Podcast: The Ride - Main Street Electrical Parade

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

The Main Street Electrical Parade is a theme park institution which ran at Disney Parks around the wold. It has glowed away forever. And glowed back for a limited time only. Multiple times. Justice for Breonna Taylor https://www.gofundme.com/f/9v4q2-justice-for-breonna-taylor The Official Peace and Healing for Darnella Fund https://www.gofundme.com/f/peace-and-healing-for-darnella Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective https://www.beam.community National Lawyers Guild https://www.nlg.org FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride 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

Hi, everyone. This episode was recorded a while ago, a simpler time when the only thing we had to worry about was a global pandemic. We again want to voice our support for the protests against police brutality going on across the country and now across the world. The other day on Twitter, we linked to bail funds and mutual aid funds. There's also links in this episode description to GoFundMe pages for the family of Breonna Taylor and Darnella Frazier, who recorded the murder of George Floyd, as well as a group called BEAN that focuses on Black mental health and the National Lawyers Guild. Thank you for listening. Stay safe. And once again, Black Lives Matter. Forever. Dog. And once again, Black Lives Matter. Welcome to Podcast The Ride, where if we ever decide to end the podcast, we will do decades worth of farewell events first. I'm Scott Gardner, joined by via electro-syntho-magnetic sound, Mike Carlson.

Hey, yes, I'm here. We will pull a Motley Crue, a Rolling Stones, a Kiss. We will threaten to retire, but never do it. Exactly. We promise. And Jason Sheridan is here as well. a rolling stones a kiss we will threaten to retire but never do it exactly uh we promise and jason sheridan is here as well yes every time i stop talking i will you know end my sentence with i am glowing away forever and then i will come back a couple minutes later probably i think i think it would up the the drama of the podcast from this point if we say Podcast the Ride is glowing away sometime in the next 15 years. So this is your last. The episode you're listening to is one of your last chances to experience the Podcast the Ride magic. I really think we should manipulate the audience

more i think we should uh really play with their emotions so i think that's good i think we should actually just do it more aggressively like threaten to quit set like because like motley crew just said they were going away forever and they came back and it's annoying but it also makes a lot of money because people then feel bad and they feel like they have to see us so from now on every live show we do is our last show sure yeah why not no let's let's let's up the drama we can uh elton john this is elton john or like i feel like elton john and share do this all the time like they're kind of in a perennial they're saying goodbye but maybe they are elton is really now elton claims he's really saying goodbye on this last tour i don't know

about share i'm not sure about her the who have retired a few times and they've come back there's two of them left uh so i think yeah it's a common trick i I mean, Jay-Z retired. I think this is also sort of part of like legend and myth-making. Michael Jordan retired. He's retired twice. He came back. It's part of like, you know, the legendary return is something. Like, I never thought, oh my God, I thought I would never be able to see Jay-Z again. I thought he'd never make another album.

He retired at what, 33 or something? Hasn't he put out more albums post-retirement, quote-unquote? I think so. That was like a midway point. That was so long ago. Was that like... Was that like when the Main Street Parade first... Yeah, I think it was in 1996. Now he's mostly...

Jay-Z retired. Jay-Z said he was retiring in the first track of his first album. He's a hedge fund guy now, mostly. He's mostly jay-z retired jay-z said he was retiring in the first track of his first album he's a hedge fund guy now mostly he's mostly just managing investments now right you don't retire from that the smart move is to stick with it sure yeah so let's get retiring and what you know the today's topic the main street electrical parade i i you. I remember a very dramatic run, the first real farewell in 96, where they were selling the bulbs. That was a very pieces of the Berlin Wall type. Own history. Make sure you own a bulb.

What do we have that would be a legitimate piece of Podcast the Ride history, but is also essentially an infinite supply. The mason jar water glasses at Mike's house. Wait, hey, hey, hey, wait. I'm just going to give away glasses at my own? Yeah. What? Mike's dishware. That's infinite supply.

There's a lot of them. No, there's like eight. There's like eight or 12. You got a couple pallets in there. infinite supply. There's a lot of them. No, there's like eight. There's like eight or 12. You got a couple pallets in there. Infinite supply. How many glasses do you have? How many glasses? Yeah.

Do you have like two? Yeah, I don't know. A few. Like what's a few? Giving away Jason's ice cream bowls. Yeah, my ice cream bowls Mike's glasses

Scott's kind bars infinite supply look in quarantine times those I'm not I'm not I'm not losing

a seed of one of those oh sure that's currency not a chocolate chip will be wasted I actually

I had as I was saying it I think I figured out what it actually is uh edwin's hair oh my god edwin's shed oh my god it's everywhere yeah give yeah yeah okay great so you got plenty but technically it's not infinite but there just is a ton of it so if we find like a nice little way to package that and then send little tufts of edwin's hair to our fans so that they can

say goodbye to us um because yeah sometime in the next several decades podcast the ride is over he's glowing away forever i have to say selling the bulbs i thought was a very candy move and at ten dollars a bulb that's a pretty affordable souvenir by dis standards. But it was the 90s. It was the 90s. I mean, I think today those are going for, you know, if they did it new now, they'd be like 45 each. Oh, and flipped. Flipped immediately. Were they actually the bulbs or were they other bulbs made to look like the bulbs?

Do we know? I don't know that. They could have been the bulbs because i think the bulbs were pretty specific they were definitely weren't just bought at the store because we'll get into the history of it but at the time the the more popular type of electric bulb of christmas bulb was like they were they were much bigger i saw it described as thumb sized it's like you know what's still at my parents house and then at some point smaller lights came in vogue but at the time they were doing this they were pretty specifically from michigan avenue in chicago so like a company

gave them the bulbs so truly that is a little bit historic if you're getting the bulbs from the 70s that had to be hand dippeddipped before the parade began. That's not too bad. But I wonder if at this point they just went and bought a ton of bulbs at Dome Depot or whatever. Yeah, and you did not own a bulb. I never bought a bulb. I was definitely very aware of the first glow away, the first farewell season. And I wondered if I should have, but that would have been a apparent pester, and I did not

do that pester. Have we looked on eBay to see what those bulbs might be going for? No, that's a good move. You want to give that a check? I'm already on it. Original 96 bulbs, which in

theory could be from the 70s or it's all the biggest scam they ever pulled i don't know i have to say i think that's like growing up with the like growing up on the east coast going to disney world i remembered this parade spectra magic definitely made a bigger more upsetting impression in my mind but i i think in my head when i was younger it was like there's always a nighttime light parade and in fact this parade inspired by the electric water pageant which looms larger in my mind as like a a regular disney world goer you always had to make a night. I was like, oh, we have to make sure we're by the Magic Kingdom or go to the Polynesian or something

and see the electric water pageant boat parade. That is a question I had. Are you guys as steeped in the Main Street Electrical Parade not having Disneyland as your main park? Well, nostalgia-wise, yeah, it was the Dollface spectro men were more the thing i remembered because of disney world because i never went to disneyland so it's more of this parade is more of like myth it's myth to me i've seen it at this point now the newer the newest version of it but it was not something directly from my childhood this version we're like focusing

on today i forgot that was the case for me my first trip was i forget 87 or 88 i mean it's like it might be one of the first things in my life i remember like i remember my pov and i remember i really loved pete's dragon already so seeing the dragon in the parade i mean that might have been like the disney character i was the most excited to see just because that was the tape i had arbitrarily i'm not as fond of it anymore but truly i like i remember hearing that first note i remember the vocoder and i remember the dragon going by it's like a really indelible memory from the first disney trip which obviously left a gigantic crater of an impression um and i can only imagine people you know uh people's memories of it from the 70s and 80s i i uh

i don't know i'm glad i'm glad it made it to myth point for you regardless of not having had that that baby brain moments that I that I had well I mean the music I think that I knew the music before anything else because the other thing is every parade samples that music seemingly every nighttime parade after it uses snippets of it the Pete's dragon especially that one is interesting just because it's probably one of the more spectacular floats and it's funny because like that was supposed to be a temporary like movie

promotional 70s float that wasn't supposed to be permanent and it just stuck around yeah yeah it's very odd like a very sign of the times thing that now is this kind of permanent place that pete's dragon has in the parks that it probably would not have otherwise i don't know that there

be any representation of pete's dragon no um should there be i don't know well nowadays kids are all about the live action robert redford starring p Dragon, right? We're all watching and thinking about that live action version constantly. Of course. I definitely remember that Robert Redford was in it. I for sure was aware of that before you said it just now. Did that

come out 10 years ago or last year? I don't know. I'm not sure. It could be either. Really in the nether realm the answer to the bulb question on ebay is that you can get a bulb for like 30 bucks 35 bucks okay 30 yeah it's not an unreasonable markup i wouldn't say and it comes in a little like box with that says main street electrical parade Parade also with a little triangle shape. So it doesn't seem like it's that hard

to come by. Some of them are a little more expensive but I'm not sure if it's like they're special. Maybe it was like Pete's dragon like the eyeball of the dragon or something. That would be an extra expensive bulb, I assume. This is from the A in To Honor America.

One of the stripes. It's the point of the A. It's the peak. One of the stars on the stars and stripes. One of the states. I mean, yeah, that's crucial. Yeah, it represents Tennessee specifically. Right.

It's worth a hundred grand. Yeah, they should have like geotracked them somehow. But I find it so funny that they did this and they sold all the books. And then just like this thing was back so quickly. I feel like it never really went away for that much time and it's sort of been in others been versions in other parks if you guys had would it have been i actually i honestly don't know this i should have done this research was it in disney world before spectra magic oh that's a good question i need to the timeline is so confusing to me and i looked at it. Jason, you have an answer? Yeah, the answer is yes. It ran in the Magic Kingdom

from 77 to 91 and then Spectrum Magic debuted after that and then it came back to the Magic Kingdom in 99 to 2001 and then came back to the Magic Kingdom from

2010 to 2016. Wow. Huh. I mean, it is like a world tour. They start shipping it back and forth. Yeah. It is so... Paris, Tokyo.

