Podcast: The Ride - Luxor

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

We take a look at the history of the Luxor Hotel and Casino. Opened in 1993, the Luxor used to have 3 interconnected themed experiences and a boat ride around the lobby. Now they have Carrot Top! Omega Mart episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever Dog. order, but now is just a place where people do esports and Carrot Top does prop comedy. It's the Luxor on Podcast the Ride, Sin City Nights, the sleazy desert cousin of Podcast The Ride, much like Snoopy's cousin Spike. I'm Scott Gairdner, joined by Jason Sheridan. That's right. We're like Spike. We grew those long mustache danglies. Yeah, those very concerted. We all grew eight hairs, eight thick hairs out of our face. That's all we can do. Mike Carlson.

I'm here, and I've also grown those long mustache danglies, as Jason says. It's not just a long mustache. They're mustache danglies, in case you don't know, there's a distinction. It's a desert term is what it is. Yeah. You'd know if you were sleazing around in the desert, says we have been with our topics. Well, that's what Spike is.

He's a desert guy, you know? Yes. Yeah. And that's what I said, but yes. Yeah, that's why. I'm agreeing with you. Now this, I was checking the levels. So to be fair, I wasn't zoned out.

I had things to do. I came in with show energy. I had things to do. I'm sorry. Sure, sure, sure. No, your ability to focus for the most part, given that you're writing the levels, is admirable. Listen, I'm going to dive right in with something that is not Vegas related,

and I don't want it to take over the episode, and I fear that it may open Pandora's box. All right. But I feel like I got to say it because it is part of the series, even though it's not Vegas related. And it is this. If you can imagine, I've been doing some further thinking about Space Mountain fans. This came up in the Mm grand episode two weeks ago there was a little uh a little discussion of disagreement you might say a loss on my part that was how i chalked it up

in the episode uh the the notion came up of whether space mountain speed is partially simulated due to the fans, due to fans that are potentially blown on you that blow cold air as if to simulate space travel or something that a faster roller coaster might do. Right. This was something that Jason brought up. I balked at this notion. Mike went a-googling, and you discovered enough results that made me feel in that moment as if perhaps, though I balked, it seemed like, well, that's enough people who have maybe brought up the idea that the speed of Space Mountain is simulated with cold air fans. I didn't like taking the loss. It didn't feel good to me.

I kept thinking about it. I went home. It seemed like you didn't stop there. No. It didn't feel good to me. I kept thinking about it. I went home. You didn't stop there. No, no. If you can imagine. It seemed like the best thing to do in the moment was just to admit defeat, but I've realized that the best thing to do for the podcast in general is to rip this thread wide open again and talk about it a little more.

You got to double down, you know? Yeah. Well, I wonder if I already did. I think this might be a triple down on my part i'm i'm i'm reopening this again and here's why uh i felt a little pummeled by the amount of source this is what you were indicating uh where you were sitting mike it was like i don't know there's a lot of things that are bringing this up i started feeling like well if there's a number of them and not just one weird source uh then maybe i should admit defeat here but as

i'm thinking about it i'm like what are these sources exactly and i went looking i looked in a couple of places uh theme park center yeah we all know theme park we're all hanging out on theme park did i say that one on the episode i said one you called that one out as like a do we know that and we're like maybe we don't know i'm. We've never been to Theme Park Center. We've never been to thetravel.com. We've never been to an expired Tumblr called Disneyland Secrets. And then the main source, and this was obviously flagged when it came up,

was that this fact was touted by Inside the Magic. I don't know if they're the most trustworthy. If their headline is ladies still swooning over Johnny Depp's perfect abs, audiences demand Johnny Depp's rippling abs back in the Pirates franchise, you can trust them on that. Anything Depp related, I'll give that to them. That's their beat. They were on a tear about woke Cinderella this week.

Woke live action Cinderella. Right. Is that one that happened already? No, it's coming. Rachel Ziegler. Academy Award winner Rachel Ziegler. Are you sure that Disney didn't already remake Cinderella? Yeah, they did.

I'm sorry. Snow White. Snow White. Okay, there you go. I get them mixed up. Oh, my God. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So, my God. Yeah. All right.

Yeah. So, you know, they have their things. Yeah, they're experts on woke culture. But are they experts on Space Mountain fans? I don't know. I looked at their article. This is how much I wanted. I'm really sorry that I clicked and came close to giving them any ad revenue or anything.

But I did give them a page click. And it's one of those, classic inside the magic fashion it's like Disneyland is a park that has entertained many over the years let's do 19 paragraphs where we say every key phrase in theme park world and by pedal humans

enjoy amusement and vacationing you have to get through the entire existence of man they go through the book of genesis they uh uh jesus is discussed for a while and then before and then finally they bury what you're actually there for and they say wow a fan figured out that actually fans are used to simulate the speed of and then it's just it's a tick talk it's something called the mouselets and they say did you know that fans are used to simulate cold air on the,

all right, for more facts, check out the mouselets. And I just started thinking, where is the good source on this? This isn't about me saying Jason's wrong. I actually would like to take that out of it. I'm just trying to figure out what's what. I'm trying to take fake news out of the equation, because i think we're dealing with a lot of fake news here and in what i've just said of where this is discussed what haven't i said i've found it on jim hill lentesta expedition theme park martin's vids right none of these sources that we usually go to that we usually

tout say anything about space mountain simulating with cold fans. Now, there's also some Reddit threads about it, and I'll give it that, but I don't know if you can trust a TIL, a Today I Learned, as a definitive source on this issue. And I'm not saying there isn't a definitive source out there. This is why I bring it up. I want a source that we can trust isn't a definitive source out there this is just this is why i bring it up i want to know i want

a source that we can trust okay to verify that fans are used on space mountain to simulate that it doesn't actually because i'm just not i don't see the proof i'm not buying it right now truthfully i had already forgotten about this and i thought you were talking about space mountain like enthusiasts and i was like oh god what discourse did i miss this week in between the like you know haunted mansion going like i'm gonna run to the rallies next door for a burger to calm down you know like the product placement the aggressive product place the the recent uh uh internet trend where I wake up every day and learn a new bizarre thing about the Haunted Mansion movie. Yeah, no, it's been a pummeling lately.

A lot of strange decisions. Yeah, apparently. I haven't seen it, but apparently it's like, let me get out a pad and paper that I got at CVS. Really weird. No, no, no. You moved on, Jason. You took your victory and you moved on. And I stayed in the weeds.

I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. And I've been connecting yarn on pins ever since. The Charlie Day meme. Yes, I am a living Charlie Day meme right now. Right. But what do you... Now that I've brought all this up emotionally, Jason, are you like, go ahead, do your thing?

Or do you feel confident in this fact still? Do you think I'm the crazy one? Do you think it's possible that I will be disproven again? Or I don't know. How are you feeling that I bring this up? No, I'm happy to see. I mean, I, you know, when I brought it up, it was mostly going off of, like, memory and, you know, going through with the lights on once or twice on both coasts, you know? Yes.

And, like, I swear I saw a fan. And, like, it's very cold on my face going through here. It seems far too cold for it to be 35 miles per hour, you know? It's a cold room. I'll give you that. It's a really cold room i'll give you that and to say what we said the previous time this came up i don't doubt that it's possible that there are fans in that building but that to me is different than fans with the explicit purpose of blowing on you the rider

like if you think about the physics of it uh aaron brought this up back she was like if you stuck your if you were driving 35 miles an hour and you stuck your head out the window, you would be getting a general wind flow there, right? Yeah. Imagine what would have to get added to that to register, to even, like, enhance the effect, you know? That would have to be, they would have to have to be like head-on fans in that instance correct which seems harder to do in my mind because where would you put the fan there's that one need to be in the car with could it just be super powerful air conditioners i mean making it colder like the traditional fan for you you know i think you have to count

a big air conditioning unit and a fan that's a traditional fan. Well, again, that's a good point. I do think that, I mean, I think there is air conditioning in the building. That's not one of my... But if it's like an air conditioning unit pointed at you on like a turn... One? Well, I don't know if it's one. What is one going to do?

The facts is implied by inside the magic and the mouselets and my beef is with them not with you jason at this point this being presented definitively as if this is a crucial part of the space mountain can we contact the mouselets and find out who are they i would love that's a that's a viable way first of all who are the mouselets where secondly where are you getting your information from? Are they just TikTok only? First of all, I'm going to become a Mouselets fan regardless of what the answer to these questions are. Do you have a TikTok account?

Do I? I do, but I don't post or anything. Just for lurking? Yes, I lurk on a lot of places. Yeah. Reddit, Facebook. Oh, I know. Yeah, that's part of my thing. I lurk.

Yeah. Pleasure Island Facebook group. Pleasure Island Facebook group. Pleasure Island Facebook group. I love the Pleasure Island Facebook group. Yeah. So I think, okay, if it's air conditioning units, you would consider, though, that Jason was still correct. I'm not saying, that's not even a discussion of would it matter.

It's not. To me, here's where I'm drawing the line. If there are air conditioning units in the building, that's not enough. Not enough. I agree. I need to hear from a source that's quoting an Imagineer or somebody involved in the ride that there were an especially large amount of air conditioning units put into Space Mountain for that effect specifically.

Okay. But what if there's like four put in for that effect that's enough i guess so but do you really think that would be enough to create a consistent effect throughout the ride to fake speed i mean this could also be it could be um you know air conditioning units it's keeping it cold in there uh like the you know vastness of space and the 35 mile per hour, that gets the speed. So I'm willing to say I'm wrong. Sure, sure.

Well, which is again why I'd like to divide it. I think the beef is not here. I think my beef is with these sources that are quoting nothing. Because here you are maybe bending what you think is happening in there and that's great these places that have published this thought with zero evidence yeah that's why i think what i i'm sure i'm trying to take these guys down i'm trying

to take theme theme park center you're in my crosshairs already gone tumblr disneyland secrets you're in my maybe that's why they're gone because they're publishing fake news. I mean, also, in addition to this, there's a number of Reddit threads saying this is possible, but in the comments of those Reddit threads, you also have people saying, I don't know how this myth

got started. I don't know if you could trust this, but somebody said, my professor was an imagineer who worked on the original design for this exact ride at Disneyland. He confirmed that there were no such fans along the track. I don't know. You can't trust that maybe as much as, or you could more than you could trust anybody on Reddit.

But isn't this, I'm just, I think it's interesting. That's more why I bring it up than any particular thing. However, I will acknowledge this, that this does go back to you said something. I scoffed. I seem to have been proven wrong in the moment, and I might be proven wrong again. So though I don't want to keep it personal, Jason, here's what I'm going to offer. If anyone, and this is where the listeners come in, I say contact who you got to contact. Let's start digging things up.

I'll save you the work of watching the behind the attraction episode that Disney put out because I did and there is no mention of the fans. But if we, I think this is very possibly a job for Jim and Lynn. Lynn is listening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If there was ever a job, this is a big one, I think. But if I am proven definitively wrong in a way that we can all agree on, here's what I will offer you, Jason. Oh, my gosh.

On three occasions in theme parks or generally themed environments or just anywhere out in the world, if we are near a place where a treat can be purchased or achieved, I will not only purchase you this treat, I will offer up the humiliation factor of to know that you are in the mood for a treat. I will allow you to say, oh, treat boy,

and then I will go and buy you and will pay for, on three occasions, I will do this. I don't want there to be stakes to this. That's how much I'm invested in this and would like to figure this out. Mmm, hungwee.

I will accept that. That can be part of it. You can say hungwee with a W. Okay. So, listener, and I think it would probably behoove this entire situation if all three of those were filmed

and posted to our social media. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, that's what I'm putting out there. entire situation if if all three of those were filmed and posted to our social oh yeah yeah um so that's that's what i'm uh that's what i'm putting out there um i don't want to you know i i'm more invested in this than you are maybe so uh uh i don't want to force you to do anything but i would put out the possibility of if i'm correct and proven definitively correct if on one occasion uh i am in the mood for wine. Yeah, I was going to say, do you want some wine, monsieur? Monsieur.

