Podcast: The Ride - MGM Grand Adventures

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

P:TR Sin City Nights begins! It's MGM Grand Adventures! Located next to the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, the MGM Grand Adventures theme park had a few big years then limped into the early 2000s. Featuring the magic of the movies (kinda), your favorite characters (kinda), and a Kenny Roger's Roasters (actual not kinda)! Find Livestream access and In-Person Tickets for Podcast: The Ride's Big Vegas Groove Blender here: https://thespacelv.com/event/podcast-the-rides-big-vegas-groove-blender/ Barbie Birthday Party at Epcot '94 with Caroline Anderson Episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! Warning! The following podcast kicks off a theme month full of vice, depravity, and robots that got thrown in the trash by the mid-90s. You may encounter stooge siblings, Vietnam flashbacks for the whole family, and high-stakes bets about roller coaster air circulation. We go all in on the MGM Grand's defunct theme park, MGM Grand Adventures, on Podcast The Ride, Sin City Nights. When the sun goes down, the good boys are nowhere to be found. The sinful boys come around Doing sins in sinful town I'm Scott, there's Mike, there's Jason

Hi Ready to sin Yeah, yeah, yeah I just wanted to, you know Go to the table If there are any sins you want to confess Look, we will confess We're going to do the sins

But we are going to confess them as well Okay I thought maybe it's just more like a confessional today Versus us like sinning Well, confessional today versus us sinning. Well, look, the sinning is in our future, I suppose, because we're on our way to Las Vegas, literally. But now we have landed there topic-wise. And I just want to, you know, like this sleazy veneer,

I think we can get some stuff out of our system this is a this is a late night usa early 90s style yeah version of podcast the ride right we've done a location change presumably for tax breaks uh and are doing it all in las vegas yeah that's smart yeah so so i can i'm trying to think like what what's what could i confess right away here? I want to just start out in the spirit of this. Las Vegas, did I have a blue drink for breakfast or something? Or did I reread 1995's Danger Girl comic that I've talked about before on the show? Where some bosomy ladies solve some crimes and go on adventures? I'm not sure.

I didn't read that today but i'm trying to think of something like that well you know what i can recall a time and i don't remember which trip it's been but uh i've gotten a little crazy in las vegas you know one time the you know the buskers like the guys like flipping the cards around and they'll hand you this and they'll just force those cards into your hands and then you'll look at it and there'll be a pretty lady on it who knows where that art on the card hands, and then you'll look at it, and there'll be a pretty lady on it. Oh, on the card. On the card.

Yeah, exactly. And then a phone number. And do I know what the phone number leads to? No. But my sin is this. I didn't throw the card away. I didn't rip it up right then and there and throw that filth in the garbage. I kept it in my pocket and then maybe glanced at it one more time and then put

it in a hotel trash can that's right we're getting a little crazy here on wow jason you want to confess anything naughty right now i've i've seen those buskers too but it was uh 2006 and i think they're pretty much gone from the strip is that right yeah they not that? I remember more of it back then. Yeah. It was the first time I went as a pseudo adult. Yeah, you'd walk by and they were hitting the cards. Hitting the cards. And they had a big stack of them and they just sort of hold them out.

And there were like 50 people in like a row. Almost like you were on a receiving line of some kind. And they would try to all throw the little card at you. But you're right. I guess last time I was there, I didn't notice as much as not that my memory well because a lot of that middle strip like the the the cosmo and aria and crystal shops a lot of that was just empty space in the in the early 2000s and then eventually these massive projects got built up so everything's built up there's a lot more sky bridges there's a

lot more walkways above the road i feel like there's a lot more crossing uh i had you know traffic lights on the street level so you want to uh you want to uh uh confess that you miss these buskers that would give you the numbers i miss the active construction sites that were going on okay good yeah nice i mean look there's all there's always going to be those because as today's topic shows us things are always uh done committed to lots of money spent on them and then they are fully imploded we never mind no never meant to do that never gonna do it again yeah almost immediately after they were built yes the brutality of vegas in that way i think is going to be a theme and it makes it a perfect area for i'm so excited by the way to be landing in vegas for a little while

because it does boy does it tie into themes that we like i mean a it's a place with big dumb stuff that looks like other stuff yes and b it is full of uh you know construction catastrophes and barely like badly thought out plans and guys and you know so many of the things we've discovered what we really love over the years of doing the show it's like a big uh themed weed it's just a big out of control weed or a big uh like a big themed weed. It's just a big out of control weed or a big, like a big rat. If rats, okay, if rats could join

a rat king with different animals, I don't know, what would you call it? Just an animal king? An animal kingdom? Sorry, we're describing,

it's a rat king but other animals are part of it too. A bunch of rats all get their tails tied together in a big clump. It's called a rat king

because they can't get free from each other. It's a massive thing. But it's just monstrosity with different gnarling heads and different-sized rats, and it's really unnerving and scary. I'm thinking Vegas is such a weird, again, like a weed, a rat king. It's just out of control. Things don't fit with each other.

So there's like a shark and an anaconda is part of the rat king i don't know they got along with rats i don't know rats could fuse with the with sharks it's just like it's an animal let's call it an animal king that's my new phrase yeah and it's just yeah it's it's it's scary it's beautiful it's everything at once yeah anything you would want vegas is very much it's the epitome of like themed entertainment where the theme is all themes at once. Like all architecture at once. Yeah.

The theme is too many themes. I mean, today is probably the biggest example of the family-friendly theme park 90s Vegas. Yeah. of the family-friendly theme park in East Vegas that I think the running theme through this and the other MGM resorts, now MGM resorts, but Excalibur and Luxor, is like they pumped a lot of money and time and construction into themed entertainment, be that rides or shows or outside of casino casino attractions and within a few years the contempt

they had for these things which have either shutting down scaling back or bulldozing like how many nightclubs will convince you that this place is not for children how many if we build a seventh one will you not think of this place as just a giant miniature golf station? Yeah. A clubhouse. How many places can Steve Aoki be in one night? Okay.

There might be multiple, Steve. That's the big secret of Vegas. We'll reveal Vegas secrets. Secrets. Steve, there's multiple Steve Aokis. There's multiple Steve Aokis. From a distance with a wig, sunglasses on.

I believe one of, I believe his current endeavor from the last few years, Pizza Aoki is in one of the food halls. Oh, really? Is a real Pizza Aoki location? Yes, that's right.

And I, I, food hall is one of the current Vegasgas trends it just means uh food court but a little bougie not so shit yeah not not a chain that you started realizing was bad around 1998 yeah yeah not a not a nathan's that is slowly decomposing if you look at it too hard like yeah are all this anything in the vegas food hall is it owned and operated by a dj or could it be any uh oh it helps it helps you get your foot yeah i think it probably helps dj snake subs or something like um there's a i think a chunk of the vegas strip if i've been uh you know i watch a lot of vegas youtubers or news updates and stuff

and it seems like a good chunk of the food that isn't guy fiori licensed or owned restaurants is uh buddy velestro uh the cake boss restaurant really boss is a lot going on yeah cake boss there's cake boss cake slice vending machines and i saw uh like a youtube short where they're like hey um just a heads up these are not freshly made they are shipped in cardboard boxes from a warehouse in new jersey and they all have a very fine uh film or like a thing of corn syrup on it to make it look fresh so like do not maybe they have a thick coating of corn syrup on the outside shiny yeah like they're not necessarily the freshest cake slice and the way a little corn shine yeah it's all corn shine sparkle in the way that the sprinkles cupcake atms there's a kind of fun they're at a lot of places

but i think those are like you know they make them well they're right there usually by the place it's next to his sprinkles and they load it up from the kitchen uh man we got to get you the cake we got to try have you try this cake with the corn syrups let's see if you can tell yeah see if you can like pull that film off that corn film it's not it right here it's not a distinguished business like the hello kitty cafe where's the hello kitty cafe that's in the park in between park mgm and new york new york really and there is always a line okay it's pretty good we got a slice cake there last year for jane's birthday we like the hello was it covered in corn syrup uh no it tasted fried i had like fresh fruit preserves in it okay because corn is the corn

syrup also a preservative to keep it fresh when the New Jersey travel? It could be. Yeah. Probably. I think so. Yeah. That's probably the idea. Right. Well, this is good. We'll get your treat tips.

As with any new location, we need that. It's actually genuinely helpful for the listener. Especially because at this point in time, just before we get into the topic, one exciting thing is we land in Las Vegas. It is possible there are people listening to this very episode on the way to Las Vegas to attend the podcast, The Ride, Big Vegas Groove Blender. Yes. That excites me. If you're listening to this in your car, on the drive, honk really loud.

Just to like I don't know other cars aren't going to know why but I think it's going to keep spirits up on the road and if you're in a plane just yell really loud do a couple loop-de-loops as well I was thinking they were flying the plane

you were imagining people in a private or in just like a two person plane I was thinking of them in a World War II like Ernie and Bert in Follow That Bird or if you're in a World War II, like Ernie and Bert and Follow That Bird. This is what I pictured. Yeah, yeah. With aviator goggles. Or if you're in a commercial plane, if you could just knock on the door and be like,

excuse me, would you mind loop-de-loop? I think it'll just help morale. And I'm excited because I'm going to this live podcast thing. They're doing a Groove Blender. Oh, a Groove Blender. Say no more. Podcasts are right. Of course, I'm going as well, says the pilot.

That's why I took this shift. I usually fly to Kuala Lumpur'm doing vegas today fellow cliffords we're landing i i did one i was not sure if you meant the uh door to the cockpit which they love when people like check in tap on that thing or if you meant the pressurized like emergency exit doors like you're doing a bit start opening all the doors yeah yeah just keep get spirits up start celebrating because that's that's what's coming for you do we have any pilots in the audience do you think there's one person who's in a commercial pilot or even i guess a private pilot probably you would think statistically maybe as a hobby probably a hobbyist i'm interested in

mostly commercial pilots i don't know why but i for some reason i can't imagine a commercial pilot listening to this podcast and i don't know if that's wrong why not i can't you're right i don't know why not but for some reason they just seem so professional and so they're serious people and why would they ever listen to frivolity like this blow off steam they're dignified good vision gotta have good vision to be a pilot i'd love it if we had like half of the audience to be pilots i'm just saying i just can't imagine it but i hope if a listener shook our hands when we were boarding like a southwest flight to vegas and gave us the little wings gave us a little sticky that'd be so good we got the little children's wings yeah and then we then we could go up in the cockpit if they were a listener maybe yeah maybe Yeah, maybe. Like, I'm a Club 30 subscriber. You're a lot up in the cockpit.

I hope. I mean, this depends. This is a scenario where we're all on a plane together. That's true, yeah. We're on our way to England or something to play Glastonbury. Play the West End, yeah. That's what this is all. Well, that's what the Groove Blender is going to lead to.

It's a big celebratory show. Yeah. Pro proven that we can do a bit you know we can carry glastonbury of course yeah the podcast stage yeah yeah um no we'll make it up to me we will lead the audience in a sing-along of don't look back in anger like that one clip of oasis playing glastonbury yeah yeah and it's just miles of people joining in on the chorus yeah yeah but that's you that's we'll teach everyone just the specific words to like you talking about sally can wait oh oh you thought it was going to be repeating like the corn syrup sheen preserves the cake slices yeah yeah but no by that point that will be the new Don't Look Back at Me. Okay. Right. But for folks who are coming to that, so excited to have you.

We're really excited for this thing. If you can't be there in person, then this episode's coming out July 21st. The following day, July 22nd, Saturday, July 22nd at 8 p.m., there will be a live stream. Tickets are available for that at thespacelv.com. There'll be a link in the episode notes of this. Join us for that if you can. I think we can promise some visual components that I think will make it worth checking out the live stream. I mean, it's all visual.

The cameras are being used and the lights and color will be. But beyond that, beyond the basics of visual information. Yes. And we should specifically say this is a true live stream. This is a live, live stream. It is not necessarily an on-demand one. We're going to get the footage. It is not an on-demand.