I mean, they built other versions for it. California Adventure, my favorite California Adventure, I'll try to hold this up to the camera, when they change the drum to say a california classic like come on guys that's a that's a weak tie together for sure a bizarre way to explain why it's there uh um hey and it you know it ended up in in manhattan too but i'll save that one i mean that's one of the odder events that is wild yeah wait twice we'll see then we'll here we'll save it okay yeah let's let's try to go about this uh

in an orderly fashion i mean like what do we should we sort of talk through the history of it i mean jason you were talking about about the electric water pageant a little bit, which was its predecessor in pretty much every way. Yeah, I mean, this is one where one of my favorite characters of the Disney executive board of hunks, Cardwalker, shows up. He, you know, they were debuting the electric or they showed the electric water pageant a on the seven seas lagoon in the magic kingdom and that was really that was another thing that like that wasn't supposed to last a long time but everyone liked it so they just kept it around

and while they while they showed that there were like disneyland reps there and i think the company edict was like hey we we need to do some stuff for disneyland too we need to have some stuff there it can't just we can't just be throwing everything in florida so some some yeah because it's early 70s so like all yeah all company resources are going to disney world uh um and yeah and i saw it explained to that they were doing a lot of concerts they were doing quick promotions right like that um but concerts are ultimately cost prohibitive and only like some of the guests in the park in a given day can go see it so is there something that everybody can see uh leading to i forget the quote from who but somebody somebody's saying why can't we make main street our stage why isn't there can there be a like a great nighttime

moving concert essentially this is also like the technology was at the right time, nickel cadmium batteries play a big role in this parade. These little portable batteries that had enough juice to light all this stuff up for one go of the parade and then get it backstage and recharge it for the second go of the parade. That is so insane. Because if you've ever seen a parade at disneyland or in a magic kingdom yeah you know it like parade i forget the order but it'll be like a parade leaves from the small world area travels south to main street then there's another parade where it goes backwards and then they're i guess that's the order because then it gets stored up

up north up in the storage area uh in the northern part of the park um so that that's the order because then it gets stored up north, up in the storage area in the northern part of the park. So that's a parade that is entirely about electricity will not have any electricity if they don't charge every single battery really, really fast. It's like I'm trying to think the most power sucking charging situation where it's like you're running all your apps on the iPhone at once. And like, I just ruined the battery after an hour. Like, it's just it's crazy. I really you would think that was like it would just be a panic once all the parade floats got back there. Yeah. Yeah, truly. And, you know, i should say that's

that's not how it runs today right it's just like in in its janky 70s uh you know formation that's how it had to happen but i i also like seeing the breakdown of what they considered because you know they they like this idea i think uh you know the the electric water pageant um was essentially a mainstream electrical parade, but on barges. Like it's going along a lake. So presumably there's just big power units like there would be on any boat. But in doing much smaller, more mobile, you know, little floats, how are we going to charge these things? So there's talk of gas generators, but they make too much noise and produce too many fumes

uh extension cords they went through um but they would create trip and fall hazards very true like where yeah where are extension cords coming from the characters would have to run on a giant wheel to power it like a hamster wheel cinderella would be running with the mice every character has one of those radios that you charge with a hand crank to play go down everything is out of sync it just sounds like a horrible cacophony they're all just rubbing sticks together kindling i'm trying to create sparks yeah they're hurry or this parade stops there could just be like a trains like a coal-based engine on each each float you have to shovel characters just shoveling hot coals into an engine you know we're trying to bring coal back

it's tight right now 2020 is the best time to bring coal back and i think disney is the place to do it clean coal clean coal clean gonna be so clean we're gonna take it we're gonna clean it and then it's gonna be clean and then it's clean coal cleanest of all the coals i mean all to be fair all the presidents have said the phrase clean coal i don't know why what the hell cinderella is gonna take the coal she's gonna clean the coal and it's going to be clean coal. We understand. Just as Disney pivoted during World War II to making government propaganda and educational films, Disney, during Corona, in order to get a financial bailout bridge loan, has to start making clean coal. Like new duck tales new david tennant uh scrooge mcduck has to talk about clean

coal yeah giant five minute ads in every episode but you know launchpad is financial decision launch they have to take like a train ride and launch like, gee, did you know, Scrooge, this runs on clean coal. It's really safe. It looks like me could get to work in factories again. I think I'm going to go get a job shoveling clean coal.

Star Wars, the Clone Wars, the final season, the search for clean coal that's a lot of the delay in Avatar is they're having to shift the philosophy like unobtainium is out and coal is in

the Na'vi have agreed to this is the way of the future and we are going to start building fuck these trees fuck the hallelujah mountains time to drill they no longer fly banshees

they roll coal they have the lifted pickup trucks that run on coal Joe Rohde is now doing the expansion of Avatar Land that's just based around coal and coal mountains large mountains full of coal.

We first find coal in the myth of Santa Claus and everyone loves Santa Claus. Santa Claus is a part of everyone's childhood. And, you know, if we can if we if we can trust him, then we can trust coal. Joe Rodia stopped wearing like his trademark like hat and vest and stuff and just now has one of those t-shirts that says like don't mess with an imagineer who was born in february and has a giant earring what those like algorithm t-shirts that are really specific you ever seen those probably okay do you know he was born in february or is that no that's just a guess you don't celebrate joe rody's birthday specifically

no no perhaps we all should yeah we should um i just watched a uh one of these great channels that just uploads every like piece of promotional. It might be cow missing on YouTube. Posted footage of the announcement of Animal Kingdom when they were still calling it Wild Animal Kingdom. And Rhodey does a presentation. And he looks pretty much like he does today, except in a very Eisner-esque suit. Like a double-breasted with a big thick tie. He really dresses like Bruce Wayne. He he dresses like val kilmer bruce wayne but still has the big curly mustache do you think there was in like towards the end of michael eisner's reign a ceo he wanted everyone to dress like him

that's it very much felt to me like if it wasn't enforced on his part, then he gave Rhodey unsolicited fashion advice. Or like he'd call the Imagineers into the office and he'd be like, look, here's a deal. I want to make some changes around here. I've ordered a suit in exactly your size. It's over sitting in my closet. I'd like you to go over and I'd like you to wear this from now on when you're in public. And he did that to everyone. There's this thing magic eye all the kids love it i want every tie to have a pattern like magic eye i want people to stare at your tie for hours on end

to enjoy the three-dimensional spaces on your tie i've invested in low people into doing your bidding if you hypnotize them with the magic eye pattern on your tie. I've invested over $3 billion into a magic eye company. He spent more time focused on that magic eye company than he did all of California Adventure. He should have bought magic eye when he was CEO of Disney. That's shocking. That would have been the Iger move. Like the Iger, you know, all of the biggest properties of the time.

Should have bought that. Should have bought big dog shirts. Stussy. Big Johnson shirts. Please welcome the newest member of the Disney family Pissing Calvin That's an empire They would be unstoppable now I like to praise him but he missed out

On the biggest purchasing opportunities Of 96 although didn't The Disney company did through some Was it Hollywood Pictures or pictures or something i think they did put put out the jerky boys movie really wow i think so i think technically like i believe jerky boys is disney wow and and i my auto i was wanting to type jersey boys but that's not right. Well, because you like that. That's the real music, back when they made real music. Back when we made that sound, our sound. Jerky Boys, the movie. Touchstone.

Nice. Touchstone Pictures in 95. So in the same little run of time, Disney put out Jerky Boys, the movie, and It's Pat. Oh, my gosh. Get those on Disney Plus now. Yeah, I know. Really? We're all stuck at home, bored right now as we're recording.

Yeah, where the hell is... They got to loosen the standards. Come on. They're sitting on so many... Yes. I've never seen the Jerky Boys movie. Neither have I. How's the time?

I was too scandalized have i as the time i was too scandalized by them at the time so like the jerky boys could show up in a star wars movie absolutely the dream or a marvel movie um as could the three ninjas oh yeah as could captain ron yeah mike Mikey from Life with Mikey. Wow. They are making, as could Cabin Boy. They're making no use of the Touchstone 90s properties. Captain Ron should come back.

And with Kurt Russell. Yeah, that one's due for the kind of reboot where everyone forgets that the first one wasn't good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, don't think about it. Don't think about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's epic. Captain Ron is back.

Kurt Russell is returning to pass the torch to the new generation of captains. OMG epic. Three ninjas, too. Three ninjas should come back. It's shocking three ninjas has not been announced yeah we're getting we're gonna get around all these well in the post corona spending spree they're just they're just gonna cycle through god they own kazam really oh my god or it was like a co-polygram was also involved maybe they just distributed it did they do they

own surf ninjas you remember surf ninjas probably not feels very touchstone however for them to do three ninjas and surfing i know they do not know surf ninjas might be new line i think it was new line uh they do uh the gun and betty lou's handbag you know oh yeah yeah yeah the gun and Betty Lou's handbag, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The gun. Yeah, yeah. Penelope Ann Miller and Kathy Moriarty. Took me a second.

Yeah. You'll know it when there's a full Disney Plus series about it. Anyway, I could look up touchstone pictures all day. Let's put this in the queue to do the full touchstone episode. But back to the parade everyone loves um yeah i uh well they even said oh here's another thing that they considered electrifying the tracks along main street like cable car style that's interesting so like they would every flow would have gotten its power from what runs along those. I guess the horse carriages or...

Yeah, the trolley tracks. That would have been fine. Yeah, yeah. Electrified. It's not like there's a baseball team named after the act of dodging electric sparking trolley cars. It's not like... That's cars. That's right. Why did we talk about this before? Was it because of Dodger

dogs at CityWalk? I don't remember what spurred this discussion. Potentially. I think I took a double-decker bus tour of the boroughs of New York once, and the very New York tour guide was like, the Dodgers never should have left Brooklyn. Even the name was about

dodging the trolley cars when they came careening around the corner being nostalgic for that they gotta take the main street at disneyland and put it on a slant everybody's having to dodge all those cars more More dodging at Disneyland. More dodging. That's what a real city's about. They should run those Main Street bugs down at 60 miles an hour. Kids got to jump out of the way. Make those horse trolleys spark like a real trolley.

