Podcast: The Ride - Honey, I Shrunk The Audience with Ify Nwadiwe

Episode Date: January 18, 2019

Ify Nwadiwe (Nerdificent, Candy Dinner podcasts) tells about working as a cast member on the Astro Orbiter and H.I.S.T.A. And we try to figure out what Dr. Nigel Channing's deal is. Freak Like Me Needs Company episode now available on The Second Gate feed! 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

FOREVER! DOG! process. Ify Wadiwe joins us to talk Pista, or as the uninitiated might know it, Honey, I Shrunk the Audience on Podcast The Ride. Welcome to Podcast Araya, the only theme park podcast that will promise you at least 45 minutes of discussion on the Disney Parks exclusive Eric Idle character, Dr. Nigel Channing. I'm Mike Carlson. Joining me as always, Jason Sheridan. Hi. And Scott Gairdner. Yep, it's finally time to discuss. 45 minutes, I think, is what we're going to give to him. Uh-huh. I have

a lot of thoughts on Dr. Nigel Channing. And he factors into several attractions. How many characters can say that? They're in more than one. That is very exciting. We were talking a lot about Sea, Disney's Society of Explorers and Adventures, which they have like kind of connecting universe. But this did it before Sea. This ride we're talking about today, this character. The Imagination Institute World Expanded Universe with I-I-E-U is very fleshed out. Well, let's bring him to guesting because He is an expert on this in many different ways. No.

You know I'm proud. More than one. He seems surprised by what I just said. He's excited to learn that as well. He seems surprised by what I said, but that's okay. I believe it in my heart. You know him from the comedy group White Women and the podcast Nerdificent. Ladies and gentlemen, Ify Wadiwe.

Hey, how's it going? Good. How you doing? Good. So you're particularly qualified today to talk about Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Yes. And why is that? Would you tell our listeners?

So I'd say for the year of 2007, I worked for Disneyland. The dream. Yeah, Disneyland, the one in California, the only one that Walt has stepped foot in. So the only one that walt has stepped foot in so the one that surely has the magic right uh and i worked on honey i shrunk the audience and astro orbiter i was there for the launch of nemo and so i got the suit and uh i you know i was real loose with some of the rules because technically you're not supposed to wear your cast member outfits outside but like i i thought the coat was so cool for the Nemo ride, so I took it to an improv show and wore it on stage.

And everyone was like, you look like Paddington Bear. Which would be very fashionable now, because people love those movies. They love it now, but this is when he was just in the books. So yeah, let me see i never got to work space mountain everyone wanted to work for if you don't know space mountain is like the cool tomorrowland ride everyone wants to work space mountain you want that yeah because it's it's the cool one and everyone loves sitting in the control room so like when you wave at them and someone doesn't wave back that's the one trying to be too cool for school like everyone

when i when i was there it was like space mountain was the get but that made it harder to get it right honey i shrunk the audience astro orbiter i don't know how people i feel like no honestly like the jobs are kind of ranked how you imagine the cooler the ride the cooler the job is so because you want to be working the cool ride you'll probably have more people there astral orbiter surprised me because i assume like oh no one's gonna be there but astral orbiter was pretty consistent in its like lines like people like it's it's still one of the quickest lines out of all the rides in tomorrowland but like people would come for it and there were people who would come and go this this is my favorite ride.

And I was like, okay. I'm not on your side, even though I work this ride. Were they older folks? It was like middle-aged folks. So they had grown up with it. Yeah, yeah. That's what I imagine. People always would try and weasel in a way to try and get you to talk about the people mover

and more so trying to see if you can get me to talk about the people who died on the people mover. Oh, right. Jumping from car to car. Yeah, yeah. One, I don't know about that. Two, I was not working here that long. Three, even if I did, come on, y'all know it's Disneyland. I'm not going to sit here and talk about dead people so so growing up as a kid like was that disneyland a place where you were like it'd

be fun to work here it was just like hey why not i'm no it's so uh i grew up out here in southern california and i got there probably when i was like 1920 and like it just was known as like disney is the easiest place to get hired like because there's such a high turnover rate they're like you need a job go to disney and i think like i really need a job my best friend weldon was like oh go to disney they'll hire you on the spot because they do their interviews and hiring like right there as a matter of fact if they're like we'll call you back you didn't get the job so like so i was like oh tight this is i need a job it's very easy to get a job here let me go work disney this

thing we described as the dream we think is an unattainable if they're just handing them out yeah so yeah i went in uh and and like the key to disney getting a job at disney is exactly what you think just being like you know a happy you know perky person a improviser you know like if you have that energy about you where you know you can because that's all the conversation is they're asking you about yourself and they're really just gauging like how you can like communicate while conveying like a happy attitude because the people who i saw got we'll call you later were people who were like very like here's why i'm good very busy you know business-minded and you know uh people who like by disney standards you assume they think they're ne'er-do-wells like there was a guy with

like who was tatted up and i was like you know have you been to disneyland like look i get it but i i imagine he was like now i'm gonna be in a costume like that that's my goal oh sure yeah uh so yeah so i got the job there uh and it's funny because like it's the perfect job for that age like that that like 18 to 20 because you're you're very malleable at that time so like when they give you that like orientation pitch about creating the magic and how important it is you you buy in i was like all about it i was like i gotta create the magic and this that and whatever and i was like all in i got i was so hyped when i had the job that i went to what was that weird online game disney had for a while where you were in a digital park oh oh was it online or was it a cd-rom

no it was online it was like an online flash based uh it was a massively online game where where you would go to the different lands and every and it was like a digital park so they had adventure land tomorrow land and they had all these different levels based off of the rides. How could you be stumping us here? I was so hyped about it that I signed up for an account and was just walking around the park and just like, I need to learn this place. You were so in. Virtual Magic Kingdom?

Yes, Virtual Magic Kingdom. I was locked in and I was just like going around the virtual magic kingdom and seeing the different spots i'm like okay cool let me just get it and then i started and honestly hista is for short which is honey i shrunk the audience was the perfect spot for someone like me who was like a comedian because like i like they showed me the astral orbiter stuff and i was like all right cool this is basic stuff and then they were like all right so for hista you're gonna when you are the like lead scientist when you put on the coat you put on the lab coat yeah you're in the lab coat and you go up there and you give the spiel

and they basically were like you can kind of do what you want and improvise stuff you just need to make sure you hit these points and i was like oh i get to just go up there and be funny as long as i hit the point so that was like my favorite thing because i would just like and then also like it was cool too because it wasn't just for my comedy brain it was like the comedy brain and indoctrinated by disney brain so it was all about not just being funny but making it like a magical experience so i i still to this day think i was probably one of the best like head scientists because i just you know one you if you don't know by now i'm a great comedian but two two i was like really committed to like not, you know, breaking the bubble of what is Disney.

So you have to know the mythology that you, you're, you're, it's in your head that it is an open house at the Imagination Institute. Oh yeah. And you were coming at it from that narrative point. Exactly. Yeah. And what's an example of like, like what is something you do beyond just here, walk this way? Oh, well, when you're a head scientist, you don't let anyone in. You are at the podium, and you walk up to the podium, and you're just like,

we're about to have a presentation from, what's his name? What is the character's name in Honey, I Shrunk the Audience? Wayne Zielinski or Dr. Nigel Channing? Yeah. Dr. Nigel Channing is presenting an award to Dr. Wayne Zielinski. The winner of the year award. Yeah, so it was like, this is going to be great, and he's going to showcase this new invention he has.

It's really exciting. We haven't seen it yet. It's the first of its kind, and we've got to make sure we have the safety goggles because we don't know what may happen, but this is history in the making, y'all. Get excited. And, like, making people cheer.

And I had a blast. I had a lot of people come up to me and was like, man, I've done, like, this ride. He was like, I've seen this before, but, like, you have the best feel. I do find, like, at show kind of of things like that when the cast member is really good when the presenter is really good and the thing is over i inevitably lean over to whoever i'm with and go like that guy was really good right like there's there's a guy there's just a profile on him uh a guy who's worked at the enchanted tiki room for years and he like gives it 110 waking up those birds and I have seen him before and it's

like yeah it does it does add to the experience it does make it feel very theatrical it's it's also it's only it's also the only thing that can change slightly from ride to ride like or from experience to experience because like you know like a like us we've gone a few times to these things so like that's the that can be like the difference in just, like, a normal ride versus, like, oh, wow, that was really great. And now I remember this particular ride over the other 50 you went on because, you know, the performer was doing a good job. These movies run the risk of becoming very repetitive because it is literally the same thing over and over. So you have the slide. It's almost like being a,

like an audience warmup guy at a show taping or like the host of the standup show. The guy like keeping the energy up to set it up for the main show. That's, that's something else. So you did it for, for a year, for a summer. Yeah.

For about a year. Cause I was, I was there for a while. And eventually, my dad got me my day job, which was at the LA County Register Recorder, which was right around the perfect time. Because like I said, there is that period of like from like 19 to 20 where it's good and then like once the kind of like dust starts to settle the rose colored glasses come off you you you realize some of the stuff that just gets annoying like just that the kind of bottom level infrastructure is basically run by kids like your supervisors are not that much older than you so it gets clicky it gets you know every it's almost like you know college or high school part two and and like the supervisors like when you're

um i forget the the actual name again uh but it's like they're the dudes in like these black kind of pea coats and they they don't have anything that discern them working for a specific ride because they are even over your the the ride lead so you have your cast members you have kind of the shift lead and then you have the like lead over the ride and then there's like the leads who are over the whole land who kind of like mostly work in an office that you'd never see that's in the back lot area and those guys like they have that black peacoat. So even if you don't know who they are, you know that there's big stuff. And they know it too,

because if you're a 20 year old in this peacoat and you know you have this power, they're flexing, you know? So there was a immediate shift when I got my day job because I still like Disney and I liked having a free pass. So I tried to like I was working for the L.A. County from like nine to five and then get into Disneyland at six to work. I'm like literally driving down the five because I was in Norwalk.

So it was pretty close to Anaheim changing into my cast member outfit and driving there. And I was in this obviously caused me to be late a little bit more my out like that hour especially during the week like only having like three hours really isn't worth the shift but like i was able to make it work for a while but my whole attitude changed like all all that bullshit was just that didn't matter to me because i knew that i got paid way more than everyone now because i have this like salaried government job so like and and it's funny because that's where the power came comes from in any job is like the person who gets paid more you're like oh you're you're talking good so i just i don't want to say i became the worst but i definitely shift like shook the ecosystem because like people being like

oh man watch out because you know they're here and it's like i don't care like like what yeah it just like and i've always hated that kind of like high school bs but i respected it because like i at before i had another job needed that job and like also did enjoy and love working at disneyland but that was the one thing i hated was that kind of like hierarchy that was there and so the moment i was able to step out and be like oh i don't need this and i know that i'm making more than all of y'all nah forget, forget y'all. You're not good. And honestly, it just like, it made it cool, but it just became, I was dead at the end of the week just working two jobs back to back.

Yeah, absolutely. Really not making any money because I wasn't working enough at Disneyland to make it worth my while. I was just really there for this free pass and it was like, i could just buy an annual pass especially that year like i i worked at universal studios and i kept i stayed on the schedule and tried to not get shifts so that i could park up there for free it was like entirely

about keeping the parking yeah for a place well i mean now we've we've ended up going to city walk a ton yeah in the recent past. I'd like to have it now. Oh, it's popping now. It's crazy to see the actual shift because, remember, they were giving out annual passes. You brought a Coke can. You were king of Universal. And now they refuse because they have Harry Potter and Voodoo Donuts.