It is not an on-demand one, but we will try our best to get the footage and put it up somewhere down the line. Yes, but yeah, show doesn't go on because it's ready. Show goes on because it's 8 p.m. Yeah, big clock. July 22nd. We have the massive clock. We've got the big Danny Tripp.

Like Studio 60. So the Matt Albee clock. Yeah. And also, before we go much further, another part of this Sin City Nights, which I'm excited about, Sin City Nights logo, courtesy of the wonderful Aaron Gairdner, and the Sin City Nights theme, I assume, I haven Sin City Nights logo, courtesy of the wonderful Aaron Gairdner, and the Sin City Nights theme, I assume, I haven't heard it yet, courtesy of Mike Carlson. Cut it

if you don't have time. No, it'll be, yeah, it'll be. There's a theme. I've just, I've switched it. I love it, I assume. I abandoned one, I abandoned a version of it, and I redid it today. Oh boy. And I think it's pretty good. Ooh, alright. So you're hearing a second draft. Yeah. A hair that's been put into it by my

abandon the steve aoki homage went more with a seat uh d martin angle you know no i abandoned the elvis homage oh okay there's like a bad i just didn't wasn't coming together but then i saw the logo which and you because the branding was the branding was you know sinful and it was so i just it got a little uh got a little sexier if i'm being honest you've heard it by now so you know how sexy it is um but yeah oh now i'm reticent to have complimented it maybe what if it's too sexy yeah i don't it's it might be on my other computer we'll tone it down for next week okay just like you know that we're in that week but we gotta look i know it's since city nights and all but too sexy bring the just lower the decibels 25 less sex next week as far as the music that's in logic one of the settings on logic yeah please yeah yeah run it run it through

the anti-sexer um okay now that all i haven't said now of course you did say that there is the sexy veneer but of course today's topic and many of the things we're going to talk about are from the family entertainment boom of the 90s the early 90s that was the logo the logo was sturdy so the logo was sort of about the knights and we'll try to yeah yeah look we'll try to you know we'll try to push it we'll try to do some things that stretch us out of the out of the comfort zone uh but but here we go straight into the the molten core of the comfort zone when they really did when vegas really did a for the family theme park there's themed entertainment stuff always there every year there are new iterations of that there's this area 15 thing but there's a distinctly adult flavor to it yeah more catering to that and this is just this odd alternate universe era where vegas

decided we're gonna try to be for families and it was seemed as like oh it was done as quickly as it started and boy was so much money spent on it in and in an era where uh nobody thought to film it so there's yes yes such rare like like it's so hard to find really good footage of a lot of the the stuff from this era uh this park included mgm grand adventures the theme park that used to be at the mgGM Grand. I thought you said something a couple weeks ago about how there wasn't a ton. And I was like, yeah, but there's got to be a good amount. No, you're right. There's nothing, barely anything. There's one ride through video.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Of the Backlot River Tour. Of the River Tour. Which I, looking at it, I was like, well, this seems like it's the like main ride and it did not make it to five years like it did not stick around that's the strangest thing about the history of it this park was it was it roughly a decade it was around all told but then i didn't know the history of it where there was just the severe cut down early on. So it was only two and a half years that the entire thing that they built was there.

You know what's crazy, too, is that Vegas goes in on this family entertainment. It's basically the same time. It's a little after, but basically the same time as Disney tries to go after adults. With Pleasure Island. it's a little after but basically the same time as disney tries to go after adults with pleasure island yeah and it was like both ways i think each place was like that's not quite what we do is it oh you're right yeah i think that's interesting off they both uh they're really no way wait just like us with this sultry theme yeah we're gonna back out of it real quick after a month yeah disney's like no no it's families and it's not a bunch of drunk people and teenagers fighting and vegas is like it's gambling and prostitutes

and that's what it is here yeah and good restaurants that's what our branding is what um uh uh what year is uh national lampoon vegas vacation 96 or 7 it's later so it's a little it's on the later end of this because I I remember seeing that when I was pretty young on VHS and that vision of Vegas is so dirty like it is these sleazy like everything is just seems so grimy and it the theme park vegas i feel like doesn't really show up in it i don't know you got some like bright colors in that though yeah the big bright cars they all get at the end i actually think of that as kind of a bubbly are you thinking of the end where they go to the like shitty casinos to win the money back yeah i think i'm thinking of the shitty like yeah because they start out in like better ones and then the idea is they go to the casino with like guess a hand and stuff oh yeah those are dirty yes the randy quaid

casino yeah all the novelty games was not real so yes if that impacts any grime opinions but vegas is dirty yes it is yeah but they're just saying You think that's almost encountered to, is that almost coming out of it? I think the, you know, obviously the footage is lower quality, standard def quality, but I feel like the, you know, now it's so many, so much LED lights and lasers and all.

And at the time in the nineties and before that, it was just like popcorn bulbs and cigarette smoke. Sure, sure. Yeah. You're also saying like it's like, I do think it's probably like nicer now than it was. Yeah. It almost makes more sense now for there to be a little bit more theme park presence than there was maybe in the 90s. Yeah.

And I think there is slowly starting to be again kind of more aimed at adults but um like night there's less 99 cent shrimp cocktails now uh and there's a lot more you know um celebrity chef kind of restaurant celebrity so mad he missed out on that restaurant i don't eat shrimp i don't eat shrimp. I don't eat shrimp. So. What are any other, you got chicken cocktail? Oh, I love a big crab. I love a crab cocktail. Just lump crab meat and cocktails. Liver sausage cocktail.

Sure. Liver worst. And a bunch of ice. Yeah. Mmm. Icy liver sausage, please. I see. I hear what you're saying, though, that it's almost like, you know,

now it feels like they've kind of like weaved the gradient where like if more family stuff started showing up, it would make a little more sense. It almost seems like such a hard pivot for it being still sort of a grimy and smaller Vegas and more cigarette-y Vegas, for sure. It does feel like, like what else could have triggered this but the like disney decade peak eisner right disney i mean obviously disney world inspired a lot of theme parks and travel destinations across the country and world

but that eisner era of disney mgm studios like it becoming a you know three park and so many hotels and so much stuff to do it seems like there was such a boom at the end of the 80s that it must have inspired this right to some extent that and also i'm sure just the idea of market share oh you know what we could do is like what we could get into this other thing i mean disney is the bit maybe the best example of it in the 90s of like yeah we can own a hockey team as well oh maybe we do this and then we were talking about on that marriott but we're knowing that marriott episode uh great america episode we got a hotel theme park makes sense sure so they were probably like yeah they saw universal orlando they saw all of it

and they're like you know what we got hotels let's just put some fucking rides back there well and then simultaneously the hotels are just getting bigger there's an arms race to build more and more elaborate hotels i think the mirage is the one that i mean obviously caesar's palace uh long time themed and has just kind of constantly growing and growing like yeah really there's so many towers there now um but the mirage opens in the 80s it opens with the vault the big free volcano show it's got all the gold front. And then the MGM Grand, this MGM Grand, the original MGM Grand is now, was Bally's, is now Horseshoe. Horseshoe, isn't that weird? Yeah.

It's home to one of the largest skyscraper fires in American history. 87 people died due to faulty wiring, I think think in the food court deli i heard so but so then at the end of 93 that's when they're if you've seen there's a commercial with a weird cgi lion the giant lion a giant lion stomping down it's really something like that's very red speaking of your rat king your animal king thing that the lion like plants on the strip and then like that's very red speaking of your rat king your animal king thing that the lion like plants on the strip and then like forms the hotel towers out of its body is okay i this is related is that louis oh um well every mgm lion named louis is my question. No, because the, okay, what is this breakdown? Because this is, I did come across this.

I think the one that we know from the, in the circle in the logo is Leo. But the theme park one in the suit is Louie. Okay. So that was Louie is King Louie.is i'm sorry i didn't give him his title so that was leo walking down the street cgi leo maybe i'm gonna say so because he's not like a silly cartoon lion right i know he looks believe me i know he looks different i'm just trying to figure out if they if maybe the hotel lion is different than the movie lion maybe i don't think so i think there was the confusion if you're on the mgm grand property uh-huh it's in some places you were seeing leo the lion

but as soon as you get to the theme park area it is louis the lion okay so leo is like the maybe harder nose brother of louis probably related um yeah well it's like you know it's like people grow up in different parts of the country and live very different lives it's like you know it's like people grow up in different parts of the country and live very different lives it's like when you when one grows up in like on the serengeti and one grows up in toontown they are related yes it's a country mouse city mouse scenario so leo's a little more rough and tumble understood that's why he roars in the logo and doesn't say hello you're about to see a movie um so this this happens because of well i mean so the the theme park opens up alongside the mgm grand in 93 it all opens on the same day december 18th 93 and it's all at the hands of the then owner of the mgm brand who bought and

sold it several times i think kirk kirkorian um he kirk kirkorian built the mgm grand that you mentioned the one with the fire uh and before that he built the international hotel uh the elvis hotel later hilton later westgate uh all three of those upon their construction were the biggest hotel in las vegas so this guy built the biggest hotel in vegas three times uh at one point in time kirk kirkorian the richest man in California. Therefore, at least, I don't know. These are different stats, but at one point, he's number one in Los Angeles. Obviously, it'd have to be.

He's number one in Los Angeles. Number two is Sumner Redstone. Wow, really? Yeah. Wow. And this is probably 1990s numbers. Or 2000s still. I mean, I think this guy loaded.

I believe he's passed away now. I wonder what those numbers are. Yeah. Not enough. Fucking alimony. Goddamn bitches. Sue me. Sumner probably hated him for being number one.

Yeah, I think so. I'm so mad. I'm so mad. I need a toe suck. Oh. Oh Oh no. I soiled myself. Change my type. Somebody change it.

I'll give you five grand to change my type. This is why I lose so much money to Kerkorian. His bowels work. He changes his own diaper. Ultimately, that's why Kirk's on top. I got to hand it to him someday his bells will fail um but so i don't really know the deal with kirk kirkorian to be honest i'm gonna guess that there are some guy adjacent qualities because how can you be that how can you be the richest man in

california without that it's yeah um but there is like bombast from this guy this again this being his third attempt at the biggest hotel so he's got to go so much bigger it is like the it is the biggest casino when it gets built so he wants to stack up numbers and i probably as part of that too he wants stuff to do what are things that no hotel has done yet and i bet that's where the theme park thing comes from it's probably by the way i guess it was this trend we act as if vegas like you know as if the mayor of vegas decided we should court families it was probably a lot of people kind of separately having the idea like forming this little and like copying each other to some extent um so maybe it is jay-z you brought up steve winn and mirage and we're getting

a little theme parky now maybe that this must be kirkorian trying to like step it up well let's actually have disneyland then yeah i he and then the the mgm ground we know now the big green building i saw a video about the history of that area. And, you know, there used to be the, I think it was the Tropicana Yacht Club around there. It's a golf course. A golf course. And then Krikorian builds a hotel called the Marina Hotel, which it's unclear.

I don't think there's any marinas around. It probably had its own like the disneyland hotel used to probably had a little like a little water zone but that eventually gets absorbed into the massive mgm grant like as they're building the mgm grant that kind of gets absorbed in i believe it's still there i didn't realize that one of the buildings was this marina the west wing the west tower which i've always heard um uh uh it you know if you read about reviews of the mgm grand every i think i think all the rooms have been updated at this point but for a long time the reviews was like do not stay in the west town you don't want to be in there because that building is decades and decades and decades old.

Much, much older than the other. Yeah. So he's this is like he's building this sprawling complex and, you know, it wants to get in this theme park zone that nobody else has done. But a wall is hit. And I didn't know any of this history that there there is disney involvement and eisner involvement in this because if you're hearing that there was an mgm theme park you might be thinking of the other mgm theme park disney mgm studios and obviously they had to work out a deal with mgm to get that library and to get all the characters in the the great movie ride and and all the clips and what have you. But I guess they didn't know the extent of it. They were like, yes, use our clips, use our characters, whatever.