And spook those horses before they go out light off fireworks in front of their face make them run down main street hill as fast as they can do a horse race do a horse race down main street let the people bet on it let people make disneyland's fun. You can't play the ponies. You should be able to play the ponies at Disneyland. Most American entertainment at the turn of the century was about either startling or confusing horses. The fact you can't do that on Main Street's a travesty. You got all the fireworks right there. Scare them. Scare more. Scare right there Scare them Scare them

Scare them Scare that horse the kids will love it Scare the horse Anyway We don't advocate for scaring a horse We don't advocate That's what the character That was that character he was wrong That well-observed brooklyn-y guy uh i imagine as we head into this we'll also have

some well-observed uh chicago-y guys because a chicago company ended up getting hired to build these floats uh and install the lights and the nicad batteries because the creators like liked the specific type of bulb like i said uh that lit up michigan avenue at night um so they hired a chicago company to do it great all because like by this point we're saying you know here's the timeline disney world opens in 71 i think it's like summer of 72. I think it's sometime in 72 that, all right, we've announced this parade. Hey, not all the fun is in Florida. We got fun right here. A new electrical parade.

It's going to dazzle you. So they start building to this event that's been set up. And then they check in on the Chicago people. And they haven't done shit. They just completely dropped the ball. Or so Disney says. Yeah. I mean, maybe they have a different story. the chicago people and they haven't done shit they just completely dropped the ball or so disney says yeah they i mean maybe they have a different story um they might i mean uh if you were a chicago factory worker and disney caught you having built nothing with two months to go

what would you say i don't know i think you could make up a couple different. What year was it? Was it the 70s? The 70s, yes. What was happening in Chicago in the 70s? I don't know. I'm doubting my own ability to do a Chicago accent is what I'm doing. It's just the Bears.

Just do the Bears. I guess that is that. That's all you got, the Bears. That's all you got to do. Oh, yeah. Well, and it's kind of that acroid it's a little bit of that acroid thing um all right it's all right i'm too busy i'm seeing i'm i can't wait look we got busy we were seeing all these we were seeing all those shows at the second city i was laughing too much i i had to take a sick leave because my my ribs my ribs and my stomach hurt from laughing too much this kid malushi michael o'donohue marone

yeah that's a good that's a good excuse yeah yeah that'll yes yeah so uh yeah all these chicago factory workers were too busy laughing so they didn't get the job done so disney had to uh gather up all these floats just yank them away from the company drive them to la as fast as humanly possible and finish this parade in like half the time or less than they had established to do it, assuming it was going to be taken care of, which did require that. So in the initial conception of the parade, there were 500,000 white miniature bulbs and they all had to be hand tinted. So they had to hire a bunch of ladies. Of course, it had to be ladies. But ladies could do this.

They had to dip the bulbs in all of the colors. Wow, yeah. It's wild. It's like a weird, it's like ink and paint. Like the ink and paint gals. I don't know why Disney was convinced that. Men shouldn't be around paint. I guess so.

Women's work is painting. Paint fumes are going to get in anybody's brain. Men are far too ladies. You can't be trusted men around paint. They'll just start drinking it. They're far too dumb and crude. That was Walt's concern in the old days, and he was right to think it. I'll say this for like in terms of the chicago company trying to get this parade off the ground

it's not like they had a great inspiration to draw from because the electric water pageant floats it's well documented that as you said those are barges covered in chicken wire wrapped in lights so kind of rigged up and kind of has never really changed i mean i think they've upgraded it a little over the years but the one night or one week engagement has now been going for decades and decades but it's not like a technological marvel what's crazy essentially i was just gonna say what's crazy about it and it's all like the the rush to finish it and i guess it's actually like the same when it comes to most projects in theme parks. It's like it feels like it's like I have a like some sort of project due in school and I'm rushing to finish it the night before.

And it's just like, well, I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know. Chicken wire and dip it in. Like we're just going to try to piece stuff together like with whatever we have and then the difference of course being that like the you know science project i made in high school fell apart like the day of me making it well and then this thing but i that's not far from how this played out i wouldn't well that's true you know you're right they've had to reconstruct it yes i i mean yeah it sort of was as janky as like a a volcano for a science project seemingly uh less than a week before the debut a third of the floats were not ready a third of them and they and i i think it so then there was like a address rehearsal where let's attempt this.

Let's try to get through one pass. And they did not get through the one pass. You guys might have seen different versions of this story. I saw that a horse fell over. A Brooklyn guy's dream. Hey, there we go. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Now that's funny.

That's funny. That's like Belushi level funny. Belushi falls down and the horse falls down. A float crashed into one of the buildings. Yeah. It just went off the track. Saw that. And this was, I think, the night before.

This was the night before the very first performance. I feel like I'm i'm forgetting another story uh i had always heard that they got down main street and like died in the hub like the the they ran out of power yeah the lights turned off costume sparking is a big thing a big thing mentioned people just walking around with electric costumes sparking at each other and i think i think jason what you just said about that they made it down main street and then it went dark in the hub i think that's that's not the rehearsal i think that's in the that was the first night that's like what that's as far as they could make it

i think yeah a guess and press there and that sort of thing. God. Which is a testament to how just instantly lovable and fun and kooky the thing was. That it was like, if that happened now, oh my God, all your news todays and your mice chats, everybody's all up in arms. Everybody's furious. We'd be roasting the hell out of them. Yeah. But I like that. It was that fun just for like the one block that it made it that like, who cares?

We love it. Yeah, really? Yeah. It's like I'm trying to think like what is I guess the closest thing in recent history is that float in Florida catching fire. The Maleficent dragon float caught on fire a couple years ago at this point. That's like the biggest parade fail that I can think of in the last few years. But also that was awesome.

Yeah, you're right. That was cool. That was great. Especially once you're seeing it and you're like, oh, I hope everyone was okay. Everyone was. Yes, that rules. As long as you can call it that nobody was hurt. Yeah, that's the coolest thing ever.

You know, the last minute scrappy nature of this is where floats are missing. I think the other thing about the night that it debuted was that they were like, the parade started. The first float is leaving the station and the last several floats are not done and people are like screwing in bulbs as it's going at like the parade is in progress and they're still finishing these things i think actually oddly the most recent example of something being this janky, unless they've just kept it secret from us, is the replacement for the Main Street Electrical Parade, Light Magic, which, if we haven't said this officially on Twitter or anything, this is a little bit of a two-parter because Light Magic we're doing an episode about as well. If you don't know about Light Magic, I'm so excited to share.

We'll get into it later. But like, oddly, whole story with that is let's do a super high tech parade to replace this always janky parade. And then that too, the floats weren't working. There were major technical problems. It wasn't ready to go by the time they'd organized some big event. So like the same thing essentially happened in the 70s and the 90s. Yeah. essentially happened in the 70s and the 90s yeah i don't know i think paint the night which is like really the like realizing that dream of the technologically superior parade i don't know i haven't read about any like big problems with that but i'm sure there were i wonder if they just keep

those problems hidden now not problems but i thought there was supposed to be, like, that parade in Japan, I feel like there are more interactive elements, or there were at one point where, like, people had wands or ears that would light up and would bounce along to the music. And I feel like they promised something like that for Anaheim, and it didn't really happen. I do remember. We did get a new mix of a classic Owl City song. We definitely got that, for sure.

Well, of course we did, yes. I am remembering now that I remember reading Mice Chat articles about the issues with the Paint the Night Parade. So there were some issues, but I don't know if they were as severe as they were shooting sparks into the audience or anything they just like they keep a lid on these things i guess a little better i i don't

know um but now but they've also leaned into it's not like disney hides all these stories of the problems at the electrical parade i think they kind of love these stories now that's something as as beloved to disneyland fans as this parade had such a like crappy messy start yeah that's like it's kind of like adds to like the spunky nature the can-do spirit of the main street electrical parade that's really what it is yeah um even in all of its jankiness and uh crashing and on fire for the parade, they did have to develop for the first time and now commonly used system or just like the way parades happen now, which is an automated show control program where, you know, in a streetlight kind of way, a float rolls into an area, sensors catch it and trigger a new music cue to start, which I don't think had been done up until,

so that there could be a seamless music flow from section to section. Now the Pinocchio part is starting. Now the Snow White part is starting. Yeah, that was an innovation for this parade that they still have i'm sure it's more wi-fi than radio signals uh now but um yeah so there there was a lot of technology going around yeah yeah pretty cool um is now the point to talk about the song oh sure yeah sure um i mean it is certainly potentially a final four that we could do of best theme park music yes and i don't want to spoil that but it's it seems very possible this could be if not number one then then in the final four. Yeah, it's got a hard, hard competition with Blood on the Sand.

Blood on the Sand from Country Bears. That's your favorite of all the Country Bears. Yeah, that's formidable. I mean, it's children. Children tap their toes to that rousing number. It's also, it's Blood on the Saddle. Is it? Yeah. Okay. it's also it's blood on the saddle is it is it yeah

okay I mean look who you're asking Jason I know I know but he says both right he says blood in the sand and blood on the saddle oh yeah maybe it might be a lyric I've looked it up and it's the blood on the saddle it's blood on the saddle

that is the song is there ever blood on the same lyrics now sorry uh blood oh no on the saddle lyrics uh there was blood that's just like a pre-recorded track by tex ritter that's interesting and blood all around in a great big puddle of blood on the ground. Oh, blood. Wait. I don't think there's sand. I don't think there's any sand. Blood on the Sand is the sequel to the first 50 Cent video game.

There was 50 Cent, the 50 Cent G-unit video game. Blood in the Sand was the sequel to that. You've confused 50 Cent again for a Country Bears song that happens all the time jason not again i mixed up the g unit video games and country bears again you have to stop so let's let's speak let's test you then who who did the song uh pimp 50 Cent or the Country Bears. Jason? I feel like that's the number Henry sings, right? Oh. It does sound like that. I don't blame you at all, but it is

I will have to say it is 50 Cent. Damn it. Maybe we'll eventually do a final four with songs i think i think final four is for sure main street electrical parade baroque hoedown of course is the name of it really broke oh down yes but i think also i think sinbad is in that final four yeah probably that's that's pretty formidable um it's almost like do you have to separate instrumentals and lyric songs you have to make those different or they or those are the sides maybe this final four is like 32 competitors instead of 16 oh yeah and it goes over three episodes yeah yeah i think and we do it really soon because we're bored oh yeah okay yeah let's just let's expand why does it have to be 16

yeah the next final four will have 128 competitors from the instrumental conference phantasmic the the loop that plays inside the ice cream parlor on main street on the gibson girl loop the droid rooms from star tours original uh this is good we should do this um but yes the very possible winner uh baroque hoown, which I'm so excited to talk about because it is the synthesis of two great loves of mine, Disneyland and old synthesizer bullshit. There's a real chicken or the egg with me. Do I like this parade so much because it is so synthy or do I like synth bullshit because of this parade? Is there any way to know? I don't know i think it's all like so as i said i truly do remember hearing the first note and the vocoder as a three-year-old

so it feels like so tied into my psyche at this point right many i mean many classic movies i like had some sort of presence at MGM Studios. Like that was my exposure. And then I would go to video stores. And if I saw stuff, I would rent it. Or if I would hunt it down because like, oh, yeah, Singing in the Rain. That's in MGM Studios a lot. I should watch that. And it's if you naturally prefer desserts and treats that are shaped like Mickey Mouse, that's probably because of theme parks.

