Podcast: The Ride - Scott's Tokyo Top 10

Episode Date: April 26, 2019

Scott's back from his whirlwind Tokyo trip and he's ready to share his Top 10 attractions! Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus Podcast: The Ride Live in Los Angeles! Tickets on sale now: https://www.dynastytypewriter.com/calendar/podcasttheridejune7 Marvel Mania Rebooted now on The Second Gate feed: patreon.com/podcasttheride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! Welcome to Podcast the Ride, a podcast about theme parks where one of the hosts has finally followed the compass of his heart oh i am sid compass follower scott gerdner joined by mike carlson and jason sheridan hi my name is mike carlson i have also followed the compass of my heart followed the compass jason needs to follow the compass i know i haven't yet i got my taxes done but i haven't followed the compass of my heart yet did that direct your compass in any particular way or your compass of spending in any particular way uh more compass of relief because i thought it was going to be real bad all right are you saying compass or compass does it matter i've just never heard that pronunciation before compass compass hmm what do you think is it

compass krampus it's krampus are you saying compass yeah like compass yeah okay compass is what i mean i guess you're right that it actually is spelled more like yeah compass yours sounds like c-u-m-p-a-s which compass yeah compass but that's always how i've heard it spelled or heard said jason's just very fond of Comp USA. Rest in peace. This is their good values and savings. Yeah, I'm back. I have been to the promised land. Yeah.

I have been to what I think I can say indisputably is the greatest theme park resort on the planet. Yeah, I agree. Incredible. Exceeded expectations. I haven't seen you guys yet. There hasn't even been like pre-chatter or discussion. I wanted to do it all on the air. Keep it real.

Keep it 100. Yep. Sure. Keep it 100. Mike and I have done no research to prepare for today. I love this. I love it. I know.

And it makes me very nervous, honestly. I'm actually nervous about having to drive the thing. I feel like we're always co-driving, but realizing that this is essentially me narrating my own vacation. The pressure's on. I had to get properly caffeinated. I'm trying to fight the massive jet lag that I have. I had too big of a lunch where it's going to make me groggy Where I'm not going to be able to keep the ship on course We just fix on fly

We're raw dogging it today Oh my god Down and dirty We're pointing the compass The compass You're the one talking about a navigational instrument Put the word cum in the Put some cum spice on it

It's even what they say When you see the people singing the song they say compass i think they do it's a little um in the song and the song that i'm referring to is in the the syndbad's storybook voyages yes ride and it is like i'd only heard i i still have not listened to the the part of the tokyo disney episode that i left oh yeah i need to go back now i'm sure we'll we'll cover it will overlap some of the the territory but i do i am i'm aware of certain things about it and i am certainly aware that you were very moved by this song very yes and i was as well and i like uh i'm on the ride going i'm like it's you immediately well up a little bit because you're you're

introduced to a town in which everyone is supporting each other it is the sweetest thing you ever seen but still i'm not like yeah but what like brought them to tears what could have and by the end to totally go like yeah i think like by fighting it at the beginning, it caused it to happen at the end. I welled up a bunch of times on this vacation, like in multiple places. My heart is so full. This will be the most earnest episode Scott wise. So please, you guys, lob your joke bombs because try to sink this very earnest ship that i'm steering and you came back to what can only be described as a united hollywood hand in hand

making projects good luck on your renegotiations um yeah i discovered the news that i was to fire my agent uh while inside the volcano oh wow i was hoping that this news dropping would happen in a dramatic way during the vacation and it was like lining up to happen i was like oh maybe it'll maybe i'll be at the top of the uh of the of the park hyatt the lost in translation bar i'll have like a dramatic view of tokyo and then i'll get this crazy hollywood shattering news uh but then it got delayed a week and i was wondering what was going on and then i'm i'm literally about to board the terra vader and i see an eve i just check and it's the most dramatically phrased headline possible. Like there is no deal. Fire your agents. So then I'm brought into a room

that is like pumping machinery and sirens and alarms and excavators and like man the hatches mass firings on three. It was unforgettable. Jules Byrne created an agent firing machine powered by steam.

You can fire 15,000 agents at once. Well, if it makes you feel any better, the most recent dispatch from the Screen Actors Guild is we have direct deposit now. So lots of exciting stuff on the Hollywood labor front. The next time my $5.43 of collected Moonbeam City residuals show up, 10 envelopes will be saved. Yeah. That's great news. We're helping the environment. Sure. Yeah.