Oh, I do like that. I mean, I was just going to do the same. Oh, wine boy. But maybe you follow it up with like a wood varietal, monsieur. A wood varietal. I like the N in there. I mean, I think all of us are having fun either way. It keeps it in the realm of fun, if mild humiliation for somebody.

But does everybody sign off on this plan? Do we feel good about this? Sure, yeah. We have an impartial witness. I think you can help weigh in on this. Feel free to make a ruling of, I'm sorry, Scott, this does seem like a credible source. But I really feel like it's got to, an Imagineer has to be involved.

There's got to be a book. It has to be, because I think Disney likes to reveal their little secrets. I think typically- Some of them, yes. They kind of, yeah, yeah. Some they keep mysterious, like a Haunted Mansion thing. Like, you know, which CVS the pen and the pad came from.

Yeah, sure. They don't reveal that in the film. But otherwise, I think they like to own up to this stuff and i think it's suspicious that this has never been well i i completely agree with what you're saying um on the disneyland space mountain there is a large like asteroid or something that you you know what i'm talking about when we first enter sort of space yeah yeah and you're slowly waiting to actually hit the fast part of the ride. And you can't really see it. You kind of have to squint to see it.

And I'm just wondering, does it count if there's a fan somewhere pointed at the car up there even? And you're saying it's part of space atmosphere. Right. So it's even before the speed happens. No. I think this is about speed. And even though I think Jason's point of view on this is adjusting,

I accept that to create a spacey, cool atmosphere, that there are little swirls and gusts of air conditioning. That makes sense to me. But again, I'm going to the letter of the law here with these articles, and I'm saying that I think it has to be involved in the simulation of the speed okay specifically speed i think so because that's the part that i think is weird i think ultimately the ride doesn't go that fast right but these are big weighty vehicles and i think you have to have absolute cannons to have any impact beyond what just gravity is already doing and like the

tightness of the turns i think that's yeah the darkness as we as we said well i will say this uh i will be impartial impartial on the hyperspace mountain it is a lot more lit up in there so i guess we would have seen i'm trying to think where the fans would be i feel like you would have seen something well and not only that there's a lot of ride through but you know everybody's get if anybody gets the chance to ride space mountain with the lights on they're turning their their camera on yeah that's true putting it to youtube you can watch youtubes i don't see where these fans i don't even see like big old fans at the top of the building i'm not seeing fans sometimes i'll see a little something and i'll say could it be and then i think that's a camera i think

that's a speaker but if but if also this is another way a listener can be helpful if you want to go through videos like like that yeah and prove and don't just photoshop fans in there i want to see there has to be a way to verify don't just take a picture from a Sears catalog and just drop it into a frame I don't know I want to see what talents our listeners have

I would like to see that if you do that then you have to say parody like the rules of Twitter I'm sorry or XR now where if you're going to do a parody account of something, it has to say parentheses parody. And don't bring a big Office fan on the ride with you

and during the photo op hold it up. No. That's not funny and it's dangerous. I'd say it's very dangerous, yes. I mean, it is funny. I take it back. Yeah, I was going to say it's very funny. It's funny, but it's dangerous and don't do it

and then we'll be responsible. So don't do that either. Sure, could hurt you to say, it's very funny. It's funny, but it's dangerous, and don't do it, and then we'll be responsible. So don't do that either. Sure, it could hurt you, but if it just drops and it doesn't hit you, you know, then you've got cars below you, two employees, a lot of bad things can happen there. So don't do that. I don't want it to become the new, like, Flash Mountain

where people are bringing fans on the actual ride. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would be impressed if you were able to smuggle one and then, like, be in a seat belt. Is it a pull-down? What is it on Space Mountain? Yeah, it's a pull-down, I believe. Oh, then how are you even?

Or is it lap? I can't remember. Oh, it's lap. It's pull-back on lap. Oh, okay. I've only been on it a hundred times. Yeah, right. It's just been a while.

Yeah, it has. I oddly have not been on Space Mountain in a while. And maybe if I went, I would plainly see fans right away and realize the foolishness of my way i i might get kicked down real fast here but i'm willing to do it because i think it's interesting i think it becomes a little hunt that the audience can help with uh you know hey everybody's a winner if jim or len get involved uh let's just see what happens here yeah i am very willing to be wrong i think i was using fans and air condition like strong air conditioning interchangeably i just like there's a lot of airflow to the fans is enough repeated online that i think you probably saw that probably infected yeah something in my brain

and a listener said like i've known my mom told me about this when i was growing up i thought this was common knowledge and i hate to be i don't mean to be sounding like your mom was wrong but is it possible that this is one of those like urban myth things that sounds cool i like the idea of it yeah i just don't know if i buy it in practice i'm being a skeptic here sure well. Well, I think we'll find out quickly. I think so, too. And we will try to, you know, we'll just make a moment. If it happens quickly and I'm wrong, we'll try to make a moment happen quickly where I become treat boy and I'm forced to fetch a treat for Jason.

We'll knock one of those out in a non-theme park environment. We'll just run to downtown Burbank. You good with the Ben and Jerry's? Yeah, I was going to say. Plenty of Baskin Robbins. As long as he's not paying, he's good with the prices of Ben and Jerry's. That's $6, my friend. Yeah. Hey, maybe I'll put on a little

costume, too. We're going to have fun either way. These are the stakes, and I'm sorry that's a bunch of non-Vegas, but hey, it's a runner in the series now. We'll find out by the end of the series. No, maybe hit a local. Yummy Cupcakes is pretty convenient for most spots in Burbank.

That is the real business name, Yummy Cupcakes. How much is a cupcake at Yummy Cupcakes? I don't know. I haven't been in a little while. I would assume a few dollars at least. A few? Well, I would assume that too. I feel like they were four dollars like 10 years

ago so i don't know like put it maybe five or six reasonably it has to be a treat for one person to have i feel like it cannot be uh a dozen of something and then you like put them in the fridge well i feel like when i've had it before you're either buying one or you're buying a box of the four big ones. I guess I would accept a box. And you're taking them to something or splitting. Oh, I'm not going to make you

buy a box of cupcakes. Like, I'm not. The price of cupcakes nowadays, you know? Well, thank you for taking that into consideration. There's a crumble cookie coming. That's a chain.

That's a popular chain. We should probably get to Vegas before we list every different treat in bourbon. In bourbon specifically localizing localize it i haven't called out localizing well randy's donuts by the airport is delicious cookie dough dreams over downtown burbank you know we i've had a couple times i don't like it that much they do strawberries sometimes no you're right we're done we're going back to vegas we're going to a different strange piece of sloped architecture with rides inside, multiple rides inside. We're talking about the Luxor. Of course, the Egyptian-themed hotel and casino, which I think has gone a little astray.

I think it's lost its… A little? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we a little astray. I think it's lost its... A little? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we'll get into that. I think, as with all... This is a great example of the theme that'll come up multiple times in this series of the family-friendly Vegas of the 90s,

where now they've made efforts to make it just kind of generic and all the stuff you'd usually want in a casino. But in the 90s, this was an indoor theme park. It was like the primary thing almost was like a new concept in a themed entertainment center. It was nuts. It was nuts in the 90s.

Yeah, one of the most ambitious themed experience of like three interconnected attractions and a boat ride that goes around the lobby. Like a boat ride with pretty bad per hour ridership. Very bad, I believe. Very bad. Yeah. Well, this is the experimental nature of it there's a lot they were just they were willing to try all of this stuff as as foolish as it might be as badly priced or as badly enumerated as as it might be um but it's really notable and worth talking about and a lot of things about it that are like uh just just big

and unprecedented and stupid and that's why it deserved an episode here on the main strip yeah it is stupid and i knew a little of it but then like just watching and reading you just like oh my god like like i they really gave them like carte blanche to just make up their own mythology and make up characters and make up technology and like stuff that doesn't even seem like it would be popular. It seems like this would be... It reeks of this will fail. Yeah. Not because of any lack of effort on the...

Right, or imagination. Masters putting this thing together. But it just sounds like... Maybe we just... We know this in retrospect because we've seen a lot of things like this where it's not IP and it's an original world and that's cool and to be commended,

but it's certainly... Everything you hear about the story of it and the IP and it's an original world and that's cool and to be commended, but it's certainly every, everything you hear about the story of it and the world of it, you're like, that sounds like something that will not do well. Of course. It's way up our alley. We love it. But yeah,

for like, again, like dads, especially nineties dads. Yeah. Oh yeah. They're going to track like this pre Egyptian side, like society.

It's a story that takes place in past, present, and future. A perfect pyramid of tales. Yeah. It just seems so impenetrable to know what's going on versus just any generic Disney thing where it's like, pirates are yelling at you. Got it. Great.

You are in a haunted mansion. That is true. You know what? And I was going to open the bigger narrative of why doesn't original theme park IP work better out in the world? Look what's original. Pirates and haunted mansion. And you answered it right there. You understand what those are before you're even in the gate.

You look at the sign. I don't think you understand. You need a lot of explanation to figure out what is it all called it's all called secrets of the luxor pyramid yeah uh and yeah that doesn't tell you much of any that doesn't tell you you're going to be time traveling and with archaeologists no and it's by the way i love this yeah i really do i think there's better versions of what they conceived of that would have worked much better but i do love it as an idea and a concept so i don't want to say i don't want to put it down but it's not like

oh yeah you're gonna go get chased by a mummy or something oh it's egypt got it it's mummies it's pharaohs done you're right maybe it should have been a little more basic maybe maybe and there's things that are yes basic i'm actually i'm going to propose here backing up a little bit and like entering the building because there's there are things about this place that are very impressive and unprecedented before you even get in there yes uh you know beyond just the attractions uh um so let me let me step it back to opening which is october 14th 1993 it's 93 like all of the 93 now it's clear the end of 93 the the peak of the pyramid peak of insane family yeah las vegas because i think treasure island treasure

island shows around then luxor and mgm grand um luxor only for like a few days was the tallest building, I think, on the strip. And then Treasure Island immediately beat it. Wow. Yeah. Oh, that's crazy. It's also, I mean, first things first, it is an actual pyramid. And it's not built in some fake way that makes it not a pyramid. It's not a simulation of a pyramid.

It's a real pyramid. And as such, it's one of the tallest pyramids ever built. It's taller than only two of the actual Egyptian pyramids. So it's in the top 10 pyramids ever built. It's, I forget the amount of like, is there a bigger pyramid? Oh, well, if you can't, you know, what's a pyramid is the transamerica pyramid in uh san francisco um which has some other there's like a more of a traditional building shape right caked into it but you know what i mean the san francisco pointy building there's an interactive like chart where you can see how big it is compared to other stuff unfortunately it did not include the bass pro shop pyramid no i know i mean that's

that's the only we had the same thought we're looking at real history stacked up against the luxor and we're both like yeah but what's the where's the pyramid i know yeah the weird one in memphis uh i guess it's too small it doesn't rate right but the luxor rated. The Luxor is huge. 36 stories. Entire establishment, $375 million to open. Built by, but no longer owned by Circus Circus. So I think there's a through line. And we aren't doing an episode about Circus Circus this round, but Circus Circus, we're talking about like, why does all this happen?

