoor area.

So it did feel like being inside a mall with no stores for a long time. And it's the CNN headquarters now, is that right? Now, yes. That is what the space ended up being. It sat, when this thing opened and closed in 1976, sat empty for a decade, and then Atlanta was already the home of Ted Turner and CNN, and they had outgrown wherever they started. And this space was perfect because it was a lot of indoor floors that were very wide and without a lot of walls, basically. Yeah. You know, so that you didn't have to tear a bunch of stuff out.

Because now, like literally CNN, like the headline news is done on the floor where they, where it used to be a pinball machine. Oh, right. Which, in speaking to the general claustrophobia of this complex that exists still today, and that you're in like just sort of narrow ceiling floors on all these rides. Imagine being like trapped in a pinball machine.

So just for anyone listening who doesn't already isn't very familiar with this park, we both just really laughed at Scott saying pinball machine. We weren't laughing at just a pinball machine no there was their showcase uh ride was called pinball machine and it was you are a pinball and you travel through a gigantic pinball machine but you travel through it very slowly and often breaking down apparently um and did you someone i was reading said that it descended like the floors too that one of these like youtube people remembering it said it like actually went down levels as you as you wrote it oh the road the ride itself like yeah okay there's no because there's no video of or there's a little video there's like a little second of like this big

pinball bouncing i will say this though full disclosure this looks like the coolest thing in the whole place it's probably a lame it does certainly doesn't like really simulate being inside of a pinball machine that's not it but but the look of it it's fun looking it looks like if it was actually the chrome balls it looks like uh yeah it looks like you're in a giant Christmas ornament or something. It looks great. I thought everything here looked really cool. It does.

It does. But this thing for me, whatever, it pushed my buttons. I don't know why. There was a note in, Jason, I think you sent us this article. guests were not allowed to bring cameras and all news film footage of the park was destroyed in a fire at the local Atlanta CVS. So I didn't quite, I reread that chunk a few times and I wasn't quite sure they were talking about the grand opening or ever,

but if it was guests weren't allowed to take pictures ever, that is an insane thing for a theme park to uh you want to preserve like an air of mystery about a theme park i guess so you don't want anyone to know what's going on it's like a it's like a dave chappelle stand-up show you got to give everyone lock their phones you don't want them taking video ruin the bit before it goes on netflix okay maybe well can we um do you know this was a sequential park yeah so maybe we can talk the big escalator you so what that means is you couldn't decide what you were doing there was an order that you had to do everything in this to me and this park does seem really cool um this seems like it might have been a misstep along with the no photography policy that you started

on this eight story escalator and then you had to do every ride in order and then you were kicked out and you were done and i found people saying i went there it was fun it was only about three hours worth of entertainment our parents had like dropped us off for the day and we just like had to sit in the lobby for like hours and wait to be picked up because you there was like a very set amount of time that you could experience this um the so you ride the escalator up and did you guys see this uh at the top there was like a strange mime waiting for you. Oh, God. Okay, so there were different things waiting for you at the top because I found a few people who said there was like this terrifying mime

who was waiting for you at the top who would bother you and who wouldn't leave you alone until more people arrived up the escalator. So he would just like make fun of you, I guess, without using words. And then another YouTube commenter said there was a spider lady at the top i'm just gonna this was youtube commenter jason holiday uh wrote basically she poked her head through a curtain made up like a web she said what questions do you have for the spider lady in a silly voice we just stood there dumbfounded and she retorted, well, I don't know what to say if you don't have any questions.

So you have to have an awkward conversation with the Spider Lady. The Spider Lady is not prepared, despite the fact that you have no information about the Spider Lady and did not know there was a Spider Lady. She is not prepared to say, well, so I'm the Spider Lady.

Here is the logic of me here's where i came from you have to spur it with a question yeah yeah uh i found uh i found some i'm honestly not sure these are postcards or promotional images looking at it now i'm realizing in out of the four pictures there are mimes and three uh they are very much in the 70s kind of photography style of there's not enough lighting um the mind are you so this guy's a mime you're thinking i think yeah that guy's a mime is basically this guy's kind of fucked up but then that guy's a mime but that guy's like he's like a mime he has the makeup on his face but then he's got like an open his shirt is unbuttoned three buttons on the top and he's like kind of a swinger mime or something.

Yeah, one of them's kind of a swinger mime. One of them kind of looks more like a cabaret MC, but it's a red leisure suit. And then, I mean, the other thing is in one of these pictures, it looks like a little street and people with trees. And like you can very clearly see what looks like just a normal industrial ceiling above it. Just pipes and vents in the dark. Yeah, similar to the small world ceiling. Our favorite ceiling. So they were like key party mimes, basically.

That's the twist Sid and Marty put on mimes. HRPub and stuff not present in any of these photos. I found one promotional photo where he is doing some kind of a stage show. I think he would eventually at the end wind up where he lives on his island where he's made. You first passed through the Tranquility Terrace, which is the first three floors. And which is like the weirdest, it's such a Logan's Run-y term, and the whole thing, it being this indoor atrium

and that pinball ride has a super Logan's Run vibe, which is, I'm giving it points for that. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty amazing. That's a good way to put it. It is so cool. It's the future crossed with Dallas office parks. Yeah, I think this was a thing in revitalizing city centers for a while

because Baltimore has, there's a building in the Inner Harbor, which if you've never been to Baltimore, is kind of like Baltimore's equivalent to Times Square or Hollywood and Highland. And there's a handful of malls there used to be a planet hollywood there's still a hard rock cafe and one of the malls has like a hotel and you you can like look out of your room and you're looking down into like yeah giant open air space it's also very close to Camden Yards, the baseball field.

So there's this one hotel built into a mall where visiting baseball teams are constantly accosted by people wanting autographs. But it's the closest hotel, the closest nice hotel to Camden Yards. I thought you were gonna say like angry Baltimoreans accosting. Oh, yeah. No, that's the other thing. That was that was how i knew baltimore until i saw the wire i was like oh there's other

parts of baltimore like watching the wire it's like there is one point where mcnulty meets an informant uh at the inner harbor and i'm like oh yeah there's the uh finally we're on crab jason's territory. Now I recognize the city. To the window of a chain hotel. Yeah. It's the scary interiors, the Tranquility Terrace. Which I think was named sarcastically, it seems, right?

Like, it seems like this was, like, the loudest, most terrifying place. Most likely, most visually busy. Yeah, you, the loudest, most terrifying place. Most likely. Most visually busy. Yeah, you can just go read a book up there. I don't want to give them too much credit, but they did inadvertently predict, like, scheduling coming here in advance. Like, which Disney and Universal definitely you have to do. And now they really encourage you to do it by like, the tickets cost more on busier days.