I mean. So I guess we say spoilers if you don't want to know about Tokyo Disney, I suppose. I have no idea how much anybody else was playing my game of not wanting to hear things. And I, you know, since that episode, I've thought, I feel like I was like too strict on it. Because we've since determined that like you guys felt so much you didn't need to spoil things that I didn't know about Grandma Sarah's Kitchen. Yes. And I'm like, did I convey like too hard of a spoiler rule? Maybe I did.

However, I'm glad that I did because constantly around every corner, there were things that I had no clue about. And I thank you guys for helping me in that endeavor and being fine with me leaving an episode, quitting it halfway through. Sure. I was wondering if there was anything that we should have said. But I think most of the things you probably found on your own. They're big enough stuff. And yeah. So you, you know, you, you passed along this book to me that I would really recommend to anybody going the TDR Explorer for Tokyo, which that's a Twitter account too. Right. Whoever runs it, I think seemed to be there at the same time.

He's always there. He's the Tokyoney explorer okay i think he has a twitter tdr explorer blog i believe yeah uh yeah incredibly helpful book and i recommend finding this book i think it's available for the for the kindle or whatever um yeah i think so yes and uh it's at tdr explorer super helpful because um i there there are logistics you have to figure out as much as i didn't want spoilers i think about tokyo in general there's there's a lot logistics you have to figure out, as much as I didn't want spoilers. I think about Tokyo in general, there's a lot that you need to solve. The trains are complicated. The Wi-Fi thing you have to figure out.

But within the resort, there's definitely things to determine. One of which is when you go. And that is a thing. I don't know how it was in general crowd wise uh um when you were you were there in like october it was like halloween ish uh september okay okay within the window though because you said you had our mid-september haunted mansion holiday yes they have a mansion holiday they still had started halloween already because they started early there too but it was uh like second week in september i believe third week um how what how was that like crowd wiser uh crowds were bad uh

like not crazy i will say that they like it did seem like they had a good flow the crowds had good flows it wasn't like anything was like choked it was just there was a lot of folks sure sure i think you this may have been you who said it uh uh that um you feel i mean there were a ton of people when i was there too but you do feel the crowd dispersal is just better and i can't help but wonder if it does it have something to do with them not having max pass and the app and everything well the app is coming oh it is so okay and we'll say i guess we'll see next time we go but it's possible but you would think though because they still have paper fast passes that people will be running all over the place sure

sure um so that would also be a thing too the only thing in terms of that uh when the gates open because i did a rope drop of tokyo disney sea uh and there was so much excitement for the park in general and and clearly for the easter season that's like they had to people were out there holding signs that say please don't run oh yeah it would certainly be your temptation and as polite as the japanese people are i mean i wanted to run yeah when you that, when you first see that volcano, I've seen plenty of pictures of it, but when it is first in your sights, you, the mania takes you over. Sure. Get me in everywhere. I will stay up all day. I will

never sit this entire day. I wonder if it's, I do wonder if everyone just like more polite about walking. Maybe. Maybe so. I don't know. People are also polite, apparently, about asking for the front row. Single rider is seemingly not super common there, which helps you blast through Indiana Jones. And Lost Spirits, Raging Spirits, is the wild mouse type type coaster it's a smaller roller coaster which is which is fun but like you shouldn't wait forever for it before we get into your trip i remember the one there's probably many stories i forgot to tell real quick there's a story i left out of my

trip about that coaster okay so i'm walking into the queue an employee runs up to me and he's trying to communicate the question how tall are you and at first i think oh he's like i'm a six three gentleman he's uh oh this is fun look how tall he is he's like a herman munster or something and it becomes very clear that he hands me a card and it says that I'm six, three, and I'm the tallest you can possibly be to ride this roller coaster. Oh, and I'm like,

uh, Oh shit. Like, so we're walking through the queue. Lindsay and I are walking through the queue going like, like an inch taller. And I'd be decapitated on this thing. This is insane.