The familyfication of Vegas. And some of it you got to attribute to Mirage, I think. That's a big Disneyland-y free attraction, and that popped a lot of eyes. But then Circus Circus has got to get a lot of credit, too, even though that was going since the 60s, right? Yeah. The guy's name is Jay Sarnarno i didn't find enough about him to make him like an official guy and right and the thing that we did but the uh he he's caesar's pals too and it he kind of combined all right how do we lure people in well with some

big gaudy theme uh and so he kind of revolutionized vegas in that way so i guess it makes sense that circus circus thinks what else can we do how do we go further and how do we kind of revolutionized Vegas in that way. So I guess it makes sense that Circus Circus thinks, what else can we do? How do we go further? And how do we kind of like Disney World-ify elsewhere on the strip? So they're responsible then for Excalibur, which is like, I mean,

I remember hearing about Excalibur when I was a kid and like, get me there i want i love disneyland but i don't get to stay in the castle yeah i get to live in a castle like not knowing the actual right vibe that excalibur would be if i were to go yeah yeah it's i i mean i still felt that whenever i the first time i went to vegas was like 2007 and even just seeing excalibur even in its like decaying state i was just like hell yes i didn't stay there but it was still like that kid kid brain of like yeah yeah i want to stay in that dumb castle yeah yeah you also i love luxor for the existence of it, if not in practice. In the same way that I love all these, where as this stuff pops up in the early 90s,

and I was saying how I think some of it's got to come from Disney decade and Eisner era, that there's a pyramid next to a castle. Yeah. And then you're not far from the pirate ship. It really starts to feel like Disney World, where you're like, here's the Hawaiian one, and here's the future one, and here's the Caribbean one.

Yeah. I mean, I like that stupidity of Vegas. Well, it makes it feel like a big miniature golf course. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like random landmarks. Yeah. Yeah.

And various monorails and people movers connecting each other. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And various monorails and people movers connecting each other. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With an aesthetic that has nothing to do with the hotels that it's passing by. You're right. That is exactly like Disney World. This is probably at the root of all of our love of Vegas. It's all like, you know, we've all separately fractured into different things that we like about Vegas. Yeah.

But isn't it like, it's like a stupider trashier Disney World all like crunched and only the hotels unless they build rides in the hotels. Yeah, 100% it is. So we're just seeing this dumb nonsense when you're walking down the street is so important to people with theme park brains. I just want mini golf courses.

So right on. I just, I want the world to be like a huge miniature golf course. Yeah. I was looking at the, when I was there, cause I stayed one night at the Luxor and I stayed two nights at New York. You did just now.

And we, I forgot where your first night was. Okay. It was at Luxor. Cause I didn't know if I was going to be there and then I was got a cheaper room. So that was the Luxor. It seems like that's the thing,

by the way. It seems like Luxor is a last minute really cheap room yes um but new york new york i'm i was looking at it as walk i was down this walking down the street and i kept looking at it going okay this would be a good basis for a marvel area with the height of a new york skyline like this in a theme park only do what you know that we've talked about these photos from this never built marvel thing that was going to be in dubai is that what i think so yeah but i was just looking at it and i was like i was like imagining new york new york in a different context

as a like the hotel itself because it's if you haven't seen it it's just giant they're not as tall as the skyscrapers in new york but they're very tall yeah like the scope of them is so big and crazy and then all like mashed together as like the you know the new york that never was right and they're all like a little more it is very marvel-y you're right yeah so like like i just add like dr octopus's tentacles coming out of a window and add like spider-man on the side of one and i'm like man we're like this is so close to what i want which we won't ever get i don't think no i don't think marvel i don't think disney is going to license out marvel although they should i mean look if they're trying to uh you know crank up

some profits here it's too why not yeah it's going to be too realistic like everything's going to be realistic that's the yeah that's because of the movies. Disney has this kind of dull take. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. It'll be another 10 years before they learn that one of the most important characters in the Marvel universe is the city itself. New York city?

Yeah. New York city. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully they'll realize that. Hopefully they'll realize it. New York, New York.

And to some extent luxor obviously the theming has been pulled back but there's still a bit of it in luxor but i have found those casinos in terms of just like sitting at a slot machine and like posting are very fun new york new york especially with all the fake city streets and all and the facades and all yeah yeah yeah New York New York and we'll talk we'll talk more when we're talking about our trip but New York it is fun and especially it's fun and I wasn't at this point in this trip but it's fun if you want to like really get hammered and have a piece of pizza and go into a piano bar and just be annoying with a bunch of other annoying people and i mean that in a good way because i saw that happening every night or both nights

oh sure 25 dollars a head at that piano bar to get in you're guaranteed a seat if you pay it is small so that's actually very small but you can also just hang out outside and hear the piano, kind of. There was a lady screaming the lyrics to Piano Man as I walked by. My God. And I was like, I'm not in the mood for it right now. But depending on the trip, sometimes you are in the mood to enjoy something like that. I don't think there's any amount of alcohol that could get me in the mood to enjoy a dueling piano. What if she was singing that Beach Boys Problem Child song? And it was five o'clock on a Saturday.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess, well, I would do a double take, but I'd also be upset that even a non-classic was getting ruined. Okay. Okay, so big thing about this, I remember very clearly when when this place opened because we get like in LA we're not far so we're

getting local news reports about it like oh all right something's happening in Vegas and I for sure remember like the news or my parents telling me how yes there is there is a pyramid hotel and there is a light that shoots out of the top of it and you can see the light from space.

What a stupid thing. I love that. It was nice to see it. I don't think they run it as bright. I think they toned down the brightness at some point in time. At some point, it was- It brought down two satellites, probably. Started a war.

McCarran Airport, now Harry Reid Airport. Not a fan of the light, I believe. Oh, sure. Because you can like, I saw that you could see, you could see the light potentially from Los Angeles. At cruising altitude. Yeah, you can see the light. Let alone you're in the airport literally next door.

I saw the phrase strongest beam of light in the world and yeah so dumb did you so pointless who went in there because of that it's a very good question ever did it help business do they have to do it it seems like an aggro move of like our light is the fucking strongest light of on earth like we will signal like what did you see read that it says it has its own ecosystem ecosystem essentially enough yes enough animals and species are up there because they're so attracted to the light so they're like moths but then there's also bats and i don't know the intricacies of it but i saw that on multiple sites now i don't know i didn't source it but it seems like they've set up shop there certain don't know i didn't source it but it seems like

they've set up shop there certain animals have set up shop there and it's a like a it's a you know upside down ecosystem because it has its own rules where like you think the bats are in there to eat the smaller animals but actually like the bats and the moths get married yeah yeah yeah they're monogamous right they treat each other each other really well. It's some of the more loving relationships. It's beautiful, actually. And if you saw them make love, you would weep. It's also, I believe it was 2012, there was a UFO sighting. I don't know if you guys are UFO-pilled like I am in the last few months,

because there's a lot of UFO stuff. And this is totally sincere. There's so much UFO stuff going on. there's a big hearing like a couple days ago um a bunch of people on the record like pilots and people in the military just being like here's the video here's how fucking crazy this little object was behaving i don't know what it is and then there's other people in the government that are saying crazier things like uh yeah we have had contact with alien species they have killed humans there are agreements in place between uh humans and aliens so like it really no i've not tried this stuff is not i don't know why everyone's not like at least talking about it i'm not saying this the extreme version of this guy's i i always catch a

little of it and i'm always interested when it comes up i do know i i saw that the one of the people testifying about it was really into like other dimensions and he's like well of course mussolini and the vatican found aliens that's the mr uh grush is his last name yeah he's like a he's a government official who people say is credible but he's the one who's definitely saying the wildest shit about aliens versus other people who have just, there's like so many pilots who just have like videos from their ship, just like of like a little craft, just defying the laws of physics.

Just so many of these videos where people are like, it's scary. It looks scary. We don't know. So there's all this going on. But apparently there was a big sighting in 2012 um because i saw where in the from there to the beam of light yeah yeah and i haven't found the video i should go find the video before and post it if they have aliens find the light because that's what i'm saying that's what i'm wondering because the light was

so strong maybe it did attract some of the aliens to the light which is ironic because luxor and the egyptian like employee costumes do come into play in the movie mars attacks oh right yeah right oh yeah yeah um so that light i do believe maybe has attracted alien life it's so strong it's shot shooting into the universe you think anybody you think any of them are up there? Or has anybody bothered to ask one of the bats, are you an alien? I don't think they have asked, probably. And then they just immediately like, all right, you got me. Yeah. And they kind of like unzip their body, and then they're 10 feet tall.

Yeah. I crunched all my organs up here just to blend in to simulate one of your human bats. Anyway, I'll tell you my deal. I'm 5,000 years old. Came from Zyral 4. Somebody's got to climb up there and figure it out yeah yeah it'd be a good place to introduce them to us the blue man group can communicate to them with sound and uh visual things and then you can show them the the bodies exhibit which is like yeah we don't know where these ones come from but this is what humanity is all that's in us okay you can trust us look our literal insides our heart is on display for you

you can trust us we'll show you that titanic exhibit we'll show you our folly we are but flawed creatures when we try to build might it blows up in our face don't you see that's a that's that's a heart they couldn't turn that down that's what i'm saying no better When we try to build might, it blows up in our face. Don't you see? That's a heart. They couldn't turn that down, is what I'm saying. No better play. And then human and alien can all laugh together at the universe bonding comedy of Carrot Top. Oh, yeah.

He made a toilet seat do what? Even we understand the monica lewinsky references we knew all about that in cyril for like an mars attacks alien and like a human with arms around each other at the same time yeah um so you got a big light that's attracting bats and aliens um it i don't know when this stopped because i specifically when i drive by it uh uh if i'm on there or if you're you know if you're going to see the sign that's the way i've been talking about is the big the famous vegas sign which every once in a while like okay i'll go do the sign um and only then will i pass by like the front garden of the luxor which now kind of sucks it's specifically like a bad area and often uh like they ruin the grandeur of the pyramid with just like a big uh poster for their

esports arena esports arena and then the other side is the biggest bet mgm logo you've ever i know i pulled into the parking garage and it's just like this big, fuck, oh, like it looks like shit. It really- It's pretty bad. This is what they've all, the aesthetic of, at its worst, a lot of these like dumb,

it's the fusion of dumb 90s aesthetics that we like with just modern trash. Yeah. And they think like the, no, the funky blend of it will be what's interesting. Why a pyramid with an eSports? But really, it just doesn't work at all.

They've got other problems too. I watched a Vegas news report where viewers wrote letters to the news and asked, why is the Luxor so dirty? Did you find that when you were there? Yes. Okay, okay, yeah. Could you feel it from your window did you see like gunk caked on or was it just like in pulling up you're like just pulling

okay so i got to the luxor i'll just because it's a luxor episode yeah uh i got there there was the longest line ever i was gonna try to see if i could get like an upgrade or something i don't know if it's gonna be a 20 trick probably not but the line was so long so i just checked it on my phone and i was trying to get to the hotel room and the elevator i was trying to get to was broken and i was like oh god and that's like the hotel like the the carpeting looked extra dirty there's bad vibes in there it's just a bad vibe especially when you go up it's just kind of a bad vibe uh i i don't mean to correct you michael the inclinator yeah i was waiting for a pause to say well i'm gonna talk about the inclinator the diagonal elevator i'm so sorry i am so sorry i did which i tried to pitch to jane

once of like what if we stayed at luxor for a night you know you take an ink it's a diagonal elevator and she's like I just watched some videos looking from the higher floors she's like absolutely not here's a reverse pitch what if we stayed somewhere safe yeah well that is funny that you say safe so I'm trying I have bags