Well, that's true. Yeah. Probably. Could be from some others. Or maybe just like three circles together. No, I have so many of those things where you realize, yeah, decades after the fact, you're like, oh, wait, do I at the end of the day like this because of because of disney stuff when i was four years old yeah the answer is probably usually yes for with almost everything yeah yeah i mean it's certainly why i like hotel lobbies and music and yeah sure uh do you wonderful texture. How hard do you go on knowing about the synths in the songs?

In the song, excuse me. I don't... I certainly don't know what was played. When I look at, like... I've seen a list of what was used on it. I'm no... Look, I'm not actually a musician or a gearhead, but I know when I see words like Prophet 5,

I know we're in i know we're in a good territory uh i know what makes the sounds that i like uh and the list is pretty good it's a pretty robust list of like 12 like great old analog synths that were used on this thing do you i don't want to put you on the spot here do you have like a just a little bit of a vague like i know this is my favorite old synth oh um i don't i i own a uh this is a pretty different area but but i bought off a craigslist a wurlitzer electric oh which is this great like tan keyboard that's what the carpenters played uh it's on queen uh you're my best friend it's on uh it's it's the super tramp it's the logical song uh keyboard um so that that's that's kind of different from uh you know this like moog area but yeah

that's that's one i'm especially fond of yeah that's good i don't go i don't know the tech spec i don't know the stuff about since specifically i'm a i'm a fan of the sounds i have like logic on the computer which has you know hundreds of synth pads you can use for your midi keyboard sure sure oh and we should say i mean the the certainly the theme song of of our show is very much inspired by yes the major electrical yes it is uh it also, I don't know, it was kind of an accident. When I was putting the thing together, I realized, the song together, I realized that the opening and the drum

is kind of like the opening to the Disney sing-along tapes. Yes, yes. Totally the rhythm. So it's a little bit of a combo of both of those things. Yeah, I remember. Well, that's a little bit of a combo of both of those things? Yeah, I remember. Well, that's a little like connecting the dots. I feel like, you know, we'd put out like five of these things and then maybe I realized, oh, you know what? That's kind of like.

Yeah, that's a that's a cool little nod you did. I'm not sure if even maybe even new listeners don't realize you did the theme song. That's not if we were. Is that something we should say in every episode, like in that end screen? Should we credit you for the song and Aaron, my wife, for the art? I mean, I don't know. We don't have to say it. I don't know.

It's not like I'm seeing it attributed to some sort of old composer on the internet or anything. It's not being wrongly attributed. It's not being attributed to these guys to Perry Kingsley podcast the right theme unknown written by unknown public domain no way to know it's a Shakespeare situation

either it was one person or 200 people and they don't know yeah do you you know what I was gonna say do you have the artist name of Baroque Hoedown because Because that was just a song. That was not a Disney-made song. That was like a song they brought in seemingly or originally for inspiration. And we're like, well, let's just license this.

And at some point, they did buy it. Disney now owns Baroque Hoedown. Oh, is that right? Yeah. I didn't realize that. That's interesting. But the person who discovered it, I know know is jack wagner often called the voice of disneyland or disney world yeah this is an insane fact if it's true although i think i feel like i've seen different sources because i've

seen that baroque hodown was maybe used in the electrical water pageants uh which maybe he found it for that too but what but certainly there's multiple Disney stories attributing it to this guy, Jack Wagner. They were talking about what is the score of this parade? Is it Fantasia music? And then he said, it just doesn't fit. The orchestral doesn't work with this for me. Maybe it's a weird keyboard thing. And I have records that are like this. And he went and found this record by Jean-Jacques Perry and gershon kingsley uh and that became the score but jack wagner if you don't know is the guy i mean he's mainly known for remain seated please and he is he's the vocoder voice at the beginning of the parade he is the like yeah ladies and gentlemen boys and girls bonkers so that got like like the texture this guy added to the park in general with his voice, but

also that he picked this song and is the vocoder. What an MVP. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A literal Disney legend and probably a PTR legend too. Perry, you did say Perry and Kingsley. Perry and Kingsley. So Jean-Jacques Perryry gershon kingsley uh uh they i mean i i found that this was some connecting the dots that freaked me out in in high school realizing that uh because they made this cool this really amazing record

called the in sound from way out uh which is a weird kooky record from 66 of blippy bloopy keyboard music. That same title was and the cover were used by the Beastie Boys for an instrumental album. They like borrowed or stole, whatever you want to call it, the same that phrase, which is very cool. But this is from an album called the Kalecopic vibrations uh gershon kingsley also did a similar like early synth song called popcorn which you'd know it from the melody which is that that feels like one of those songs like you know but you don't know where it's from unless you guys don't is it in tetra don't they use it in tetris or something

god maybe am i wrong or it's like i'm not sure am i thinking of a different song i'll look it up Unless you guys don't. Is it in Tetris? Don't they use it in Tetris or something? God, maybe. Am I wrong? I'm not sure. Or am I thinking of a different song? I'll look it up. Popcorn song. I don't know where popcorn is from, but it's definitely, it's just one of those, like, what is that? That's some, like, 60s novelty thing, and I don't know who made it.

But it was one of these guys. I think, I believe it's used in Tetris. Yes, Tetris, yeah. It's in Tetris, really? Theme Tetris eating popcorn wait i think oh uh yeah tetris popcorn instrumental yeah oh geez wow fuck uh um yeah so these guys like clearly like yeah like major figures in the history of synth music. Some of the first people ever to use a Moog synthesizer in any regard. And what I love about all this stuff so much

is that I was trying to figure out what's important about Moog keyboards specifically. And a lot of it is technical stuff that's kind of above my head. But I think the main thing is that early keyboards were trying to sound like other things. Like, can we get this, you know, electronic machine to sound like a piano or like an organ or like an orchestra or something? Like, I think early keyboard stuff was like, how do we make sure we never have to hire an orchestra again? Can we get a machine to sound like an orchestra and uh robert moog with his early keyboards said what if it's not trying to sound

like other things what if we embrace the the artifice and the electronic nature and they'll just be like these bizarre sounding things they'll just sound totally kooky and weird and perry and kingsley were two of the first musicians to say that's great let's like twist all these dials and get bizarre sounds out of these machines which is totally what the parade is like every little every different little here's the deep one boop boop boop and here's like if you listen to their original recording all that character is in there like and it's just amazing how much like it's indelible now you like think of all these bugs and these little like kooky characters and their soundtrack was like just like inherent in this unrelated song made in 67 yeah that is very interesting how perfect that ends up being i mean

i'm sure there's obviously there's a million different ways to, you know, make creative decisions, but it does feel like it was completely written for this. It fits perfectly. It feels like a parade. It feels completely like parade music already, even though that wasn't the purpose of it. And the original track

is not that different from what they use in the parade. Yeah, they re-recorded it yeah but it's yeah it's it's pretty right on like down to that like that opening drone and that real wild pitch bend like uh it's so great it's so great that's i think what i was saying was like that the bizarre character of those old keyboards is the parade too it's like weird and janky and kooky and of its era but that's what everybody loves about it i don't know this thing is like it's like the mystery electrical parade isn't inherently a retro thing i don't think

that's why people love it but there's certainly that error to it it's like it's like so part of the dna and i love that disney has something that's so of its time in so many ways yeah because it's not retro it's also not like retro disneyland in the way that you're like opening day disneyland stuff is it's retro in the way we i think talk a lot about on the show we like is like 70s and 80s retro disney that like is i mean and obviously you scott you know what i'm talking about more than anyone but like the retro future that's what it feels like i mean since synths in general have such character to them and and i think as a kid whether you knew it or not you were like thinking that this is the music of the future

this is suggesting just hearing a synth is like you're thinking about like robots and you're thinking about some crazy technological like society like well i guess you couldn't i probably couldn't articulate it at 10 but if i heard those noises and beeps it was like whoa this feels like some crazy, cool, like, hundred years from now. It really, yeah, as a kid, you cannot process what these sounds are. Yeah. You, like, don't, like, I don't know what this is, but it is different, and I want to hear more of this. And I'm sure this parade factors into why, like, probably the vast majority of music I listen to has some synth component. I bet that's true for you to

some extent too uh it's just i don't yeah i did the just the texture these there's i provide as cool as hell i was working on something yesterday and i was like i should see what synths they have in logic and there i was just saying there's like hundreds and i just go through each one and just like run my hands up and down the keyboard because it's so satisfying to hear these bizarre robot sounds that are are in there it's like which when you call me yeah yeah absolutely oh my god just putting your hand on a key how cool it feels instantly uh and that's the fact that these early synth guys were such like they were combo musicians and scientists like they worked in laboratories, literally. And some of the early ones, like it took an entire room to play it.

And I think the Moog, what this stuff is played on were some of the first keyboards that could actually you could pick up and take somewhere else. They weren't stuck in a laboratory. Yes, it really it's honestly it makes too much sense that these were scientists. Because there's something like so beautifully artificial and clinical and scientific about the sound as well. I mean that in a good way. Yeah. It's like this kind of like, it can be like, a lot of them can be like kind of almost like cold, sterile sounds. But there's something, there's something beautiful about that too isn't there well and it's funny it's still like how does this ever not feel

current like when we were in orlando and i was staying at universal i was walking around like the the city walk and by the hotels like after the parks had closed but horror nights had started and the soundtrack of horror nights in 2019 was all like synthy like spooky like i found like a playlist i don't know if it was official or not on spotify and it's all like a mix of weird horror music and like synthy like club music and stuff and i was just walking by i was like that sounds cool should i just should i go in should i should have gone in i should have bought a debt but just standing outside it's like wow that seems like a cool party yeah it's like i mean obviously like i think everything comes back into stogue or whatever, but Stranger Things has that very synthy sound.