So this part too was like, yeah, schedule in advance because we're only letting so many people in a day. Because we can fit 6,000 and we will fit 6,000 every single day. They were really confident about that. They seem to have a real fixation on little people performers. They boasted of having the shortest living twins in the world. John and Greg Rice. Do you know these guys?

I saw they exist. Yeah, today. I know them today. Patty Maloney. She's also small. Patty Maloney was on a Croft show called Far Out Space Nuts playing a proto-elff looking character named Honk. That looks really crazy if you look that up.

And the Rice twins are famous for infomercials for hawking this cash flow generating system called seven small steps and um check it out on youtube uh greg is still doing infomercials john passed away in 2005 but yeah there were tons of little people and also uh a lot of obese uh performers including a large man dressed as a hippo. There's one YouTube guy talking about it. So there were just people walking around, and it just sounds like a crazy place. In a mall, in a weird... Or in an office building, basically. Yeah, what is now literally an office building.

It's the headquarters of our, the fake news and the MSM assaults that we are bombarded with each day. Oh, Scott, not now, not today. We don't have time

for this. Just cut it out. All right, if you hear an edit, but know that in real life I'm talking for an hour and a half. Okay.

But so the, all right, so we're back and, yeah, little people, obese people, mimes and leisure suits, puppets that are famous for being terrifying. That's the main way that they're known today. I also heard that someone had a visit there once where just suddenly they were like, maybe they were having a moment of tranquility on Tranquility Terrace. And then they were just tapped on the shoulder and somebody went, hey.

And it was Billy Barty, who was another dwarf who operated in the Croftiverse, who played Sigmund on Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and later was Figment, our beloved character who will one day do seven hours about. So yeah, you could run into famous small people as well as obscure ones. Well, yeah, there was one story about Patty Maloney. It was like there's some kid she met and then she's like, I have to go meet my boyfriend and ran over to Bob Denver, Gilligan, who was also hanging out there.

And I think there's a picture of Jimmy Carter visiting as well. I don't know if you guys. He made it? Oh, it's Atlanta. Huh. Weird. Checking on the, did he like use it as. Nixon and Disneyland.

Nixon went to Epcot. Carter and. Carter went to eat your puppet stuff. Oh, man. He was a humble man. He only wanted to pay that five dollar admission um yeah do you think he like briefly used in the like month where it was working okay did he use it as like a sign of economic prosperity under his reign and then it closed yeah yeah all right take that out of the presentation

the camp david accords were going to be signed at the hr puffin stuff and then it closed yeah yeah there everyone was going to stay in a different lidsville lid and then meet in the morning for the peace accords uh the spider this but they were going to ask questions to the spider woman. And that's how we were going to get Mitty's piece. If their answer's lined up. There's an observation I have about Lidsville that's confusing to me.

The residents of Lidsville are hats and they all live in hats. What's going on there? It's a precursor to Cars because Lightning McQueen travels in a car it's a precursor to cars because like lightning mcqueen travels in a car in the cars movies he's yeah he's in john ratzenberger the truck yeah he goes inside the body of his friend and gets moved yes right so i guess i don't know is the answer unless a truck are i mean there's a lot of cars logic but is it is the truck body is does the

trailer not is that not part of their physiology? Like just the engine is like their head and their brain and their nervous system maybe? Yeah. And then the like flatbed part. Yeah. And the wheels are obviously part of them. But is it like if we wore a backpack, the backpack's not part of us? You know, I guess that is probably right.

I guess, no, yeah, you're right about that. But then you can take their wheels off. Yeah. So what is that? Is that just like shoes? That's like people with artificial limbs. I guess those are shoes. Another topic we could do seven hours on,

the physiology of the cars. Wheels or shoes. Yeah, cars logic. But yeah, the hats. The hats are hats. Hats live in hats. Well, not to rush us out of Lidsville, but I know we're all dying

to get to our next park. Are there any other big city and marty... Well, it seems to me like this place goes in descending order. The order you can't control. The middle is the pinball ride, which is the only ride. One of only two, I believe.

Well, yeah. There's a crystal carousel. Which is also cool. Yes. Which is also real strange and cool. Agreed. Yeah, yeah. I think if they'd had a chance to expand and add more rides, add more experiences, clear some of the mimes out and put rides in,

then maybe it would have stood a chance to close four years later instead of six months. Just looking at the illustrated map of this park, I have found four mimes. Another four different mimes. There's what looks like a mime entryway on the top floor and then there's just two mimes hanging out above hr puff i don't know how you just they're everywhere there's always a mime using one of the urinals fixation on mimes oh and then you end it in the

heavenly slumber cemetery um which is uh full of talking mushrooms with the faces and voices of Cagney, Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson. Favorites of kids everywhere. Those guys would show up. It's like Looney Tunes cartoon. Kids must have loved those grizzled character actors. Two of them show up in the great movie ride. Oh, yeah. Cagney and Bogart.

Yeah. Wait. Weird. two of them show up in the great movie ride oh yeah yeah and bogart yeah um yeah wait weird and there were also there were puppets of bowie and elton john and yeah yes and stevie wonder and i i think there's only maybe 17 seconds of footage of this park really that still exists or i didn't see the pinball one that you found but on youtube there's like a bear puppet wearing either a bow tie or a bikini top jumping rope uh for 17 seconds and that's all that exists of this 60 million dollar endeavor we had four photos out of it. That's great. I know these are like in the promo art here, these are probably like Bobby's or Policeman, but

Mario, it looks like Mario and Luigi to me, doesn't it? Oh yeah. It kind of does. Above the dwarf and the green dwarf. Yeah, right above the mushroom. Mushroom Kingdom. So maybe Is that another thing they can sue about? Can now, is Marty still alive? Maybe he could sue Nintendo.

Marty Croft v. Shigeru Miyamoto. I can sue diminutive characters, both of whom wear red and green hats, respectively. They are not mayors. You know what I'm thinking? On that map, you can actually, in the lower, is it the same map, the lower left-hand corner, you see a mushroom with the face of like an old gangster.

Yeah, yeah. So there is evidence of that. I think one of them is smoking too. So I think the smoking one is Bogart and the one on the far left is Edward G. Robinson. Yeah, I think they're both smoking. I'm pretty sure they both have a cigarette or a cigar in their mouth. Yeah, a lot of kids' characters back in the day were smoking.