I have my comic-con exclusive toys which are gonna come up every episode this month I just unboxed Ernie Reyes Jrr it's a great toy he's got his little scooter or a keno from secret views uh i got everything i'm just like lugging this shit and i'm just like oh where's my room so i'm walking walking to find a different elevator so i get to this other bank of elevators it's not the right bank it's like you know it's like one through 18 and then 18 through whatever like you have to find certain okay oh it's not the right one all right i'll go to another one i finally find an

elevator that looks correct i get in i scan because now your phone is your is your room key i scan the room key on the thing on the uh whatever the button pad in the elevator in the inclinator and it's not working it doesn't fucking work i didn't get a real key card because i skipped the line so i keep scanning not working i just want to go to the room and put all this shit down i hate the luxor in this moment i'm so mad at it i'm so mad that i didn't spend like 50 more dollars to stay at a better place so all of a sudden the elevator door closes or it was maybe it was closed already all of a sudden the elevator starts inclinator starts moving now it's i'm like okay i guess somebody at the top maybe hit the button and is looking for the inclinator i don't think this is what happened because there was no

one at the top i shoot up from first to 36 or whatever i don't i forget exactly what the floor is it is the rickety-est ride i've ever had and that includes tower of terror simulated rickety it's rattling it's like this i didn't know that and i'm i'm literally i'm freaked i'm completely freaked out i have all the like i'm so tired and i'm just like it's you can hear like stuff rattling in the city and i'm going and i'm like when is this gonna stop i'm expecting it's gonna be like charlie in the great glass elevator i'm gonna shoot out the luxor it's going so fast and then you say goodbye to your loved ones ernie right if i don't get a chance to tell you i love you i give ernie a kiss little ernie i rip open the the box the kiss

ironic i'll bring this up now since you're talking about elevators um i took the elevator out to my room at the park mgm done floor 27 once opened on floor 24 who did i see but the carlson family mr and mrs carlson well because you were all staying in the same they were all staying at the same hotel and we just high and by yeah that's a different yeah those elevators that's a cute story anyway back to your horror show so it's rattling and i'm just like oh my god what this is so we end i end up at like the top floor and it opens no one's there but it's not my floor so i'm not getting out on the chance that you don't i can get down again yeah so then i go so then i have to go back down and it's just as bad and scary and then it's like i'm so freaked out you

don't like when you're in elevator and it seems like an there's an extra like five seconds and sometimes your brain goes are we stuck does that ever help yeah it's it feels like 45 seconds in my memory oh god of the door not opening oh and then i'm like scanning and scanning it might have been 20 seconds of a pan a panicked 20 seconds it feels like then i'm like scanning and scanning it might have been 20 seconds of a pan a panicked 20 seconds it feels like 45 seconds so like scanning scanning scanning finally the door opens i think because somebody else had hit the button and then somebody else scanned me up to the right floor finally i think i i was honestly it's so blurry. I may have just gotten into a different elevator. But I was just like so freaked in that moment.

And none of the other ones, because I went in a couple different ones the rest of the day, or the day and then the next morning. And none of them were that bad. But that one was crazy. I've never been in a scarier elevator situation. Oh, my God. And here I am imagining, especially jason like we should stay at the luxor for the inclinators though the might of man the inclinator inclinator i'm going to die in this inclinator it was really awful i did read i wait i don't remember where this

quote came from uh but somewhere printed the phrase inclinator an elevator that ascends at a 39 degree angle and rocks like a ferris wheel carriage yeah i guess maybe that i went into because it was the set of uh elevator inclinators that went to like the top they go fast so because of the angle that just is normal that is so upsetting to the well between this and the new york new york roller coaster this corner of the strip is just is normal that is so upsetting to the well between this and the new york new york roller coaster this corner of the strip is just shaky ride alley shaky yeah luxor also if you look up the phrase luxor cursed or luxor on it of course there's a lot of different like some obviously people have died it's a hotel that's been open for a while. You know. But then some of the deaths are fucking bonkers.

Some of the deaths. There was like a car bomb. It was rigged to like, all right, I'm just going to put an upside down cup in this guy's car. And there's an explosive in there. So if he turns the cup over, the thing. I like truly crazy deaths. A pipe bomb. And I believe it did kill the intended target,

a guy who worked at the Nathan's Hot Dogs in the food court, because the bomber's ex-girlfriend was now seeing him. And the two bombers were sentenced to life in prison. They avoided the death penalty. Jesus. Oh, my God. Wow. Well, first of all, RIP to a real one, to a Nathan's hot dog.

To a Nathan's true blood. But also, like, isn't that the, like, you wedge yourself into a relationship, you cause a breakup. It probably does not occur to you that the person might have a vast knowledge of how to build successful bombs. Of car bombs i think someone also may have gotten grievously injured or died falling down the shafts of one of the inclinators oh no yeah did you and then you go look at the article it says here it happened in 2023 and his name was michael carlson michael r car Carlson. And then Mike disappears. What was that?

There was a flash of Luxor-esque light, and then Mike was gone. Wouldn't it be cool, though, if a ghost was your third host? Yeah. I mean, as long as I showed up every time. Yeah, as long as you put in the, yeah, look, I'm not splitting the Patreon money with an apparition. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah because i understand did you did you guys see in somebody said this that the the rumor was that the whole place is haunted because it it was a place where mobsters used to kill and bury their enemies that's what the property was yeah yeah i mean i'm sure that's probably every place that there was a hotel or there's a hotel now well i i also saw that in

construction a handful of workers died but it was like oh estimated three but it might actually be seven and like that's haunting i i saw one video that say it's cursed because if a if you build a sphinx to protect a pyramid you have to to build two, and they only built one. So they're summoning old, like curses that haven't been awakened in this century. They defied so many laws. They defied so many different laws, essentially. They built on a burial ground.

They didn't do the two sphinxes mobster curse mummy curse yeah i don't know if there were any others they don't know the other types of curses well they probably built too fast i mean this whole thing was built in 18 months it's like poltergeist probably it's one of these days it's just gonna like get absorbed into a ball of energy and go to hell or something sure i don't know why it hasn't happened yet, but. That's a good way to, because I love my Vegas implosions, but how do you top that? Well, by the entire Luxor being taken back to hell.

If hell could take back a casino, that would be the ultimate implosion. That's the one it's eyeing. The video I was watching, these couple who do like vegas videos they were like oh there's a a middle-aged man in like a pinstripe suit that walks the halls that's a ghost at the luxor and you're supposed to like get out of his way like that's how we just make sure you get out of his way no problem everything is fine good roll of thumb yeah they didn't uh did they film him did they get it they don't think they got a release yeah you can't you have to get out of his way but he will sign a release form for you he understands how media works no i get you yeah i'll send you

a lease i know we'd hey we know an otherworldly yeah that's true a pinstripe suit man here they got a jewel store in here somewhere uh uh the luxor for sure is haunted i you can feel it there's a weird vibe in there and all the vegas hotels have a weird vibe but that one does feel haunted to me yeah it doesn't surprise me that it's haunted but also i won a hundred dollars playing slots there a few years ago so who's to say you know what slot machine what's i don't uh i it was a very generic it was one of the ones where it's like oh it's all babysitting it only plays 80s movie i i did and we did okay on the wizard of oz slot machine at the uh bellagio okay that was pretty shop well yeah little shop treat you i got a little shop story we'll save it for another episode patreon tease it'll be on the trip report

park mgm does not feel cursed to me it doesn't feel haunted no and that's flip that circus circus entertainment at some point did own 50 of the monte carlo which is what Park MGM was before. And if you, there's some very, there's like 2012 videos of like walking through the Monte Carlo and it looks busted. Like it's like, Oh, this got redone at just the right time.

Like, wow. They've got all the ghosts out of there before. Yeah. The best of all. Yeah. We found ourselves back in there. Yeah.

Really, really good. Okay. So Mike didn't die and mike didn't become one of the the happy haunt the unhappy haunts of the luxor i didn't succumb to the pharaoh's curse 99 if you would if that story kept going it was just so then we're getting i know i'm getting afraid and now that we see the numbers climbing like to i'm sorry I'm on floor 1,000. And then the roof of the elevator dissipated, just turned and it just scattered into ashes. And then I went into a ghostly pharaoh's mouth.

He screamed, your soul is mine forever. And I went into it. And then I can't even describe what I saw in there. It was so illish. Well, I met 900 dead mobsters. The genre. You know what? I like the genre mashup here of the mobster ghosts plus all the Egyptian stuff.

This is a real Cowboys versus Aliens. Yeah, yeah. It's mobsters versus mummies. This would have kept it open if this was the sort of basis for all of the rides and experiences a little bit of a streamlined yes yeah it easy easy to wrap your head around right uh i wonder scott i do you know about how that got me like that that was in the mid 2000s they they made a it as a comic book first cowboys versus aliens and it seemed like a thing where they were like practically giving it away at stores where it's like i don't

how is this making money like and as it came out they were like there's a movie cut like it seemed like really shady uh-huh like sure to be hit movie sure to be hit movie yeah so i i am wondering like oh are their stories gonna come out if they haven't already come out of like the ponzi scheme that got cowboys versus aliens made you know i'd love to know yeah well let's start a ponzi scheme for mummies versus mobsters. Yeah. There's got to be some shady financier out there. Look, we might be talking asylum. If we're lucky, it's asylum.

Yeah, that's true. But we'll go sub-asylum if we have to, to get our vision of mummies versus mobsters. Do we have... Which is more of a mobster versus mummies, mummies versus mobsters. Mobster versus mummies, I think. Yeah, okay. All right. First way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. versus mummies mummies versus monsters mobster versus mummies i think yeah okay all right yeah yeah i do i know i said i i was i was thinking that we don't have any commercial pilots in our audience and i have yet to be proven wrong i think there's pilots in our audience but not commercial pilots that's what you want they haven't but is there any are there any shady movie producers in our audience i hope so if so what are you doing if you're a fan of this you if you're a fan of this podcast you know we're chomping at the bit to make the worst movies ever made oh my god we would love to you we could do it all together we could each have our own bad movie and you could finance them and hang out with us come on and also with like mobster like you can can get, like it's a genre where you can get like great actors who have played mafia characters before. You can get any living soprano actor so easily.

Just like the modest amount of money. Pacino will do it. Yeah, that's true. Give him the earpiece and just feed him the lines. And he doesn't even need to. Yeah. He's a mobster. He's maybe, not to spoil it, but he's maybe a mobster who you realize is secretly a mummy. Of course he's a mummy. Of course he is. A mummy.

They're a mummy this whole time. And nobody knew. The Tribeca Film Festival is solely to gain life force for his mummy spells. The Tribeca film? Are you confusing De Niro? Did you say Pacino? Yes. Oh, I thought you were talking about De Niro

because I know De Niro has done a lot of those. You said you listened to the impression and then still thought it was De Niro. He can get pretty mad. He can get pretty mad. I don't know. I don't think i don't think deniro shouted in a movie in 30 years he is not able to shout anymore he's physically not able to get that excitable he's gentle he's like he's the intern you know he helps everyone out pacino makes uh

pesci and deniro look like uh he's 15 and they're 80 in the irishman oh yeah so much more energy than they do thank god when pacino loses the ability to scream that'll be like the snuffing out of the the great the great art of the 20th century yeah but i know he's pacino's still hanging out with guy fieri and uh sly and everybody he's doing great great. Yeah. He just had a baby. Oh, he's hungry. Oh, that's why you got confused. De Niro and Pacino both had babies. That's right. Yeah.

Proud papa. Proud papa. Was that De Niro or Pacino? I think a modern De Niro person's like, you're good doing that. You're good doing that. Yeah. I'm excited too.

I don't know if that even picked up people in watching killers of the flowers move uh the flower killers under killers of the flower goes under i'm not thinking what am i thinking i think it's enough you're thinking under the chair i was saying people are gonna be watching that and the bichi and the dinero scenes they're just like turn it up can't hear him you can just hear the volume sit closer to are just like, turn it up. Can't hear him. You can just hear the volume. Sit closer to the speaker in the theater. It's the only way.

Plymouth seems like he's screaming in comparison. Somebody's riding the levels on that. Yeah. You can hear the hiss of the white noise in the background. That's the sound of the moon. No, we put it in there on purpose. Okay, to keep creating through rides. You have a ride before you. You have a ride that I think initially you didn't even have to pay for.

And the ride, well, I don't even know if it had a name initially. It became the Nile River Adventure. And then I think it became, okay, so confusing history here where this was, oh, first of all, with this giant pyramid space, we now have the largest atrium in the world yes you got to fill that with a lot of stuff and you have a kind of marvel-y little indoor it's a little bit new york but mixed with art deco mixed with egypt it's real strand that's still there they can't get rid of that yeah still have they have to like i don't know whatever kind of whatever nightclub crap we're doing has to work under this weird It's real strange. That's still there. They can't get rid of that. Yeah. They still have, they have to like,

I don't know, whatever kind of, whatever nightclub crap we're doing has to work under this weird Marvel city. So that's there. But this boat ride was initially a big part of it where you would, it was crazy reading the phrase that you would climb aboard the boat, the read boats, not far from the check-in desk.

