Podcast: The Ride - Jaws with Justin Michael

Episode Date: August 24, 2018

From a stop on the Studio Tour to a full-fledged attraction in Orlando and Japan, Jaws looms large in the history of the Universal parks. Justin Michael (Bad Reception Podcast, Infinity Train) joins us as we board Amity 6. This 40mm episode is indeed loaded. 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

You all know me. You all know what I do on this podcast. But this isn't my usual bullshit. Not treats and three-hour naps. This is Jaws. The universal classic attraction. The one filled with lawsuits, leaking hydraulic fluid,

rowboat rescues, and dead birds. Justin Michael joins us on the best, and only, scenic cruise of Amity Island show me the way to go home I'm tired and I want to go to bed podcast the ride Welcome to Podcast The Ride, the show that can make your two-hour wait for Slinky Dog Dash feel like a three-hour wait.

I'm Jason Sheridan, here as always with Mike Carlson. Hi, yes, we want to make it worse when you're waiting in the orlando sun and so you have to listen to us talk about fake rocks and different treats that we like yeah so sorry about that i guess yeah yeah uh and scott character um hi yeah um how is the line what do we know about the we know the line has been bad since the start since the opening of it shaded yes there's a big problem with shading in the new toy story land in disney's hollywood studios uh we know that they've changed the menu on andy's lunchbox i believe yes they dropped the monte cristo yeah they do this usually happens with the theme park food is that when it when

like a new stand or a new restaurant opens they're very ambitious with the food and then after a couple weeks of operation they realize that everyone just wants a chicken sandwich a new stand or a new restaurant opens, they're very ambitious with the food. And then after a couple weeks of operation, they realize that everyone just wants a chicken sandwich, a cheeseburger, or a hot dog. And then they start taking stuff off. So they probably had filet mignon bites or something, something crazy. And then now it's just like, Andy's chicken sandwich. It's like they downgrade it because no one wants that fancy crap.

Only food shaped in slinky shapes yeah just spirals it's curly fries and zucchini i think that would do very well uh i'm not sure the full menu we'll have to look into that yeah uh joining us today uh a very special guest he's a writer on infinity train the new cartoon network show coming soon and bad reception a new narrative podcast from the good people at audible justin michael hello hi justin the good people at audible i'm glad you clarify that they're good people because you wouldn't want to listen to some project no the bad people without no thank you um yeah so excited to have you uh you're a friend of all of ours for for a while and a i i think a theme park nerd equal this is just what we talk about anyway whenever i see you yes that's true it has

been for a long time yeah that's what we plug so let's just pick up the conversation where it left off where where where's the last uh theme park you've been or like internationally have you you did a tokyo recently yes we should ask him disneyland ride we gotta ask justin what's your question the question okay so here's the thing we've been we've been having this discussion over several episodes uh how many days for your first time going to tokyo how many days now we each have a different day so maybe we don't i don't if you don't know we shouldn't sway you by saying which one we think. So you tell us, first time going to Tokyo, how many days do you need to do at the Tokyo Disney Resort? Okay.

So, obviously did a lot of research. Sure, of course. Because half the reason I was very excited about going to Tokyo was pretty much this. Going to Tokyo DisneySea. Of course. So you go to, there's this website that I went to, and they were like, you need five to six days. Right.

Which seemed like a lot. Yeah. Yes. But, depends on how much you really want to spend there, and you're like, I'm never going to go here again. Maybe you just want to keep going on the rides over and over. Right. We did two days.

One day at each park. We went during an off season right so that made it easier but the thing about tokyo disney is that they only let you go to one there's no park hopper you can't go to two parks in one day you have to choose which park you go to and then on day three i've been told it's a park hopper exactly yes oh if you do a third right that tilts it over then you then it's the visitor's choice you can buy separate tickets right like they do a thing called a starlight pass so what we did i we went twice which is insane uh because we got a real good deal um but the first time we went to disney i think disney sea first just

because i like couldn't contain myself yeah i was just like this is what i've been waiting for since i looked at pictures on the internet in like 2001 three when did it mine mind blowing and when we're getting all of these low rent parks your early california adventures and seeing what is what japan has uh yeah yeah you couldn't even like this is not what the company does now they still do this oh my god it's insane and then the second time we did like uh disneyland for most of the day and then did disney c we did that starlight pass after 6 p.m right from 6 to 10 we went to disney c but it was dead the second time well i mean that's good but it looks beautiful at night it's

i mean it looks beautiful in the day, but especially at nighttime. So for our level, the three of us level of nerd about theme parks, first time going, how many days do you recommend? I'd say minimum three. Hey, baby!

I didn't go more than three days because of my girlfriend, Marissa Strickland, former podcast guest. Marissa Strickland, of course. She likes theme parks enough to indulge me on international trips, of my girlfriend, Marissa Strickland, for her podcast. Marissa Strickland, of course. She likes theme parks enough to indulge me on international trips, but not enough that she would go if I wasn't there.

Right. Which will come up in a later part of this episode. There's another detail about Japan that I want to get to. Yes. Okay, so Mike said three. Mine was three. We're going to do three when we go there, hopefully next month. Jason said four. Scott said three. We're going to do three when we go there. Hopefully next month. Jason said four.

Scott said two. Yeah. Well, everyone is fucking made their voices heard on this. I had a great time doing two. I did every single ride. This is what the idea that it is like unreasonable that you are an enemy of the state. Somebody sent an all caps email and the title was scott has made a big mistake which i'm sorry if you're a fan of this podcast maybe don't send us threats i mean i did research

how like what the best way to like your plan of attack so it was like nobody goes in single rider lines there it's crazy there was like a two and a half three hour line for splash mountain there and we were the only people in the single rider line and the same with indiana jones at disney sea so like know the rides that are single rider if you're doing that okay sure and you sent me a very helpful email which thank you it's very it was not asked it's comprehensive it was not asked for but it was very much appreciated well should we say read all of it you're going well i'm going i mean there's a chance work Work stuff, something might come up. But yeah, as of right now, Lindsay and I are going next month.

And I'm going, evidently, in April. But I also, you never know. We shouldn't start promising. I don't want to whet the audience's appetite for my trip to Tokyo and then disappoint them. That's what I'm saying. People would be crushed. They would be so upset. So fingers crossed.

The wheels are starting to turn for both of us to get there. So anything else you can actually really like, we don't want anything spoiled. I understand. I didn't watch any ride throughs beforehand. I know very little. I didn't watch them either. I did end up for 20,000 leagues.

I know about it because we did an episode about it. But I still, I try to not let it really register in the brain too much. I'll read about stuff and I'll look at concept art. If I know I'm going there soon, like with this one, I just didn't want to see. Because that's the most fun. You can never get back that first time you go on a ride. I accidentally, I was watching something on YouTube the other day and tokyo came up i forget the ride i'm not even going to say or no i remember the rider but i i won't say uh exactly what it was in reference to but i like sat up and i went it

uses one ride system like i was like it revealed a little too i was like oh i i didn't realize this about like you know this tokyo disney sea ride and i was like oh i think i can kind of picture it now damn it i'm so curious i had a similar thing and i also won't say the ride but i was looking at a lift for this episode because we're dealing with an attraction with a with big giant animatronics and i was like what's what do people consider like the best animatronics or the you know in terms of those especially those giant you know the yeti or king kong or whatever and this list that i read the number one was a tokyo sea giant animatronic i feel like we all know which ride i don't know i suspect but i don't want to even say because I don't want to get a car.

I already, luckily because my short-term memory is dying steadily, I already don't remember the name of the- Okay, then I don't want to- I know which ride, but I don't know the name of the character. There are people in their cars right now screaming the name of the ride at the podcast. And they'll be like, they'll write an email like, Scott better remember what the name of the ride is or else he's dead. They'll find a way to make email subject lines be in red and dripping with blood.

Well, some of the best giant monster animatronic rides I found out after the fact were concept designed by the same guy. Like, I realized, like, there's like an auteur of like, you know, like a Tony Baxter. I feel like you could sort of see like what kind of rides he makes and i feel like it's hard to like figure out who makes rides because there isn't like an imdb for or maybe there is i there should be park rides yeah and there's this guy and i won't say the ride that we're talking about but i found out this ride that i think you're talking about he was the lead concept designer on that ride in tokyo right he did his first jobs were for making jaws and confrontation wow and he did jurassic park the ride and he did a private he can't he hasn't revealed what the ride is but there's one piece of concept art from beastly

kingdom that lost land and animal kingdom and it looks like a like a mine cart ride with a big dinosaur oh my gosh and i'm like oh so i like this guy's rides right who is that do you know his name tom thornton okay i think and he goes by thor and he's like big in the tiki community oh actually our local tiki joint in hollywood margaritaville sorry margaritaville different one okay uh tiki tea the tiny shack that is right nestled next to the scientology center that used to be a kct which is the saddest thing oh yeah brought to you by lucky strikes tiki tea brought to you by lucky strikes marlboro whatever brand you prefer hey they don't they don't allow you to smoke in there anymore is

that right no for like the last six years seven years okay it's much better uh because i hated it then but i'd be like all right well i like this decorated shack but now with whatever for decor he made their anniversary mug like he designs mugs and stuff and so he did it's like shaped kind of like the right the building oh man we give us a new guy to uh heroify on this podcast yeah he's great yeah we'll check out thor yeah hey neat i was just gonna say if the other few haven't heard of beastly kingdom there was gonna be a whole other section of animal kingdom with like mythical characters like a castle with a dragon and a roller coaster i think and there was a hedge maze where you'd find a unicorn at the end

which had some amazing technology where the unicorn would speak to you telepathically that's not a this is not a joke they They were going to do it where they were going to have it like the dialogue being bass tones. So you would literally feel it, the vibration as opposed to hear it. So like you'd go up to the unicorn at the end of finally, like you would find different mythical creatures in the maze, but then you'd finally get to the unicorn and he would like,

or he or she would tell you something, but it would, you wouldn't, it would be like, feel like it was in your mind. Wow. By bass tones, like vibrating words to you so you'd like feel it in your body as opposed to hear it there's nothing i want more than that land that world to exist oh i know so sad it's in the spot that avatar went though so i mean they're gonna have to figure out a different place for it but now it's not ip based so it'll never happen the the dragon coaster in uh islands of adventure lost continents i think was like the dueling oh

oh oh the concept i believe was born out of that kingdom and then when it got canceled the universal that makes sense the concept and the people who are working on it right i think so some vestiges of it right yeah because he was popping back and forth i guess or maybe he started at universal and then he moved to disney i think he just helped with like concept illustration and storyboarding for jaws and those right and confrontation but then he was like the designer of this ride at tokyo disney sea which is probably one of my favorite rides but we unnamed ride that we all think we know the name of but we won't say it spoiler alluding we are i understand though it's like it really yeah there's a magic to it and there's there's rides i've yeah i ended up seeing what 20 000 leagues was but i'm still now it makes

me so excited to go on it it doesn't ruin it for me there's never a line nobody likes that really the two times I've been it's like people are like yeah you can skip this even on the like the the websites that say like here are the best ones to visit it uh yeah it's really great it's really just a dark ride and it's it's with all all physical practical props which is cool cool um one more thing before we get done with this commercial for tokyo disney seriously uh i am looking forward to the teddy roosevelt lounge maybe the most of everything we stole some coasters from it you did we did and what does it say teddy roosevelt lounge on it or does it say it's got the logo of it yeah it's beautiful's beautiful. Everything there has their own. So every

dining facility, we thought about taking another thing, but we couldn't fit. I mean, also the coasters were cardboard, so it wasn't like a real thievery thing. I mean, we might not do that because... I also just asked at Jock Lindsay's in Orlando, like, could I take something

and they just pushed the stack over. Like, yeah, take as many as you want. They did not seem to care. I mean, we didn't, like, hide them or anything. But they have those, you know, like, cafeteria trays. Oh, the trays are crazy. Every restaurant has a themed tray. Really?