But as soon as Disney started saying, come film movies here at Disney MGM Studios, they viewed that as a breach of the contract or an overstep that like wait but we're your competitor we're not your competitor as far as theme parks go but you can't tell people come film at mgm studios and that's not us right yes yeah i think uh licensing yeah that was viewed as like beyond what they had agreed to i should this, but is that the reason why there was the whole thing with the icon having to be, like the Chinese theater to be covered up for years? I don't know.

Was that, but is that true? Is that like, was there an actual need to block? Because it's, you know, they don't own the Chinese theater. No, I know. That's always what I heard. And I realized I've never looked into exactly what it was. I think that's more due to the ownership of the Chinese theater, not MGM. Yeah.

Did they lose that for a minute? Or are we overthinking? Did they just decide to build a big stupid ad? The hat was there longer than the other stupid things. Yes, only much longer. But I think there was a reason for it. But I'm trying to remember what it was yeah yeah i mean i don't think some lee i i always heard yeah it was some

byzantine legalese you know um i think the the eventual name change to hollywood studios i think was the end end of a licensing agreement and then the great movie ride the last few years that it kind of limped along. It's always running well but in terms of like who is funding, like the Turner Classic movies stepped in and like had some you know, some of their hosts in there

and I think covered some of the bill for the last little bit. Zaslav asked if he could fire all the robots in the ride and tell them we don't have anything to do with that anymore. We don't. Yes. Will you send in Gene Kelly?

Can I please personally fire animatronic Gene Kelly? Sorry, sir. No, we lost that all the time. Are you sure he's not in the Batgirl movie? Are you sure he didn't get tossed out already. Go find him. He's around somewhere. So basically, they sue Disney to try to get out of all this.

Eisner talks about this in his book, and he says they had no grounds for any of this. They just suddenly look. He actually, he blames this guy, Kerkorian. Apparently, Kerkorian didn't know he didn't know there was disney mgm studios like lower people just kind of did it yeah maybe he was vaguely aware right and then once he gets the idea to build a theme park they're like well there is we already made a theme park deal what what do you mean we made a theme but you had that disney thing ah so eisner views it as they just suddenly started claiming all this stuff to get out of

an agreement that they just didn't like so disney countersued so early 90s there's a volley of back and forth lawsuits between disney and mg immediately after the park isn't open for like six months before we're all like happy kids going to disney Studios, and those entities are suing each other immediately. And so Disney says, well, if you're going to bug us about this, what do you mean you're building an MGM theme park? We own your theme park rights. You can't do that. A judge had to parse all of this, and he basically said, you're both right. You can't have the name on the studio.

That's not good but and they get to uh wait how is disney right i think like everybody can have your theme parks and you get to keep mgm in their theme park you guys can build your vegas park but it can't be a behind the scenes of movies theme park and they're like yeah sure okay that's fine that's not exactly what we were going to do hurry up change it all like this to me the and we'll get into the park and the seemingly the weirdness of the park but i think they got caught i think like fuck fuck fuck we have to think of a new what this park is now right we can build it we just can't do what we foolishly right let disney take our name but then they also kind of did do a little behind the scenes yes there is that the

ride that you mentioned but it's like weird it's not there's not a tram so maybe that and you're not you're certainly not seeing any actual movies being filmed. Maybe they determined this is exactly the line. Or they never had the rights to do it and Disney threatened to sue again. And they're like, fine, closing it. We're building a pool. A pool at the convention center. Huzzah! That's what we wanted to do anyways.

Don't worry about it. We never wanted this ride. You know, while we're talking about actual movie-based ride can we just briefly touch on the document i sent you guys sure that uh so a listener gave us this a year or two ago yeah they work in a they were they work in a uh an entertainment library or archive here in hollywood and this is a fascinating document because i mean just the title uh this is r and r creative amusement designs who have worked on a lot of rides a lot of parks and uh you know worked on this uh park but the title of this document, Apocalypse Now, MGM Grand Theme Park Ride Concepts Storyline, and it's dated October 22nd, 1991.

You all know Apocalypse Now, the... The rip-rollicking good time at the cinema? The rollicking good time about the insanity and violence of the Vietnam War and war in general. I've always wanted to be in the movie. It sounds so much fun. It does sound fun. Yeah, the movie about the insanity of war that almost drove everyone who worked on it insane.

Universal says ride the movies, and then I get to Universal, and my favorite, the only movie I want to ride is Nowhere to be Found. Yeah. I don't get to see Kurtz and the, what's Martin Sheen's name um willard captain willard and they were gonna solve this they were gonna so this is this is what i'm saying that like yeah i think

there was a point this is pre the lawsuit right so i think there was a time where they were maybe exploring real movie properties that we're going to do exactly what universal and disney mgm are doing and then they just kind of cheap out and generic a file of it but yes there is this this incredible document it's so many pages long what a discovery and it's um yeah i the first couple of paragraphs with the details of entering the Q line dock building, the guests are surrounded by various video screens. An edited version of Hearts of Darkness is playing, which also includes Mr. Coppola welcoming the riders to the MGM Studio theme park and the Ap now ride hearts hearts of darkness is the uh documentary about the horror

show that was making this movie yeah yeah so you know you want to yeah you'd you'd want to show uh you'd want to show overnight in the line for the uh the boondock saints ride it experience um you want to see why not wurtz and all boondock saints veritas i uh that's really strange and what uh you know i know that there's blue skying i know that yeah yeah you know you aim for the fences but the notion of francis ford coppola saying hello and on behalf of everyone here in hollywood welcome to the mgm studio theme park i know he did captain eo but i don't know that it necessarily uh whet his appetite for more no yeah george was a theme park guy george was a theme park guy hi i'm francis ford copp. I'm here on the set of Dracula. Keanu Reeves, Gary Oldman. I'm here on the set of Jack.

Taking time out of my schedule to introduce you to... I'm just at my winery trying new blends for our exciting new endeavor. Coppola Wineries. I mean, that's the right move to get him to intro. It would have been great to see a lazy intro from him. Oh, yeah. I mean, imagine how this would be such, this would be like, we talk about this in every fourth episode if there was some.

Yeah, sorry. Coppola video. Yeah, yeah. Is there a crazier movie that has been made into a ride like this? Like in one that's, because obviously like Jaws is a scary movie. Isn't there a, in Europe, didn't we talk about a, it's not a scary movie. Isn't there a... Scary movies and things. In Europe, didn't we talk about a... It's not crazier, but isn't there an attraction based on U-571?

That's right. It's very serious. Yeah, that's pretty serious. But, yeah, the real war component of it, there's no Three Kings ride. No Three Kings ride. No Saving Private Ryan adventure. Kurt Locker, get in it. Climb into your lock. component of it there's no three kings ride no three kings ride no saving private ryan get in it climb into your luck ever guess climb aboard a locker which will magically take flight yeah steven spielberg yeah he some of his more serious movies have not made it into the universal

there's no martin scorsese there's no goodfellas ride it out. Well, that guy hates theme park rides, as we know, so he wouldn't want to have a Raging Bull experience. But the other thing about this document is it only tangentially touches on Apocalypse Now. There's a couple moments where a a sound cue of martin sheen goes like you better get back here on one piece and then later parts of it don't die in the real war don't die uh later parts of it essentially do get built for the backlot river tour yeah uh including some of the most notable parts of this ride uh which mostly involve various sizes of guns being pointed directly at guests yeah sure well it's

apocalypse now what do you want yeah yeah yeah because there is a helicopter with like a gunner with like an animatronic gunner like shooting at your boat in the backlot river tour you know there's i think what's weird as you go through this document too i mean first of all clue right there mgm studio theme park that's exactly it disney called their bluff and they had to do grand adventures it is now it's a place where you can go anywhere it's not about movie making but then like the dial this is what's really weird is that it's back and forth between martin sheen in character this is captain willard to pbr excursion patrol boat come in and then before that welcome to the apocalypse now river tour where we will show you how effects from that film and others are used to create movie magic the most rote theme park

find the scenes movie shit but about like the most like films are usually shot over the course of two years and typically drive everyone involved mad there's a little taste of that today the behind the scenes stress of the film usually uh exactly mirrors what's going on with the characters and becomes a metaphor in fact for uh the story being

told the um uh uh there is a fake temple sequence for a fake movie called temple of gloom oh yeah yeah that made it into the ride. Well, let's, okay, so that ride, you know, and then we can talk about kind of like broader stuff about the park, but it's like, it is essentially, I don't know. Well, that's, look, it's messy, right? I think they had to scramble, what is this now? So there's types of rides that we all know.

It's log flumes and rapids and those don't particularly have anything to do with movies or mgm and probably the only one that gets built that does is this backlot river tour uh which is this so yeah clearly it was like a rewrite from apocalypse now a because they didn't get the rights to that or to anything it's all generic yeah so they have to like just like come up with the kinds of names that movies would have uh it's so so like again it's it's the most strange mishmash because it's like it's a ride vehicle that's a lot like jaws yeah universal i saw a couple videos say these are the jaws boats from the first fucked up for because r&r creative amusement designs as they

were called at the time built was involved in building the original shitty version whoa that the other company had to come in and fix wow so then the boats were sold to mgm grand these are the university florida boats yeah so i i'm aboard the shitty boat trying to find more sources that say but i saw a couple videos that said that and it did kind of seem right to the point where one of the one of the bits of dialogue in this the pitch document for the early version of this ride just says this has never happened before stay calm and i'll get us out of here and i don't know if that's verbatim from one of the versions of the jaws ride but it does seem like it right like well i mean sure but it also seems like a

line that's in every theme park ride ever made. Hang tight, everybody. Whoa, there's real people in there. Okay. Yeah, that's on every Jungle Cruise to the New Minions ride, actually, probably. And then it was the strangest thing. We, the guests, went from being in peril to being the ones who saved the day ourselves. Yeah, weird.

It's funny how that happened. Our heroism. So it's, yes, you climb aboard shitty Jaws boats and you go along a river where there's a wisecracking captain. But in this case, you see places where movies are filmed. But why are movies being filmed along a river? Why are there five separate productions all right next to each other? All of them. They're very different genres.

It seems to me that the river would only get in the way of camera positions and equipment. It would make it all much more of a mess. I agree. I don't think this is a real backslide. I agree with you. It seems impractical to do a set of productions like this yeah also at the loading dock there was some crates or like the shooting schedule sign was labeled mgm movie world and i was like that's not the name of this part another one yeah they keep they've like the company got the prop done early like can you revise that no on to the next one pay us more please ten dollars and we'll write nope we don't have ten dollars

we barely want to do this park to begin with uh uh so uh so yeah you get your little board of what's being filmed here. River trader, swamp creature, ironclad, temple of gloom, jungle storm. So you ride by all these scenes and they all kind of represent different genres. The one that stands out a lot to me, the first time it ever occurred to me to do YouTube digging of this park, and I found the one home movie ride through of it is definitely if what really stands out is uh that was just a normal place you know nothing too crazy going on and a big monster bursts out that is like a pseudo creature from the black yeah but that's just the like saddest most teetery guy. You're startled by just that something's happening. It's not the monster itself.

Right. So give him credit, I guess, for making a big sound. But once you have eyes on it, he's pretty dopey. Yeah, it looks funny. A still picture of it looks like it was a joke or something. Yeah. It looks like it was not meant. I i mean i guess they weren't thinking it was deadly serious or anything i'm just saying for like a movie you would want it to be like a scary monster it's kind of a home depot halloween decoration yeah some of those are scary some of those are

a little bit scary yeah yeah increasingly but very much an off-brand like off-brand doc brown this is off-brand you know everything creature off-brand monsters off-brand uh productions is that that presumably is swamp creature just one that is like it seems i think it's like the civil war so we get two real wars represented in this one attraction there's one indoor scene you go into kind of a temple and the creature like a like a stone guy comes to life he's all right that's okay yeah yeah i don't know that might be my favorite part of it is the stone man i mean i also here i am like snarking on it of course but i think if i well i did there's I haven't said this. I went, I went, I was in there. Yes. Okay. I was there, I think in 94, I believe.