I'm like, oh, y'all are just out of this. It was so funny. They swung too far too fast yeah they're like you're not gonna be able we're gonna shut down lancashire and ventura there's gonna be so many people and then there was a slight uptick for harry potter and then everyone went back to their lives because we all just like live around like there's homes right next to it i know it's it's they they have a decent uh annual pass right now with triple a where it's like 119 oh yeah and then like i was like that's pretty close to like just a day ticket right that might be the move for me but i haven't i have yet what has been what's the room's consensus on the simpsons ride? We haven't talked about it.

We haven't done an episode on it. Yeah. Oh, do we just stay to specific rides? No, no, we can talk about it. No, no, no. This is a comedy podcast. We don't stay specifically to talk. Yeah, yeah.

My feeling is I really liked it the first time I went on it. But I think a joke-packed ride is tough to stay good and fresh many, many times over, and they were letting the projection quality lapse. It was starting to get dim. I think it came out of the

gate really strong, and now about 10 years in, I don't need to go on it when I'm up there. The screens are different. It's brighter now, right right i think they changed it supposedly they changed something the problem is i feel like it's the all the other rides that have been built since because everything's a screen ride everyone complains about that obviously we've complained about it but it's like everything's a screen right now so like that one seems extra okay yeah i don't we don't need to go on it i'd rather go on Transformers.

Oh, my God. Better screen ride for sure. Oh, wait. I love Transformers. I was, look, that was a real journey for me because, you know, I've never been a fan of Transformers. I was real into Armada right when the movie series came out, and I hated the design of the robots. I haven't seen a Transformers movie to date except Bumblebee, which is amazing. And I just always had this disdain for Transformers.

And my sister drug me on the Transformers ride and it changed my life. I was rooting for Optimus. I was rooting for Bumblebee. I was in it. And I go on that ride every single time. To date, I have not been on the Simpsons ride because I'm still salty of them getting rid of Back to the Future. Because there was no reason to change it. It's timeless.

I got to say, I think it's literally not timeless in that ride you go to the year 2015. And we are now past 2015. I mean, you could say that it's traveling to the past 2015 and we are now past 2015 so it would be i mean you could say that it's traveling to the past yeah yeah but into this of this 2015 back to the future because it's the future to them and we're going back to it oh so it almost makes more sense when you put it that way you know they hacked the system with that name we uh we actually we talked about this and we i think we were thinking like Let's just do a new one Because my feeling was

I love the old Back to the Future But we want to see Some of the characters We want some robots with the characters Let's do a full new e-ticket In this new crazy Universal park I don't think it's going to happen I want Strickland and I want Needles

We want these character needles From Back to the future 2 to be a robot that's what we want people are pounding down the door of universal demanding needles i'll say this i think the the springfield next to the simpsons ride oh it's amazing is great oh it's my favorite part. It's the only reason I'm not like so militant about it is because those donuts slap. They slap so hard. We are like, look, I'm on my keto thing right now. I was in the bathroom debating going to Fuddruckers or Steak and Shake. But since I don't have it with a bun, Steak and Shake feels like I should just get a steak versus going to Fuddruckers where you get an actual burger bun. That's a weird side note. No, I get it. I don't know. These are issues.

I'm ready because we're going on a team outing for BuzzFeed to Universal, and I'm 100% ready to break keto to eat that big donut because that's my favorite thing to chomp into when I go there. So is that your favorite theme park snack overall? you put it number one is there anything else dole whip do you like dole whip oh i'm a big dole whip head but dole whip is that thing where you know where it's like it's consistent like like it's not something i'll lose my mind over like if i had to run into disney and i could only choose one snack I wouldn't think to get a Dole Whip but I I do think it is the best but like I went to uh Disney during the Halloween and I got probably six different churros because they had the different flavor yeah so I

went six yeah yeah uh because I had the candy apple i had the orange i had the uh the pumpkin spice i had the regular churro and then i had um that red hot's one nope oh that one's pretty good there's one more that i think i'm missing so i think i had this many where are all these coming from where are they at disneyland uh the they're all around now did I say Sour Apple? Yes you did Sour Apple is in Tomorrowland Pumpkin Spice was in right next to Haunted Mansion And I got the regular churro there The orange one was in Adventureland And there was one I think in Fantasyland

Maybe that's where the red hot one was How are these flavors conveyed? Is it through the dusting? Or are things attached? So the sour apple one, which I think was probably the best out of all the newer flavors. Because with that one, they dusted on like a sour apple dust, like sugar on it. But you dipped it in a caramel. So it was like a caramel apple.

And it actually did like taste like that uh then with the pumpkin spice it was like uh cream cheese frosting that you would dip into oh yeah the only thing though is you have to pay extra for the caramel the cream cheese came with the pumpkin spice which you know that's weird yeah that's weird that that's not yeah yeah that made me mad but I still paid for it. The orange one was cool, but it was just kind of like, just orange. Yeah. So, I was going to say, I ate a s'more one one time that was good.

Oh, nice. That is a dipping like marshmallow sauce. Yeah. So, churro over Dole Whip, but does Simpsons Pumpkin, or Simpsons Donut, is that top? I'm getting my flavors mixed up here. Ooh, that's good i think it may be my top because it's something that because i feel like all those other amazing ones like a dole whip is when i'm walking by the tiki rooms like oh yeah these are amazing let's go or like a churro is like oh yeah these are amazing but like i am actively thinking

about those big donuts because i feel like for the price it has the value it has the size and has because you know this big enough to where like if i split in half with someone i wouldn't feel ripped off because no i number one i hate sharing food uh you know us in here with significant others they like to share i don't i need my own get your own we'll both have our own and when you don't finish yours because it's too big for you i'll have that too lindsey is like that but i'm not really so you're the other way around i was like hey let's go split this she goes no all right she's right she's actually saying with aaron yeah really yes that's funny i don't like to split entrees or i like to share entrees but i don't like to get just oh let's just get one and we'll split and i share but that's actually

odder to me you share entrees but not like dessert uh no i'll share dessert no you share dessert with me uh we've both shared desserts we've both you and i and you and jason and i and scott and i have both shared the gray stuff in different times yes correct um but then jason has also eaten after me jason i pretty sure ate soup after me once like soup the soup was everything i was on board till the soup i don't think i would finish someone's soup i'll finish most of it because i could be wrong i think he had a bit it was like a biscuit the jolly holiday or something and i kind of like had a little bit of it and i was like i had a couple spoons of it and you were like yeah i'll take that that's my memory of a couple spoons and you had a couple spoons, and you were like, I'm not into this. Like, yeah, whatever.

Yeah, it depends. Like, if it is a couple of spoons, then yeah, I'll do it. But if it's, like, you know, past halfway point, I'm like, nah, that's not too much saliva. I imagine the remaining two spoonfuls of, like, tomato soup or something, that was what I went to. And I agree. Oh, oh. With more information, I understand it. Yeah, it wasn't that.

Yeah, that would have been very weird. If I was like, hey, I got like a little thimble full of tomato bisque, you want it? Yeah, I'll take it. I mean, that I would, because that would be so novel to enjoy a thimble full of food. Where'd the thimble come from? Did Mike have it in his pocket?

Did Disney provide it? Was it a cup that got shrunk down by Dr. Wayne Zielinski to a thimble size? Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Hey, everyone. It's Michael. I'm breaking in to tell you about my favorite meal delivery service. It's called HelloFresh.

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and enter ThemePark80. You are going to be very glad you did. Remember, HelloFresh.com slash theme park 80 and enter theme park 80 you are going to be very glad you did remember hellofresh.com slash theme park 80 and enter theme park 80 so i'm gonna just say this one anecdote then we're gonna jump right back into hista because there's something i love bragging about that only disney people care about place um jolly holiday had a good halloween uh dessert too they had like a black rose which was this chocolate mousse that was just black and it was good but it was one of those things that felt like too decadent for where i was like Too decadent for theme park food. This feels like I should have it at a restaurant restaurant. But I feel like that's kind of what Jolly Holiday...

Not Jolly Holiday. It's the one that's in Fantasyland. The Red Rose. Red Rose Tavern. Red Rose feels like they're trying to swing for that fancier vibe, but I'm like this is still too fancy for here. But it was good.

Yeah. Now, the thing I want to brag about, and I always bring up, I could not shut up about this when this happened. I knew Captain EO was coming back. original tour and orientation of Hista. They show us like, oh, this is the room where the film is, where we shoot it. And they kind of showed us how the camera works. They were like, you can't go in here. And also, we also still have the Captain EO film. And this was back in 2007. And this was back in like 2007.

And I was like, oh, they're just gonna play it when he dies. Like when he dies, they're gonna bring it back. Like, why would you keep it? And he was like, we don't know. And sure enough, like Captain EO came back and I was like, I knew it. Like I knew it the moment you were like, oh, and we still have the Captain EO films.

I was like, great. And I never got the Captain EO films. I was like, great. And I never got to see Captain EO when I was younger. So I was so glad I was able to go back and watch it and actually see it. It's also weird that you were thinking about his death, which was sort of a surprise when it happened. But the year before. I mean, I didn't expect it to come that fast. Like I was like, in 20 years. It was kind of like when he happens to die they're gonna bring it back but but you're saying when so when it when

they did put it back in it was the original prince presumably if that was sitting around damn so that it wasn't even like some it wasn't some remaster yeah no because it was very like analog poppy like grainy grimy so yeah hmm you could tell you could tell and that's like in some just giant like yeah did you see it physically or did they just like in that room it was like a mystery room almost because there's the film room and i didn't get to actually see the camera there was kind of like you know how in the movie theater they'll have that kind of window and they're like, oh, here. But the room itself was locked, probably so some dumbass doesn't go in there and be so funny.

Shine a flashlight over the whole thing. Yeah, that was completely off limits to us. Do you have any idea how big, talking honey like, how big that film was? Is that a regular thin little film strip or is it some bigger, like, IMAX type? It was kind of, if I remember correctly, which I'm probably not, I remember it being, like, it was, like, a different type of film

because it was displaying, like, doubled images. Oh, okay. Right. Oh, so this is not your ordinary. Probably, yeah. Which makes it even more insane. I talked about this on it it's probably won't be out yet or maybe there's a mailbag episode i was talking about my cockamamie plan to propose to my wife with a custom video i would make and play in this theater this is a good way to practice you're a good person to talk to

about this actually i was like what if i could make a little move that you think captain eo is going to start but then it's this little movie i make that culminates in will you marry me yeah yeah and now i'm going well how could i possibly have made something and run it through a film projector yeah that displays double images i would have had to go to an optical lab i would have had to like go to like talk to the people who shot the back to the future movie and like okay so can we print that like i'm now i'm spending sixty five thousand dollars but a conference call with marketing operations and representatives of the kodak company to figure out how to do this is there any like when i present that plan to you you're like that you if if this had been in 2007 you're a person who would have like helped me with it.

Is that completely insane? The idea that I could have contacted someone? Yeah, I feel like you'd spend more money than the engagement ring and probably the wedding doing that. It's like, look, I just say, you know. Why did I think this was possible? Look, I'll let you wear the lab coat and at the end say, will you marry me? Oh, that I could have done. Okay, okay.

Yeah, just be like, just like, whoo, glad the day is saved. Thank you so much. And to my beautiful girlfriend in the audience. Yeah. One of my colleagues has an addendum to what you just witnessed.