And there is a country bear tray. Michael R. Carlson. Just because, I mean, we all love the country bears. Yeah, that's right. Especially in my opinion. They're, like, alive and well in Tokyo Disneyland. disneyland in a way like yes people go to different shows we went to the christmas one we went to the regular one it's very weird because it switches between english and japanese i don't know that won't spoil it right hey i'm very excited but i wish i could have those traits

like they have a duffy tray oh yeah yeah well we'll get to that that's tough that's tough to sneak out and that feels like more of stealing i mean it's definitely it's 100 stealing for sure stealing i just really fest also the i don't i have no idea and just tell me you're just give me your like guttural reaction to these rides which i don't think we've talked about on the show uh poos honey hunt it's i know nothing about okay it's absolutely incredible it puts every other one of those rides to shame oh my god and the disneyland one isn't bad it's fine it's just kind of like it's not monsters inc bad right uh it's like i feel like it's a little little mermaid level yeah to me which i i'd rather have than not have but yes certainly yeah but honey hunt is like well they're all plush too so they look like stuffed

animals you're gonna gasp yourself i know i and they have i won't spoil anything yeah that it's it's great it's the best ride go there early that's the one that oh okay interesting monsters inc uh also really good yeah yeah i'm very excited about that yeah i've avoided knowing anything i'm just i'm glad to hear they're cool let me ask uh so have you spent did you spend much time exploring their hotels like their official disney hotels because that is stay there a thing i like to i like to you know explore the grounds and the lobbies and stuff yeah even at the hotels like i'm not staying in um do they have toiletries that jason could possibly put in a giant garbage bag uh probably i we didn't go into any hotels okay i don't i think that's the like my theme park nerd

level is not as interested in like the hotels and even the restaurants or that kind of like i really just love the rides and the theming and just being immersed in the world but it looks like japan and like i mean their hotels look like they're as nice as the theme parks sure yeah i mean that teddy roosevelt thing is in a huge cruise ship oh so steamer or something you know so it's like it's just an icon in the park and inside is a restaurant. And then it is just a, just one of the things in this park is a full ship. It's just, you know, among the dozens of attractions to check out. Crazy.

Oh, boy. One more tip. Unless you think we have blinders on. Oh, sorry. No, no, I didn't mean to. Oh, I was going to say, uh uh we recognize too that like in one of the most amazing countries in the world like just full of cool stuff what is this apology to japan for us only caring about the cultural Japan and the good people at audible need to be

called out in this podcast we're going to japan too but this isn't a podcast about japan it's a theme park it's not japan the. It's not Japan the ride. Wait, no. Never mind. That joke fell apart immediately. That's okay. That's fine. You're a good person.

That's what matters. Oh, my tip was for English speakers like yourselves who want cool theme park memorabilia. You know there's a Tower of Terror at DisneySea. With custom story. It's it's it's amazing it's great uh they have a handout for people in other languages that you have to ask for and i think we just happened on it and it's themed and it's like a history of the hair like the high tower hotel right and it has like the legend of shuriki utundu like this evil tiki idol and stuff that is the theme of the thing so even if you don't like spooky drop rides or just go in the

line it's cool and they'll give you a thing so you can follow along cool and it's better than anything you can buy right geez but it's but that's a little secret menu it's just yeah we never would have known english-speaking stuff and like the design is really beautiful and they just go all out that's great i think tokyo is the only place where i'd be tempted to sit and watch a show i i skip shows everywhere but shows are like awesome there we watched phantasmic there it was different okay yeah that's all i will say oh neat and it's at disney sea oh yeah in the main lagoon yeah cool I'm excited to see Duffy and all of his friends. You mean all the people dressed as Duffy?

Well, everybody there is dressed as Duffy. But I'm just talking like Duffy and his friend Shelly May and his friend Gelatoni and his friend Stella Lou and their bird mailman. Marissa and I waited in line to get you guys plush when we were there. Yeah, they're lovely. You guys got me Tippy Blue, the bird mailman. Duffy's mailman. Tippy was almost sold out.

Well, Tippy's a very popular character yeah i feel like they're not pushing tippy as hard as they used to i agree i think tippy has gotten lost in the new because there's new characters like stella lu and what's the new character oh cookie but cookies hong kong exclusive and ulo ulo is an exclusive to alani yeah so duffy has friends are exclusive to other parks but i think that they are overshadowing duffy's bird mailman, Tippy Blair. You think some news is going to break about Tippy? You think he's about to be Me Too'd?

You know what I mean? That's what I'm saying. Possibly. They're downplaying their association with him. That makes sense. Yeah, they're trying to distance themselves. I get it. What did you do, Tippy Blue?

Oh, Me Blue. That's better. I said Me Tippy. Hi. Wasn't a pun. I really thought if somebody's getting me to do would have been gelatoni the italian painter cat he just seems like he's very like vivacious and maybe you know he's a little bit too forward boundaries and that's a good thing about i guess

that's a good point about gelatoni anyway he's a good on that a good cat what is he he's a cat he's italian italian the paintbrush all All right. A good cat, Gelatoni. With his good tail. We're talking about a different critter today. A different critter of the deep. Yeah. We're talking about old Spielberg's old pal, Jaws. And I find it very fun when we throw out,

when somebody who i'm like yeah i know i know your big theme park nerd throwing out an open-ended assignment of topic i'm always excited to see what's going to come back and uh and this this is a great one and i and i but i think it's interesting that this is opposed to all the disney stuff as i'm curious about your uh your personal associations with jaws yeah i think it was very hard to pick because it was between like jaws and just efteling in general yeah oh yeah yeah but that's it happily we'll do that we'll do that oh boy great but jaws so i grew up like loving giant monsters like godzilla and then like king kong and jaws

and i think it wasn't until recently that i realized that i think i went on the universal studios tram tour first and that's why i liked jaws and so before you saw the movie yes so i like would obsessively watch jaws and at the time when i was younger i was like jaws 2 is better uh because there's more shark like as a kid i was like there's more shark that's why it's a better movie that feels like you could write an article right now on the internet and people will lose their mind like why jaws 2 is better than jaws 1 and then people would get really mad and then you get a lot of like hate but it would get a lot of clicks because it's like an outrageous view so i think maybe do that i mean

earnestly i think jaws is a much better movie than yeah yeah but i'm saying for clicks yeah and i want the clicks i'm looking for the clicks so So if you find me, click me. A whole very angry political movement will stem from this article. It's the most important thing politically going on right now. Yeah. It's the Jaws versus Jaws 2 debate. It could be like the revisionist history about the Star Wars prequels is what I'm saying. You could start that movement.

Okay. I got to go, guys. Immediately. Just bail on this altogether no this has been great and thank you for having me but i gotta go i can't go anywhere near this uh but i like that your child brain just like is on effect you aren't nobody's you haven't bought into the greater narrative you just are you that that was just like a pure kid opinion you have that's very nice yeah yeah and sharks as a kid.

You know, like I really was into just sharks in general. I have like a cassette tape of like different types of sharks being described to me that I fall asleep to, which makes me sound like a sociopath. Like you're trying to like get their power somehow subliminally into your brain. Yeah, I would stare at it with my eyes wider than you can imagine just holding fingers to temples repeating some words backwards did you remember like what do you can you like remember what was on the tape did you listen to it so much that you kind of have like an encyclopedic uh pedic shark knowledge now it looks like you don't i know i mean i remember there were tiger sharks and hammerheads. And they were just described sharks. And, you know, like, if they stop swimming, they sink.

Oh, interesting. They're attracted to blood. They have, like, a good sense of smell. But also, no, not really. I don't know. It sounds like you retained some of it. Yeah, I got some of it hanging out. Did you like street sharks?

I did, but they creeped me out. Yeah, there was a weird vibe about just roided out screaming like they were just too gross for rollerblading yeah pick a lane aggressive yeah turtles much more laid back than the street sharks street sharks looked like they would beat the shit out of you a lot of biker mice from mars also too aggressive yeah biker mice from mars well after all to mont the biker mice from mars when biker bice for mars were hired by the rolling stones to police their concert yeah we all remember that oh my god anyway sharks back to sharks did you see me i because i didn't see like jaws until i was like around like end of high school start of college but i would have ridden

the ride about a dozen times before that i saw the movie probably when i was too young to see the movie okay um if if i were like a parent now i'd be like no you're not allowed to see that people get bitten in half there's like a leg that floats by a kid dies um so probably it was like at least like 10 or maybe eight um but i was so into the ride that i think it wasn't that scary to me yeah um and so it was like at least like 10 or maybe eight. But I was so into the ride that I think it wasn't that scary to me. Yeah. And so it was first the tram tour because I grew up in Los Angeles, which feels like, you know, instant access to theme parks. But as I grew up in like in high school, I would because Universal offseason, especially then there were no rides really compared to Disneyland.

It feels like i mean there's yeah yeah it really was the tour i mean the universal slowly transitioned from the tour was a three-hour experience it was most of my day yeah they had a break you would eat lunch and i remember there was the incredibly shrinking woman telephone set oh yeah i never did that you you basically halfway through the tour you would stop and then there was like you could get lunch or just sit around and then you would get back on the tram and then go around and see other stuff there's a little like cart like you'd go down to the lower area where there's limited stuff to do so you would eventually have to get back on and do

i want to say it was by like the horror movie sets oh yeah you know you were at studio i did it oh yeah uh-huh i auditioned for it really did not get it didn't get it why did you do it around the same time i 2005 okay so it was like after freshman year of college in the summer i wanted i wanted a really fun summer job i auditioned went to i think it was like a radisson uh it would have been the garland possibly the garland yeah the beverly garland yes it was the beverly garland holiday and that's what it was yeah yeah and you know it was like a bad improv audition so it was like i mean you talked yeah i remember there was a yeah i had to like uh which i was not super improv comfortable but like for this job i I swear to God, I will,

I will own this moment. You only had to do, you know, you only had to improvise for like 30 seconds or something, but even that was a little nerve wracking. I got to like whatever, I don't know, there were like three auditions maybe.

And I got to one where you had to memorize a block of dialogue and go do it for one person in an office, just like in front of their desk. Yeah. And I got to that stage and I, I beefed it whoa really and that specifically and you could feel it like disappear well because i was so afraid like they gave you they handed you something to memorize there oh yeah yeah yeah

like audition how long did you have to memorize it how long like an hour or less much less less yeah and i memorized it cold yeah because that was the it was meant to convey this is the gig we're gonna hand you new stuff you'll have no time to prepare you're just gonna have to do it on the fly and i remember mine was it involved me having to know the names of all five of the desperate housewives which i again i had like i i still don't know it and i remember on the tour being so slow and method like nicolette sheridan terry hatcher i like because i truly i've never seen that show i truly don't care but i like if all right if this is what it takes i i want this so bad mine was about the war of the worlds 2005 spielberg

movie oh because that would have been like new the set opened and they drive through it and stuff so i had to memorize like something about that and i choked for later i'll just bring it out oh my god i have the studio tour guide manual wow with me this is so i think i can find the part that you probably would have had to do and i have so many it's a lot of pages i have instant sympathy for you here because i what i recall is that that stretch was one of the stretches that you had to do word for word because it had been signed off on by some spielberg lawyer and there was like this verbiage that was i like it was you know you had to remember is it heart pounding yes bone rattling this is this why you didn't get the job i mean yes this was the

audition that i failed and i also just didn't memorize it well like i think i just forgot a lot of it and i was so nervous yeah yeah um here okay i got it it. I'm like, should you read it to make up for it? Let's see if you can handle it now. Adolf yourself of your sins. Take it from, right? It's this paragraph and then the next one. This amazing set. Do you think they'll hire me if I do a good enough job now?

