Podcast: The Ride - Pleasure Island with Paul Scheer

Episode Date: May 11, 2018

Paul Scheer joins us on a journey to Pleasure Island. Featuring The Adventurers Club, The Comedy Warehouse, human mannequins, corporate funny business, the convoluted back story of Merriweather Pleasure, and a quick stop at Church Street Station. Plus, an exciting announcement! Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/ FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tonight, a once-in-a-lifetime podcast party that spills out into the streets. Every minute of this episode is a New Year's Eve celebration, featuring heel kickin' country, cool jazz, madcap explorers, and the funmeister of podcasting himself, Mr. Paul Scheer. It's Pleasure Island on Podcast The Ride in 3, 2, 1. Welcome to Podcast The Ride, the theme park podcast hosted by three men who, despite not having children, still possess strong opinions on the best diaper changing station in Disneyland. Joining me as always, Scott Gairdner. Hello. Too crowded in Adventureland. You've got to go deeper into the park, I think. It's Tomorrowland, I think, because it's that bathroom in the very back

by the Autopia. Well, Adventureland bothers me. You're saying Tomorrowland's the good one or the bad one? I'm saying that's a good one, yeah. Oh, okay, sure. Also, Jason Sheridan is here. Yeah, I'd have to agree with the Tomorrowland one. That bathroom's nice kind of out of the way. It's the opposite of the New Orleans Square one, which is

like a dead end, and there's a lot of traffic back up and constantly construction there for some reason. I'm glad we're in concert with this. Yeah. Let's bring our guest in for his opinion

on the best diaper changing station at Disneyland from the upcoming podcast, Unspooled. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Paul Scheer. As someone who has children, I will say that I have an issue

with the changing tables in all of Disneyland and I think they are too small. I have an issue with the changing tables in all of Disneyland. And I think they are too small. I have two children and they do not fit on those changing tables. I have to cram them in there. It's like a very small trunk that I'm trying to pack for a very long vacation. Putting my child in there. Legs are going up.

I have no room for my gear, my wipes, everything. It's a real mess. It looks great, not functional. Wow. And it's a length issue. Yes. And my kids are not abnormally long. I don't have very tall children.

I have average-sized children. And also, it's made of concrete. It's made of a very hard substance. It's not like when you go to, or at least the ones I've been to, because I feel like I'm looking at your face and you don't look. When I go to normal bathrooms, it's like a pull-down thing. It's a little bit of plastic. It's not hard concrete.

I feel like I'm changing. Is it like marble surfaces a little bit? It looks very nice. It's not what I want. I don't want to change my child on marble. It's not good for someone who is not cool with me changing their diaper and their heads are whipping around on marble. It is that anytime I have to change my kids,

now only one of them, it gives me way too much anxiety. Yeah, if there's like a jerk of the head and they slam backwards. Yeah, it's too much. That's the way I broke my arm the only like serious injury i've had was slipping on a on a marble floor oh really and falling backwards and broke my in new york city and then i had to like do all the new york tours with a broken eye the first i was ever in uh studio 8h or uh or the former conan studio i was like uh yeah i was a little dork in a sling so you had your arm

treated in new york yeah or actually wait no nothing had happened in new york and then we went to boston okay the best children's hospital in the country apparently so i lucked out but uh yeah but your arm looks great now by the way it does everything yeah every which way i'm demonstrating now uh but yeah keep kids away from marvel and when witness like walt disney probably like he changed his children on marble like there's a generation that changed children on a marble surface and they're like they lament the loss of this as a character building moment in most kids life i think but now like playgrounds and parks everything's like shredded rubber right everything's like really cushioned. Yeah, I mean, you think.

I am a ball of anxiety with my kids at these parks. Everything is there to hurt them in some way. Or at a certain point. Then they get to an age where then they're not hurt. But at this age, I'm a four and one and a half year old. Like, there's too many. Even though it's hard rubber, they can still fall. I'm here to say, as a man with a child who's been to disney world now there's issues there are issues but okay but you bring them over to that pluto's uh house and it's great great time well that's good what

ages are the what age uh four and one and a half so i spent i've been spending a lot more time recently i don't bring the one and a half year old yeah yeah it's a waste that stuff yeah i uh but i've spent a lot of time in toontown yeah yeah toontown usa yeah yeah you as a theme park fan do you ever feel uh obviously you're happy to be spending time with your kids but do you feel like uh frustrated that you're stuck in the kiddie area so not exploring the i have a very cool kid who happens to be 40 inches tall which means as a four-year-old he's much taller than normal four-year-olds maybe he's larger than normal

but uh he can ride roller coasters so uh he loves big thunder mountain railroad he goes on the go go he calls it go go gadget coaster i think this is called the gadget coaster but uh and he goes on a bunch of things i he's allowed to go on space mountain but i feel like that will freak him out and i i tell him he is not allowed to go on that the matterhorn are off limits and every day he wakes up and asks me am i tall enough now for the matterhorn so we have uh like a thing in our house where he stands up against it we see the 42 inches and we are tracking until he can ride the mat almost there it's current it's 42 inch watch right now that's it we are we are i mean we've been on 42 inch watch now for a while so i feel like when it happens it will happen but it's it's been a slow

go soon your child will have the coming age of coming of age experience of getting injured on the mat of just getting thrown around on that rickety ride really getting upset by that uh yeah he's yeah he's already having issues with the big thunder mountain railroad is that there's yeah you know which is a great ride yeah but you know scary yeah scary scary i was as a little i was very i'm short now as very short as a child and i would get like tossed around on those rides like my dad was like thankfully just there like for whatever on those rides like my dad was like thankfully just there like for whatever reason it was both my parents were always like all right make sure he sits on the inside of the thing right uh so that way you can just slam into your parents

yeah we kind of sandwich him in the middle of a big thunder mountain railroad it's good it's yeah it's a bit you're in that but that's uncomfortable as an adult to have three across in there. It's not a fun ride. But I will say going with my kid has been an amazing experience. Because I'm a Disney World, Disneyland, all theme parks person. But it's kind of great to watch a kid experience all of this. And see them just do it and get excited by it and you know i don't bring them to the parades i don't he doesn't even know that exists i'm like i don't need to get into that like good smart yeah i'm like no parades uh and most of the day that way and it's a small world

has become a great like refuge because it's kind of tiring to bring a kid and it's all air conditioned it's a nice ride it's about it feels like 20 minutes yeah and you get like as a parent you get a nice recharge on there so i'm i'm appreciating different parts of the park i've probably done roger rabbit more than i ever have done or probably want to do but yeah but uh yeah i've definitely i've explored a different side but that being said in the last three weeks i think i've been there three times no wow yeah i went there once to go to club 33 right oh so yeah you posted about this yes this is no private affair no yeah i got a for a birthday gift someone got me uh invitation to go to club 33 which was amazingly fun yeah have you all been

there i've never we've jason i have never been scott yeah yeah yeah it was it was a great experience i thought it was a pretty lovely thing did you stand out on the deck um i did i got to see the end of phantasmic and i forget if i've told this story on the podcast before but i at the time was uh like eyeing when to propose to my now wife and i had my i had the wedding ring in my pocket and i was like huh this like in case a moment struck yes and we were out there finishing would have been great and our rap my rationale in my head was like then like our our friends who were uh nice enough to let us in there like that then takes over the dinner conversation it's entirely about we just got engaged and not about

how cool you let us into club 33 i understand that yeah yeah i thought it'd be distracting but yeah i could have it was i will say as someone who is also married that it is nice to do that moment uh privately like like you don't want to like immediately like and we just did it like you want to kind of just be able to connect which by the way i you know uh yeah i think that that's yeah i think that's a good a good move i think so yeah even when i ended up doing it we were were on the bluffs in San Diego, along the beach. I was extremely stressed out by how many people were there to watch the sunset, a reasonable thing for people in the world to do. And I was so stressed out. And she's like, why do you care that there's people around?

You get kind of clicked with her right before. Why are you suddenly having this people phobia? So yeah, I felt the privacy pressure big time. There was no chance, though, you were going to run into a Captain Jack Sparrow face character. And then he'd steal the ring from me. He loves those jewels. And sometimes it's Johnny Depp just stealing people's jewels.

I proposed to my wife on a beach as well, and we it's Johnny Depp, just stealing people's jewelry. Yeah. The, I proposed to my wife on a beach as well. And we did it at night. And there's like all these cool fire pits and we did it. And there's a whole story to this, but the only thing, the end part was like, we finally kissed and,

and this kid yells, get a room. The literal nightmare, the movie scene scene it was like a 1980s movie we are we will this is very special for us what do you guys think about a disney wedding i mean we've there's been a lot of talk about a lot of things in this podcast but where do we fall on that uh it's well there's first of all i'm a big pro wrestling fan okay and some pro wrestlers got married at disney a couple like a year ago and they did i think they didn't do the big crazy version of it because i think there's tears to it

they don't have it on the website but like they did like there's like a little chapel out to the disneyland hotel or like that chapel but like a little spot where they do it floridian has like a whole big thing on oh there's like a wedding villa there to the Disneyland Hotel. Or like not chapel, but like a little spot where they do it. Grand Floridian has like a whole big thing out in Florida. Oh, there's like the wedding villa there, which is really pretty funny to walk around. I think there are tasteful ways to do it. And then like obnoxious like Saudi Prince style version. Where like you're walked down the aisle by Gaston or something. Or a less evil character, I guess.

There's a beautiful courtyard like in the grand californian out here and it's sort of like self-contained like you can't see downtown disney from it you can't see a starbucks or like sprinkles cupcakes and all uh but like there are rooms above it like i i was my family was visiting a couple years ago and they were staying in a room and i walked out on the balcony and I looked down at like three stories down, there was a full wedding reception going on. But it is like very private and intimate and like beautiful foliage. Well, if I'm getting married there, I want to get married.

I want to have my whole reception at Be My Guest. It would be a very expensive. Oh, in Orlando. Yeah. Who went to that be my guest who was a guest yeah i've been i've been twice yeah because you've mentioned you're the one who yeah okay i i'm only knowing your voices and now i'm always trying to so you did you went there to get the 8 30 reservation right yes it was a whole yeah was it worth it you didn't really talk about

the be your guest experience well i had so much to do well yeah i convinced my friends to bail on the rent a car that we had paid for already i was like they'll reimburse you they'll figure it out uh yeah it's it's great it's it's got the three different like you have the the ballroom where they dance yeah and you have the beast swing which has the flower the rose that like is wilting it's just sitting there though it's just sitting there but it does fall like they have an effect that makes it look like it's falling or whatever throughout your day uh it was it worth it to ditch the rental car yeah of course well i mean but was it worth it in general because i feel like it's a coveted place to have dinner it's hard to get a reservation yeah very hard like stock it which i did for like weeks yeah if you unless you book like a year out

and but i mean so but you felt like it was you felt like it was worth the hype? It just feels like you're eating in a place that looks like the Beast's Castle? If you're a weirdo like we are, yes, it's worth the hype. But if you're a normal human being, you're like, okay, yeah, it looks like the movie. Got it. The food is good. Yes. And the atmosphere is good.

But I guess my question, and i'm not trying to be difficult about it but does it fall like above bayou does it go below it where does it where does it fall in the in the atmospheric disney experiences um i think the food is a little better than bayou we're talking blue bayou okay we just call bayou yeah yeah uh uh the blue yeah the atmosphere i think is on par with it the blue like it's it's it's cool it's really cool if you like beauty and the beast a lot like they do it like the snow is falling behind you i'm down with that and like again the b swing is like the coolest place are they walking around yes they well he's you can take pictures with him which doesn't quite make sense because like he should be upset you're in his house.

Maybe he wants company. But yeah, he's a lonely man. Yeah, so you see that they walk around. When he walks through, there's a big like, ah, now introducing the beast. And then he comes through, so that's fun. Like introducing the couple that just got married for the first time. This is a married couple. It's great.

I mean, it's great. If you like this type of nonsense, it's on the high end of this type of nonsense. I feel like if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably, yeah, you're on. You're on. Indeed, yeah. You're in. What's the best restaurant in a park if we leave out hotels and subsequent?

Yeah, so no Napa Roses here. I guess you'd have to count that out. Oh, I have one. I think it's Le Cellier in Canada, Napcot. Oh, I've never eaten there. Oh, yeah. It's a steakhouse. It looks like it's supposed to be in a cellar.

I guess back in the day, it used to be a buffeteria, like a full cafeteria buffet sort of thing. And then at some point, they made it into a steakhouse. And it's great. That is a very hard reservation to get because it's so small. And I think Epcot across the board has like really solid food choices. Like the Italian Pavilion has a good food. That's a great like go-to dinner place.

Did not love the French restaurant there, though. My mom loves it. They had an okay restaurant there. It was fine. There's a couple there, and I feel like they've turned over a lot. Like they've redone them a few times now. But they're never, like, at the top of anyone's list. Yeah.

Who would be Italian? There hasn't been one consistent Italian restaurant as there is a change. Alfredo's was there for years. Alfredo of Fettuccine Alfredo had... Of course. The man who invented it uh which was amazing but then i think i always heard that they didn't want to accept the disney dining plan or they didn't want to lower their prices or stuff so eventually like when the licensing agreement ended they were not accepting me

they're bartering within the overall disney it they it was very fancy i mean it was a really intense place like they're very serious about their pasta yeah um i haven't i tiffins is supposed to be really good i've never had that that the animal kingdom that's like their high end i've eaten there is that good it is very good yeah do you have an answer to this i'm thinking of my answer like i might might go to it but continue i'm sorry oh i continue. I think the best, I'll say this. I'll be very bold here. The best fast service restaurant is the Sol Cantina in Pandora. Oh, I know the cantina in Frontierland, that Sol Cantina.

I thought that's the same of it. Let me look the name up. No, is that Pecos Bills? No, it's let me look the name up no is that bill pecos bills no it's a mexican place disney world or disneyland okay disneyland oh yeah the um zocalo zocalo sorry that's not a navi word oh all is a navi word yes which language you were i sorry i mispronounced it. Satoolikantine. Okay. Sorry.

Fans were screaming. They're very upset with all of us right now. In their cars. My Pandora experience was really a bust. Oh, no. So I went to go, my mom has a timeshare at Disneyland. My mom got into the timeshare game at Disneyland. At Disney World? Oh, sorry, Disney World.