Mike, you described this difficult process of finding the right elevator. Yeah. What they imagined for you is that you're whisked away on a reed boat. All right, just follow the boat, sir. And then you climb aboard a boat and that takes you all across the world's largest atrium. So it was meant to be a boat that took you around the hotel or the lobby until they realized that doesn't make any sense. Well, and the waits were like 90 minutes to get on the boat, which I don't, who didn't bring this up? This is one of the most.

Well, you know what's going to happen to you right away on day one is lines will form. Yeah, this is really weird i understand like this no one brought this up that like this is gonna back up you know you can see great footage there's a very slick uh uh special like 27 minutes special about the opening of the luxor yes great and we'll pull from a lot when we talk about these the big ticket rides yeah yeah and you see a couple funny things about the boat ride one within the first few shots of the special there is a massive crowd waiting for the boat ride and two later on you see uh one of the boat ride like a host doing the spiel with holding the script in a microphone to an empty boat

as you're putting final touches on the whole place. That is very funny to see. Well, the notable thing there is that she is practicing her spiel and welcoming people on board the boat for when it opens and she says, Hi, my name is Cricket.

I also noted that her name was Cricket. That stuck in my mind too yeah wow that's cool yeah i hope cricket had a good run before the nile river adventure wrapped up so basically so this was meant to be like a transportation boat this is meant to be more like the the the epcot boats so the island of adventure boats but that doesn't make any sense and really just what it leads to is weird imagery of like here's the because it's also okay all the rooms are facing that atrium so it's like the world's largest motel basically where you don't have private hallways yeah like as soon as you're out of your room

you are public facing so that's the case and if you're on one of the lower floors you walk out if you're on floor two you step out and maybe there is a reed boat full of tourists going by immediately right so the it's the creepiness of the boat just moving through the little hotel corridors is very strong really weird yeah um and i think it smelled i think it was very uh chlorini or whatever or like pirates water smell. Like that was really, that wafted through the entire lobby. Oh, and I believe, uh,

correct me if I'm wrong. I think I saw the mention of like this and some of the other attractions gone by 1996. I think so. I think, yeah, I think the main Luxor things made it a little while. Yeah. But 96 kind of, that's where it all started unraveling. Because 96 is when all that Wizard of Oz theming we talked about on Club 3, that's when that went away.

And I think when nearly half of MGM Grand Adventures was gone. So 96 was a big sober up moment for this weird family time right boat rides gone most of mgm park is gone but you could probably feel like what it always seemed to me theme park vegas family vegas it seemed like by the second or third week of running this stuff they were like the contempt the people running it probably just had for this stuff you know yeah really the idea again just from somebody like you get done with your long drive you've probably got bags with you you're waiting to check in you check in and the next thing you have to do is wait in a 90 minute line to get on a boat just to dump your shit and and keep in mind you don't have to you could just walk to the elevators which undoubtedly will

be faster well sure yes and so like so they complete this this notion of a transportation boat ride is just defeated instantly yeah but i'm but they were obviously encouraging i would assume a lot of people wanted to do the boat because you go we're going to this big crazy hotel let's get in line for the boat but then the boat takes 90 minutes and you got your shit and you just drove like it's not even like oh we hop right in the boat we go right to the room or whatever like the idea of this extra like this extra two-hour chunk before you get to your room is crazy i don't know who thought this was a good idea the larger ve Vegas casino hotels, I am skeptical of the relaxing.

Like when it's like New York, New York is a little like this too, where it's like, oh, if you're in that tower, you have to cross the casino floor with your luggage to check in. Yes, that drives me nuts with a lot of these places. Because the thing we like about Park MGM is the check-in desk is right there. Right behind it is the elevator bank. Yes, you know exactly where it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was at Vidara, which is part of Aria, and that's completely the deal there, too. You don't have the silly fun, but you're close to the silly fun. Yeah. You maybe get a little calmer escape. Right. It's not a bad thing. Yeah, this is crazy. So they stopped making this.

They threw out the transportation element of it, and it just had to become a ticketed boat ride called Nile River Adventure. But I don't think there was much to the adventure. Because it wasn't supposed to be, it was just like going through hallways, some of them quite narrow. It's a little creepy.

You go through very little, because probably right above you, people are walking by to the rides of the restaurants or whatever yeah so there's some low clearance for and then like a guy on boy all of them there's somebody on board like storybook land just from what i could only find one video and they are not making jokes really this is like real they're pointing out real hieroglyphic stuff. Right. But it's all fake. And they're trying to incorporate sometimes the mythology of the rides that we'll get to.

They're saying, you know, hey, our main archaeologist, Mac McPherson, was spotted around these parts, which, again, I love. This is so up my alley. Yeah, I love this. This Dumbo ride in this part, like, connects to the other. Love it. this is so yeah i love this this dumbo ride in this part like it connects to the other love it but it's being said by this gruff brian doyle murray sounding guy who does not seem to be thrilled with having to parlay and then there's no animatronics right you don't like encounter it's a pirates without anything to right look at besides stuff that you could just walk past in

the hotel anyway they thought that yeah they thought the idea of it being transportation would be enough obviously they did yeah they didn't think it was just going to be a ticketed ride but they thought they didn't have any foresight that that boat ride should have some sort of really unique theming or robots or anything to it yeah anything yes it's just it's pointing out hieroglyphics that are uh not ancient they were put up there three months ago yes uh similarly they all this place also had a recreation of king tut's tomb which are like why who would care if it's not a real well what if i told you it was greenlit by the egyptian ministry of antiquities and they oversaw it to make sure it was like the real tomb well i would

say still then okay it's just a if it's a simulation of a real tomb but it doesn't have like a mummy trying to get out of the tomb yeah and try to send me to hell and spit scarabs at me right then why bother to make it realistic it's a very good point really weird some of these uh i'll say quote unquote artifacts because they were all recreations. When they were closing stuff down or pulling back on it, they did donate to a local Vegas museum. So that's nice.

You can see. So now a real museum has a fake King Tut. Has fraudulent artifacts. I think there's still some sort of King Tut exhibit in the Luxor with the Titanic and with bodies

and the fantasy the topless review that's at Luxor? I forgot to go see it you did? yeah I didn't see, I forgot to go see it. Oh, you did? Yeah. But it's so, it's so true. Just kidding.

I didn't see bodies. I didn't see, I didn't see dead bodies and I didn't see nude bodies. You know, well, and they were both nude actually. It all sounds a little bawdy. It does. Bawdies. A couple of spellings in place. Bawdies.

That's my new, yeah. Did you scribble that on the feedback card when you were like checking out i was close on those bodies i every time i walked to the luxor i was like angry or for some like i was just like oh i just like got me transport me to the other side is dumb place so there's no really the idea was you get all you would just you would just wait 90 minutes for a 15 minute boat ride yeah yeah rest rest your feet but it was not to be but look uh ultimately you know if there were some flawed concepts here it's because the big money was put into the centerpiece the trilogy of attractions of high-end theme park attractions,

Secrets of the Luxor Pyramid. And again, we will recommend the special that's on YouTube, The Making of Luxor. I think that'll find it for you. And where you can watch the creation. They have cameras present for every step of putting together really high-end, the highest end outside of disney universal maybe higher than some of what they were doing at the time yeah this was top tier stuff plopped into

this casino to be mostly unappreciated the work they put in for the work they put into to the appreciation ratio has to be off the charts different i don't know how to explain what you know what i'm saying the amount of work the amount of effort versus the amount of people that actually gave a shit yeah when you compare it to like so little i assume same era uh indiana jones adventure right and it is like it comes out to rave reviews and people still are just like trembling when they like i love it so much in reunion panels and it's the grand i want to take It comes out to rave reviews, and people still are just trembling. I love it so much in reunion panels, and it's the great, I want to take my kids on it and pass it along,

and they've refreshed it, and the emotion present. And I'm not saying these were better than that, but it was top-tier themed entertainment talent getting nothing. Did anybody tell him i liked it i it's possible no i guess i'll say now if somehow someone is listening who's part of these i can't say i liked it because i didn't go yeah i wish i could have gone these seem incredible yeah 100 the the thing i had always heard about it was the one guy associated with Douglas Trumbull who worked on Back to the Future of the Ride. Directed it.

He's the reason for the premise. He saved it. It was potentially going to be a disaster that just made people nauseous. They built a theater that was not to his liking. And he's like, what can we do? And he figured out how to make it work. And remade that uh the you know one of the greatest rides ever yeah and i think another was known for the special effects on close encounters of the third kind at some point 2001 2001 is this Hollywood and started working more in themed entertainment.

Under the shadow of Natalie Wood's death, which occurred while he was directing her in a movie. Dear God. Yeah. And he, like, I'm sure I said this before, but yeah, he's just on the record, like, and after what happened to Natalie. I just, I didn't want to be in this town anymore. And I, crazy. Can you imagine want to be in this town anymore. Crazy. Can you imagine that?

You're like, you were the person with her when this still mysterious thing occurred. Wait, he wasn't on the boat. No, no. You just mean he was working. Yeah, I was like, wait, I didn't read that. I can't believe what happened, what someone else did. And I won't say who, but you can. We're not asking the right question. Check out out this big miniature it's pretty funny right it's giant but it's tiny rides are gonna

be fun that's what we should focus on um no a giant in the field of early special effects yeah who and also in uh experimenting with different frame rates to create different crazy effects so you don't have i don't think what peter jackson later did or james cameron later did with uh you know not standard frame rates uh without this guy and especially in this ride forum uh because he started doing everything 60 frames a second which was did not happen much then right uh but worked really well for for ride purposes yeah one of the attractions that the names of the attractions by the way insert to the obelisk luxor live and theater of time insert to the obelisk kind of the straight more straightforward simulator ride luxor live like

starts as a talk show with in-person actors and then becomes more like cg footage and then theater of time is like that's the future one that was nearly impossible to do in a way that really worked and where you needed people who were part scientists to do the math and to build the domed screens. What they had to do to do this, because, okay, so he, for Back to the Future, The Ride, was not happy. He had to like, we already built the theater. We're stuck.

Can you save it? And he had to work around that. He got to build these theaters from the ground. This guy had a huge say in the layout of the Luxor in general, was involved in building the theaters. He was involved in creating a custom robot to paint the screens so that the the screens were even and you could light them correctly

which is also admirable and then you just read about the history of this that like the film started going to shit that nobody was maintaining it properly, which has happened so often. It's so... I appreciate the optimism that we can put a really top-tier technical process in this casino and that somebody will take care of it because I don't, I think, a year in, maybe less,

maybe as soon as Doug Trumbull left town, they're like, all right, and put a 14-year-old in there and we are good. You know it got bad so fast. Yeah. Unless he was, like, I wonder, like, does he, how long does he even stay on? I don't think this is documented at all, but, like, how long does he get contracted for

past opening? Okay, it all works. Does he check in on it every six months, or after a year he's out? I don't know, maybe not, because if there's no – yeah, I mean, assuming there's no new money in it for him to – then why would you? He can't. I think the whole thing was part of – I found another interview with him where he was saying this was part of – okay, he coined this term.

He was imagining a world full of high-impact entertainment centers. He wanted there to be a ton of things like what he did in luxor every city has something like this where it's a theme park and it's high-end original movies with a story and that was part of it to him he thought of making them all correlated they said we want three rides he said the ride should be connected so that you get more invested in these characters as you go and he you know schomburg was gonna have one of those i suspect somewhere around me would have had one glendale galleria or whatever like we're king of prussia mall we all if he got his way we would have had such insane like arch stories that don't like our dads don't understand and we're begging to keep going back to these

weird things that are like too adult for us and scare us but we're like chasing the scariness god i wish he got his vision of the world i really have to get behind here because he he's what we said this from day one on this podcast like more stuff like this and just like malls you know like exactly what he wanted yeah film-based micro theme parks in shopping malls multiplexes and casinos that was his whole detailing of his vision and there was every any bit of it that we ever see we're like oh look one of those yeah he wanted there to be everywhere there was the vibe i mean there was you know disney quest they wanted it everywhere um yeah blockbuster blockbuster had that entertainment there was, you know, Disney Quest, they wanted it everywhere. Yeah.