I honestly think that's fun, and I'm kind of bummed out that no one can smoke in movies anymore. Yeah, because I always like scenes where a character we like is regarded with cigar smoke. Of course. And it lets in a struggle, and then it makes you be more on their side, and it adds to the stakes,

lets you know they're in a bad place. You know what? Cigars in, we just covered the yeah uh you know what cigars in we just covered the american adventure you got cigars in that you got cigars in pinocchio's daring journey so the theme parks have not theme parks are still doing cigars luckily but after they get rid of the redhead scene and pirates are coming for the cigars what's next in 2018 they're coming for the cigars slippery slope yep uh i was thinking, this is funny, past guest Mike Mitchell complained a lot about Guardians,

as did Doug Jones, about Guardians of the Galaxy taking over Tower of Terror, which, of course, is a beloved attraction, so it's a little bit different. But, like, this was a very current, like, these were very current characters for the time, like, when they built this thing. And there was no, there was,

no one should have expected this to last as far as characters that would, like when they built this thing. And there was no... No one should have expected this to last as far as characters that would stand the test of time. So would a Mike Mitchell at the time have been complaining about, well, these aren't... No one likes shit in Marty Krofft's characters. So you would have fought for what was there before this day, which is nothing.

Office buildings. Yes, office space. Yeah, that's what i'm saying would he then have been upset but then in 80s mike mitchell might have been upset that they got rid of ted turner i don't know the original cnn anchors but let's say wolf blitz nobody likes wolf blitzer you gotta keep uh jimmy the lid in there yeah i think that's right we're g robinson the mushroom we love him we love edward g robinson mushroom if he somehow he's hearing this he's just like saying fuck you no one um

he's furious that we're we're using him as the placeholder for a lot of people's opinions grumpy disneyland message board posters and i do instead of saying that we just say mike mitchell yeah he represents all of them yes speaking of tower of terror is are there many other things based on t i feel like i have heard imagineer talk about this where it's like there's lots of rides based on movies but tv shows just don't have the like emotional cash like they they they just don't have the staying power because like every few years that bad like 10 years ago there was rumors of like disney doing a lost experience or like doing a phineas and ferb ride and like yeah both those things i think phineas and ferb still popular with kids but not

like the time i went to disney world like six years ago and we all learned very quickly who uh perry the platypus was because he was everywhere uh he's a lot less everywhere nowadays i feel like uh yeah the less tv show rides probably at these big parks right was there a prominent yeah i mean it started there you got they're always a little like uh there's stuff you can take out more easily like there's a walking dead maze right right so um the sim The Simpsons. So your show has to be on for 25 years. Once these shows are no longer airing, it feels old,

whereas like a movie just exists and it's kind of around. It's probably an old feeling that probably should go away. Because at the time, TV was always more disposable. Then that was everyone's like perception of it do you remember you must remember a universal part of the tour was like they would take you into a battlestar galactica room oh yeah we haven't really talked about that much yeah yeah um i didn't know what that was when i came out here in the 80s and yeah yeah i think i must have taken the tour at one point and not known what that was even supposed to be which is like a bunch of mannequins i'm sure that footage it felt like just a generic

space adventure as far as i knew i didn't but you know i don't it wasn't too plot deep it's it wasn't uh you know it didn't have care beloved characters like the new battle star you didn't have to represent edward james almost or right this was this was old battle star yeah and they had my and there was the miami vice stunt show but yeah it's more temporary yeah things i feel uh um yeah because tv shows don't have the staying power of rock bands all right pull aside the beaded curtain and put on your prism glasses as we go to where rock comes to play. The Hard Rock Park. Hard Rock Park.

In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Here we are. Entertain us. That was said on the gate as you walked in. It did look a little bit like the gate to Auschwitz when they have that sign that says work equals freedom the march begins

this is of course the park we were saying opened and closed within six months it opened in 2008 in the spring of 2008 and closed in the fall of 2008. 150 days. 150 days. And then miraculously, a year later,

opened as the kind of more generic freestyle music park in 2009, and then closed in the fall of 2009. So not only did it open and close quickly once, but as we said, it did it twice. Wow, that's a theme park rarity. Yeah. And probably never to be achieved again. I mean, there are stories of parks opening and closing

and then reopening and closing. The North Jersey urban legend action park comes to mind sometimes called traction park um uh due to so many uh horrifying injuries happening at it uh but yeah this but that didn't cost 400 million dollars like the hard rock park did oh man crazy all the footage like this happened in 2008 and everything you watch, it's so crazy how something so recent looks like it was like 50 years ago.

Yeah, it was right on the line of like everyone having standard, or high def cameras on them at all times. Yeah, all the footage is in standard def. Everything's in standard def. Oh, yeah, true. Well, and just stylistically, I was showing my wife a lot of,

I made her watch it we'll get into all the pieces of it but there is a stunt show that is set all to like rock you like a hurricane and rat and stuff and then i showed her like just an outfit of what like what women had to wear if they worked in the park which is like short leather skirt and like uh fishnets and uh and she was she just made some comment about like god this is the most 90s thing i've ever seen and then i was like no no 2008 this is seven years after the events of 9-11 which impacted uh this park it is part of the tale i don't know if you saw the correlation between no no i didn't that's just how I think of things in terms of like-

BC and AD. Yeah. This happened recently. This happened a couple of years ago. Really recently. Really recently. Also, the 2008 recession had a big part to play in this. Listeners, we should tell you, we all spent like the whole day in grossed at research.

Like once, like you would just pull back a layer of the onion and there would just be more onions. And so we're- More onions. I think that's true. Multiple onions within the onion. Yeah, not layers, just new onions. Yeah. That's accurate.

I am honestly a little intimidated. I'm not even sure how to start. Do you want to talk about the genesis of it, what we've discovered about that? Yeah. Well, let's set the scene. Someone set the scene. We're in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,

a place we've not yet talked about on the podcast. And this is one of those meccas of tourist trap insanity. I was there probably in the late 90s. I don't remember it very well. I was more recently in Niagara Falls, and it feels a lot like Niagara Falls to me, where it's not just two of the tourist trap chains. It's all of them. They had at one point Planet Hollywood, the all-star cafe, the sports restaurant that was around for a little while.

There's an M&M thing. There's Medieval Times. There's Margaritaville. There's something called the Ripken Experience, like a Cal Ripken ballpark that has 10 replicas of different great ballparks across the country. Insane how much tourist trappy stuff. And then, of course, there is a Hard Rock Cafe. So they planted seeds in this area a little bit. And it's all very close to the ocean. tourist trappy stuff and then of course there is a hard rock cafe so they they you know planted seeds in this area a little bit and it's all very close to the ocean it's like you know there's an

amusement park pier and stuff so it's this very like uh amusement heavy area as is this was not close enough to the ocean that was something that did it in uh it was kind of a little more on the outskirts uh originally conceived as a place called fantasy harbor that was going to be themed to the four seasons and yeah and uh i think we have to start getting into the the protagonist of our story whose name is john binkowski john binkowski because strangely this park did not start with the hard rock cafe deciding to open a theme park branch even though they were already in myrtle beach it began with the vision of one man by all accounts the hard rock cafe seems to have been dragged into this and wanted nothing to do with it it was like

it was literally like a coincidence that brought all this together kind of yeah it was a neighbor yeah okay so i'll try i'll try to say it fairly quickly. John Binkowski was a guy in the theme park world. He worked at a company. It was his company, I believe, called Renaissance Entertainment. Renaissance, yeah. Which was still around. Centralized in Celebration, Florida, which is the Disney-built planned community

in Florida. His company did a lot of attractions and shows. They did a Baywatch stunt show that was in a lot of sea worlds across the country. Did they have anything to do with the Waterworld stunt show? There's concept art on their website. On their website, yeah. I think they did

concept arts and some original scripting or blocking or the stunts. They blocked the water. There's a weird word used. But one of the Batman stunt shows, the Lethal Weapon stunt show, which I saw a couple of times. It's Six Flags Great Adventure. Very short-lived. There was a Lethal Weapon stunt show on a body of water.