Sorry. I'm sorry. That's okay. Got into Disney World early on. Early on like but just late enough that originally when you bought a timeshare there they would give you like a lifetime free pass like that was the first wave of it like oh and so my mom got in on how long you've been doing uh like over 25 years i think she's had it like so um so she's like on the second wave of it so she has like whenever i tell people i don't know her point she talks about her points all the time but whenever i mention the amount of points

she has people like whoa like there's it's a it's a comically large amount of points and she has them for life but now the new points you only have them for 99 years so like you can't like you can't pass them on to your family like that's basically like you can but it will eventually but they got to use it yeah my family was in it for a little while yeah like five or six years we're in it so like as a kid i was like so how are the points looking this year are we doing what because one year we went for two weeks we spent two weeks in disney world which was wild that's amazing i I think that Trump should repeal that. I think that it's like the death tax.

I think that he should allow the kids to get the full amount of points. That would only be good for... Kids need to get those points. I was going to say that my favorite dining experience is... And this is... I apologize to your listeners. I am an ardent Disney fan fan i forget names a lot of the times um is the either it i think it's a carnation cafe in disneyland it's like the old timey cafe

main street main street where it's like where they do the character breakfast in the morning i feel like that is a quintessential like a disneyland experience in like in both parks i think they like because it looks like old timey diner like red and white kind of thing and like poos there and they have good while like uh good french toast there's something about that one that's a higher quality than good cheeseburger there like a good like whatever a good version of a johnny rocket's cheeseburger you can get at the carnation cafe if you're facing the castle is that the one on the left to the right uh disneyland if your face on the left okay yeah that that the one on the left or the right? Disneyland, if you're facing on the left. Okay.

Yeah, that's the one. I've never been there. But it's in the middle of the street. Uh-huh. The Carnation's in the middle of the street. Oh, is that the one that does the breakfast buffet? Oh, no. Yeah, I see.

I'm always wrong. What is that? It's a plaza. It's called the plaza in Disneyland, and in Disney World, it's called the Crystal Palace. I'll let it all this. Okay, Crystal Palace is the one I'm thinking of. That was great. Okay. And Carnation Cafe had a good breakfast here last Palace. I'll let it all this. Crystal Palace is the one I'm thinking of that was great. Okay.

And Carnation Cafe had a good breakfast here last week. I had a good pancake. Wow. Although they served it as a pancake and granola and I was like,

oh, that'd be good, like a granola pancake. It was just granola sprinkled on a pancake which was an odd. That's a weird choice. That's odd. Yeah, and I felt

uncomfortable eating it. Mike and I went down to Reese because they have all the Pixar Fest stuff going on right now. And we went to the Pizza Planet restaurant and we're like, there's their, oh, look, it's, let's try the cheeseburger pizza. Which I've, like, had before. I've had this, I've had the idea of cheeseburger pizza before.

And this, usually it's just ground, a layer of ground beef under the cheese or on top of the cheese. This was like, they, like, quartered hamburger patties and had chunks of it like it was fine it was nothing it was fine but we posted it on the twitter account it's god reply immediately spit back that's fucking disgusting yeah i didn't even have a joke way to say it it just looked uh horrible and i showed my wife and she said the same thing we're just jabbing you uh on your trip from before it was covered in rain like a thousand island type dressing so like miserable no but i mean if you have you ever dipped like a real cheap pizza in dressing before that's the papa john's like key to success right i mean essentially it was like this is not that good but if you you just dip it, you'll forget about that. Put enough sauce on anything.

It's delicious. Dip a Jake's Pizza in some creamy ranch. It's delicious. Sure. Well, we should talk about, you know, there's plenty of fine dining options and, of course, entertainment options at today's topic. Oh, yes. Pleasure Island. This is.

Yeah. Hey, if you're looking to, you know we we could talk about rides all day but if you want to talk about the the finest entertainment the best top 40 jams yeah and uh and there's some restaurants and shop it's all there it's all on pleasure island it's amazing i want to tell you like a little bit of my background of disney and why i feel so connected to pleasure island so i grew up in new york and uh from the time i was three years old to 21 we went to florida every single year not just to florida we went to walt disney world so we were there all the time in a minimum of five to six days a minimum of that maximum dream yeah so i didn't understand that

you could take vacations anywhere else and i didn't understand why you would want to go anywhere without a theme park like and i wasn't like a purist in the sense that i was like i'd like to go to universal we went to universal it was great like i wasn't you know but uh yeah i that was my my entire life from 3 to 21 was that and when i had like my girlfriend in college he's like well we should go to hawaii i was like why and then we and then we went to france and i made her go to disneyland paris and we were only there for a very short period of time in france like like a day and a half i was like we're gonna go there you made the majority of it be disneyland the good thing was

it was completely empty so we could like really knock that park out real quick as it mostly has been in its history yeah it's a little bit of an out of the way place uh but it was uh it was fantastic i actually found that i found the haunted mansion there to be uh quite spookier than uh the any other one that i've experienced it's scarier i lied I love that ride. That was the best part of the day. Yeah, they did a great job. And it's still the scenes and characters you recognize, but with this layer of the Old West. And it is, yeah, that Phantom is scarier.

It's a real good one. So I spent a lot of time, a lot of time at Walt Disney World. And so as I got older and even when i was younger like pleasure island was like um this is cool like i am going to like my idea of what like a cluck where you know people go to like whatever like senior frogs or whatever i was like this is my yeah where my people are you know and like and as i got when i when i got a little bit older like high school age, my parents would let me go

to Pleasure Island by myself, which was great. Oh, yeah. But yes, but I originally went there with my dad and we would spend, I needed to get there to watch at least the midnight celebration,

which I think happened at 10 o'clock. This, okay, so I was telling my dad we were doing this and he went and tried to hunt this because he was convinced of the same thing and yes it seemed like on weekdays they would do it at like 10 or 10 30 yes because every night was new year's yeah every night was new year's yeah that like if you were to ask me like what like i did my research everything that my

research is not my memory of pleasure Island. Like it was like, yeah, it was like the theming behind it. It was like, that was not out in front of this place at all. Like, okay. Okay.

Cause it was like, it was like this guy, uh, James pleasure invented. I'm like, it was like, to me it was like this moon that had sunglasses on that looked like a rejected like McDonald's character.

That was the fun Meister. Yeah. The fun. After tonight, Mac tonight already exists and they still go in on like the moon the cool moon character for adults fun meister is different from mac tonight everyone be very clear about that but it felt so cool to be like it's midnight it's it's new year's eve every night like and they would have fireworks and music

and they count down like that's a crazy great thing. And I want to acknowledge, because there's people I know who are pretty advanced in their theme park knowledge who still, when I talk about this, oh, yeah, it's this nightclub district where every night there was a New Year's celebration. And so many people have been like, the Simpsons joke? That's real? That's an actual thing? Because in the Itchy and Scratchy episode whener and marge break off from the kids yeah when they go to parents island uh it's there it's new year's eve constantly just like every five minutes right but like uh it just seemed like kind of a like an odd joke of like how a place like that could be irritating and i've like recently told people there was a real place they're like you're fucking kidding that's so crazy it was like this cool it was an interesting

thing and it was kind of like, I think in my opinion, like at the height of like good, bad Disney decisions. It was like, we're gonna appeal to Orlando. Like this is gonna be a place where Orlando people can come, you get a wristband and you would be able to come in and just go to any of the like, but it was almost like a separate park. Like Pleasure Island was like a park. Yeah and that was another thing my dad came across there was a season pass

just for pleasure island you could buy a pass okay for uh an annual pass just to go to the clubs and then you could yeah and i remember like my dad and i would like figure out like well we're gonna go here every night it was worth buying like the more expensive band. Have you all gone to Pleasure Island? I have not spent a lot of time. I really only went in the middle of the day on a band trip. Okay. And I cannot figure out which place I went to. And my mom was chaperoning this trip, kind of. And like I was dancing with girls and I had never been more insecure in my life.

Oh, wow. Because also like's like a year or two prior the girls introduced like what would be called grinding i guess you would call it yeah and then like they're like kind of and it's also in the middle of the day so everyone's like not really you know feeling it i didn't even know the pleasure island was open during the day because i always thought it like started opening up at like six but this is pleasure island was like gasping for air at multiple points i feel like yes the last few years of pleasure island because that's what i came across looking up the researching for this

episode a lot of videos on youtube and the type of video you're going to run into is i transferred a vhs tape from a camcorder in 1991 of walking around pleasure island or i'm here in 2008 and it's shutting down yeah there's a lot of planters and a lot of stuff is already closed by the way i need to get my videotapes out i have like literally like boxes of videotapes of like all we did was just tape everything like it was it's almost the most uninteresting home video because it's like who's who is this for like yes here's four rides on mr toad's wild ride like great none of them are better than the other like but yeah we taped it it was almost like we can tape this so we should and now we have this

property it was like like i felt like the same way that you feel like if you got like a i got ghostbusters on tape now like you know like i got mr toad's ride i can live it anytime i want um a pretty youtube era that was important like yeah i remember having like i took my own video of alice in wonderland and i don't even need to go to the park anymore yeah um i uh to me pledge island was two things that were like my favorite things um besides the new years every night and it was not the dance clubs it was this place called adventurers club sure yeah all right that was the best thing ever it was like kind of a spinoff or at least my memory of it was like of like the jungle cruise and you would go in it was like a basically like a fully themed like kid-friendly cocktail bar where they would have like

people singing songs there's like a gorilla that ran around uh certain points uh and and then you know you would like play games it would bring some of the people into like one room and then the other people go into another room and it was kind of like everything that people are doing now it was like the best it was yeah as a kid i would make my dad stay there for hours i i did the same thing i talked about this on the show before but the adventurers club was like looms so large in my childhood the adventurers club and the comedy warehouse that's where the first two places that i ever saw live comedy oh the comedy warehouse equally amazing it was like we're just running back and forth they're they're right across

they're right across away from each other i didn't know that. But the Adventurers Club, the most notable thing, there was, do you remember the giant idol in the main slot? Oh, yes, yes. There's a giant animatronic stone head, and it talks to you, and it always asks for volunteers to do an embarrassing dance and stuff. And I had gone there so much, I those volunteers got like pins you couldn't buy this door yeah so i pimped my dad into i was like get up there you do get up there and do it uh and then i don't remember if this was the same night in my mind i've mushed it together but we

stayed so late it was like last it was closing down and we walk outside into pouring rain like an electrical store in time with like chain lighting in the distance and the bus stop is on the other side of of like right yeah we theater and the cirque de soleil had been built by that point so we had to run through torrential rain because i was like well we got to see all the shows tonight some of the best memories of my dad in because my parents are divorced but uh was like being like me and my dad just in in those yellow disneyland ponchos just like braving like awful awful storms oh yeah yeah terrifying yeah yeah it was fun though it's like because in the line my dad was always cool to be like let's go on the line now that would be very long and then it would be empty

and then you know you know he'd tough it out oh he toughed it out yeah once you get that poncho on you're fine yeah yeah you're set um yeah adventurers club i'm upset that i didn't go to this i'm so i didn't know i didn't know it existed it wouldn't have been cool when you went with the band i don't think i don't think people would have been like i want to go in for an interactive like theater experience well it was open though when i went with my family i just think that i wasn't in the know i was i wasn't reading the zine the what do you zines you call them the old thing scott was reading yeah because i did read all these all these dorky magazines and stuff and for some reason it was not on my uh radar it's everything i thought i couldn't go

because i was a kid but this wasn't all ages to me, that was the coolest part about it. Because I had no desire to go dancing at mannequins or Videodrome or whatever it was. I wanted to watch these people. They had a special thing to say when you walked in. Here, I wrote it down. It was... Jason might have it too. Yeah, it's Congaloosh.

Yeah, Congaloosh. You wiggle your your hands you take a drink and you wave it felt so adult i think that was the thing that was so cool about it as a kid i think i would go back there now and it's probably i'm sorry it's probably what you assumed adult entertainment would be like you put like it's it seems like in a similar it's it's like disney tried to start a magic castle just like all of a sudden from the from scratch and and i like now you realize magic castle is this odd particular anomaly weird la thing but you probably like probably as a kid you think like oh yes these bizarre secret room cheeky theater shows or it's just the kind of clever uh cool adult entertainment that people

are always getting up to i almost think if the pleasure island had like like i feel like they kind of like again they appeal to like orlando and they don't appeal to like the people are going to the parks i feel like adventure like the adventure club would be better served as if they did more of those type of theme like more disney type theme things instead of being like and you can totally do like i remember they were like shots girls in like in pleasure island and that was like it's so incongruous to what you know of disney like yeah they had like syringe shots i remember at one point i was there and it was like they had like syringe shots or something did you ever get did you drink there were you old enough to okay huh huh like I feel like I was a too I was a good boy I wasn't

gonna push it but we didn't even have that oh you know that was the thing dude with the wristbands I think the wristbands would dictate if you could drink so yeah you there was no way to even fake it sneak it yeah okay okay it's uh it's you said I believe Jason before we started you said that they were Pleasure Island was like trying to be everything to everyone they were trying to give it yeah every single demographic would enjoy and that's like the bad the good bad disney it was like this is a good idea but it's too it's too scattershot there was so much going on i mean mike even your description of like going there and like dancing with girl like girls, I think I would have been a little younger the main times I would have gone there. My most memories of being at Pleasure Island was between 11 and 14.

And I was so focused on the comedy warehouse and the Adventurers Club. I was like, the concept of meeting people is alien to me. I would go there by myself and just sit quietly in the comedy warehouse i mean a lot of my time at disney is spent by me by myself like because my parents were like we're just staying at the hotel i'm like well i'm gonna go to there you know and bring a book yeah you know like and like read books online but uh like but yeah like it was just me by myself at those places not talking to anyone just like watching i would do that like i remember taking like the bus once like i want to go walk around the virgin mega store it was like a giant three-story i spent a lot of time there too i could i could be by myself right um i got i bought blood sugar

sex magic at that mega store perfect years after it came out this is like 97 or something this is about a beck biography that i read front to back and learned learned a lot from as a very formative item thanks virgin mega store ask the listeners which item they purchased at the orlando how do you how do you virgin i i think I bought an optic nerve collection. Really? Because Virgin Megastore used to have a really intensive graphic novel selection. Oh, wow. Yeah, right.

They had cool stuff. They had, like, cool comics. I remember, like, finding cool stuff there, like, once in Orlando and then, like, on a high school trip to Times Square. Yeah, that, like, that Times Square one was amazing. That's the one I had my most familiar with. The other thing I loved about... I have a whole story about the Comedy Club.