We just watched Good Time for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Oh, yeah. And obviously, the Safdies love this synth. They love using it to make you feel just constant dread. But they love it. I mean, it follows. There's always, every every year there's some new thing that feels like the future by using a lot of sense like it'll never not be the future this

is what i'm saying we always come back to this about tomorrowland and epcot like just there's no new future right it's still like it's it's still neon and sense that will always be it's like a future that will never come. Deep neon blue. You don't have to worry about it getting out of date. What's that? Deep neon blue, always the future. Yes, yes. The color schemes of Tron Legacy had it correct.

Probably the digital thing. Maybe one of the things that has aged the best in terms of the look of the aughts and 2010s. I can't remember the actual movie myself but just like that glow glowing uh greenish blue is like yeah that still works still like that yeah and daft punk always feels like future music despite always nodding to 60s and 70s music uh tron the music by wendy carlos who also did a lot of these early experimental like a a peer of gershon uh kingsley and john jack perry with her switched on bach uh records those were like also a mix of experimental or and also fun and weird to listen to uh which that was

yeah a lot of these early records were like what if we took classical music and played them through these weird keyboards and in fact the guy who ultimately played the disney version i believe don dorsey is his name um the guy who made the new borough codown for disney in the 70s he also put out an album in the 80s called bach b. And it has a cover that is delightful to look up where a guy playing Bach is like running somewhere or from something while holding a big keytar. Check out Bach Busters. Do you have a keytar, Scott? No?

Only the one that came with Rock Band. Oh, right. Technically, I do have a little. What do I have? Is it a mini Moog? I forget. But also interesting about all this, that Jean-Jacques Perry went to Disneyland in 1980 and saw the parade and this just started playing. And he didn't know that his music was

in the parade until that moment wow it just started yeah bonkers like it was because it was run by the publishers disney didn't rip him off he was making money from it right just they just like never alerted him so he's just in the park and here's that his notes start and it uh freaks him out but it made him very happy and kind of never uh stops because i don't know if we've said yet like this is the backbone of the soundtrack of the parade and then as the radio cues like as the floats cue the different music cues like electric versions of like al in Wonderland or, and,

and the other songs kind of play on top of this. We're like mixed into it. That is a really bonkers thing about it, that it was this other track that Disney didn't make. And yet it was the base that all of their melodies go on top of the fact that it worked as like a starting point. And now we'll do all the classic Disney songs, and that they all fit. It's never like anachronistic. It's so crazy.

And probably helped make them a little more current at the time, like bring them back into people's minds. Yeah. I mean, they were re-releasing those movies every other month still, but, you know. Very Merry on Birthday is probably my favorite within that it's such a it fits so perfectly in that particular variety of like uh weird deep that that one fits the best for me and that might be my favorite little musical stint that's probably right because

like the movie is a nightmare or like it's already odd and psychedelic surreal i should say it's psychedelic more than a nightmare i mean the movie is a nightmare but that's not what we like about on birthday sure sure um maybe it's time to start you know we should maybe start talking about sections of the parade and floats and stuff but just real quick before in the music section i one thing i think is awesome uh jean-jacques per Perry Gershon Kingsley were both born in the 1920s but they only died pretty recently like Perry died in uh 2016 Kingsley died last year these guys made it so long uh and when Jean-Jacques Perry died a relative said uh no one should be sad there's nothing he would want more than for his fans to be playing

his crazy funny catchy moog music and smiling instead of being sad he was the happiest guy so listen to his music and smile he seems like the coolest wow that's nice and this you can watch footage of him not from not that long ago at the knitting factory playing baroque hoedown wow audience goes bonkers wow. Watching him actually play the complicated parts of it. So cool. These guys are great. Made me very happy to talk about these guys. Did you ever think about, did you know

you could see him live? Did you ever think about it? Oh, I don't. Hmm. I mean, I wasn't on my radar. Yeah, no, not really. I've made no effort to see uh marauder probably the uh the biggest uh you know the most looming i quote my own thing lord of synth uh i was gonna say out there and can we plug lords of synth can somebody watch that scott made a a very funny

oh is it a short i guess you'd call it? Adult Swim Special. It was a 4am special. Yes, if you're interested in synth and lords and synth patch work and that kind of thing, please check out Lords of Synth. It's one of my favorite things I've ever been part of. Many past guests of the show are part of it too,

and yeah, it's great. Perry and Kingsley, not reflected in it, but yeah, hey, it was so funian kingsley not reflected in it but uh uh yeah hey it was it was so fun i still can't believe it happened uh where is it available just on youtube for free okay wow isn't that insane yeah it's one of the it's uh it's funny how that works out where like so many people have told me they like lords of synth because they saw it because they got to see it it's not behind some weird paywall so yeah go to youtube look up lords of synth and because they saw it because they got to see it it's not

buying some weird paywall so yeah go to youtube look up lords of synth i'm very proud of it um yeah check it out uh yeah yeah so let's get back to the actual i guess parade yeah yeah what are what part what parts do we like what uh what's what are what are highlights in your your guys mind i mean they're all kind of highlights. I always think about Goofy sitting on one of those balls. I don't know why that comes to mind. I mean, I think the kings are the two turtles. The hat turtle, glasses turtle.

I was trying to figure out if they have names, and I think via eBay, at least if the eBay listings for models of them you can get are accurate, then I think their names are Lightning Bug and Twinkling Turtle. Wonderful. Wow, Twinkling Turtle. I have the Park Star Turtle. Oh. That's great. Yeah, I have that one. Look at that.

Wow, that's a top-notch Park Star that i guess is twinkling turtle that is twinkling turtle yes i have twinkling he's in a tie that's there's maybe a disconnect for me that he's wearing a tie in the parade i didn't know he was wearing a tie until i got the toy he's wearing a tie the one's got a jaunty hat uh i like the snails too both the snails are great yeah snails and ladybug and if you had to pick something to do in this parade uh it would be hard to resist uh driving one of these things around oh yeah that would be spinning oh goddamn cool spinning that thing are you kidding me i would have a ball spinning that turtle i was thinking in the way that uh these are this the music's done on weird janky synthesizers the parade is chicken wire and chaos and the the

way the fact that these there's such a human element to the way those things move around and spin around it is um you know it's not like perfect motion controlled rise of the resistance it's weird and wonky and you can see the like antenna you know shake back and forth and you can imagine one of them driving into the crowd if they weren't careful oh yeah i think about that every time it's not that everything in theme parks has to be janky like these things are. I just love that there's both. I love that there's the highest technology and weird rickety technology, too. There's a human element to the turtle spinning, flailing wildly in a seemingly dangerous way. And it would be so fun.

All right, not to hit people, but if you lined up a bunch of like dummies a bunch of crash crash test dummies along main street and then just got to like plow through a row of 20 oh just nail them yeah yeah very satisfying like ball or giant bowling pins oh yeah yeah oh my god right in the middle of main street oh yeah knocking them downocking them down, seeing if you can get them all with that initial impact. Right. Hell yeah. I was going to say, I love when Dopey is driving the mine cart with the diamonds, or the jewels, I should say. Yeah.

That is a child, of course, the jewels in Snow White. And they perfectly made them as attractive as they were in the new mine Snow White. And they perfectly made them as attractive as they were in the new minecart coaster. And I say new, it's five years old, but the newish minecart coaster. And when you see those jewels, when you see those rubies and

sapphires, you know, that's a nostalgic thing for me. Gotta give it up for the fancy mice, the waltzing mice that are all electrified. Yeah. This might be one of the top uses of the fancy Cinderella mice,

which my wife, Erin, loves very much. I don't know what it... I never asked her to explain what it is exactly. Their heads are just so giant, and they look so stupid. They just look like such daft characters, but in a little tricorner hat. It's like they're trying so hard.

It's like Homer putting on a tie to be mildly impressive at work. That's how it feels. It's like these dumb creatures are trying to, look, I dressed up. I'm doing a good job about dressing up. I was noticing when I was watching the video that like the seven dwarves have on like gold pants. Or like so like shiny pants like happy has gold pants and then like one of them just has like maybe purple pants, but they're shiny.

They're like dressed like the rolling stones or something like they're like they're like aging rocker kind of cool leather pants that are colorful uh which i really like it's like i don't know that it reads so well to people like i don't know you could tell necessarily but maybe maybe it's something you subconsciously realize that happy's pants are are gold yeah and it's sort of like refracting light in some way. You're noticing it in some regard. We should talk about the costumes. The fact that all these costumes are electrified and how insane that must have been in the 70s. It did light people on fire the first time they tried it, but not so much anymore.

And it's very complicated. I think there's battery packs in wigs often. Yeah. That's where they're hiding things. A battery pack in a wig. Yeah. It's very cool. It's very cool.

Oh, very Liberace is what it is. Liberace must have loved the Main Street Electrical Parade. I hope he got to see it. Oh, my God. There'd be no better audience oh my gosh he would have been the like if he ever like could just like have joined the parade on one of the floats and played piano on top that might be the greatest thing i'd ever seen like this one like this big mouth yeah it's like the big mouth the vague pleasure island that's gone i think

from recent versions is that right Or is that still there? That's there, isn't it? I saw it. I watched a video of them building it in one of the side, like rebuilding it and rebulbing it in one of the former parking lots at California Adventure, like what's probably Cars Land now. They were like, the parking lot was clear and they're putting the thing back together. It's kind of fascinating footage. I think it was a Martin's Vids. But I know that face was in that.