If you'd like to join me in the Institute of Eternal Matrimony. So you would have done, if I had, now if I'd just gone straight up to you you're you're an employee with some power but i could have like hey i have a thing i want you you would you have had to run that up the flagpole you i probably would have had to run it up the flagpole and i probably would have like when i first started probably would have asked my lead

who probably would have been like oh no but if you would have caught me late in my disney career i would have told you come back towards the end of my shift and then we'll make it happen i got that norwalk money i don't give a shit yeah well also too like you you know like which leagues will let you do some like cool stuff as long as we keep it chill and which leads are trying to be by the book so i'd be like all right this the cool leads here and it's like i'm gonna do some because like the only i think hiccup to it would be like like once we're letting people out we're letting people in like it's almost like simultaneous so you would literally slow down that process uh but it would probably just be something as simple as being like all right

there's an extra presentation if we just step outside to the right i see i see okay okay you can get her attention on the microphone and then all right all right so it has to be done with precision and you would be in the lab coat i assume yeah yes yeah yeah uh uh which this oh wait it's a very different dream now the idea that i yeah i'm sure aaron would have loved if an institute professor it started out as like a cool movie playing in the captain neo theater and now it's like you're outside at the exit wearing a white coat in a halloween adventure quality white coat and like people are like just trying to get by. And you're like, oh, excuse me. They're reaching over you to dump their glasses. Although now, 2018, if you reached out to like social,

because they have such a huge social media apparatus at Disney now. If you reached out to them and were like, hey, let's talk. You can do whatever you want with this video. Like you can make this viral. You can make this into a commercial, whatever you want with this video like you can make this viral you can make this into a convert whatever you want you would have to you would have it would have to be viral marketing for disney yeah which is i have no desire for my proposal to be viral marketing um now we know the terms i you were talking about food also i want to ask about what's what was what was the food

situation as an employee there is it cafeteria are you slipping in getting food in the park you can do either okay so you there there is a cafeteria in the back which is like it's like cafeteria food like they're not like whipping up what they're whipping up in the park so there are but like it is gonna be cheaper whereas if you wanted like park food like it was like gosh i'm trying to remember if i'm misremembering this but if i remember correctly you were able to because the one spot is like if you wanted a burger you can go to that tomorrowland burger spot by nemo and but it was like the employee discount with a park food was still more expensive than cafeteria food oh sure yeah yeah i mean 60 cents off kind of in

retrospect it's like why didn't they just feed their employees for free like i know there's a shit ton of employees but like it's like why why were we buying our food and i think it's because now i'm in an age where i work for tech companies that do feed you for free and it's like it's like yeah why are we paying you to eat on our lunch break you know it's well it's a perk it's a perk and it's like you know uh to get people in the door it's an added benefit yeah but with a company that makes that much money sure why not yeah yeah being that like a facebook or whatever has a cafeteria or like dreamworks yeah like they have just a cafeteria if you're on that lot right um disney i don't think i think disney you're paying for yeah yeah disney i um i was like that abc lot i went in there and they had like a cafeteria you pay the comment i guess

some some jobs you do pay so it's not that obscene but it's like they're subsidized all the studio commissaries are like a little subsidized, like they're not terribly expensive. Yeah. Yeah. Tech campuses that there's an expectation with the job that people are being fed. And I think in San Francisco restaurants were even having a hard time getting head chefs or sous chefs because Google or Facebook or all these campuses were just snapping them up. Oh, yeah. And I think that's why I kind of see the correlation. The idea behind tech companies feeding you is if you can just walk to a cafeteria and grab food for free and walk back to your desk, you're working there. And I feel like it is literally impossible to leave Disneyland

to grab something to eat and come back in time to be at your shift. So you have to be there which is why it's like then just feed us free food like don't you know we have no choice but to buy this food because there's nowhere else oh i guess you can bring your own lunch but who does that yeah it's like being on set it's like that's why they feed you on shoots and stuff because they don't want like the cast and crew going to a dozen different restaurants and if there's act traffic or an accident or like oh no yeah but but it was cool the food was great i i always loved doing it but it was this thing of like since you are

buying cafeteria food on a essentially like a little bit higher than minimum wage budget you can very easily just be burning through the money you're making right buying food there yeah that's a little gross and was how close did you live to disney like how long did it take you to actually get into work this i lived in long beach at the time okay but long beach is very close to anaheim and orange county so i was i would just take the 405 street down and be able to hit it pretty quickly okay so it was cool and you get to you know k lot the cattell lot and just take the shuttle over but that was a thing where it's like you have to be there so much earlier because there's so much transportation because you have to get there and even though it wasn't that far

you still have anaheim disney traffic yeah and when you get to kayla you have to wait for the shuttle take the shuttle in and then go backstage and then make it to your land so you had to make sure you you had to like be in the parking lot probably like 15 20 minutes early just to be safe you know and you're not getting paid for that time uh no not at all and that's all that adds up the clutch move is like to just go to the park on your work days and just like, you know, check in, go in, hang out at the park, and then walk backstage when you're ready to go. But you can't just walk backstage. You have to walk out and go in through the employee entrance because it's all about keeping the magic up. Right. Anything weird and magical in the corridors? Did you ever see some other,

some secret prop or Captain Hook having a seizure or something, medical emergency? No, I think the weirdest thing was like, on my first week working there, the first thing I see backstage is Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette with the head off. And I was like, all right, well, the magic has changed for me forever.

Now, you always hear that was a thing that scarred michael jackson was he got to go backstage at disneyland really came around the corner and a character had the head off and was drinking a cigarette i think he was old though when that scarred him yes no he had a number of hits and it was 80 late 80s it is like just so jarring because you when you think about it all your life up until you're that point you've never seen the character with your head off so you've never had to even bounce around that suspension of disbelief like you knew there was a person there but you never had to see it so seeing it it's like oh man and also like realizing that a lot of these people are hella short because these suits are so small go on yeah yeah potential employment opportunity yeah yeah i i would be unnerved though if i went

out to get a picture with a character and go like wow this goofy really smells like uh smokes today i know right no they real they're really good about like cleaning yeah they febreze the outfit before they go back out right but yeah that was like those were the big jobs are like your character jobs and those like speaking of the clickiness backstage is like you know if you're in the cafeteria and you see like cinderella or snow right or any of the princesses like you don't get to just go talk to them like you know like i, I'm sure you can, but no one does that. There's just like this unspoken rule of like, oh, that's a princess. And usually like the princess are chilling.

And like they're the- With each other or just by themselves? Yeah, so what is the hierarchy? Could you even identify the groups? Like, is it a mean girls scenario where you could be like, there's the princesses over here. There's Tomorrowland people over here. Yeah, kind of because like

the the hierarchy was uh fairly um fairly simple it was split up to your factions which were uh which were like uh like your lands so like you know i you everyone in tomorrowland kind of kicks it you're the coolest ride are the cool kids of said land so the space mountain kids you know they're they're the cool guys it's the i was just the funny guy so like i kind of commingled with everyone but also you um you would meet people in other lands when you would do the parades because like people from each land would all come together and but then like then you had like the parade leads those guys were cool which were essentially kind of like uh just pretty much leads who just also got to do parades um and then like i said the like the big like land leads who like wore the jackets like those were the cool guys and then outside of that were just the older

people who like this was a job and they were above that bullshit and you just really didn't notice because you had like lifers uh which was like you semi derogatorily which are people who like they're like yeah i like working disney and this is going to be my career and it's like oh you're a lifer um and then you had like retirees that was another big thing which were old people who retired and they didn't give a fuck about any of the like cliques or anything they were just their own breed and but they were kind of cool because you know just old people's stories sure i have heard that a lot of retirees like will do it for less for the money but more to a like get out and about have something to do and then the perks for grandkids like they get the discount uh for yep they can buy gifts, discounted gifts,

and then you get all those extra, you know, guest passes and stuff. You're like the coolest grandparent or uncle if you can get your niece or grandkid

into Disneyland for free, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. The wheels are turning with all of us now. We'll all be working it. I'll see you guys

at the, I'll see you guys when Hista comes back, Hista 3.0. Yeah. I'll see you before my shiftista comes back, Hista 3.0. I'll see you before my shift. Well, I think at a certain point, the way the annual passes are going, it's going to make more sense for us all to get jobs part-time at Disney to get tickets versus paying whatever an annual pass will cost in five years. I know.

Goodness gracious. It's going to be wild. Before we get deep into the ride my last question uh do you have like one specific day where something happened or a story like is there a one specific story you remember from working there where you're like oh yeah that was the weirdest day um well the it's the craziest story but the story i have um was like there was this lead who was a parade lead and this was a very important crux to that that person's uh uh plan because he ended up like dating multiple girls at the park but since they were separated by lands they never knew about each other until they kind of figured out and then they kind of connected the dots and found out that this dude was cheating with them. If you imagine you're a parade lead, you can flirt with anyone in any land.

And then they go back to their land and you go back to the land that you are. And he was in Tomorrowland. It's like a rock star having like a girl in every city. Yeah, yeah. And that's basically what it was. But then it blew up in his face like right as he was leaving. It was a whole thing. Well, he was living in the future.

He was from tomorrow. And the concept of couples have evolved and societies change. And he was a polygot, you know, as a poly thing. We've moved past only having one partner. We're progressive now. Was it just in Disneyland proper? Or did he have like some girls over in Hollywood land over a California adventure? You know, at this point, who knows?

Because the moment it like popped past like two, it was like, oh, you were putting in work. Wow. But like when you, I would never think of it. But when you hear it, you're like you're like damn yeah that would work because there's no the way the lands are separated like all the lands for the most part go to lunch in different places because it'd be so much work to come all the way over to tomorrowland so there is like no way that this person would be talking to this person in like the way the friend groups are dispersed there's no way that they're they like they could probably openly talk about like oh i'm dating so and so and like it wouldn't get

back because they're like right lands apart he could have like he could have had a girl in paradise pier but she's so far away maybe she didn't even find out about the other girls yeah oh yeah paradise pier might still be dating him right still hasn't found out yeah he doesn't even find out about the other girls. Oh, yeah. Paradise Pier might still be dating him. Right. Still hasn't found out. She doesn't even know it's changed to Pixar Pier. Wow, that's wild. You do Paradise Pier and Toontown. That's as far apart as the girls could possibly... You bookend it.

Right. And then maybe a Critter Country. You just spread them through. Sure. Wow. That's wild. Controversy. I didn't even think about that.

But of course that happens. You get a job there. Yeah. get to your parade yeah let's let's do it let's dive into the ride itself hista is it true that uh some website i saw said that with this abbreviation hista for any i shrunk the audience that the employees would call each other his stations i i don't i don't uh remember that at all his station i read it and i thought that doesn't sound uh right that doesn't that seems too lame for anyone to actually that might have been before or after me but when i was there no one referred to each other as his station his station community had disbanded yeah yeah yeah because histista is short. Like, I could see people calling each other that or saying, oh, I work at Hista.