And I have fond memories of it. Um, I think I did do, I must have done this ride. Um, and I think I was scared of the swamp creature then. And I think I did find this very cool, this like miniature version of the universal tour, you know? Yeah. That makes sense. find this very cool this like miniature version of the universal tour you know yeah that makes sense um i seeing all the pictures of it and seeing it presented this way it does look like absolute shit across the board the whole park looks bad yeah everything looks like the money

they've said they spent it seems like a complete waste of that much money in the 90s everything else that like open this i would make sense looking at some of those photos to go oh this was open in 1972 when they like added some things to it oh sure but you see it like oh this open in the 90s this looks like it was complete shit yeah well you're absolutely right like you would cut it some slack if it had been there forever but for a brand new like glistening park yeah in 93 um there's this one photo i i these don't do the listeners much good but let me show you guys this um there there's look at this this is like um this is a postcard yeah the park. And it is rendered like any concept art you'd see in the early 90s of any of the Universal parks,

where it is sprawling and glowy. There is a glow on everything. And there's a giant helicopter coming out of an explosion over in that Backlot River. It looks just like the know the miami vice thing and there's fireworks going on like i mean this photo is so exciting oh yeah and dynamic and and we're at this i mean this i want to go to this park very badly but you see it in the light of day and it's just like like here's here's an actual shot of the park and this is a corner of like the new york street is what it is yeah and i think a lot of it just

the atmosphere wise it's it seems like it's it's like an ai of a theme park it's like an almost there well you're right you did like take some theme park locales and kind of put them in a blender, and that is sort of what a theme park looks like. What I'm showing you guys right now, does that specifically resemble anywhere that you can recall? No. I think it looks exactly like

kind of the corner where the parade returns in Town Square on Main Street. You're right. The corner where the parade returns in town square on main street, you know, like the corner where the Lincoln theater is, but just like all rendered a little bit worse. Yes. It's not. And again, I would go as with all of these things, you got to pin it on amount of money spent space. Cause it was small. It was like 33 acres, I believe. 33 acres, believe 33 acres which is

small less than half of california adventure today um and that's you know a park that was deemed too small when it opened right it actually i think there's a lot of overlap with california adventure the way it opened where it's part of a big billion dollar enterprise like this company is going to build a ton of stuff and some of the space and some of the money are going to a theme park how much uh enough it's enough don't worry about it yeah but where it feels a little bit like like an afterthought it's a little too small uh uh things aren't done you know quite to the present value yeah you'd want the numbers the expedition theme park video had a really good uh list of numbers of like dc when dc i i guess when dc started that was 55 acres mgm grand adventures 33 acres to put in perspective with the movie

theme park universal studios florida the original universe studios florida park 125 acres wow wow that is crazy geez so a quarter yeah yeah yeah and then when mgm uh grand adventures gets cut down it gets cut by 40 percent down to 18.8 acres 96 almost immediately uh uh it's it's crazy um and 33 acres in las vegas is incredible that's a huge amount of space that they have like done giant things with of course but in theme park world oh my god the standard is so high how much space you really you need to do something that really matters um let me talk about my experience there a little bit i have very fond memories of it definitely i was trying to remember what to like i asked my parents about it.

And the only thing, I just remember at the time, I remember, like, as a kid, the big theme of the visit just being like, oh, my God, the walking. God, you walk a mile through the play. You get lost down there. And it is true. It is, like, all the way at the end of a really massive it's you're all the way through the casino and then all the way through a very long row of giant restaurants it's what now is the path to the pool if you've ever stayed there right which is very

very long indeed i mean not i think now that i've stayed there a bunch i'm like dad cool it wasn't come on um yeah but it's big but uh not knowing like a walk back yeah not knowing where you're going oftentimes makes everything feel longer that's yeah that's everywhere that's everywhere that's a six flags that's a casino that's true yeah yeah yeah well never that's the idea in the casinos yes to get lost but then it maybe shouldn't be the idea and i that's true yeah yeah yeah well that's the idea in the casinos yes to get lost but then it maybe shouldn't be the idea and i that's the idea to six flags too is that you get lost and then hopefully you end up spending another six hours there or that you get so frustrated that i mean it's what almost happened to me at great america right i almost went in for the the fast lane thing

yeah that's like i've been wandering around i just want to get on a ride how much is this thing that's still too much never mind crap uh works on some people i mean i think you can get a scope of the full property if you look at it now if you look at the satellite views now the mgm grand hotel is very large the convention center and the like 70 000 seat arena is large the pool complex is large and then there's also a top golf and then the signature at mgm grand which is a series of condo towers is there i i uh the mgm grand is that we're talking arena is that we're talking about yes the mgm grand arena because that 16,000. It's not 70. 16,000. So 70,000 is all I am.

Well, I just didn't know if there's a different one I wasn't thinking about. Oh, no, no, no. Because I've seen wrestling there. The place we, yeah, there's wrestling shows. A lot of boxing, I feel like, happens there. I just didn't know if there was a second place. I wasn't trying to shame you. No, that's okay.

Often on this show, I am trying to shame you. But not in this instance, I was not trying to. No, I was pulling off the dome. I was trying to remember. off the dome i was trying to remember i just wanted to make sure we were talking about the same thing pretty impressive wait were you also pulling off the dome mike or did you look it up i thought that it was under 20 000 and i looked it up okay so i can i it was off the dome but i confirmed it off the dome before your gut was off the dome it was you were going off the dome of your gut that's correct yes um i okay so tons of walking it's massive that's the thing and then i asked my mom for memories of it and all she

could i think she was like the rides were were fairly non-descript and i probably skipped a bunch because i was still pretty little and i only started going on theme park rides while i've known you guys that's right uh yeah i mean you know uh the good high octane theme parks yeah yeah uh which they still did not have very much of kind of i guess a weird let's build a family park without lots to do for little kids um so the only thing my mom really remembered was the the opening the like the like the cutting of the ribbon in the morning, she said, was a surprisingly grand ordeal. It was a big old thing and just waves of characters kept coming out. So many characters. She was shocked by the amount of characters.

And it is sort of true if you get into it. I missed this part. You've seen Louis. Yeah. But here's a photo from my uh family out of my mom took of louis um any feelings about louis i mean he's very uh he's he's in the theme park host mode that we're familiar with with mickey he's a tux guy and that's what lets you know he's in charge he seems more wholesome than characters around that

time like we've said before mascot characters oftentimes like a chucky lets you know he's in charge. He seems more wholesome than characters around that time. Like we've said before, mascot characters oftentimes, like a Chuck E. Cheese, you know, it feels like kind of, they're like, they present them as the owner and they're a little shady. Yeah. But he does seem a little more, I don't know, pure of heart. Well, in theory, he is a king. Does he have a crown on? He does have a crown.

Okay. So, King Louie. He's a benevolent king. A king in a tuxedo right that is a funny blend now that i think about i don't know if i've ever seen it out in the world a real king in a tuxedo yeah usually in something kind of fancier than a tuxedo maybe in the princess diaries the royalty that's like royalty in modern times charles was a tuxedo right can you

charles but even then you but you still got kind of like you know it's not like that doodads uh honors pins right uh you know the southwest airline uh wings right yeah um yeah here's well here's a cartoon of him this is from a map or something and he's looks i like him i'm not i'm not creeped out by louis and that doesn't seem like much of a bar but you know there's a lot we all know there's a lot of creepy theme park characters yeah yeah i like him yeah and i like him here where he's holding a giant pocket watch with his own face in the uh in the face of the clock i think the king might be like a nickname and it's like a Jughead kind of crown going on. That could be it.

He's like a hipster. King of entertainment. He's a hipster that wears a suit ironically or a tuxedo ironically. Yeah, he's sort of... Louis was the king. Louis was the original hipster. That's right.

Do you have the names of some of the other characters? I don't. Because they're pretty funny. Let's hear them. Louis Jr. Oh. I think that's a they're pretty funny. Let's hear them. Louis Jr.? Oh. I think that's a kid lion. Wait, I miss Louis Jr.

Oh, congrats on the... Oh, I'm sorry. I should have congratulated Louis on his prince sooner. Oh my gosh, he has a kid. I think... Does he have one kid? Well, yeah. And then I think there's a lady lion named Lucy.

Okay. I thought I heard. Is that his lady friend? I'm assuming they're a family, that they're named Lucy. Okay. I thought I heard. Is that his lady friend? I'm assuming they're a family, that they're an item. Okay. I found Louie Jr. gaming token from 1993. Okay. That sounds right.

So, was Louie Jr. was on money? Was on like their currency, essentially? Their arcade tokens? Yeah. Kids are going to love him. Kids are going to want some Louie Jr. to take home. Is Louie Jr. cute? Maybe he's cute.

Yeah, I think he's cute. It's kind of a weird drawing, and it's hard to see on the back of a token. Here, I just found the mythology. It is Louis Jr. is Louis and Lucy's kid, but Louis and Lucy are siblings. That's the official. Yeah, it was in the guide map. Yeah, they wrote it. Yep.

Right next to it. Here's where the bathrooms are. Here's's first aid and just so you know louis and lucy are siblings that's the sort of horror that you would expect in like apocalypse now or something uh what i insist going on in apocalypse that's what the horror there's a lot of he had to have sex with his sister obscene stuff there's a lot of unnerving stuff in apocalypse now that's what must have been in the longer that reminds me how it's in the french plantation scene in apocalypse now okay oh in the background some brothers and sisters are doing it that reminds me how i think like look their little treatment for the apocalypse now rides seem pretty good but i what it could have used is because you're looking at there's no kurtz is there you're looking for kurtz yeah it's the

point of the movie so that's just so at the at the end it should be a big a 30 foot tall animatronic kurtz oh yeah it's king kong and he rocks your boat back and forth. And he says the horror of the horror and everyone cheers as he said the line. He's like the Yeti on Everest. Yeah. Okay, yeah. And then he gives a giant Larry King a big kiss on the mouth. To the boat?

He kisses your boat. I'm gonna kiss you like you Larry King. It's the only thing that I remember about the last 20 years of Marlon Brando. Sure. I mean, it's at the forefront of most of our minds. Our minds. Yeah, yeah.

The other one I love about him is when there was that Michael Jackson tribute concert before 9-11. All the biggest stars are on this thing. It's insane. There's Liza Minnelli and Diana Ross and Whitney Houston and NSYNC and Britney but then Michael's friends all these actors they gotta come be part of it too so Elizabeth Taylor has to talk mildly incoherently and then Marlon Brando has to talk really incoherently so he they just roll out this is just suddenly a couch on the stage and he's sitting there in sunglasses and he starts just muttering and most of you don't know what the muttering is and the only part anybody could make i was like that you know they're killing uh they're chopping up kids

with machetes where who is any specifics on that marlin can you Are you done? Can you bring out Usher now, please? I feel like I've seen that whole special, but I really don't remember Marlon Brando on the couch. Oh, that was not on the television version. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I was like, I've seen all of that show. Oh, yes, I've seen that many times. What happened with that special is

like okay we filmed it great now to cut out all of the parts that are bizarre and not suitable for television like i see marlon brando ranting about machetes and now also to digitally touch up all the not all the performers maybe certain performers for many many months before this is suitable to be aired wow i gotta go home and will you watch this now check it out yeah because that's 2020 years ago like retouches too yeah it's i bet it i bet you can tell that it doesn't hold up yeah bet it's no dial of destiny yeah aging because people have been to be getting touched up for the last so many years at movies but i bet the technology is pretty good that we don't notice. Well, only Michael had the technology then.

Yeah. Elizabeth had it first. Sure. They used it on the Flintstones. It's the only way I do the film. Now I give it to you, Michael. Marlon Brando in a Michael Jackson music video, right? Yeah.

