Podcast: The Ride - Podcast: The Ride Live with Tony Baxter

Episode Date: August 17, 2018

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Warning! The following live podcast takes place inside a closed mall store in the San Fernando Valley, full of old Dumbos, Doom Buggies, and Skyway Buckets. We'll talk to the owner of these items, Richard Kraft, and find out which of these ride vehicles he slept in. The first few rows should be considered a splash zone, as you will likely get drenched by tears wept by three nerds as they meet their hero, Imagineering legend Tony Baxter. Please be aware we cannot begin until you turn to the left side of your seat and tug on the dirty yellow strap. Permenecer sentados, por favor. Live from the abandoned sports authority in beautiful Sherman Oaks, California, it's Podcast the Ride. the ride! Whoa! Wow!

This is crazy! Oh my god. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Podcast The Ride Live. Hi there. I know this is probably your first live podcast recording and it's ours too. Yeah. Now like we're going to have like a lot of fun. It's going to be a party. Imagine this is the 1980s and you're all cool teens and this is Videopolis, baby. Okay. So it's very exciting. We got a lot of fun stuff. We're going to the top. Videopolis. We got a lot of fun stuff planned. Sure do. Let's say our names. I'm Scott Gairdner. Yeah. Hello. Scott. Sir. My name is Mike Carlson. Thank you. That's almost everyone, right? That's the equation equation i guess we are missing someone we could just leave

him back there and then he doesn't get to do this unless he's officially invited up that'd be funny and he'd be very mad certainly would so uh let's not let that happen i mean we just we thought that he uh deserves a an extra big entrance because he's preparing for a very up very important upcoming job that he'll have in about 20 years or so. Yes, he's in the middle of like a hungry campaign for the highest office in Disneyland. Okay, this is a man who believes that everyone should be treated equal and that all treats should be enjoyed.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome the future mayor of Disneyland, Jason Sheridan. Now is the time. Now is the best time. Now is the best time of the year. Thank you.

Life is a prize. Live every minute. Open your eyes and watch how you win. How are you, gentlemen? We're excellent. Jason, meet your constituents. I mean, thank you all so much for coming out. Thank you for your support in 20, 30 years when I'm in my ripe old age, staring death in the eye,

preparing to take on the role of mayor in disneyland wow what an inspiring speech this is wow very fitting because we're only blocks away from where i uh first crashed for a couple months uh when i moved to los angeles it's right off of Woodman. Like Walt Disney getting off that train to California. I stepped out of a dirty green Saturn Ion, which has only gotten dirtier, and stepped into the dream, the Hollywood dream. Yeah, he's a real man of the people, folks.

Yeah. I will run that Saturn into the ground before I get a new car. And then it's going to be part of theme park history. They're going to sell it here at the Van Eaton Galleries. Oh, that'd be great. We're making history here tonight. This is totally insane for us. We do this thing in a living room with a damn dog running around the

last one of these we did i choked on dog hair a little bit on the microphone and i had to stop talking uh here we're in a we're in a room of 300 people uh at the most prestigious venue possible the i mean the vets from disneyland gallery but but you know in a broader sense the westfield fashion square which if you know me personally and you know how i feel about malls in the valley you know this is essentially my carnegie hall uh it's a really big deal for me my only regret is that they did not orient the stage so that the giant painting that says team sports back on that wall was not directly behind us mocking us for a quarter and a half. For never playing sports in our real life. Yeah.

Is that what dramatic irony is? Would that be dramatic irony? I'm sure you can call it that if you want. All right. But thank you guys for coming. Thank you so much. It's insane. There's people came

from far and wide. We just talked to a gentleman from Australia. Is anybody from a farther place than Australia? Thousand Oaks? Okay, Thousand Oaks. Shout out to Thousand Oaks, too.

Any Valley Villagers in the house? Oh, boy. I mean, yeah. It's just really nice to have concrete proof that we do have an audience, that anyone listens to this thing. Yeah. I feel good about that. There's so many friends here.

There's so many past guests of the show here. My parents are here. Yeah. I'd say wave, except I can see nothing, so I won't. Oh, wait, hey, yeah, you did poke through. Thank you. My parents, the people who, depending on how you slice it,

either made me this way or didn't do enough to stop me from being this way. I also want to say to them really fast, you remember those years from approximately age nine to, let's say, 19, where I wasn't super social and I mostly just rambled on about stuff I saw on mouseplanet.com and Laughing Place and Teacup Town, all the great theme park websites.

Well, now here in front of you, incontrovertible proof, it took a couple of decades, but I made two friends. Two friends. You know, this is true. I was talking to my mother yesterday, and she said, you know,

because my mom knows Jason, but my mom's never met Scott, and she said, you know, because my mom knows Jason, but my mom's never met Scott. And she goes, you guys are such nice boys. And I, she's like, I have never met Scott, but I can tell. So. A mother just knows. I just wanted to praise your family for that, for raising you to be a very nice boy. Yes, indeed.

Yeah. No rules broken by me. That's why I'm not going to take any of the sporting goods stuff that's left back here it's not mine yeah does anyone want some dirty industrial shelves because we have a surplus of dirty industrial shelves um so this is a very special night for us for a lot of reasons but reasons, but there's one pretty big thing for us, which is the dream, the golden dream of any podcaster is to get a sponsor.

And for tonight, we finally have one who made this whole thing possible. We have a sponsor tonight. Yeah. Tonight we are sponsored, we're proud to say, by the good people at ExxonMobil. Indeed. Yeah, we want to thank ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil, accident-free since the accident sign broke. You know, Exxon has made a lot of great things possible in this world. In 1982, they helped Disney create their greatest attraction of all time and by greatest I

mean longest and and we're going to perform a little a little song in tribute to Exxon right now feel the flow here we go the universe of energy now see it glow it's the universe of energy come through time Sail the winds, tap the source. From the seas to the skies. There's a force beyond our eyes. Jason! Feel the flow. Here we go.

Through the universe of energy. Feel it grow. See it glow it's the universe of energy the universe of energy thank you

applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause

applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause

applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause

applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause Thanks so much. Thanks to ExxonMobil.

And now, I think we have a duty to meet the people, not only crazy enough to have us come in their space and ruin it with terrible singing, but also the people crazy enough to put this entire event on. Because if you don't know it, everything that you saw downstairs, did everybody get to see the exhibit downstairs before the show began? Pretty incredible. And it's all from the collection of the same man. This guy and his son put on this incredible event.

And we're going to ask him a little bit about how this all came together. Please welcome Richard and Nicholas Kraft. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Join in. Well, we have a song. Oh, great. Whoa. We don't have a song.

Feel free. Tune up if you need to. Can I get an E? Okay. Well, yeah. Just flick those mics on, whatever. Yeah. You'll hand it back to us.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming. These are the people. These are the people who made this whole thing possible. And congrats on the success of this so far. It's the talk of Instagram. It's the talk of the theme park nerd. It's the number one Disney attraction in Sherman Oaks.

We bested the Disney store over in the Westfield Mall. Yeah. By the way, we are technically not part of the Westfield Mall. We are Westfield Mall adjacent. We don't want to get sued by Westfield. No, that's ugly. Yeah. I also think I parked in the Westfields, and I'm worried now that I'll be towed.

So give me a sec. Hang on. No, I'll stay here because we need to find out what happened here, how this all came together. Clearly, you've spent a lifetime collecting this insanity. And tell us a little bit about your collection. Okay, so the collection started 25 years ago. Prior to that, I was just another kid who went to Disneyland once a year.

I was very lucky. Grew up in Bakersfield, which made me very unlucky. Yeah, really give Bakersfield what for oh yeah I mean in some ways there's no spot on earth that's more the opposite of Disneyland okay so they uh but my my parents realized this so they would save up their money they were school teachers and we'd go to Disneyland once a year I had an older brother who had a Crohn's disease so we had to do two things to go to Disneyland first we needed the money second he needed to feel well so a trip to Disneyland was extraordinary it was like the best day imaginable times a million and in trips, we had the attraction poster on our bedroom wall,

and we would plot and plan for the next trip how we were going to allocate our tickets from the ticket book. Because it never occurred to us you could buy extra tickets. So if you had three e-tickets, you're just going to go on three e-rides. And we also treated it like a military operation so we'd plot what path we would take. I want to ask the audience, by a show of screams, because I can't see any of you, how many of you enter on the left tunnel and how many

on the right tunnel? So scream if you're a left tunnel person. And how many of you are a right tunnel person that's hard to determine how many people go both ways i'm a both ways guy yeah go in and then back out and then in again sometimes so um this is everyone's story by the way i went to disneyland once a People are wondering, but I didn't then buy all of Disneyland. Something happened.

Something did happen. It involved death. My brother died 25 years ago. And I was a bit despondent, as one would be when someone dies. And I didn't know how to feel better. So I instinctively went to Disneyland. And I recognized, oh, I'm walking on the same sidewalk we walked on. And I'm smelling the smell of the water at Pirates of the Caribbean.