It's unclear. When you're talking about all these companies that do a body of water it's unclear a lot of the when you're talking about all these companies that do this type of work it is a bit unclear like what they actually did well somebody could have planned the whole ride and then as you said someone could have just blocked a show somebody could have just told the actors where to stand their websites are are pretty much glorified uh minimal portfolios or business cards like the resume cvs you gotta be you gotta be in the business to see the the nitty-gritty and to know who's who yeah yeah so did you read about john in 97 the ufo encounter uh thing that he did no uh that's all over his

youtube channel which i was checking out today it's called ufo encounters um there's a really long video about it looks like it only appeared at the la county fair and then never again but it was intended to be like a touring attraction where families can go and be abducted by aliens and like experimented on by aliens yeah like and you're like there's a you go in a replica of a craftsman home and like things shake around and like there's different phases you go it looks really cool it looked like a fun thing um and i guess it didn't it didn't really take off but yeah so this is a guy that's really uh kind of had a bunch of themed entertainment uh projects for a time by the time that like at least 20 years by the time this part got off the direct did something called pirates 4d there was a movie that played it's played in a couple theme parks um but so the uh as alluded to uh on the the

terrible day of september 11th 2001 the uh it sends the theme park industry into a spiral, kills tourism, people don't want to fly. He had been doing a lot of work for the bigger name theme park, sometimes Universal, sometimes SeaWorld, and all of his clients have bailed on him because nobody's investing new money in anything. And he is left with his sole thing that he has investments in, which is a Myrtle Beach ice skating theater called the Ice Castle Theater, which was mostly known for a show that they did that I looked into called, I might be getting the name wrong,

but it's something like, you know, like a haunted ice show with Nancy Kerrigan. Like Halloween on ice with Nancy Kerrigan. There was also a Christmas variation also with Miss Kerrigan. Oh, really? Okay. So she was a frequent client of this theater. It would be like her and a Frankenstein doing

an ice skating routine. That's exactly it. I saw one where they invoked some of the most, the spookiest characters in all of Halloween, Batman and Robin. Batman and Robin are skating around and then the villains show up

and Nancy Kerrigan is Catwoman. She's in character. So Nancy Kerrigan is performing in every show. So it's like Elvira at Knott's or something. There's not an actress playing Nancy Kerrigan. No, no, no. The real deal.

But she also, I don't think all of her Halloween on ice work was at this place because i saw footage of something that happened in boston a haunted show which uh i if i could describe it uh uh nancy is skating free in a in a flowing dress of virginal white she is uh very very innocent as we always picture her and then she gets in a bed that's on the ice and goes to sleep and then the skeletons come out to play.

Eight skeletons surround her bed and taunt her and then she wakes up and oh my god she's in a nightmare and then like 50 more skeletons all skate in and she has to skate around and avoid them and they just do circles around her and like what's the bit when all the skaters line up they just like do a big line a synchronized

line like nancy there's only so many that's not a bit not traditionally like a can can sort of skating move uh that when all the skeletons skate in a line. You guys know the term. What's the technical name for that? Oh, it's a whip. They all are whipping around and around. There's only so many ways that skating skeletons can haunt somebody. But she's trying to avoid them in every way but jumping

because she is pregnant at the time of this video that I watched. What? Yeah, she's doing a haunted ice show while pregnant. She shouldn't be skating. She shouldn't be skating. She shouldn't be on the ice. She should take a little break. For our younger listeners, you're probably thinking like,

oh, as I'm hearing that, well, the Olympics will probably be over by the time this is released. They're still going as we're recording. In the 90s, figure skating was insanely popular. There was a boom and bust similar to the stand-up comedy boom and bust of the 80s and 90s and the current comedy 2018 through forever uh but yeah by the time you're listening to this comedy will be done yeah it'll be over some article recently about like i don't know if it was an interview with Scott Hamilton, but just like talking about like skaters were making insane amounts of money in the 90s and then kind of quickly faded to the background.

But at the time, she skated to glory. Wow. Not just in her famous Olympic appearance. Yeah. Let me ask a question. Did she have the, was she still in the white dress while she was being chased by the skeletons or it was a different was it an outfit change yeah it was very they are they're in black and she's in white and it's sort of the good versus evil gotcha you know so people in the cheap seats can tell who's good and evil sure

because confusingly she was also cat woman one of history's greatest villains. Anyway, the point is... Ice theater. Had a failed mall next to it. Yes, there's this weird area that this guy has land deals in that's an ice theater, a failing mall, and the back of Medieval Times, where they were grazing horses and now are again. So the guy, his

work options are limited and he's like, I have to make my own opportunity. Look, there's a big lake here as well. That's the other thing, which is very similar to California Adventure. There's a big lake that was actually just a clay quarry that got filled up with rainwater, and then it stayed. So I got a quarry. I got an abandoned mall. This is the beginnings of the theme park, obviously.

So he set out to get uh funding from banks he went out with an idea that's uh the four seasons not the band not jersey boys but the the four seasons of a year and he we watched this i think we all watched part of a presentation that he gave where did you guys see where he like showed the characters who would be fundamental in the Seasons Park, who are like the Easter Bunny for spring, Uncle Sam for summer. Of course. And then for another great Halloween character like Batman and Robin, Jack Pumpkinhead. Jack Pumpkinhead.

Jack Pumpkinhead. Who he just presents confidently. And then obviously Jack Pumpkinhead. Is Jack Pumpkinhead a character from the other Wizard of Oz books? Like that Jack Pumpkinhead? Well, he says, he makes a point that these are all public domain characters. And all the Wizard of Oz characters are in, not still, but of course in the public domain. Who's Winter?

Santa. He has Santa in there, right? Santa's still alive. He has Santa on the PowerPoint, I think. It's Jimmy Icicle. Ironically, public domain for how much licensing would end up fueling the actual park. Yes, that's true. Oh, yeah, exactly.

Well, so the bank tells him the seasons aren't enough to get a park financed. You need some IP, that beloved IP that we love so dear. So he goes to some of these other places. He goes to MGM. He tries to get them to sponsor a park. And he makes a big map with all of the MGM properties. And then they aren't interested. They already had an experience in Las Vegas.