Exactly the same time, the same couple months. Yeah. You Rock My World? Similar. Yeah. He shows up suddenly and like he's like in a white suit in a bar and like michael's who is in the car with michael on 9-11 i think it wasn't in marlin elizabeth taylor marlon brando was one of them driving

maybe which one of those three would you trust to drive oh my god oh what a question um yes so many pills yeah no god oh that's a really good question oh shit i think we i think we have to choose yeah we have to choose okay we're not as good we each can have our own choice elizabeth i think liz taylor i mean i don't like that option either but i bet yeah i bet she for some reason was doing better with the pills than the other the other two yeah and was the story they fleed the city they like fled the city i think so yeah i think the three of them in a car together car someone should write that as a movie Probably Was there an attempt? They made some TV version of it

That's why I'm thinking of it A white British actor Plays Michael Jackson And says he regrets it Is it Joseph Fiennes? It's like a major actor Brian Cox I think is Marlon Brando Oh yeah here's a people Elizabeth Taylor, think, is Marlon Brando. Oh, yeah.

Here's a people. Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, and Marlon Brando's rumored 9-11 road trip. The truth behind the myth. Michael, we're going to have to repopulate the earth. I think that's the start of the apocalypse. I would know. I was in apocalypse now. This is the apocalypse now.

So you and I are both going to have to take turns with liz repopulation i'm at the taxico do you want corn nuts or combos this says this never happened this people article i mean that's probably correct it sounds too fun and silly it says elizabeth was in new york with deb with Debbie Reynolds. She did not get in a car with him. There's only one way to get away from the Twin Towers. We all three of us have to get in a car right now. All right, sorry. We interrupted a list of... Sorry. Yeah, yeah.

Well, look, let me just throw out this one. Here's a pretty good photo of me and my sister and here's us hanging out with bluto oh wait bluto or bruto what is these bluto it's bluto uh because this was one of the many theme parks from over the years where you could meet the popeye gang another place to get some quality time with our pals. And it's a good thing that this, we don't know what kind of lockdown they had on the rights because if this place hadn't closed so quick, maybe your beloved Islands of Adventure couldn't have built your beloved

Bilge Rat Barges. Oh, Bilge Rat Barges. One of the wettest water rods maybe in the world getting soaked oh yeah you get drenched drenched on that and dudley do right yeah they they take no prisoners as far as we've talked about that but yeah they had popeye do have we there's so few photos is there was there like an olive oil walk around or was it just popeye and budo there was no there was olive oil and they're like i guess you would say fur character they're not face characters did you call them fur characters not character the turns face characters are fur characters

like so would you call these fur characters but that's what i was trying to figure out have we ever said that on the show scott uh i don't think so i don, I don't think we've ever said this. Like Peter Pan is a face character. I know what you're talking about. I'm just shocked at this term that we've never used before. It is strange when it's not an animal. Yeah, that's what I was trying. I was thinking about this. I was like, would you call these fur characters?

They're just big, puffy humans. Carl from Up is a fur character. Yeah. Yeah. That starts to feel very strange. His skin is furry if you were to touch it. Edna Mode is a fur character. yeah that starts to feel very skin is furry if you were to touch it edna mode is a fur character or character yeah there's some that are both sometimes like i'm trying to think there there has been the the uh um good fairy or the fairy godmother she's the fairy

godmother right sometimes she's a human face and sometimes sometimes it's kind of a horrifying like strangers kind of mask yeah but that's still a fur character i i i need um i need further information you need to know what the mask is made of well no i need to know if there is a further information is the magazine for character enthusiasts. Yeah, well, that's the polite way of saying furry. Not that it has to be a polite way, but I'm just saying. I mean, one of the most fascinating juxtapositions is the short-lived Islands of Adventure show, the cartoon circus show that was in that giant theater, amphitheater in, like in tune lagoon and it was half like

dagwood and blondie are face characters with like weird grotesque stuff on them and then there's like rocky and bullwinkle too and it's all kind of set up in a way that it's like oh it is certain people are doing knife throwing and like unicycle acts and stuff well i hope it's the face characters yeah yeah yeah well for characters if you miss a knife it like gets caught you know oh yes true yeah there's more protection so and then they throw a knife at dagwood r rock okay oh yeah there's olive i found olive sorry the song is the circus is coming to tune i love what i love the video which i love but i remember crazy i love it it's coming tune but i remember seeing it in 1999 going what

what is that like what's going on um i have a photo of them in the uh holiday mode as well if you ever wanted to know what popeye looked like dressed up like uh santa i would like to know that yeah now you know wonder no longer this is a big day um the so you can meet the popeye gang and you don't have to go all the way to malta to do it and then here's this in keeping with what my mom was saying that the characters just keep coming uh here now we're at a location called the tumbleweed hotel must be like an old west area and then here's a bunch of characters and they all look like giant babies with single teeth and like they're they're they're cowboys and different you know uh you know marms whatever you want to call it and i'm like these

look really specific it seems weird that they would be just completely invented for MGM Grand Adventures. But no, in fact, these are from an old comic strip called Tumbleweed. Does anyone know Tumbleweed? That name is familiar, but I know nothing past that. This is, again, now, and again, we're in the upper echelon of podcasters who know about really obscure, unpleasant comic strips that started in the 60s. And that's what this is. Too recent, too recent. I don't get in on any of that hippie shit.

I check the date my comics were started. If it's pre-depression,'m in i have seen these i have seen tumbleweeds i have seen tumbleweeds as well i've never read a single strip though i don't know anything about the thought of seeing them in like puffy costumes in three dimensions is very weird i don't want to see a fur character of tumbleweed or of uh sorry i've i've not vetted this description epic that's the name epic tumbleweed's toothless alcoholic plug chewing sway backed second horse once a u.s cavalry horse but now but drummed out of the service so hey kids come to las vegas your dad's gonna gamble today but you get to meet epic a drunk horse it was drummed out of the core the leaving las vegas

i'm just there seems to be some uh see at this point there seems to be some stuff that's aged poorly in tumbleweeds from from the quick glance it. In the old west, you're saying? Yeah. But the horse, that drunk horse sounds good to me. Did anyone in this photo that my mom took in 1994 age poorly? I'd have to look a little closer. Are there any poor cultural depictions? No, I'd have to maybe a quick look.

But tumbleweeds, though. Tumbleweeds ended in 2007. Jeez. Wow. Justweeds, though. Tumbleweeds ended in 2007. Jeez. Wow. Just there in plain sight. Everyone passing it. All of us. You guys like the funnies.

Erin likes the funnies. She's like, I have just passed Tumbleweed for year after year. No interest. 50 years of Tumbleweeds. 50 years of Tumbleweeds. 60 years? Maybe it was just too close in the lineup under prince valiant and i just skipped over the whole yeah yes was this uh did this rip off f troop or did

f troop rip off this what year did f troop come out i think f troop may have uh sailed along without any awareness of tumbleweeds they're the the same. I think they just never even knew about it. They come out the same year. Oh, my God. Wow. This is a job for me. This is a little project for me. This is a project for you.

To figure out if F Troop and tumbleweeds had any connection. Holding your daughter. If you're a listener who might not know what F Troop is, it was a sitcom in the 60s, 1965. I know it. I watched it growing up a little, but I couldn't produce one character name. I couldn't. Corporal Agarn, I think, was Larry Storch, who just passed away at 99 a couple months ago.

Not a PTR curse. Did we kill him? I don't know. I think I brought Larry Storch up recently, though. I wouldn't put it past you. Yeah. So I apologize to the Storch estate, the Storch family, if I brought him up and he died.

And F Troop is not Hogan's Heroes. Of course not. One is World War II. One is The Wild Quest. Hogan's Heroes is more popular. Hogan's Heroes is a superior product. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In terms of characters, though, I did see footage,

some of the preserved footage of like the characters coming out uh first off the characters were led by like a team of employees and khakis and very loud windbreakers great and then i think there was an announcement of the characters of like king louis louis jr lucy wacky wolf and i really couldn't find much about wacky wolfy if you want to talk generic it just was a very generic wolf in like a polo or something and itchy and scratchy and friends they had to invent some friends yeah manic mailman and then it was popeye olive oil and blue dough and then it cut to the windbreaker like dance like the windbreaker employees were like all dancing like not super choreographed dancing

either um yeah there's also uh i got some some purple dinosaurs here i don't know what they are um they not barney um more of a brontosaurus no no they didn't have more they didn't have the flintstones because you would have seen the flintstones yeah um but there's a couple things in this you can see in the background just very clearly the mgm grand parking garage um know, sight lines, uh-oh, sight line alert. But then, I just noticed this right now, is that there's a hanging sign for a wedding chapel.

I think you could get married in this lame theme park. I did come across that. Oh wait, here it is. This is from an article from around the time. A section of the park designed to resemble New York has no muggers. Okay.

But it does include two express wedding chapels. Two. Two. Wow. Why are there two wedding chapels? They have the same amount of rides in wedding chapels. The demand was going to be so high that they needed to be prepared. It's like Tower of Terror.

If you load on two different levels, you get done that much faster. Yeah, crank through. Get that wedding line down. There's also an old English village street with a not-so-quaint Burger King. There is just a Burger King in old england and uh and and you know well what else was in old england uh rides or attractions answer no welcome to old england hey while you're here check out burger king and then get the fuck out i saw a group of uh performers uh in the old English section.

It's just the shortest little clip. And they were, of course, singing Consider Yourself from- Oliver. Ah. British, you know? Oliver Twist, you know? Have I mentioned that I played that in the marching band in high school? Okay.

Yeah, that seems like a good. Yeah. Our director, because our director would intro everything. And he would say, the band, the Schaumach High School band would like you to consider yourself one of us. And then we'd. And in hindsight, it's just a funny, like during a football game, like everyone's going to be like, hell yeah. Yeah. Consider yourself. Wow. say this is a funny like during a football game like everyone's gonna be like hell yeah yeah consider yourself wow i i thought i was cool because i'm on the football team but now i know

today i'm one of the marching band yeah that could be me playing the off-key tuba oh man be as cool as the artful Dodger himself. It's where I developed my play philosophy. I try to play like the artful Dodger. Duck and weave like he through the streets of London. The opposing team is that mean Bill Sykes coming for me. I've said this before, too, though. The next year or the year after that, did uh we had an all sticks show though god how many are there what do you mean songs yeah uh we did three

or four okay too much time on my hands mr roboto and uh i was ambitious that's like a sweet this is yeah we did the whole thing i'm trying to to think. What else? What are the hits? I can't think of the third one. They're all sweets. Come Sail Away. We did Come Sail Away. Sweet Madam Blue. We did not do Sweet Madam Blue.

So a lot of changes. Like a lot of like, yeah, sweets. Like you're saying. I got to go through my trumpet case, see if I have the old sheet music for it. You got your trumpet case out of here with you? Yeah. My parents moved out of here. All my shit's here now.

Oh, yeah. That's right. for it you got your trumpet case out of here with you yeah my parents moved out of here all my shit's here now yeah i'm sorry how do you really need to go through your old trumpet case and get the old sheet music what's gonna what then what'll happen i have then i'll know for sure what it was and i'll know the arrangements and i'll know what like the truncated versions of the songs you could start playing stuff you could start playing solo sticks during live shows in full disclosure i just bought a new mouthpiece and some new tuning grease and because i haven't played a trumpet what really i haven't played trumpet many years and i play guitar and everything but i haven't played trumpet well i'm like you know what i could i can play this i know how to play you can start playing taps to wake up your daughter that's. There'll be taps. Patriotic. Yeah. Finally, she'll understand my patriotism. Well, she's going to grow up in an era laden with AI and the challenges that come from that.

What better way to teach her all about it than with Mr. Roboto? That's right. Dennis DeYoung was way ahead of this whole trend. And when you play an instrumental of that song a trumpet she needs to know a blaring trumpet bass from an old from a like student level trumpet from purchased in 1995 it's missing a couple of i've played it since fifth grade a couple of buttons what do you call them what do you call the things you press valves valves uh fifth grade i think i had it since so it's an old ass i don't want to disclose my age at this point but uh it's 30 years old it's less than 30 but yeah so so anyway i'm gonna

they're like wait i thought mike was a teen i know he acts so cool and knows about all the teen stuff from hot topic you're telling me he's north of 30 yeah i'm north let's just call it there i'm north of 30 yeah believe it or not so yeah i'll uh i'll update everybody on my trumpet yeah you're making a promise for the show it's for one of these shows um oh you had a kenny rogers roasters in there also and those were that was new with i think a lot of people's first experience with Kenny was at this park, actually. I found a Reddit thread, and people were talking about their memories. And someone said, I don't have a lot of memories of the rides, but I remember eating at Kenny Rogers Roasters.