If anyone's listening from Universal. While you're on hiatus, you need a job. Oh, you're right. One of your former... A former valedictorian is recommending this exciting new voice, Justin Michael, and I think you should hear this. All right, guys.

Imagine that we are heading up... We're making our way up the hill toward the Psycho House. For some reason, it says that, but then now, you know, heading up. We're making our way up the hill toward the psycho house. For some reason, it says that. But then now coming up, one of the most impressive movie sets ever created. The spectacular crash site from Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. We're going to take you right into the heart of this colossal set, stopping our tram for a few moments to allow you to get some amazing pictures. So hang on tight

and have your cameras ready wow you zoom in this carnage plane crashed in the neighborhood yeah this is clip 83 or 84 yeah either way i have a dealer's choice i i'm assuming though the only difference would be that the script now says what do you think jimmy and then we cut to jimmy fallon and he says like whoa the plane crashed that's crazy and then it's him in a leather jacket screaming my kids or he's doing the risky business oh yeah cruise uh dance can i say what's in here in between there's there's some direction do not underlined bolded uh point out mother and do not mention the psycho house as you drive by what as you make your way around the house and as the where the world sets w-o-t-w uh sets come into view the only sound

should be that of the music nothing more all caps oh my god see this is that legal shit i think i think this script had been approved by team spielberg and you could not but now i don't remember what my problem with what you just read was but it was something like is it amazing pictures or is it eye-popping pictures like the adjectives were so hard to keep straight in my head and i was worried they told you you could be secret shopped any time that you're doing this tour so you were always afraid at this point these this startling experience will allow you to get some dazzling photos? No, wrong. Fire. You just get thrown off the tram in the middle and it careens into the earthquake.

Your chair is an ejector chair. You fall into Falls Lake. Okay, I have a couple. First off, that War of the Worlds movie is not very good. Second off, I thought it was okay until like the last 40 minutes. Sure. It's a well-engineered engine

of terror okay um do you think that spielberg uh and and his cohorts were like do not talk about psycho house or mother because of there's that famous anecdote where hitchcock was too embarrassed did not want to meet spielberg do you know this is a jaws thing hitchcock did a voice in the original version of like the jaws portion of the studio tour and spielberg wanted to meet hitchcock when he was still a lot and hitchcock said i am too embarrassed they paid me a million dollars to do a voice on the studio tour ride, and I feel like a whore. What? Yeah.

I have never. What is this story? I don't know how these things connect. He was too embarrassed to meet Spielberg. He was too embarrassed to meet Spielberg. What? Because he felt like a sellout for being paid so much money to do a chunk of narration. Spielberg's all over the tour.

Why would that be a problem? Ron Howard later was the host of it. I'm going to fact check this. Those walls have been knocked down. Directors can be all over the tram, even if you're Stephen Summers, writer-director of The Mummy, who I remember,

my joke on the tram was always, he's putting the finishing touch on a model of like a tomb or something and then he comes at hi i'm steven summers writer director of the mummy and then i would stop it right there as if that's what the entire clip was i'd set it up like and now right steven summers writer director of the mummy hi i'm steven summers writer director of the mummy the end we're live remixing like a youtube clip yeah yeah yeah that was very fun yeah essentially yeah you could create your own cues that you had a lot of

flexibility as a as a guide but here i am making you jealous of the the the so many fun audio visual opportunities i went on that ride so much as a kid i went because i had a season pass in between every so i went on it over and over and over and. I went, cause I had a season pass in between every, so I went on it over and over and over and over. So I think I was so, it was this lofty thing to me. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, like SNL, like the ultimate stage. That was my SNL. I found the story. Jason's correct.

It's a crazy story. He says, uh, Spielberg tried to meet with Hitchcock many times over the years. And then, uh, according to Bruce Dern, who like tried to meet with hitchcock many times over the years and then uh according to bruce dern who like had tried to make the meeting happen hitchcock was like isn't that the boy who made the fish movie i could never sit down and talk to him uh because i look at him and

i feel like such a whore replied hitchcock because he's the voice at the universal studios theme park they paid a million dollars i took it and i did it i'm such a whore i can't sit down and talk to the boy who did the fish movie i couldn't even touch his hand i don't really even know british manner like weird you know it's crazy i don't even quite understand what he's talking about i kind of don't either but then he's being like passive-aggressive too it sounds like he's you know the name of the movie. This was the most popular movie when it came out. This was the time when movie actors would do TV shows, they were slumming it.

Right. That's true. And he was an old creep, let's be honest. Yeah, he was a weird man. So he definitely had some hang-ups. Yeah, he had some creepy hang-ups. Yeah. Just like in Creeps.

You know, the good people at Audible, the good man, Alfred Hitchcock was a creep. Some hang-ups. Yeah, he had some creepy hang-ups. Just having creeps. You know, the good people at Audible, the good man, Alfred Hitchcock. One more doesn't want to offend people of Japan, and he doesn't want to offend Alfred Hitchcock. It's understandable. There's something else in the script. Oh, just that you did write down in pencil, amazing and incredible. It looked like the words were- I did?

It looked like you wanted to remember. Yes, that's right. This is a real problem I had, was remembering that it's an amazing set for an incredible scene. You fell into the worst trap possible in a tour guide audition. I feel like this is some...

This is Marin failing his Lorne meeting because of some monkey comment. some monkey comment sit down with the lauren of universal studios yes mike sington head of the tour guide if you're listening uh we may have a sit down repair repair the damage um jason what's all this about then he'll say how far did you get in the process of the audition? Oh, I waited the three hours for the first round. Yeah, they really treat you like garbage. It's such a cattle call. So, 2008, 2009, I think I tried two years, like recession time.

So, they said there was three times more than there normally was. And that's a fun job to have. Yeah, and I got to the like, alright, we're going to start the timer at a minute. When you hear a ding, you're done. And you have to just pitch yourself. And they didn't prep you for that

moment at all? They told us that's what it was going to be. But they're like, by the way, we'll let you finish the sentence, but like the ding is the ding. You know, they weren't giving you finish the sentence. But like the ding is the ding. You know, they weren't giving you a lot of leeway. The ding is the ding. So you made it to that and that was it?

Yeah, I did. Do you remember how you pitched yourself? I just talked about like, because I had done a bunch of UCB classes and some shows at that point. And I talked a little bit about that. I talked about going to Orlando. That's where you lost them i i berkeley okay interesting uh yeah that is probably you just got done explaining the curriculum of ucb 201 and they were like ding time's up save it for your therapist in 10 years

buddy but i was about to tell you about who also times you and says times don't you want to hear about group games well all right i'm gonna vouch for both of y'all let's get let's get justin and jason some jobs you now and now in your mid-30s i'm sure this is a perfect job to have and not a uh depressing i would happily do it once yeah that's how i i always say that if i could do it like once once a summer i'd be so happy what a what a fun thing yeah i'm trying to figure out how to also to put it in snl terms because truly you know the tour is the you know it's it's the the ultimate stage if i could come back and host quote there we go that's what i want you know i'm i did

my time like you know i'm not you become a recurring host you'd be like a baldwin or yeah tom hanks i want to be the alec baldwin of the universal tram tour uh you can quote me on that uh um well anyway i'm sorry yeah you really you fell into such a trap here uh um but uh uh well i also i imagine another job you might have enjoyed that we all might have enjoyed is being a skipper in the yes in the florida i wanted to have that job so bad yeah yeah i know a friend of a friend of the show, Bugmane, also a long aspiring guide. I'm not sure why he didn't. He was down in the Florida area. That seems like an easy slam dunk for him.

And I'd love to see him do it now. Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh. Oh, man. Maybe he'll do it on the show. Maybe it's only simulation. But anyways, well, how do we tackle this thing in general uh i i mean well like to touch on the universe to touch on the hollywood version first of all you but you might add the same thing as me where you go to

disney for the cutesy stuff but if you want to get scared you go to hollywood yeah i was like even by the time i was brave enough to do it i still was very scared of the main tour attractions of king kong of jaws and of and of earthquake scott what if i were to tell you i have a quote uh about that exact topic let's hear from a book so i uh I pulled a bunch of quotes from the book Universal vs. Disney, The Unofficial Guide to American Theme Parks' Greatest Rivalry by Sam Genoway. And there's a large portion of this book about Universal Orlando being opened.

And one of the designers, let me find this here. So there's a lot of designers talking about how you know universal orlando opening was a disaster on a lot of levels but they they were really jacked up to work on it this is peter alexander a former universal head creative uh alexander had worked at disney and had learned quote the the thing about Disney was it was very soft and family, but it was big production value. It is kind of nice, but it doesn't have any edge. Finding that edge was how Universal was going to win.

Terry Winnick was confident. He said, the Pirates of the Caribbean is for wimps. Climbing the treehouse, that's for wimps. Space Mountain, no big deal. We got King kong we got earthquake we got back to the future we got jaws we are going to terrorize these people these are going to be rides that are going to scare the it just says expletive i'm assuming it means shit or fuck uh we're going to scare the shit out of people this is not for wimps

uh wow we bullied into going to this park? Yeah. Because I was a nerd for sure. Still am. Technically. This should have been. Textbook definition. Glasses, it's true. Yeah, glasses.

If that's the full definition, then yes, you get glasses. Talking, you know, excitedly about a thing that I love. I guess that's more geek territory. But this is, I feel like this is how, like in the early days of universal doing more themed entertainment they at least internally they were like yeah we're we're fucking jacked yeah yeah it seems like you just did a bunch of cocaine and ran up to like a podium or something a lot of this seems like so much of this and the story is about trying to open mgm to a lesser extent like it seems like oh yeah 1980s cocaine okay yeah okay so you did so everybody involved you were or at least the leads of the disney mgm

universal turf war uh that cocaine was a major player i mean i i it could have helped it seemed like a lot of long nights like saturday night live some of the best material in the early days was fueled by well it's aged so well what if there was a ride where there was an earthquake man you cannot come up with that stuff without being on drugs we are going to terrorize these people i love that that's so funny that's something uh um well and i also it seems like the universal strategy also became like what if a what if a big thing jumps out at you and jaws is the first one of those which led to king kong which preceded the the t-rex and in jurassic park um i think the i

think that the jaws on the hollywood tramam Tour is a crucial moment in the development of Universal. Because it's the first Spielberg property. It's really the first original thing based on a specific blockbuster film. I was looking at what did the tram have up until then. They had the Flash Flood and they had the Avalanche. But those were not a property and jaws is this this massive game changing so their first ip kind of based yeah yeah and now disney is kind of equally ip i mean always was because it's the you know they're all the rides are based on the animated films but like you know yeah current 70s 80s blockbusters jaws

is kind of the first strike in that that world being having a presence yeah it did seem cool like universal like it was cool that they had all of these ips at the time whereas now i'm bummed that everything is completely ip riddled yeah man i miss the days of having just a generic you know expedition everest or something right yeah like when will we get that again right uh well that the answer to that is maybe never or when there's like a giant new park and they can like make one of the rides in the new park a non-specific thing yeah but probably like a new ride one off or a new land it's always going to be ip or at least for like the next 20 years i mean that seems like too when when is universal gonna dial back on screen rides

the answer is oh when they have to make a whole new park and they gotta switch up the tricks at least a little well hopefully that's coming soon the rumors say you know a couple years yeah but that's the thing really about jaws that's so cool is that i mean the the the tram uh originally and then the the florida one uh that you're in physical environments and in the case of florida a huge physical environment that lake is massive and twists and turns and there's the indoor section and several outdoor sections um just like the the the place making there is is very impressive um it's it's really it's kind of like universal's answer to the jungle cruise yeah that's what i love about it is that it feels like a theme park ride a theme park nerds twist on a like an old favorite it's like let's do the

scary version of the jungle cruise it's gonna basically look like the same kind of boat and start as innocuously but then things go wrong and the animals will actually attack which i love i mean it's just like a series of like horror movie set pieces yeah yeah yeah and it gets genuinely scary yeah uh the heat is very hot uh i don't want to i don't want to go out of order here i guess guess. But the final state of Jaws is so crazy. The stories about making the heat are crazy. Where they would like, all right, I'm going to get in the boat, turn the fire up as high as it can go.