But, like, adding station makes it long again. And at that point, you may as well say the full name. Oh, man. Yeah, I would have totally said, don't ever call me a Histation. Do me a favor. No. Were you familiar with Honey, I Shrunk the audience before you started work actually yeah so i even though i never experienced captain eo before it came back i did experience hista so i was actually kind of hyped because i was like oh i kind of like that

i was not a fan of being part of astral orbiter because to me that was always the lamest ride in tomorrowland and there's been people since who have taken offense to that where they're like no it's not and it is fun if you have someone because it actually does when you get into it and it's moving and the fact that you can control it up and down while you go around is actually a nice little hit but i think when you're going up against like nemo submarine space mountain and i think it makes it harder buzz light year you have a like video game star star tours it's a stacked land yeah sure yeah well astro orbiter moved from when it was up on top of the platform yeah uh when it was just rocket jets you at least have okay well dumbo's down on the ground but rocket jets is way up here it's a little

more uh yeah death defying but back on the ground but rocket jets is way up here it's a little more death defying but back on the ground I've never really understood the appeal of Astro Orbiter how do you shrink the audience though I don't think it dawned on me until like starting to read about the ride that it is it is book ended by Captain Neo like it replaced

Captain Neo in all of the parks around the world Disneyland Disney World Tokyo uh Tokyo Disney Disneyland Paris so yeah a lot of the big uh uh parks and then they all came back Captain EO came back after Michael died and what a day I'm sure I've talked about it I got a hotel room I made such when that logo seeing that sign go back up outside that theater michael died you know no no no i was not celebrating michael's death no uh but it did occur to me it was in the back of my head on a sad day like oh but you know what i bet and sure enough

a couple months later yeah yeah um which you know maybe i this is okay this isn't just because it replaced Captain EO or was counter to Captain EO in any way I swear that's not why but I will go ahead and say I am not a big fan of Honey I Shrunk the Audience I do I'm like I found this thing kind of unpleasant and I sort of didn't do it past the first couple opportunities to do it. I will say as a child, I did it at Epcot. It scared the absolute shit out of me. And I don't I think I just did it once and never did it again because I was terrified of it, much like when I was terrified of Captain EO as a child, too, when those monsters poked their staffs out at the screen.

And I had to be removed from the theater by my mother because i was having a meltdown so i will go on record as saying my memory of it is oh shit there's mice at my feet this is real oh my god i hate this yeah so that's my memory of it and i never i like i started going to Disneyland when I moved out here right around the time of Captain Neil coming back so this might have been still there for one or two visits but I think I was like no thank you I will not be scared again I I liked it because I like these movies okay I'll say this I did not like the snake and the feet. The mice I could tolerate, but when they're like, oh, the snake is loose. I just did not like snakes.

Well, I didn't like the snake either. I really did not like that. And even after I'd done it a few times, I'm like, why do I always forget that snake is coming? Because I did not like it. But as a kid, I loved Rick Moranis because I was like. Sure, I liked Rick Moranis. Honey, I shrunk the the kid and i remember seeing i feel like we saw an advanced screening of honey i blew up the kid for some every now and then my

dad's company would get like uh early movie preview tickets and then um and then as him is lewis tolly right that's a character in ghostbusters that's the name i just loved him sure i i loved him but I and I'll say this I never saw the first Honey I Shrunk the Kids because the giant bee scared the shit out of me and I didn't you knew it was in there I knew it was in there in the

commercials and we did not see it I was so scared I did see Honey I Blew Up the Kid because big things Scott's scared of big things that didn't bother me as much kids getting small on insects ooh I hated it

we didn't see it so I think I was even going into this still with the memory of the first movie with like Giants I didn't even like the Playland very much

because that freaked me out I liked the Playland I did like the Playland loved the Playland I liked that's in Florida I never had the first I don't think we had the first movie on

tape but i feel like all my friends had it so i always end up watching it at friends houses and that first honey i shrunk the kids is a little unnerving the second movie the only unnerving thing is corporate malfeasance like he's trying to stay steal his inventions right well and it's similar to it's scary in a similar way to Beethoven, where there's people trying to... What's the word? It's like darts to tranquilize a dog or a baby. I guess I was freaked out as a kid by scary needles and darts hurting cute things. I'm forgetting the actor's name, but he's the bad guy in Beethoven.

And he always played a good guy on TV, but he was a bad guy in that movie. And he gets a... Dean Jones. Oh, yeah, Dean Jones. Disney mainstay Dean Jones. He's a bad guy, and he gets a chest full of syringes at the end of Beethoven. And it's terrifying. No, that's comeuppance.

Even as a child, I knew, like, that's justice. You deserve 16 syringes straight in your heart dead he had a heart attack yeah like beethoven is pretty like oh yeah and also groden falls through a skylight before that happens ah oh and beethoven too so like there's a very dark ending because beethoven is such so light and like the david de coveney part where they're like, Oh, Beethoven, no. He tangles his leash around the chair and they go flying down the street. Ha ha. At the end, Charles Grodin eats shit through a skylight like Raphael in the Ninja Turtle movie.

And then Dean Jones takes a chest full of syringes. There's different shades of gray. Different shades of justice. The good news, though, I dean jones got high as shit right before he did that was like euphoria for five seconds he was like rush limbaugh and his oxycontin times a hundred so he got i bet he went out and it was like like it was like all the morphine in the world here's a bit of insight into my scared childhood brain that i just remembered we saw the lassie

movie in theaters which had come out around that zone maybe it was like a 90s lassie movie yeah 92 93 and i remember in the movie going oh here comes because my brain knew here comes the like climax the movie i didn't know it in that term but i knew this is when like the scarier intense stuff happens it didn't happen in lassie there was like no almost no resolution and it was just like sort of ended and i was so relieved i remember feeling like oh the movie's gonna get like darker like scary now it didn't the movie was over and i was so happy that nothing dramatic happened at the end of lassie oh that's good i i've heard there's that um what a A Dog's Journey Home?

It's by the same guy. That new movie? The new movie, but it's based on a book written by the same guy who wrote A Dog's Purpose. Yes. And the new movie,

I was reading an article about it and they're like, in theory, this is a feel-good family movie, but a major plot point involves a corpse. So I'm like, whoa, what is, yeah, what exactly is this movie?

Oh, no. They also, in the trailer, give it away that the dog gets home. Yeah, yeah. That I noticed. I was like, what? Why? It's not a dog's attempt to journey home. No, he gets home.

It's a dog's journey home. He makes it. Unless there's an addendum to that where the dog gets a bunch of needles in the chest or something. How weird would it be that this was some fever dream and the dog gets a bunch of needles in the chest how weird would it be that this was like some fever dream and the dog wakes up and was like you didn't make it home yeah he's in like a kennel somewhere in the south or something you are a corpse do you remember i always ask any group of people around my age about this commercial because it happened once in the

middle of the night when i was watching mtv i never saw it again i always google it every now and then i could never find it but there was a like it must have been peter or something but it was a commercial about like putting your dog in the cages the doggy cages and then like it was like it's this like woman and she's like looking at her dog and she's like you're my best friend she was like i hope that uh if if uh if the like something like i hope like if the roles were reversed you'd treat me the same or something like that and then it just cuts to her in a cage freaking out and it's fucked with me for so long because it's like she's like help help like screaming for her life and no one's ever seen

that commercial but me what is it a commercial for yeah just not putting your dog in a cage oh like anti-caging that could also be like a what was it liquid television was that that was the shorts the weird shorts on mtv that could have just been a liquid television that could be true that could be true i'm gonna look it up but stuff there is like as much as everything's documented on the internet a ton of stuff isn't so like they're that rare case that there is one of those like somebody was just telling me that i think it was little debbie made something called like a tiger cake or something and it was like it looked like a tiger and i was like i've never heard of that or whatever and he's like it exists so i'm googling that and nothing shows up and then you i did some digging and on

a facebook page official little debbie page it was like yes we did have like people were asking questions they're like yes we did have this product in the 90s but there's not a picture of it and i was shocked that there wouldn't be one picture of a product from the 90s so like there's plenty of stuff i feel like out there like well little debbie has a very large product line a lot of variations seasonal variations you know it's complicated things get lost in the shuffle you feel very i know you you are sort of lobbying for a pr job at little debbie well one of your dreams i would just like because i mean you can get little debbie's in southern californ but back East, I feel like there's a lot more variety of Little Debbie's available. So I would like.

Oh, you mean Little Debbie had more products in the East? Yeah. And a lot more like convenience store, like single serving versions of those products. I feel like you just get the hits out here. You also had like Drake's, like Drake's Cakes, which I don't have out here. Yeah. Drake's Coffee Cakes and that sort of thing. All right.

Well, let's talk about honey. I shrunk the audience, I guess. All right. We'll find a separate episode. This is too much. Yeah.

That's, I don't know. I'm comfortable with it. I just want to make sure we hit all the points. Cause we've all, okay. So we've established, if he,

did you like the ride or did you see me in the show? Oh yeah. I loved it. I, when I was a kid, I loved the show. I thought it was fun yeah as you know i was i was big in 4d i liked shrek 4d i like to get wet i'm like oh yeah i'm

in it so yeah no i never got scared and i was a scaredy cat but i think i was just so into the experience that did you like the movies did you see the movies yeah i saw honey i blew up the kid honey i shrunk the kids uh you, I did also think the bee was weird. Actually, the thing that was weirder to me than the bee was the ant. I did not like seeing that ant up close. Does he die too? Does he die heroically? Yeah, the ant gets murked and it's supposed to be a sad moment.

I was like, good riddance. Stay dead. Don't ever come back into my life again. Oh, my gosh. It was so gross and he flew oh yeah so that so yeah so we have two likers and two haters sort of of the riotous kids at least yeah i liked them i liked the movies i was a big fan of blew up the kid especially i liked the blew up the kid fine i just never saw the first one when he touches that guitar and it shocks him. Oh, yeah.

And he starts crying. Like, that made me so sad. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. That is very upsetting. Well, so this, I always like to talk personnel. Here comes Scott's dry facts. The personnel is great on this.

It's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This movie was, Honey, I Shrink the Audience, was directed by the same director as Honey, I Blew Up the Kid. So he stayed in the family. He knows the franchise. He knows Wayne Zielinski's voice. Did he also do Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, the direct video?

No, but I'll get to that. Let me take you through the Honey, I Shrunk-iverse in terms of directorial staff. Randall Kleisner, not Kleisner, Kleiser, crazy filmography. Let me list his movies. I wrote this down, too. This is so odd. Really odd ones.

So before Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, he did Grease. This is the director of Grease. Oh, wow. It's kind of crazy. You don't think more about who directed Grease, but it's this guy, Randall Kleiser. Blue Lagoon was him.

Flight of the Navigator, Big Top Pee Wee, and then two of the most notoriously odd titled TV movies of the 70s, Dawn, Portrait of a Teenage Runaway with Eve Plum from the Brady Bunch, and Boy in the Plastic Bubble with John Travolta.

So Grease was his second Travolta joint. And then he did Honey, I Blew Up the Kid. But the most impressive name in the list, if you've worked on this probably, is Dean Cundy who shot it. Dean Cundy was the DP. Do you guys know

Dean Cundy's name? I didn't. The list of the films he has shot. Halloween, Escape from New York The Thing he did all the Carpenters all three Back to the Futures Wow Big Trouble in Little China Who Friend Roger Rabbit Hook the Flintstones Casper Apollo 13 and Jurassic Park all shot by the same guy who also did the 3D spectacle, Honey Shrunk the Audience. Then, with his Honey experience,

he went on to make his directorial debut with Honey We Shrunk Ourselves. And past that point, his filmography gets really odd and spotty. It feels like Honey cursed him. Oh, no. He went on to shoot Garfield, both Garfields. He shot one of the worst films I've ever seen, which is this Reese Witherspoon movie from a couple years ago

that has this bland title I can't even remember. It's done by the kid of, who's the rom-com? Oh, is it Nancy Meyers''s kid yes yeah yeah nancy myers's kid directed this movie i think it's like specifically horribly shot and you look up who shot this thing it's like shaky and badly lit oh the dp of jurassic park it's real like what a strange answer i'm not gonna lie i think I put myself on tape for that movie. Hey. I think that was a weird submission that came through UCB.

Wow. And it said the name of the director. And it specifically said, like, Child of Nancy Meyer. And I'm like, what? They listed it in for you to just tape yourself? Or maybe I Googled it. And the Hollywood Reporter article just kept mentioning Child of Nancy Myers, Child of Nancy Myers. Man, I wish you'd been in this.