Blockbuster. Blockbuster had that entertainment. There was only ever one, maybe two of them. Yeah, yeah. What's that called? Entertainment City? Something like that. Yeah.

And there were Sega in Australia. I think there was a Sega-sponsored thing. There were multiple kinds of things in Japan. There was a Sega thing here. There was something called Virtual Land. Right. Oh, okay yeah yeah you could get in those like orbs that spin around and uh go 360 oh yeah massive arcade here yeah yeah and rides and uh three attractions a boat where like they are going for the disney dollar here oh god if i don't just listen to wherever you live just imagine where you know it would be. And imagine what year it would have disappeared.

Yeah. Probably 96 to 99 sometime. But imagine what the fond memories you would have in 1995 of going to this barely attended, too dense of story theme park near you, you know whatever in like uh in glendale arizona right i oh god oh the world of these i wish was there there's i still we're not done yet this still is trying like it's not the same thing but like the void was trying even though now that's over like this is still an idea to put so much more themed garbage everywhere yeah and i still i think it can as we get older and as we theme park pill our kids more i feel like we're just priming the world

for it and as shopping malls die and we don't know what else to do with them they're big crazy spaces why not just turn them into right you know meow wolf we're saying on the second gate is a good you know they're they're trying to do these off the beaten path the into right you know meow wolf we're saying on the second gate is a good you know they're they're trying to do these off the beaten path the thing is you know crazy experiences in in uh you know not the three primary cities and without like a billion dollars to do them uh i'm hopeful i'm hopeful and how long did that austin powers bar last in glendale that's a themed bar that lasted a couple of years. Enough for me to go a couple times. I think I went twice.

For me to feel some sticky textures of chairs. Yeah. See some shady people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The dreamers of the world. The Trumbles and the Powerses. The fake Powerses. The unauthorized Austin Powers bar. Oh, there was an unauthorized

Star Wars bar on Hollywood Boulevard. That's still there. Oh, it's still going i believe so kevin smith does his shows there still oh okay pretty sure i'm pretty sure i see him in front of the dream is alive yeah i'm pretty sure i see him in front of like the bar like the ma size of looking bar when he's talking talking about flicks okay so i think it's still there well this is i'm saying that it exists this idea exists it's not

dead douglas trumbull had a dream and i think it's still alive does kevin still have a key to the kevin smith podcast lounge on the top floor of the john lovitz comedy club formerly wizards you know what is it now what is it now it's nothing it's not already It's a bunch of boxes. It's storage and the signs. A bunch of rats and bats. Still says. Is it the third floor of the, or third store? I thought it was. Yeah. So in the circle in the bamboo ceiling area, it was the third floor. It was like at above Carl's.

It was later. It was added on later. I know, but we're actually, this is really, I would like to know, do you know specifically where it was? I don't know. I was never there. I wasn't either. And I feel bad that I wasn't.

There's no diagrams of this there's no martin's vids breaking down where the smodcast theater was but where it had to be like above the form what is it what is carl strauss now oh it's um starbucks isn't it starbucks it's a starbucks a starbucks so above the starbucks maybe was where john loves i think you know no the other side it's above the um it was next John Lovitz County Club was? I think, no, no, the other side. It's above the Johnny Rockets. Oh, okay. I think. And then, because Wizards, you see the pictures of the... But Wizards was the Carl Strauss and Starbucks.

Or am I completely my geography? I don't know. It's not well recorded. Interesting. It's almost like they thought no one would care about this. No one should even. We don't need to write down one bit of where any of this is. It's like we're going to have to do more City Walk, though.

Yeah. Let's keep moving. Let's talk about what these actual rides were. So there's like a kind of an aesthetic that is strewn through all of them, which is like the future of Egypt. And you hear people mention in the special how it is the like millions of years down the road version of Egyptian technology where like anything that the Egyptians thought of now is in use in the highest tech way

and it works great. So all human technology is ancient Egypt based. But also, do they say at some point, and this is a society that came before Egypt, where it actually got less technologically advanced yes they do say that and because they say the pyramids are like less good versions of what were originally built i think they say luxor luxor is supposedly like a better pyramid than the real pyramids that were built because it was built by the people before the whatever society before the ancient egyptians so your your hotel is shittier than whatever was there before that

we don't remember no no the hotel is better okay the hotel better than those fucking garbage pyramids in egypt right now and the crap old casinos yeah yeah then the real pyramids i'm sorry then the crap old pyramids yes that's right all right i think that's what i got from the special at least wow okay so we're so we're introducing uh like an entire race of people yes it is mostly vanished and then also a whole a future based on ancient technology yes and so all right so uh dad with a big yard uh are you ready now so are you ready to learn about ancient but future technologies and peoples yes yes dad who just wants to gamble and just take a nap gamble and smoke gamble with the big cup the cup that had your quarter yeah they were coins oh man yeah and you missed the big cup. The cup that had your quarters. Yeah, your coins.

Oh, man. Yeah. Did you miss the big cup? Did you ever do the big cup? Growing up so close to Atlantic City, there were definitely relatives who would like, if we would see them, they'd be like, hey, here's a big cup. You know, this is good for the beach. And honestly, the big cups were good for building sandcastles.

Oh, so you get their big coin cup, but it was empty. Yes. And I hope cleaned before anything was drank. Oh, cleaned. My mom was definitely being like, yeah, clean that because it's probably disgusting. Yeah. Clean your coin cup. Clean the coin cup before you take it to the beach.

So first one, now you were supposed to do this in an order yes yes and doug trumbull was frustrated that they did not force people to do it in the order that he wanted i love this maniac yeah they also be able to do the second one first and the third one second and i went it all went haywire so but if you did it under trumbull's vision you started with in search of the obelisk can we even how how would i don't think i am capable of describing the story of in search of the obelisk these things and they're not there's there's precisely one video of the actual ride other than brief clips in the special and it is like it's somebody filming one corner of the screen you don't know what the hell is going on yeah it's tough let's let's try to as if sifting through

ancient ruins can we put it together okay you're in a ride vehicle that is called the monolith the monolev monolev sorry sorry monolev monolith is a i know I believe the architect character is like, oh, I guess you're coming with me. Mac. Yes. Mac? Yes, an archaeologist. Yes. Mac.

Wait, I had it earlier. His last name. It was Mac... It's Mac McPherson. Okay. It's Mac McPherson. And then you've got Cricket. No, that was just the one woman doing the boat ride.

Cricket's not in the video, yeah. Okay, Cricket's not in the rides. And then he has... Mac has a friend named Karicket. No, that was just the one woman doing the boat ride. Cricket's not in the video. Okay, Cricket's not in the rides. And then Mac has a friend named Karina. Yes, Karina. And Karina is gone because she is in search of the obelisk. So we need to find Karina because she's my friend. Right. And maybe in doing so also get the obelisk.

Now, I don't know what is crucial about this obelisk. Maybe we don't know yet. Actually, that might be something we don't learn until Luxor Live. So, do we miss anything? Well, I mean, there's like villains. Well, yeah, you go through. Well, okay. Just like what happens, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, with the villains, you want to. Well, I don't know. I just, I don't really know what they are. He's fighting a villain. So, you're in basically a simulator, like Back to the Future or something. And on the screen, Mac is basically on the front of your vehicle. So it makes it look like he's hanging out right on the tip or the hood of your...

He's on there with you. Yeah. Kind of surfing it. Does he steer? He has a steering mechanism up there too. From the pictures pictures that's sort of what i can decipher um and yeah you're going through like a grimy looking practical effects sets shot with cameras giant miniatures motion control cameras and by the way like you

know regardless of story which is hard to figure out the cool thing is if you like back to the future the ride very much it is same director and thus it is really similar aesthetic shot on similar film shot on same kind of camera um like the just the degree of visual effects are very similar uh and like compositing and the way he lights it and the way light is treated and alan sylvestre score as well so this was kind of a second back to the future ride yeah that was only in las vegas so that's pretty notable it is yeah and it is it looks it looks some of some of the scenes almost look like mortal kombat the movie i've talked about mortal kombat recently yeah fan of mortal kombat you've seen mortal kombat jason i years ago you gotta

watch it yeah i gotta re-watch it there's some broader way i mean we we will certainly throw in movies that we want to watch yeah and talk about them especially on the second game but is there some way to frame it that it's like the ptr canon just that we were we talking about the films that we think are the most fundamental to us as people, but also that are the most theme parky and the most in line with like, Oh yeah. Like David Hasselhoff, Nick Fury. Yeah.

I mean, I've never seen it. I'll put it in the PTR canon. I can only assume, but like if, if, uh, if people are down for more,

for more of that, because then you get some Batman forever, I would imagine. Well, of course. Yeah. Yeah. You'd have to,

um, if you have a better name, if you have a name for the PTR can and throw it out there too. That's a good question. But mainly find proof of the fans. That's task number one. I send you in search of the fans as Karina is in search of the obelisk. I love, I do love what I can see from this.

Yeah. Yeah. Big fights happening on the front of the, and you're going through like a, it's an underground pyramid and there's a bunch of giant floating obelisks, but not ones you can grab. Yes, right. Those are like levitating. You got to weave through them and not crash. I almost think there's no, I'm trying to think in Back to the Future, no one's ever on the

hood of the car in Back to the Future. No. Yeah. That's a lot more ambitious. All the characters are on the screen in front of you. So that's way more ambitious. This is almost like a precursor to Spider-Man, the Islands of Adventure ride, where you're really getting, it's a simulator, but you're getting characters up front, which gives you that personal touch that you might want from a intimacy uh intimacy if you will well some of the and some of this stuff is also precursors to like the soaring flight like

they figured out like okay here's how we do kind of a flying theater before the soaring flying theater comes along yeah yeah um also you mentioned Spider-Man. A company that worked on that later worked on this called Kleiser Wolzak. Also part of Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Part of a zillion things. It seems like one of them is a prolific director.

But one of either Kleiser or Wolzak built the, sculpted the Michael Jackson history statue. Really? Remember that? Remember when they were sending big scary statues all over the globe and one of them is still in a McDonald's parking lot? Oh yeah!

Possibly Russia? Am I making that up? It's definitely somewhere weird. I don't know. I would not. There's still Michael Jackson scary statues floating out there all over this world of ours and made by the same which i understand like aesthetically i see what you know the big ancient ruins and statues make sense so uh you have yeah some spider-man folks cut their teeth on these um

to keep in in perspective the the cg and the footage stuff uh at one point they talked to like the engineer like the computer guys working on this and they're like and we've got a specially made computer and like one image from this is 90 megabytes and that would fill up someone's home pc instantly oh my god and it's like i think i clipped i think i screen recorded a clip from the special that probably is like around 90 megabytes. Oh, it's got to be more probably. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Our notes files. Like 20 seconds of HD footage of standard death special. Thank God. Yeah. Wow. There is some bad looking CGI in this too. Oh, yeah. But that's to be.