I've never heard of this before. So we're like walking through, like be decapitated on this thing this is insane i've never heard of this before so we're like walking through like should i go on this should i just not do this because and they're like because there was a whole like he was talking amongst employees like should we let this guy go on or whatever and then they they were like all right it's fine and they handed me this card that said i was approved to go on it so i was structures note i was stressed the whole line wiggle room of course but i'm just saying still i was like this is weird that there was even a debate so i got on the ride and i'm like crouched down on the coaster as like hard as i can and obviously everything was fine but I do think I put myself in such an uncomfortable position, like I hurt

my back a little bit because I was like making sure I wasn't going to get decapitated on the ride. I think really the issue was that the restraints didn't go high enough. Oh, okay. I think that's probably what it was, but still. You didn't ever, there wasn't some

like overhand, there wasn't some temple ruin that almost hit you in the brain. No, but still, I was like, I've never seen this before on a roller coaster that I'm too tall to go on it. Like that's never happened. I found it weird on that ride that there was a when after the cars did the loop that the loop like shook. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a little unnerving. A little unnerving. Yeah. A wild mouse type coaster with a loop. I'm very intrigued. It was it's it's a little unnerving a little unnerving yeah a wild mouse type coaster with a loop i'm very intrigued it was it's it's really good you wouldn't call it like the best thing there yeah but especially you single ride it uh really well themed and it like fogs up right before you uh you shoot through a little tunnel and there's a big there's like ruins like step ruins kind of enticing you in it's like a

pretty plain coaster but themed a little better than usual but the entrance where there's a waterfall going down the steps but it's also on fire at the same time incredible so cool that's just a throwaway part of that park that's like the 19th best thing in the park uh we didn't go on in the night but it looks better at night too oh i bet yeah i didn't do enough like i saw this in the day and right at night we didn't either i can get into various iterations of that um uh well to the end of the um harnesses being too small definitely think that the rides are uh built for smaller people oh yeah it's definitely true yeah for sure finally a place that doesn't diminutize shorter restraints that don't give me a headache every time i go on a looping coaster they have to hand you a form that you sign that where you say you are the perfect candidate to go on this ride are you okay being perfect yes a blue ribbon you wear mayor of the ride um so oh wait i was starting to say the time that i was there was fantastic

if anyone's listening to this for general recommendations because i was there in the um the second week of april and it's fantastic because you're avoiding i read at the end of april is this thing golden week which is a apparently in everywhere in japan is fucked apart tourism wise because it's their very like institutionalized spring break so we missed all that but it's right before that so everything's still really beautiful and cherry blossoms are in bloom and that's as cool as it's hyped up to be. Crowds were totally fine, except that I did end up there on a Saturday and Saturday markedly worse. So I'd say anybody who can like avoid the weekend, if your schedule's open, avoid weekends because I could. The difference was night and day immediately.

But boy, I really recommend when I went and especially because I was there for Easter, it was the Easter celebration and holy shit. Uh, I mean, I'm sure it's always great, but I, and I'd heard it alluded to a little, the glory of Easter. I mean, really everywhere. Easter also affected Sanrio Puroland, which i will try to be sparing talking about because we have to just that's its own thing for sure right um easter at disney oh my god and here i'll i'll lay all this out mainly do you guys know about the mythology of the the usatama and the the usapio no oh no i but i am interested because it's Easter like the the cultural like Easter parade Easter of fancy dresses and linen suits. Right. Like there's no there's no element of Jesus Christ Easter.

Not remotely. Culturally in Japan. I don't think the traditional definition of Easter is totally skewed for just eggs and fancy clothes. But also it's not like big gowns necessarily like their easter clothes are just kind of like in many cases like sparkly space clothes like there there were dolls of chip and dale where they're just wearing these complicated ass they've got a spire and it's like sparkly purple and sparkly silver clashing and going back and forth on every part. I met Easterdale. That was really exciting for me.

Did you post a photo of that, I think, already? I tweeted about it. I got to have a conversation about Easter. I was like, well, there's a language barrier here, but I bet he's in his Easter clothes. He must be excited about Easter. So I made bunny ears. He made bunny ears in return and we hugged. It was very exciting.