So it was at least still around in the 2000s. I'm looking at it in 2017 and the face is there. Oh, all right. Some stuff is coming and going though, right? Like there was rescuer stuff, I think, at some point. I didn't see that. I believe it. I thought there was.uer stuff i think at some point i didn't see that i believe it that makes sense yeah there's a on the pinocchio front there was a big underwater section so there was more pinocchio uh which includes when you wish upon a star as the score which i forget if the

other part had that um but there's a bunch of seahorses there's a huge monstro that's spouting and Geppetto's boat is in its mouth and Geppetto's there like he's about to get eaten or like he's just getting spit out I don't know what moment we're seeing

but it was really cool like I can only find it on old grainy video but it was I don't know why they took this one out it's super cool yeah there's a lot but it was, I don't know. I don't know why they took this one out. It's super cool. Yeah. There's a lot of, it's like, I'm interested in,

yeah. If there's like some sort of resource that we're missing that has like every single little change and all the different versions. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of documentation of it, but yeah, the Disney fandom,

it has a full list of floats. I don't know what was running at any given time and obviously internationally they uh do not have the to honor america section all right yes yes yes uh um to honor america yeah very interesting that's that's a very of its era thing too it wasn't there for the bicentennial it was a couple years late but it still feels like it was part of bicentennial mania yeah it's 77 it seems like it got an uh or 77 when it debuted i have 77 as an important year and 84 as an important year i think a lot of what we think of the parade as comes from 84 77 was the opening excuse me so much so supposedly that i i read that um you know as fond as we are of it like

some of what we a lot of what we love might be from those years that that you said and those refurbishments because disney apparently likes to keep photos of the original on lockdown like it looked so bad in the early 70s. It must have been the weird first season of Mystery Science Theater where the robots are falling apart. It's not the still janky but charming version we know. I think Disney does not want you to know how bad it was in 72. Yes. 72 yes they want i mean because with any of this stuff with any of the disney stuff like what happens is is that your brain remembers the newest version of it yeah so it's like unless something was drastically different like in my mind i saw this version forever this is

like the new version the newish version which i haven't seen i guess we saw scott and we went to see it in 2017 that was one of the best disneyland visits so what a what a great one yeah we went to blue bayou because we had to buy the pig package and then like you got a prime viewing spot for the new the new viewing of the parade uh and a blue bayou dessert of uh one of the bugs oh yeah i totally forgot about that i have probably have a photo of that somewhere um yep which which we ate while in the wind that somebody checked their phone and said la la land won the oscar tonight yes we had that dessert in the window where it was not yet clear that it ended up being moonlight and had watched the oscars in the great moments with mr lincoln for a few uh awards i believe right that's the day yeah yeah yeah because it's a fine abc uh

production so they some great cross-company synergy so watching the oscars in the lincoln theater so so great i god they gotta do that kind of thing more can we just like can we just watch uh you know what would you do um oh yeah yes bachelor in paradise from uh from the lincoln shutting down uh yeah shutting down the lincoln theater early to watch like all in the family live my only complaint about it was that they should have like lifted up the screen to see Lincoln once in a while while we were watching

he should have watched along and nodded and laughed and right made catty comments about what the what the celebrities were wearing yeah and then they like in between instead of showing us you know Joan Rivers style snipping and sniping of course what the celebrities were wearing yeah and then they like in between instead of showing us i was

always just yeah you know joan rivers style uh snipping and sniping of course yeah i was gonna say instead of commercials they should have just played two brothers on the screen just we cute we got a cute up for you we know what you like it's uh we're just just the highlights here yeah um but i don't think abe has it queued up and uses it to play off people whose speeches are too long yeah two brothers should be there's probably some commercial campaign that is begging to use two brothers like one of these what's the there's some commercial about where like the different uh uh the the kit kat factory and like the um the brothers split into different uh left lefts and right oh left twix right twix yeah oh it's twix it's not okay no kit kat is a strong strong bond you need all those all of those wafers a kit kat is a strong bond you need all those all of those wafers a Kit Kat is a strong bond

Kit Kat is a strong bond meet meet familia salute or maybe it should be like Coke or Pepsi should buy it and imply that the other that their competitor is the confederacy of sodas oh yeah that's blue so coke could be yeah yeah i'm not sure the i gotta chart the math on this but it's it's dying you could change the colors yeah any product that doesn't have a catchy jingle right now two brothers is sitting right there waiting for you to grab it looking at you la croix maybe honestly maybe there is a synth version of two brothers that could be made like a new well that's the yeah hmm maybe they yeah they got to appeal to the you know all the the hardcore american adventure fans out there

um and yeah they they should do in the middle of to honor america a civil war section where with lit up electric versions of the family and then the brother who dies goes dark oh yeah dragon yes they should we've talked about mashups before they should start mashing up disney properties like this yeah yeah i so it's like you're going from and then right and then ben franklin and mark twain could be wearing gold pants and they shake hands and then spark yes that would be really great spark of american brotherhood um i uh um i was saying about to honor America

I mean it's like I don't mind that it's fun but what I didn't realize is that before that the finale of this parade was a huge section with where characters were in like I gotta describe them as, like, crystals, essentially. It was, like, glass rectangle, it was a mix of, like, glass and mirrors, and the characters were done in neon, and they spun. I gotta show you guys this if you haven't seen.

I found, like, a really crappy old video of it. It was, like, I mean it looks like logan's run or xanadu or something like i it made me so mad that that's not the finale anymore it was like this the sleaziest vegas mirror on the ceiling vibe um that it was like a truly amazing finale before um it was like yeah real real grimy and cokie i i loved it yeah that's great that's like that sounds bad i mean bad like a bad in a good way sometimes it's good sometimes it feels good to be bad though it looked to me like the only the silhouette that I remember seeing was was Pinocchio. So seeing like a neon silhouette of Pinocchio in a revolving mirrored cube.

And it felt like what would be at the entrance if Pinocchio opened a strip club. Which he could have. I mean, he was on the Pleasure Island. If he had liked Pleasure Island more, you could see him opening up a strip club for sure. He might have planned to see, if he didn't quite learn his lesson, he might have opened a rural Italy's hottest strip club. He could have turned into a whole like uh wooden bob guccioni type well if uh you know if it was him doing the stripping uh like if he grew you know now that he's real he grows up gets buff he's like chippendale style and the club is called real boys Real Boys. Uh-uh. You choked on that idea. It's just a name.

They're all of age, Jason. The only strip club. They're all of age. I'm sorry. I was joking on how much money we're going to make on that idea. Oh, we're doing it? Hell yeah. We're making it now?

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we've already got to make the Two brothers burrow code out, Mash. We are known. You know what? I'd like to officially formally suggest that the listeners stop calling us good boys and start calling us real boys. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Now my choking has started. Because we keep it real here on podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why. We're the real boys. The real boys. Yeah. That's it.

Oh, no. Now I'm upset I brought up the revolving mirror cubes. It's your fault. Am I going to just let it die? Unlike Peter Pan, these boys are all grown up. Worse. Worse, but it's good. Worse, but it's good.

Worse, but it's good. Sometimes it's good to be worse as we also talk about lost floats did you guys catch the 1985 and 1985 only film tie-in float oh I saw I don't tell me just because I'm gonna I have I have so many tabs open is 85 the great mouse detective um that

is the year but not the okay um it's real it's we'd never think of it return to Oz oh yeah I missed it was a return whoa I miss this look up pictures look up pictures Wow bunkers I'm very excited about is a return to Oz flow. How did I miss this? Look up pictures. Look up pictures. Wow.

It's bonkers. I'm very excited about this. I can't believe I didn't see this. Whoa. It's similar. It's not unlike the... I think mirrors were also deployed. I don't know why they aren't using mirrors more often.

Wow. It looks pretty good. Yeah. And also very casino, sleazy, Biff Tannen's Pleasure Palace. It really does, yeah. Yeah, this is not that far off from some of the original MGM Grand Oz stuff, I feel like. Yeah, it's a lot like that, absolutely. Did you read about the incident?

The incident. Oh, is that on some... Is it written in a way that is sort of weird and misspelled? Well, I'll read it. You know, I haven't proofread it. I'm just going to read this sentence. I'm not going to look at it again. We'll see what it is.

The float... We're talking about Return to Oz float. The float barely lasted a single summer as the reflective mirrors suffered this float's fate as it caught fire and was completely destroyed. That's

better written than what I read. What I read, I didn't believe because it was so typo. You're saying that the lights refracted around the mirrors and it caused the thing to overheat or it sounds like it was cursed glare that sounds like there was a curse or something it burned itself down for the insurance money that's what i'm getting at yeah i uh were there care were there characters from the movie walking around

do we have any they were on the float there was a Dorothy and there was a here if you google image mainstream electrical parade return to Oz you'll see it there's that the pumpkin head I don't know who that is Jack Pumpkinhead

I believe that's his name oh I see I'm watching it now Jack Pumpkinhead. Jack Pumpkinhead. I believe that's his name. Oh, I see. I'm watching it now. Dorothy is holding a chicken. Huh. Is it a real chicken? Is it a fake chicken?

I cannot tell from these videos. There's a decent video of it. I was looking for TikTok. TikTok is my favorite character from return to oz uh he was sort of the round like copper i assume copper robot guy do you know him you know i'm talking about i have never seen this film really still too childhood scared of this film oh we got it we gotta do it i haven't seen it in quarantine we gotta do it oh my god is it on disney i believe so okay it looks like it is yeah yeah oh yeah i'm scared of it now you should be currently scared while looking at it you should be scared of it there's a ton of oz

books like these are not characters made out of whole cloth I believe like these are from the yeah yeah those are from the books yeah I think in some ways return to Oz is a little more like the books than the Judy Garland version I think I always hate that whenever anything

is quote more like the books I always think it's worse I believe in point Willy Wonka. From what I know, Jack Pumpkinhead plays a big part in the continuing books. Oh, yeah. I'm not saying Return to Oz is better than the classic Wizard of Oz.

I'm just saying. Sure. It's interesting because it's more horrifying. Aish, yeah. horrifying well I'd like to think that in my mid 30s I would not watch this film and be scared but maybe I'm going to try to get Lindsay to watch it tonight with me

we watched it about 8 or 9 years ago I think oof I'm getting real. My never-ending story genes are getting lit up here. My never-ending story phobia is kicking in. Look, I feel like I know exactly what you're saying, and I think you'll get a sense of accomplishment though, when you do it.

Cause I've been trying to do that here and there with other movies. I've done, I do scariest one, of course, being hell raiser. No. Yes. Of course.

I watched hell raiser. Cause I was like, you know, you'd see the VHS copy of it sitting at blockbuster and just go never, never. How, why, why would I do it?