They don't want to get back into the theme park game. So he's like, Binkowski is not sure what to do. What theme, what brand could I get involved to get this place built and then he somehow miraculously thinks of Hard Rock well someone tells him the way I read it is that

someone tells him you should talk to your neighbor your next door neighbor he is an executive or was an executive at Hard Rock. And that would be Steve Goodwin. No, wait. No.

Sorry. He's also involved, but this is Oliver Monday. Monday, my mistake. Yeah. I was in my head. I was like, oh, is it Goodwin? Like all of these characters live in my head now. I knew it was Oliver Monday.

I wouldn't make that mistake. I knew it was Monday because that's what my boss at Conan, Mike Sweeney, called Nick Mundy, an actor, our friend, who was often in sketches. And he never learned the name correctly. Can we get Monday? Wow. So no relation, Oliver Monday. Power play.

It might have been. He was up to something. So they go to the, do you have the official corporate owner the the hard rock brand and the the cafes and the hotels and everything is owned by the seminal tribe nowadays right is it yes i read that yeah yeah um and they uh uh hard rock of course like operates some of these and then they license out the name for stuff too uh and they seem pretty on board pretty quickly for this theme park right well they had him he went over with a bottle of wine to his neighbor's house and presented him with like a two-page outline explaining that it

will the park will have all the tenants of rock music and it'll be a family friendly place where kids and adults can rock out together and this string of words was enough to get him in the door although it went away he never thought about it again and then Oliver Monday calls him and says hey I talked to my bosses they're in actually they're interested so can you come back in 48 hours

like with your plan and all the specifics yes sure can do he has no specifics nothing figured out but he talks to his friend this might be Goodwin this is Goodwin they went to like with your plan and all the specifics. Yes, sure, can do. He has no specifics. There's nothing figured out. But he talks to his friend. This might be Goodwin. This is Goodwin.

They went to Kinko's. That's where his mistake was. They went to Kinko's. Multiple stories of them at Kinko's. They had this very fateful jam session at Kinko's. Where they're just putting labels over the old. They're taking MGM. They're taking what was probably a James Bond ride. And then just,

and then putting like Dixie chicks ride over it. James blunt, which actually like, this is like kind of prophetic in like how quickly they would have to re theme the park later on. Hard rock pulled out. Yeah. We'll get to that uh quickly mods out the it makes it uh rockified there's something that i noticed that he like there's

he's just hypothetically throwing out bands that may or may not be of course i can get the beatles involved yeah um and and i saw i looked at the map of the kid with the kinko's labels and there's a plot of a dark ride and he just put he puts like the different eras of the beatles into different rooms on the on the dark ride and it's like you know probably the more visual like eras of the beatles it's you know here we'll be at uh you know we'll be in the liverpool era or in the cavern club and then we'll go to the Yellow Submarine and Magical Mystery Tour and then the last room is Anthology.

There's gonna be a room in the ride based on... So I guess that section would be a bearded Ringo Starr reminiscing in a pasture. George just glaring at Paul, not wanting to be there. John off with his old assistant

that Yoko was like, go live with this assistant for a year, and then I'll summon you back. You gotta cover the lost year in the ride. I thought you were gonna say John is off with God. Yes. That was what I was thinking. A nice ending to the ride, like the blue fairy granting life to pinocchio perhaps

the ride ends with john granting his blessing for free as a bird to be recorded for the anthology sounds good i love that old tune in in 2007 hard rock the cafe inc was sold to the Seminole tribe of Florida and it is headquartered in beautiful Orlando Florida as of December 2015 there are 191 hard rock locations in 61 countries that includes 173 cafes

23 hotels and 11 casinos Jesus Christ Seminole tribe came into this very late in the game because this was happening it took like six years to open i think yeah so like they they did get this park open while a corporate like ownership sale of the hard rock company was happening and i guess it was just moving so along at that point the park that they're like okay i guess we have a theme park now the simonoles are looking forward to that they want to go on led zeppelin the ride this really

makes me think that if we just find like a millionaire we could just get a theme park open like let's find a company that has like anything movies a play maybe famous plays i don't know like somebody owns a bunch of plays so you own gypsy yeah that is what's like kind of incredible about this story is like this guy that has bounced around in that world got to open a 400 million dollar i know like he seems unfathomable that you would like have an idea and be like yeah there's land here and get this like you know uh license to do this and make some calls and like like, yeah, there's land here. Get this, like, you know, license to do this and make some calls and, like, take years.

But eventually it's like, yeah, I've got $255 million lined up. Like, completely forgetting that it didn't last very long. This is still, like, an incredible achievement. It's pretty amazing. He's credited as such in the theme park world. People, like, are very complimentary of this part. Yeah, and that he did it like, he had no connection to any of this,

to Hard Rock whatsoever. Suddenly he's with them, they're branding everything. He went to talk to Led Zeppelin and shit, and then it's gone and it falls apart. And all of this happened and he didn't go to jail. Not that he should go to jail, I don't think he did anything wrong,

but that this wasn't the kind of situation where somebody screwed up so bad. This is the kind of story where there are usually bodies at the end of it. And then it got really bad. This just didn't work out. He seems to be fine. He moved on.

In an interview a few years ago, he said, oh yeah, Renaissance, we're working on stuff for Shanghai Disneyland. And it's like, oh my God. He's doing fine. He's doing fine. He's doing fine. He's thriving.

Are we saying this because we think John is listening to this? Yeah. Like a little one-tick. No, he seems like a nice guy. We are fans. We do. We're all sad we didn't get to go to this part. Yeah, we wish we could have said it accurately.

And we are being honest. I'll say this. If John's listening, let's give it another go. Let's get us involved. Go back to the Seminole tribe. We got some ideas. Maybe we'll say them at the end of this whole segment. Absolutely.

We'll just find a new quarry to build around. It's got to be an abandoned quarry somewhere. Where's the new tourist? I don't know. In Mississippi? Get a Skrillex coaster going. Guys, I know I have the lead on a plot of land outside of a vacation spot in South Carolina that is currently occupied. Oh, wow.

You actually do? Yeah. Hmm. Okay. Well, let's start talking finances. This old park on the Freestyle Music Park. Oh, I remember. The old Freestyle Music Park.

Old Freestyle Music Park. Whatever happened to that. So that needs, that needs an owner. All right. Yeah. Let's buy it up. So there was this long money raising period where it says he got seed money

from Israeli firms and was able to sell $255 million worth of bonds. And so he had hundreds of millions of dollars. Oh yeah. Specifically because you brought up the Israeli firm. I even know it about this. This is not quite... No one is in jail, but there is some legality stuff. One of the investors in the park is named Africa Israel Investments. Their American branch owns the New York Times building,

which I just think is an interesting fact. This company, to allude to what happens at the end of this park, this company just wrote off its $10 million investment. They just wrote it off. This company also in 2008

dealing with some controversy. They got a lot of newspaper coverage for its association with the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Oh my goodness. In occupied territory. All like rock themed. All rock themed settlements.