Easter is just, it just takes what is probably already like kind of a hyper park and just ratchets it way the fuck up. Like Lindsay got me this crazy Tokyo Disney Sea Mickey for my birthday, which is insane. But the clothes in general are already did you remember what this looks like yeah wait spin that around if you can jason without hurting anything i i know kind of what you're talking about he's in this crazy like future sailor suit yeah it's like he's it's crazy like the clothes are ready look a little bit yeah like how do you even what is even a touch point i don't think we have in our culture what kind of clothes mickey's wearing it's sort of like a pt barnum sort of get up but all in like

different shades of baby blue it's a little greatest showman yeah a little greatest showman but like a 2030 greatest showman maybe it's the future of the 1900s with a tri-corner hat yeah like a colonial america tri-corner hat the most detailed like buttons and crevasses uh and the the brightest baby blue i mean this is like the character they dress like these weird like samurai by way of a turn of the century marching band that's like not easter even that's their their base right that's just normal like Like here we have right now Mickey and everyone are in like Party City style like white suits with like splashes of color. I was no fan of that before. I'm really not a fan of it now.

I think I prefer the Japanese kind of crazy clothing, not only on the characters, but also on the people in the park. Like when you see people dressed up together in Disneyland, there's the Disney bounding thing, or there's Dapper Day, there's the kind of the retro thing. And those are fine. And it's not my bag, but I like a way that people can dress in the spirit of the park. In Disney, it just seems like cooler, or in Tokyo, it just seems cooler the way people do it. Like, here's a group of 10 girls and they're all dressed as ham. How did they coordinate this? This is insane. Like ham from Toy Story or just the concept of ham?

No, not, although that would fit right with Easter, wouldn't it? Okay, yeah. They're all dressed, when they all form like a transformer, they form the full, yeah, the full traditional honey, big, big,

big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,

big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,

big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,

big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,

big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,

big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,

big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,

big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,

big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, button and how do they do this how do they coordinate that and it just and it and it all feels more like then they could go out on the streets in regular tokyo and nobody would make fun of them like it's just all like the the cool culture is embedded with disney culture they're just one in the same yeah i mean i think that's probably true i do feel like i mean i think with disney now it's still it's it's getting more melded every day yeah like we'll be there in like 30 or 50 years where it's like not even where there's no chance you get beaten up by

orange county punks if you wore your dapper days outfits into the fud ruckers nearby because the punks are wearing like hashtag disney squad shirts anyway yeah and a lot of them already yeah a lot of the punks are already wearing that so yeah potentially we're getting closer but yes i know they're wearing some they're wearing something with like a like um 50s pompadour like a 50s swoop uh clara clara bell yeah a patch of oogie boogie saying wop op a lube up i think i'm just relieved that there's not a lot of 50s going on in uh in japan i don't know what my problem is with the 50s except that actually as i say that i'm totally wrong because sanrio pura land their easter celebration was 50s rock

and roll was wapapaloo ba whoa like like rap babaloo bits easter time but like why are these things merged i think there is a certain streak of like um um, cause greaser fashion is like, it's a spin on like traditional menswear, which is such American menswear is a big influence in Japan and vice versa. Like there are, um, catalogs. One thing I read about like Japanese menswear, um,

there's a book of like Ivy style, like of, of the shops around like Harvard or Princeton or that sort of stuff that is very popular in Japan. And then it's very popular for menswear enthusiasts in America. So it's like a circular thing. Huh? And then one influences the other and it changes back on the other side.

Yeah. Same with rock and roll. Japanese. I think we've all been listening to japanese city pop uh lately yes yeah yeah which you know what threw me in the record stores i don't know what you call it was hard to find stuff because i don't know what they call city pop they don't have a big section labeled city pop but they do certainly have like you know here's the giant progressive rock area and there's a massive area devoted to aor my favorite genre of music where like some obscure thing i've that i don't even have one friend to

talk to about this album it's like what they're featuring this week whoa really yeah i'll constantly the tower records and we didn't even get there oh we gotta go yeah next time next time holy shit because also the there's one in shinjuku where I stayed, and I'd recommend anybody going to Tokyo. Shinjuku, a great central area. I dug it a lot. But then the one in Shibuya is the crazy multi-level. It's the one where if you watch the documentary, you hear like, boy, the end of Tower.

And why did we reject Tower? Oh, but it is in Japan in the coolest building you've ever seen, which would fit right into Tomorrowland in Disneyland, which I obviously was super enamored with. Tower Records fucking rocks everything. I mean, the city, I can't even go into the city. There's so much cool shit. I was starting to head to Easter.