I think we read the same article. Yeah, and then dial it back just a little. And it's so hot. Like my brother came off once like very upset at how hot it was and people were convinced for years i got burned i got hair like it seems my hair which is like partially a mental trick and then one thing i read was like you also have to remember a lot of people don't put on enough suntan lotion so a lot of people were sunburned and then had intense heat thrown at them so their brain thinks they've got like third degree burns right like yeah it was crazy

oh sorry just also the the uh the petroleum used to make these fires uh apparently cost universal studios two million dollars a year wow fortune yeah and they shut it down i in 2005 to like 2007 it only ran seasonally like when it had the most crowds because florida had been hit by hurricanes and gas was so expensive down there it was just not it didn't make financial sense for them to ride jaws but everyone got mad at them because they're like we like jaws run jaws. We're on Jaws. We want to be burned alive. We want to be burned alive. I want to leave the Marines, but bring back the gasoline. I think that was the first time I went on that ride.

Really? Was when they had no fire effects. Oh, interesting. So I read about it because I was like a rabid little theme park nerd. And I was like, I can't wait for this part because it's supposedly like the largest still largest controlled fire in a theme park ride really is that like that moment that's like the i don't know like it's right before the climax of the ride but it feels like the biggest effect is you know like whatever the sharks bumps into some like gas tanks or

something and then yeah attacks it and it like there's a ring of fire that looks like it surrounds your exit essentially yes oh yeah the blockster path out of there yeah yeah yeah yeah i was always under the impression that fire is caused by the uh skipper firing a grenade at it and that might be it i don't remember but it was always hard to tell it was always it was a lot going on a lot of commotion even in like the videos i watched it was hard to tell um can i read one other little part of the to talk about hollywood again this is very funny i should say in our group text the other day i was debating because scott was like oh we're including hollywood and i didn't even think about the studio guide stuff but i was like well there's so much with orlando i don't we have the time i think one leads into the other and i also think i have a big

book of green loose leaf paper that i've been uh waiting to bust out for a long time blue and some is salmon um you know among the other things in the i forget what all the colors are but some of the other things they give you as a guide is just a list of all of universal's movies and tv shows oh my gosh which i don't know know what horror has transpired on your tram where you are stuck somewhere and having to resort to, well, you may also remember Semi-Tough from May 1980 with Bruce McGill and David Hasselhoff. Of course, they're on the same time as stone with dennis weaver also one season

finally oh good okay stone fan uh more stone info please uh i don't uh think i have any throws a cup at my head how did you make it from so far away that was three cars back they passed it up to you car by car um so i also have in front of me the script of the jaws experience and one odd thing about it is that really both of them the interaction of of the shark and fire however it happens is it a gas tank that dips into the water is it a gun being fed the idea and in the films the idea that the shark can trigger explosions and stuff is so odd and forced but so delightful and just from the actual script um you watch the guy so so you you pull up there's a police diver in the water making sure that there are no more sharks and that you can pass through and view

this empty lake uh without incident but he gets eaten and blood gurgles up uh so you were supposed to say i have an idea why don't we just pull up next to that gasoline tank stage direction with approved sarcasm i'm sure we'll be safe there. I really like that. Approve. The lack of edginess of the script to where that has to... We will allow it. You can comment on it. But then what transpires is this strange.

He takes a yellow barrel, which then triggers a gas pump to start spraying everywhere, and explosions go off. You tilt towards it right like yeah kind of like breaks a little bit and you slide down yes although i've heard that that has been it's been untiltified which is a complaint apparently that was always the scariest part yeah because like the shark would jump at you as you were like much closer to it yes yeah

yeah and it brings everybody uh closer down into it and gives people on the other side a better view but i used to pick my best seat uh based on king kong and jaws you gotta go on the right smart right yeah on the right side second car okay why second car i don't know it's just where it would stop so you'd be right with kong like if you were in the first car you were too far might be a little ahead of it uh Second car was at least like the first half. This is when King Kong was the big animatronic Kong that they ended up turning into Kongfrontation. Before they burned it down mysteriously for insurance.

Right, exactly. The real example of burning things down. I've been trying to find where the rumors from that started because I remember hearing about them burning it down for insurance or even that the Kong ride was too expensive to maintain well there's a joke on 30 rock about it uh and then there are i forget there's web websites bumper car boys and uh ferris wheel.net and i think i mean stuff like that i think is when i was i when i was reading it looking for an original original print of what dreams may come?

That burned in the fire? Yes, I just remember there was a list of like half a dozen original prints they lost and the only one I remember is what dreams may come. Down in the back lot fire, really. Because it singed like one of the warehouses to like one of the storage warehouses.

Yeah, the film vault. And the original reel will walk through the underworld looking for its way back to the land of the living toy houses too. Yeah, the film vault. And the original joke will walk through the underworld looking for its way back to the land of the living so it can be viewed again. The joke was on 30 Rock that that theme park fire didn't destroy the stuff

we wanted it to. But then also, like within a year, they were like, oh, we got a new King Kong ride ready to go, which is I think a big reason everyone was very suspicious about that. that's pretty coincidental that king kong burned down

oh but peter jackson's here to introduce a new skull island y'all like screens yeah sure how many y'all like screens oh yeah look like stone and screens. Yeah, also that there was a property that burnt down where there was a new one recently. Yes. As opposed to earthquake burning down or what have you. Right. Interesting. Right. Suspicious.

We don't know. I don't know anything. We don't know. These are just rumors. We're not typically conspiracy theorists. I guess the fact that I said bug main is making us go to... The last time, funny enough, the last time I was on this tram tour, I was sitting next to bug main.

Oh, is that right? Yeah. Interesting. And right before the Jaws section, we both kept going, the shark isn't working. The shark is... Because they keep playing that on the video over and over again about how the shark isn't working. I'm looking right now at clip number 67 the shark isn't working which richard dreyfus the shark isn't working he gets

even more nasally because he's he's already nasally richard dreyfus and then he goes more nasally to be an intercom the shark isn't working um and then at the end well one of my favorite things to say on the tram in case you're wondering Bruce, the ferocious man-eating shark, was named after Steven Spielberg's attorney. I remember. They had been saying that since the early 90s. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I went on it as a kid, and that is how I learned that fact.

I remember telling people at school that, and I was like, you know, it's named after the lawyer. Isn't that funny? We all like lawyer jokes right very little evergreen comedy but one of the top ones is lawyers yeah yeah yeah works for kids works for adults yeah um so so you've got this attraction which is still i feel i feel like for a long time was universal's primary iconic yeah attraction having that shark pop out at you used in the ending of mall rats oh right we all

yeah no confrontation was or the kong was in the wizard and this was in mall rats our two finest films yes in all of cinema feature at the egyptian i also like to say that the shark the jaws lake played into what i consider one of the greatest cinematic moments the murder she wrote that's what i was thinking her bike in cabot cove that's another odd thing yeah they love that moment on the tram getting the only reason i know it's one of the greatest generation they were a less grim note, they were also, but how much of, that zone of the back lot is like three buildings. Right, it's not that big. Nine seasons of Murder, She Wrote.

I think it was just the theme song. Yeah, I was gonna say, it's the opening intro and maybe that's it. Yeah, you just see the shark pop out in the background. She tumbles in. And there's a big explosion

and then that's the end of the Murder, She Wrote credits. I'm sure there's also an episode where Jessica's trying to solve a murder on the backlot. If you were a drama made by Universal at any point in the 70s and 80s, for some reason they would find a reason for the characters like, you're going to the backlot this episode. Oh, what part of the backlot are we using?

No, you're using all of it. The backlot's playing the backlot. They were, MCA was cheap as shit but also i loved those episodes yeah they also like the fans love them anyway uh yeah mischief on a backlot night rider did it twice they did one that i watched before this where uh hasselhoff's punching somebody and he rips their mask off. And I think it was Robert Englund, the Freddy Krueger, doing a cameo on Knight Rider. Well, A-Team too.

A-Team must follow that. Oh, yes, you're right. Did A-Team ever go to the Green Planet or anything in Meaty T's Teacher, Botanicus? Ride wasn't there yet. I wish. Too soon. It'll be later then.

Nothing ever used that practically, I don't think. That sucks. But Jaws a couple times. And one of my favorite moments in all the film and television happened in the jaws lake which is uh from the the feature film the harlem globetrotters on gilligan's island has anyone seen this i've never seen it i want to now i want to give maybe doug jones credit or a friend doug jones for possibly having found this this clip or made me aware of it but the there is a part where the harlem globetrotters plane has crashed which

eventually i assume leads to them getting to gilligan's island and they are stuck in a raft and all but and all they have with them are a bunch of basketballs and they're questioning how will they survive especially if something a bigger goes awry and then the shark pops out and they're all like what do we do and then curly or one of them goes but here follow my lead and he shoots a free throw into the shark's mouth and then they all do and the shark's mouth full fills with basketballs and then it subsides and then you hear it burp so you know that it doesn't desire people it doesn't choke on basketballs it just so they didn't kill it they just made him no the burp lets you know that they did not choke a shark to death

with basketballs with leather in its mouth but it is like that's one of my favorite kinds of things is like tortured how creating a problem that can only be solved by basketball players. Man, movies used to be good. What happened? That's how I felt. I was like all this like mopey ass dramedy about standups being sad or whatever. Like, give me a show where basketball players have to shoot baskets into the mouth of a

shark why can't things be fun anymore we can all agree on that yeah we all agree i'm more sharks full of basketballs and i think it is interesting you can draw a direct line of like oh that shaw's attraction was a big hit and that led to get them getting spielberg on board for like hey we want to build a theme park like that is the only reason Orlando happened, was Spielberg signed on. And then they had to figure out, they had Earthquake at that point, they had Kong on the tram tour.

How do we expand these two-minute experiences into five-minute experiences? Yeah, I remember that idea blowing my mind, having been to hollywood first and going there okay so so jaws and an earthquake and king kong are just these like stops they're just part of the tram tour and that they all now are fully fleshed out uh full experiences i was so excited because you know living so far away i guess i did go to florida when i was really young and i was excited about like nickelodeon i I don't think we went on the Jaws ride and maybe it was shut down.

It happened. Maybe it was like close to when it opened. Cause there's like, you know, famously like how Jaws was, you know, riddled with problems. That opening Jaws is crazy.

The 1990 version that only ran for like five or six months and was mostly broken down. But the two effects that I wish still existed i mean they never worked or only one of them is the i guess the finale was the shark would come bite your boat and drag it and there's some footage of it attempting to do it online it looks like shit it looks bad in theory amazing yes which is such a cool like immersive way of pulling you in and and then they blew them up like the end of Jaws with like big meaty chunks. Yeah.