And tasting a Dole Whip before it was trendy. And the sound of the Swiss Apulka playing out of the treehouse before the Swiss Family Robinsons were evicted. And all of these sights and sounds and tastes. playing out of the treehouse before the Swiss Family Robinsons were evicted. And all of these sights and sounds and tastes, oh, just the feel of lacquered handrails brought back a million memories. So a few weeks later, I heard there was going to be a Disneyland auction, and there was going to be attraction posters and I always loved the Autopia poster

the best of all like this hearty father with his son and everybody's in a really good mood and they're kind of retro futuristic so I got that and I'm a bit obsessive so one poster don't say yeah one one poster became every poster. Minus one. I never, ever got Casa de Frito. Aw. I want to hear sadness over this. Yeah. Heavy.

Yeah, it is heavy. And I used to justify, oh, I don't want it. It's ugly. That is the worst sour grape or sour Frito story ever told. And so then I somehow realized you could get ride vehicles. And I sort of became known as the guy. So a lot of black market people would call me in the middle of the night. I've got six sets of small world figures. It was like a hostage situation. I literally met those figures in a deserted Fry's parking lot and they were in the back of a truck. It's all come full circle. Now we're at an abandoned sporting goods store.

They've returned home sort of. But I have been to Fry's and I can say I've never been to a sporting goods store. Yes. I am glad that you chose to meet, although it was closed in the parking lot of the thematic electronic store. Well, Nikki and I always say, what if a flying saucer actually did crash in the building? And we're all just thinking, oh, isn't that clever? Yeah. We've all been laughing at the pain of many people. Also, who's like, Best Buy or Fry's? And the owner of Fry's is like, we got to do something.

Should we offer lower prices? Should we do some sales? No, let's just theme. And they're all themed differently. The Woodland Hills is like Alice in Wonderland. Is that correct? That's not as cool as the B movie.

Sci-fi in Burbank. That's the, yeah. Well, that's the, that's the Disney sea. I think of, uh,

yes, yes. And the DCA is definitely the, yes's the wrong Alice it's like if it was a Disney themed Alice it'd be awesome but it's like based like there was a book before the movie yeah what wait so it's just like a nightmare Edward Gorey Alice in Wonderland it store. It's absolutely joyless. I mean, when I want to buy a D cell battery, I want happiness. So death posters collecting 25 years ago. And I'm really blessed.

There's two things in life I'm extremely passionate about. One's Disneyland and the other is film and Broadway music. And I get to combine both of them because what I do for a living is represent as a talent agent film and Broadway composers including three Disney legends who I collect I want to put them in loose site cases because I have Richard Sherman of the Sherman Brothers yeah that's a one of two. That comes in a set of two. And Danny Elfman from Nightmare Before Christmas. Danny's my first client.

We've been together like over 30 years. And then I acquired for my collection Alan Menken. Who will be doing a charity concert on this very stage. Because as his agent, I said, I finally, he did some prestigious things. There's just a big event for him at Carnegie Hall. But I said, you've never played a sports authority. Yeah. Wait, I think we, but we beat him.

We did the first musical performance. We beat Mencken. Well, that's how we sold him. Yeah. Always wanted to. So August 24th, Alan Mankin on the stage with a piano,

singing songs, telling stories, and 100% of the profits go to charity, which brings to why this exists. We don't need you guys, by the way.

He's just going to go. You guys can like, take a break. You're fine. Yeah, so we... Charity. He grew up with all the collectibles. Like, he had the Tiki Bird over his bed.

Yeah. Naturally, as one would. But we did not know it worked. Ah. We thought... It came mounted on the sign that's hanging there, and we just thought it was a nice theming for the sign. And then when you turned it over to Mike Van Eaton

of Van Eaton Galleries, he said, wow, you have an original Jose the Tiki Bird? We said, no. He said, yes, you do. Yeah. And you were skeptical. I'm a little happy that I didn't know it worked. That would have been a horror.

Like, you would have snuck into my room at night, you know, and like turned him on. And like, it's a, having been here for a week hearing that song over and over it's a great song great showroom brother song it is a ride of racial stereotypes what i uh so so it's very uncomfortable yeah it's very uncomfortable to just hear these racial stereotypes in this exhibit extremely I think it's extremely progressive. Yeah. Nothing that's weird in 2018.

There's no way that's a white guy doing the voice. Yeah. Okay. Speaking of, you'll notice every attraction poster, the people are white. I did notice that. Except for some reason, Matterhorn. We think it's because most of the poster is white, so they would have blended in. So they are black people. They are black people and it

predated Cool Runnings is what we kind of realized. I think someone saw that poster and said, there's a movie. Disney gets their ideas from everywhere apparently. We want to show you something really fast.

We're not... We don't have... As podcasters, we don't have the discretionary funds to buy thousands and thousands of items, but we are amateur theme park speculators, and we look

at some of this stuff on the podcast once in a while, and a long time ago we found a uh we found a little piece of art that we wanted to have you as an expert we wanted to have you appraise it a little bit and yeah just kind of visuals on a podcast oh yeah yeah well it'll be on the twitter podcast the ride but we'll we'll describe what we see and we've talked about this before. Yeah. So, yeah. Like, this says, like, it's an original piece of promo art from Disneyland. So, some people might know where we're going with this.

Here is the photo in question. Oh! For those listening, for everyone at home and all our ships at sea, you're looking at a painting of Winnie the Pooh and his common law wife. They are in front of the castle at Disneyland and they seem very much in love. Winnie is about to motorboat her.

He is going in. He's going for a jungle cruise. Oh, I was going to go go the proper boat joke so like like price wise if you were still collecting like what do you think something like this might cost might run well this crosses into two categories so things become more valuable if two different types of collectors are going after it so this is both people who love Disney. Three! Disneyland, poo, and erotic art. Yeah. The furry

community is going to go crazy for that. They're going to have to outbid the polyamorous community to... What is this look in his eyes? It's called love, Nicky. That is not love. That is like, you know what I'm about to do.

It's that Nala face. It's the Nala eye. Is she, I'm sorry, is she pinching his nipple? No. She is pinching his nipple, yes? Wow. It also looks like SNL cast member Jan Hooks. Yes.

Oh, yeah. I actually think I saw them on YouPorn, actually. Oh, no. Under the rare category Pukaki. Really going for it. Running an exhibit that says family friendly all over it. Only Scott told his family he was going to be on good behavior tonight. The rest of us did not make that promise. Cover your ears, guys.

Things are being discussed. So price wise, what do we think? On eBay. What do you think it is on eBay and what would you pay? I want to show you how an auction works. Sure. What's the starting bid, Nicky? $250. $250, $250. Can I earn three? Can I earn three? Oh, that's a $300 piece. Absolutely. $350. This joke's going to get funnier and funnier. I'm going to guess. Now, do you have a real number? The next slide is the eBay page itself. Where would you go?

Where would you, Richard? What would you be willing to pay, or what would you? Personally, I don't collect. He has standards, please. Some standards. You lie very well. Very good. Yeah.

And my heart is no longer like this. Have you guys seen Melting Face Snow White downstairs? Yeah. I am in love. It may be the only thing I bid on to get back. So she means nothing to me. It hasn't gone yet. I think you can take it back, right?

No, I wouldn't do that. That's a slippery slope. I'm going to say, I love a good guessing game. That's a $3,500 piece of art right there. Wow. What's eBay have it at? eBay has it at $300. Oh, that's a steal. Wait, and you can pay monthly. Wait, why is it for $22 of shipping? How big is this? $22 in shipping we do a patreon we're gonna lose somebody who thinks this is a better deal a much better monthly installment plan yes or you can make an offer has anyone done that do you want me to your offer i'll make an offer right now okay wait i'll

buy it right now okay oh you want me to do it? Okay. So make an offer and see if they get back in time. Offer them $263. You were going lower? Yeah, that's how you make the offer. Oh, I don't. You can buy it now for 300, but I'm about to offer $263 and they're definitely going to go for it. You're hooked up to do this, Mike? I don't know. We'll see. I feel like we can't. We don't really need to pause in real time.

This will be a cliffhanger at the end of the episode. We'll let you know. And if we get it, we'll all split it collectively. Yes. No, I'm planning to pay over 12 months. So we have to have it on the installment plan. Okay, what else we got? That's it, and I think actually, I feel like we should bring up

the man of the hour. Absolutely. But if there's anything else you'd like to say about your event here, or any way people can participate, or anything you want them to check out in the future. Buy, buy, buy. Everything must go. It's a fire sale. I actually have, before you bring them out i

have a tony baxter story i have two tony back oh yeah yeah please okay so one day somebody sells me a metal plaque from the front of tomorrowland the dedication plaque that's in the rock and it was like okay this is really cool and so i I purchased it, and two weeks later, Tony came to visit me in my office. He looks over, he goes, that was stolen out of my office three weeks ago. It's like all the gentlemen I bought it from and said, I'm not going to ask questions.

I want a refund, and this needs to go back to where it came from. So it went back, and then I think Tony sold it. No, I honestly don't know what happened. But by far the best Tony Baxter story is the night Tony Baxter and I went to a deserted floor of the Sheraton Universal to meet Michael Jackson. Yeah.