Oh, yeah. It's even hard to break down what it is because it is an assemblage of insanity. There's a Jessica Rabbit-only clothing store, and then there's four dance clubs, and then there's the Ventures Club, and there's a comedy thing, and like there's a jessica rabbit like only clothing store and then there's like four

dance clubs and and then there's the ventures club and there's a comedy and then there's the nightly new year's eve celebration and then there's uh disney quest which i like disney quest yeah i love disney quest right right which is like a pay one price paid video arcade like you like or at least when i was there was like you paid like 25 bucks and could play any game you want uh-huh and that to me blew my mind with cyberspace mountain and uh magic carpet right which i got ill on what's that i felt i almost threw up on that oh really yeah i was so excited about it and then i almost threw up it was probably weird old like vr oh yeah it was bad it wasn't it was awful yeah but it was so exciting like i mean, to me, the best part of that place was when you get in there by yourself and you could ride the elevator up.

And it was like a special, like Robin Williams did a special Aladdin or a genie from Aladdin thing. So he was in the elevator with you and he would make the Disney Quest appear. There's a thing that's only in this elevator, in this particular themed experience that's so bizarre i was you know there's a that thing is similar to our friend andrew grissom just turned us on to a did you ever go to mars 21 12 yeah i've never heard of it till recently which had like a there was like a simulator you had to go on to get into the restaurant it was a very it was the poor man's version of like a planet hollywood because

the simulators where they spent all their money it was like they like it was and simulator is is a generous way to describe it it was like you were in a little box you sat down and it was so janky and it just like it just shook it didn't really move it just like almost like you could picture like five kids is like pushing it really hard and then the door would open on the other side it wasn't you know so and you get out and you'd walk into mars oh it didn't take you anywhere it didn't elevate oh no no no yeah it was like well yeah it was the same thing as star tours but take away all the cool things of star tours and then you would walk into this place, but then they had no money. So it was like just the surface of Mars as a restaurant.

So there was no real theming besides like, oh, you're here now. That's it. It was like a big open space, and it just became notorious for everybody who worked at MTV and VH1, which is right upstairs, to get super drunk at their bar.

Because when I started working at VH1, people would just go, yeah, we're going around Mars 2112. And everyone was psyched to get into that simulator. And then they would get super drunk at their bar. Because when I started working at VH1, people would just go, yeah, we're going on Mars 2112. And everyone was psyched to get on that simulator. And then they would get really drunk and then get on the simulator. So like, it was because that play at that time was becoming like, this is not going well for the Mars 2112. Sometimes the simulator wasn't even working,

and you just had to walk through the simulator just to get through into the restaurant. It was it was bad news we'll show you a video if you're curious just keep walking they had one in schaumburg illinois where i grew up oh really yes it was another multiple we got to do all episode about the shop woodfield mall yeah yeah yeah there's yeah there was a lot of fans demanded the only rainforest cafe still there jeez really one of the only rainforests that still exist wow uh and the and of course the disney uh the mickey's kitchen oh yes that was one of the mickeys whoa i didn't know that disney

store there were only two locations of a disney store restaurant so it's kind of like the one here in los angeles that's attached to the movie theater the ice cream shop kind of yeah it's an ice cream shop disney store yeah elevated the with el capitan yeah yeah but you were well so that's like going to that bar for stupid reasons in times square you must have had all this like this this this pleasure island and disney affection growing up and like you must have like badly wanted to take this into your adulthood and get people to dumb restaurants of that name yeah i mean it's a constant battle of people not wanting to go and do my stuff like my wife like like uh for my birthday this year like

it was just it was weird timing we were away we're back and she's like what do you want to do and now she oh my wife was working that was what was happening and and she's like uh and i was like i'm just gonna go to disneyland i was like it'll be fun like i don't like i didn't have anything planned for the day i was like i'll come back and then she's like what why would you go there like during the day by yourself i was like no no it'd be fun like i didn't want it was i had a great time i went on that new uh star wars like vr thing which is amazing we just we just did it yeah we loved it yeah i mean it's great now i have one in glendale now too uh-huh we did the glendale one yeah yeah yeah right next to the JCPenney's.

You've got a VR spectacular. You're making us feel that your willingness to be open about going to Disneyland by yourself makes us feel less alone. I don't often admit it. I try to hide where I was. I just got busted by my wife. I didn't want to even tell her. But there's been days when I'm just like, if I have that season pass, which I do, I'd

be like, I'll go down there and ride when they switch over the Haunted Mansion into the Nightmare Before Christmas thing and come back. I don't care. Sure. Just that? Yeah. It's a luxury you have. That's making me realize I have been to Disneyland by myself and been too ashamed to tell my

wife that was what I did. Oh, yeah. She'll find this out from listening that you ever done that. Maybe Lindsay knows where you're coming from. I feel alone when I go by. I feel like I'm not. So you guys have all gone by yourself. I've gone by myself.

It's usually like I have something to do at WonderCon or there's something around. I don't think I've gone down alone and not told anybody, but I've certainly been in the park. I've drank alone at Trader Sam's park i've drank alone at trader sam's i've drank alone at the bar at the carthay circle i've uh maybe drank alone at that circle one in the middle of downtown by the way i'm gonna say carthay circle might be my favorite yeah very good we love the lounge too if you ever done in the middle of the day i'm sure this is the 10th time i've said yes you go and you have a Walt's Scotch Mister, a Manhattan,

and it totally reinvigorates you. It's a good midday. I had a martini there. I should have done that. I did a midday drink there because I was like, why not? I'm here. This is great. Not a bad line, too.

I went down in December just on a weekday just to see, because I was going home two days later like a week or two to see my family for the holidays and i was like oh i'm not i didn't i can't schedule no one else could go down and it's like well i want to see christmas i want to see disneyland at christmas i just went and then i was like middle of the day i was very tired i was like i'm gonna go eat at the hotel and i went to whitewater snacks the uh quick service restaurant it's all the way in the back it's very quiet they pump in nature sounds and soothing music i had the whole restaurant to myself i remember now i went down i have said

this before i went down to see dick fendike in the parade oh yes i remember for like an hour it was an hour i don't think i went on a ride I think I literally got out I bought a cupcake I watched an old man in a car go down main street and I was out of there because I had like I think I had to do an I think we had an improv practice that I had to get back I think that's right yeah you know it's like my like when I I think I got used to because when I would go with my family I'm an only child so they would like my parents, even though they have a Disney timeshare, they don't seemingly like the parks. They really like the hotels and the restaurants. I think they almost just like that they don't have to think about anything. It's like, why would I go to France when I could just have a nice French meal at this place?

And you have to do research and look up where are the nice hotels and where are the nice restaurants. You know, you go to Disney World and look up where are the nice hotels and where are the nice you know you go to disney world they'll all find them somewhere she's so excited she's like i check my bags at the airport and then they're in my hotel room because she does like the disney oh the bus the bus and everything um so i mean by the way i'm speaking about oh this is the thing i that's what happened i went to club 33 but i went there with friends. Then I spent a week in Aulani, the Disney resort in Hawaii. And then my son's birthday was on Monday, and I brought him there. And that was the most Disney I've done in a very long time. You know, I know somebody who was in at Aulani when the death notice went out.

Oh, I was talking to somebody there about that. Yeah, yeah. What it was like uh uh it like it just it was almost too surreal to believe and just everybody's looking at like he's got to maintain calm for the kids have to just but like you go outside and everybody was it was kind of like people eyeing each other like is this real are we all is a is a is a bomb coming our way right now and he said like the bonding after it had happened was phenomenal like every single person you ran into is like hey we made it

like just everything was this like the great bonding of humanity happened from that we all had the experience of getting a fucking alert on our phone saying we're gonna die well maybe most of us had to deal with children and like how do we yeah my god i could like i could not imagine i talked to like i did this little boat trip at off the alani and i asked the guys like what was it like and he's like yeah they were really nice disney people invited us into the hotel and they were like hey you want to hang out here like you know like you know like you know like you'd like because i'll spend your last hours because no one could get home or whatever yeah so we just like hung out in the hotel with them and they were like nice to us and was like which seemingly was surprising to me from about disney like being like i can see disney at that point being like you know you guys

kind of work on the water so i maybe stay down there if you could uh it'd be great still costs us money ultimately yeah this place gets destroyed well the hurricane last year that hit florida like disney got a lot of good press because like they went out of their way to feed people and like they gave like next to nothing rooms to florida residents and there were characters around there was activities for kids and buffets and like uh kristin bell was singing like show tunes uh she got josh Gad's family rooms. And I believe that was a 180 because I think they've kind of

miffed it on Hurricane Prep in the past. But they seemed like they did a good job in 2017. Well, you know who really miffed it on Hurricane Prep was the Pleasure family who let the island

fall into disarray. I don't know if you read the backstory of Pleasure Island. This backstory is so confusing. Can you try to break it down? I have a couple of questions about it because I did enough research that made me confused about it.

I don't think any amount of research would totally clear it up. There is so much. Meriwether, Adam, Pleasure. Meriwether adam pleasure meriwether meriwether adam pleasure before we start this so so what and maybe you guys found this this is called pleasure island which is from pinocchio the name pleasure island is from pinocchio it's the evil place it's the debaucherous place that the kids go that they should not they learn a lesson not to drink and smoke and they turn into donkeys.

And then they work with salt mines. And now here's my question. So that's the theming, right? You should just stick to that. Call it Pleasure Island because it's based on Pinocchio. And make it, but I guess it has a very evil negative connotation. That must be, this is weird. They had to invent another definition of pleasure. But they're not naming it Pleasure Island.

Right, that don't call it Pleasure Island. That's what I find so bizarre about it is because when people hear it 99 of all the dads who went here weren't like let me look into the backstory of this place and then he's like oh it's not the pinocchio thing it's a man named meriwether okay and also and then the the big mascot is not meriwether pleasure it's jessica rabbit right but also the moon man but then there's no visual depiction of meriwetherica rabbit right but also the moon man but also the funmeister but then there's no visual depiction of meriwether pleasure anywhere right only in the adventurous club he's in a picture in the adventurous club didn't but but then every place had a plaque yeah

there were 26 plaques scattered about the island the plaques were black. Yes. With like gold-ish. So hard to see at night. Yeah. And they made an incredibly convoluted back. I mean, here at the entrance plaque, this is like. Are you going to read the video drum one? Because the video drum one is one of my favorite ones. Well, this is just a snippet of the unverifiable, anecdotal, purely subjective, theoretical,

alleged purported history also ersatz. So, like, it's a gag. It's like, this is fake. They're telling you it's fake. Founded in 1911. Founded in 1911. Meriwether Pleasure's profitable canvas manufacturing and sale fabricating empire founded on this island provided him with capital to indulge his lifelong interest in the exotic the experimental and the

unexplainable and very quick side track to that because i found a longer history that explained that he was he made sales that's what mary with a pleasure did that's what all these warehouses were were sale manufacturing uh rooms warehouses and it was like a failing business until world war one so he was he's a war profiteer is who meriwether pleasure he is a war profiteer and he is also known as the grand funmeister so the funmeister is a nod to his own made-up history by the way how much fun would it have been to have a man dressed like you know like like almost like a life-size version of the monopoly man running away yeah merida brother welcome to my island yeah and walking around and just being a gregarious sort you know you put a

big mustache on him give him a monocle and let him just run around there and be like he's the ghost of meriwether meriwether they didn't they didn't want to go all in on him though because like that's probably like teens are like who the fuck's this old man like they wouldn't like that they want a sexy cartoon woman or they want a moon man by the way speaking of ghosts i just remember that one of the things the adventures club that they wanted to always do is drink with a ghost yes so they were going to do the haunted mansion technology to project a ghost next to you so you'd be in this ghost bar i thought that was so someone would be playing a ghost and talking but it would look like they were yeah it's amazing in another room yes they are it is live yes whoa that's cool i know there was a

bunch of like expansion plans for it if it was like the most popular thing ever which it wasn't but i will say i bet it would be now yeah it would be now and there were plans to put an adventurous club in downtown disney in anaheim according to jim hill i believe he mentioned that on a recent podcast they were going to put it out here and then as they started to dial back what california adventure and downtown disney were going to be that was gone that stinks because you know they put in like that that store they take pictures of babies and like bean pods or whatever it is, you know, but I may be gone now because of the Starbucks. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That was there for a long time, but maybe now in this like elevated with the level of escape room and all that stuff. I think the theming and everything. Yeah. I feel like that's what star Wars is going to be.

It's kind of like interactive fully. Like, you know what I think? And this is, it goes back to like this dumb thing of like interactive fully. Like, you know what I think? And this is, it goes back to like this dumb thing of like, I feel like 40s is lost on people. On How'd This Get Made, we just watched Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow.

And at a certain point, someone's like, yes, this is what people want. They want to watch a movie that was like the old serials because that's what Indiana Jones is like. And what people forget is like, no, no, no. Indiana Jones is still like a contemporary movie. Yes, it takes place in the 40s but it's not like literally like it's not like it's not nodding its head to the 40s so much you're like hey there what's going on over there you know it's like it's not like that people don't want i want it

yeah me too yeah i'm all in yeah adventurers club imprinted on my subconscious so much anytime i see something of like you know mid-century explorecentury explorer, I'm like, all right, got to make sure to see that, at least on DVD. Oh, 100%. Like, yeah, I would be going, if it was that, I mean, that's why I like Trader Sam's to a certain degree, too. Yes. Because Trader Sam's has that same kind of energy.

It's like, it's an explorer. It's a pirate theme. It's a this. It's, you know, it's a TV. And you're with all the artifacts he brought back from his travels. Yeah. That's why. The Orlando with all the artifacts he brought back from his travels. The Orlando one has artifacts, yeah.

Have you gone to the... Oh, I haven't gone to the Trader Sam's. It's like a year old, two? A year and a half old? Something like that. It's in the Polynesian. Oh, because I just went to the Indiana Jones bar. Yes, John. In Disney Springs.

Yeah, it was fun. That's a great bar because that's a perfect theming. It's like Indiana Jones. And they got the plane is like a big decked out restaurant out there. It's perfect. In the former Pleasure Island. Exactly. In the landing is what it all became.

The specific area. Right. So you had the J Sparrow. You were getting to a plaque. There's 26 plaques. Can I read one of my favorite ones? Huh? Can I read one of my favorite ones? Huh? Can I read one of my favorite plaques?

Please. This is, I think, the one on the Videodrome one, which is basically a club that had just a lot of music videos playing in it. Videopolis. Videopolis East. Oh. It was all ages. That was the only all ages.

Built for island founder Meriwether Pleasure's son Henry, the mad genius of Lake Buena Vista, and Henry's life work, the Pleasure Cellular Automation. Okay, so that's that. Henry died thinking his experiments in artificial intelligence had failed, but when the building was reopened in 1987, the automaton was alive and thriving. In fact, it has directed the refurbishing of its home

and designed the sophisticated computer hardware that shows itself to its best advantage. That does not make sense. It's a poorly worded thing. I'm not, as I was reading it, I was like, I'm hitting the periods. It doesn't really. Yeah, no, it's all wordy.