That's like the most popular IP there at that point. Kenny Rogers IP. I think so, yeah, because they got no mood. They didn't end up with apocalypse now and they didn't like um you know on the club three we're going to talk about this wizard of oz walkthrough that was in the casino and not the theme park the theme park is bereft of anything of that nature there's no i couldn't tell you what's in the mgm library exactly but you know that you you associate mgm grand with

wizard of oz like and and that's why it's the color is the emerald and but none of that is reflected in the park which maybe that is due to the disney uh licensing stuff right um but it is yeah all your you get you get kenny rogers and you get popeye yeah and uh's, yeah, I don't know. If you're coming to meet your friends, you're not going to meet a lot of friends. There should have been a gambler, the gambler ride or something. We're in Vegas.

It's his big song. Yeah, Jason, that's the most exciting he's been in the whole show. Yeah, well, there seems like, I was going to say the, you know, to allude to the club, the Wizard ofz animatronics in that walkthrough look pretty good the animatronics in the theme park there's like

two or three in the backlot river you got a off-brand creature from black lagoon you have a helicopter gunner shooting at you and then you have a squirrely crew member at the very end of the ride what is that about just a mean guy with a broom so in the pitch document in the apocalypse now it does mention a crew guy with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth at the end of the ride they i think they just gave him a bushy mustache yeah um that's strange they they also refer to, this did not make it into the ride. But they say, and suddenly, around the boat, animatronics, special forces, Navy SEALs come out of the water with their M16s pointed at you in wetsuits and blackface on. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know if they call it that.

I don't know if that's the official name. There has to be a paint. It has to be like an official military term. Black paint. Yeah. Or dark gray paint. I think they mean camouflage paint. But like, oh, I don't know. I think do another pass on that, you know?

I don't know. I loved the ride or a bunch of people in black face pointed military weapons weapons at your boat and then later on a different guy in a helicopter shoots at your boat ladies and gentlemen the most canceled ride um no didn't have that nor did yeah how many how are going to get all those characters popping out of the water? That's crazy. Well, this is a good way to maybe segue into a ride called Grand Canyon Rapids. They had a rapid ride.

I don't remember if I did this. This might have been my first rapid ride or that or it was Hershey Park a couple of years later. But Disney didn't have these yet uh uh you know this this was still i guess regional parks did but rapids rides were still new a little bit and i'm gonna give them a little credit on this one because there were animatronics tons of them so so many and i discovered this was the very first big professional gig of Garner Holtz. Frequent presence on the show. Now he does Disney stuff, has done things, great animatronics everywhere,

all the not stuff that we like. And evidently, he came out of just insanely complex haunts and mazes. That's what kicked off his career and somebody part of this saw his work there and said uh hey do you want a shot yes i do this is the big time this is what i've been waiting for then he saw the scope of it and the budget that he was allotted and thought if i don't make this work this might be it for me actually uh i think this was an extremely stressful endeavor for garner halt but he thought this is the way to get his foot in the door and it worked out yeah this was a big success and kicked off a really amazing animatronic career i would

love to know like a very detailed version of how you get that together like you're like but a humble robot maker and then all of a sudden you get contracted to do like a really big project and then it's like oh shit like how do you pull it together like that that's a whole podcast probably in and of itself talking to him we should probably we should pursue a garner hold that was something that was maybe going to happen uh before the pandemic we haven't picked up again yeah yeah um but uh he claimed now like uh according to mr hole he swears this ride was actually pretty good he's proud of his work on it um i found some photos some of the info on this came from there's a website you guys may have found it for other stuff there's something called theme park university.com but i think it's not around anymore yeah i was trying to find really who is it so placeholder

website now i think you have to go to internet archive you got archive.org it um but they have a bunch of like big extensive articles about a lot of these rides and some pictures you got like an old prospector guy and his like in his red pajamas and bathhouse. He's got some character, right? Yeah. This is pretty good. And then just kind of, I don't know what, this JPEG is just man1.jpeg. And he's kind of somewhat off-putting but well done. Just bald guy.

I don't know. Is he working on the railroad? Is he a butcher? I don't know what he is. Dick Tracy villain-esque face. Yeah. I'm not saying he's a bad robot. But he seems nicer. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Kind of just like, yeah, I don't know what he is dick tracy villain-esque face not saying he's a bad but he seems nicer yeah yeah i agree kind of just like yeah i don't know he's got a big chin

i ain't so bad yeah um but uh this is erin's recollection too because she went to this park and it was it was still open when she went she's that's the one she'll say rapids okay rapids not so bad 14 characters garner made most of the props, too. Big dynamite explosion ending, like what ended up in Big Thunder. Keep in mind, also, Disney, a couple years later, opens Grizzly River Rapids. No animatronics on that. Still not. Probably better, like, environments in that thing.

Yeah. But I give them credit for i don't know that it was common or still is common to have animatronics on uh rapids rides so maybe this this might be the one zone where i say uh grand adventures did it right well the one that i think of is the one at knots they redid and that garner holt productions was involved in redoing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is, huh, so that's nice. It's a throwback to this whole charming thing. I'm also, I would like to shout out the place that you mentioned, Jason,

R&R Creative that did that mock-up of the Apocalypse Now concept. They were involved in two of the ones we've mentioned already, Backlot River Ride and Grand Canyon Rapids, and one we should maybe head into called deep earth explorations and i think they're pretty responsible for the the environments um which you know on a budget pretty well done i'd say and i realized this i was on their website they are behind a ton of things that i have mentioned in the last like month those that i've been very charmed by those being the pirate mini golf at santa cruz beach board wow i recommend this again really good mini golf they did the rides up there haunted castle and cave

train and at gilroy gardens on the second gate i was going on and on about a couple of rides the round boats and the 20s slash 50s car track that's way better than autopia right this place did those and the animatronic show that i didn't get to sing we're all they didn't get to see where all of the fruits and vegetables sing salads usa oh man now i know where it came from it came from this this little place so they've done a lot of these kind of good uh non-disney non-universal ties together a bunch of like really recent history so wow i'm uh all all for r&r are you do you have it in front of you do you know like what's the newest thing they've done or does it list anything chronologically it's a pretty ancient website yeah i couldn't tell if they were still act how i think they might not be i don't know yeah um maybe you don't in this line of work maybe the websites don't have to be that's maybe

right yeah the website i feel like said founded in 1981 we've been doing this for 30 years and i was like well that would put us to 2011 is that right so maybe not so i don't know i the contact there were no social media links there was just a contact uh form um you want to talk a little bit deep earth exploration yeah the one that they worked on and now this it's kind of impossible to tell if this one you might also give the nod they actually did okay on it because there's not a video i don't think there are some photos i think a lot of these probably it's just it's a level of darkness that an old camcorder is not gonna be able to pick up so they're kind of lost to time but this one sounds interesting i have no idea if they pulled it off but it's described as sort of a proto

spider-man slash indie in that it's a simulator car on a track so you're moving from room to room and the vehicle is doing the simulating motion that the track is not actually capable of. So maybe, I mean, if they got to that mechanism first and did it okay-ish, you got to give them credit for that. But I don't know. It may have sucked. It may have sucked. We have to get, like, the people.

Like, your Tony Baxter's of the world seem to have gone to all these places when they open and stuff like he's talked about star trek experience and stuff so i would love to like talk to people who like the pros who remember it and be like oh yeah that was actually really good or we stole some idea from that or something yeah it's possible you never know it's also a ride where you go uh deep down into the earth and find crazy stuff down there and that in not too long gets done at tokyo disney sea the amazing ride journey to the center of the earth so they got to deep earth first they got to simulators first um the thing that makes me skeptical is that i think like okay and we're running. Yeah, let's get these cars out there. And then it was basically that like windows open and close.

Kind of like that's the web slingers now. So some of the gaps would be filled in with you. Now you watch your screen and this is what in theory you're doing. Right, we're showing you like exteriors kind of. Before you were submerged? Yeah, I think so. Or like maybe now we go to a model and that's something that the right where the ride couldn't take you and then the window right

so now we're looking at a bunch of magma or whatever right but apparently uh that video was a laser disc player and it had to get moved out of the cabin because the all the motion made it skip oh no that may have uh victimized this ride a little bit too bad i don't know but it sounds kind of good i don't know you see crazy creatures and rock slides and gorges this at least would sound like it has enough stuff to have been memorable either way if that makes sense yeah yeah it's not just like oh it was like if like, if it was, if it was bad, I bet it was kind of interesting and bad, or if it was good,

it was good. Yeah. I don't know. It sounds like an interesting ride system for the time. It sounds like there was a lot of show scenes. So I guess I'm just, I'm giving it credit for B if we could see it, we would talk about it.

Yeah, I think so. Yes. But it's just a mystery now. Just like if tumbleweed and F Troop were bitter enemies. Right. One of life's great mysteries. Right.

We'll have to really put some time in to find that answer. So there's that. What are big ones that we've not... The King Louie Theater? I saw something in the King... Assuming that the King Louie Theater, wait a minute, I don't know. I don't know, because there was also, there was another name for a theater that I saw.

Wait, let me find my show. King Louie Theater gets renamed to Manhattan Theater at some point. You're talking about the You're in the Movies or the Gold Rush Theater? See, I don't, what I saw was in the Magic Screen Theater. So maybe that's different. Wait a minute. Do we have... Okay, let's start with the one you mentioned.

That is a different entity, I think. I think there were like three theaters. Well, that's pretty good. That's a lot. King Louie Theater, later Manhattan Theater. What would you see in there? Ice Skating Spectacle starring King Louie. That sounds good. That sounds good.

Sounds good. Yeah. I'd like to see him skate. Can he keep the crown on? I would love to see that. I assume he did keep the crown on. I don't know which theater. Oh, you know what?

I think this is Magic Screen. I'm sorry. It's all I can speak to is Magic Screen. One of my only memories, and it's kind of crazy that i can remember this like i remember my point of view seeing this in 94 or whenever it was um i saw a show i was like i felt mad typing in mgm grand adventures black light show that's all i could remember is that it was a show that utilized black light so that there could be a bunch of people uh just in all black like theater style uh moving stuff around and you couldn't see because all the props glow but all the people puppeteering blend into the background

and i found it the show is called kaleidoscope oh okay and let me now expel this from my brain onto you guys and the listener i specifically remember that this show was so inane like i think the puppeteering all plenty impressive and everything and the pride remember it like popping and looking kind of cool but i remember this one now we're back to this kind of like a movie theme and i remember that there was a astronaut scene and the astronaut was on a big cord getting him back into the connecting him to the ship and uh that somebody then you're a voice i don't know if it's the astronaut or a director says cut and then a big pair of scissors comes out and then the same voice says not that kind of cut uh-huh why do i remember that wow why is that in my brain i and i and then i also then i remember turning to my mom as if to go do you think this is

good and she did the same thing back to me like i don't know i don't think this is good yeah and it was maybe a kind of a loss of innocence where i was used to the top tier entertainment at disney and universal that my mom took me to and was excited to take me to and now she's like i'm sorry son i don't think this one is good not up to the standards not that kind of cat you can't find a video of this i don don't think so. I tried. If anybody... Wow. I didn't go through everyone's home movies of it, but I'm dying to now. And what if I made it up?

Well, maybe somebody listening could maybe do your work for you and send it to you. If you worked on it or something. If you're a commercial pilot and you know what scott's talking about please send us that clip so he doesn't have to narrow or a narrow area or the reasons to contact us scott can i did you see the other shows that that would play in the magic screen theater you got bmx grind that's bmx bikes and inline skating yeah and then this is the only the only proof i've seen of that just the phrase a live recreation of the three stooges three stooges live yeah that's uh there are people i just got a little sad yeah because there's an instagram i think i might follow where guys are just doing Three Stooges.