Who likes it? Why? And then I i was like you know what let's try it and yeah there's some interesting stuff in it it's a lot of like hooks going through skin i don't necessarily need to see hooks going through skin but the return to oz is so much less gross than that it's but there is one thing that is so traumatic in my mind about Return to Oz that I think you might know. It's not going to be that traumatic, though, for you now. But as a kid, I saw it. That's why it's traumatic for me. I'm looking at pictures of the Gnome King, and I don't like this guy at all.

You're not going to like a lot of the characters. I really think I'm going to hate all of the characters uh i think uh uh griffin newman and on blank check i think nodded to this when they were talking about silence of the lambs but i think in my head it's just that that that one poster of silence of the lambs where the there's the like the moth is on her mouth. Yes. Like I think I thought it was Hellraiser. I think I thought it was like a movie about a villain who like puts a moth on your mouth who changes your mouth into a moth. Or the I didn't know what it was when I was six.

So maybe I thought Jodie Foster was like some kind of moth queen. Well, she'd spit moths. I think that's because I think maybe I thought it was like the fly oh yeah because i had seen because my friend luke would his parents let him watch r-rated movies and my it was not like i was like forbidden from it but we just never saw it so i thought that i couldn't see r-rated movies so i didn't really see R-rated movies until I was in my mid-teens. Sure. So they felt like truly I might die if I see an R-rated movie before I was ready. Yeah, I think I thought every one of these movies, if you put it on, would just be plotless. And it's just people getting whipped and tortured and torn apart on a rack for 90 straight minutes well now there's no stories there's no characters it's just

yes from what i know of of hellraiser there is a lot of that right i mean you go beyond the world hellraiser of hellraiser there's a lot of pleasure and pain there's a lot of uh again close-ups of skin with a hook going through it and like tearing the skin you're like all right well this is actually closer to what i maybe thought it was than some of the other movies where i went oh this is fine this isn't that bad but hellraiser is pretty intense but not without some interesting uh not without some interesting things in it well maybe it's time let's face our fears you watched the scariest movie hellraiser i'll watch the scariest movie returned

which is rated pg i think bullshit i hate this rating too scary too scary for 34 year olds yeah uh um here let's get back on the ground of something here let's let's go to the opposite of uh let's go back go way more pleasant than this uh our our pal the dragon our pal i have to make sure to say elliot the dragon not it's one of those frankenstein things i think i still even though the title is pete's dragon i still look at him and i think oh look there's pete i also know that's not right i also think that yeah yeah um i mean like truly special to me in a way i can't further explain than i already did i just try really remember seeing this for when i was three years old and boy it just it made my heart glow i could not be more earnest

in my affection for this thing and i i don't think i'm alone in that yeah i don't know i know i have never seen the original pete's dragon which might be blasphemous and it's not because i was scared of it or anything i just have never seen it um but that dragon does feel like i saw it and have some sort of attachment to it from childhood. Very easy to mix up in my mind was Sword in the Stone. Sure. Peace Dragon and Sword in the Stone.

Similar, yeah. I mean, it's from the era. But then one is live action and one is all animated. Right. But you could, yeah, all those from around that era i can kind of miss mix up a lot of things yeah um that's what was that within a few years or am i wrong they're a little they're a little far apart that's like 60s and 70s i think um i'm not sure i'm curious if

people think pete's dragon is good i haven't revisited it in a while. I think I may have just liked it because it was around. It might have been one of those. Well, the character is so cute and friendly looking. It's like... Well, and as with all, just like, you know, any Star Wars affection I have comes from the ride first. I think I like Pete's Dragon because he's in this parade. Yeah, I could see that. That makes a lot of sense. It might be better not to watch Pete's dragon because he's in this parade. Yeah, that's, I could see that. That makes a lot of sense.

It might be better not to watch Pete's dragon, you know, just like have your perfect memory of this dragon is the one from the parade. And he'll never go. It'll never go away. Cause the parade is going to apparently come back for the rest of time. Like they'll never, they brought it back last year when the attendance

was sluggish at disneyland because of galaxy's edge yeah i people lose it i mean i definitely have fallen for it too it's like oh the electrical parade's back like how many times have they done this and i still fall for this crap. Yes. It's still, and I, yeah, but yeah, when Mike, when we went with Aaron and Lindsay, I felt this like, just like that, that glow that comes from that opening note in the VOCA. And then you start seeing them look, there they are. It's yeah. I don't know.

Even if it is like a crass marketing move, it still triggers something that is very pure. But yeah, they do it a lot. They definitely do it a lot. So I'm just saying, yeah, you'll be able to see this dragon forever, I think. Yeah. I'd like to say that when they brought it back this most recent time, a couple years ago,

I'll go out on a limb and say that commercial that they made in the warehouse where all of the characters live like like the room of disney magic that you have in your heart and the girl puts the last bulb on it i think that might be the best disneyland commercial that there has ever been yeah it's up there like it's up there with like that original space mountain commercial oh hell which is such a now yeah yeah well thanks for reminding me all right number two well if it was a final four of disneyland commercials it would absolutely be in the final four i think that's not a bad idea that's not a bad we haven't thought about that yet i don't think

yeah there's that disneyland paris one with donald running around with real ducks like that's very cute that is cute i do like a lot of different song eras i'm going to disneyland there's like they've gone in and out of it there's all the athlete things oh you you guys had that too they sang i'm going to disney world in the marketing materialized so i didn't realize they recorded both versions of it. They did both. Yeah. Both ghosts. They tricked us.

I don't know. That ad, though, I think they nailed it. When all the floats are leaving, like heading into the park with this glorious pink sky, that really is like the ideal disneyland we all uh you know we all imagine is there as opposed to just like yeah it's a boring like warehouse back there it's uh they did such a great it's what you want it to be backstage you know yeah the close like the closest to that i've probably talked about it on the show before, it was maybe 2015 D23, where they had this Imagineering exhibit.

And it felt like that. It felt like you just walked through the warehouse. And it had the big weird Ben Franklin float from that weird 70s parade. Do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, right, right, right. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It was the AmeriCon parade or something. Yeah, I forget the name of it. it ben franklin float from that that's weird 70s parade do you know what i'm talking oh oh right right yes yeah yeah america on parade or something yeah i forget the name of it um but it had a big sandwich yes yes with the big sandwich oh yeah now you have my attention uh wrecks like the full the full-size wrecks the like ride vehicles that felt like walking through i mean the commercial came after that

but then i was like oh yeah that kind of reminded me of that exhibit at d23 which they had never the next year it was like or the you know two years after when they did the next one in 2017 it was like pirates of the caribbean only and it was like half of the movie stuff. And you were like, yeah, I don't know if this is quite as good as two years ago. Two years ago, I was so thrilled. Two years before that, I mean, I was so thrilled to walk through all that stuff. And then I was like, well, it's cool to see some of the ride vehicles and some of the pirate robots, but I don't necessarily need to see Barbossa's jacket. You don't want to see the headband that keith richards wore when he just shows up on

screen for 30 seconds uh yeah i was not as thrilled to see that as i would have been to see some other like country bear busts or robots no um i so they this first went away uh in 1996 in a very confusing way i don't really still don't really understand why they took it away but it was a big disaster and they replaced it with this thing light magic please go to patreon.com slash podcast ride will explain light magic um it was so much emotion in it disappearing but but like why it was like it felt like an absolutely arbitrary event to get rid of it that completely backfired because now they've just been plugging it in to like fix you know attendance problems ever since yes yeah i wonder i mean i i would imagine that like the in charge, probably because of the janky nature of it, especially when it started, the nostalgia obviously wasn't there because it was new.

So I would imagine that maybe the people in charge and the people who were making it, this is a guess, but all they saw were the flaws of it. All they saw were like, oh yeah, this looks like shit like we got to make a much better version whereas like people that came to the park were like this is great we really like this and it's lasted for whatever reason you know for so many years and i think yeah they i don't think they realize it's it's because of what they were regarding as as crappy or or tossed together um it's just what it's the character of uh of what it is some things are meant to be super high tech and some things are charmingly low tech and that's what this thing is um and boy did it backfire as we'll explain because what they put in was supposed to now here we here's a real parade and everyone

hated it instantly i hate it i'll say that um yes uh i have to give them credit i mean the the farewell season marketing like this billboard uh now it's time to say goodbye okay i get that you know mickey mouse club reference um the farewell season logo like i i get trying to drum up business this one with the two snails and the text we can't glow on like this is the grimmest thing i've ever seen because they're smiling like they're smiling it's saying we can't glow on like this that is they're cracking that is so upsetting it's a it's a forced smile they're jokers david joker it's a demented smile bugs are jokerfied jokerfied they can't go on like this oh yeah that's really morbid wow good fine yeah that is oh my god what a nightmare yeah

we can't glow on like this. It's funny. You know how they say Wolverine, when he pops his claws out, and he says this famously in the first X-Men movie, it hurts every time. Maybe these characters are just in pain doing this parade every night. No, no, Michael. Stop it. Maybe the lights are just like, it's really like hurting them they're all kind of sentient

floats and they're just in constant pain they're dizzy they're overheated and they just need to be put out to pasture the light is their blood it's supposed to be inside oh they're leak oh no they're gonna run out they need transfusions the original the original imagineers gave them consciousness walt was working on consciousness for the robots before he passed away and then they finally perfected they half perfected it in the 70s, and the floats had the early version of the consciousness, but they could also feel pain. I have to say, I'll get into it over on the second gate. There is a pre-light magic pitch of what the new parade was going to be that isn't that far from characters whose consciousness is light.

There is one of the creepiest, worst ideas I've ever heard, and I'll tease it for over there. Yeah. It gets grim. But, of course, the parade kept going, kept reappearing, but pretty quickly, in fact. When it was 96 it went away it reared its head in 1997 in one of the strangest events disney ever did where it

transformed it got a new name as it ran through times square in new york city and was called the hercules electrical parade. Yes. Zero to hero, baby. This is so bizarre. They did a whole deeply expensive weekend in New York City promoting the release of Hercules several years prior having done a ginormous screening of Pocahontas in Central Park.