The air went out of the room. My God. So Tony could tell the story up to the point that I joined it, but he had had multiple meetings with Michael who wanted to hire him, and what he wanted after that was unclear. So he brought me in because I'm a talent agent and thought maybe I could negotiate or move the conversation further. So it's just three chairs, Michael Jackson, Tony, and myself.

And I start asking questions. I go, so do you want to hire Tony to work for you or start a new company like Imagineering, that kind of a thing? Can you give me the year here, by the way? He can. Okay. I'm not... It was before he died. Good. But what if it was after?

All I know is, I can tell you if anyone's a Michael Jackson fan, after we left a meeting, I said, what was that hanging from Michael Jackson's nose? And we realized it was his nose. So it was that era? Yeah. That era. That's how you tell time in Michael Jackson.

So I asked if it should be him or are they forming a company? And Michael Jackson said, that's a really good idea. So then I said, is he building theme parks or is this for hotels? That's a really good idea. So then I said, is he building theme parks or is this for hotels? That's a really good idea. So I went through a list about seven things and always got the same response, complimenting me on my really good ideas. And I finally thought I'd break the ice a little. This wasn't going well. So I said, so tell me about the first time you went to Disneyland. And he goes, I worked there when I was five years old, which kind of made me sad. No one's first experience at Disneyland should be working.

And then I got a little cocky and I said, oh, by the way, I own a Dumbo. And it was the only time in a meeting he looked at me like,'m michael jackson do you think i'm impressed by this so um needless to say nothing came from this meeting except for a great memory and a way to segue to bringing out the man himself and of course the man himself um okay well wait are we doing a switch off i think we're doing a switch off uh uh richard nicholas thank you so much yeah thank you very much. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. And thanks for doing...

Thanks for putting on this wonderful event and for giving us the opportunity to do what we get to do right now. Let me show you something really fast. This is a magazine that my mom got me a subscription to in 1995. I was 10 years old. She knew that I was more interested in theme park stuff than the average kid, and she got me this magazine, The E-Ticket.

Anybody get The E-Ticket? Does anybody go back that far? This was a wonderful fanzine with really cool pictures and interviews with Imagineers. And I loved all of it. But the second one that I ever got absolutely blew my mind because it had this extremely cool interview with this Imagineer who was so thoughtful and just spoke in such detail about all the care that was put into all of the rides that were blowing my little kid mind from the seventies and the eighties and the nineties. When I learned about this guy, that's when I became an incurable theme park nerd for life.

And that's the person we get to bring out right now. In case you don't know that this, this man worked on, let's list them. Let's list his greatest hits. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Journey into Imagination. Splash Mountain. Disneyland Paris.

Star Tours. Yeah. Indiana Jones. What else have we got? There's tons more. We'll talk about it, though. Ladies and gentlemen, this is like the Mick Jagger of theme park design, okay? When he comes out here, give him a Mick Jagger-like welcome and uproarious applause for Mr. Tony Baxter. Wow.

Tony, just to start us off, we want to thank you for all of your wonderful contributions to Disney and the themed entertainment world at large. But I especially want to thank you for your most important work, your time on Main Street as an ice cream scooper is this yeah this is working you know those were like the most fun really yeah because you'd come in and you got to be kind of talking with the guests and looking at all the action and for one year i actually got to hang around walt disney being there and he would come in like very early in the morning, you know,

and drive the truck that you see right downstairs, drive that around the park. Everyone thought he was kind of crazy, but later I found out his brother was a truck driver, and Walt really admired and wished he could do something simple like that, but he could only do it before Disneyland opened. And that was the cool thing about setting up the ice cream window that early in the morning. I got to see it.

I mean, that's amazing. I do want to just toss you... It actually was fun, you know. Well, by saying things that we feel so earnestly about, you have shut down all of our snark brains. We're supposed to be funny, like snark, sarcastic comedians, but we're like, oh, wow. I think I'm back on track.

I think I'm back on track. I just want to toss you some quick hardballs. Cup or cone? There's nothing quick with me. Okay. Do you prefer cup or cone? Cone. Favorite flavor?

Chocolate chip. Oh, me too. Great. Actually, I got to qualify that. It's mint chocolate chip. Oh. Very popular. That is now Jason's favorite.

Preferred toppings? Toppings? The kind of chocolate that hardens that you used to get at frosty freeze oh that's great yeah yeah uh and do you have any brand loyalties for ice cream any fun yes thrifty because if you go yeah if you go in there and ask for medieval madness it's actually the nougat taste from inside a Three Musketeers bar. Awesome. Oh. Fully awesome.

Wow. I mean, that's an amazing tip. All right. Really, it's good. That's all of my questions. Gentlemen, if you'd like to take it from here. You wanted to know about Disney, right? At some point.

Yeah, yeah. Well, so, all right. So you were one of the people who achieved the dream of, you know, starting doing, you know, just like smaller jobs at Disneyland. And you worked your way all the way up to Imagineering. We know about the time at Carnation. Any other rides you worked on? Oh, yeah. I mean, I dreamed of getting out of carnation to do the rides but really i mean working in the food service you didn't have the responsibility of people's lives you know that

you do when you're working right all of a sudden they hand you this controller and like if someone's clothing snags in that you know grill down there you better shut it off right away before it pulls their clothes off or something like that you know and you go oh okay or in the submarine ride if somebody panics and they run for the hatches it's going under the waterfall that's a bad thing you know so all of a sudden the dream idea of how much fun it would be to work those rides and it was but you you really couldn't let your guard down you had to really sure was there is there one you'd be like too afraid to to work on if given if you were assigned yeah well not afraid but i'm not believe it or not i'm talking pretty glibly now

but the thought of working the jungle cruise scared me to death and i never did i never did how come i don't know i can do memorization like for centuries man had but his own two eyes to explore the universe within a single snowflake and now the mighty microscope yeah i can do that by heart but jungle not a word wow wow gotcha now you well that's it you worked at uh adventures through winter space yeah for a whole summer i saw everything geez and then you know not to jump around around too much, but you're running that ride. And then a couple decades later, you are replacing that ride with a little attraction called Star Tours. Yeah, and you can believe all the people that wrote in about their life being changed by inner space or their life being created in inner space or a lot of things like that that you know made it very difficult to take

it out yeah those things have a high back they kind of like high whatever's going on uh like like now like in this era like people online get very upset if tower of terror gets turned into guardians of the galaxy but like was it the same way back then where people were upset it was actually worse because we had never gone to the outside for this overused word that you hear every day now ip two letters actually ip and so everything had been disney disney disney disney and we were all sort of faced with the fact that the last really stunning animated film had been like jungle book back in Walt's time. And the rest were pleasant, but they were more for kids. And so that thing where it really bridged Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast

and Aladdin, young people went and date, people go on dates, everything. That hadn't happened yet. So you looked at who was really where the population, the young people of 1978 to 85, that was all Lucas Spielberg stuff. So I drew the long straw, I guess, the short straw, and I said, someone's got to go over to the studio and tell them Disneyland's going to be hurting if this generation of kids doesn't see the things they grew up with, all the action toys, all that stuff. So Ron was good.

This was Ron Miller, who was son-in-law to walt uh said well why don't we have a meeting up at the silverado vineyards and i'll have george lucas come over and we'll talk about it well if you can imagine being a kid from orange county who works scooping ice cream and i'm now at the silverado vineyards and a bmw comes up with george lucas in it diane is just in disney is serving the potato salad and says oh there's plenty more where that came from so don't be bashful and i'm sitting there going does it get any better than this wow uh that brings up a question you know not to fawn over you too much but i I would say you are the most influential voice of the latter 20th century

when it comes to theme design and entertainment. Do you think Michael Eisner's son, Brett Eisner, is number two? Applause, please. No. You know, it really is a team effort. So I think you've got to think of the leadership and their success or failure

is how well they're able, like a director in music or anything else, to inspire a whole group of people to take the ball and run with it further. Because, I mean, you can have millions. Everybody has dreams of rides. You guys never have ideas for new rides or anything. I don't know it's it's really assembling the incredible range of people that can make good ideas or bad ideas

come true yeah um well do you jason you were i think what you were driving through. Oh, yeah. I derailed it that time. See, I can do it too. So if you're number one, does that make Michael Eisner's son Breck Eisner number two? Because it seemed like, I mean, the stories are that like he would rubber stamp a lot of those rides. Well, I was very lucky. I mean, you got to realize,

Michael was, the first 10 years of Michael Eisner with Frank's Wells, best 10 years I've ever worked at Disney, really. These two guys were hands-on. They were in our face every week. And when Michael came over the first day, he said, I don't know anything about this business. So I brought my 14-year-old here, Breck, and he's going to tell me whether the ideas that you're going to show us are any good or not so uh your first thought is my career depends on a 14 year old and then think about this what is

our audience at disneyland you know and i'm about to pitch star wars as a ride and i'm about to talk about splash mountain so to give my brain some recovery time to think about how do I pitch Splash Mountain, Brer Rabbit, Brer Bear, all of that, that's not 14-year-old fodder. So I went with Star Wars and I talked the whole thing through and the end of it. Now I gave it in a way that a 14-year-old would like it rather than my normal pitch that's for executives, you know, where everything has got to be, this has a throughput of over 1600 an hour. And at that rate, we'll do 24,000 in a day. If we're operating from eight in the morning until midnight. No, it was like, this is so cool. And you know how it felt when you were going down in the trench and the pilot's going to go, I've always wanted to do this. And then

down there you go and you feel the whole thing. And Breck says, wow, dad, that's incredible. We've got to do that. So Michael says, okay, we're doing that. What else do you have? And then I went, okay, how do I pitch lovable bear, rabbit, and silly old bear, bear to a 14-year-old? Well, you do the tallest, steepest drop that's ever been imagined and then hidden in the dark, something no one's done before,

where you go down a dip, and then unlike boats the boats go back up and and like a roller coaster and we get done with the whole thing and he goes dad that's even better than star wars so he goes okay we're doing that and michael says so that'll be open the star wars one next year and then splash after that and then a management came in and gave him a dose of reality. But in an ideal world, those happen, like they open the same day or something? Like if there was limitless money? He would have loved that.