Yeah. The wailing wall like the Pink Floyd wall. My. So yeah. So, yeah, so numerous investors involved in this part. You don't raise $400 million without making a few compromises ethically.

Apparently not. This is all making me think, why the fuck didn't Circa this time, like in 2006, riding high on The Apprentice, why didn't trump just start oh yeah and i think we could have missed all of this like this is like it's a great shady investors and stuff this is so up his alley again if we kept reading for another few hours we might have found out like oh okay 20 million from trump international sure yeah that makes sense he's involved in the

weird failed warner brothers stores we found out like really but didn't his family crush a local theme park isn't that what happened there's some story about an atlantic city or i i there's something like that part of coney coney island yeah yeah yeah in atlanta uh coney oh yes yeah the trump's out they outlawed fun yeah that's why it happened so um but how but he is the president of Trump land of a failing theme park. He would be having so much more fun than being the president of a failing theme park. But also he is president of Trump land of failing theme park called the United States of America. But he hasn't gotten to design any coasters on a cocktail napkin and then make people figure out how it works.

People are going to fall out of it. It's going to catch on fire. Who do we think is a better leader, Trump or H.R. Puff and stuff? As far as him treating his people well. I'd have to look into his policies, the specifics of his mayoral run. Plus his father in the Klan. Both their fathers were in the clan a giant wide hood over archival photo and one of the clansmen has a giant head a very wide mouth which one was your dad i don't think he's in there i don't see him he was arrested nearby but he had nothing to do with it so yeah

they scared up this investment i yeah where are we there's so we haven't i know we're not even in the investment which the investment i mean if you're talking about the the successes and failures of the park the investment the money being divided up a thing that kept getting come that kept coming up is that they got this money, but then there was no more money. It's like, this is your allowance for the week. Yeah. That is so crazy.

And that is, I think, maybe jumping ahead a little bit, but they had apparently $400 million, and then all these stories say, but they had no money to buy any advertising. Yeah, the advertising got mucked up somewhere now there are commercials you can find online which are something else it's usually people in normal settings and then they start acting like rock and rollers and a logo comes up and so an announcer goes like must have been to hard rock park there. There's one that Benkowski presents as having been banned, where a waiter comes up to a group of off-screen women at a table and says,

so can I get you ladies anything else? And then they all throw their panties at his face. And then, must have been to Hard Rock. He might be mixing up banned with just people didn't want to air it. Just rock and roll. Not interested. Stuff. roll bummed out comedic taste didn't align that maybe uh oh sorry oh no i was gonna say that that reminds me uh uh like the the panties thing reminds me this is also like it it's hard rock but i mean the hard rock cafes and the hard rock hotels kind of encompass a lot of

popular music there is like you know um there's folk stuff in there there's hip-hop stuff in there there's a lot of memorabilia this hard rock park is very specific in its definition of rock and roll it's i think i wrote down the note somewhere uh white baby boomer nonsense like very a very specific kind of like yeah zap and moody blues and oh man arlo guthrie was so funny my man like it's it's very narrow focused in its definition of rock and nothing i would ever think that you would think kids would be psyched to go to, which you would need on board to support a thing like this. Yeah, a reminder, 2008. 2008.

This is 10 years ago. It's not like this was 85 or 92, a time maybe when you'd go, okay, those bands were popular 20 years ago. We're talking like 30, 40 years ago when these bands were having hits. So it's even more insane to think about building an entire theme park around them. Building a multi-million dollar Moody Blues ride in 2008.

2008. The Moody Blues. My main association with is that Simpsons gag about what's rock. It's like, who are the Moody Blues? The Moody Blues are just getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. Oh boy. That's finally happening.

They were on the Simpsons though. Like when the Simpsons just became like a checklist of who do we want to meet? Like they, they show up in a Las Vegas episode and talk to Homer and Flanders, you know, because like you got to get some of the big famously Vegas centric bands, like the Moody Blues. I don't understand.

It's also crazy because this is like, we're getting, I guess, ahead of ourselves, but this Moody Blues ride, which is the crown jewel of Hard Rock Park. I've restrained myself from making this joke before, but we might need to put on a pot of coffee. Other topics we've been like, oh yeah, this is going to be a while. We might talk about this for a while. But this, I'm like, I might need to. So this was supposed to be the Beatles ride. This was the first idea. It was a fun, magical mystery type thing.

But the Beatles people were like, it's got to be a whole Beatles land, which it's crazy that they didn't go, yes, let's make the Beatles land because that's the most popular band. That's actually still a relevant band in 2008. Instead. He was like, no,

thank you. No, thanks kids. We don't want your Beatles license. Get the hell out of here. Next name on the list. The Moody Blues. Get them on the phone.

What about the Kinks? What about, why didn't we go to another band? They did try Pink Floyd. Pink band? They did try Pink Floyd. They did try Pink Floyd. They said no, but there are 25 to 50 bands that are bigger than the Moody Blues.

No offense to the Moody Blues. They're good. But if you're doing something that people are going to recognize... I'm not sure I've heard the song Nights in White Sad. I thought it was Procol Harum's Writers uh yeah it paled for the longest time they occupy kind of the same space and then culture and then i thought it was white room as well i thought that uh the cream song again the white room black curtains i was like

oh that's what that song is and i played you thought it was white rabbits and then yeah yeah until yesterday i thought it was nights with a K in white satin. And then I looked up the song, and it's like the inspiration for the song was one of the members of the Moody Blues got a set of satin sheets as a gift. And I read this, and I thought, this is what Jason Sheridan would write a song about. His sheets on his bed. Oh, he's writing sheets. And how soft the sheets are.

Wait, is it really not knights with a K? It's not knights with a K. Oh, he's got good sheets. And how soft the sheets are. Wait, is it really not Nights with a K? It's not Nights with a K. No, it's Nights. Because it's like. But there's a night in the lobby. That's the right interpretation of it. It's not. It's about him just having a nice night on nice sheets.

You know why? Because did you see that quote they asked the guy who wrote it? And they're like, what do you think of the ride? And he's like, well, that wasn't really what that song was about haha he's like implying that it was about fucking like yeah no knights in white satin in that yeah yeah like he's yeah like i'm in bed with a real nancy kerrigan as babe just another night in white satin so this ride is like a ride and we'll circle it back around to the to the creation of the park and the opening. We do have to cover the groundbreaking.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We'll go back to that. But yeah, let's bang out. Let's bang out. Mike, do you happen to have the name of this ride on hand? Nights in White Satin, the, wait, it's the trip. The trip.