These are all tough. They needed an editor. He had two... In the history, he had two sons, Henry and Stuart. And they're like Trump's failed son. They're like Donald Jr. and Eric. They just, like, if you follow the line through these plaques, they're constantly fucking up.

Their mismanagement led to their bankruptcy of the island. Yeah. And it had gotten vacated. And then Hurricane Connie hit. And that wiped it out altogether. But yeah, it was a wealthy industrialist who had two idiot sons who fucked up his empire. How bizarre. This is my favorite plaque.

It was at the lookout point at Pleasure Island. And this is my favorite because it's so off game of everything else. Son of Island founder Meriwether Pleasure, paranoid Henry Pleasure, camped up here every single night from December 8, 1941 to V-J Day. He was convinced that the Axis powers were plotting an assault on America by coming ashore at pleasure island which was then and remains 80 miles from the atlantic ocean in his nearly four years of vigilance henry fired his musket only once musket is a weird detail uh he mistook

a family of herons for the leading edge of an invasion force the herons escaped unharmed this is insane this is like a crazy this is backstory that seems like the stuff that you write uh and you're like oh i'll never use that and i guess it's like it's almost like edit like they go well i don't need like it's like that's for me to know to write the story but no one should ever know because it's inconsequential like you're like actor backstory and something just in case anybody needs to know yeah it's it's so sick we could make a better pleasure island right now in the give it just give us the same exact material we could make it would be more functional and and complete than this this seems like this seems like michael eisner's like dumb ideas like yeah yeah it's

pleasure go go go i feel like maybe it was the Imagineers were like, here's the deal. We're going to make 26 plaques. You guys write whatever you want on them. We're going to sneak them in in the middle of the night. Eisner will never see it. No one will care. Like, we won't get this approved. There's no like, this is our, we're a bunch of fucking nerds for the 40s and for like

people like firing muskets. We're going to put these plaques up. Like, cause again, no dad ever read these no no one cared no 99 of the people didn't know really right you were walking around by yourself i didn't know that these even existed until i did this research i mean let's in front of the comedy club this is this one this building became a storage facility when pleasure island was electrified in 1928 so does that mean hit by lightning or got electricity? Either way, it's not clear, right?

And then it goes, six years later, the power station became home to the Pleasure Island Thespian Players, founded and featuring Isabella Pleasure, wife of island founder and drama enthusiast Meriwether Pleasure. The players specialized in elaborate Central Florida historical pageants, including the seminal Song of the seminal now but why do we need to know that it's a storage facility that was electrified and then it became this other thing it's like it's it's not this is not it's nonsense it's nonsense nonsense also i read all of these plaques and if you ask me right now

uh how many of them were power plant themed i'd go like uh half half of them were powerful 17 they're all where that's the that's the flaw in the design of all warehouses i mean like it's like it's like too much like there's too many points on this like because there's supposedly like this thing was discovered by the imagineers who got it back on its feet but like there's a much simpler line to draw of this man owns the things and it's a fun place for children to or for teens to go. That's so much

cleaner. It's not an unheard of thing in this world that you take a dilapidated warehouse area and turn it into a bar area. You don't have to do many, many pages of novel. They were already stealing Church Street Station, which was like the downtown Orlando hotspot.

Thank God you said Church Street Station because I spent two hours last night going down this rabbit hole. All right. I'm ready. Church Street Station, I think, just like Adventurers Club, opened me up to this thing. They had a haunted mansion there, a walk-through haunted mansion. I'll reach out.

You had to walk through by putting your hand on someone's shoulder in front of you, and you walk through. They had like a haunted mansion there. Yes. Like a walkthrough haunted mansion. Like a reach out and like the whole, you had to walk through by putting your hand on someone's shoulder in front of you and you walk through as a line. And it was the first time I'd ever gone in anything where people like jumped out at you or chased you with chainsaws. Like it was a very, like a lot of money were put into it. And you went.

I went. Which is crazy because I never went. I didn't even know really this existed. Scott said this like Church Street Station to me a while ago. Is there anything weird to do in Orlando? And I was like, this like Church Street Station to me a while ago is there anything weird to do in Orlando and I was like this thing Church Street Station but it's not

but it's totally desolate much like Meriwether Pleasures Island so it was like 70s and 80s it was the heyday of it and it's the reason why Disney made Pleasure Island

to put it out of business to try to get some of this nightlife suck that money yeah this is what they do this is what MGM Studios was.

They tried to put Universal out of business. Or like Bush Gardens. We don't want people going to a zoo. Let's have a zoo. Exactly. So a man named Bob Snow came up with Church Street Station, and he was the one. And it was a crazy, like you would pay like $10 or $5,

and all these different places were available to you. Very quickly, I'll name some of the places. Apple Annie's, Rosie O'Grady's. Rosie O'Grady's, I'll name some of the places. Apple Annie's, Rosie O'Grady's. Rosie O'Grady's, I brought a date there. Really? Yeah.

Wow. How'd it go? Great. It was actually the first time that my parents met my girlfriend's parents at Rosie O'Grady's. Wow. I have a souvenir mug.

Wow. I don't have it now. Say the full title, Rosie O'Grady's, Good Time Emporium. Yeah, sorry, sorry. Again, a very Simpsons-y. It's so much like Uncle Moe's Family Feedback.

The Chenny and Opera House, which they recorded a TV show from there. And if you look on YouTube, they have all the episodes of this Chenny and Opera House show. And they have Merle Haggard on it, Lee greenwood tammy winette boxcar willie every country star you can imagine did this show that was at church street station it's insane what was the word you were saying before opera house i couldn't hear it was i mispronouncing it chenyan chenyan i'm sorry oh okay i only know that i have a relative named cheyenne otherwise i might not know okay i probably wrote that uh it was also the Orchid Garden Ballroom. And then my favorite title is Phineas Fogg's Balloon Works.

That's so Dream Finder-y. Yeah. And, of course, before Dream Finder and before Fantastical Man in a Balloon. Wait, is Phineas Fogg the character from Around the World? I believe so, yeah. Well, is Phineas Fogg the character from Around the World? I believe so, yeah. It sounds like that Troy McClure fantastic

of Nagels. Those to that era of Simpsons writers must have been down with Disney World stuff. And obviously, as South Park is, and I think the Adventures Club is referenced in a little bit in the uh last episode was chef the uh super adventure club yes that's got to be a a little disney reference um i was

going through like people's like memories of this place and i was getting so nostalgic for a place i had never been like hard rock park yeah i was like hard rock park but like hard rock park was it was a little funnier i was getting legit like wow what a place if i was only like i was imagining working at phineas falls like 2 a.m and i'm so tired and i'm like really getting nostalgic for all of this bullshit uh and then there's also people like talking about you know just how much fun it was then there's people that are talking about how they would pregame for a Jimmy Buffett concert at Church Street Station. There you go. To me, Church Street Station felt like adult.

And I think Pleasure Island tried to split the difference. It was like, can we do adults and kids? It felt like this is where people in Orlando went to get hammered. And it was fun and safe. And I think Orlando didn't have much outside of the parks. And this felt like the community of Orlando to a certain extent. It's like, we're going to go down to our New Orleans, whatever that main street in New Orleans is where everyone is.

Oh, sure. And the bars are all separate establishments, but it's all one big neighborhood. You're walking down one block. And everything's there. And everyone's seeing each other. And it's like, no cars are there. Or at least my memory of it was like that.

It was like people all over. You could bump from place to place. Watching people's home movies on YouTube of Pleasure Island, it was very clearly like a mix of locals in club wear, couples in vacation leisure wear where like a lot of flowery polos tucked into jeans and then four-person family like families with kids and they all look tired so that that is a very odd melting pot to encounter yeah it's it's it was again it's a bad it's a bad thing i think the reason why like even disney springs is having issues now it's like they want to like attract people from or Orlando to come there and do

their like mall shopping. Right. It just seems like it's out of the way. Yeah. And I feel like if you live in Orlando, you're probably like, I don't want to go there to do my, my mall shopping.

Just basic shopping. Yeah. Um, do you have more, is there more church? Well, I don't want to go to, I didn't see,

I didn't have a memory about that. I did find the church street station promo video which is a big did you see have you seen this didn't we text about this did the uh does this with with um I think maybe we did dancing in the streets yes yes we did okay yeah so I re-found it there we go so we'll post this obviously this I'm yeah

I love the vibe of this it's like a more slower themed like cheers I mean like it's like if cheers didn't have all those lovable characters this look some of this looks like ferals the ice cream oh yeah oh yeah old-timey yeah yeah and it's like the there's a very sincere sizzler ad that's that's like eight minutes long that's like this a man just carving a marlin out of some ice. A good place for good people.

Oh, man. That's a little sexy here. A lady putting a garter on. But this is like this whole idea, like these places came alive at night. Yes. That was like that. Wait, wait. Please don't, cops!

It's really sincere fun, and Eisner is like like I must crush this Yes It False Louis This was the I read This was the fourth uh most visited tourist destination after bush garden sea world disney wow wow well because i think it felt like adult i mean that's like my parents like going to church street station uh-huh because it's a real place for grown-ups yeah it was established by not a bizarre kids corporation.

I mean, this goes on like this. But you end up with the dinner, where things get a little more stately. See, we didn't leave the Disney bubble that much. We mostly left to go to Universal. My dad and I would leave the bubble. My mom would stay in the bubble.

Oh, and then if we had a kitchen, we would go to the grocery store. You get the classic song Dancing in the Street in all these different styles. But the dinner is my favorite. Where was this ever airing? That's a very good question. It's just called a marketing video. Oh, okay. It's pretty long.

If you don't feel like hearing this part part up there's it you it's all the different clubs sing dancing in the street and then it changes to a more stately dinner where you hear it's a place for folks to eat change i really like but so but so mike i don't want to jump ahead of your things but do you know why what happened to church street besides disney crippling the business i probably came across across it, but I don't remember. So it's in the window where Pleasure Island was doing well. Church Street station decays. Businesses start moving out.

And Orlando has to do something big to try to get this area back on its feet. And they turn to the greatest industrialist in orlando at that time lou perlman boy brand will you sir turn this area around okay i guess i'll get some of the guys in here and so and so in 2003 they give this guy 1.5 million dollars in loans the city of orlando and in 2003 the bands have all already sued this guy backstreet and in sync have already and there's certainly by 2003 the implication that this man is like a pedophile yeah and still orlando is like he's the solution he's a guy saying that he's going to turn churchy station into the hub of boy band culture and he makes a promise that this is just a place for him to like score dates like i think so well this is all the

boys here all the kids will be here they'll all be dancing in the streets here there'll be many alleys that are difficult to escape from all dead ends every alley is a trap doors spikes that close in on you that's like four years after city walk opens in the other side of orlando you've already got that you already had that how is perlman gonna and and he makes a promise to he's like we'll start small 2004 we will have we'll do some concerts We'll have 150 outdoor street events. 150 days out of the year. And then the next year, we'll get it up to 200. And I found an article from the Orlando Weekly from 2005 for liberal writers.

Anybody been to any of those concerts? Any of those happen? No, not a single. He just didn't do it. And he pocketed the money. And then he was arrested by the fbi in malaysia or whatever and he died in jail oh my god what like what a sad thing for the people of orlando all they had was a place where they could hang out where they weren't going to be

totally inundated by like tourists all the time like maybe is there more a little bit more of a local culture there and even though it was the biggest tourist attraction, I feel like they probably had their own thing and then it just got ripped apart. And then not every banister and everywhere you look, not everything is shaped like Mickey or Jafar or whatever. There's some unbranded things in this area. Yeah, characters like Phineas Fogg. And fake Louis Armstrong.

And Laurel and Hardy. They were and laurel and hardy oh they were like laurel and hardy running around in all the places too that sort of like old-timey stuff like that still hasn't gone away i mean mike and i have both been to disney springs once it's like been fully operational and like the edison is power plant theme turn of the century power plant theme uh marie and enzo's italian restaurant in it looks like a 1940s like golden age of airline travel 1940s 50s airplane hangar and then jock lindsey's that there's still all this old-timey theming it's a weird thing i think it's like i don't know why we are doubling down on that because in my opinion, you know, look, it may be controversial.

I think that CityWalk is the only one who's nailed it. Like CityWalk is like, this is what you want. It's kind of like you got a big movie theater. There's some restaurants that you know. We're not theming these out to be like 1940s. There's no Keystone Cops here. It's like it's Olive Garden. It's Bubba Gump.

And we got a fountain that does that thing so your kids can run there and get soaked. 1940s there's no keystone cops here it's like it's olive garden it's bubba gump and like and and and you know we got a fountain that does that thing so your kids can run there and get soaked and you know and then there's like a couple fun stores a magnet store the sock store sure john lovett's comedy club that's out here or was out here but like you know they get like they're just kind of like walking around the saddle ranch if you want to get a little bit more risque you know you know the clothes now i know it's a sad sad day there's like you know like there's a big cup or something or the king kong there's big giant things you can take a picture of if you want right you don't have to learn a whole fucking story it just seems like

that's what you like when you want to go out it's like yeah let's go get a pizza and then go see a movie like i don't need to like yeah welcome friend, to a universe that your eyes may not understand. That said, I mean, obviously we like the theming of these restaurants and stuff. Also, when I was there, packed. Everywhere I walked by, lines out the door in August. If I was eating a Bubba Gump and Laurel and Hardy wandered by, I'd love it. Oh, again, I'm seeming dismissive of all this. I'm 100 there i

hated jock lindsey's by myself and waited until i could sit in the little like portal of course like yeah the submersible uh submarine thing yeah saying is a populist idea city walk is the one that appeals really to the most that's what i think everyone's trying to do and i think when they try to get too cheeky with it and i feel like pleasure island walk this weird middle ground of like a good bad idea it's like it's almost disney and it's almost city walk and what it turns out to be is a mess because the theming is half ass it's like well disney quest doesn't fit with the theming of this the comedy club is very different than adventurers club and the clubs are just clubs well Well, that's, I mean, we barely talked about though. I mean,

even after reading for hours about these clubs, I had to go like, wait, so neon Armadillo was the country. What was it? Cage was different from mannequin. And then one was the, the roller skating one.