But when he found out, no, it would take three years for Star Wars and five years for then, he looked at Frank and said, who's the hottest person in Hollywood today? Frank says, Michael Jackson. He goes, get Michael. Let's get, who's the hottest person in Hollywood today? Frank says, Michael Jackson. Goes, get Michael. Let's get, who's the best director? Coppola.

Get Coppola. Bring George in to produce it. And then he looked at all of us and he said, you can't tell me we won't have a movie out there in a year because I make movies. Wow. Wow. Wow. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Oh, I was going to say, if you followed Francis Ford Cobbola's career in the 80s, it was just him making a movie, going bankrupt, making a movie, going bankrupt. That's true. It is true. Do you have, did you, what did you, did you do stuff on Captain EO as well? Like, did you advise on it or did you have any? Well, that's where I met Michael Jackson. We actually created three scenarios.

One was a science fiction that became Captain EO. Another was a fairy tale. And I think the third one was kind of an Indiana Jones-like adventure thing. And Michael just sort of right away said, I want to do a space film. I want to be Luke Skywalker. And so that's how that happened. And my life was changed forever. I just remember we filmed that at culver studios

over in culver city and michael to get himself up out of a very he's very calm in real life was and when we were on the set he would turn the sound up to like so deafening loud you know deafening and then he would just become a different person under that. But I'm really shocked that he never had a hearing problem. I'm sure he would have if he'd lived. Eventually, yeah. Now, do you dispute anything about Richard's story about you and Michael Jackson? Or do you have anything else?

No, but he only told you the end of the story. You got 30 minutes to go into the beginning. No, I mean, i remember sitting with him eating bubble gum and he had one of those 120 packs of double bubble and he had called me normal go on yeah he called me uh but he was he was really i said it's very important that to do this work to kind of be in this industry and look at richard he'd probably agree. You have to maintain some of your 12-year-old self. And Michael was kind of cheated out of a childhood. So as an adult, he was trying to recapture that.

So he's eating the bubble gum while he's having me go through four cassettes in a boom box. He was recording everything to know about building an Indiana Jones ride. And it would get to the end. He'd go, stop, stop. And then he'd put Tony Baxter's side one and then turn it over and then, okay, we're ready to go. But

he only chewed the gum until the sweet went out and then he'd wrap it in the comic. I used to do that. Yeah. Now that's crazy. Um, so, well, you know what we haven't talked about you, you know, you talk about getting IP into the parks, but you created one of the most beloved original Disney attractions that was not previously in a movie or TV show, and we're talking about Figment and Dream.

Absolutely. Yeah. And for those of you who have only been down to Epcot since 2000 and ridden the sham of an attraction that's there. Oh, wow. We weren't going to go that far, but now that we know that, that's on them. I think even the company knows that.

We know. I don't know. It was a beautiful attraction that talked about this process that every single person does, and that's they gather input. You're gathering it right now. You're storing it some way or another, and you will use it to combine with all the things you know to create new things, and it was a very inclusive thing.

The Sherman brothers captured that thought with the one little bark song, and the only thing that was missing was the name of our dragon, which you've probably all heard the story, but I was home one night, and Dream Finder came out of, just quickly, he's a guy that finds dreams so he's the dream finder the dragon what is that going to be and uh one night i was watching magnum pi and magnum had put a goat in the garden which ate all

of the plants and the foliage and the old butler came in mad as hell and said what is going on out there and and magnum to calm him down just said oh it must be a figment of your imagination and the butler looked at him and said figments don't eat grass and i just sat there for a minute i went well what do they look like and what do they eat and then it just popped it said you know isn't it obvious so the next day i grabbed the little carved figure we had the model and i put it on the desk in front of our whole team and i said meet figment and everybody looked at me and said how how did we not i mean that is it's so obvious and what's cool about it you can try this

on your phone when this is over write in the word figment google the word figment and then push images and every single image for pages and pages is figment. Now, that's an English word that's been around for 500 years, and now we own it. That's what I call that valuable mental real estate. Is there, like, when I was a child, and we share this, and I think everyone in the audience, when we were children and we went on this ride,

Figment felt like he was your best friend. No? No one feels that? Uh-oh. So, like, you're thinking of Figment. Do you have a fondness for him in that way, or do you identify with him? Like, when you were creating him, was it like, I want to make some, like, the perfect best friend for, I guess me is really what i'm asking like what was your thought and like is he what

qualities will he have like like what was an overall like kind of philosophy you were the perfect age audience for it um you know we had very serious people that had passed the gates of childhood and sort of given up that 12 year old they would go i don't get it i don't get it the movie i love is big and you can watch this dynamic between tom hanks who's an adult with a 12 year old's mind uh giving a prayer in a presentation where this guy is talking about facts and figures and extending the penetration of this product to the 14 year old level and all that and And Tom is playing with it and going, you know, and raises his hand, yes. Well, I don't get it. What's fun about turning

a building into a robot? And the guy goes, didn't you read your charts and all that? So, you know, the dilemma was children just caught it right away. And the dynamic of DreamFinder being kind of a Santa Claus or a knowledge figure who's lovable and benign, and this child who just is drinking it all up, and after like two minutes of one thing, he's on to something else. And it was an extraordinary combination of two perfectly balanced comedians.

I think the problem now is you've got two wacky people. You've got Eric Idle and Figment, so you can't play off. It's not like Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis or Figment and Dreamfinder. It's Figment and Figment, essentially. So it was a perfect combination. And you can't believe the letters we still get. And it's your age group that's kept it alive.

So keep those letters coming because Marvel took a gamble and did 15 episodes and they were hugely successful. They went hardbound, which doesn't often happen with a standalone. The comic you're saying.

Yeah, yeah. The comic is really, has anybody read it? Yeah. It's cool. I did have a question about that. So like Dream Finder, everyone knows, hold on, this will work eventually, right?

We have audio-visual? We do, if it would work. Except your laptop shut off. Let me, while Mike's figuring that out, so you mentioned the sham version. So what happened? Like, why did that change happen? Could you tell me what happened? Oh, it's one of those scenarios i see

no i mean it was very clear that it was to be an inclusive thing i mean so many kids grew up with their parents saying what's wrong with you aren't you imaginative you gotta work you know come up with some idea to do on your own well so if that's drummed into everyone and if you if the goal of high school is to beat the 12-year-old out of you and make you a productive adult without childlike thoughts, I mean, I don't know what I would have done to create all the things I've created if I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be, as you said, that kid going on that ride and having the appeal and the emotional connection to the characters and the scenes involved.

So, you know, this is a danger we have in our school system. So the new one, I think, sort of reflects a more adult attitude. And if you can explain to me what an upside-down toilet on the ceiling and learning how a skunk smells improve your imagination, it would help me a lot because I, for one, can't figure it out. Comedy was very interesting in the 90s. I guess.

That's all I can... So, yeah. So, Dream Finder, this is what he... Toppo appeared on the ride and then this is... So, in his original incarnation, he was this sort of

jolly Santa Claus. I was wondering, how do you feel about the change they made in the Marvel comics to make him a whole lot sexier? Like, look at this man. This is a very handsome man. And it's just, I mean, I think it's good. I just, how did you feel? Have you ever interviewed anyone from People Magazine about what covers sell best? That's a good point. That's a good point.

The stories are sweet and charming inside, see? So if they made Eric Idle's Dr. Nigel Channing a super hunk. Maybe that would help. More appealing on some level. But I think the idea of the stories was kind of going back to the origin stories. But I would love to see a Figment animated feature film the figment movie we all want it this whole we want this there's a streaming service coming out and this is a perfect place for a tv show about figment so somebody out there so maybe there's someone from disney out there who can i mean literally if you had the IP where you push a word on Google

and every image of it that Disney company owns, why wouldn't you do something with it? I don't get that. It's funny. This might be a place where Breck Eisner could help again because do you all know, I don't know if we've ever brought this up on the podcast. Breck Eisner went on to direct the movie

The Last Witch Hunter starring Vin Diesel. And he's currently an executive producer on The Expanse, the next season coming soon to Amazon. This would be perfect. Do you have a phone there that you're looking all this stuff up on? Not for that part. Not yet. You had Breck facts. We have it all committed to memory, Breck's career.