Yeah. And the chunks all had to get collected into some pipe. And then. And then, and so that they can be recycled and reused. Why didn't this work? This is like, anytime there's these, right, like this is similar to like the Indiana Jones effect that doesn't work, which lasted for like a month,

which is where. Well, it was, it was when the temple's collapsing, all of a sudden all this rock, like old rock would fall in front of the car and it would explode because it was ice for but they like dyed it with tea or something and it only lasted for like a month or two so anytime they try to do these cool things like things that'll blow up and separate then they have to collect it or whatever they just it never works for some reason like they haven't i can't think of one application on a modern ride like this did they do that on the right like was that in a like audience open yeah yeah the ride for a couple a month or two maybe or a couple weeks and somebody

there's like one there's a real very conspiracy conspiracy theory type video where like their paws circle there that is that silhouette that you see is ice falling simulating a grumbling temple yeah because it was a giant like crazy industrial sized ice machine that would dump ice every whatever 10 minutes or something could fat like freeze ice it was for uh vegetables it was for freezing like stuff on a farm like if you had to flash freeze vegetables it was just a giant freezer or a giant ice maker essentially so like yeah another situation where it was like it just at a certain point the water pooled and it was a big problem for them to come in and like dig it out after a while there was a rumor that when we were kids that people would say that you could go through one of the three doors in the beginning. And they were like, I went through the right door. And I was like, always look.

And so like to this day, I'm like, so did they ever use the other doors? It seems like they obviously don't use the other doors. Well, they shift them over. They shift them over. Don't they? Can you go through any? It's all the same entrance. Yeah.

It's all the same entrance, but they shift the door over to make it look like it's a different door. They haven't done it in a while. I feel like I always go centered. always go centered yeah i mean the last so many years retired the um the jaws uh uh the show director adam b's arc summed it up this way you can imagine how complex it must be to get one giant mechanical watercraft to swim up and bite another mechanical watercraft which is moving with absolute precision hundreds of times a day yeah that was the thinking but they tried it they tried god bless the ambition and that it's going to be the the sheer acreage and amount of physical space that you're wandering through and multiple and water vehicles doing it in water especially i'm no engineer but that to me seems like an extra hard thing to do that was

the problem with the movie like yeah they were i mean it wasn't salt water in the ride but it's just like it it feels like a very funny thing that should have been obvious like yeah remember this movie that was had horrible set problems right uh're going to make a ride where there are multiple versions of the shark, and it has to do it over and over again. But you didn't learn. Also, we have never built water rides before. Yeah. Universal, MCA design, whatever it was called at the time.

This was their first attempt at building not just a theme park, but rides of this caliber. Yeah. Wow. And it really does mirror the film in a lot of ways and probably the people you're accusing of being coked up are the guy the people in charge or they're like the mayor they're like it doesn't the the park doesn't shut down we got summer visitors it's the fourth of july i i another terry winnick had been designing mca

attractions longer than anybody and he said it was never going to be ready that was the same story that jay in this case jay stein former head of universal that jay heard from me every year when i was all by myself you are approving it in january you want me to open and open it in june and i am sleeping in a motorhome my crews are working 24 hours a day we're all on cocaine that's for sure jay's attitude was we're going to open it because we said we are going to open it and we need to open it and we will fix it afterward at least adderall if not was adderall around in the 80s they crushed it up and they just mixed it all together yeah lutes were still around chill out. I guess they would chill you.

Well, the coke would get you up the Adderall. That's how you would go to sleep in your motorhome in a dirt field. After being up for 72 straight hours, you would take a loot and calm down in your motorhome. So what we're saying is the people at the top were like concerted, active coke heads. But the employees who are good people were only forced to do a lot of cocaine i don't say that if you're a coke head you're a bad person no that's it was just a necessity yes they don't have to be like an 80s businessman or evil businessman from yes they were contractually obliged to do coke yeah yeah it's just part of you know keeping up the it's like having a nice

car if you're a major executive right you also have to have a nice coke habit you gotta do this apparently the original show writer was steven spielberg's roommate old roommate whoa which is insane yeah the failed version of it like heavily designed and getting universal florida open it's wild it's it's crazy uh uh so all right universal opens in, or is it 91? It's in 1990, yeah. 1990. Time Magazine called the park Universal Swamp of Dreams. The Orlando Sentinel reported, they came, they stood, they left mad. Wow. Wow.

So, the big three, which are all, this is something I find interesting, too, that it's these three attractions that are based on components of the tram tour, all of which you get on essentially a tram-esque vehicle. In the case of Jaws, a big multi-row kind of pontoon boat. Earthquake, it's kind of literally a tram, and then you're on an elevated train in King Kong. All three of them had gigantic problems right and and jaws was the worst by far the other ones ended up looking better but still like in and and there was by the way to give the whole history uh i think if i'm correct universal orlando they had like they had broken ground they had started planting seeds and then eisner rushed in and said us too we're also doing a studio park and theirs was

less ambitious they they obviously have done this stuff more so they got it open quicker it was probably chintzy original mgm studios and they tried to do that like two and a half hour tram with lunch in the middle. And it lasted. Oh, yeah. It barely lasted at all. Did they have Catastrophe Canyon open at launch or no? I think they did. Because that was the only exciting part of that.

Exactly. It was their earthquake-esque. Right. Yeah. But I think they walked you through the costume warehouse. I think they took you around a little more. Maybe. Maybe.

Because I remember always being on the tram. They made it last. It was a walking park. They made it last. All they had was the tram experience and the great movie ride, and that was what the park opened with. Maybe the animation building. Muppets?

No, the Muppets came later. No, honey, I shrunk the kids. Star Tours? Was that open? Not at first day. Not at park opening. No. There was like nothing there yeah i don't think

about that we went pretty quickly when it opened but yeah there's nothing there but the important thing is they got it open first and universal was dilly-dallying around with these like 25 million dollar attractions that were going to be better and are better than a lot of what disney ended up having but they they opened late and then they opened full of problems. The PR was really bad, and then they had to shut down Jaws very quickly. Yeah, confrontation and earthquake, they managed to fix the problems within a few months.

Jaws, they had then shut down until like 93. It lasted like six months. It's so wild that that's how long i had to be shut down justin you think you might have been there in that time i think so there was no i remember terminator 2 was there at the time and not in hollywood right oh interesting um so that that's like a key memory but i was such a little kid i remember going on the world of hannah barbera ride yeah which was like a simulator with like a crossover of all the Hanna-Barbera characters.

You can watch it on YouTube now. Yeah. That's a fine one. Yeah. But yeah, I don't remember going on Jaws as a kid and I love Jaws so much. So I, it must,

I probably went on for the first time in college. Oh yeah. Um, and it was, it blew my mind. Yeah. It truly lived up because the new version of it, I think, is an incredible ride. It's great.

And that first version, the bones are there. Like, the grenade launcher is there. But the skipper is barely saying anything. And the sets are, like, so not there. They got so much more built out. Yeah. By the time I went on it, yeah, they were built out. I guess this is a larger point

though like it feels kind of real like a lot of thing that makes all of these rides kind of scary is that they're like in the real world so like kind of the feeling of like your brain kind of going this just looks like a town or like even i mean not as much hong kong where it's a city but it kind of like you kind of feel like it's a city yeah so like there's like there's a feeling of it's the real world which does make it scarier because your brain is kind of just like taking in information like if you were in really just on a boat that's kind of what i love about universal is that they they do it with jaws and they do it with the mummy ride in florida where they they spoiler i guess we've we just talked about this yeah i think we've talked about it at this point the fake out of like the fake yeah

attendant like you know they're gonna let you off the ride and then you dive down for more i actually didn't know that till we talked about a few weeks ago no no it's fine it's incredible it's a launch coaster yeah probably i might yeah it's really it's like a very cool never really replicated on anything else that i can think of no the other mummy is garbage compared to that one yeah that's that's truly one of the the other mummy is garbage compared to that one yeah that's that's truly one of the big uh theme park disappointments i feel but now it looks cool to me going to universal studios hollywood because it's like some of the only practical effects they have yeah right even even though it was like disappointing when it came out

but it is an actual it is a ride that where you move and go places yeah not not screens yeah i mean the way that those like big uh whatever warrior mummies jump down on the side of the ride uh anyway we're talking about a different ride yeah the the original this is a ride that lets you know why they went so screen heavy because like okay universal opening day i mean it's it's also there's these big three attractions and their shows but there's also they opened with et in the future and that was the only thing that worked flawlessly they said yeah yeah et ride um so you can understand why they stopped trying things of this nature that cost two million dollars a year in uh in petroleum uh so so they shut down until 1993

when they reopened jaws no longer yanked the boat around, although he maybe never did correctly, according to the history. And to make up for that, I think that's when they boosted the fire. I think there were not the tanks and everything. No. Tanks aren't even built. I think there's one or two fire or mortar effects, but, like, it's amped up in the newer version. And instead of him exploding into blood and guts, now he bites on an electrical wire and electrocutes himself. um and then descends down and then right on the way out you get one last burst of a jaws who is

charred yes and and just black burnt flesh which is truly disturbing yeah it's like one last it's like the horror movie final jump scare like you killed the monster and then it like jerks to life but then dies and that's it really it's and it's the ending of jaws 2 okay he gets electrocuted uh and so the story of the ride takes place around when jaws 2 is supposed like originally when it opened again the idea was that you're revisiting amity and it was like when we had that fateful shark attack a few years ago yeah and so it's like timed around i don't know if they like got rid of that later but uh so i think i was excited because i was like that's the jaws i grew up on more than the original there's also a self-awareness because they're like there's chief brody's house he was played

by roy schneider in the movie which i always thought was very funny and re-watching the video now they said there's may there's the mayor's house which that means the mayor stayed in office even after jaws but there's a very funny visual gag where uh there's uh brody's house is like a reasonably sized home and then the mayor's house is a giant mansion right next to it like it's like oh yeah of course the fucking larry would have that house. Is there an official timeline for when the Jaws write? Is it after the first movie for sure? Yes. It says that, right? Yes.