So for a number of years running now uh disneyland took a disneyland has the usatama who are a bunch of eggs with legs who have infested the park whoa and they are everywhere they've made themselves at home and the ones in frontierland are you know kicking back on top of the saloon and uh you know, and drinking some moonshine or they've disguised themselves as, you know, the dwarves over in the by the Snow White fountain or they're they look like Mike Wazowski over in Tomorrowland or whatever there's so many egg you get to do like a visual easter egg hunt right while you're there and they've so cleverly designed all of these eggs in a very fun pop or what's the literal what am i thinking of the park star yeah or the uh park stars yeah it's so much like that where it's a really minimal representation of the characters from there. Up on top of the country bears, eggs dressed as Teddy Bear and Henry and what have you. So this just adds this level of visual excitement everywhere in the parks.

They do a version of it in Disneyland, but it's just like kind of painted eggs and it's Chippendale or something. And we saw one of them recently and they're fine. sure yeah but this is a whole seems like a whole nother level there's this mania where there's like they're presented like critters they're like gremlins or something who've taken over the park they've just made it there i got a picture of one like the lawns in front of the castle they're very golf course manicured so they made one look like he's putting he's got like a golf bag and a visor my favorite clothing item just a regular cloth visor hanging off of this egg um but so how you know they're cute and all but we have to keep the population under control

how do we do that uh well with the usatama on the run parade in which mickey is piloting a suction machine oh my gosh i didn't know anything about this eggs to try to that's insane that's so fun it's a population control measure more than it is a parade i admittedly didn't stop and watch this parade but just look up photos of usatama on the run mickey riding a big contraption it's they're all helping out. They've all got, Mickey and Donald have their own ways of trying to find the. Do they have like a big thing of eggs behind him? Like he's caught some of them? Caught a bunch. Yeah, they're all suffocating.

They're all like, they're all hanging like fish from hooks. Wow. He made lessons of a couple of them. That's great. No, I don't know. Look, they're all friends ultimately at the end of the day. He just has to know where they are because it's his park right it can't get to like the disney feral cats they can't get out of control right yeah when you said they all have their own ways of taking care

of it i was concerned that like donald was like eli roth and inglorious bastard it's like he's the brutal like he's like as soon as you said that i went i bet donald has a baseball bat yeah that is what i thought then you said Eli Roth So we were on the same page It's a walking tall scenario Smashing your mind Bitch That's as close as I can get to Donald apparently

But new This year I got to be part Of the inaugural audience of The first time ever Disney Sea equivalent of the Usatama, a genetic varietal called the Usapio. And here's what they are. Donald, I'm sorry, Daisy and Minnie were decorating for Easter that year and they took an egg and they painted some bunny ears on it. Cute, right? Yes. They went a little further than that because the eggs actually sprouted ears and chickens hatched out of them.

So Daisy and Minnie unknowingly created a genetic abomination, which are little chicks with Easter eggs and that still have their shells on their bottom and their top. And those are the Usapia. Wow. that still have their shells on their bottom and their top and those are the usapia wow and the giant lagoon show tip-top easter is all about you get to witness the birth of many usapios at once wow they all come out of eggs and uh like do you know about this lagoon show in general uh or did you see some equivalent of that? We saw the Halloween, the villains party. Oh, boy.

With like waters, like ski-doos and that. Flying kites off of the back of jet skis. Yes, there was that. All the villains had their own vehicle in the water. So each villain had their own special big giant thing that they were out on and then shit yeah wow and there's a crazy original song and hades does a rap in it whoa what yeah apparently at last year's easter andrew grissom told us uh they there was a rap done by max goof goofy son uh but there was a whole new show this year they revamp them

every year yeah you can go buy cds of just the single songs that are 15 minutes long they sell cd singles oh yeah just the easter music or probably just the halloween music i got the three disc like kind of best of of that year but I should have bought more. Like there's a 10 to 15 disc thing that's on eBay for $500 of the history of the music of the park. And I was just showing a picture of it to people in the park going like, do you have this? And then they would be like, they were so helpful,

but no one knew what I was talking about. So I would have had to have bought like all of the CDs. Cause Sinbad is not on there. And that's one of the big reasons. I remember you had something up with the CD and I was looking and I, yeah, there didn't seem to be anything, which that'd be the first thing you'd want to walk away with.

Yes, for sure. And I, I've had to rip it off of YouTube. Do you have it on your iPhone? It's, it should be on my iPhone. It's on my computer for sure.