There's big beams. You got some typical mummy kind of right um but there's so much practical stuff and it looks it just looks like a weird kind of low budget 90s movie like this i don't know yeah yeah yeah totally which is you know and it's and it's shot well where you can take you know even like some some dumb movie is still like is there a movie called like the great panda adventure does that sound familiar no not go into that movie what about like warriors of virtue even warriors of virtue shot on beautiful pristine film yeah movie nobody's really seeing or liking apologies to virtue heads out there the poster for the ride looks bad i would say the poster looks shitty i think the cityscapes look best because they're

just practical miniatures that what you're showing looks like a some like uh creepy it's like it's it's it's like i don't i was gonna say a christian movie movie, but I mean like the shadiest of Christian movies. A Christian movie with an agenda. It's the ships that the Animorphs travel in, you know, on the covers. There's things I like about the poster, but the poster overall doesn't look as cool as it should. Pretty cruddy. There's somebody named Claggart, and he's yelling, Get off of Claggart! But I don't really know what claggart is and then there's also there's another enemy whose name is dr osiris

i forget if he's part of this first one or if you meet him later but dr osiris is also part of the uh the luxor verse the secret verse uh the p the pira verse i'm not sure which verse it is do you think does so because i don't know i forget what year mgm bought this but does mgm now own the ip of all of this oh fuck probably i don't know or does circus circus still or yeah what is circus circus anymore did Circus get swallowed into something? Oh, I think. Because the hotel itself, I think, is only that. I don't think they are major landholders in general.

Yeah, maybe. Oh, God. So, yeah, does Circus Company, I think the name was the Circus Company, maybe? Could be. Before, yeah, did they own Mac and Dr. Osiris? Dr. Osiris. I love a good, crazy doctor name. Osiris. I'm now crazy. I love a good crazy doctor name. Yeah. I want to know

what else can be done with Dr. Osiris. I don't think I know what he looks like or how to find a picture of him or if anyone saved a picture of him. Doesn't matter. We'll reimagine that. I love his name. I think Circus Circus might technically be under the MGM brand. Is that right? Because I think

it shows up in some of those uh iphone games you can go to circus all right right right yeah maybe that's probably right if that if they're showing up there they might be trying to sell it off although um if you look up luxor and like there's lots of google question results of like will the luxor be destroyed like will it be demolished or closed yeah will it suck inside itself and go to another realm yeah there's talk about different floors being like have that has the basement been condemned like wait a minute oh go ahead i was just saying mgm bought it 2007. So like all this stuff was long gone. But I wonder if in the language of the sale, they said, and we also buy the rights in perpetuity

to Dr. Osiris, Carina, Mac, the obelisk. The obelisk itself, the maglevs. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I wonder. Is it just floating out? And if they ignore it, I say if you find that contract and you do a little find and search and you don't find dr osiris or maglev that means they're up for grabs and right and we can make a very frustrating graphic novel about all of this

yeah oh and trust me any of the publishers that would but there's a lot of indie comics publishers now that it's like yeah we'll get your comic out we'll get a public and they like pay dog shit rates and they're like and of course we'll keep the intellectual property and we will immediately start selling it to the major studios no way we're not doing that we have to learn the lesson of aaron fechter who would not give up his intellectual property of his characters the beloved rocket fire explosion and he kept them and he he holds them proudly they're the great greatest weapon in his arsenal as soon as he figures out anything anybody wants to do with them he's back on top he crushes chucky cheese because he wouldn't let them pilfer his valuable ip don't count him out yet he's coming back he's scheming in that warehouse that has room for 400 people but it's

just him and a bunch of like uh billy bob robot oil spilled everywhere yes a bunch of rotting billy but billy bobs that will sometimes move and he's like, oh, is my creation becoming real? And then just a bunch of rats crawl out of it. He could have had some of the Five Nights at Freddy's money. He could have had at least the current weird Alf where it's like, oh, yeah, Alf's back.

They're doing some short... The Mint Mobile commercials? Yeah, the Mint Mobile, like Ryan Reynolds stuff. Ryan Reynolds has teamed up with Alf for Mint Mobile commercials. That's so freaking epic. Yeah. You better believe it.

Okay. I think that covers In Search of the Obelisk except, spoiler, you do not get the obelisk. You get what's important. You save Karina, Mac's best friend

or lover or associate or maybe he has better friends i don't know karina matters to mac and you get her onto the maglev do they but you don't get the obelisk so we're still in search of the obelisk after in search of the obelisk do they call in that special do they call like the two of them like quintessentially 90s or something no maybe they describe then they say that within the 90s they maybe they don't say quintessential but they definitely uh say both of them are like typical 90s people and by that they mean white i guess yeah the most generic white humans boring yeah um so then if you continue the story or if you realize that this is what you're supposed to do

um is it apparently i think this footage where you enter the ride and it says episode one really big on it as if like so you get it these rides are episodes and i think the tourists partially drunk probably did not but if you went to episode two that was luxor live luxor live is an out of this world talk show where you will behold a fabulous 3d solar eclipse it's kind of like a campy version of heraldo now i'm lost what does now i mean i just don't think i get it luxor okay so and now we're in the present that's the idea so the idea here is that luxor the casino you're staying at has a live heraldo-esque talk show yeah and uh it's not like the serious heraldo show that you're used to no the straight ahead very played like a news uh a

piece of serious news heraldo show no no this was no, no. This was the wild times, uh, you know, with the weirdos where he's getting into fights. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I guess so, uh,

all right. The visit visitors are part of a studio, fake, a studio audience of a fake TV talk show with a debate between, well, it looks are alive today. It looks are alive. Uh,

all right, everybody having fun at the casino. You're hanging out by the pool. Well, today we've got a treat for you. Uh, we've got archeologist Mac McPherson and Colonel Claggart, and they are going to have a debate about ruins and whether we should use technology to get items from the past

and bring them to modern times. I guess. I guess. Yeah. I suppose. This all happens in front of a talk show set that has a Johnny Carson-esque cityscape, but it is not of Hollywood.

It is of the two properties that Circus Circus owns. So there's a big Circus Circus clown and there is the Excalibur Castle. Yeah. And in this setting, there is a debate about archaeology that happens before a live studio audience. Now, here's what I've always tried to figure out.

I first saw this special a few years ago. Did they have the actor who played Mac McPherson on retainer to be there in person? Or did they just like, all right, we need a white guy with brown hair, you know? They can't have, can't and he's right he's far enough away well they'd have to have multiple max i would assume so i would assume that's the i bet i bet that's just like terminator 2 kind of i think i would think deal yeah yeah it's just he's you couldn't count on mac forever something that i'm confused about though is when it transitions from live to movie because of a comment i read somewhere does somebody describe being there as a kid and then

thinking this thing was confusing and unremarkable until one of the actors exploded into particles and so then i don't understand i don't know if like what if all i get it seems like it was live actors but what if some of it was projected or i i don't know or there what if all I get it seems like it was live actors, but what if some of it was projected or I don't know. Or there was a screen in front of them that made it. I don't know. Whatever's going on here. Maybe this ended up being actually the coolest effects wise due to the surprise of it. And then like the screen cracks apart and you go into like a fully.

It seems like Terminator 2. It does seem like T2. Like that really like there's. You don't know what screens until right and crazy happens but then you watch a bunch of crystal dancing oh i love the crystal dancers yeah they are touting the liquid are they crystal dancers liquid dancers i saw crystal crystal figures but i don't know what i got this they are talking up those crystal figure dancers in that special as well, where they're like,

and they like captured real life human movements to make these new crystal. Like they're really blown away by these. And obviously they did. Yeah. Essentially. Original avatar. Yeah. Yes.

But it sounds like dry description of this first liquid human beings emerge from the life-giving source of water, then solidify into male and female glass dancers, moving in harmony. But they soon grow wary of each other, put on armor, and start fighting, culminating in a nuclear blast. This is sounding a little

obtuse, or like too pointed, or I don't know. I'm very, would I love Luxor Live or does Luxor Live collapse this entire experience? It's a good question. I could see there being a lot of cringy stuff during Luxor Live, but I don't know that the dancers were as impressive as they thought. But if somebody blew up into particles it does that could get me back the eventual tlc waterfalls video which was very

impressive yeah to the mtv viewers of 1995 right however i don't know they probably the technology was probably better than uh you accept uh things a little jankier in a music video maybe i don't know yeah this uh uh when i was reading that luxor i discovered i i had seen it years ago but i didn't put it all together uh uh or didn't really mean anything to me but the getting jiggy with it music video is filmed in the luxor lobby right And then they're in front of the Mirage volcano. Yes. And then they're in front of New York, New York. Yeah.

It's kind of like traveling all over, but by way of just Las Vegas. Just, yeah. It really encapsulates that era and all of the big silliness going on. And specifically the one side of Las Vegas Boulevard. Yeah, yeah, true does does he not do kind of like walk like an egyptian dancing is he not in sort of a headdress i believe he is he is and the backup dancers are yeah there's a lot of egyptian stuff and he well he maybe he saw these shows and started thinking about like wow so there, so there's some crazy stuff out there.

I should maybe pursue like, you know, I passed by this building. It said Scientology on it. I wonder if that has anything to do with the... It's very possible. Is Colonel Claggart part of that? Is Dr. Cyrus part of that? Is there an obelisk in Scientology? What are the secrets of the obelisk?

Maybe Scientology will open me up to those secrets. Is this Douglas Trumbull was just maybe trying to create a religion secrets of the obelisk? Maybe Scientology will open me up to those secrets. Douglas Trumbull was just maybe trying to create a religion based around an obelisk? Maybe. Obeliskology. Yeah. And the Luxor was going to be the center of obeliskology. The celebrity center of his new religion. All hail the

obelisk. Did someone find the other like pop music connection? No, I didn't. That when Tupac Shakur was killed in Vegas, he was... He took a picture here the night after. I saw he was staying here. Whoa.

Oh, I didn't know that. He gets killed elsewhere in Vegas. He was staying... Someone of his wealth at the time was staying at the crappiest hotel. Well, maybe in 96 it was still okay. I don't know. Wow.

It had to be better. Do you think, I'll just type it into Google. Did Tupac meet Dr. Obelisk and Colonel Clackert? Did he go to the rides? Very good question. That's so creepy. There is a room at that hotel that is the it could have been where you were staying where it was like the room that tupac did not return back to that night

jesus my god yeah this place really is this place does need to fold into itself like a priest needs to come or an army of priests from different religions. From a real religion. Yeah, from the good religion, Christianity, the one that makes sense. The ultimate 90s religion. Get the top priest from each state and get them over to Luxor to get the spirits out of there. Everyone hold hands, surround the building. Yes. Then and only then will it return. Now, of course, Carrot Top can keep playing there. He's not part of the curse. No, surround the building. Yes. Then and only then will it return.

Now, of course, Carrot Top can keep playing there. He's not part of the curse. No, he's good. He helps fend off the curse. He balances the light. He balances the bad with the light. Carrot Top is a force of light. Wikipedia says, so Tupac was at the Tyson fight at the MGM Grand.

And then there was a brawl. And it says, after the brawl, Shakur returned to his hotel, the Luxor Las Vegas. Wow. He went back there? He stopped there first. Whoa. That's insane. I believe he was killed closer to

Flamingo Road. I forget the intersection. Yeah. I've been there. I was in a cab and somebody was like, you know where we are jesus oh god east flamingo road and coval lane coval wow um huh crazy um he might have waited the 90 minutes for the boat ride they maybe he got maybe they're like oh we'll take you yeah let him cut the line jesus. He could have met Cricket. Or he got... Tupac and Cricket could have met on this earth.

If he'd been on the boat, right? If he'd done it, if he'd been patient and then waited, what if he, like, then people were, like, looking for him, but he's having a blast on the boat. Yeah, it's possible. He's in a secret... He's in one of the secret tunnels of the Luxor. Anything's possible. Do you think a crew guy on the Will Smith video is like,

you know, Tupac was staying here when he was killed. It's like, Jesus, don't tell me that. Like, fucking haunted Egypt hotel. And that was what cursed Will, ultimately. That's what led to what happened 30 years later. Took a while. It took a while to manifest. Okay.

So now, well, well basically the special says like the audience shares karina's discovery of the true meaning of the obelisk okay again it's hard to imagine people okay so now now armed with my knowledge of the true meaning of the obelisk now i can proceed to the theater of time and the theater of time is set so this i don't know if you stole it on this too that there's you encounter a big sign and the sign says enlightened society for global transformation and it could also sounds like a scientology i was gonna say the full logo looks like scientology really does the phrase looks like science it sounds like Scientology.