When they're talking. Yes. But not before Jaws 2? I don't think they acknowledge the other movies. They keep up with real time because in the last few videos I watched the last year of operating, they say there hasn't been a shark around here in 30 years. Oh, I see. Okay. So they only are acknowledging that the uh first movie it's a superman returns type uh timeline yeah that cuts out some of the films all of the films

kevin spacey as luthor is on this ride for some reason uh he does make an appearance and he's good right after you see jaws charred he's like i'm fine the final final scare is given space he is able to work in hollywood but he is working at the end of a defunct florida ride so yeah he's demoted at least a little bit uh so and that yeah that final that charred jaws is truly that that is the kind of thing that really separates universal from disney i don't think disney would do anything there's no charred corpses no monster of the whale charred in the pinocchio ride yeah they won't even show a ursula being run through by the mast of a dirty a dirty mast from a ship truly all i wanted was a giant

ursula and the little mermaid ride that version that they have of like i think tony baxter was he involved in making it yeah or something there's the you know the 3d ride through like the previous version we talked a little bit about this yeah in the little mermaid episode yeah it's crazy it's so good there's a giant ursula at the end that yeah yeah gets her what for you know so i think well just to have a little you know this is not the plus up of this ride but let's i'll say a plus up of every disney ride as with jaw with this cool jaws as the precedent whoever the villain of the ride was i want to see them charred and burnt and breathing their last gasp like like the queen evil queen on the snow white ride we should see her fall yeah she should get electrocuted and then we should run over her with

the vehicle yeah yeah yeah let's like let's see her like that in the fall that her limbs are all like gnarled yeah yeah yeah twisted in painful directions captain hook and smee smee was an accomplice he was he was he should have spoken up yeah yes he was was smy the gerbils or the himmler maybe huh that might be for another podcast yeah with jason shared the um uh uh the alligator is uh france a villain early on but then once it's once vichy france is defeated uh it's three joins the allies at the very end of the war i think that works um is the alligator ever is he i thought he was the alligator chases after hook and smee at the end right oh okay that's right but he always has the ticking top he's always scaring hook oh that's true yeah he's kind of an antagonist he's like in comic books

where like black cat shows up and it's like you don't know what side she's on yeah it's just like well you just robbed the museum but you helped defeat sandman right he's very scantily clad that alligator uh yes very sexy portrayed in a way that's inappropriate he's a thought yeah that alligator's a thought well anytime you want to map a ride and its components uh onto a war or or vice versa uh they're all metaphors secretly which is what you'll keep revealing through yeah sure um yeah it's all history lessons jaws is the kaiser the shark is the kaiser chief brody is the americans finally getting into world war one at the very end uh well what have we what have we not talked about

oh the lawsuit oh yeah that's right oh that was another thing that happened in the first several months of yeah the ride being opened before it closed for several years was that universal sued ride and show engineering inc who uh built the first version of the ride and had done work for them before uh uh but it seemed like the lawsuit went back and forth between universal and this uh ride show and engineering inc of like they didn't use waterproof parts it's like we did use waterproof parts we didn't you didn't test it enough and i think which was the problem in in the movie yeah right that they weren't able to test it enough yeah so like the skin kept falling apart anyway wow. Wow. It perfectly

overlays even more perfectly than the Hitler stuff. I don't know. I think they're on equal ground. Okay. Fair, fair, fair. It seems like though it did rule in Universal's favor and there was a payout. Good thing the little man won. Yeah. That was an argument.

That was an argument of the defense was that like it's just this big corporation taking on we're just two little guys in orlando and they're coming after us so it sounds like a disaster all around but don't forget the other lawsuit the lawsuit by the man yes yes by truly a little guy who fell into the water. I didn't know about this. Yeah, someone was leaning against the boat rail, which fell off, and he fell into the water in front of his children, who started screaming, the shark's going to eat daddy.

And sure enough, he fell off in most of the ride. It's about four to five feet deep of water. The parts with the shark are 10 feet deep to hide the animatronics. He fell off in the 10 foot section, turned around to see the shark coming at him. And they did get him back in the boat. And everyone clapped because they thought it was part of the ride. But then he slipped and fell again. He fell back in a second time.

There was a banana peel that they forgot to take off of the boat. Why did Universal insist on this banana stand? Cocaine and bananas. It's in the contract. This is like a cartoon, like Mr. Magoo goes to Universal Studios. Size will pay out to that family. And not the only size will pay out. The Duck Stops.

Did you guys come across the Duck Stops? No. What is that? So there was an AMA with a former skipper on Reddit a few years ago. And he told stories. He posted pictures of the ride controls. Here are the ride controls. It looks like an ancient ATM. It's crazy what they used to run oh like rides off of your phone is probably as powerful as like these consoles um uh okay the duck stops um you know they talked a

lot about like there's a lot of emergency uh stuff involved like all these skippers had a line on them where if they fell out of the boat or something happened there's an emergency stop hooked to their back of their belts so they fell in the water everything would shut down um but the duck stop uh uh here's what happens uh okay in the spring uh the lake could be filled with duck families. For whatever reason, ducks and ducklings would always hang out in this body of water, despite the loud noise and the explosions and stuff. One time, a duck swam right over a mortar as it went off, sending the duck flying into the boat, bouncing off the canopy, and falling dead and mangled in the lap of a little girl. What? With the girl thinking the skipper shot the duck

with that 40-millimeter grenade launcher. Just separately, he's also getting some hunting done. Yeah. The family was compensated greatly by guest relations, and we were thus authorized to perform duck stops, or e-stops for duck safety to avoid a similar incident for occurring oh my story was thereafter included when training new skippers about emergency stop procedures there's a pixar movie about a family of ducks that grows

up on a horrifying universal studios oh yeah uh we're like they believe this to be like part of the ecosystem right and then one gets murdered? Yeah, yeah. You know, in every Pixar movie, you see a brutal murder. A mangled corpse. It's kind of like the first ten minutes of Up, but worse. Yeah. Oh, or the scene in The Good Dinosaur, where the father dinosaur gets washed away by a flash flood.

That was a brutal movie. It was. Not good. The closest I've ever gone to walking out of a movie. Was the good dinosaur? Was the good dinosaur. Yeah, it's bad.

Oh, man. It's rough stuff. I haven't seen it. I walk out of movies all the time. It's great. It's a lot of fun. I buy a ticket just so I can walk out.

It gives me power, a sense of it at least in this crumbling world. It was honestly- He's telling me what to do. Get out of here. I kept saying like, well, it's Pixar. It'll get better it's pixar it'll get better and just never got better man yeah you wish you had a uh a rifle to uh take your anger out at the movie or a grenade

launcher i mean look if anyone thinks i'm wrong look how much good dinosaur stuff is in pixar pier try and find uh any case closed drop these clothes lock the gates i'll add a drop mic sound effect there for you um yeah so is there more about that there's also the fact that the the company got an anonymous tip from the department of environmental protection because they were not disposing of pollutants properly from the ride like what you know like the oil was leaking in a improper way that's why they had they would drain it every year in the winter for like a month and shut it down because they would have to clean up the lagoon and then refill it and dye the water which apparently they did so you could mask the shark being seen underneath right they had to make it darker yeah yeah wow uh so there's like kind of you can sort of see a layer of where like the dye is and like where like the density changes oh man so i have some sympathy for the screen ride thing

they're easier i understand there was so many catastrophes of like hydraulic fluid like shot out one like they had to drain the lake they had to try and scrub the lake because like it made it look electric it was like white looking hydraulic fluid that then made the lake look electric green for like a week and they they was like okay i think we can run it anyway it's not hazardous and they said like after the first few guests got their clothes ruined when water splashed on them they're like after the first few guests got their clothes ruined when water splashed on them they're like all right we gotta filter it more we gotta take a few days and just drain this mess i was reading here that the uh in june 1995 following an anonymous tip the

company was ordered by the department of environmental protection to fix its improper disposal of pollutants from the ride during those drainages yeah so they would get rid of all that crap but they would have been like dumping them or whatever, doing something wrong. Yeah, it was a costly ride. There were all those Jaws figures that came to life because of the pollutants. Oh, yeah.

Walked out of the water and started taking hostages in the park. People thought they were walk-around characters at first, and then they were not. Yeah, everybody willingly walked up and started taking pictures, and that's how they got the idea for the street sharks. Oh and then they were not willingly walked up and started taking pictures and that's how uh the idea for the street sharks because they were walking talking sharks yeah he was there yeah he was there and he was like you know what this would make a great show it was incredible the coincidence that brought us the magical street sharks he just took a photo and presented it as this is just some uh drawing i made it looks from

great tragedy doesn't it yeah uh and universal got no money for that either that's the biggest shame yeah it's come on the side of the little guy spent so much money on this i didn't realize this though a positive about the ride the ride at full capacity 2500 people an hour it's almost a leader they call it people leader ride 1,800 people an hour so significantly more people bring it back down bringing it back there it one still exists yeah Japan you have been Justin yes in the recent past alluded to earlier yes i did i believe you left your girlfriend in japan to go to this alone yes so so jaws still exist at universal

in osaka universal studios osaka or universal studios japan which is one of the weirdest theme park experiences because it is it's like not not like uh what euro euro disney the second park whatever the second gate is disney studios studios bad but it's like weird it just is a mishmash like their kiddie land is like san rio sesame street and snoopy snoopy even though it's not here famously universal yeah yeah and so they and they have like they it used to be i feel like i wish i would have gone a few years ago because it was like a haven for all the dead rides like back to the future was still there et was still there i mean et's in florida right but et was still there back draft is still there what yes

and it has it's like the nicest looking back draft you ever will see i'm like why i it's insane so i went on that and t2 3d because i was like well when else am i gonna go that too which watching the intro for terminator 2 i don't know if you remember how long and joke filled it is yeah there is watching somebody do it entirely in japanese is weird to say the least it's a half hour of uh stuff you're not understanding because it's like a very like chipper cheery like woman going like super in in the american version so i was like i have a vague recollection of what this is but anyway marissa was going to something called the golden temple in kyoto on game for her yeah well it's like beautiful and you you get to take like a maple uh i called it maple treeway because i think that's a mario kart level but it was like a hanging tram through like a beautiful maple forest wow like it's like a real life

experience and then she went to like a spa like just like the things you do that are culturally appropriate in japan actual good experiences to have, non-trash. Yeah, exactly. How dare she? This is the only remaining Jaws ride. And I tried to convince her. I was like, you've got to go on this. We have to go.

We'll go to Osaka for a day or half a day. Just come with me. We'll go there and I'll do the thing. But we'll fit it in. She's like, no, I have no desire to go there. We're here for like 10 days. We did two days in Disney parks. I had a good time.

So we split off and I took a bullet train to Osaka, which was on their side of the country. Two hours. It was about an hour and a half on the bullet train. So it would have taken many more hours. Uh, not, but we,

we, and I, I went, I timed it. So they had like a cheaper, cheaper like 40 to get in after like 4 p.m sort of thing and so i got there and it was i went alone to universal studios osaka they did have cool matcha churros there um but i went on the jaws ride i don't know how many times like maybe like i rushed to it nobody was

trying to get to the jaws right no i mean it was like you know there was a line but it was barely full like people wanted to go on jurassic park there or you know like any of the other rides i went on it maybe seven times wow and like five of them were in a row because i was like i got to get a good instagram video of this shark jumping out of the water like the perfect i'll never see this ride again yeah uh and it got to the point where like i was requesting where to sit like i was testing where the bet like there's nothing sadder than having to like explain why you want like getting a video is like like when people have cool videos it feels very cool because you don't know the behind the scenes of it was like of course like you're a tool and i was like this i

was like the lamest thing and to the point where they were like laughing at me because i was the same guy going on the job right over and you still don't need a second seat no no no no no i'm here alone i'm very much alone uh i mean look you gotta pick because the the i'm i believe the japan uh version is the same way it's identical it's identical so the shark pops up five times on the one side two times on the other so you gotta figure it out what side what's your side well i wanted to get my favorite scene in the ride is the boathouse yeah we haven't talked about the boathouse yeah i think it's like it's a perfect horror movie ride because first it's happy then you turn a corner and you basically see a sinking like jungle cruise askle one of your boats that you're in

you see the fin and it's like the first kind of like spotting of the shark yeah the tears tease yeah that's great and then you go into the boathouse and you get locked in a boathouse with the shark but it's like to hide from it and it's one of the coolest moments horror moments in any theme park ride i think because yeah you know there is the suspense of like okay i think we're okay let's just like hang tight and then things start rattling it's like the shark is clearly in this small enclosed space with you and then does jump out and there's like a lightning effect and it looks so cool and you escape and there's the fire stuff and then the ending you really have no idea within that room where even in watching the video i didn't recall i could not have guessed which side where he was going to come it doesn't

feel like it should be big enough to hold the shark which is what makes it scary i think it's still a little claustrophobic especially for a boat ride which very rarely do you get like stuck in a tiny spot on a boat ride and so they have that and i kept trying to get a shot in there but i didn't have a good enough camera i just had my phone that barely worked it was a few years old so i was just like i was like i didn't want to ruin the ride and like film it with like a flash on for other people because also everybody was very scared on this ride you watch the videos for florida i think a lot of the time and people are either the skippers aren't into it or if it was like at the end of the ride's life it was people

were just like chanting shark right uh but in japan at least the day i went everybody was very much affected like it was a day one opening of the ride also like they keep their rides in impeccable condition so like just was perfect uh and so one of the cool things was watching people get scared every time that is fun which is i don't know if you guys get this is maybe the saddest thing to say but i'm like i really like seeing things that i love with somebody who's never been on it oh i love it it's the closest you can get from like to experiencing this for the first time this is what would happen if any of us had children i that's part of why i'm like maybe i'll have children because that is in place of that i just be like i started like begging friends of mine like don't go to disneyland a lot i go come on

down and like i like i like that i like taking people to wrestling for the first time yeah i went to wrestling for the first time with you yes and it was crazy great yeah uh so yes of course i understand that so that, you know what? I'll say this. I don't care for like the flippant people in Haunted Mansion, like not being, not that everyone has to be scared or pretend they're scared, but everyone does that faux scream while they're, when they're in the stretching room, you know. I don't need that.