I think it's probably transferred over. I listened to that song like once a week at least sure i i mean we've been singing it ever since and the main i i mean i i'll say this now uh the this was a hard vacation to leave we love if we hadn't even done disney to tokyo and kyoto are such fantastic cities we're very sad to be probably the saddest i've been to leave a vacation since i was at disney to tokyo and kyoto are such fantastic cities we're very sad to be probably the saddest i've been to leave a vacation since i was at disney world when i was seven and one little trick that we did to make us more excited about coming back was going through the airport passing by the customs agents imagining that they were puppet dolls singing a majestic song, wishing us luck on our journey back to America.

And we did the same thing to our cats when we went to retrieve them from Chatsworth, where they were staying while we were gone. We were wishing them good luck on their journey back from Chatsworth. And there are cats names are Brenda and Bunny, and we called them Bren Bad and Bundu. That's good. Wow. And it really helps. So any difficult challenge you have in your life, imagine anyone near you. Don't forget that. Imagining people are naked or in their underwear.

Imagine anyone is a puppet doll wishing you luck on your journey. It's going to help you through any challenge. challenge uh so but just to sum up from earlier this year's easter show which probably won't be back next year involves minnie and daisy playing god yes and creating life a new form of horrifying life it is a tale of genetic engineering gone adorable it works out to their advantage well while you were gone i watched gattaca and uh is it was not at all i also thought i had never i knew very little about that movie and uh but i saw the poster and like box art for years and i was like this is a sci-fi action movie no this is a like off broadway sci-fi melodrama that involves a lot of smuggling urine and blood samples i haven't seen in a long time i remember thinking was it cool or was it just

there was a lot of interesting like brutalism architecture choices and a lot of interesting yeah but it is really like um uh arthur miller play almost of like not a lot of big set pieces and stuff well you know as we allow our most beloved franchises to sort of take surprising forms like our joaquin phoenix jokers or whatever i would gladly watch the gritty gattaca style film about the birth of the the usapios oh yeah oh sure great yeah yeah do they sell they don't sell usapia merch though they do and it's they do it's tough and i you know we have so there's we have friends with babies and stuff and uh and i was trying to find usapio puppets it's tough they apparently i think they go and i was finding sites i think they also have

these in hong kong and it's like there are two left in the entire nation yeah they go like that uh um like a new duffy outfit or something yep yep flies off the shelf i certainly i i i definitely get duffy more now i will say that especially when i saw a duffy while waiting for the tip-top easter show i saw a duffy dressed as an aristocat this was the most adorable thing yeah i've ever witnessed did you see anyone um pushing two strollers around full of duffy characters um i definitely saw i mean not that but i saw people like having meals across from their duffy yep yep and i like that there were little seats that you put the duffy on to take a photo like in the volcano you like lean down a little yeah yeah seats and like here's the perfect spot for them

to have their photo taken and in the in this multi barge lagoon show, um, there's, you can, there's many vantage points from which you can watch it and you could watch it over in Donald Daisy territory or Mickey mini territory. You don't know what's coming, uh, until they land. And ours was the Duffy gang.

So while I didn't meet Duffy or watch a separate Duffy show, I did get to see Duffy. Can I name them now? Duffy Gelatoni. Um, maybe I can't uh but i'm certainly more fond of gelatoni than i used to be oh my god he's the best yeah yeah yeah no gelatoni yeah gelatoni's one of my guys yeah there's a well shelly may uh stella lu and then who's the bird mailman uh who's the hong k Who's the Hong Kong one that our Wonderful listeners sent us

Merchandise from Hong Kong Of cookie Well we should tell the listeners There's a lot of Duffy coming From Podcast to Ride Oh yes things have I'm not even aware of what you guys did While I was gone We've recorded an interview already for part of the Big Duffy

Episode coming up and we'll be doing the full version soon only a fraction of it has been completed yeah it's a big project sure it's a little more like a um it's a little more like a cereal or like yeah yeah or a slow burn right this one's gonna be a little bit more of an excavation i i will be certainly more mentally invested in the episode now having seen the gang and having seen Duffy and his pals teach The hatched egg creatures Ballet and magic

That's what ends up they hatch and then they teach them about Easter some ballet dancers show Them and then say now you go And they you know they don't even know how to walk Let alone do ballet but they try their best And it's very adorable Is Stella Lou a ballet dancer Was one of them I don't I don't recall

She has like a yeah she has like a tutu She may have taken lead in that section Here's the number one thing that happens In that show though at one point something Is yelled and Everybody points over to the volcano And the volcano Itself yells

Happy Easter Yeah does it shoot something out too or does it just yell there might be like a you know i mean it nothing special nothing besides its usual eruptions the coolest shit ever um now we were discussing later is that supposed to be a spoiler the monster inside the ride wishing happy Easter? Oh, interesting. Or is it the volcano itself? I prefer to think that the landmark, the volcano, loves Easter. Right.