What a delight if we turned a corner and you were in this movie. Let me also say about Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, the forgotten piece. This was a TV movie for Wonderful World of Disney that oddly was written by Joel Hodgson of Mystery Science Theater fame. And Nell Scovel, who... Oh, the Letter... Letterman, like one of the only Letterman and Simpsons female writers. Yeah, I think she has a book out that's supposed to be pretty... Like, she has a crazy, like, story.

Her career, she's worked on so many huge things. Sure, sure. And then, but the best fact about Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and probably the main reason to revisit it, is it features a performance by Allison Mack, perhaps better known as Pimp Mack, one of the leaders of the Nixxiom sex cult. Or however you say that, N-X-I-V-M. Yeah, Nixxiom.

From Smallville. Yes. On her rise to become Pimp Mack. Wow. She was in the... Is that what they called her in the cult? Yes. Oh, okay.

All the women had to get branded and they got branded a symbol that was like, if you looked at it, if you thought about what the symbol was, it was the initials of the leader of the thing and then A-M for Allison Mac. But she's also part of this wonderful

franchise. The Honey franchise. But anyway, like top tier talent. and then the other one writer uh um oh the writer well the the muppet guy bill bill prady big bang theory the co-creator of the big bang theory wrote honey honey i shrunk the audience uh who also went on to create the recent muppet show on abc and he wrote mupp Vision 3D. This seems like the movie version of the ball in Space Jam where the mom stars steal the power because it seems like he came in and after that, wildly successful and everyone else has dark turns.

He wrecked Dean Cundey. He stole all the magic. I know this is weird, but can we touch this script before uh we shoot everyone hands on everyone moranis retires moranis hasn't done a movie oh that's true yeah one of the last on-screen performances of moranis but also but another guy who got a lot of power uh after making this thing the pre-show was shot by pey Reed, eventual director of Ant-Man. And presumably he's, oh, he already is.

I think he was involved in what they shot for Hong Kong Disneyland for Ant-Man. Yes. And presumably will be in any other attractions they do. And rumors have been,

it's possible that these theaters where Honey, I Shrunk the Audience once played will be home to some Ant-Man attraction down the line. So this is Peyton Reed and shrinking well before his most famous shrinking work.

And not his first theme park thing, right? Didn't he shoot Back to the Future, The Ride? The pre-show. He shot the pre-show of this and Back to the Future, both of which are at institutes and both of which are like hijinks and it's more like broadcast camera, like people scurrying down hallways and trying to solve mixups.

So, uh, um, yeah, there's, there's a big common out, which is a funny thing that in, if you view all of theme park world as one big narrative,

that there's the imagination Institute and the Institute of future technology. These are different things, but they both have open houses and invite people to come participate in there. It's chaos 24-7. Yeah. Well, or just that one day that they happen to invite Joe Schmo in to check it out. Yeah. Which, by the way, so that's the convoluted nature of the plot of this thing.

It is the open house of the Institute while an award show, during the inventor of the year, is both an award show and an open house. Kind of a hat on a hat situation. Kind of two weird things going on that day. I'm not sure they needed both of them. And also, if you're going to open an institute within a theme park, you need to know people are going to be there, and you need to prepare, and you need to be safe. How is it catching them off guard that all these regular people are flooding into the audience? Right, and it's not like Wayne Zielinski isn't a madman before this.

In canon, it's always chaos. As Nigel Channing is reminded with newspaper headlines, he has sowed much chaos on this earth. Everyone should have known this was going to happen. I have to say, I want to know how Dr. Nigel Channing got this job because he shows up. I don't know if you've ever ridden the journey into your imagination, the second generation of this Epcot ride, where the same Eric Idle character shows up and interacts with the character Figment. No. This is a separate ride that's only in Epcot with the same Eric Idle character.

And it is considered to be one of the worst rides ever. Yeah, people hate it because they love the original and this one sucks. Yeah, and he is so annoyed by a whimsical creature. Figment, that little purple dragon. Oh, okay. That was the original. He's still on the ride, the character,

but the original was like this whimsical dream finder man and imagination and there's a flying contraption. And the newer version is like a very like sterile like figment trying to explain to eric idol why how smells work yeah like and there's a toilet stuck to the ceiling and it's like weird and it's very 90s of like stodgy guy comes around at the end like a yeah i don't know mrs doubtfire s kind of slot right and it just it sucks and everyone knows it sucks the creator of the original ride hates it uh yes pot to publicly talk shit about it with us on our podcast we reviewed him yeah he was like i don't know how a toilet on the ceiling is imagination right on but it was So they must have thought, it's Nigel Channing mania.

When this ride opened, we got to get more Channing in the parks. Did you ever see people wearing Nigel Channing shirts, Channing his name? We can't wait for Nigel. Not at all. No, no. There was not a lot of merchandise, I feel like, for this. We need more Nigel merchandise, I think. We really are slacking on that front. There's not a Park of merchandise, I feel like, for this. We need more Nigel merchandise, I think. We really are slacking on that front.

There's not a Parkstar of Nigel? There is not a Parkstar of Nigel. The way we work, though, I feel like if there was some Nigel merch, we'd be like, oh, shit, did you see that Nigel merch? That's a pretty good shirt. And we'd be like, oh, yeah, we got to get that Nigel Channing shirt. So, like, they're missing out on doing that. Yeah, why is such a fuss budget in charge yeah imagination institute and also like if he's such a pain in the ass character why was he in two rides

i could see putting figment in two rides figment's awesome he's uh 20 rides imaginative little dragon you love him you want to buy a doll of him nigel chant what the hell like why i it's weird it's a weird choice it's fun that they're connected it's fun that they're he's in two different rides he just had a weird contract he was like if i do one disney movie i must do another so sure i have all right i guess um a question i have for you is and the big thing i think about with anybody who works at a theme park is repetition. You were leading people in and out of this movie many times a day, every day. Were you driven mad by hearing the same dialogue? I don't know if you had to stay and listen to all of it.

No, you didn't have to stay and listen. What you would do is after, like I know like i said when i was hyped i was in there watching and i was like okay cool and i would try and like run up frazzled where it's like oh sorry about that uh then once you get used to it uh you're like outside talking to the exit point guy and chatting it out and then like listening for it and then like you'll peek in it's like okay it's about to end and then you run up and do it okay so you didn't have to like you weren't on the other end where you have to hear like hello and welcome yeah you weren't like hearing that uh rant every day not rant a little uh same bit of dialogue every day uh um okay what about music like were you in some hallway

where you had to hear yeah that yeah that one you you especially if you were in the front you were constantly hearing that and that would get kind of old but like you're also being at the front you're constantly being inundated by questions i it's so funny too i'll never uh forget where like this like i was there on my day off and like this guy just like kept asking the cast member questions and i was like and it was really just like like i was like just talking to him but i was like answering the questions and he's like yeah uh i'm i want the cast member to answer answer it and like i had to stop myself because i was like i was like gonna be like bitch i am a cast member but i was like one like i can't sass him and I was like, I was like, going to be like, bitch, I am a cast member. But I was like, when like, I can't sass him.

And then in the same sentence be like, oh, I work here, you dumbass. Hey, fuck you, buddy. Yeah, fuck you, you asshole. You're my employee ID badge. Yeah, yeah. Like, so I had to like, eat it. But I remember being so annoyed. But then being like, oh, yeah, from his perspective, I'm just some Disney super fan who's just like trying to answer all of his questions.

So and so like at the time, I just didn't think to be like, oh, no, it's my day off. I work here and he's kind of busy because it was the thing of like, whereas like you're you being a co-worker, you're like, oh, this guy's being annoying and like inundating you with simple questions while you're also trying to because it was also like right before show was going. And so he's trying to hand out stuff and he's like just hounding him for questions. So I was just trying to help. So it was like this weird mixed emotion where like I saw where he was coming from. But also like I also know from my friend's perspective, he's being asked an asshole. And then me,

my personal pride of like this dick dad, like sassing me. Like it was just so many emotions. It was like, I think I just like walked away. I think that was my solution. Or like I, I did like, i did like a flex

where like i walked backstage like into the um to subtly give him the information yeah to be like yeah no i uh or like did something of being like oh it's so and so here because i start like just to like tip him off without trying to be too aggro. But it was, like, funny where it's like, oh, yeah, when you're not in the – because – and that – I think the core of that story was, like, I didn't know what I was doing because when you work there, whether you're in your outfit or not, you are still essentially a cast member because it still turns on. And you still have that eagerness of being like oh i'm gonna give you the information you're asking for right but like it's like it's like you know the a more wholesome version of like a cop who's off duty you know where it's like i'm still do my job but i'm technically not on the job i i remember being at the container store when i didn't work i was working there at the time but i wasn't on the job. I remember being at the container store when I was working there at the time, but I wasn't on the shift.

And people would still ask me stuff because I had the air about me. And I knew what I was doing. So I would still answer. And I'd be like, oh, I'm just trying to get through here. But then secretly I'm like, they know. I feel like this is where I belong. And you would just hang out because container store is a cool place to hang out. You'd bring a tall boy and just kind of chill.

I would hang out with a big beer outside of the Container Store waiting to be asked a question about closet planning. I'm going to use this for all my magazines and the bookshelf and no magazine. They're never going to get out of the wrapping. You know, if you think about it, a beer can is a container. Yeah. That's a good point. Wow, man. I never thought of it that way mike yeah that's fucking cool wow it's still funny the fifth time you've told that joke mike

punishing mike with my joke putting this in your mouth fuck you michael dare you say a beer can's a container i'll take it i i deserve it if you let me uh ask when you were working there, any famous people, did you see any famous people enjoying this show while you were a cast member? Not anyone enjoying our show. There has never been a single famous person to go through our ride.

Wow. But Nemo just came, so we heard of lots of famous people going to Nemo, just picking over and seeing. I'm trying to think of some. I believe there was once a Red Hot Chili Pepper we were real excited about. Noodles. Gwen Stefani. Sure.

And those are the first ones that pop into my mind. Were you working in Tomorrowland when the red hot chili peppers music was on space mountain and california screaming do you know what i'm talking about no i don't there was a year or so where uh their cover of higher ground was on space mountain and around the world was on california screaming not because i would definitely remember that damn i was gonna say i'd be very excited like summer the buzzing of people like oh my, my God, did you hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers are coming to? And it was bizarre, too, because it was not right when those songs came out. Years later.

Yeah, yeah. They were like, this will be fun. I didn't know they did a cover of Higher Ground. That was news to me. Well, I was a Chili Peppers fan as a youth, so I knew all about Higher Ground. I probably heard it before the Stevie Wonder version. You know what they need to do is, because I took my very first ride, not to brag, I took my very first ride on the Golden Zephyr,

a rarely open ride in California Adventure, which for any Astro Orbiters fans out there is a ride that goes round and round and then stops. What a blast. But I was in my head playing the song, right away on my Zephyr. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's what they need.

They need to bring the Red Hot Chili Peppers back and put it in that ride. And then I think the line's out the door. I used to do a bit about the Zephyr with someone I was dating. I was like, sorry, the line's just, we gotta get going. We can't, we were leaving the park. the line's just... We gotta get going.

We can't... We were leaving the park. The line's too long for Zephyr. It's two hours for Zephyr. Maybe next time. Man, I really want to get on that Zephyr. Someday. Someday. There will be a source for Zephyr jokes.