This might have, I'm deciding it. This opened Will Smith's mind. This started him on the path. This picture that I'm showing of this sign, this is what would greet you as you entered the theater of time, and now it is at the Neon Museum. This is sitting around somewhere.

If you go there in Vegas, which I have not, but I would like to, I'd like to see that sign because it's actually a lot like Alien Encounter or something. It's a very 90s theme park.

And this was like a screen tipped. Movie screens are thin and long ways. Imagine if you turn that, if you went 90 with it. If you go 90, if you do Quibi Freestyle, you turned it on its head. They did it. So it was a tall, long screen is what this was. Right. A tall TikTok.

This was the, think of it as the original TikTok. And eventually this just became a real IMAX theater. They just like put more screen on there. Why do we have just one? We can only play one kind of movie. Much like what befell Quibi, ultimately. Yeah. Maybe having some more flexibility in what you could show here is good.

There's not a lot about Theater of Time. Did you guys? I don't really understand what's happening in this one. Is this mainly a sit-down movie, but with a little bit of movement? It's not a full simulator. Yeah. movie but with a little bit of movement it's not a full simulator yeah it seems like it's just sort of uh an imax like a little bit of an elevated imax it's seen some of this stuff seems a little proof of concept i think it was because he's he's like this is my chant there's i have like

doug trumbull found this rare pile of money to prove his high impact entertainment center concept. And I wish it had been proven better. I know. It's like, I admire his big reach for the nonsense, like just doing this much dumb nonsense. But it's, yeah, it's like, it just, it was a little bit more accessible. Yeah. At the very least, it could have lasted longer than this stuff did well it's obviously mobsters versus mummies that is the

like a very clear story much like pirates of the caribbean you know what it is when you're going into it he should have had the idea that we just had 30 years later i agree the only other pitch i had on it is that he licensed william shatner's tech war uh of course the william shatner verse it is surprising tech war is not part of luxor visit the tech war experience open in 2006 the william shatner supposedly created future story of the illegal drug known as tech. Tech. Is it just in our world or like it's not, tech war is not in another universe. I believe it's in the future, but I actually don't know if it's in another universe or not.

Okay. Yeah. Tech war is definitely in the canon. Tech war is in the PTR canon for sure. Because there's a lot of, there's a variety of things we need to watch and read. Yeah. Oh, and it's filmed at the Eden Center in Toronto while I'm on board. The future as seen through a big tall mall?

Yeah. Sounds good to me. Hey, that, you know, I got a couple of things. One, Douglas Trumbull credited it with working on the first flight simulator ride, which I think you can see footage of online. It's called Tour of the universe and it was in the basement of the cn tower of the tower in toronto star tours pre-star tours right that's it first uh the other thing you know we were speculating about like how did luxor get made

how did this all happen and there's a clip in that special. This is Clyde Turner. He's the president of Circus Circus Enterprises. And this is, I mean, when you see this clip, when you hear him talk about it, it's just the most dynamic thing you've ever encountered. But the vision is somewhat vague. And what happens is that you then seek out the best and the brightest of all you can find

and you have intense brainstorm sessions and out of that comes ideas it's not ideas he's just describing the creative process if that's making you like you're probably electrified hearing that 20 second clip of this man who appears to be falling asleep on camera yikes and then it cuts to the table it cuts back and forth between the table of like this is the casino manager this is douglas trumbull this is an engineer and it's the you've never seen so many receding hairlines in one place no offense no shade fellas i'm right there with you uh but it's like uh yeah there there ain't a woman or a person of color in around for miles and miles you know sure um yeah well look um this thing i don't think it went away right away i don't remember when they start i think you know it just the theater of time became a regular uh imx theater i'd like to know more

about theater time but it's not you can watch a big clip of it on one of those mind's eye videos that keeps coming up you can watch a big extended like a minute and a half sequence of it and it's very impressive it's very you know what it's like it's like being in hill valley 2015 in the best future ride but you're not rushing through it. And there aren't cars and stuff coming at you. None of that exciting shit. What if you could just hover above a gentle Hill Valley future? I like that.

Sure. It's pretty cool. I take it back. There is one woman and one person of color at the table of bald men. Not a single, not nowhere to be found. I just wanted to clarify. These sexist racists wouldn't allow them in the room.

I just wanted to clarify. They were stuffed racists wouldn't allow them in the room. I just wanted to clarify. They were stopped at the door. Get out of here. These very bald men did let a couple people. You were right about the baldness. Yeah, I was right about the baldness. You should be ashamed of yourself. So these things start disappearing.

The attractions, they can't really get rid of these facilities. They're baked into the building like certain theme park like yeti um so they started using it for other stuff when i was first in vegas as a as a not child in 2006 i remember that one of the presumably formerly the obelisk ride was home to something called reboot the, a ride based on the early CGI television show. Reboot the Ride is maybe worthy of its own episode. I don't know. I assume. I'm not going to try to rush some version here.

But it was at a number of theme parks, I think, and somehow provoked a second one. I'm sorry. Okay, so it was at Adventure Dome first, formerly Grand Slam Canyon, my favorite name, a second one though i'm sorry okay so it was at adventure dome first formerly grand slam canyon my favorite name um and then moved to the luxor and then somehow i don't know where this was if it was a luxor or some oh i think it was in canada maybe somewhere there was somehow there was not

only reboot the ride but later reboot the ride v2 journey Chaos. So we got two reboot rides to grapple with, with a full method. And unlike the Obeliskverse, which nobody is tracking and taking care of, reboot fandom is massive. So we can find every detail. So we'll get into that. Is Reboot doing Mint Mobile commercials yet?

I don't think so. I don't know. It's calculated if he's epic enough. Maybe Mac Tonight, or not mac tonight um the uh mac and me maybe if alph meets mac and me at that alien yeah how much does mac cost these days ryan reynolds did do just he's gonna do biker mice from mars that's true that's not a joke everything this guy does uh um like you know it's kind of like a spider verse version of i shouldn't talk my name this will be this could be a job for any of us yeah oh yeah i grew up with biker i loved the mice i remember all of their names and i'm checking my hand for an unrelated

reason um when the name them all when the biker mice play an exhibition a game against wrexham football club oh boy it's gonna be something welcome to wrexham back biker mice from mars um the weirdest thing though about all this there it didn't the luxer verse did not just stay in the rides there was also a cd-rom yeah which makes all the sense in the world because this aesthetic of all of this is very CD-ROM. There was something called Secrets of the Luxor. I took a shot of the box. It has like the pitch of what this thing would be. And it has all, by the way, this is Dr. Osiris.

It's the characters. It's all of it. This morning, you were just another archaeologist exploring an ancient pyramid. Just another archaeologist. an ancient pyramid. Boring. Just another archaeologist. Behold, hum. Snooze. Now you're 300 years in the future trying to convince a madman not to blow up the sun.

Some days you wish you just stayed in bed. And I downloaded an emulator of it, but I don't know why I have no emulator program. But anyway, we can play Secrets of the Luxor, explore Dr. Osiris more fully see if he's worth trying to explore in an ip sense oh i bet he first of all we know he is um but of course we do we need to watch and or play excuse me uh not just watch uh this is oh i i wish this had worked in a in some sort of way i mean is there really like i know we're simplifying it but is there a way if there's if everything was just better would it have stuck around in a way

where it was like you can't get rid of this or it's just the nature of vegas that everything is so disposable that there's almost impossible maybe that maybe if it was like due to the experiment that like ultimately it's not a family destination this is not a place to do story rides yeah um like that inherent foot where i think this could have worked maybe this you know this transforms niagara falls and myrtle beach and all right right he's where all the weird crap is uh it's just the wrong it was the wrong market but drumble had to grab it while he could much like an obelisk yeah see what power he could wield it is an admirable yeah an admirable idea at the time yeah if we're um i the name jim grand adventures episode i brought

up blackjack rules hit stand doubled down cash out i think clearly the answer was doubled down 100 let's literally double they there wasn't they didn't provide enough material to make us care about Mac and Karina. They needed to do six attractions, not three. They should have added every year. They should have kept hitting and hitting and hitting. And they should have gotten rid of the hotel rooms. Turn those into mazes. You knock some of those out.

Now there's nowhere for Tupac to stay. Maybe he changes his mind, doesn't come to Vegas, and we're still getting Tupac albums to this day. I mean, we are because he's the most prolific posthumous artist of all time. But I mean, actually new made by an alive Tupac. I think you've just, yeah, that's a future that we can get behind. And if we had just gotten behind Douglas Trumbull's vision, in his world, you think there were, like every hotel had interconnected like store like you would see

mac in different hotels in different contexts like you could bleed this story into different hotels yeah like in the grandest vision of everything yeah it's a huge like disney like c disney's not disney c the theme park but the c the organization which is the caesar's now you go into a pre-rome universe that was better than rome and a future that uses roman technology right and now karina is in search of the column oh of course the column love to see mac help this would get the maglev to help karina find the column no one crossover potential like the avengers of the vegas casino oh yeah you make all different characters for each each one and then they all get together in like a big hotel yeah that experience the the slot machines and cheap drinks table games shrimp cocktails that'll bring the people in you know yeah you got to give them something else to do what do you do how do you make them stay with

great storytelling? And the problem is there wasn't enough of this. They should have taken over Mirage, and that's about like a society of volcano people, which is, is that not kind of what Avatar 3 is going to be about? That is absolutely what it is. So they would have gotten on that first, that meaty idea. And then, like, you know, if they didn't feel like,

well, how are we going to come up with all this volcano-related mythology? Well, it already exists. It's from the mind of this writer, L. Ron Hubbard. Then you just plug in all the Dianetics stuff. So that's what I want. I want that it's 1998 and Douglas Trumbull is helping L. Ron Hubbard achieve his perfect cinematic. Three rides that tell the story of dianetics where you go into the volcano verse with mac and karina and the new york skyline these are these were buildings built

before the people built new york they were early societies that better sky the ancient old orkeans the ancient orkeans i don't know why i dropped the y sure i went with this and eventually that roller coaster what do they get well they get you know samsung uh touch phones in vr lenses and it's aliens oh right right it does become an alien thing yeah yeah it was always heading there it would the trouble is not supporting trumbull trumbumbull should have had a trilogy of rides in every single hotel. And that is the reason. And then it wouldn't be a gambling city anymore. It would be Trumbull Town.

Trumbull Town. Trumbull Town. Wow. Well, this makes me hate Las Vegas. This makes me want to get out of there. I agree. And not talk about it anymore. But it's too late.

We're stuck. And thus, you survived Podcast of the Ride, Sin City Nights. I wish it was Trumbletown. I wish they would have changed the name for him. There was this brief time where they flirted with gambling, and they hadn't discovered the power of storytelling and the power of the obelisk. Oh, yeah.

Dark times. Yeah. But as it stands, because they didn't do it, the Luxor should absolutely fold into itself. Disappear back and take all of the lost souls with it. Or spit them back up.

Spit Tupac out on your way into crumbling. I was just looking at it. Specifically, the UFOs above in 2012 were orbs. So the orbs could also absorb the whole Luxor and take it back to its home planet or they could blow it up too

or implode it. Well, now I told my wife and child they could come back in the door because we've been recording forever. So now I'm going to actually wrap up while they come in and probably as she washes my son's hands. So you survive podcast, the right sin city nights,

sin city theme, courtesy of Mike Carlson, sin city nights, logo, and current childcare, courtesy of the wonderful Aaron Gardner. Keep up with key PTR, sin city nights on the,

the bad socials like X at podcast, the ride. Oh yeah. We'll talk about what to do about that. More episodes coming on the main strip bonus episodes on podcast, the ride, the Fremont gate and our high roller tier club three. You will find all of that at patrion. Bonus episodes on Podcast the Ride, the Fremont Gate, and our high roller tier Club 3. You will find all of that at patreon.com

slash podcast the ride. But for now, all hail the obelisk. All hail the obelisk. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner,

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