Can I ask about, we're talking about stuff in Epcot Center, and then we here in California almost got a West Coast version of Epcot Center called Westcott. And you were, I don't know your position, but you were sort of supervising that project. Yeah, we were actually kind of pitting Long Beach against Anaheim. We developed the Disney Sea project, which sort of saw the light of day because most of it you can visit over in Tokyo. So Tokyo Disney Sea became the outgrowth of Long Beach Disney Sea. How many days would you recommend?

Okay. All right. So this is a running feature on the show. Just to explain it real quick, not take up too much time, where the three of us... I have no idea. The three of us are split. We've never been to Tokyo.

Mike's going in September. We're going in September. So there was a night at my birthday, and we had a couple drinks, nothing crazy, and I said, my girlfriend Lindsay and I are going going to Tokyo and we're going to stay three days. And Scott got very riled up and he said, no, two days is right. And I said, well, that's just one extra day. And he was like, no, why do you have to go an extra day?

And I was like, and then we got into kind of an argument about it. And then we talked to Jason and Jason said, four days. Four days. Which I. Because you need to explore the hotels, and then you've got to walk around and appreciate the design. I've been beaten down on this point, and I'm willing to accept whatever answer,

but your official answer for a Tokyo Disney trip. My official answer, without a guide and without extreme amount of fast passes, I would say four days. All right! Oh, my God. Get out of here. Get out of here.

Oh, Jason always wins. Officially shamed. I admit. That's what it takes. All of that has nothing to do with Westcott. No, it doesn't. No, we got way off the point. No. What I wanted to do with Westcott. No, it doesn't. No, we got way off the point. What I wanted to say about Westcott, because we can't talk about every facet of it,

but if you could tell us what is the single thing that your ideal version of Westcott might have had that would make us the most jealous that we don't get to experience it? Well, I mean, we had the longest ride that had ever been done, a 45-minute cruise called World Cruise. Imagine Pirates of the Caribbean with dips, all kinds of audiometronics, and five stations in the four corners of the world, as well as Future World. And so you'd learn about each quarter of the world world and then you'd have a chance to disembark or stay on through the whole thing

or ride it all day like the train around Disneyland. But knowing that we didn't want to make it boring, we made sure we had a thrill part and some audio-metronics in each of the five segments. So that was pretty cool. The other part you can kind of get a feeling for, which was going to be the four corners of the world had four mega hotels that actually formed the berm because we're

so landlocked there that we built up these fairly large hotels that were all themed and kind of cascaded down to kind of the look that you have in world showcase around the front end of it so people are living kind of up in the back and playing in swimming pools on the roofs of the mid-level area and then on down into the day-to-day park visitors in the front and you know while we didn't do that i think someone in las vegas thought it was a pretty cool idea because about half of it if you drive down the strip now is kind of like very different from the the frank sinatra and dean martin vegas of the past and a lot of that happened just after we kind of put the thing to bed it's wild oh i have that

oh you don't go ahead i was just gonna say that's that is the one thing that i i would i would i don't know what i would sell or what organ i would give up to have Westcott exist. I am so, I see that picture with the golden sphere and it's that, that is what dreams are made of. That's all I had to say. Certainly, I heard a rumor, and tell me if I'm wrong, was there also talk of putting an Adventurers Club in downtown Disney out here? Got me on that one.

I know. I don't know anything about it. Interesting. I have another question where I'm hoping you can provoke some jealousy in us. I am curious, with your status at this point in time with the Walt Disney Company, if you went to Disneyland right now, after this, what is the place that you would have access to that we would be the most jealous

that you could walk in there? The 33 Club. Yeah. You know what's good about it? You don't have to wait to eat. Now, with a new lounge, you can go in and sit down and have a nice meal. Not the full-on one that's in the main dining room, but a hamburger and stuff like that. Just waiting for you in a nice air-conditioned space.

That's very, very cool. I'm jealous. Yep. Mission accomplished. I have some logistical questions. You've worked for Disney so long. If you want to go to, say, Disney

Sea or obviously go back to Disneyland Paris, you don't have an annual pass, right? Are you kidding? The Disney company we're talking about. You make a call, right? I make really good friends that invite me on their trips to go over to those places to be their tour guide.

Oh, really? Yeah, I did that to see all three. I'd been to Tokyo, but to get into Hong Kong and Shanghai, someone said, I can't imagine anyone better to be able to go around and talk philosophy and all that stuff. So I said, I'm your man you know and so that was how i i really saw those two parks it was great great opportunity so you kept your rolodex but had to give back your badge and gun no hey you never give back your badge i think

somewhere in the oh my my cards are in the car but uh no i still can get in here you know that that doesn't go away sure sure sure um real quick uh talk quick about splash mountain and our friend scott here um has a situation with splash mountain i don't want to embarrass him but he's talked about on the podcast so it's like common knowledge he hasn't been on splash mountain in how many years? It's something like 17, 18, something like that. Look, I don't love a steep drop. So you wouldn't be friends with Brack then? No, I couldn't. Boy, would I have blown it if I had pitched to you.

You would have been responsible for Splash Mountain not existing if you were Michael Eisner's son, Scott. What if it was just a gentle bayou trip where nothing went wrong? But can you offer Scott some encouragement? He has to go back on Splash Mountain. It's a wonderful ride. Where did it is? I watched the videos.

I can't think of any ride more comfortable on a day like today than Splash Mountain. And the whole idea is yes, you're going to be apprehensive for a full ten minutes, but then after you drop, you've got three minutes of pure pleasure with a song

Zippity-doo-dah playing in your ears. Well, you got to go on it now. Come on. Yeah, I think so. That's enough encouragement. I immediately turn on it when we actually... Nope, not doing it.

Are there, Tony, are there any rides or like types of rides that you won't go on ever or uh-huh okay teacups oh really really i i like to spin it to where i don't think you can anymore they kind of put brakes on them but when i was a kid you could spin it and the the effect you got was it was tipping over it was so fast it felt like instead of going like this it was starting to go like that and the whole world was going by i can't do that anymore even i went on in credit coast to the other night and um the last time for me too for it it sort of settles into a ring thing at the end of the ride after you've done all the fun parts i don't mind loops or anything but it then goes into this and when i came into the end of that, beads of sweat, you know, and I, no, no, no, no.

But a giant sensations. You were freaked out by the, uh, the Skyway bucket. You got sense memory even sitting in the Skyway. When I was, yes, we were sitting in the Skyway bucket downstairs and I remembered, it's not the same one I was in when I was a child, but that terrified me when I was five. Uh-huh. So don't say, I'm a familiar person on the stage. That's weird because, you know, for little kids, I mean, they're not even fully developed

two and three year olds. The fascination of changing their point of view from like close up to being above looking down was always like, it was really fun to ride with them because they were just they didn't know how to comprehend it you know right so i guess you were too old at five i loved it i loved it i'm like a goat i like to be on the highest possible elevation which is funny because one of your you were sad to lose the goats at disneyland which is like oh yeah let's not even get into that. That's true.

Like when the goats went away because they got rid of Big Thunder Ranch. The Big Thunder Ranch. Oh, okay. Goats. Jason would always love because the goats would run toward the end of the day and they would run them backstage. And that was the thing that Jason was most upset when they were talking about Star Wars Land being built is that the goats were going away.

And that is a true story. There's no joke to it. You made a ride with a goat in it. I did. But you know what? Steve, bow. The goat has been usurped from its prime place because everybody at that moment has two seconds exactly

to study the new developments in Galaxy's Edge, you know? And you look the other way, which gives you an entirely different effect than looking in towards the goat. Wow. So in 10 years, people will be given the goat his due once again. I guess so. No, so, I mean, I was curious about that. We saw an old video on YouTube where you're talking about how people think that Disneyland is small and doesn't have a lot of room for expansion. But in 1984, you're saying, well, there's that corner up there above Frontierland. And that's a prime piece of real estate to do something. Something's happening there now. A pretty big project.

And you're one of the people primarily responsible for getting Star Wars into the parks. How do you feel? Are you excited about Galaxy's Edge? Are you? Yeah, I mean, who wouldn't be? I mean, and it's starting to look fantastic, except one of the views looks just like

the Big Thunder Mountain in Florida. So I hope they keep it gray. So it doesn't, which one is Big Thunder? Anyway, yeah, no, it's amazing. I mean, because I told you my story about being up there and George drove up in a little BMW. Hi, guys. Eating potato salad and I'm sitting there. And if you'd ever thought that day, I mean, you know, we faced about a year of real public backlash about bringing somebody else's mythology.

Disney's always been Disneyland, Disneyland, not Lucasland or anything like that. But unfortunately, all the people that make movies, whether they make them for Disney or for 20th Century Fox or whatever, are their own directors, their own producers. And so the day of Walt Disney being the creator is kind of over.