I will have a weekly platform for Zephyr jokes. We all have it now. We're gonna do an episode that's two hours long on the golden Zephyr. Find We all have it now. We're going to do an episode that's two hours long on the Golden Zephyr. That, I think, is actually, there is, because it is modeled after an older, like an original generation of theme music. We don't have to justify why.

Okay, well, I'll save it for that episode. Wow, modeled on an older generation. I'm in for two hours. Someone's like, well, you know, there actually is two hours of material for the Golden Zephyr episode. So let's not joke about it. Yeah, no, seriously. At least two hours, if not more.

All right, that's enough. And we're done with that. You know what someone put me on in California Adventure that I would have never went until someone was like, you should check it out, was the Aladdin show. Oh, you're talking to the right man about the Aladdin show. It's really good. I was like, this is like a really good show that's just hidden here that you would not think to go. It's almost like you would think you'd see it at any other play.

It's a Broadway caliber. Yeah, yeah. I didn't want to give it the full endorsement set in case some listeners are Broadway heads and scoff at me. But yeah, a Broadway caliber show. Yeah. 50 minute show.

And you get topical jokes galore. Yes. Oh, the genie. It kills every time. I've seen it probably 10 times. It's gone now. It's frozen now. Really?

Yeah. And there's no... Oh man, we're missing all those genie donald trump jokes yes well he couldn't do trump probably yeah he definitely could not i was that i was joking remember i when i was working it was the super bowl and we couldn't even ask people what the score was like they're like you cannot ask people you can't like uh if someone was wearing like a team you couldn't be like go your team like you had, you couldn't be like, go your team. You couldn't.

Because the concept was that when people are in Disneyland, you want them to be immersed in Disneyland. You want them to forget about the outside world. The big game does not exist. Yeah, you could not talk about Super Bowl at all. But Genie could get away with a Dr. Phil impression. He could get away with Snooki joke. He could get away with like a dr phil impression yeah he could get away with snooki

joke he could get away with the joke about angelina jolie's leg from the oscars i saw all three of those the dr phil you mean when she like stuck her leg out in kind of a strut pose and then he did that jim rash won right after her and he did the same pose yes genie there was a joke about that yes yeah we would go that that's the side note obviously we i would when i say we would go i would force lindsey to go or whoever was with i go i want to see what topical jokes he's going to do today and like that's one of the big ones where i was like genie did angelina jolie's leg joke like i wanted to see how obscure he could get and i think that was maybe the most obscure. That was the most.

I think Genie would have a tough time in 2019 because what material is out there that's OK. Not Trump. He can't do Trump. He can't do Kevin Hart. He can't do Louis. There's no story in the world that the Genie could make fun of. It's just dabbing.

He would just be dabbing. He would just be doing a lot of Fortnite stuff. It's like, where are we dropping, boys? He would floss probably and get just a standing ovation. Oh, yeah. People would go nuts. Crying like in the Michael Jordan

Michael Jackson concert montages. He would do Justin Bieber stuff that would kill all the time. Or just still. Probably still today he would do Bieber. He would still do Bieber stuff that would kill all the time. Or just still. Oh, he's probably still today. He would do Bieber stuff. He would still do Bieber stuff. He would do Bieber.

I bet Dr. Phil, I could go on and on about this, but when he would list what he could and couldn't do with his wishes, he would say, and I can't bring people back from the dead. He would do the Dr. Phil uh for some reason during that part and then like announce kind of like that he was dr phil or something and the audience would think that was great i'm dr phil he would say he would there was a couple where he would just be like something something something also like snooki and he'd like look out at the audience and say snooki and everyone would be like yeah yeah! It's like, what? And then everyone I would always bring

would just look at me like horrified during this part of this. And I'd be like, yeah, great. Anyway, that is two hours for sure, that episode. Yeah, that one for sure. That one's gonna go and go and go. But look at that. This is, I mean, with a live, a breathing apparatus

like the Aladdin show, you can change up that material the set movie honey i shrunk the audience trots out its jokes over and over to where i did it once or twice never needed to do it again when wayne zlinski's in the flying machine and then he crashes it into the inventor of the year sign and then the letters form nerd that's not funny more than once i don't think it's not that funny it was the 90s when like you could make fun of nerds or that was more of a really dates it the idea of nerd like your podcast is called nerdificent but it's like the word nerd doesn't mean what it meant in the 90s oh yeah not at all it just means you're a

pop culture enthusiast essentially that's really what it means in the 90s. Oh, yeah, not at all. It just means you're a pop culture enthusiast, essentially. That's really what it means. In the old days, it was like a put-down. So, yeah, at the time, because even at the time, I didn't think it was that funny because I was like, I'm kind of a nerd. I like X-Men. Also, it's a science institute, so, yeah.

It's clowning on itself. And Wayne Zielinski, if he existed in the real world, like the greatest inventor of the century. Of course. His messy results. Great family. He'd be like Elon Musk or something now, but better. I mean, it's just like he is a different. Oh, he would suck on Twitter.

Wayne Zielinski would just be awful on Twitter. Wayne Zielinski called me a cuck. In terms of repeating movie, like re-watching movies in the parks, I will say like as a kid, I was totally, like I would re-watch the same movies and cartoons over and over again.

So I didn't really think about like, oh, we're going to watch Muppets 3D again. I'm like, no, we're here today. We're going to do it. Or we're at Epcot. We're going to let's rewatch it. Yeah, we must. It says you to your beleaguered parents again.

Yes, we're here. We're going to do it. Well, in Florida, a movie where it's dark and air conditioned, parents like that. You can get a few little, know some winks in get a little nap in very good point but harder to do when the floor is vibrating and there's mice zipping around your leg like that all makes all those things make this a tougher proposition i don't ever do i mean they're well you can't do either of them now really really. I don't do Honey, I Shrunk, and I don't do Tough to Be a Bug. I don't like all those little vibrates.

You said the thing, I think, which I had the same thing. I hated when it would poke you in the back. It scared me. Like the Tough to Be a Bug. Yeah. I didn't like that. I'm better about it now. Shrek 4D pokes you in the back, too, which I got used to it on Shrek 4D.

Yeah. I like the little mice and the snake you're like oh it's fine i'm fine with it now there's a version of it on the mummy at universal i can handle it now but is it on the ride on the ride yeah yeah the scarabs yeah i never the one thing i don't like that gets me is the like darts and indie like because i'm like oh really yeah it's like yeah i'm not getting shot but if air gets in my eye it does kind of bug me that's fair yeah there's a ripoff of soren in canada that i went on called fly over canada that has way more like blasting stuff in your face and it fucked up my wife's eye like her like her like i really hurt she's like digging shit out of her contact no an hour after it was terrible well i have definitely gotten ash in my

eye from either phantasmic or the firework like i have definitely gotten like explosion debris it was funny during christmas when uh they make it snow that was always cool seeing the kids be excited because like i'd love to do that parade. But then there's a point where kids would start trying to put their tongue out. I was like, no, that's soap. Don't. That is 100% soap.

It smells like Nussbag. It doesn't taste like it. Yeah, yeah. It's all soap that we're shooting out. Do not put it on your tongue. When you were standing outside as the show was going on, could you track how far along it was by like all right first scream that's the mice does that feel not even by the screams but the big sounds

you're like boom okay he ran into the sign boom okay i guess and you can hear that last like zap when he brings everyone to regular size and you're like okay it's like really loud would the show play pretty much the same way with most crowds? Like, was there ever a variation where you're like, holy shit, this is really plain. Like, they're laughing at everything. Oh, yeah. There were times like where like it's crushing and you're like, damn, OK, I guess this is a group of people who've never seen this. But 90 percent of the time, like silence.

Yeah, it was pretty much like, you know, just light chuckles. People were doing it because, you know, they yeah i like doing it like there were like aps who were like yeah no this is this is my jam i go um aps i've like grew to hate they're just so just because like they like they never approach the park with considering the fact they're like, oh, I will be back here soon. This is this is the I can come back as much as I want, as opposed to sometimes this is someone's only chance to come to Disneyland, maybe in years. And I would see someone I went to interventions because like my girlfriend at the time, that's where she worked. And we would drive home together. So to kill time, I would just go there and play rock band or something.

You didn't have somebody else in Critter Country? Yeah, no, I was one of them. Girls all over the lands? Yeah. And it was crazy, too. So Disney has this program where people from college get to work over the summer yeah and then they go and that's when i first met her and i have like the biggest crush on her in the world but i was like a little wimp i never wanted to tell her and she went back to college and i was

just pined over her for so long i was losing like i would just go like this is back in my space i'd go to her my space and be like let me see what she's up to she's in college right now oh man she's living it up and then like she like came back to uh la and i like lost my mind and so she was at disneyland and i had an annual pass i wasn't working there there anymore. But I would meet up with her there and wait for her. But I remember sitting there and I was watching. It was one of those Kinect games. And there was this young-ass kid who was waiting to play. And there was these two older APs playing.

And they looked back and saw the kid and like started another match and i was like what the hell are y'all doing also it's like buy an xbox you fucking dorks like it's like like it's not even like it was all right like it's an xbox game move out the way and let the kid like you are old enough to purchase an xbox this kid probably cannot you know that bugs me on haunted mansion when it's people who know the spiel in the elevator by heart and it's like hey some people in this room it's definitely their first time here maybe let the uh beloved voice narration do it maybe let them hear this beloved voice actor yeah as opposed to you guy who comes every saturday like maybe chill out a little yeah chill chill all the way out that ride you know the more you think about it does

get really dark oh i can this is the perfect podcast to bring up this gripe oh i think the nightmare before christmas installment to that is always way too early. It should not be during Halloween. 100%. I hate it so much. And everyone always argues, like, it's Halloween. Nightmare Before Christmas is not a Halloween movie. Christmas is in the movie, and the movie starts when Halloween ends.

It is not a – it's a Christmas movie, and it should not be around in Halloween. It's the one scary ride at the – ride. Haunted Mansion is legitimately scary, and you make it not scary during Halloween? What sense does that make? Hey, I agree. We agree, I think. I think, you know, this issue, it never occurred to me, but Molly Lambert brought it up.

You're bringing it up. I am now thinking this is a movement. I think that they need to be heard on this issue. Right. And I've heard people in the, I've like passed conversations in the parks of people complaining about this. Ryan Gosling complained

about that video. What? People are talking to him, like people meet him in the parking garage or something and they're like, what's your favorite ride? He's like, oh, Haunted Mansion. Oh, Haunted Mansion. I wish though it shouldn't be around for halloween yeah i came up with the solution the time it should be is at they they should like have it running

on halloween and then stop it like for a bit to make the change over even though there's no way it could be done this fast but on the or or have it closed up to the point that you need to do these changes but on halloween like night at midnight you can switch it over exactly that's when it should go because that that's when that movie begins right and it's just all this christmas stuff during halloween and it just annoys me so much i'm like this is it's ha is Halloween right now and you're just doing Christmas stuff. They could I think it takes two and a half weeks

to switch it out. So in theory they could do that and have it running by mid-November. But now I feel like they keep starting Christmas earlier and earlier. That must be why. They must be not wanting any of the holiday season to be lacking in in yeah yeah because

if yeah if you think that it if you think on the fact that it takes two weeks that means you either have to deal with two weeks being down um you have to deal with two weeks it being down during halloween yeah would be make would make the same party mad, or you would have to have two weeks during November it being down, which is essentially a quarter of quote-unquote Christmas time. Yeah. This makes me get it. I think we get the logic now.