So it was kind of a sequel to that. Slightly less pleasant films with huge New York events that get in New Yorkers' way and make them mad. We got to do it again i don't i mean i'm not the first person to say this but i don't understand why they used that parade like hercules is a movie wasn't this like neon light synth movie not really no uh they also made original hercules floats that they never used again. Like this... For one night! For one night! For one night! This horrifying representation of Hades, which I'm assuming is what the inside of James

Woods' rotting brain looks like now. But, like, yeah, they did... From what I was reading, they did this in 1977 for the Pete's Dragon premiere. Oh! In New York? Yeah, Pete's Dragon premiered

at Radio City Music Hall, and they did some sort of, whether it was the electrical, but they did a similar event for that as well. Less well documented. Whoa. That's crazy,

and I also found another strange outside of its natural habitat. Although, you know what? I'm realizing, I think they made a big deal out of this thing. And they said, this is the first time the Main Street Electrical Parade has been performed outside of Disneyland. And one, then that's one. And then I found another one, which is it was the halftime show of the 1978 Orange Bowl. Which I think is in Florida, unless I might be confused. You're right. But I think it's Florida. And it's fine in this video. So it's really strange. I mean, like the floats go through, but the floats are obviously still extremely small in a football stadium. So what it mostly becomes is people with like big electric umbrellas or something kind of like making shapes, just like walking around in circles. And it only makes sense if you're in a helicopter point of view. It's insanely boring. It was a pretty bad idea of a halftime show.

And then they bring out Pete and Elliot. And Pete keeps, they give him dialogue. He keeps saying like, wow, Elliot, the Orange Bowl. And he goes, wow, I've never seen so many people. And just that infinitely really strange. So it's a mixed bag, seemingly, the non-Disneyland performances. Did you catch the detail about the Times Square turning off the lights for this? Did you catch?

Yes, yes. Go here, go ahead. This corporate. I forget where I pulled this from um but so they got disney ran the electrical parade through times square and they got most of the businesses to turn their lights off so that parade could light up nicely all but one all the businesses complied with the exception of warner brothers who had a warner brothers retail store at the crossroads of 42nd street and broadway the lights eventually did go out at the warner brothers studio store when the chain went out of business shortly after that

so i don't know what to fuck you man like that's not cool people lost their job that's not a newspaper writer humor in the 90s was rough stuff like very bad but maybe someone was like the light while someone was trying to like fill in uh the coloring book screen of like a picture of taz like maybe they needed to do that that's my memory of the warner brothers stores where you you were like coloring digital coloring books on screens we uh we gotta do the full warner brothers studio store episode because did i share these with you or was i saving it for the idea of doing this that i found a bunch of um internal use music videos made by people from different Warner Brothers Studio Store franchises.

There was like a music video contest for an award show where like they all got together and like did a, like a medley of grease songs, but changed the lyrics to be about like stocking shelves and like, but we're out of Taz dolls. Wow. I, you, stocking shelves and like but we're out of taz dolls wow i you you told us about the award show i don't know that i dug down into it enough to see the music videos yet oh it's so good there could be an episode just about the award show yeah joel schumacher comes out in the middle of promoting batman and robin and could not be more cocky about this.

And like, you guys are going to love it. And there's so much. Oh, the toys. We're going to make so much money, you guys. We are going to be flush with cash. He's just like top tier, most confident anybody could ever be. No idea what's coming for that movie. Wow. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, I love those stores. Also stores also hey trump is part of all that too trump is was an owner of several or they were like in his atlantic city hotels yes that's correct it's yeah yeah there's a lot there and we should do that one soon yeah um but as for this one yeah what else about uh times square i mean yeah they had to it took seven days to get it to new york city for for one performance and they uh you know they filled in potholes they paid five hundred thousand dollars to fill i mean the whole thing cost five thousand five hundred thousand dollars but like yeah they had to do like they had to fix up the city to make this possible this is the disneyfication of time square era so they were

like spending money left and right on like family friendly events i will say the hades float is cool is very cool yes yeah um i also am i i also think it's they did do the to honor america at the end as well which is funny when it's like hey which is like it's a promotional float for their movie do you need like the the patriotism at the end of your promotion for a movie a movie set in ancient right yes thank you set in ancient greece or rome is i always i never know who's who. Yeah, I don't know. He's Rome. He's Roman, I think.

Yeah, that doesn't quite make sense. But I bet, boy, I bet Mayor Rudy watched that America float go by and reminded him of the country he loves so dear and that he'll do anything to protect. Rudy should have been on the float with the gold pants. Oh, man. Rudy covered in Christmas lights with gold pants waving to everyone. With an electric toupee. With an electric, neon electric toupee. What? All right, calling for fan art.

You know what? Wait, let me not call for fan art. Let me call for Photoshop. Let me call for Photoshop of Rudy Giuliani with gold pants, Christmas lights, and a neon toupee standing next to Mickey and Minnie on the To Honor America float, and specifically the New York City Hercules

electrical parade from 1997. That's my official request. Specific assets. It's tough. But yeah, I think everyone's up to the challenge. And if you're listening to this still in quarantine times, you like us are bored as hell. Yeah. So get to work.

Photoshop experts. Fill your time i also uh i would say a full episode about the disneyfication of times square oh yeah that's good a very fun one let's put that in the q2 um but uh yeah this was certainly the one of the most fun zones of that um it was seen by a million people it ran over four times the length of uh the typical main street electrical parade they really did it they really got some people to go to hercules in theaters not enough but some but some um oh yeah uh well what else about this thing i mean it's hey it's it'll be very happy to talk about it.

It'll certainly be back. It might be back. I would, should I, I'll predict it now. I bet when everything opens back up, Disney's like, hey, look what's back. Come back, please. I would have to think so, and we'll think that it's Kras, but we're all

but it'll work I'm going to say I think they're going to wait on it for some sort of a lull because I think like for insane people like us when the park opens up it's going to just be like the biggest attendance day of all time that first day

so I feel like maybe they wait to bring it back for like another lull a time but maybe we'll see they gotta find some way to do it digitally virtually for all of us sitting in our uh separate apartments um there is a full 2019 live webcast of that version of it on YouTube, on the official Disney Parks channel. That's nice. Good. I'm glad to hear that. I like that they've been doing all this stuff.

Like, here's a really nice multicam Tokyo Fantasmic. Like, those kind of things they've been digging up to entertain us uh have been appreciated i guess we we didn't say also that it was it was also used as like a quick fix fuck fuck fuck let's save um california adventure yeah yeah yeah which has no main street they put it over in like paradise pier and called it the uh disney's electrical parade yeah they had to rebrand for that that quick a california classic a california california classic which i guess that's really what you got to say about it at the end of the day it's a california classic whether or not it's in new york or florida it's always a california classic i was interested to learn i'm going through some random things i was interested to learn that baroque hoedown is used in the ending theme of a mexican sitcom from the 70s

from the 70s that's fun yeah wow um one of those guys i forget which there's another perry kingsley song that i think is the theme song to the game show the joker's wild oh really i might be getting the game show wrong no that's it joker's Joker's Wild. Yeah, yeah. Bunk, bunk, bunk, bunk, bunk, bunk. Check out that in sound from way out. It's all so good. All those Dumblestone songs are delightful. I can find no evidence just from a brief search that Liberace saw the electrical parade. But I will still hunt.

I will still hunt um he though when i googled liberace disneyland he did describe himself as a one-man disneyland of course sure fair enough he has an out he has an album called my parade of golden favorites he has an album called that so he is also a one-man parade also liberace episode eventually there's no way yeah there's no way there's enough like themed entertainment and liberace places to go yeah yeah i'm i'm on board with that i'm like writing them down i got a little i got a literal list i'm excited for all of these um i what do we what do we leave people with i'm tempted to mike you should screw around and see if you could do it maybe i could do it on top of the what i'd really like is to for the

music on this to go out with like can we take the can one of us with our our keyboards at home incorporate two brothers into baroque codown oh yeah i i'll try yeah i'll try i think i think it shouldn't be hard i think it shouldn't be that hard it's not gonna be amazing i'm not gonna spend like weeks on it but no no no certainly not yeah i know you you will yeah maybe i will you might be right yeah the downtown disney ordeal theme was getting into guns and roses chinese democracy territory theme my god here's version 27. That theme is still only like 50% of what I wanted it to be, to be honest.

Yeah. I still at a certain point. In length. Release the demos. Release the demos. I have a lot of demos of that. Release the mono mix. I needed a full real recording studio for that one. And a full band, honestly honestly that's you becoming Brian Wilson

now you're you and you you've got you got a theremin player a bunch of glockenspiels and uh you end up lighting the studio on fire losing my mind we almost lost you to the downtown Disney ordeal theme you brought in Dr. Landy

to talk to me yeah is it working out is Dr. Landy. Talk to me. Yeah, is it working out? Is Dr. Landy Jr. getting you back on track? No, he's not as good as his father. He sucks. Dr. Landy Jr. sucks. He tried to smack a hamburger out of your hand.

That didn't go well. He failed. He was too light of a slap. Yeah. Well, i don't know i guess uh i guess with all that we can say our softer uh quarantine version what do we settle on you you put listened to podcast i think it was like you uh put up with podcast the ride you put up you put it you put up with podcast the Ride, Minister Electrical Parade edition. But boy, truly, it makes me happy to think about the parade. The commercial made me so happy.

And talking about it for a while made me so happy. This is hopefully in that area of very earnest episodes. Yeah. Because this thing's the best. And enjoy it. Enjoy it, everyone, because this podcast is glowing away forever until next Friday's episode for the magnificent return of this podcast. The long-awaited.

The long-awaited hello season. You enjoyed the farewell season. We need to... Guys, we can't glow on like this. Wait, I had another one earlier. I forgot to say. Oh, I feel like the shots of smiling bugs and the tagline is,

they've lost the will to shine. What are you saying, Mike? I don't remember. Who cares? what are you saying mike uh i don't remember who cares um but for um for more of the mainstream electrical parade story go to patreon.com slash podcast to ride the second gate where we we worked we will talk about its successor light magic which ran for less time than the mainstream electric parade did the fuzz bucket of night time disneyland light parades amen absolutely and a for uh for more stuff uh twitch uh oh i said hey i said i was trying to say twitter and i said twitch but we're yeah we're trying to do twitch stuff we've been having fun uh but uh twitter instagram and facebook all the usual stuff um yeah check

check us out all right i got one uh the uh new ad that just says it's the turtle and everyone it just says we're glowing to hell um all right well so enjoy podcast the ride before we all glow to hell but also enjoy our triumphant return uh we'll uh we'll talk to you soon all right glow to hell gentlemen 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.