So you've got, you know, hopefully we can have them made under our banner. But at the time, we weren't. So we had to go to the outside. So if you had told me then that we were going to own the Lucasfilm, as well as Marvel, as well as Pixar, no way would you believe that.

You know, it just couldn't go. Now Fox, I guess. So Spider-Man, as well as Pixar. No way would you believe that. It just couldn't go now Fox, I guess. So Spider-Man, welcome. Anyway, it's all good. The question is, I think the attractions are going to be great. The area looks terrific already. You can kind of see. But there is still a lot of room at Disneyland that people don't know about. I was in a presentation just yesterday

looking at things that people would not really know we still have available. So don't think it's all done. Wow. Wow. That's a crazy tease. Yeah, yeah. Where would it go?

Is it underground? Back to Big Thunder. Big Thunder, I realized a couple years, is like my low-key favorite ride. I didn't realize it, but I go on it every time. I love it. And I was realizing that there are no human audio animatronics on it.

There's animals and stuff. And I feel like it's a different experience than going on Audimansion or Pirates because you're not observing as much as you're experiencing I was wondering like was that by design or were there ever plans to like put a robot old prospector at the end of it well you know it's funny because Mark Davis who is the genius behind like Pirates and Haunted Mansion figures and as well as some of the greatest films you've ever done, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. He tended towards that. So when Walt died, you got Mark Davis attractions that

were characterized by being nothing but figures like Country Bear Jamboree and America's Sayings. And Claude, who was my mentor, was a background painter. He did Pinocchio and Lady and the Tramp and many of the films that we love dearly for the environments as well as the characters. And I think I grew up being a scenic background painter in Long Beach State. Anyone go to Long Beach State? I learned my trade there.

And so I kind of gyrated more to the backgrounds like Claude. And it was funny, Claude's rides after Walt passed were like Adventure Through Inner Space. And if you had wings, the Delta Dream Flight things and things like that, where it was more about the background. So I guess I'd characterize myself as a background person. So Big Thunder, Indiana Jones, rides like that tend to feature more the environmental aspects of it because one of my feelings about Disneyland is it's more about you being the star going into the worlds created in these things.

The best one, the simplest one, Peter Pan. One line of dialogue that's important, and that is, come on, everybody, here we go. And Ray Bradbury, I love this thing. I tell it every time, so I'm going to have to do it now. Ray wrote Walt, after getting off that ride, a postcard, and it said, Walt, I'll be eternally grateful. Today, I flew out of a child's bedroom window in a pirate galleon over London on my way to the stars.

And if you think about that room, it's probably not as big as the space we're in now. I can't see anything, but it's really tiny. And yet the imagination that's still generated there right now, at this moment, there's 45 minutes worth of people waiting to get on that ride. Okay. So it does something right, you know, really right. And that's because it puts you in the perspective of being this star. The worst kind of rides, I think, are where we sit back benign and watch the characters from a film tell their story without inviting you into it, you know. Right on. you know you mentioned intellectual property and and bringing in star wars getting backlash for bringing in outside intellectual property and now i feel like it's kind of shifted where pretty much

every new ride has some sort of if not the company's intellectual property a licensed intellectual property uh what are your thoughts? Boy, I don't know. The cost differential between building Big Thunder, Star Tours, and even Splash Mountain compared to Galaxy's Edge, Cars Land, and Pandora in Florida, it's just astronomically more. And so what that means is a company, you know, again, is management-oriented, and the risk reduction to make those kind of,

if Big Thunder had failed, it would have been, you know, it would have built a pre-show area for Guardians of the Galaxy. Anyway, you know, so, you know, it gives management a comfort zone to know, hey, this movie made $500 million in the first week. You know, everyone's going to go crazy to see it. So all of us love the challenge of building them both ways.

I mean, if you look at Figment and Dream Finder, we created IP. In Indiana Jones, I dearly loved getting to work with that IP. That was my favorite Lucas character ever. And so, like, working in that was just as much fun as creating Figment. But I wish we could find the confidence level to invest like that. That's why I say, wouldn't it be great

to do a Figment movie and then if it was successful that would certainly justify going back in and making that a great ride again. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, that might bring us to our next point, because we, you know, the whole point of this podcast,

we're comedians or writers or something. Am I holding my own against your comedy genius? Huh? Yeah. There's some proof right there. But, you know, the whole thing is that we're trying to get out of the game and into your game, the Imagineering

game, and we, you know, we, in an amateur sense do like to think about rides from time to time and just kind of backseat drive. If we had the keys to the kingdom, what kind of ride could we come up with? And we actually, we do have an idea that might do some of what you're saying,

which is bringing an old Disney property back to light in an interesting way. And I don't know, would you mind, this is a nice high pressure situation where I think we could prove we have what it takes. My gosh, is it, would you let me present an idea for Knott's Berry Farm then? Really? I'm not kidding. What do I do at night? I sit around with my friends and we conjure up ways to fix Knott's Berry Farm. Wow.

Wow. That was... That's similar. I had a question I was thinking of. When you're watching TV and you're watching, say, Seinfeld, are you thinking what would be a good Seinfeld ride? No, because I mostly watch movies. Fair enough.

All right. This might be up your alley. Just pretend that we are in a boardroom at Imagineering and give us your honest thoughts. If you think it's cool, if you think it's feasible. Do you want me to be the 12-year-old creative kid or the 50-year-old manager? Ooh, the latter. All right, so this is an IP.

I don't like to think of it as old. It's a franchise Disney owns. It's about a team of people that are pretty super, and it starts with an A. I think everyone probably knows what i'm talking about after i tease that of course i'm saying it's the apple dumpling gang we all knew it uh and look we know someone in the audience that knows we were talking about this movie just three days ago whoa really We were also talking about it three days ago. So we know the plot. We all know the plot. Bill Bixby, he's forced to adopt three children, forcibly adopting children who discover gold. We know it. We all know it.

So we, look, we know from watching, you know, countless hours of Imagineering interviews that you want to make a great ride that, like, really lets you experience what happens in the movie. So, on this ride, you will be made to forcibly adopt three children. And there'll be three child actors. It'll be a lot like the great movie ride. Actors on board your ride vehicle. There hasn't been one of those in a while. So, like, this is happening to you. The forced adoptions are happening to you.

Okay, now it's, of course, that iconic... So, it's interactive. That's a good thing. Yes. You can talk to the actors. We'd have to hire some pretty good improv people, but I think this is a lot of... Improv children. Improv children.

So, you know, we want this thing that's going to... It can only work four hours, you know. It want this thing that's going to... They can only work four hours, you know. It's going to be a little expensive. So it's going to be, you know, kind of a roller coaster type situation. Like, you know, we want it to sort of

be like this. And we want it to be as massive as the franchise, the Apple Dumpling Gang is. So we're going to need a lot of space. Have you prorated the gross up to $2,018? So we know what it's...

That would have been a good thing to do. It's $4.5 billion. That's what I thought. So it really makes sense. So we want to make kind of maybe the biggest roller coaster ever.

So this roller coaster will start at Knott's Berry Farm. Gee, you know what that is? That was going to be the monorail track when we had certain ideas for Knott's Berry Farm actually. Oh, there could have been a monorail track? You saw our

drawings, didn't you? Well, good ideas never go away at a magic hearing, we've been told. So, look, this is going to take you over the rough and rugged terrain of Blaine Park, Illinois, California. Why did I say Illinois? You hayseed, you can't

get your home... That's where I'm from, I'm sorry. Of course I've had it. Another part of Blaine Park, California, the Rock and bruise where's portillo's hot dogs oh oh i i love portillo's i grew up right by a portillo's it's my favorite restaurant please don't get him started on portillo's hot dogs but we haven't we have a note from tony already he added the the car has to do a stop at Portillo's, and you've got to get the kids some hot dogs. Done. Any out of your pocket.

Done. Easy. So this, of course, there's going to be four seats in the car, three for the children. So the capacity is 20 people per hour. That's almost equal to the void. Yeah. Of our friends at the void,

please have us back for the Ghostbusters one. So this mine cart will rollic its way through the Buena Park and then onto the five. So is that caption having a ball at disneyland yeah the uh so yeah so it's going to careen it'll join the carpool lane for a couple minutes uh and then it shoots over into new orleans square uh and also quick thing we're gonna have to retheme new orleans square and call it apple dumpling square uh and we're also gonna have to lose haunted mansion and pirates

but the new land is gonna be great there's gonna be a lot of great food offerings like apples and dumplings and that's it that's it um and and here's the thing here's the most exciting about all of it it's going to launch a new franchise for disney coming in 2019 adg ride or die ride or die starring dwayne the rock johnson and original cast member tim conway. I was just listening to Tim's junior on the radio. Maybe he would do it. That would be fantastic. Do you think he would maybe want to commit to being on a ride vehicle every day?

As long as he could do the horse races from the ride vehicle, I think he'd be fine. He can get a phone on there. He can be checking that. Yeah, and that's basically it. And if you can get a phone on there you can be checking that um yeah and that's basically it and if if you don't like that ip we can always use oh yeah i mean we know stuff is you know there's lots of secret stuff at imagineering that may already be allocated for another park so we have a backup the ride is exactly the same, except the theming is... I don't have a slide for this. Oh, okay. It's the No-Mobile. It becomes the No-Mobile if we can't use Apple Dumpling Gang.