I do. I, while we were on Disney stealing, I may have, I have a story. Yeah. So, um,

I used to do comedy at this place called Chicagoago city limits it was in new york city and they did short form improv very much like what you'd see on whose line is it anyway like every time a bell rings we're going to change our thing so when they're opening a pleasure island some people from disney came and saw chicago city limits and they're like this is what we're opening up a brand new place this is what we want to be in uh in in our in our new park and we'll call it chicago state limits and we'll buy it we'll do the whole thing we'll move you guys there so the head of chicago state limits at that time goes we want 10 million dollars you know, for the name,

the name that didn't even really mean that much. Now I was a member of Chicago state limits. I've heard this now from multiple people. This is a true story. And then, and Disney's like, okay, okay,

okay, let's think about it. And Disney walked away, then went to behind Chicago state limits. The owner's back hired everyone in the main stage show, took them and stole the entire show so what you would see they open up with this review and that was essentially what chicago city limits was it was like improv very mediocre sketch improv mediocre

sketch and that's kind of what this thing was and then and then everyone those people who perform there who sold out chicago city, would just occasionally steal another performer. They would come down and then they would teach improv and then go. So I have all these friends who migrated down there to do a essentially Chicago State Limits show that they just completely stole. And it was lamented when I was at Chicago State Limits. I was like, oh, we could have been this. We could have ultimately branded ourselves by being like Chicago City Limits, I was like, oh, we could have been this, we could have ultimately branded ourselves by being like Chicago City Limits

at Disneyland. And this thing. And that could have been the step to making it like a second city multiple. How there's like a sillier second city, like the Vegas thing. Exactly. Just something that feels

like it makes it, but I just said that was like the best example of hubris and also the smartestness of Disney just going like right right right 10 million okay cool we'll think about it and well no now we'll just take everyone from your show and make them yeah when it first opened they were doing like a review called forbidden disney right that was like a bawdy sketch show about it was like body to

disney body like it was like i think it was like someone would play like um small world and like let's kill this guy or like shoot him or something but even yeah like even if they shot him it was like um like a gun that said bang yeah you know like fake yeah like yeah slumping down the adventures club much more bawdy in terms of people the characters being drunk and horny like yeah like to me, the Disney body was like, oh, the lines at Disney are pretty long. Like, whoa, I can't believe they said it. Like, hey, we just spent a lot of money eating these hot dogs.

It was like the most, like, we're poking fun, but not that much. Seriously, though, thanks for coming down. We're always here. I appreciate your business. It is a good value for your money. And really, if you think about all the things we have to offer. But it doesn't seem like that lasted long.

It seems like they pivoted to that short form. That short form thing. And then, yeah, that's when I would go when I got a, I think when I was back there in college, I went and visited a few friends that just were doing that show nightly. And I once got to play on that stage because they said, we have some friends in the audience. No kidding.

So that was a very fun thing. But then also a nerve-wracking thing because it is a level of improv and a level of language and a level of content that they are very comfortable with. And so I could only do the latest show that they had because it was severely monitored by everybody. And it was like I was kind of snuck in to do the show and kept it very clean it was just sort of like but yeah it was it's not at ucb you can sort of do

whatever you want this there's like there's rules and parameters yeah like it's gonna be really polished yeah and it was very simple improv games like literally i think like every time this bell rings you'll say something different so i was like i just went to the store ding i just went to the mall ding i just went to the movie there ding I went to the car dealership ding you know so it wasn't like you weren't like improvising you were just basically like coming up with specifics and puns there's lots of rapid speed yeah did you there that's that's cool you got to play there the the um there's there's folks who are there people who like did improv there who've made it out to to new york or la jamie denbo jamie denbo yeah i thought so yeah jamie denbo i performed at that comedy club as well and then she had the real in my opinion

crappy gigs like she worked at like innovations like she was doing like this the streetmosphere of innovation in event in event in epcot yeah and interventions oh intervention sorry again yeah yeah and uh and uh no I'm upset the only show you'll ever be on that will correct you on that I knew I was like

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't trying to be a dick no I didn't take it that way it's not the video drone no I'm like this is where I knew I have so much Disney knowledge

but it's all falsely categorized that's okay but yeah like she had like those jobs where like you'd have to like yeah showing the houses of the future and doing the funny but also we're also showing off

that like you know black and decker does have a pretty cool back you know wow that's a thin line and she was saying that there were like these dots on the floor that you'd have to step on and that would activate like a light like it was like an automated show it was a one person show that you were controlling all by what you were doing on the stage wow wow did you ever think about like did you try to do like theme park entertainment as a regular gig anywhere yeah all right i'll tell you the two darkest moments of my life it's funny that's the response they all involve yeah i know it's like so i was dating this girl. This is a girl who we met their parents at Rosie O'Grady's. Not bad. You know, fun place.

We got flaming drinks. Of course. I watched Showgirls. A lot of fun time. But we were on the downward spiral of Rosie O'Grady's. I think Rosie O'Grady's stuck it out because it's a great establishment. It was on its way to being a bad time in Emporium. It was an okay time in Emporium.

Right. It was like a mediocre time. Two Showgirls not not on the bar they would just be in the back they don't kick all the way up just like 30 degrees so we were dating in college and i went to go visit her at home and she was like we got to break up and you know you're i was doing improv in new york city at this point i was doing chicago city limits and and uh i was not going to spend New Year's Eve with her because I was going to do this New Year's Eve show in New York. And it was

like a really cool opportunity. It was cool. It was exciting. This was like the beginning of my career. And I was still kind of in college at this point. And she's like, oh, you got to break up. And you're too involved in this stuff. And I see it's not gonna go away and and this is not gonna work out and and i was like all right you know what i i need to keep this relationship going i'm going to join the comedy company at uh pleasure island and literally like because i know i've been in there i can this. And if I would have made that choice, my career would have gone in a drastically horrible, different, I would argue, not be here.

I would probably be in Orlando, working at something sad. You'd be the king of Orlando. I was going to say, it might not be so bad. I don't know. I don't know. We're all heading for it. We're all bail don't know i would go to orlando a million times i just feel like if i would have just went there and be like hey i'm like trying to do comedy and be an actor and then like i just maxed out at the

comedy connection or whatever it is or you would have gotten it in sync great if you've gotten the dancing in that alley luke perlman would have grabbed me uh and then the second is um this is not a dark moment it was more like again it was an opportunity like i always made this choice of not taking like the easy path like so disney cruises came and disney cruises like hey you want to come do disney cruise and that was a really like you make 110 000 dollars like for like a six month cruise you couldn't get off you were on the boat for six months like you couldn't get off the boat i mean you could get off at ports you know but like you

were you couldn't go home right right so you're there all your food was provided for so you're you're keeping your 110 like your your room and board and your food is paid for and you're just doing like an improv show on that boat and it was right at the start of ucb and i was like should i do this like 110 000 like that seemed like a gigantic sum of money and it is a gigantic sum of money and uh and i and i opted not to do that and just do like free shows at ucb that were like you know robot tv at midnight on a friday night uh which i'm so happy that i did do but it was like a moment where i was like really like what do i do do i do disney because i love disney and i was like oh that would be kind of great i would and that's the other part of it i would love to

work at disney like my my dream thing would be like it wouldn't be great if you could like run the jungle cruise like one time. That would be awesome. Yeah. Something like that would be fun. You know, I was a tour guide. Oh, I know. Yeah, yeah. And I always say, if I could do it once a month, if they'd give me one shift a month, I would so happily.

That seems like the best. Then that one's a fun one, too. But now it's just like Jimmy Fallon doing it all, right? They kick a lot. There's a lot of clips and things you're required to do but not necessarily hey anybody at the tour guide gig listening you know when you unless you're being secret shopped you can kind of do what you want out there unless and then imagine you had to fill a lot of time when that guy died on the earthquake ride right oh i did talk about that yeah that was an hour straight the tour guide praise for something like that so we can really let it riff.

That's what they told us in the training is like, you will beg for these moments because it'll throw you off. It's like something different happening is such a big deal. So when that man died of a heart attack, I was thrilled. Scott's time to shine. Get me in there. My friend who worked at disney like a couple people i knew who worked there like out of college and again last night and i don't know maybe i'm just uh depressed or something in general in life but i was again getting very

nostalgic i go why didn't i just go for six months and intern at disney that would have been so much fun because i'm reading all these pleasure island and we'll get to it but i found the pleasure island memories facebook page oh and i was reading through all of this stuff and i was legit going man this would have been fun if i was a certain age and it was like there's no i think there's a right time to go it's almost like you can go to europe or you can go to disneyland or disney world like my sister-in-law did it but she got like she worked there she had a great time she all lived in these big dorms everyone was in college it was like a college thing but she like was the pooper scooper behind the animals in the parade like that's what that was like her like her face job was that like you know some people got to be like pluto she got to be you know the person who picks up the poop in the parade i i went to an information

session at my college for the college program and answered a trivia question correctly and got like a antenna topper was it about merriweather pleasure it may as well have been it was some like sort of thing where it's like there was no competent like my hand went up immediately uh but they they have their own semester schedule so it's like i would have had to missed a semester and missed half of a break like it's it was very it's almost it's almost built to mess up your college life yeah it's like because it doesn't work with any other like everybody was there it's like oh yeah you you mess up a year yeah and you can do it after you finish your undergraduate you can start right after like you can get your degree and then that summer like do the college program even if you're out of college but then at that

point i was kind of like no i did internships in la and i have a lot of friends out there and i think i'll just go right out there but yeah i mean i would love to like work in the like the like if we could do like imagineers like that kind of level that would be like the dream that's what this is this is just an ad for us to like hey guys let us in like we got ideas too like it would be amazing i would just love to see that like that to me is like because again we can make a better pleasure island we would never make a jessica rabbit themed store like you would be like you know what that's not going to be that's not going to run the the life of this park sure uh you know a a store for jessica rabbit that was like the third piece of the puzzle there was like the pleasure island as pinocchio the fun the the pleasure island backstory plaques and then also the massive jessica rabbit

idol yes that very briefly was above the jessica rabbit store that didn't seem like it lasted long but sold like sexy t-shirts and like lingerie with jessica rabbit on it which is insane to say yeah yeah it's it's all like a comp i assume i didn't read this but uh this is from other other stories about all this stuff it's a compromise between the imagineers probably like the sales department for merchandise and then just like corporate so like i feel like it's all everyone's compromising so like the imagineers i'm assuming because we know joe rody uh is an imagineer behind uh the adventurers club and he's a guy who did avatar land he's a guy who did uh the guardians ride alani he's very he loves these backstories and stuff so that's like kiki like i met kiki at alani alani the kiki is just like a hawaiian woman who's like yes yeah and you go to kiki's

house that's where the kids like have a thing and kiki does breakfast and it's like and there's a story about kiki kiki is a disney character is set she is in the mythology i met kiki i have a picture with kiki sure you know but uh how do they uh teach you about when do you get accustomed to kiki do they send you a video or something uh kiki is it's sort of like where were you of course this is kiki's house like it was like you like you have to do the catching out is it like duffy the dude yes it's like hey it's duffy you love him yeah because it's like they have like a they have a great thing there where you can like they will babysit your children from like eight in the morning to nine at night or actually even later yeah um and you could do like and i saw many people drop off the kids we didn't do that we just would go there for family play every morning from eight

in the morning to 9 30 and then kiki would be running family play and you know and just be like all right because kiki's house and oh well so kiki's house and you go in kiki's house and you can go up the stairwell to her room and if you put your ear to her door you could hear her and her husband and they're talking you're like oh we're so excited the kids are coming today it's like a pre-recorded thing it's not really great yeah so they like they have like a whole like conversation kiki and her husband about what they're gonna do with so like that's yeah so we gotta watch the electrical bill this month it's just way too high running the year this much there should be like one day when they play of like, again? Kids are coming over again? I shouldn't disturb Kiki today.

This is all news to me, this mythology. Do you think, because I am a legitimate Disney World fan and theme park fan, but I think I am because I don't work there. Because I never worked there. Well, we talked to a past guest, Jenny Nicholson, about her work there, and she said she was exactly the same coming in and coming out. Okay. So, I mean, I think it's probably different for everyone.

But the first script I ever wrote in LA was called Enchanted Kingdom. And it was a Disney World-based script. And it's the one thing I wish I always got to do. I read all those books and stuff. There's a book called Mouse Secrets or something like that oh yeah yeah there's what's the oh what's the other with tragic kingdom mouse tales i think it's two books of mouse tales yeah yeah yeah by the way i feel like you guys often on the show reference some sites that i'm not familiar with but you don't say them by name what are the sites that what are the sites oh yeah i see that on these disney sites i don't say them by name. What are the sites? Oh, yeah, I see that on these Disney sites.

I don't know what those Disney sites are that you guys go to. Let's shout them out. There's Mice Chat. Mouse Planet. Mouse Planet. Mouse Planet was a godsend for this. They had a lot of Pleasure Island stuff. Screamscape.

Theme Park University played a lot into Hard Rock Park. Yes. There's WDWmagic.com, which I go to for the boards. That's the real gossipy one. There's a couple real gossip pounds on that message board, and you get some good tidbits

from these people. Those are the basic ones, I think. And then the podcasts we always talk about that we listen to. Yes, Jim Hill. I mean, I'm all on that. And you listen to Lentess. Oh, yeah.

I'm all on board. I have sometimes two to three Disney podcasts on my computer. Sure Lentess. Oh, yeah. I'm all on board. I have like sometimes two to three Disney podcasts. Sure. Season Pass. Oh, I haven't heard Season Pass. Season Pass is very good. Oh, you see, like sometimes I always, like the things that always shut me off about Disney podcasts ultimately is a lot of them that are really hard to listen to from a just audio

standpoint. Yeah, like Golden Horseshoe Review. I was like, I'm kind of interested in this, but I'm just having all everyone someone's always calling it on skype you know they're never in that same room together yeah like i was gonna tell you that there's a great one i was on a podcast and they challenged me to um they challenged me to like like they they find out what you like and then they go okay well i gave them like 10 10 things and then they surprised me with what they were going to test me on they test me on my walt disney land knowledge and i did very well but i met this guy who was like the expert on disneyland

and his his instagram tag is exploring disney world and he has all this really cool stuff he runs the walt museum so he will occasionally post pictures that you've never seen of Walt's apartment on Main Street in Walt Disneyland. Wow. A lot of the times it's just normal stuff too, but he will do some cool stuff from an Instagram thing. I mean, I'm on Jolly Poppins and stuff like that too. Wait, I don't know.