I don't need people talking along with the narration. I agree with that too. I hate all of this. You are correct. I'm just saying, let's official podcast The right edict Yeah If you're listening to this And you do that shit

Cut it out Cut it out Yeah If you're legit screaming Great That's I love that That's fun

If it's your first time If you're a kid But I don't like the adults Pretending to scream When the lights go out In the stretching room It's usually teenagers Yeah probably

We're anti-teen On this podcast Definitely Sorry Except for our teen fans i'll give this uh i think i i do think it's funny in in like less uh concentration needed parts of the the queue like as you're loading into doom buggies or any dark ride where the queue's a little dark if i think it's very funny to see someone with someone else and they go like

and they scare and someone gets legitimately scared i think that's very funny to see someone with someone else and they go like, and they scare and someone gets legitimately scared. I think that is very funny. Watching strangers scare each other. Little scares. Let's hear that. One more time. Actually. Yeah.

Let's hear that scare sound. I will tell you, I vow right now. And I hope you forget next time you and I are on the haunted mansion. I will scare you With that noise No I don't want it done to me I want to witness it

I vow God damn it And then maybe it's not The next time Maybe it's not the time After that Maybe it's in two years It's unpredictable

But what's going to happen Is we're going to be Getting out of the elevator And I'm going to go And then you're going to get scared This is like an Anton Sugar Like if he doesn't find you Today

Tomorrow He will find you years from now you will not know when it will happen but i will do it to you i will scare you after the elevator god damn it don't if you derive pleasure from it you gotta you gotta allow somebody to do i suppose that's true uh we should mention the jaws ride in japan is also in japanese yes and they were committed i was gonna ask how are they performing because i yeah you see some of these videos of the ride toward the end too and i'm like i don't love their commitment to it i don't i i want commitment commitment commitment i can only speak to the day

i was there right but i think there is i don't know if it's a cultural thing or because i don't know but it feels like there's an attention to detail in the parks from the way they're impeccably clean right to upkeeping the rides uh and caring for things to like commitment to the world that you're living in and and they were every single time every skipper was like so intense about it like it didn't feel and also there was a language barrier i don't speak the language so maybe i probably wasn't get it like maybe there were bad actors yeah but the general the language you would have known i did hear roy shider uh or brody maybe i don't know if they say roy shider but i think like brody and uh jaws and steven spielberg those were the english words

that appeared at some point but but they were very committed. That's great. It just felt like, I don't know, I can't imagine that ride's going to last much longer there. Valuable realistic. I should go. Oh, the problem is we're only doing a seven-ish day trip, and it's like what you're saying.

Six of them are going to be in Tokyo Disney. Right, six have to be at Tokyo Disney, so how are we going to find that extra day to go to Osaka? You can skip that stupid-ass Marissa Kyoto tram. Obviously, nobody's doing that. I mean, that is a ride. Natural beauty. She did turn down a ride to do other rides.

I mean, it looks beautiful. When you came back, she was like, oh my gosh, I should have gone with you. The thing I went to today was such a bust. I wish I saw that robot shark. Yeah, I hate it. It was so relaxing. I really, yeah, I hated it was so relaxing i really yeah there was no fake charred flesh on what i did i did i i asked her to please watch the ride through video today

before i came here uh it's because we were just sitting there and i was like hey will you at least watch it like you've never seen it uh you've never and you know i love this right it's a reasonable request do me this favor don't you love me yeah well she likes horror movies a lot right and i think she would really like this ride but is it worth it just for that ride for her probably not but for this and like that space fantasy ride they have an original coaster it is great i get nauseous on spinning things and it is a spinning coaster oh interesting but it's like i didn't actually because i got nauseous on that crushes coaster oh we skipped that that line was too crazy we didn't do it i did i felt horrible like it knocked out half of my day um but it has like an animatronic shark in it it has you know i think

bruce the shark in finding nemo that's right he's bruce yep as a nod a little hollywood insight knowledge attorney i wish you were i wish you went on the crushes coaster at the in paris but did you feel for jaws yeah while you were spinning around i have to do that on every vehicle that goes through while spinning just to just because i deliver that joke better than anyone else in i believe it and on any continent between you and steve slaga uh the two people i know i'll do it i'll do a bruce attorney off with him any day of the week let's get him on the show let's see who nails it better he might get the joke about uh jaws is the only fish that can do the backstroke but that attorney one that's mine man years i've like that just conjured a

sense memory i always wanted to deliver yeah i always wanted to be a skipper wearing that light blue tee and those jean shorts first off gotta be the most comfortable i like that you said the outfit was something you were like dreaming of wearing wanted to wear i wanted to look nice i wouldn't do that i wanted to say you know the best and only boat tours of amity island like you know you're protected by this 40 millimeter i tried to get you a couple years ago i saw that there was osaka japan um like there were auditions for characters and i tried to get you to audition for austin powers they did at least a couple years ago they did not when i was there and that's the biggest

i hate it so maybe they got rid of austin powers but yeah i guess that's why but maybe that would have been your in if you had been austin over there for like a couple months then you could have transitioned to the actual jaws boat ride although i guess maybe they weren't looking for americans for the jaws boat right now but you could have convinced them i could have i could have learned just the spiel in Japanese. Oh, yeah. Only those words. Only those words.

Yeah. You might be a superstar in Japan by now, had you tried to get that in. I think that you made a big mistake by not applying for that. Maybe I am already a superstar in Japan. How do you figure? I mean, I will say when you come back. When you come back, if people recognize you in Japan and they only want to ask about Jason.

Do you want me to look at the analytics? We are not that popular in Japan. We have some listeners in Japan. I bet we didn't see a walk around Sheridan at Universal Studios. They would have rejected him for that, though. Yeah, we already got one. Sheridan type already.

It's like Ernie Hudson not being allowed to play himself in the Ghostbusters cartoon. Oh, boy. Well, if you're a listener in japan please please approach mike but only talk about me approach mike in real life uh jason if you dreamed of doing that job then you got to deliver what apparently is regarded as the most popular line from the ride uh hey how many more how many more minutes should we be uh doing this podcast for uh you aren't taking the bait you don't know the line oh my god it's right here there it is uh i'm making everybody read scripts today well yeah uh chief bro well i have my favorites i frankly like the end where they say Chief Brody, you know. Oh, okay.

Sure. He's touching his heart right now, just so you know. Well, now, do that. He might be having a heart attack. Chief Brody, clearly not Roy Schneider. Scheider. Scheider, excuse me. Dan Schneider.

He says he'll be there. Hold tight. I'll be there in 10 minutes. And then the skipper always says, 10 minutes? We're going to be shark bait in 10 minutes, which is they're already shark bait they are right now they're currently shark bait yeah yeah true but there you go very good some universal property please hire jason and just while you're at it and starting salary for both of you the 35 an hour minimum that's a great starting salary i'm declaring it oh never mind no no this is my level okay cool and i get 10 of that because i declare

so universal call me and i will call jason and justin um i get the thing that my comment i guess maybe actually belongs in the section where we talk about plussing it up but we're about there we're about there i guess like i my one complaint is that there's a lot of like fresh-faced teens as the skipper on these boats and if i was planning it out i would want a very quint-like yeah boat guy yeah i would want a crusty old man with stories piloting the boat or whatever you would say driving the boat and then like doing all the lines but is this guy who's seen it all or whatever and like he's lost an eye or something to a shark like we need more of that i think if we were gonna bring the ride back or or let's get some grizzled japanese like since there's only one ride left let's get a grizzled

japanese guy or girl to do it i would love that because i couldn't think of how i would plus this like i was like this is a perfect ride to me but having a quint esque like just uss indianapolis drunk oh yeah yeah sure like and then you could like they could have like a little sip before each ride so if you get too close you smell the whiskey on their breath like that would be a nice extra touch they could get eaten or something i mean that's like that would be that never happened but seeing somebody get taken out of the boat that was a rumor that was going to happen on the new kong ride that was in the blue sky phase like the drivers were going to be automated or yeah there's gonna be a robot or something and like the kong would reach in and pull them out i haven't been on that ride but i was excited about it and then it was like mostly screens right it's mostly screens like the one nice kong at the end it's exactly the same

there's like one or two more screens but the only reason anyone is excited about it is that there is a real there's a head of a monkey at the end and it's big well you can't like i feel like this is like the old screen versus practical debate but like nothing like the screen technology like you'll constantly have to update i feel like there is something i feel like tony baxter talks about it like there's something impressive about seeing something in person and the size that it is you know like you can't like a special effect can't beat that i mean right sure and and there's something about seeing like a giant king kong robot that will always trump whatever you know screen in and of him right because it makes you like a little uncomfortable it makes scott

very uncomfortable because it's a giant robot in a tiny space but yes it's like your brain didn't i don't have that problem though i yelled at kong every day right that's a good point that was the high laser like a banana breath so oh yeah you know it yeah i got high on that did you catch that difference in japan the when you go in the boathouse in in america it just says like boathouse or like fish and tackle in japan it says quince yes oh which is great which is a little morbid because in the real world of the ride did so did quentin die in this amity like he dies in the movie well he wait because remember in this world you are in amity chief brody's real right maybe it's a memorial mayor larry vaughn huh yeah that's what i i think it was probably like because quinn's dead are you saying is quinn not dead or like he would have to be dead if it's after the first movie i'm assuming

he's dead like why does he have a boathouse there yeah why is there still a boathouse with this dead man's name well it's martha quint uh his wife martha no that's true okay yeah yeah was his first name or last name quit is is this the last name quit amity from the book where richard dreyfus character uh uh does he sleep with brody's wife or does he try to sleep with Brody's wife yeah in the book he's a lot more of a son of a there's a lot more yeah Brody is much less likable also I think like both like there's a lot of like family drama yeah the name of the character is Bartholomew Marion Quint Bartholomew yep that's an insane seasoned shark hunter so you want to hear that full name get said otherwise japanese right yeah get on the boat if they had him in the queue talking to you

instead of uh wjws channel 13 the local amity tv station that played in the queue yeah oh the queue did have a lot i don't know i don't remember the queue for florida but the queue here had a lot of jaws memorabilia so like there was like all the posters so like it looked like old stuff that was like passed out like movie lobby cards and stuff like the crew jacket yeah like truly stuff like that um but then the world of the the ride was like like what jason was saying earlier, like the movie was made but based on real events. The Scream 2 of Jaws. That is weird. Yeah, you're in real Amity, and this is where the movie was filmed

and where the events it was based on took place, but now the shark is dead, and they're aware of the movie and the success of the movie. Every one of those old Universal rides was something like that something like that convoluted and i'm here for it i loved it i loved it and this was this the first appearance of a fictional local media company like in twister the storm chasing a radio station that's only within this attraction yeah could be um yeah those yeah those pre-ride videos they were like real cheapo public access hey there amity the morning show yeah i could not find it no one stopped and filmed those and put them on youtube or if they did i

didn't find them send us some hey there amity if you have it yeah they have them in japan i think but i the line was moving so quickly every time. I think I lingered once and people were like, why are you stopping? What are you doing? This is a boring line. What was the merch like at Jaws in Japan? It was a bummer.