So that's the pitch. Thoughts? Next steps? You guys wanted me to be sort of serious, right? And then you gave me, okay. So. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. We're curious. I'll talk about the good things. I mean, apple dumplings, I mean, they go back to Snow White. So that's pure Disney, right?

Apple dumplings. Dwarfs love them. Everybody loves them. Great. So that's a positive, all right? The theming is consistent with both Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland, right? I think together. It actually improves both parks.

They have a ghost town already. It leaves from here. That's right. That's right. So, you know, it's got some positive things. You know, putting on my other hat, the capacity hat, the gross per film. I mean, maybe it's sold a lot of DVDs. It's been out there for a long time.

Who owns the DVD? Does anyone? Help us, Scott. Everyone, come on. Okay, you can buy movies on your phone now. So everyone can pull up iTunes on your phone and buy Bob. Buy, buy, buy, and who knows?

Buy the Apple Doubling Gang. That's the answer. If you can get the thing up to like $500 million in a month, the studio's going to say, my God, we've been sitting on a gold mine here. Great. And now you've got them in your pocket. All you need is somebody who can speak your pitch

with a British accent, and it'll be sold. Wow. The British accent is all it takes? That'll like dress it up? That way, if you don't know what's being pitched, at least it sounds intelligent. You know, you know,

we will start taking some dialect courses and, uh, I mean, Hugh Jackman, it's not British, but it's Australian. Uh, you and McGregor,

all of these people, why are they stars? You know, we have a fan and all listener in the audience from Australia. Maybe maybe he would do it we'll talk to you later when we i think we're gonna easily converted my gps to speak australian because i like i go my god my gps speaker is so intelligent you know he knows where we're going you know so you trust that guy so it's i'm what i'm hearing is a maybe it's somewhere in the hinterlands the difficulty is always getting out of the meeting without ruining people's lives that brings up a question i had uh i know all jobs get heated. Like, how heated did it ever get? Did anyone ever throw

a chair at you? How do you know that? I think you've talked about it on another podcast. Uh-oh, did I do that? Maybe. You didn't name names. I don't, yeah, well, yeah, it happened, but you know, it was a know, it was a short moment, and then the person called me and apologized for it and admitted I was right. I always like to know that I'm right. All right. You're right about the Japan thing,

and you're right about that. It rules being right. Well, you know, we're getting towards the end of our time here and we thought seems like it was 15 minutes yeah no kidding well what we thought we would do since you know there's so many questions that are very

open ended and we could talk about it forever but we thought we'd do some quick hits in keeping with the Disneyland theme we're going to call this the super speed tunnel we're going to pick up the pace a little bit here. So, guys, want to rev up the super speed tunnel? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. This is not my forte, you know. Oh, feel free. I love talking and talking and talking. We're going fast. You can go as long as you want. The Van Eaton Gallery's hired Pinkertons will break our knees. They won't come after you.

Okay. We can call it the moderately paced tunnel. That's less pressure, yes. Yeah, all right. All right, gentlemen. It was the slower paced tunnel. Yeah, yeah, you're right. That's accurate.

Okay, what gift of mara would you choose earthly riches youth youth okay you got it uh do you like that figment is in that little box on the guardian's ride if they would clear the glass up a little bit you know they're afraid that it'll derail the story if you can really see it, but then why did they put it there, you know? Mm-hmm. Who has a more impressive collection, the Crafts or Tyvon? Tantalier Tavon is the name of the character of Guardians of the Galaxy. The Crafts beats Tavon.

You heard it here first. These are easy, you know, so far. Okay. It was a very exciting day on theme park social media when you were spotted at Diagon Alley at Universal in Florida. Could you talk about the differences, you think, between Disney and Universal and any Universal projects you like or admire?

Of course. I can't do this in one line. Yeah, we're breaking if you haven't i'm not so crazy about the one here because the dynamics of the two parks and the hogwarts express it becomes an incredible double adventure yeah and the diagonal alley is truly amazing and uh what is it gringotts the escape from Gringotts is probably one of the greatest rides ever. I think the thing that's positive about it is it's

brought the level of competition up to a class that equals Disney. I would also add Efteling. If any of you have ever been to Holland. Yeah. And they got our TEA. I'm on the TEA board so I vote for awards. And TEA gave award to Efteling for their

new dark ride over there which is interactive and incredible but yeah I mean Escape from Gringotts and the whole you know looking at that London approach across the lake it's pretty damn impressive and it's really amped up the competition between Disney and Universal. And that's very healthy for all the Imagineers and all the people at Universal, too, because we're working harder. We're inventing new things. That's what happens when you've got somebody barking at your door. If you're the only game in town, you get lazy. So I like this. It does feel to me like we were lucky enough to grow up in that era

where there was kind of the first big arms race for Disney and Universal, and it was great. Yeah. We were the winners either way. Us kids. Yeah, see? It's good for the guests.

It's good for the Imagineering and all the design companies that benefit from it. Sure. Favorite Disney hotel? Probably two things. The Wilderness wilderness lodge because of its theming but the campground uh log cabins because it is so convenient if you don't know this you park your car right at your door so you don't have to schlep through the parking lots to get in and out of the lobby and then down a long aisle or anything you come home from having a fun day park your car and three steps away is the door to your cabin you

know it's awesome yeah you don't have to have a you don't have to have a tent or a trailer or anything you can just book one of their cabins and they're really great bedroom uh another bed that comes out in the living room a kitchen it's the way to go at Disney World. Sure. I get 10% of all the people that say... Oh, it's great having a little commission. You snuck a second sponsor into this episode. This is actually a little open-ended. This was a little tip from the crafts. They said, just mention two words to you and see what you say and the two words

are rocket rods rocket rods actually you know nobody knows the the whole story on that well maybe some of you do but it was a big e-ride it was going to be the indiana jones level attraction in there we had um they were they are designed and you can kind of see it if you look at that stripped down version that we had to build for one quarter of the money that was originally allocated for it it was going to be a wire frame like a computer design that was rough and hadn't been filled out yet and the idea was after experiencing the ride and of course we would photo capture you you would go to the design center and then you would build body types for it and colors and at the end you'd get a printout of the car you designed

with the colors you selected and the goal was that would all be beta test information for our company that was involved in building cars that was going to sponsor it. And that would give them the color preferences and the shapes, whether it was round shapes or square shapes or angular shapes, whatever, that came out of the choices that people tended to pick, which I thought was a genius thing. And it was four times the amount because we were going to profile the track.

It's the same ride system that's used on Test Track and also Journey to the Center of the Earth. And there's one more, I think, that we have. Maybe not. Oh, yeah. Radiator Springs. Yeah. How could I forget that? So it wasn't a question of it not working.

It's just that by the time you backed out the track reprofiling and the big event of the fact you were riding in an undesigned car. We did one car, maybe some of you saw it, that had the night striping on it so it glowed, and it looked just like a wireframe computer as it zoomed through the night sky there. So it would have been a really cool thing. But unfortunately, we are money, that's the one time where a company has just completely backed out.

So it went down from you know what a normal e-ticket would cost to about what you could build a teacup ride for so then of course you can't put that sign out in front say please excuse the fact that this is not a fully fleshed out you know and we hope you enjoy your three-hour wait to go on it you know so at a panel in 20 years you will understand why yeah you will you will learn the story but the name rocket rods that is very cool i mean it says what it intended to do i i always think you know disney when they create their own ip when you think of words like space mountain two words that exist but you put them together and when you say

them space mountain um it's only one thing you see and it's a Disney branded thing. And I think Rocket Rods could have been just as cool if we had been able to do what we wanted to do with it. Is that a more frequent scenario than we realized that like something, the dream

was this budget and then it got reduced more than you would have liked? Well, everything else kind of worked within okay we we all was like indiana jones you may have seen the renderings that showed the the mine car ride we put in paris and the jungle cruise and a very diabolical third attraction you wouldn't want to know what it was though i don't think yeah Yeah. It was a maze. And see, Indy, the main ride that you have now is a little over 2,000 an hour. The little mine car ride that we have in Paris is about 900 an hour. So how are you going to mitigate the expectations of all the guests coming off of the big Jeep ride and not able to go on the roller coaster?

So we had this maze, and all the pivot points in it were interactive and movable by somebody watching from a grid above, looking down. And so if more than 900 people an hour got through the maze, they were vented back to the exit. So it was great,

because we were never starving the little mine car ride, but we were never creating an impossible situation where people couldn't ride it. But can you imagine the thrill of going through that maze twice in a day after waiting for the main ride and never getting to the point where you get to go? I think it would have been insidiously delicious. Oh, man. The tantrums you would have caused i know i have been there five days i've never gotten through the maze

oh man um every every question we listed we like now want a ton of answer we love this is all great um i'm wondering like are there any attractions you're fond of that you maybe oversaw a little but didn't do, like, a ton of? Like, I'm not sure how much you did. One of my favorite rides of all time is Alien Encounter. Yeah. And I'm wondering, like, what are your thoughts on that, for example? Well, first, let's say Soaring. Because that was

a group of us in aspen and they now decided on the incredible theme of california adventure as the main park theme and they broke us down into three quarter groups and said land sea and air and i was on the air team and so we started thinking we should really deal with extreme sports things that disney could let you do that you wouldn't do in real team and so we started thinking we should really deal with extreme sports things that disney could let you do that you wouldn't do in real life and so the logical one for the air was hang gliding so i i remember going to the ruben h fleet science center down in san diego and they had an omnimax which is a curved dome uh imX film. And I thought, what if you hung out over that thing and got the hang gliders to go out?