Jolly Poppins? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I follow this guy. Yeah, this guy's really good. I can't believe you have different ones. Is it Jollylly poppins i don't know yeah i don't know that one wow i used to follow a guy and then it depressed me he goes to disney yeah he goes to disneyland every single day and would take a picture and he was going for the biggest consecutive record of disney like the like unbreakable record and then it was just sort of like i gotta stop following

this guy it just say i don't know why i just don't know like because it didn't seem fun anymore it seemed like it seemed like day 4 000 you know or like whatever it was i was like i can't since he was like the smile wasn't real anymore it just felt like it's like well then when it becomes a job like it's like you're just like i like gotta go to disneyland today just that seems like the other part of it well that's good to hear that she likes jenny like to go in it yeah yeah i think so i think it's possible to come out yeah i think it's a line to ride is like not losing the joy and the silliness of it and not because you do get a sense from people on the message boards a lot that they are that they're they've they've gotten cynical

some of them and they're so like they're mad that things are changing and they're eyeing every like you know a piece of paint that's scratched off and they like i don't know you gotta like have a little bit of blinders on to remember this is all stupid and fun and it's just fun to incorporate this into your adult life and we'll take it so seriously yeah like i mean to me the place i'd like to hang out though is that disney bar where they have all the name tags up on the wall. Have you heard about that? That's in Orlando. I've heard of this, but never been. It's like I've never been either.

I don't even know where it is. It's basically all the former employees, whenever they, that's like their watering hole, which is pretty prominently in the script that I wrote. But when you retire, your name tag goes up like on the wall. So apparently the way it sounds is like it's just covered in name tags when i was at city walk in orlando last year they told me that all the people all the disney people party at city walk that's where you go to party just to party on site they go yeah they leave the mouse to go to city walk i i found a trip advisor uh post where someone was like hey i well i was gonna book a trip to disney and stay by pleasure island and mostly like eat at

the restaurants and down to disney and go to the clubs and i found out they're all closed like what else is there do it or land and like immediately two people wrote back yeah you're looking for city walk now like what you want now is uh just go to city walk like that is uh probably what you're the best approximation of what you want they really they struck back like disney got disney was winning in this nightlife game and i think now they're uh losing and maybe maybe disney springs will eventually take the metal back i think what's interesting with disney springs and what is slowly happening to uh downtown downtown Disney in Anaheim is that it's like becoming like a fashionable LA sort of Nate,

like an LA or Brooklyn neighborhood was like two, three years ago. Cause it's like, all right, there's going to be a intense milkshake place. There's going to be a crap cocktail bar. There's going to be a brew pot. Like it's all that sort of stuff.

I think they realize if they put places like those VR places places in like because that the void is awesome and and they should almost have you know they once they are able to have multiple experiences in it then it'd even be better like you know it's when they have the ghostbusters one the hulk one and the terminator and star wars ones like that would be like but like i think what they want to do is get people there but you don't have to go to the park but But you have to do that by, I don't like that restaurant. Is it K-Tal? Katal. Katal, yeah.

I don't like that one. I feel like they just need to kind of revamp. I think they have to continue to revamp that place a little bit. It's this odd love. None of them are actually that great. The best that some of those Disney restaurants are, well, it's better than the park it's close to like a good restaurant you'd go to 20 minutes north of here back in la but like when they put in the bowling alley the bowling and disney springs has this too like those are like i think disney springs is the right

direction for disney it's like yeah good legitimately good restaurants bars where you can kind of bar hop which is like but it's your respect architecture nice looking architecture free parking yes parking garages that's a huge benefit big deal i think for the locals yeah and then you have like the nice bowling alley it's you know based on the the incredibles or whatever it is you know it's like splits or whatever v8s oh yeah it's kind of got that 60s yeah yeah the retro thing yeah yeah yeah it's it's all getting there the bowling alley is a good step every time they do stuff like that's more like like kids like for instance the videopolis out here they closed once violence started erupting in the parking lot oh and a very similar incident i found an article from 1989

videopolis east also a stabbing happened very early i remember this club history yeah because i remember there was a nervousness that there were like i that i mean now you say that brings it back in a very big way that there was a little bit of an unsavory nature to it now when i look back on it going like to ever feel unsafe and i did and i do remember like the line to get in was intense because it's like imagine every line to get into a bar but that was to get into the pier or whatever it was the war so you're on the line to get into like as a child you're still on the line to get into the bar or it's like the line getting into Disneyland

or Disney World but like when it opens but it's all people ready to party yes and that energy I always felt a little

it was intense yeah I wish Minneapolis was 20 was the 21 and under club in Pleasure Island yes yeah yeah yeah

they were stabbed and that was kids stabbing eachbing i have the article here i mean i don't need to read from it i mean we get the gist a guy got stabbed a couple people uh but then i i also i didn't find this maybe someone else did because they quickly changed the name of videopolis videopolis east to cage okay and that's the one i know nothing and then they changed it like pretty quickly in a couple years to eight tracks okay oh i remember eight tracks yeah uh no that you know that to me was i would like like my big move was when i got older walk in do like a circle through it and

then like walk out and then like head to the adventure school like i don't know what i was looking for there i didn't know like my maybe my like a high school mind is like well i'll pick up a i'll either pick up some girls i literally just do a full circle through here without stopping or drinking you know and or i don't know what i i didn't talk to anybody like um but i wanted to look and see what it was like they had a roller skating place there oh yeah that was the one like the roller skiing was on the second floor second floor and the backstory on that what is also insane that's where uh mr pleasure wanted to like built his experimental air crit spruce goose kind of air crit like and that that leads me to the fact that a lot of these clubs would change names or change themes and so the plaques would get taken down or the backstories would just never

get updated and so that all reality started to fall apart the funniest of which to me is uh the neon armadillo the country western bar eventually became the uh bet soundstage club which that seems like a conservative meme like made into life of like our honky tonk became a hip-hop club like what is happening to this island of ours what's happening also the neon armadillo is just like again reading spending hours reading all this i had to still remind myself like okay yeah that was the country one and the backstory was that a family of armadillos they found in that abandoned building like it's so so many steps it was abandoned and then when they came back it was full of armadillos armadillos creepily similar to that part of discovery island that was full

of vultures eventually yeah they stuck him in a shed and they all died this is great it's crazy so it's one of the strangest pockets um the Disney world. Absolutely. So real quick, back to this Pleasure Island. So I found this Facebook group called Pleasure Island Memories. And is it legal for me just to say things that people say in a public Facebook group? Yeah. I won't use their names, but they'll know. Where are the audio when you say that? So you were talking about the roller skating rink.

Oh, wait. What's that name? It's XCFR Rockin' Rollerdrome. So you were talking about the roller skating rink. So, uh, Oh wait, what's that name? These are terrible names. I mean, yeah. You want to go to the XFRZF Rock and Roll Good Time Drome? No, I'm going to the Portobello Yacht Club. Man, Mannequin's Dance Palace is just an eye. And it all seemed like they were also hitting very weird music. It was like, oh, yeah, we need a New Wave Club. We need a Techno Trance Club Country.

Country makes sense country makes 100 sense but like new wave and techno trance are like very niche it's like why don't you do like a country and like a rock club and like just like again it's like too many things yes they're trying to hit every demographic again everything mannequins also filled with uh the scariest phrase i've ever heard human mannequins yeah which with uh the scariest phrase i've ever heard human mannequins yeah which were like mirror suits they all look like something out of american horror story uh and the the music at mannequins from all the videos i saw seems like horse shit it's like sub hadaway like what kind of music is this i'll debate. I kind of like the music in Mannequins.

Really? The few videos I've listened to, it's insane. And there's a whole... It's very like LaBouche. Not as good Mortal Kombat or something. Had a very cool light show. Had a very cool light show. There's a very cool light show.

It starts off with a very... The floor lit up, right? That was the whole thing. The floor, and there was just so many lights everywhere it seemed overwhelming again the theme of this episode is pleasure idling was overwhelming in numerous ways except with restaurants there was not a lot of restaurants um at the start of mannequins at least for the thing i there would be like a calming calming female voice it was like good evening in next hour, we will take you into the world, a world of music, spirit, meditation. Take a deep breath and relax.

And then like, it's bad, but it's also very good. So what were you pulling from the memories? So Pleasure Island memories. So what's very great about this, and everyone should go on this message board if you have any fondness for this place. And if you're still on Facebook, as you might. Yeah, even though I claimed to get off of it

like two episodes ago, I totally forgot because we recorded it weeks prior. And then I said, who cares? And then we started. I don't care. No, you need it for this show. You need to find the dirt. You know, stay on it. I'm staying on it. I'm so sorry. I will you need it for this show. You need to find the dirt. You know, stay on it.

I'm staying on it. I'm so sorry. I will never lie to you guys again. Anyway, so Pleasure Island Memories. And what's great about this is that it seems like it's mostly former employees. So there'll be a thread, for instance, that just said, like, hey, biggest celebrity you ever waited on at Pleasure Island. And this is like 50 long 500 comments long so i mean i just picked out some of the greatest and the roller skating reminds me

so somebody just wrote michael jackson was the biggest roller skating with eisner and george lucas and so this is full so i'm going to quickly run down some of the other ones here uh uh i was okay so somebody says yeah i was at the comedy warehouse uh one night and uh robin williams and bobcat goldthwait showed up with their wives and they got williams got up and did about 20 minutes of stand-up and improv based on the drink the wobbly wally that was sold on the island whoa that's amazing then bobcat got up and joined him he dropped the f-bomb and all the disney suits almost passed out uh somebody just lists all the celebrities that came through here michael jackson george lucas john lassiter uh cool bobcat goes away dorothy hamill taylor negron larry miller demi moore uh howie mandel algeroo yeah mary tyler moore charles barkley

uh so somebody's got a fun anecdote about leslie nielsen he says surely whatever that one Al Jarreau. Yeah. Mary Tyler Moore, Charles Barkley. So somebody's got a fun anecdote about Leslie Nielsen. He says, surely, whatever, that one is fine. We know his story. Multiple people, multiple, like more than three, say Jimmy Carter. Wow. And then someone has an anecdote. President Jimmy Carter was using the upstairs at 8 Tracks, and he sat right next to the

DJ booth, just smiling and singing along the whole time. Whoa. And that means. Songs of his presidency. Yes. 70s and 80s. That's it. He's up there.

That means there's secret service. Yeah, of course. In eight tracks in Pleasure Island. Well, you don't even feel like it's like, so Jimmy Carter went there and then like whatever his like itinerary is like, now you go to the nightlife. You'll go to Fulton's Crab House, which is like an old riverboat or whatever. And then you'll go to 8 Tracks. The old steamships, huh?

Yeah. I can imagine them probably saying to him, I have dinner. What kind of music do you like? We have everything you want. Oh, I don't know. I like stuff from the 70s. Great. We have the club for you.

Jimmy Carter, I like techno trance. I want to see the mannequins with the reflective suits on. Living mannequins, that sounds trippy. I need to go get some souvenirs for my daughters.

Meet me at Doodles. So somebody just wrote, OJ. Oh, man. And then somebody wrote, I enjoyed speaking with OJ two weeks before he committed the murders i was gonna say right after he got out of jail no it's not recent so i mean first time oh yeah the first after trial this this this i love this i was again getting nostalgic for a

time because all these people worked there and they loved it. That's the commonality between everybody. Can I ask one quick question? Of course. Do you think that the layout of Pleasure Island was so insane that it drove OJ Simpson to murder? Like he was carrying the weight of it like, it doesn't make any sense. The signs don't make any sense. He's trying to make someone

I want to know. I want to be Meriwether Pleasure. I can do it right. I think he went and he got some bad advice at the Adventurers Club. That's my guess. Oh, no. There was a Comedy Warehouse joke about, like, you know, like, wanted to kill your damn wife, and then he took it seriously.

It's like, oh, yeah, all right. When I first was there, and I was probably there when it first opened, it was a good vibe. I mean, we're talking, we're breaking breaking it down because it doesn't really make sense and ultimately at the end of the day i guess their thought was who cares if it makes sense there it's it's places where you can dance places you can drink places where you can like and they have like a little bit of the theming towards the end of the island which is the new years every night like and but it was for me as a kid it was super exotic and it felt cool and not dangerous, but different than Disney. It didn't feel like clean, even though I'm sure it was, you know, if I was there now.

I think it was a good hang and then it fell off hard. And I only saw that part in the daytime. If you went every year, do you have any idea when the turn started to happen? I think I remember when more shops would come. When you see that first Sunglass Hut or something like that. You know when something gets shut down for a fully... Some... Yeah, a thing like that.

The Sunglass Hut was the harbinger of death. Well, I think they expanded to that, what they would call downtown Disney West Side, like yeah like a thing like that the sunglass that was the harbinger of death like well i think like i mean they expand it to that like what they would call downtown disney west side with the virgin megastore and the cirque du soleil and all that and like that was a very different concept and then also there was the you know the shopping village downtown disney area and then pleasure island kind of just in between and then like i think it was 2004 i came across was when they're like okay no admission to get on the island it's just admission per club now and then they dialed back they stopped doing the midnight every night celebration

which they did right when it closed as like a you know a send-off but even like an adventurer's club they always referenced one character and then on the last night he appeared like he never appeared it was like a you know um yeah i met your mother uh yeah like kind of yeah like they were like and he came on the last night he was finally there oh geez although that has a weird story like that the adventurers club closed and then like one year later opened for one night for like a special ticketed event that I think like WDW radio organized.

God knows how much those individual tickets cost. But it was the full thing. And the Avengers Club, it seemed like towards the end, the reputation became like shows are still great. Characters are still great.

The way they've cut back is they've dialed back on the wait staff it's impossible to get a drink oh you see i think i remember trying to go there and it was like less shows like i think when i went there it was like you could go in there at like eight and stay for a long time and i think now no no eight o'clock is when we do our adventurers club and then it was like over by like then it's just a 9 30 or something i think no i think like again my memory of this might be bad but i remember like being so excited is when we do our Adventurers Club, and then it was over by 9.30 or something. I think, no, I think, again, my memory of this might be bad, but I remember being so excited to go there, and they're like, no, no, no, it's done for the night.

It's done for the night at a certain time. It wasn't just like, and it's improv until midnight, which probably makes sense. It probably was for a, yeah, let's not keep these places open. I mean, even if they're not paying equity rates, they still have to pay those people decent money. Yeah. If this were in the park, I think it would be maybe still there.

Like, this to me is the outlier, obviously, of all this stuff because it's the most themed. It's the most... But, like, if it was in the park right now, either park, either coast, I feel like it would be like reservation only. And especially now that the parks are so insanely crowded versus 2008.

2008, everything was going downhill. We talked about you could get a pass for 200 bucks. Right. And now it's like 500 times the price. I feel like if it had just stuck it out or if it was in a location like inside the park, the Adventure Club could have hung. I mean, the Adventure Club is the thing that yeah was in the wrong spot at the wrong time and but i feel like i do i do believe that people don't want this experience from disney adventurers

club yes uh you know but i even think like disney quest was a that went down like that should never gone down you are a place that is full of children where you're saying pay 25 bucks and play every video game you can play you can play you're in a giant pinball machine you're in yeah i played the first like the most fun i've ever had there was like they had the star wars game where like the first cool star wars game where it was like you had the lightsaber and you could and you could play that for free all night and it was like that you know i don't know like i feel like they just couldn't, people that weren't there for nightlife or kids weren't allowed to go there. I think there was some.