Yeah, the trip. Yeah, yeah. That's what we were asking for. Not Nights in White Satin, the ride. No. Nights in White Satin, the trip. We should change the name of the podcast to Podcast the Trip. The Trip. The Trip. Yeah, The Trip. Yeah, yeah, that's what you're asking for. Not Knights in White Satin The Ride. No. Knights in White Satin The Trip. We should change the name of the podcast to Podcast The Trip. The Trip.

Just for this episode. For this episode. New logo and like a man put over, paced over at a big trippy. I've seen the entrance. The entrance is crazy. I mean, we'll post all of this on Twitter. Showing us the facade. And it is like, I mean.

You're being summoned into a room by a psychedelic wizard. This flames a fire. And you know what? I don't know if you can see it in this, but there is apparently a poster for this ride that has a lot of weird little hidden imagery. And in John Binkowski's corporate presentation, he points out that you can see the ultrasound photo

of a baby of an employee who was working on this ride. Oh, wow. Like she lent a photo of her fetus to be a trippy visual. Now, what we're kind of glossing over is the fact that everyone who went on it says it's the greatest dark ride that has ever been built. Here's the thing. Just reading the name of the ride every time i would come across the trip part of the ride i would get viscerally angry once i hit number three on journalists who said this is the greatest dark ride ever i was just like i need to step away

for a few minutes so there's a guy named jeremy thompson who has a website called roller coaster philosophy i think have you guys ever seen that and he writes these like really really long So there's a guy named Jeremy Thompson who has a website called Rollercoaster Philosophy, I think. Have you guys ever seen that? And he writes these really, really long, in-depth reviews of theme parks. Yeah, very thoughtful. Yeah, very thoughtful. And just really, really long, well-thought-out stuff that treats dark rides as an art form. And he's also very hard on

everything he kind of hates everything and he and this is how i discovered this park is because he had his list of top 10 dark rides of all time he's been every theme park in the world and he ranks this as the number one it's a why i mean i looked at those ride through videos and it does not do it justice if it's truly that great. It looks like a better version of the Garfield's Nightmare. It really looks like, I don't know, I'm missing something, I guess. It's a good story. It's like if you were making a 60s miniseries, and one of the characters had a psychedelic trip,

that's what they tried to recreate so uh for this ride going through it and there's like there are knights in white satin k knights yeah and they like take a swing at you on the ride and then you keep going and there's stuff like floating and it's like it is what like it is what he wanted a magical mystery tour ride, I guess, to be, but then he just put this whole druggy narrative on this song that's just about having sex on a nice bed. Oh, wait, which also is... The best part of great sex is when you're on a really nice bed. Yeah, that's what the songwriter was trying to highlight specifically.

Bed quality. Lumbar support uh the i mean the look the trippiness starts in the queue where you go through a beaded curtain and then you're given prism like weird prism glasses and you go through some dark dark black light hallways and then you ride through the satin satin night room and then there's a floating candle room and then bang the ride becomes a screen ride yeah yeah once you're past some optical illusions like i i think i was a little more with it for the first minute and then it does seem to become just like lights yeah just a candle a screen ride where they did not bother to put a screen portion over the tunnel like

in a lot of rides the screen will cover doors and then the doors will open up and you'll go through not this you can see the hole you're about to go through and then you go through a tunnel with lights and i'm also glossing over the fact that as i'm watching this i think like oh i there's a spoken word interlude uh no it is not a spoken word interlude it's a spoken word ending what oh it that the ride ends with this weird poem with a weird poem no music oh which includes the line new mother picks up and suckles her son senior Senior citizens wish they were young. You're hearing this. You're on a ride with a child hearing these lyrics.

I feel like everyone walked out of this ride in tears. Like, I think we will never in our lives understand how powerful this was. Every single person is like, this is the greatest ride I've ever been on. I mean, you sent us that roller coaster philosophy website. powerful this was every single person is like this is the greatest ride i've ever been i i mean you sent us that roller coaster uh philosophy website and i'm like okay well this is just one blogger and then the slightest bit of research got me to a write-up about the park from beth j harpaz the associated press travel editor who also said it was one of her all-time favorite theme park rides right up there with disney soren which again also kind of a weird uh that's weird that's weird and then uh i gotta

give credit a lot of my knowledge of this park comes from a a theme park university a great blog that i i've read for a long time and I had never gotten around to reading their hard rock. They wrote a 10-part series on the hard rock park, and I thought, like, well, I'll speed through, and I did not speed through this. I spent a day reading this part because I found it so engrossing. But then even at the end of this 10-part series, he shouts out.

He says it's one of his favorite. It might be his favorite talk right at all times. It does feel like we're being gaslighted or something. Yeah. It feels like everyone's like, yeah, this was the greatest ride. And then we look at every piece of information about it and go, what are you talking about? Maybe there was some kind of hypnotism kind of thing when you get off of it that like yes makes you walk away thinking you you've had this like incredibly transcendent experience yes was released into the room

apparently the audio quality was very good i don't think that's enough for me john talks a lot about the audio quality shout out to jl audio he talks a lot about the audio quality the pv amps that were everywhere he said we're not hiding these amps. And then he said, we want to have the logos bigger. So PV made special logos to make their logo bigger on the amps around the park. When you're walking around Disneyland, all the speakers are hidden. And they were proud to have them all out and labeled, heavily labeled. It's funny that you guys mentioned the speakers.

I don't know if you watched the safety video for Led Zeppelin the ride i couldn't find it well i found it john put it on youtube oh and the safety video not the pre-show the pre-show i just spent an hour trying to find it i think because i learned it's the first three minutes of the song so it probably was just taken down for copyright immediately that was the big not to keep jumping around but that was the big complaint about led zeppelin the ride is that you had to watch a five minute pre-show uh of them performing this song every time you wanted to just ride this roller coaster because they insisted a full song you had to get a full song so you you couldn't as as pointed out by theme park university, you could not do a five minute,

70 mile per hour roller coaster because people would die. So you get like the first 80% of that song in the pre-show and then the song- And then there's a break? And then you get in the car and then it finishes. I think the song continues as the doors open. The song continues as the doors open, you get in.

And what is the song? I'm forgetting the song now. It now it's a lot of love it's a whole lot of love it is go ahead wait but i know what you're gonna say right before you see that you watch this safety video which is so confusing and convoluted because it's about what like numbers to stand on if you want to stay with your party it's like this computer animation but they're saying you get into the get into the uh the roller coaster and it says make sure you don't damage the high fidelity onboard audio speakers when you get into the ride which i've never seen any of these things yeah you like this guy was so concerned about the speakers like make sure everyone these fucking idiots no don't touch the speaker he speakers. He was very proud of it. You can see he's in this presentation. He's beaming when he's talking about the PV amps and speakers.