Like the lava short from Pixar. Oh, yeah. Like that guy saying happy Easter, maybe. A short I love and have talked in the past That people were way too mean To those volcanoes People very Yeah people do not like lava People body shaming

Those volcanoes Well I think also They were shaming Because they're saying Like the The lava volcano Is like a Like a chunky guy

And the woman volcano Was like sexy girl Was very spelt And that's a trope Like where it's But then You know People were

That's sexualizing the volcanoes That's odd Why but I But like for instance They were in love But for instance Like with cartoons Where it's like

For instance Heathcliff When the The Cadillac cats Riffraff is like Short and stout And looks like a cartoon But then his girlfriend Is a

Is the body of a sexy woman What's wrong with that Michael I'm just saying That's something that people talk about You know like I think Kevin James But then his girlfriend is the body of a sexy woman. What's wrong with that, Michael? I'm just saying that's something that people talk about. I think Kevin James and... Bugs Bunny isn't jacked like a human man, but Lola Bunny sure looks like a sexy lady. That's the difference. That's like comedians getting with people.

Like Kevin James on a sitcom. Yeah. Was there some comments? Somebody on Facebook or somewhere said like our girlfriends and wives are too attractive for us. Must be a California thing. Yeah. Whoa.

That's funny. All right. Brother. Thanks for giving us credit. Okay. So I've, So I've said that the, I think that the time of year that I went was

perfect, but there is an outstanding question. The outstanding question is how long. How long were you there? Did I go for? Let me reach into my duffel bag. And hang on. Will you have like just a number, like a big plastic number?

I will pull out now and reveal to you gentlemen my four-day magic pass porch. That's what I thought. We should have asked. Jason always wins. Because what people were, we ran into some listeners who were asking about this. Some listeners were asking about how long you were there people asked well yes we didn't know but then they said which

I was thinking there because the reason we think is because Tony said for Tony really pushed it over the live episode Tony got me on Splash Mountain and yeah and Tony no I don't know I well hey your enthusiasm from enthusiasm from being there doesn't do nothing either.

You clearly had a great time. So you deserve some credit, too. Now, here's the caveats. It was a four-day passport. Two of those were half days. Right. So it's first evening in disneyland two front to back days and then a little in the morning before uh before we went

off to the airport so you kind of did what we did because we really did like three and a half days okay yeah ours ended up being three all told right uh now so is the revealing of this four day passport me eating crow in a way, in a way. A delicacy in Japan. So many good crow places in the parks. A lot of good crow. I will say this. I will maintain. I think that four front to back opening to closing rope drop days would be overkill i don't think

you need that much time uh that is i uh i'm still gonna hold by that i don't know how you feel about that jason well how much yeah i haven't been there how much time did you because you were not staying at um an official disney hotel did you spend much time at all at the official disney hotels i you know i didn't And I'm usually somebody I like exploring hotels Right I definitely

I've said before I carve out hotel time When I go to Disney World Yeah I didn't really Partially because Those hotels seem really neat And one of them is right Next to Disney Sea

Yeah But The parks are so great I don't want to spend time In a hotel There was even I ran around the mall Expiry And I tweeted something About the upcoming Expiry affair are so great i don't want to spend time in a hotel there was even i ran around the mall uh expiry uh

and i tweeted something about the upcoming expiry fair and i thought about spending more time you know that's sort of their downtown disney although it's removed it's not like right next to the parks but i i kind of thought i'm gonna want to spend a bunch of time there in the silly mall next to i didn't really the parks are so great i had no desire to be in the other places the other thing that kept me out of the hotels was they're all kind of recent so what I'm after where I'm going to see some like solid 1971 architecture out of the contemporary or the you know the the there's 80s throwbacks and some of those other places I was like if they're all built in 2003 then who cares really I did I stayed at the uh the Hilton you were at the Sheraton correct yes I was like, if they're all built in 2003, then who cares, really? I stayed at the Hilton.