Not enough of the audience was making it out. Because if you don't know the Disney World layout, this whole mall zone is this separate area as opposed to downtown Disney or the area outside of Paris.

It's not like, or CityWalk, it's not connected to the park. You gotta specifically get on a bus and go to this different area. And maybe if you only had three nights or whatever walk it's not connected to the part you got to specifically get on a bus and go to this different area and maybe if you only had three nights or whatever you're not going to take a bunch of your time to go find this but if it was right outside the magic kingdom right that would be easier i mean but disney quest i also think is 10 to whatever 20 years ahead of its

time yes because i think disney quest now disney was not, when I went to Disney Quest, I was so hyped about it and it was a letdown with all the stuff like the VR for the magic, for the magic carpet thing was not that cool and all the other things. The whitewater rafting.

Yeah. You paddle and you're just on a thing. Because as a kid, I was like, VR is amazing. I'm so excited about it and it just, it fell short

whereas The Void lives up to, for the most part, the void is the future. Yeah. That the void that we saw, you couldn't still be running that in five years. Like they're going to have to keep updating it. And I think that's the benefit of the void though, is it is a simple maze that they all have to do is give you a new VR thing to watch because then they can reconfigure the walls. But the quality of the footage and stuff, they'll have to do is give you a new vr thing to watch because then they can reconfigure the walls but the quality of the footage and stuff they'll have to keep oh i think iterating

yeah i think i i've i know that the void has like literally like five or six things in the oh yeah they've got big expansion plans i think but like disney Quest never changed. Yeah. Wow. They've made deals with Terminator, Hulk. Like it's all like, it's, they're not like going, they're not going like, do a virtual reality experience.

Like, no, no, no, you know this world and you're going to now be in this world. That's really smart. I do think, I do think if Disney Quest were like starting now and they had like five experiences on

the void level, I think it would last. It would have, like, I guess a Disney Quest honestly lasted i think it would last it would have like i guess a disney quest honestly lasted a long time but that would have wowed everybody i didn't come out of disney quest even as a kid going wow i like playing arcade games but that was the best almost part of it all the stuff that was supposed to be amazing fell very short it was like it was like sort of like the scope was big it was like you know like like whatever that stupid pinball

machine was where like the mighty ducks like pinball machine where you're in the pinball machine it's like it it's like all right it was fine it was like yeah but like i feel like uh oh man i just lost my oh i i mean i bet you star wars will land will have a lot of the themed hangout areas but i think this is going to make a comeback like things like the void which are simple and you're it doesn't take up much space but i know you guys are talking about like shield and a couple episodes ago oh yeah uh but the idea like if you created like the collectors if they made that like if the new adventurers club was attached to like the guardians of the galaxy right and it just like it was like you're on nowhere you're in this weird club of all these cool things and you know and then you're it's like

these aliens that you don't have they can all do funny things and sing and yeah you would be it would i mean not you know but it would be fun it would be the most popular thing i i i think i said it on the show that idea also at dr strange's sanctctorum, a magic, it's like a magic club. It's also like there's weird spirits. There's people coming out of doors and dimensions. Like that would be the hottest place to go. Well, and at Disney's Hollywood Studios, it seemed like they were so close. The way the rumor blogs were, it seemed like they were so close to pulling the trigger on putting a bar at the exit of Tower of Terror in Florida.

They had a huge unused storage area by the store there where it would have been a smaller bar, Trader Sam style, but a bar that would have made sense for the hotel bar for the Hollywood Tower Hotel. That's great. And that would have been a huge hit. Now, that also would have driven a lot of traffic to a dead end in the park uh uh but honestly it could help it could have helped with people complaining about how like there's so much construction in this park there's not enough to do it's like hell if you had a fun bar there that would have been something to do well that's i think that's the thing they should be playing to and ultimately it's i think it's

liquor it's bars are better than dance clubs or anything like that because it's sort of like for the people like us it's like oh i would like to go to and sit like that same way i want to go to trader sam's like i want to i will go for the like give me the really good disney experience in a theme bar and i'm way in like it's like it's it's so much more fun like having a drink at trader sam's is more fun than yes than going to you know rosio grady's you know uh you know or like you know like how much people like clifton's here in la like how fun it is to be like to be having a drink settle in and there's you're in some weird forest yeah people i think appreciate those themed experiences more and maybe it's just i'm sure there's a cynical

angle of it of like millennials never put away childish things we still just want to go to Disney World uh but I wonder if now the future will be it all needs to be property based like it can't just be like Adventurers Club is and like if you put Adventurers Club next to the Jungle Cruise then it's like you know the way they have Aladdin's Oasis in Disneyland. It's like, oh, this is something that feels of the... You have to really connect it, like the hotel bar to the... Or it's just got to be Marvel, Star Wars. If there's an Adventurers Club in The Rock's Jungle Cruise movie, then the Adventurers Club could be built anywhere.

And if that's a hit well that's an interesting idea but paul do you know about c s e a the society of explorers and adventurers okay this is the mike correct me if i get anything wrong this is the yeah i know uh uh the continuity that ties together all of disney's like explorer like so whoa the adventurers club the jungle cruise harrison hightower who's the basis for a tower of terror in uh japan yes and he looks he's he's modeled after imagineer joe rody yeah oh wow there's a portrait of him they and and it shows up in little play like there's sea stuff in Trader Sam's. Oh, cool.

Is Alani part of it? I'm not sure. There's got to be some sea something in Alani. I will tell you that Alani bummed me out because I am, again, as a dad, I was psyched. I was like, this is great. This is like a Disney hotel. It didn't have anything that was like, it didn't have enough theming for me they went to like they went to hotel right like or two like they didn't want to like it's goofy hawaii or something it's like it's kind of like the big like so it's basically like i think the conceit is mickey's on vacation so like i mean like that like so like he's walking

around in cargo shorts you know and and theny's like hanging out by the pool. So like that's like, so you see the characters, you're interacting with the characters there. Kiki's house is the kids thing. So if I didn't have kids, I wouldn't be able to go in Kiki's house. And rightfully so. I'm not advocating for that. I'm kind of sad I can't see Kiki's house. And by the way, I was really excited because I've heard about Never Neverland Club and that's supposed to be like amazing for kids too like that's at walt disney world oh yeah where

it's like oh i did that yeah yeah um so but they didn't have anything like they're they had um no cool restaurants no by the way trader sam's is the perfect place to put in a lawn oh right yeah yeah nope it's it's hotel restaurants on the most mediocre level it's just like fine hotel restaurant you could put that restaurant in any hotel and you beg yeah and and i was like give me something give me like they have a lot of boats you know hanging from the thing it's it's you know it's nicely done but there's no there's no and i actually the thing that was really bummed out about was their luau. I've been to many a luau and, uh,

and, oh, I, oh yeah. You know, I, and that's, that again,

just speaks to my like theme park love. Like I'm always like, well, we should go to that luau. I mean, I think there'll be something there. And my engine's like, no,

why? Why do you want to go? And we, and we went to the luau there and it was like, like pretty unspectacular. You're Disney. You should be doing the best luau in Hawaii. Because you could afford it.

There should be fireworks and fire dancers and this. The pig should talk before he gets cooked. Yeah, right? Wait, don't. Yeah, I thought it was the most... I was surprised at the lack of... Nothing for the Disney people there at all. Really? And when you're...

I assume you're paying exorbitantly more than the typical resort. Well, we use all of our points, so we had a pretty sweet dig. Yeah, we had a three-bedroom place. Oh, good deal. Did your family ever go to the other the disney timeshare hotel like vero beach or the one in the carolinas disney owns a few no yes my dad just went there yeah my dad went to the carolina was because it's awesome music it's great it's really good he's talking very highly perfect for him because there's no rides

and shit yeah exactly yeah which like my parents were like kind of into like they were like that idea sounds good to me my brother when we were kids were like there's no rides and now to me i'm like oh that sounds great just a disney hotel in the middle of nowhere uh at the beach sure yeah well then you know but it's like to me you want some of those i don't know you want some of those things like i remember being so excited when i was a big universal studios fans because i loved islands of adventure and it was so fun. And I just went back there recently. I was so excited.

Like I had a day in, I basically like detoured my day. Like I, and to make sure I got to do a universal again, cause I hadn't done it in years. And it was right before the Jimmy Fallon ride opened. So I didn't get to go on that, but like they had some cool stuff there.

They did the Max Pass and Harry Potter Land is amazing. But I remember Universal was like, we're going to do our hotels. Every one of them is going to be themed. So one floor will be the Psycho theme. And one floor will be like, every floor is going to be a different movie.

And I was like, that's awesome. I would love that. And then they just never did that. Oh, that was talked about and it was never wow yeah like it's like and i think now they're going back to like trying to do more stuff with like volcano bay and and i think i think i heard her talk of a harry potter theme they've rumored that that would be a harry it seems like an because they're doing it with star wars in orlando they're doing a full star wars yeah which is of course that's gonna be

amazing where you don't even see daylight. You just have the windows. It seems like you'll easily go insane. Oh, I mean. You need a window. Oh, I'm like, I can't wait to justify to my wife why I need to go to Orlando by myself. Unless I can get my kid into Star Wars real quick. There's a lot more of them than there used to be.

I'm like, yeah, you got to get in. But the only people who do themed hotels great, in my opinion, was Legoland. They have like a, every floor is a different thing. So one floor is the Indiana Jones adventurer floor. And your room has monkeys on the wall. And every room is fully themed out. And there's a special safe there. And there's clues around the hotel.

And if you get the clues right, you open up the safe. And there's a special safe there, and there's clues around the hotel. And if you get the clues right, you open up the safe, and there's a gift in the safe. It's really well done. I'm like, more of that. I think Great Wolf Lodge has little adventures and games you can play. Yeah, there's some through the hallways of the hotel. See, that's kind of fun. Yeah, I like that stuff. Yeah, yeah's some, like, through the hallways of the hotel. See, that's kind of fun. Yeah, I like that stuff.

That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so, I mean, what we're finding, I feel like, is there's, like, there's fun ideas in some of this Pleasure Island stuff that maybe has not been capitalized on to its full extent. I think, like, yeah, some new, if it has to be an IP, whatever, but the general notion of the Adventurers Club and a place where there's, like, a lot of odd little different shows and experiences it's cool and like even more those puppets

clattering around that those puppets are cool oh the animatronics and puppets in the adventures club were great well but what if you like if you really just committed to the idea of an adult playground but you don't try to be like it's almost like could you make chucky cheese for adults and like that's like like that would be the perfect kind of, it's almost like, could you make Chuck E. Cheese for adults? And like, that's like, that would be the perfect kind of thing. It's like where you're, where adults can kind of be kids without kids. I don't know like what that middle ground is. It's like, that's what you want ultimately.

I think that unless we're the odd ones, we may be the odd ones. We're odd, but we're getting less odd. Yeah, that's the greatest generation dies off. I think we're more common is that we're all stuck odd. Yeah, that's the... If the greatest generation dies off, I think we're more common is that we're all stuck in our childhoods. Well, that's what I... Because I... Pleasure Island totally made sense at the time.

And it made sense for Disney World because I've seen a lot of the 70s and 80s Disney World resort. The promotional material emphasized the resort stuff. And they were angling for like couples and stuff to like come without kids even we've got nice restaurants we've got dancing and and shows and all this sort of thing so it made sense but now people want seem to want something more and whether that is i think part of some of that was people

want more bang for their buck like after a couple recessions and that that sort of thing I mean Pleasure Island closed right around or right before the recession um but like I was just saw like a blog post about like new Disney afternoon mugs in the park and I was like what what is this and I'm like oh they're to cater to adults now they're not building nightclubs they're making mugs that you look like you would find at goodwill from your childhood it's like well that's the newest thing i feel like everything is retro like i bought an epcot sweatshirt that i love that it was like looks like it was oh it was like it's designed like the epcot from 1980s i have a drawer. I have a drawer full of retro Epcot shirts.

Hey, let's go upstairs. I'll show you. Yeah, we got a whole closet full. Let's show them off, guys. Paul would be so impressed. But yeah, I do think you're right. I think that is becoming more and more common now. Disney just said they're getting into escape rooms now.

So that's a big thing. Oh, yeah. And so to me, it's like if you had like a, I like those scary ones like a scary walkthrough like if you like a maze or some sort of like jumpy out thing you do like a scary one like that you had an escape room you had the void you had like like that's i'm saying like that kind of like a more mature experiences but they're all fun yeah that would be i would i think that would be great and like you could have like you could still do a comedy club some version of that because i actually do think like the improv stuff

it's probably very fun for a lot of people that are there for like a vacation like oh this is they're made yeah it might be a rare uh they probably are not pursuing improv typically yeah it's like maybe the one of the only times they see something like yeah well you and i said like we got like that was my in like that was amazing yeah that was the first live cut that and like a cruise ship like a topical review on a cruise ship where like the first things i saw in terms of live comedy maybe disney springs needs to just exist now as disney springs and maybe a new pleasure island must rise somewhere on the grounds of the disney world resort where maybe we're like where river country used to be i think this is anaheim that's what i think you do

i think you start it in anaheim okay because i because i think i know what you're saying there's more land there but i guess i think you rip up that that strip and you build out from the void like use sprinkles is good that's good like the void is good like let's start doing more of that they got a whole hotel restaurant that's adventurers club yeah 2.0 and you have that bowling alley there it's like i feel like you you have to make it a place where people will be like do you want to go down to like yeah we could go down to disneyland vr thing we can go play go go bowling go like if you can like name like three things you could do right now to go down there

to do the void it's like well I'm going to the park because I'm not going to go down there for one thing well they're putting like two micro breweries

like two like a ballast point is doing a restaurant brew pub and then there's that black tap something like that it doesn't have the desserts

isn't that desserts as well yeah and it's got the crazy milkshakes with like a slice of cake in it this sort of thing and then they're building a massive new hotel like on top of where the espn zone and stuff and that seems like this like it's a four diamonds triple a four diamond it seems like they're trying to actually build a luxury luxury hotel so yeah yeah but more tentpole jams well i obviously i want themed experiences everywhere you could possibly fit them hey shout out to glendale for you can go to the void and you can get on that trolley like i my pitch is that everywhere in the world be like this

rides everywhere i want i want to have them i mean more church street stations i think that's what we're saying yes it's like how can we find like that that is i think what people want it's like it's like almost like fake community it's like you like this is a place where you can go where you can knock off like five things and not have to like you park one spot and you can have when you make a night of it right maybe we all need to like we just we need some capital we all need to start a sale company use the earnings from that to become the new sure weather pleasure the new grand funmeisters don't you think i mean i i just that to me the simplest thing would have been just to have a guy like always there every night like i'm very

weather pleasure and this and tonight we're gonna like his and his whole thing is you have to live every night like it's the last night of the year because tomorrow's a new day and that's the thing and so we're all gonna make a resolution like you know just it's like a simple theming like he just he's like almost like a spiritual guru like and we're gonna have this experience you're gonna laugh you're gonna dance you're gonna this you know he had like a near-death experience on New Year's. He was sailing. Lightning struck his ship, and he almost died, but he made it back. And he knew when he got back to port, I will live every day like it's New Year's Eve.