Another thing that's touted about the park is that there's seamless transitions from the music on the ride to the music out in the park. So if you're in a restaurant and you're listening to Do You Think I'm Sexy? Then you go out into the park and it is a calliope version of Do You Think I'm Sexy? And they're all synced up. So one, they're all playing right on top of each other

and there's a smooth transition. To which I say, who cares, right? Like why? Does it really bother anybody at a theme park that i mean a different song is playing now like it's just part of what happens on the harry potter episode i do find that when you're sitting at the at hogs or uh the three broomsticks three broomsticks you're sitting out at hollywood universal and you hear loudly playing Do the Bartman in the background. A little bit of a problem.

That's more of a bleed problem. But John specifically says he doesn't like when there's a sound bleed. No, I don't like it either. I don't know that I care that much, but I do think it's thoughtful. There are thoughtful stuff involved in this book, like how each land has a thrill ride for adults,

and then there's kid stuff, and there's shows, and there's restaurants. So that way, if people don't want to ride the big rides, there's stuff close by for the rest of the family to do. I do think that is a thoughtful design element. He is very proud of that. He's so excited you can tell about that sound bleed issue. Like, that was his, like, I'm most proud of, not of the rides, but of, like, the sound and what I did in the bathroom and stuff.

And you know what he did? Oh, the urinal? Yeah, yeah, the whole bathroom. Oh, yeah, the urinal. I'll say that. There is, you can see a photo of, in this park, in the Whammy Bar area, I believe. The bar called the Whammy Bar. We're up above the urinals.

I've got it right here, Scott. There is artwork of women looking down. We all have it. We all have it at once. There's women looking down at where you are peeing. Looking at your penis. And pointing and laughing. So there's two blonde ladies, a black lady who I think is the only person of color represented in the park.

No Aretha, no Beyonce, but this lady in the bathroom. Two country ladies and an old lady with a magnifying glass because your penis is so tiny. So this is the wit. This is the acerbic wit that the Times of London talked about. The African-American lady, though, seems pleased with the size. And the old lady seems like she's got the magnifying glass and she's kind of judging it. So everyone kind of has a different face on.

So if everyone's dick is small everyone has a different feeling about dick size is what i'm saying yeah honestly the old lady looks like she's pleased too like oh what a great small yeah she might just need the magnifying glass to see yeah yeah it might not have anything to do with the size honestly a vision issue or maybe she's trying to get a look on how big trying to to take a, you know, a 7'8 inch-er and make it look like a three-footer. Just for fun. Or she's using the magnifying glass as a barrier

because it's so big. She's like, maybe I can squat it out of the way with this. Don't poke me in the eye. There's also photos on Google Image of, like, people, like, pissing in these urinals where, like, this only encourages people to pissing in these urinals where like like this only encourages people to take photos in the men's restroom yeah all people are using it this wouldn't fly in most

strip clubs this is crazy yeah this is like dick's last resort level also what does this have to do with hard rock yeah no i know well that's the that's what we call the sub game of the park is horniness. Like there's a very corny, like for this is, I got to say, this is the main, this is number one, just like Nice and White Satin is number one at some people's dark ride lists. This is number one in terms of theme parks that cater to dad. Because there's a lot in this park for dad. Not a real dad who you would meet in reality but like

madison avenue's concept of dad a uh of an al bundy a guy who's frustrated in a sexless marriage and super horny and he can't express it to his own wife ever since the the kids showed up i can't get my rocks off but these little like the little teases throughout the hard rock park to analyze them and get them through the day like for example uh there was a a british style phone booth uh with fake like uh business cards and stuff in it and there was a pressure mat on the ground and you would walk in and the phone would ring and you would hear like the conversation between rockstar and his manager i don't really give a shit about that what i do give a shit about is this fake business card for dean's dry cleaners that has a picture of a washing machine

and the uh business tagline next to it says give us your load why is give us and your load in two different fonts two different fonts i guess that's that's just graphic design of the day, I guess. That's rock and roll. It was 2008. 2008. It was different times. That's what we did. Again, a little crass for a strip club.

Give us your load. Did anyone see the statue that is called the Birth of Rock, in which there's sort of an abstract amorphous, but obviously female body uh with with with breasts and then a it is not what you're currently showing me that's another thing jason yeah yeah that's not that's a different the birth the birth of rock a statue at a time the birth of rock is there's like a female body shape and then and she's sort of like thrusting her legs towards you oh but her her you know her actual

genitals are not represented instead just a hand is coming out of the genital still different statue right also a disgusting statue where the woman's vagina should be instead a hand is emerging making a devil sign oh I did not see this

this might be a good thing that this park doesn't exist in this era. I don't think it would have lasted. Even if it had done well, I don't know how long it would have lasted. I gotta say my criticism is that that birth of rock is a real missed opportunity to tie it into the hit song

by Live, Lightning Crashes. I don't think I read you. Which features the lyric her placenta falls to the floor lightning crashes and new mother cries her placenta falls to the floor I didn't know that was the lyric

the opening lyrics of the song so I feel like there is a live tie in the birth of rock new mother picks up her son and suckles her son this park is about birth and rebirth. The statue I was showing Scott was of, I guess, a cow dressed as like a rockabilly guy or Elvis maybe.

But it's also a fountain and its udders are spraying on two women. You could easily get splashed by a cow's udders. And my statue was just a big open mouth, like the Rolling Stones lips, but like dirtier and grosser. And then it has piano keys as like its lower set of teeth. But it's like lower lip is also its groin and it's thrusting it out and it has two legs.

And it's just, it's really obscene. It's like a pure rock creature. Yeah. I've got stuff on both these statues. Okay, go ahead. So the cow statue, it works similar to the statue in the Lost Continent at Islands of Adventure where there's someone sitting in the theater behind it who can see through cameras. And that cow, and like, so he can talk to you and shoot water at you.

So like when he knows when people are there walking by um mike your weird teeth statue uh that you designed and are very proud of i forget the name of that section of the is it like the graveyard of rock or something whatever it was future plans called for that statue garden of upsetting statues to be the entrance of the park exclusively used by the Hard Rock Hotel guests. The Hard Rock Hotel never built, but that was going to be their exclusive entrance to the park was through this upsetting statue garden. That was their treat for staying on site. That was their treat for staying on site. They get immediately accosted by a lips creature.

Oh, sorry. Should we talk about, like, you mentioned the lands. Yeah. Well, you know what? There's even, we still aren't done with sculptures and everything. Because, well, let's hear it. We can start talking about whatever the London. Were you going to talk about Mount Rockmore?

Yeah. Mount Rockmore was in the opening. We aren't even close to done. We aren't close. That's right. We aren't even close to done. We aren't close. That's right. We aren't even close to done. Yeah. If you think the rock's going to stop, think again, brother.

We jam too long for one pod. That's why this is the first Podcast the Ride double album. Tune in next week when we spin disc two of our magnum opus, Podcast the Ride, F ride failed parts until next week keep calm and rock hard