Because I wanted like a cool shirt or... They had a plush shark. That was the only thing. And it had like Jaws embroidered on it. But then they had like aush shark that was the only thing that had like jaws embroidered on it but then they had like a lego knockoff shark they didn't even have like a cool keychain or anything like it really there wasn't much i was kind of disappointed in general with merch across but like that and the disney parks like really disney parks i mean i i think i care much less about like mickey and minnie and that kind of stuff i want like ride specific things sure so i wanted like you know shiriki utundu or whatever uh i wanted

like the characters this this unnamed animatronic from a very cool ride in disney city that you i wanted something of that there's not that um they do have a ride vehicle for the ride in question that we're not. Oh, interesting. If you go and it's, it's, it's hard to find. So we'll talk about it. Maybe. Do you have it?

We don't. Yes, I did. That was like the coolest piece of merch that they had. Everything else is just very generic Disney, but like better designed than out here. That's what I've noticed. I have, there's an Instagram account I follow. That's just Tokyo Disney Sea merchandise. And they just post there

because this person i think has a business where they go to japan and sell it and bring it back yeah but they what i like when we mentioned it earlier they have a lot of country bear plush they do a lot of good country bear stuff which they do not have in florida and it drives me nuts they have so much i think i got i got lindsey the point was to be shared as a pad. Yes, yes, yes. As a country bear. I've seen it. She didn't take it. She would never be so cruel to keep country bear merch from me.

Yeah, so then they have like a little country bear monogram. Not monogram, whatever. They have like a logo pad that you can write on, which was kind of cool. I think in Japan, the way I understand it culturally, when people go on vacation, they bring back a lot for uh friends and relatives and co-workers and stuff so the there's a lot of uh broad merchant t-shirts and boxes of candy and and office supplies and stuff like stuff that's like a broad appeal and you would bring back for cookie boxes like cookie cookie boxes. Like, cookie boxes and chocolate boxes. Just, like, big kind of gift packs. Yeah, like you would give to your, like,

like popcorn tin type stuff. Sure. Yeah. So, and is it, like, a custom there to, if you go get a bunch of stuff for the host of a podcast that you've been listening to? Jeepers, I hope so. Toiletries from the hotel or various...

A robe from the hotel or just several towels with a monogram. Skeleton key from the hotel. They just have those lying around. You have a skeleton. How many skeleton keys? You have just like a Sheraton skeleton key. but the skeletons on them scare me,

so I don't open up that drawer that much. This is a very quick tangent. Professional wrestler Terry Funk used to have several skeleton keys and in the old days he would just go to hotels

and find an empty room and sleep in them and he would save money on hotels by not paying for them and sleeping in empty rooms because he had skeleton keys. Smart.

Tip for you, Jason. Yep. You and Terry Funk, two birds of a feather get less afraid of them yeah um what else we got uh any yeah plus plus it up keep his uh um yeah and the old man eventually uh the jaws you know sega will will burn perhaps not for insurance money it'll just will given the uh you know the ecological issues this ride has had it will just burn to the ground at some point in time of course um well first of all

it should be it should still be there we've talked about this a lot uh it should still be there universal doesn't have a sense of history and i think that the core few rides that they had when they opened in the first few years i think that would have few rides that they had when they opened in the first few years i think that would have been important to the park it would have been a nice thing to like pirates of the caribbean or haunted mansion would have been a nice these are still movies that people know and like it's not like these movies have faded into obscurity this is an odd one in that like it obviously this was a a problematic ride to to havea to created a ton of issues for them but in terms yeah obviously jaws is still plenty relevant and of all the things to i i obviously you totally understand

putting diagon alley of course it's amazing uh makes all the sense in the world but yeah what a bummer that this of all things had to go but i guess it's such a big footprint and it was the is the calculation also like where it is as opposed to the first harry potter land so that they can line up the train correctly yes probably yeah that certainly plays a role in it but it's still at the expense of our great history that's what i'm saying yeah we don't say that a lot no right we're not talking about a Confederate statue. We're talking about the Jaws. I mean, like, in terms of the other show.

Yeah, I know. I agree. We're very progressive when it comes to theme park stuff. We try to be realist. PC culture. We got sharks getting ripped out left and right. We got to preserve history. I love this ride.

Yeah. This one, for me, is... This is up there with alien encounter like in terms of my what a loss in terms of like my favorites that i still think about a lot because you're edgy you're extreme i am you are the bad boy of the three of us good boys that's for sure it's like if you were to disneyland and it like all the, all the cool rides from the first 10 to 20 years were gone, except for maybe one, it would feel less special.

Even if it was the, they were the coolest rides you would, it would be awesome, but it would still, there would be a little bit of something missing from the nostalgia factor, which I understand Universal isn't going for that as much, but it is nice to have a couple rides that were like at the opening of a park to give the park some sense of history if you were them would you where else

does diagon go well it's tough because i don't know the boundaries i don't know what they have backstage wise i don't know like i for sure what you could have lost the men in black over you could have lost i do like men in black but like you're live sure it's a waste of space that is it still there it's still there that it's not right it doesn't run is it on the outskirts i can't remember where is it on the street around the curve so it's so it's sort of like next to men in black it's what's being eyed for the ministry of magic supposedly oh okay i see what you're saying uh yeah maybe get disaster out of there which got replaced by fast and furious but nobody likes that i say i think they should have if there was a possible way to do it they should

have killed san francisco instead of um instead of amity yeah sure or like better uh switch out or take out all the i understand they're like it's going through a lot of things there's the rocket roller coaster what is it like that's a lot of real estate that that's taken up like just disassemble that put it somewhere else i think it's cool but like i don't know put it like hide it right there i don't know it seems like seems like there was something could have been done i'm sure they were also thinking oh good this new land won't be as hard to maintain and we'll make a ton more money like i'm sure expensive water ride yeah i'm sure they could have put it somewhere else but they were like also very excited to like get this albatross off i wish that there was a new movie because i feel like that's the only way it would stay around

it's like a jurassic park the ride jurassic world redeco same with back to the future yeah which by the way when these guys are dead spielberg and zemeckis there will be there will be a new jaws when these guys are dead oh yeah it's all coming back i mean there could be a new jaws could be no worse than the last couple jaws movies that were already made why not child self's favorite movie. Yeah. A new Jaws with like multiple sharks. Great, updated.

Add a couple shark attacks at once in that boathouse. The shark is neon green. I don't care. Just keep it. It's an alien shark. That's the new version of Jaws. Whatever you need to keep this thing around. Indominus shark.

Left shark from Katy Perry's Super Bowl show. Can make a caveat. There it is. All right. Better yet, hosting show. Can make a cameo. Better yet, hosting it. They're just hosting it. It's Left Shark, but a grizzled man in the outfit. Richard Drex's character is no longer an oceanographer.

He's a Snapchat star. And you know what? It's in Japan, and if we're trying to keep this thing hip for millennials, what better tour guide of anything going on in japan than logan paul i thought you were gonna say another famous american in japan jason sheridan well sure that too uh and i am welcome in japan unlike logan paul that's a good point i have done nothing yet to anger the people of japan oh shit did this shark kill himself on this electrical line logan paul yeah logan paul is selfie videoing himself next to the uh hanging up jaws uh hanging up bruce at the entrance oh man he hung himself oh shit

he fucking hung himself dude there's the time that's how that's how we salvage it you listening osaka yeah get call logan paul this is this is his chance to make things right and do what he does the best um well folks i i think that might be it i think we might have made it uh justin michael you survived podcast The Ride. And thank you for helping us conquer the Menace of Jaws. Yes, thank you for having me, you guys. It was a real treat. Where can people find you?

Plug your projects a little bit. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at HeyJustin. I also do a podcast called Batman The the animated podcast which i'd love to have the three of you on to talk about a theme park episode oh yeah sure what did i do i did the trial the trial yes all the villains all the villains team up i love a team up is there some crossover situation did was there was there ever a theme park in the show kind of i've been saying truly i saved it and then the my podcast had just went on a hiatus indefinite hiatus and i was like this is too much and we all suffered the same fallout our previous network the fallout of all our good intentions uh very fun

so i was like well when it comes back there's an episode called deep freeze which is mr freeze's return there's a walt disney-esque villain yeah which is like an epcot-esque yeah like perfect society oh yeah and he wants to be turned immortal because uh you know he it's kind of like a play on disney's head whatever being frozen but uh it's really fun that's right every time you mentioned you mention your show, and I would think of an episode, I'd double check, and I'd be like, oh, a famous person did that one already. Oh, the voice of Paul Dini did that one.

Okay. Well, this one is one of my true favorite episodes, and I've been saving it for years at this point for the three of you. Oh, boy. Hey, yes. Done. Down.

And what are you doing on Audible? The good folks at Audible. The good folks at Audible. For the three of you. Oh, boy. Hey. Yes. Done. Down. And what are you doing on Audible? The good folks at Audible. The good folks at Audible. Hired me and my buddy Eric Martin to make an improvised narrative. It's called Bad Reception. It comes out on August 21st. Maybe it's out by the time you've heard this. It's possible.

Yeah. Audible.com slash Bad Reception. It's got Paul F. Tompkins and darcy carton and nicole byer and lauren lapkus you know all your favorite pods star-studded people uh and a good person from the good place yes yes good people at audible that's why she's working with us uh lots of other people who you know are great improvisers uh you know as well so please do you ever do you ever like fit in a joke about like how a lawyer is kind of like so please do you ever do you ever like fit in a joke about like how a lawyer's kind of like a shark do you ever do like funny stuff like that honestly we

could use one um for a season two so uh you know you know who to call not that other guy steve but yeah those are all those are all the things hey cool i think thank you this is my dream is to talk to you guys about on a podcast about what we talk about already what we already have done many times and in person we'll continue talking after we turn this off to this always we'll start recording the after show but like more casually somehow we periscope it we'll figure out some way to make this monetize this yeah and every bit of our conversation yeah well that we're certainly getting to the point where our whole lives will be documented and we'll try to make a profit off of them i mean i've already had instances of like

oh remember when we talked about that and it was like oh we weren't at dinner or anything we were on the podcast well it's all blurring the line really we're all always doing it but the official actual podcast uh can be uh while you're listening to it and you know where to find it but the twitter for it is podcast the ride and the instagram is podcast the ride and you can email us podcast the ride at gmail and facebook we have a facebook group you can join and that's fun that's a nice little community yeah people posting cool stuff sharing tips and tokyo disney day advice you know so uh do that join that what are they up to minimum nine well they're all very upset with scott yeah they all want more than two days for sure. Someday I shall atone for my huge mistake.

I will say one person just said that I'm going to Tokyo Disney for the very controversial amount of two days. That is what someone just posted. Wow. I made a controversial choice. Yeah. It worked out. I went on every single attraction.

It was definitely a, an open day. I would have preferred three, but you know, it was somebody else's trip as well as mine well this is this is an important point yes well empathy is a bitch i'm glad you wanted that recorded thank you empathy is a bitch thank you for listening