Because that's the most exciting part of the year. Because on New Year's Eve, anything can happen in the new year. Fresh possibility. I would like it if they would put these plaques outside the businesses in Disney Springs, quite frankly. If there was a plaque outside the Uniqlo and it was like, well, his son was messing around with some textiles. And we found them in this place and we decided to sew them into T-shirts here in the Coca-Cola store. We could still do that. Hire us to write these plaques.

Yeah, we'll write plaques for everything. Is there Wetzel's pretzels there? Sure. Backstories everywhere. could still do that hire us to write these yeah we'll write plaques for for everything there what is there what's those pretzels there sure backstories everywhere i have one quick question before we wrap it up uh uh you know the comedy the comedy warehouse has done reunions you said the adventurers club came back for one night only if you guys if everybody here if suddenly pleasure island was back you could go for just one night and you can only there's only time for one club. Which one do you go?

How old am I? It's you right now. Okay. Yes. Pleasure Island exists, and you, it is 2018. Because if it was 22, I would say mannequins. Yeah. I think I'm mannequins today.

That's my... Oh, really? It's not a kind of music that I really like. The light show. Mannequins. It was the one on watching on the disney in-room entertainment just like mannequins what the fuck oh yeah that when uh the episode we were talking about that that watching the disney in-room tv was my favorite i literally made uh like an adult

swim commercial based on an in-room like hotel commercial because i just uh i got like obsessed with it was like um i got obsessed with steve wins version of this and so i made a whole and like it was it so the idea was that your tv at midnight or whenever it aired just came i was like welcome to the so-and-so spot it's like it's on youtube i don't remember what it's called but it's but it looks just like a hotel screen and then it just like it's like this is what we have this we have this we have this and it's a crazy uh i mean i don't want to build it up too much but it was but it was like something that i'm obsessed with i was like oh i love like yeah i love that like soft music playing it's like impossible to convey the appeal of this to somebody who doesn't just naturally get it yeah But I feel blessed to know so many people now. Those in room, oh yeah.

It's hypnotic. I mean, I don't know what, I guess it's the music and there's something comforting about it. Clearly the theme is location-specific experiences. And I like that this is a video I can only watch in this hotel. The only place that it exists.

And occasionally you'll hear Mario Lopez chime in and be like, hey, we sat down with everybody from slender man and uh sure sure uh to answer your question adventurous club no without i mean i guess it has to be yeah i got it right yeah so i'm taking adventure i because mine was gonna be adventurous club i'm taking it off the table because i feel like that's my go-to so i'm trying to like challenge myself what's your number two amc 24 movie theater it's a beautiful theater i'll say that big awning i saw the santa claus there as a wonderful place uh i think i would go to um i think i would be really interested in going to the roller skating place i feel like that like that to me feels really unique in the sense of

like yeah i would be curious to see what that is about on the night that michael jackson was skating with michael eisner and george lucas i mean oh that'd be amazing specific that's the answer i want to be there then michael is also brought up in that thread i'll send this thread to you obviously but michael has brought up so much in this thread. Like, Michael was at Pleasure Island non-stop. In disguise? Maybe he was one of the mannequins! Oh, yeah. Very possible. In his alley.

Another thing, the rock and roller drone at some point turned into the rock and roll beach club. You can look up, there's many NSYNC references on this episode. You can look up an NSYNC, like, looking for a record deal concert from up uh there's many in sync references on this episode you can look up uh an in sync like looking for a record deal a concert from 1995 in that venue in the beach club and they and they're so young god they're they're so tiny it was forever ago but the like uh they do a weird like boy band

defied version of we can work it out we can't work it out we're gonna get out life is very short oh that's a big recommend for somebody on the message board says joey fatone hit on me he asked me out they turned him down do you ever see joey fatone's uh like his home movie theater no he designed it to look like the death star so it's like whoa you enter and it's pretty cool it's pretty uh pretty well done have you screened a film there personally or no i just thought on some sort i think i feel like i feel like i saw it on like a hotel tv i was like we went to joey baton's i was like it was i don't know why i was watching whatever it was um i was just going to mention one thing here which i thought was interesting um it was another thing another fact about merriweather pleasure that they he there's a restaurant called the

fireworks factory that he was also into fireworks this is the band of fireworks but then they did a deal with the gruchies who were like we're now i mean at least when i was growing up the gruchies like these big like fireworks people in new york like they just would set off like a ton of and like they did a thing where they would like give them their old fireworks setup so it was like like the after the cannons were used to do the macy's day whatever like so the place was like full of like discarded fireworks like paraphernalia to make it look like yeah yeah which all smells great what a great thing i also i in my notes i have the drinks menu from the fireworks factory uh uh and just just to name a couple, these are explosion-themed drinks.

You got the detonator daiquiri. You got the 21 rum salute. You got the bang master. And then, finally, very bizarre name, even at the time, and the most bizarre today, the border bomber.

Oh, God. Why, my god and i know we're wrapping up i will just say one thing i just realized this when you said that thing about the daiquiri i just recently went to the saved by the bell restaurant that opened up here in la i brought uh weiger and mike mitchell the dope boys there because i figured that would be uh right up their alley uh that place is incredibly packed they're sold out or they have limited availability for the next nine months that's the right like tone to like again themed great it's fun i'm like a medium saved by the bell fan like i know all i i think i knew all the references i can understand all the menu jokes but like i'm like'm like, I'm not obsessive. Um, but it's like, that was great.

Like, that's the kind of like that weird, it's like, I don't know what that is, but I guess it's brand. It's like, you know, it's,

it's a brand and you go there, but like, I think that would pack them in. Like if they put that state by the bell restaurant in, or like in Orlando, in pleasure Island, that would work. I think maybe downtown Disney and all these places need to have spaces that they

trade out and put in it's like every couple months. Yeah, Disney should embrace the pop-ups. They never ended up using the plan for a bar where all the Disney villains drank at. That was an early concept. Because also, Universal does

the Horror Nights mazes, and they put up very crazy, elaborate mazes that are themed to Nights mazes and they put up very crazy elaborate mazes that are themed to like movies and stuff and they do it for what, three months? And the park works functionally during the day without those mazes. So it's sort of like that's, you can do it. Yeah. I also feel like the fact that Disney has had Star Wars for such a long time and they never built a cantina bar.

Like I know they're building Star Wars and I'm sure that will be coming yeah but it's like but they've had star tours since the 80s it's like and this even the and even jocks like that was just built like you've had these properties you could have done any of these themings and you've never well when they opened the star wars launch bay and there's just like a little corner with a table, and then it's like, hey, Star Wars themed food. And I know you and me were like, blue milk. And they're like, no, hamburgers. Huh, huh. And yet, with everything that you're complaining about,

this is what I'll trust like this is the last factoid. They did not, even opening Pleasure Island, for some reason, not a priority to do an Indiana Jones thing or a Star Wars thing or something from any of the big animated films. Did anybody come across in their research Madison's Dive? No. No. Madison's Dive was the first bar to be cut when Pleasure Island started going over budget.

And this was a bar themed after Splash. It was Madison is the Daryl Hannah mermaid from Splash. And it was going to be a place where you could sit and watch an old sailor wax nostalgic about the one that got away. And then behind it, it was going to be partially sunken. Oh, wow. So in the actual water behind the sailor,

the mermaid swims by. Holy crap. So for some reason, we've talked about this with Splash. That's where I want to go. I would love to go there. Wow. Actually, legitimately, yeah.

Now, let's do the Splash pop-up now. Why not? I know no one remembers Splash. Why do the good ideas are the ones they never commit on? Like, the villains one. These are all simple, like, down-the-middle ideas. But then they go, no, no, no. Mannequins wearing mirrors.

That's our thing. Some coked-out guy had too much power at disney at that he was like they were scared of him like we're gonna do it it's gonna be living mannequins and they look like disco ball sure whatever you need just go away it's got to be like the imagineers like like when you hear any story about any movie being made it's always like well i had this idea and it was pretty good and then there's a producer that had just an insane idea that he got stuck on so there must be like some executive that was just like a club with mannequins is good we should get that club with the mannequin in there and they're like yeah yeah that's fine but how about we like do a cool theme thing yeah okay you can have your

theme thing but can i have my mannequins please because you will be fired if you don't finish the mannequins and they're like oh sorry ran out of money here's my one pitch on pleasure and what would have been better instead of having a badge on your thing what you do is every time you went to a club you put on a you're getting full donkied like like peter like pinocchio so like so the first couple you go to you have nothing on but you have a head you you have a headband when you go in and the headband if you it's red if you're this or that you know and so you get an ear and the next time you get another ear and then next thing you get a nose so like when you're full donkey you've done all the things right and then that's when you have to leave and when they pin a tail on you that means

like don't serve them yeah yeah how amazing would it be is everyone left looking like donkeys like it was like you've partied too much now you must go home that is such a good idea and there would be all these people with like geos polaroids of them in college looking like donkeys and it would be everyone would cherish those yeah yeah man what a good idea that is i'm in if you're okay disney new pleasure island 2.0 let's install the donkey system donkey system sleep no more escape rooms adventures club and the boys splash club splash club we want all of it damn it we demand it paul sheer demands it paul sheer thank you uh you uh i'm sure you survived podcast. Thank you so much. So much. Thank you.

Uh, uh, anything you would like to, uh, a promoter, uh, especially Kia Sindhu while you're here. Uh,

yeah, I'm trying to, though. No, I mean, you guys just gave me a lot of good stuff. I would just say, listen to,

uh, unspooled, which is now, uh, wherever podcasts are listened to. We watch a hundred of the AFI as movies, the best movies of all time, apparently.

Wonderful. And then we have actually something. have a quick we have an exciting exciting announcement we actually were talking a little bit about this place earlier and i i got so excited but here we go we'd like to officially announce that we are doing podcast the ride presents the city walk series a 19 part exploration of universal hollywood city walk all right this is obviously something that you guys have been demanding that we really get this is the exploration of the parking garages of the hotels of of maybe some of the sock related businesses that are at city walk we're going to do it all it's not going to be in a row it's going to take like six years for us to get it but i've divided city walk into 19 sectors and we will review each sector there's a moment where i was like this is

april fool's joke we're doing it uh i have talked about a defunct mall for two and a half hours so you better believe it yeah so i have we'll post some of this stuff there'll be more details uh to come and start let us know what you want to hear about which one of the city walk stores with the artificial waves outside can i make can i make a request that of course when you get halfway through you should do one of these live from city walk like the gordon bursch brewery because i'm waiting for you guys to go like i was like i'm waiting for you guys to go and start touring around like jim hill and lentesta like yes oh yeah they do live shows yeah get the podcast the ride fans i'll come down to orlando and you guys could guide it around do a live uh sure we go to pandora we know you're willing to abandon your family and go to orlando

solo you won't be solo you'll be with a podcast. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, let's find a spot. If anybody at CityWalk has a hookup to a live entertainment venue. What's going on in that comedy club? I think John Lovett's comedy club has been empty for a long time. That's what I'm saying. Just turn that off. Make it the podcast, the ride comedy club. We'll binge the Kevin Smith podcast lounge.

The second theater inside there. Podcast, the ride, podcast lounge. The second theater inside there. Podcast the ride, podcast lounge. Yeah. I think we could do a live Hollow at the Moon episode where we just go, we do five hours at Hollow at the Moon. And the dueling piano guys

learn our theme song. Oh, yeah. Screaming at them by the end. Please stop. We've paid you to stop. Why won't you stop? We don't have the rights to don't stop believing. Stop playing.

I can't wait for the one where you guys do the parachuting one. Where is it? The indoor skydiving. Yeah, skydiving. Sorry. I guess. Is that crazy? Would that freak Pansy like me out?

Probably. Yeah, it might. I think it's pretty safe. I think it's safe. But I think it'll be scary because you'll be in the air. You get a voodoo donut afterwards, you'll be fine.

Not in the same sector though. Aren't they right across? Well, but in the way I've sectored. Oh, you know, it's going to be two different episodes.

That one's closer to the comic store. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that comic store. It is fun.

That's legit comic store. Yeah, that's an actual business at CityWalk. Yeah. Something. What sector are we starting with? Do you know that?

Oh, well, that's... Again, that's information forthcoming. I do think maybe... We've already said too much. Now I figured a bad plug. This sounds very exciting. I don't want to hear anything else but this. I feel like you should just go 19 episodes in a row.

Oh, man. It's only this. We lose all our listeners. An entire season and more for a summer and in a row. It's only this. We lose all our listeners. An entire season and more for a summer and half a fall. Yeah, why not? People seem down with our indulgences. If you did,

I think if you did this 19 days in a row, you released an episode a day, it would be amazing. Oh, that's good. It wouldn't even be like, then you go right back to the normal schedule, but you just have a break where it's 19 episodes in a row it's a good idea yeah it is a good idea i just spent 30 minutes on each section it would be yeah we don't have to do a full two yeah two and a half hours 19 sections that's a relief i i was assuming

we were we owe two hours on all of these stock market we'll get two hours we'll scale them based on i assume by the way the sock the sock market is doing very well right now too yeah yeah thanks trump appreciate it thank you trump um uh all right well for all the updates on the exciting city work yes series uh follow us at podcast the road on twitter at us on facebook as we uh what are you calling this series by the way i did i had written just the city walk series i think you need a class so you need a class i think you need like a bright lights big city kind of like you need like a like a kind of a moniker like someone's like bright lights big city not that that's a good title but like colon the city walk series like you need like that you know it's like yeah well in the trailer it starts with the avengers music

and then it ends up it turns into walk this way so it could just be called walk this way oh i love that that's great uh well and if you have any name ideas let us know hit us up on our social medias on our instagrams and our facebooks email us at podcast the ride at gmail rate and review us on itunes and uh yeah stay tuned paul once again thank you so much thank you what an honor oh my gosh my pleasure this is my favorite uh yeah uh yeah stay tuned big things coming