So I did up some sketches. And everyone said, wow, that could be really good. So they brought in a fellow by the name of Mark Sumner, who called his mom, and she said the erector set was still in the garage. So he said, well, get it out. I'm coming over tonight. And he figured out a way with a little crank and everything

to pull three rows of hang gliders up into the air. And they brought in cinematographers and everything. So my involvement was, wouldn't it be cool to be in a hang glider and be safe? I think you should take more credit for that. Like, that sounds like a lot. Well, you know, it was just an hour in a in a brainstorming session and you know that's how these things happen then it took hundreds and hundreds of people to make uh that thing a real real thing now alien yeah yeah yeah so that was pretty cool it was going to be truly the most

frightening ride ever you know know. And we had this kind of white elephant in that the Mars, previously the moon ride buildings, had been grossly passed over by time and the reality of knowing that there's, you know, it was one thing when you thought the moon was going to be inhabited by little green men. And the first Ward Kimball film that was in there showed you the backside of the moon with a lost civilization. It was worth going on the whole ride to see that flare go down and light up this thing,

this city that was all destroyed. And it goes, who knows what life forms lived in that city? And then they go, Captain Sir, we're coming from around the dark side of the moon. And you're going, wow. And when they got knowledge of the moon and you're going wow and when they got knowledge of the moon and they knew it's dry and dead and boring then why are we spending all this time at disneyland going to this dry dead boring place you know so we had this asset that was kind of

becoming a liability and so the idea of trapping you in the seats and dribbling what might be fluids from a beast down your back seemed like it would be horrific, you know. And it actually worked too well. You know, we weren't able to put a sign out there that said, if you're under the age of 20, we would advise you're not riding this ride, you know. So then it went the other way. You talk about the pendulum swing

and they put in Stitch. And, uh, the thing that happened is while we were doing in the audience, we, while we were doing Stitch, you know, the television division was making Stitch a lovable, sweet character. So subsequent kids growing up didn't see stitch as kind of the mean and bratty stitch that he is in the movie they saw lovable sweet stitch so they're waiting in the line all happy that they're going to see their cartoon favorite and guess what you know so it was kind of i i think if i was picking i'd go back to the original Alien Encounter. Yeah. Amen. If we could take it to your attractions and rides associated with you and animatronics associated with you, there's a segment we've been too lazy to do in a while

called Animatronic of the Month, and we were hoping really quickly you could pick from a, we have a choice of three hardworking animatronics associated with your attractions. We have specifically space figment, number one, as opposed to the other figments. We have Roxanne, who is Rex's girlfriend who's only in Star Tours in Disneyland Paris.

You've all been there, right? I do. When I found out there was a girlfriend who was only in France... Scott's favorite character in fiction is Rex. Correct. I thought it'd be stacking the deck for me to put Rex in here, so I chose Roxanne. And

thirdly, the classic, the Dynamite Shoe and God. Alright, if you had to pick... I have to say, first ofly, the classic, the dynamite chewing goat. All right. If you had to pick. I have to say, first of all, I love figment. But the space figment, not my favorite. So I would have to go with the goat because he's overcome such a lowly lot in life to be such a talked about, you know,

audio electronic character. He never was created to achieve such notoriety. So I like that. How do you think his story ends? Does he eventually, have you ever seen Goat Splatter? I have not had the pleasure. I guess that's it. Well, I mean, I think we're heading towards the end here.

If there's one final thing we could ask you, I'm sure you've spoken to a number of rooms of people who are maybe aspiring Imagineers like ourselves, but also there's a ton of people here who are in all parts of the creative arts, there's writers and actors and artists and all kinds of people. Is there some advice that you could give

from your career that you think could apply to all artists, just in terms of creating indelible works that stand the test of time? Yeah, I think, you know, if you're just starting out, and the doors all seem, like, impenetrable, and the walls all seem like they're made out of brick and all that, which we all face, do a little research on wherever you're approaching, whichever company it is, and, of course, you've got your portfolio of your work or whatever it is and this goes for engineers, architects, artists,

writers. You know, that's what they're going to hire you to do but you're competing with 50, 100 other applicants doing the same thing. So you say to yourself, and it used to be really easy for me when we were doing the Shanghai project. You go in there, you have a respectable portfolio

of your work, and then you say, oh, by the way, I'm fluent in Mandarin Chinese. You've got the job, see? And timing is another thing. I had a friend that was first year architect at school, came to me and said, should I finish three more years or apply right now? And I said, we're four years from opening Epcot. If you come in now, we can't, we are hiring everybody that walks in the door that has any talent at all. In four years, when we finish Epcot, we'll be laying everyone off. And that's when you'll be coming in with your fabulous degree. You know, so timing is another really critical thing. You know, there's a moment where all projects,

films, everything are really open to the need right at that moment. And finding those windows and then finding a way to make yourself more than your key, you know, asset value-wise. And for me, it was engineering. I had my portfolio. I could see the look of, yeah, okay, that's good.

Yeah, okay, okay. that's good. Yeah, okay, okay. So do you have anything else? And then I took them out to the parking lot in front of Imagineering. I'd rented a van and I had this kinetic sculpture out there and we opened the back end of the van and the interviewer looked at it and said, do you think you'd mind bringing this around into the company in the back end and letting some people look at it? and said, do you think you'd mind bringing this around into the company in the back end and letting some people look at it? I said, well, let me think about that. Yeah, I'd be okay with that. So we're carting it in. I'm looking at all these automatronics being tested and ride tracks with vehicles going around all that and carrying my piece in. And for four hours, people came from every department to come down and go, can you run it one more time?

And then I got the job about three weeks later. And when I started, for the next six months, people would say, are you the guy that brought in that machine, that crazy machine? So who would have known? I wasn't even going to show that unless I got a sense that the interview was going bad. So I think that, you know, that was the turning point for people that have been in a company or in a company, you know, it's kind of easy to cite out all the goals and areas that you might rather be in than where you are. I mean, I was scooping ice cream and you don't say, oh, tomorrow I want to be an

Imagineer, But you go, if I was working on a ride, at least I'd be dealing with the products that I want to be involved in from a creative standpoint. So that goal was fairly easy to get to. And then being a ride operator, you're around people all the time that have more influence at WDI. And so that turned out to be one of the leaders at Disneyland who said, well, I'll take your stuff up there. If you can, you know, this was before you could put it on a flash drive or anything. And I, it was my one and only portfolio of work. So saying goodbye to it, you know, it was kind of scary, but it landed me an interview. So, you know, and I didn't know anybody. So it's, it really is still doable. And I think the exciting thing

about the era we're in now is if something goes viral online, you're suddenly a superstar. And that wasn't possible. That was not doable. And it's something that's a fact of life now. So there are many more avenues. It's a cluttered field, more so than when I was here. But then you've got more avenues to break through. So good luck. Beautiful. All right. That's incredible. I guess, with that being said, I can't believe I get to say this.

Tony Baxter, you survived Podcast The Ride. All right. That's wild. Thank you so much, sir. We had a dream guest when we started doing this last year, and your name was that dream guest. So it happened. A lot of people in an abandoned sports event.

Well, I have to thank Mike and Richard, who are two of my good friends, for organizing this amazing event. I've already been here once to look at it. And it's like a walk down memory lane and then some. And so it's really great that something like this happened, really. Yeah, yeah. really yeah yeah uh and i think i speak for uh for for everybody here all through this way when i say the the the stuff that you did and the the rides that you put so much effort into made our our childhoods better and cooler and you being here uh tonight helped make our adulthoods better and adulthood where's that 12 year old it's got to be there somewhere

it's there uh uh well ladies and gentlemen, that is our show. Thank you. One more hand for Tony Baxter. One more hand for Tony Baxter. Thanks to the Van Eaton Gallery. The Van Eaton Galleries. Thanks to Richard and Nicholas Kraft for putting this thing on. Yeah, definitely, Nicky. You too.

Thank you to Paul Shear for hooking this up for us and connecting the dots. What a great man. You made a dream come true. And thanks all of you for coming out here and for traveling from Thousand Oaks or Australia. Or Anaheim.

Or Anaheim. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Twitter, Instagram, Podcasts, Reddit, Gmail. Thousand Oaks or Australia. Or Anaheim. Or Anaheim. Yes, that's what he says. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Twitter, Instagram, Podcasts, Reddit, Gmail. Come back for more stuff at the That's From Disneyland gallery. And have a magical day. Thanks, everybody.