They're doing new versions of the classic gags. Not the cast of the movie from 10 years ago. a little more authenticity in your three in your modern three stooges uh then i would direct you towards uh a gentleman who professes to be curly's grandson i know exactly yes this is what i'm talking about i wasn't actually even going to say it but you're yes i follow curly's grandson on instagram oh okay that's what i'm talking about i know all about curly's grandson uh yes i well uh i hate to brag i hate to brag but i was on a zoom in early pandemic times when the zooms were still fun i remember that and there was a uh on one week of this zoom of watching weird stuff curly's grandson uh was there uh it was where we watched clips of curly's grandson and then the very next week

all of a sudden a box appeared who is this joining the zoom oh my god it's no way wow so yes i have been on a zoom who put it together i think i don't think you'll mind me saying jason waller okay all right makes a lot of sense yeah yeah that makes sense to me found a way to I don't think he'll mind me saying Jason Wallner. Okay. All right. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. That makes sense to me. Found a way to get a hold of Curly G, Curly's grandson. Wow. In my head, I was thinking, I was like,

this sounds like a Jason Wallner project. Sure enough. It sounds like a Wallner special. He put some true magic together in those early days. Can I ask on the same not the zoom where curly grandson showed up but the previous zoomer clips were being watched was sunglass sunglasses jack shown do you know who i'm talking about i don't recall oh no my god what is this i think it's sunglasses sunglass or sunglasses sunglasses jack it's a man who's a Jack Nicholson impersonator,

and he's got a lot of followers, but he also dances and stuff, too. He does other stuff that is not really in the character of Jack Nicholson, but he's very popular on Instagram. Sunglassesjack.com. Yeah, there he is. Yeah. As you guys can see, you listeners can can see uh pockets

are at sin city nights is a world of difference from the regular podcast the ride we talk about crazy stuff like curly g and sunglasses jack and f troop and old old comic strips which by the way that by the way is king features syndicate if you, I didn't want to leave you. Tumbleweed. Tumbleweed, yes. That one, not a mystery. So, yeah, three, oh, that's very miserable. There's also something called Clint Carvalho and his extreme parrots. By the way, sorry, it is Sunglass Jack. That's his name.

And it's 330,000 followers on Instagram. And I do, I hate, hate again we have to watch just like i haven't seen these this is just some of the audio listeners need to know but it's jack nicholson impersonator playing the bongos uh uh and then he like i think he recently started doing the voice but he was not doing the voice a lot what wait he built a following without doing the yeah but i think he's doing the voice maybe now let's hold on oh she's just dancing here i can i i attest that i am looking at a jack nicholson impersonator

while that music like wow jack jack nicholson impersonator while that music. Like, wow, Jack Nicholson impersonator, huh? You must do a great impression of him. Eh, that's not really the point of it. Maybe a more pedestrian impersonator might do an impression, but. Kind of do like the ice bucket challenge more like that. He's just walking around with joker makeup on here i'm trying to find sorry how many followers does he have 330 000 how many do we have five i don't know put here we are with our notes and our research i learned

about kirk kirkorian fucking eating shit to sunglass jack this is a niche show for a small amount of weirdos and sunglass jack is what the people want this is a mass entered when all the networks and streaming services go belly up all that's going to be left is guys like sunglass jack giving the people what they want. And not the drill from Twitter, which is Jack Nicholson, like a warped photo of Jack Nicholson in sunglasses. Drill? Drill.

Yeah, drill. He writes jokes on Twitter for like over a decade. Oh, I see, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's not. This is a different, this is for over a decade. That is a different Sunglass. If I tell you how long he's been writing the jokes,

does that help? 2009 or so. The best account on Twitter, you know? Okay. There's a ride that is probably best mostly skipped called the Haunted Mine. Haunted Mine, huh? What's that about? Is it about, you know, what's in there?

Frankensteins and the vampires. It's like a Native American thing. Yeah. Look, that's not a good. They aren't monsters. They're people. Yeah. Maybe you shouldn't. They're not just about vengeful and vengeance and curses.

On the one wiki I'm on, they leave that part out of the description. Yeah. Yeah. Review I'm reading uh well it did have a big on the plus side a big spider on the minus side it was kind of clever but also mildly offensive and not terribly scary so that's the haunted mine um there is a roller coaster yeah i want to i want to talk about this lightning bolt this is an indoor coaster space themed because that's easy to do inside in the dark like space mountain no sense yeah

the the journey of this coaster it it was indoors and then in 97 they moved it outdoors and they made it twice as long that is one of the strangest roller coaster journeys i have ever heard hmm yeah um i believe uh uh and and aaron it only went on the outdoor version but i think this was kind of a tame roller coaster and i think that maybe the indoor part hid the tameness so i think because when there's a mystery of what's happening and where you're gonna go and maybe there will be a big scary drop or something but outside it cannot hide its lameness it says 35 miles an hour this is but probably that's top speed what What is Space Mountain? Is that 35? Space Mountain's not that fast.

I mean, it's not fast. A lot of wind. A lot of wind launched. But I don't know if it goes. I don't know if we went 35 for like a half second or something. I don't know. What sounds a little cool is that they kept it. It was like you're going to space and then you come back.

And that's indicated by a black light model of the strip so that sounds good that sounds like something notable and proprietary uh but again impossible to document yeah in a dark room it looks like 35 miles an hour is space mountain here so this is because fast is, then that doesn't feel, maybe if you put it outside, would Space Mountain be lame? It wouldn't be lame, but I think we would be shocked

at how much less fast it felt. Maybe. Yeah. Because, not that I, I still kind of feel fast and sometimes, but I still feel like it,

oh, it's a little, it feels out of control this time or whatever, but I do think times when I'm less like anxious on it, I'm like, out of control this time or whatever but i do think times when i'm less like anxious on it i i'm like this actually is fooling me i think it's still going faster and faster it's a lot of cold air blowing at you and a lot of lighting effects yeah and

air blowing at you i think makes you think you're going fast yeah i think the way like yeah wind i don't i don't know i'm not actually i didn't actually even think about that going faster than you are. Yeah, I think the wind. I don't know. I didn't actually even think about that. You think they're blowing wind on you? I think so. It always feels so chilly in there. I don't know about that. Like, all of it? The whole track? Certain parts. I don't know that. I don't know that.

I don't want to look like a fool if I'm wrong. I think I've got to be a gambling man here in Sin City Nights month. That doesn't feel right to me. This could also be a magic trick. That it's just dark and you're going a little fast. Heavy duty air conditioner

and there's certain pockets of cold air from just the trajectory of the... That's not the same as a cannon it's not making me feel like it's going faster hmm i don't think there's a cannon of air no i don't i think i i think it's just like some air ac really like turned up she's saying a cold environment cold environment zooming through it can't see you're going a little fast in the dark jason back down a little bit i think you were positive that cold air is being blasted at you to simulate space travel fans fans blasting cold air but it's fans to make you feel like you're in

space not fans because it's a hot room how about is google are there fans on space mountain well well we know we think we know that there's fans but it's a question of are the fans where are the fans placed no what's the purpose of the fans are the fans to cool or the are the fans to simulate space travel cool but certainly the fans are there to cool because certainly that's what most fans do i'm also part of you know just saying this is this is the story my mind is completing in the darkness. Michael? Raising my hand.

And here's the first thing that pops up when I write, are there fans on Space Mountain? Something just says, secret two, many of the Space Mountain attractions actually have fans blowing air on you throughout the ride track. Oh, my God. Well, well, well. Oh, my God. Oh. Well, how oh well how about this this is why mike stayed out this is why i stayed out because i didn't want to look like i didn't want to look like a fool quite frankly look at this king jason over here you gotta know when to roll them god that's why he was so excited about the song What is the, hang on

What is the site though? Hold on, wait, there's an Inside the Magic 2 that's discussing this as well Well, we can always trust them Most trustworthy source of What's the date? Hold on, oh, it's October 23rd, 2021 Ah, fuck

It is post-Wing turn Theme Park Center Have we ever been on Theme Park Center before? I think I've been on Theme Park Center before. You've been on Twitter since 2009. Writes the jokes. Space Mountain Tips and Secrets. Secret 1 is not only a Space Mountain,

the first indoor roller coaster, it's also the first roller coaster to be controlled by computers. Secret 2 says many of the Space Mountain attractions actually have fans blowing air on you throughout the ride track. This is to make you feel like you're going faster than you actually are. Fuck. I think the fact that anyone else is saying this does make it seem legitimate. Well, wow.

There's a couple other places that look like they have something similar to that piece of information. Wow. This is, wow. I mean, we're little trick we're stunned here what do i do now how do you recover from this i don't yeah i don't know can the listener ever trust me again yeah i just really i was also ground in i'll say this earlier i was trying to quickly figure out the answer to that question about the big hat and it looks like some of that might all just be rumors too and no one's quite sure so i that was not easy as that one's too confused that wasn't as conclusive as this is what i'm really saying is i'm like oh shit i'm gonna be able to quickly answer my own question but that did not happen this one seems like boy the man's right i don't know oh boy i just stepped right in

it he's putting his crown right oh he's putting a crown on right now and i got my big pocket watch with my face on it wow he's floating on you to make it feel faster so now i think you're also dealing with the fact that you've been kind of do you thought space mountain maybe went faster i think so yeah and it was more of a scary so i'm mad I'm mad at myself for stepping in it. And I'm mad at the ride for being all tricks. It's all tricks. Yeah, you've been deceived.

You know what? This is like how a lot of casinos don't have windows. They don't have clocks on the walls. And they are blowing air. They're blowing air on you in those casinos, too. They better be. Yeah. It's going to be hot this weekend. blowing air they're blowing air on you in those casinos too they better be yeah and they they

hot this weekend yeah they do uh i think some of the ones that still have a lot of smoking areas have really complex ventilation systems to sort of like they say no smoke out i'm not gonna say you're wrong here because you're on a hot streak here but sometimes i go in one of those places where they allow smoking and i go it sounds like fucking smoking here yeah yeah but i think that i think it could smell like worse i see that wasn't well i look if you're saying it i believe it today tonight jason's up when he's up he's up jason's up good way to go yeah starting this week on a hot streak hats off to you crowns off to you i get wow that's an interesting one something we would have known maybe if we ever did it space mountain um but we got this to get through first i think i mean we're heading to the the exit here i mean so uh this place uh it it seems like it opens to

like there's some interest but the really damning thing is that they're like, we're going to keep, we're going to make sure only 10,000 people come in every day, just to make sure it's comfortable and those lines don't get too long. So we're just, you know, we're just going to cap it. We're going to cap it. Sir, the attendance figures are in. It's nowhere close to that. Well, good, good.

That's what I said. I want it to be small so uh great yeah my plan worth and we will cap it at 10 000 as this place gets more and more popular that did not happen it kind of was just floating along doing okay uh and then uh but they're they just they wanted to do other stuff i think i think they were trying gimmicks of like we'll do it'll be a scream park for halloween halloween people like that from what i saw yeah and i'm not saying it's good i feel like some people had fond memories of it and there's a commercial with like it says jack is back now who was jack i that's my question to you guys did you come across who jack is i'm not saying i know the answer sunglass sunglass i don't think it's sunglass jack though i think it's a different jack from 1997 um but like the

the night of the jack is the thing we saw a couple years ago we drove through like jack is sort of a like name for halloween characters like a pumpkin had a character oh yeah see scream park three jack's back right there so i'm not sure it doesn't yeah means nothing to me if i don't know what jack's capable of to begin with and it's probably they did not make the leap of like okay jack pumpkin head is in the later wizard of oz books and I think Return to Oz. Yeah. Does he show, but it's not him. He's in the movie Return to Oz, yeah. Jack Pumpkinhead, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, he's in there. He is not in MGM Grand Adventures or in the hotel. Right, because MGM, it's more the original movie. The movie version, yeah. Or the second movie? It's actually the second Wizard of Oz. There was another Wizard of Oz, am I wrong? There was like a different Wizard of Oz movie made before the Judy Garland one.

I don't know the answer to that. I don't know if I ever knew that. Oh, I'm scared now. I'm scared to be wrong or right. Maybe I'm thinking of a different movie. Let me tell you something. Oh, no. If you put yourself out there and you get something wrong, it is humiliating.