It's down right now because they have to take it all out. Yeah. So it's always down like two or three weeks at the start of the year. And I think they use that time to like do any other cleanup they need to do on the regular ride. Yeah. The problem is, I think also, is that there is a big, and I don't know why I think this,

but an Orange County bro, pro Jack Skellington movement that wear the big Jack Skellington sweatshirts in the park. And I think they would riot if they don't have a halloween nightmare you want to get in this file we can do the fight there's nothing the the that i hate more because then orange county bros as a la native it would be my personal christmas present to fuck them up like i can't the whoa you we're getting into laoc watching you kind of like spin kick like 10 jack skellingtons in the face i would like to see that very much speaking of which that's the one thing that i think is right because and i don't know why no one seems to think this based on the kids

around it but the walking around Jack Skeleton is terrifying. Yes. Hate this. Hate that face. What's going on? It's so like it looks nothing like Yeah it's bizarre. It's so far off. Terrifying but kids are like yeah and I'm like that is

horrifying. The first time I saw it I thought it was a fan made costume walking around the park and not an official Disney mascot. I honestly did. What if there was more of them? What if you just, like, one day you're at the park and you're like, there's a Jack Skellington in every lounge. What's going on?

What a nightmare you're describing. They need to make, like, a puppet Jack Skellington that you can take a photo with. Yeah. Because he's so slender. Maybe that's the impossible. But you can make the head look like his head. Why does he have a thin cloth head? He looks like the Scarecrow.

I think so he can walk and like see easily. I don't know. My brother really likes Nightmare Before Christmas. I feel like any time he comes to the parks or visits, that's a souvenir. He usually gets some sort of Nightmare Before Christmas thing. But I think even he would be like, no, but the Haunted Mansion is... It's terrifying. You can buy the merch any day of the year,

but I mean, how often do you get to see the Haunted Mansion? So to take it out of play for like a quarter of the year is bizarre. I think we should put this on a poll. I'm curious what our audience thinks about nightmare too early or not right because i'm starting to think that's a good idea the result's going to be like 85 percent i don't want to tip it say what you think because i i'm on the i could see the argument either way uh um but it's interesting to me this is like this seems to be growing to a boiling point yeah i want to take the audience's temperature because i went for uh halloween again and it

just like took me out. I'm filled with five different types of churros and chocolate mousse. And I'm like, oh, I'm ready for the spooks, baby. And it's this cute Christmas song. And you get a gift at the end. For anyone who wants to make that trash argument that it's still a Halloween ride, you get a Christmas gift in October. It's Halloween. You want a Christmas gift in October. It's Halloween.

You want a ghost to follow you home. You don't want a little day glow box with a bone on it. I'll even take one of Oogie Boogie's little freaks, one of those little helpers that are, because they're at least unnerving. If one of them followed me home, I'd be like, oh, no. It's too early for presents.

We've got to get back to Nigel Channing. Promise the listener another 30 minutes of Nigel Channing. Well, you know what? I'll say there's topics where I'm like, but we have to get to this. We have to get to this. This is one of those where I'm like, I don't fuck it. I honestly don't like this attraction. I like hearing about your experience on it.

And here's one thing that I don't like about it, is that as opposed to, spoiler alert, we're going to be talking about Muppet Vision soon, and I just re-watched that, and Muppet Vision has cuts. It has, here's a big close, and here's a wide, and there's the depth of the room, and then you're in this void,

and then there's fireworks, and there's all kinds of different tricks going on and types of shots that that um you know accentuate the 3d effects in different ways the the construct of this show it being an award show and having to stay in these big long shots for so long uh i think it makes it dull i think it yeah and you and you're waiting and waiting for those things to get in your face, like the hologram lion. Excuse me. A hologram lion.

And it's not an aesthetic that sits next to the aesthetics of the Honey movies. Him flying around on a little hover pod doesn't feel like the movies. Holograms were the thing in 1994, though. Like, holograms were a star. Just the concept of holograms. I thing in 1994 though like holograms were a star just the concept of holograms i mean he's flying around a lot of magic eye it fits in with that he's in a very similar vehicle to like baxter stockman in those ninja turtle video games yeah and like a little flying machine and it's like yeah he never had that he's like a super villain or something like yeah yeah wayne zielinski's just a guy right that thing That thing's weird. I do like, I mean, Rick Moranis, Canadian, right?

He's one of the, at CTV, when he says, sorry, everybody. Like, I always liked that as a kid. Yeah, that is nice. I like that. Some other, I. He doesn't show up also until, like, five minutes into this thing. He shows up late. A lot of set up.

People milling about, and, well, he should be in just a month. So you're watching this dull dull and why is there so much also why would you start the award show without him there it's on the stage manager to have made the check this isn't on TV they don't need to start at a particular time wait for him

we don't want the fun of him showing up late and ruining the sign we want him to be on time to walk out get his proper applause, and his trophy. That would be funny if they rolled the normal Hista show, and then there's one where he just shows up early and accepts the award and walks off. That would be a fun April Fool's bit. Yes. That every five or ten show that would

be great like it just shows one it drops at some point it's like oh i dropped my pen well that was the only thing that went wrong today yeah yeah wow everybody i dropped it right next to the cloning machine thank god it didn't go in it all right goodbye uh i'll say this here's a gripe i have uh mrs zielinski i mean i i it's a set piece from all the movies. You want to hear him say, honey, I shrunk the blank and she faints. This is the third time. Now, you got to get the fainting under control. Yeah, I agree.

She needs medical. I think she has a condition. My other thing, and even as a kid, I remember this going like, man, girls go wild for Nick Zolintz, the son. There's always, like, Nick has a girlfriend in the first movie, the second movie, and this movie, one of the helpers is like, oh, Nick, like, swooning over him. Yeah, he's just some dweeb, too. Gary Russell in number two.

Oh, yes, one of her first big roles. But I'll say this. Quark the dog. I always thought it was cool. Quark the dog with 3D glasses on. Cooler. Big Quark. Cool list. I agree with that. Yeah. Quark the dog also though you could argue kind of a poor man's Einstein. And when

we're talking institutes. Another instance of Back to the Future. But Einstein doesn't get big. Right. But Einstein travels back in time. I have an issue to bring. Yes, that's very cool. He's the first time traveler.

Yes. So here's a fun thing about this attraction. We know it, of course, as Hista or Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. But in Japan, this was opened as Micro Adventure. Love that alternate name. Crazy name. Because of their, presumably their lack of familiarity

with that franchise. But in addition to that, I'm going to show you guys some artwork I found, some concept art of Micro Adventure. And here is how Micro Adventure was presented to the Japanese public. What you have here is a family that's getting hit by a shrinking ray. And then there is Quark the dog with 3D glasses, but mainly a much, much bigger Mickey Mouse. Well, in this art, it looks like Quark is shooting them.

Oh, no. I see the shrinking ray now. For a second, it looked like the beam was coming out of Quark. He spits shrink rays. No, no, no. The family is in Mickey Mouse's giant glove. Mickey also has 3D glasses. And so if you see this, you think this is a crazy shrinking world where you are going to become small and Mickey will carry you around.

You know who does not appear in Micro Adventure or Hista or any iteration of this? Mickey Mouse. I wish. There's no Mickey. This is false advertising. What a great. The promise of that is so hot. Yeah, that is so awesome.

That is awesome. Whatever that is. It shows no characters from the movie at all. So you don't know what you're going into. Who's this family? And you're like, oh my God, Mickey's going to carry me around. And Mickey has a different dog that's not Pluto. He has a realistic dog.

And then you get inside. Okay, I can't wait to be carried around the town by Mickey. And then an open house of an award show hosted by Dr. Nigel Channing begins in order to give an award to Professor Wayne Zielinski, who first tests technology of a hologram machine that puts a lion in your face. Just seeing bumbling guy Jin being poor at science jobs. It's honestly, if the deus ex machina of this show was like mickey shows

up when you're small goes i'll say i'll fix this and he picks up the audience and he fixes his shrink wear a and he's like get get your shit together wait like what are you what are you doing come on get fix what's your life fix your life man i do want to point out the Mickey in that photo doesn't look like the character Mickey it looks like a Mickey suit that did not look like a Mickey which is even creepier even creepier but even better like that's what I want

I want like suited Mickey who doesn't talk to save the day and then I wanted to play the drums like in that special I like and for that to be like 3D in your face. I've shown the breakdancing Mickey video to so much family over the break. And then we just had people from Lindsay's work and I showed that to them too. She asked for she was like, show them the breakdancing Mickey kills every time.

This is your requested entertainment. Yeah, yeah. That and the McGruff songs. Oh, sure. Yeah. So I'll praise this. You know what I like? I like the little practical when they're holding you as the audience.

And then you see it in like the mirror image. Yeah. And you're a little tiny box with little people in it. I love that. That's great. I like that too. However, I'm tripped up by the logic of it. I know.

The theater shrinks. So at what point does the theater and what part of it? And it's separated the building is now like shrunk if you were outside the theater what does that look like right what is like like this is just disconnected wall and some of the it's a little bit of a leap to imagine that half the building now is shrunk because then you would have like seen the edges of like this is outside and this is tiny And how did the shrink machine know where the divide, how did it divide it cleanly?

I just like that little practical. Yeah, I do like, it's a fun little trick when they take you up and show you yourself. That's great. But it's probably, it probably messes, it is probably an issue in that they always show a packed theater,

which I can't imagine you ever had. It's very hilarious when it's like a few people in there and it's this packed theater. You're like, yep, there you go. The show also is not, in my mind, structured to have a big climax or something. Grand finale. It kind of ends with a whimper like that Lassie movie I was talking about. But you like it a lot. But I liked it with L ends with a whimper like that lassie movie i was talking about but you like but i like when i and i liked it with lassie a lot but this now as an adult uh assessing it i was like

this really should be a fun big thing that ends where it's just kind of like whimpers out and all right you're big now and with if you went into it with that micro adventure advertising oh you want something major happening at the end right so it's like it's i watched it and like i liked some of the things but it obviously i can't experience it now again so i can't fully assess it but yeah i was like okay this is a lot of the issue you're like you shrink i shrink and and what's happening is a giant british man is worried about me yes it's not like you're going like it's not like you're on some fun adventure and it's like Bugs Life or whatever

is much more fun and there's antics and stuff. Yeah, and animatronics. Shrek 4D, you're flying everywhere and stuff is happening. Like this one, you're just sitting down and everyone's like,

all right, calm down, everybody. Let's figure this out. Like that's the narrative of the thing. Hold on, don't move, don thing hold on don't move don't move don't move don't get too excited and like no one really does move it's just like some mice running around and like it's just it's a little a snake opens his mouth at you yeah so like nothing really bad happens it's just like all right we dropped uh a very tiny like battery or something like it's just like when you would if there's something like i dropped the watch battery i was

going to dispose nobody moved nobody step on it and then it's just like when you would if there's something like i dropped the watch battery i was going to dispose of nobody moved nobody step on it and then it's just like a couple minutes of like trying to find it and figure it out and then that's it that's sort of the feeling of the ride well i feel like it's because it stunted itself in its design i think it is because they decided it was going to be presentational yes instead of something like captain eo which is a movie that happens to also be 4D. And I think that's the same thing with the Bugs Life one, where it's like everyone's talking to us. It's like you can have all those effects with us getting poked in the butt and stuff and still have us moving about your world and get to show it. I never thought about that.

Yeah, it's like one long shot and things have to be trotted out to you as opposed to cut to this, cut to that. It's more passive than active. But like you can see where the cuts are in the movie when like a thing rolls by, like they roll like a cart by and it's clear that they cut the film there and then there's another shot. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. But like there should be. I mean, this is, I guess, a plus it up idea where it's like, why didn't a villain come by and steal the tiny theater and go on like you know what i mean you're in the real world with the

box now i think that's that's the crazy thing is like they kept it in a way where they felt trapped but you're right it didn't someone could have stolen us and then took us on an adventure oh and like gone out into the street we're in the back of a van and we fall out into the sewer oh my god yes that's so much more fun and it seems like that's what they would do now and i don't know why they didn't do it plus up we have to stay in the auditorium where an inventor of the year award is being given out i will admire it for its realism because that is what would really happen everyone just be calmed down we're gonna figure this out and everyone will be safe that's probably what would happen but But we want a fun villain. Was there a villain in the first movie?

Because I haven't seen it. I don't know. The bee. Was there a Dean Jones? I think it was just Wayne's incompetence. Okay. And the bees. Well, let's get a crossover.

Let's have a Biff Tannen's cousin or brother come over and steal. We'll make up a character. I'm going to take this theater for a little joy ride. Why? Because I'm bad. What do you want? Since it seems like we're doing, we're all on the agreement of like,

yeah, this could be plussed up a little. I have another plus up, which might be able to be used for the series at large if we were to plus it up now. I would like to see an old man logan sort of story of wayne zalinski i would like to see like modern uh rick moranis comes back and maybe he's doing a symposium a presentation about his life's work but he's bitter and grizzled but he's got to fire up the shrinking machine one more

time you know what'd be cool is if like he there was some experiment that we didn't get to see that you could flash back to that fucked him up like luke where like his hand shrunk permanently like there's a part of his body right that's uh that's stuck and that made him like bitter and like i can't use the machine anymore. But now we need the machine. But Nick comes back or his wife had been estranged and he's like, honey, you need to shrink again. Son of a bitch. The name of the movie is Honey, You Need to Shrink Again.

That works for me. I like it. I'm fine with that. That's comfortable. Honey, there is further shrinking to do. I think there will for sure be another one of these movies. Yeah. They have to know. There's going to be a reboot.

Especially, I think a year or two ago, there was this article with Moranis, and he said, he's like, I don't think I'm done with acting. I just took a break to focus on my kids. Yeah. And he was like, and they're getting older.

Almost hinting like, hey, y'all can start inviting me to auditions again. I would love a Keaton, like a Michael Keaton, older Michael Keaton sort of resurgence for Rick Moran. Be it comedy or drama. I mean, we talked about this recently that he said he almost did a role, but it was like a really low-budget indie thing. And he didn't want to be in the desert in a motel for eight weeks or something. Oh, wow.

But I gotta give him credit when he said, he was like, I was offered a cameo in Ghostbusters, but he's like, it didn't quite make sense. And he's like, why would I just arbitrarily show up as this character that I did a couple times? He's the only person with sanity in this world. He's just chilling out up in Canada, not doing awful cameos. Good for Moranis.

I say he doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to do. But if the right thing, we'd all love to see him back. Somebody needs to create the right vehicle for him. Yeah, I'd love to see him back. Somebody needs to create the right vehicle for him. And yeah, I'd love to see him again. Yeah, he was, as a kid, one of the first people I was like, this is a comedy guy. This is comedy. This is a comedian.

Like, you see him in things, and he's always funny. I like him. You love him. Yeah, I know. And he's Barney Rubble, and that's totally different than Wayne Zielinski. Oh, yeah. Which is totally different than Ghostbusters. Yeah, he shows so much range in all those kids, all those movies we love. I think he'll never act again.

That's a guess. Yeah, maybe. Good for him. I think he keeps saying, like, maybe, but it's like, eh. Maybe Broadway. I mean, Daniel Stern does, like, a Broadway play every year or every other year. I feel like Moranis is like, that's too much work. I guess.

He doesn't owe anyone anything. I think that's great. Good for him. I'd love to see him back, but I don't think it's going to happen. Yeah, yeah. And I don't think this attraction's coming. I mean, I guess if they made another movie, it could be a good candidate to revive somehow in the parks.

But it's really, it's left this black hole in all of the parks. Both this and Tough to Be a Bug, which aren't played on the regular. I mean, it still is in Animal Kingdom. And it's torn down in California Adventure. Yeah, now it's gone here. But, like, all these movie theaters are in rough states. We're just watching Star Wars clips.

And Pixar, that's what's in Florida right now, is a Pixar film festival. Yes, which is crazy. Like, what? Yeah. Why? Just, like, who cares? They got to find, it's like the way, like, big box malls are all starting to go away, and we got to, what do we do with all this space?

We need to, like, find a good use of Disney movie theaters, and I don't know what it is. Well, unlike malls, they can't just stick a climbing gym in there. Why not? It's pretty short. There's not a lot of height. There's not a lot of height. They could figure out some sort of VR thing, maybe. Malls are starting to do that, too.

That's not a bad use. I think what's going to happen is these will get torn down in the redo of Tomorrowland in 10 years. But they will sit in a bizarre half space where we watch Pixar movies and Star Wars clips until then. There'll be a terrible state of disarray until then. And then they'll just tear it down and finally put a ride

there in a decade. I don't know if it'll be in a... Well, it depends. When is Star Wars Land done? This year. June. I think that Tomorrow night is probably next. Because while I was working there, we switched the color schemes. Because remember, it was the Taco Bell colors at first.

Oh, yeah. Then after that, we got the newer kind of hipper colors. And then innovations kind of turned down. And now it's a Marvel showcase. I think that whole area is due for an upgrade i hope you're right the world the big problem they have is a lot of the stuff that's kind of quote unquote dead or not that great is is sandwiching one of the most popular rides in disneyland which is uh space mountain so it's kind of hard to like do big constructions because if you try and shut down Space Mountain, even though they should, because Space Mountain goes down so often, that needs a whole new remodel.

So I think they should take that opportunity to just take that whole corner of Tomorrowland and redo it and re like rework Space Mountain. You know, I think with within that, if they were to do that, take that opportunity to just amp up Astro Orbiter some more. I like that it has the up and down controls, but it feels very old. But I feel like that's also part of the now appeal as the park grows in age. So I think put it back up on a platform. Like go through, revamp, make sure everything's safe, strong, new materials on everything, and lift that baby up. Make it like – Because that's a choke point for crowds too. Like it backs up right around Astro Orbiter because it's not a big entrance like it originally was. Exactly.

So you just pop that thing up and then make room and also just it like one of the big things that people like to do is try and get on astro orbiter during the parades and get up there so if you have it even higher that it's a rat sure i think it's a great idea i just uh i guess i'm really negative today because i don't expect moranis to come out of retirement i don't expect tomorrowland ever be different i'm really negative today because I don't expect Moranis to come out of retirement. I don't expect Tomorrowland to ever be different. I'm really getting worried for so long.

I feel like it got pushed back on the docket because that movie didn't do well. Oh, well, that's for sure. I feel like if that movie crushed, oh, we would have already been in construction. We would have had

a new Laurie animatronic chasing us. So sad. All right. But also, what a weird idea that the land was going to get devoted to that. Like, they never thought that was possible.

I don't know if it would have been devoted to that, but there would have been references for sure. But who knows? The one thing, I swear, they just don't touch that beautiful metal wall on the way up to Space Mountain. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like on the wall of Red Rocket's pizza port, it just looks so 80s LAX, retro future space wonderful. I love it. That's what the thing,

well, I guess you were more probably on the other side of the theater. Maybe I'd want to work the load so that I could just stare at that. And I take that back. I said the burger spot was best. It's actually pizza port. That was the spot to get.

Oh, yeah. Especially for us because you just have that the pizza smells just hitting you non-stop. I gotta get this pizza for lunch. Yeah. It's the thing we didn't talk about is

your last grab of details. I did kind of like that the flubber guy is in the line. There's the posters of who previously won the Inventor of the Year award, and they nod to... Robin Williams. Yeah. What's his character's name?

I can't remember. Martin Flubulator. Yeah. The shared universe idea worked. I like the Imagination Institute as a concept. I like the logo. I had a concept i like the logo i had a pain as a kid of of the logo this is this is one of those things where they could bring this back in some form whether it's on the disney streaming service or another ride where it's like bring back

this and then bring back the mythology of the flubber and the nigel chan get eric idol back people are demanding people are demanding a Nigel Channing series. There must be. And then like, well, is Doc Brown, did he ever do work at the Imagination? No! Do not ask that question. Of course he didn't. But Christopher Lloyd could be on the show. Yeah. They sure.

Well, that's fine. He never left. Yeah, he could just be this character who like they basically are referencing Back to the Future, but just vague enough so people know. It's like, yeah, he's been working on a lot of time stuff. And it's been interesting to see him get back to it. But we have to look to the future. I believe he's a doctor of some kind.

And a character in the show is named Marnie. And he can go like, Marnie! This old man voice obscures it too much but you're like if anyone tries to sue it's like we sing marnie character name is marnie listen here play it back in slow motion you will just invent it rick and morty well i mean what if there were characters that were kind of like doc and marty that'd be a that'd be a cool idea. But they were, like, fucked up. Yeah. You know, one more thing occurred to me. Any experience in the glasses washing station? What's the difficulty? Oh, it's a very...

If you've ever worked, like, a food service job, and you know when you take all the dishes and there's, like, a system of, like, you put it here, it dips it. It's very similar to that, where you actually put it through uh like the there's like a washing machine that it goes through so um the reason that you're giving them back to them on trays is you just put the tray to a machine and then you uh you sanitize it and then you wipe it down so it's a whole

process so like the histaline would go i think it's like the pieces of astro orbiter then you would go to the entrance then from the entrance you work the inside of hista then from the inside of hista you work that the end of the line and the end of the line you collect the glasses and as soon as the show starts you walk back to the area to clean them and then bring back some fresh glasses and bring them to the person up front. Oh. Ever steal them? No. You didn't see the value in stealing a bunch of glasses?

Huh. Okay. I was too into that Nemo jacket. Nothing else. Oh, yeah, yeah. You don't have it now, do you? I don't know where it is. I had it, but I have no clue

where it is. You gotta find that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a tribute to your glorious days working in the park, and thank you so much for telling us about it. I'm Matthew Waterway. You survived Podcast The Ride. Thank you so much for being here. Hey, let's exit

through the gift shop is there anything you'd like to plug yeah just uh check out nerdificent it drops on tuesdays candy dinner with uh man opodaca drops on mondays and you know just uh stick around got lots of uh fun stuff coming on uh on the horizon so follow me at ify ydyy ify nwa diwe on twitter and instagram where i'll keep you updated about those stuffs when I can talk about said stuffs. Sure. Such as if you ever find the jacket. Mainly the jacket.

Yeah, I will post the jacket. Once we get off, I'll show you pictures. I have pictures of me and my cast member. All right. We want to see those pictures. So a treat for us. And there's treats for you waiting on our Twitter. I mean, I guess we could tweet it out.

Yeah. Sure. It's your willingness to be public about uh yeah no i'm fine yeah check us out on twitter instagram facebook we have merch available at t public go to our second gate patreon patreon.com slash podcast the ride yeah uh anything else gents no i think that's it that's just uh yeah and uh remember um uh there's always as long as there's imagination in the world, there's no quote from the show. There's nothing to it. And let me just apologize that we didn't do 40 minutes of Nigel Channing. Maybe only 15. Well, we'll do a separate character.

But there'll be a whole separate Patreon episode about Nigel Channing. Yes, sure. There. Yeah, so we'll do that. Promise that. It's a promise, yeah. Episode about a terrible character. Yep. All right, got it. Bye. Thanks, everybody. Bye, sure. There. Yeah, so we'll do that. Promise that. That's a promise, yeah. Episode about a terrible character. Yep, all right, got it.

Bye. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey.

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