Roll the dice, brother. I don't want to be wrong. I'm stewing over here. Don't risk it, i know i'm right 1910 the wonderful wizard of oz oh nice nice nice oh i gotta see this the feeling of being right about a movie from 1910 oh yeah 100 year old movie it was a silent film yeah oh that was probably a horrifying wizard of oz yeah however they're rendering those creatures then um there one one other thing about the um uh park there was a giant

uh theater outdoor theater with a pirate ship and a lagoon oh yeah we didn't say that. Which is, and it had a pirate stunt show. The MGM Grand opens December 1993. The Treasure Island Casino up Las Vegas Boulevard opens October 1993. So there was a point where you could see two competing pirate shows on the strip. Wow. Wow. That's right. But one is free.

One isn't locked up behind a gate extremely free and then you can also turn to the side and see a volcano you know it's uh the pirate thing look kind of looked again like fun in some ways yeah and there was obviously like standard stunt stuff in there that we it's in every stunt show but but. Sure. It looked fine from what I saw. I seem to have seen it. It was in a photo album. Okay. I have not very many memory.

This is the theme of a lot of people who went to the place. Yeah. It just seems like this place lacked a personality. Yeah. A little bit. I think just kind of like it is a theme park. It has some of the things that theme parks have, but maybe there's not a lot of, like, but what's the core? What's the feel that only we have?

Right. Not literal character, but character personality in the design. Yeah. No, they got tumbleweed. They have characters, but they missed the point. Real true characters. So then it's 96, and they decide some things that they want are a convention center and a much bigger pool area so it's chopped by 40 and the 40 that is

closest to the entrance is all the best all the ones that we said maybe this was okay yeah not the rapids ride that's in the back so So that's safe. Log flume safe. But Backlot River Tour, which is the closest thing it has to like, what is it? It's kind of a movie adventure park. Gone. Out. Deep Earth Exploration. The one that's a little bit ahead of its time.

Out. Gone. Coaster. Indoor coaster. Pretty okay. Got to move it. It's going outside. So it just so happened that the front of the park had all the best stuff and uh well shit okay so now we're down to lesser more generic rides um they put in one of those

the sky screamer sky coaster from the episode we did with hanford twice and only one came out we know about sky coasters and uh ended up is the one at fun spot america yeah that was in orlando okay um wow uh some other stuff that closed during the reduction that manhattan theater and then this is a funny note on the wikipedia although unaffected by the layout change the haunted mine was also closed so another ride is gone for no reason no reason they didn't even need to um seems like it's for the best that's really funny uh and then so then it's just it's like an increasingly miniature theme park just like sliced and sliced until there is not much left um you know probably good moves that pool area is fantastic the pool area is sprawling it's so huge and that was always the

guessing game i was like well where was this park i couldn't figure it so it's just everything it's all the periphery it's what's now pool, convention center, those signature suites, which are three big towers, and Topgolf, which requires a lot of spit, you know, to any driving range, much less a giant one. All of that. So the MGM fun zone, all the stuff that isn't casino and hotel rooms was all a theme park. Now it's a bunch of other stuff and more hotel rooms and it seems

more like what they uh they need they also changed the name of the most generic thing you've ever heard it was then for the park at mgm grand for a while that just sounds like you don't want to be doing no yeah at all do you you give it that name you seem embarrassed by it's like that you something could be called the park at mgm grand now and it could be you know one of those food things you mentioned oh food hall yeah yeah that name means nothing hotel called park mgm yeah no those are just generic words yeah rolled around um i saw i i was reading saw videos people okay, I'm going to try to find remnants of MGM Grand Adventures. The remnants were the lazy river at the pools

called the Backlot River. Unsure if that's current. And then there is a sign in the parking garage with an arrow. And it says like, convention center, pool, Grand Adventures. That still says that there yeah i don't know from the the last few years this video i actually haven't been to them is there a lazy river at the mgm grand pool at the pool yeah oh i gotta give it a yeah maybe i switch

you know where you're staying oh yeah you have to switch i do know i'm saying very good pool and it's also the home of Wet Republic, which I would have to imagine is one of the douchiest pool parties. One of your nasty pool parties. Yeah, it's one of my nasty-ass pool parties that I want to go to. Yeah, Wet Republic, of course. I'm over there. Maybe I got to switch hotels. So it's a plus up to you because now there's more.

There's no theme park. It's a minus for you, but plus douchey Vegas pool party. But you see that I like both things. I'm excited about a lazy river, but I'm also excited about a group of the world's worst people getting together in one place in the pool to listen to loud music and drink. To listen to loud music you don't know. None of my favorite songs except at the rehab pool party when i was at there at hard rock and they played the start of uh circle of life and the crowd lost their minds it was so exciting people were like it was all of a sudden the the whole that came on everyone

just went nuts and i was like this is good wow i'm enjoying this this is great so yeah so once in a while you'll hear a disney song i've already been wrong once in this episode so i don't want to be down for the count but i'm going to challenge you on the point this is good it is good it was good and now i know i might not have known about that cold air but i know what's good and what's not good i don't know how it wasn't even a remix. They weren't even putting like a beat under it. It was just literally the opening of it, which I don't know. Do you like that?

I guess. You wouldn't even say you like the start of Circle of Life? Yeah, fine. Jason, you like that? Why are you being so accusatory of it? Well, because you said. You don't like the Circle of Life? You just said.

This is a classic American film. I was debating it like I was in a courtroom. Like I was on trial. Would you at least agree? Can you not agree that the circle of life is good? I think I can intellectually prove that it was good. Whoa, whoa. Weigh down a waiter or a waitress and get a complimentary drink. You're both a little worked up.

Hey, slow down. You're not in Vegas yet. You're not, right? We're not in Las Vegas yet Here's my question winding it down You know we aren't very good about doing the old You know Burn it down for insurance money Scale but I think for these Vegas

Ones I think we could do a Vegas specific Analysis of was the right decision Made here and I think we could play by blackjack rules so that is and this is we'll do it in past tense which will confuse it but uh what should the we know what they did but what should the mgm grand have done with mgm grand adventures hit stand double down or cash out they certainly cashed out uh they cashed out 40 of their chips and then then slowly all the rest but it's kind of an interesting actually to you know hit implies

put a little more muscle into it just take it a little further stand implies don't change it whatsoever double down is way more way harder uh i guess individually what is the face card you think what what does everyone think the face card you're seeing of this park is it's a it's the face of kurt krikorian saying i don't want to have a theme park anymore you see this is too it doesn't go that far because if it's 15 if your car is a blackjack or is it five car stud we're playing here or is it hold them which game are we playing that's also important to know before i decide to like ante what if i ante my bet or if i uh uh okay let me say this i think they were right to uh fold at the time now if there was a different timeline and this is maybe kind of an okay park in 2011 2005 or something and then they last for 10 years i think because of the growing up a theme park

adult audience, I think a doubling down later might have made more sense, but it would have taken another 20 years to get there for, to see it like an audience there that would want it. So I think they were correct to, to, to fold them. And I think that's a big thing in Vegas. And I think that might keep coming up with,

you know, a lot of parks. You need to hold before you double. You either need to double down or you need to stand. Because you need to let people get used to it. And yeah, building that audience but i think in vegas a town that just prints money every minute with gambling you know i i don't think they were willing to commit to like keeping this around should the scale really be knowing when to hold them knowing when to fold is that what we're discovering okay that's a good idea but i'd also like to introduce the concept of maybe they should have bluffed which is a

totally different concept and they should have just kept it at the same they said we're going to do more but then didn't and it's still open but in a shitty way now i'm i i don't i'm confused about how you would bluff in terms of owning and operating a theme park okay maybe that doesn't it's not one-to-one but in the in the fun poker way i think it kind of makes sense well if we're adding if we're breaking the rules and adding more that were not on my list then i think they should have flipped over the table okay sending all the cards and chips flying everywhere that's good and then run away that's kind of what they did that is what they did that is what they did yeah and then somebody had to

clean up their mess yeah um i don't know i think they should have i think it's you doubled i think you quintuple down and just way way more garner hold yeah animatronics yeah dude scary king louis louis louis juniors animatronics bursting out of every and of course an animatronic kenny rogers oh my god that would have been the greatest just don't mind me roasting in here he puts pops out of the window every once in a while uh do kids go like do people bring kids to vegas in this day and age i don't know here and there a little bit but like every now and then i bet a little and probably there's stuff you can do yeah it's probably more like you're you're vaguely local but do you really take like a big trip but even my my trip was like a couple of nights on the way to you know elsewhere in the southwest right so maybe it's that i think there's stuff to do if you're

going elsewhere but i don't know if you do like a lot of them still have pretty big arcades you know a lot of the outskirts casinos i think a lot of good arcades yeah catering to the local crowds have the like all-inclusive casino resorts with like an imax screen and a regal theater and a bowling alley and an arcade and like sure so that's all plenty so so somewhat somewhat but so if we see a kid we shouldn't call the police okay yes we don't need to be worried got it noted okay unless it's like an oliver twist and he's trying to pick your pocket oh yeah then call the police and get get your phone out because otherwise if you aren't holding it he's gonna take it but if they're charismatic enough i might join their little gang because they'll consider consider myself one of them self one yeah yeah yeah they need a tall guy

they everyone is on to their trick of two or three of them in a big trench hello i can't believe you're over 30 i thought you were 26 useful y'all. Look at your joints. They're working well. Your hair, it's brown. Your enthusiasm about circular life at a pool party convinces me you're the most youthful boy there is. I thought you were Billy Eilish's other brother. I thought it was Billy and Phineas and you. Meanwhile, my pockets have been thoroughly picked. They found your weakness being complimented on your youth by children.

Oh, that's kind of you to say. They finally fully sliced your Achilles. Oh, why'd you have to do that? You stole from me already. Hey, you're not going catch us big boy you look like you're 55 in reality oh fuck you oliver twist the deepest cut of all uh all right well watch out for pickpocket kids we gotta you know uh we gotta get on our game here because we're on the way but i'm we've we've at least kicked off the trip here with this you survive podcast the ride sin city nights and i'm so happy we're in it yeah lots of fun

stuff to talk about here what do you got i just have uh you can get one of the pieces of merch which was the king louis plush wow um and this is on ebay for 10 bucks it looks like a large head to the large head tiny body i a large head, tiny body? Did I just not see it good enough? I think he looks, I mean, he's got certainly a big head, but I don't know that it looks like a bobble. Let's bet on how big it is. Maybe I can catch him.

Maybe I can get one right at the end here. We can even up. The important rule of gambling, you stick around long enough, you can win it back. That's somewhere in Kenny Rogers' lyrics, isn't it? That's somewhere in Kenny Rogers' lyrics, isn't it? That's right. Hey, keep up with PTR Sin City Nights on the socials at Podcast The Ride.

We've got a... Yes, what? I just got a popped up ad for some bootlegged Dr. Evil and Mini-Me figures. A pop-up ad? Well, like it's popped up as a thing a night of you should see. That figures. A pop-up ad? Well, like it just popped up as a thing a night of you should see. That wasn't a pop-up ad.

Mike, you should see this. I do want to see it. We hear you talking about being concerned that you're not youthful enough. Will a couple of Dr. Evil and Mini-Me action figures fix that? Two grand for these. What? For Professor Sinister and Little Guy? figures fix that two grand for these what for professor sinister and little guy by hundreds and hundreds of uh lee of louis the lions for that that's true yeah uh okay we've got a month's

worth of sin city episodes here on the main strip bonus episodes on podcast the ride the fremont gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride the next episode of the series will be on the high roller tier club three uh and uh that as as mentioned is selected by the club three audience a little more mgm grand uh the 1990s wizard of oz theming and walkthrough at the mgGM Grand and maybe some other peripheral MGM Grand stuff so join Club 3 if you want to hear that but otherwise I think we're wrapping it up

so I guess I'll say cut no not that kind of cut laughter forever dog this has been a forever dog this has been a forever dog production executive produced by

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