You were at the Sheraton, correct? Yes. I was at the Hilton. All these hotels are an easy monorail stop. Boy, one thing I'll say, the transit, so easy. In general. Yeah. You're waiting no time.

It's a loop. There's only four stops. There's all the not the main hotels. There's Disneyland. there's only four stops there's all the non not the main hotels there's disneyland there's disney sea there's expiry and the main train station that gets you in and out from tokyo i don't see any reason to stay in the the disney ones because you're so close to the it's not like uh in paris all the hotels were so fucking expensive the main disney ones so we boarded a rickety bus to a radisson that was only 10 minutes away but the ride back and forth was so shitty yeah made us not want to go in for the day right just terror like this awful shuttle where you're

standing and bumping around here you get to board the cleanest monorail sure i in general think that you know this initial two-day argument now here i will say this two days not enough i was certainly wrong about that uh i'm man enough to say uh it sounds like because jason had always said four it sounds like i was absolutely right before i went with the three days you that sounds like i'll give it to you i've won i don't give it to you on everything i'm giving it to you i've won i don't give it to you on everything i'm giving it to you on this you were right you called it i appreciate that also i think uh i was thinking about the whole situation again i don't know that i was like mad that people were going if it was two i think i said we should do three with our level of enthusiasm i think that's

all i was ever saying this is a good point uh it yeah for some people for some people one day is fine i don't under i i get why people would just do see there's friends of ours who are like i didn't do tokyo disneyland because it's the same as the one here now for me a big fan of all this stuff it certainly isn't but in all these micro ways you're like well space mountain is a ramp and not the uh you know, it's a ramp from the front, like the way it used to be in Disneyland. So you got to see that. And it's, you know, kind of the Haunted Mansion from Florida, but it's different in this way. Yes.

Like we're finding all these micro differences. So, of course, you need more time. Yeah. We talked about that on my episode. It was like, which one is this going to be? Yeah. It's a wonderful mix of a lot of magic kingdom which is great because magic kingdom perfected a lot of disneyland stuff and then in other cases

totally original to them and in other cases a little bit of a tribute to the original it's like it's the better pirates and space mountain because it's disneyland but then it is florida haunted mansion which i don't know is better but is interesting and it's nice to but then it is Florida Haunted Mansion, which I don't know is better, but is interesting. It was nice to do. I'm not like super familiar with that one. So getting to do, you know, the library is part of the ride or hurry back is part of the ride. And then what the coolest thing was, there was Haunted Mansion holiday.

So I got to see the Florida version of Haunted Mansion with the Disneyland overlay, which is very cool all right so yes that's for nerds um so yeah if you're even slightly a nerd you you definitely need a little more time because disneyland's gonna take you a little more time uh if to you know not if you're listening to this podcast you were a you were a nerd for this stuff presumably but i would tell anybody even if you like can't even stand theme parks disney sea is this other oh yeah beast of thing it's almost like it's the closest that disney's come to like a public works beautification project it like it's like something the city needed it is so they like made they made tokyo better with disney sea

it's unbelievable a city already chock full of substance and culture and yes a million subcultures the greatest i could i could talk for two hours about talking about disney but in terms of tokyo tokyo fucking rules yeah um and they somehow it's such a testament to disney sea that it's at right it was the last thing i did essentially and it's like all i've thought about since even though tokyo is the best place i've ever been right it's at right. I was the last thing I did essentially. And it's like all I've thought about since even though Tokyo is the best place I've ever been. Right. It's a masterpiece in design every which way. Cause I'm trying to think of any other theme park I've been in like that, where I think I said it before, where it's like everywhere you're standing, it feels like it was perfectly designed to be the most beautiful scene you've ever seen.

As if they like, as if in every single spot spot as if they did like a google street view all right now go five feet over here and look every way around you and if there's anything cluttering your view it's out yeah every square inch was made the most beautiful place isn't it wild that opened the same year as california adventure yes it's on you know i actually been, I think I've been saying the wrong date. I think I've been saying 2002 on the show for a while. It was literally the same year, six months after California Adventure. And we get the soap opera Bistro and they get this beautiful Mediterranean harbor. And they get like the, you know, this thing that like wildly over invents the autopia or the

motorboat cruise or totally original mythologies and uh and if you i also think i think you could have an incredible day at disney sea and never go on a ride yes that's for sure yeah um and and maybe you did find this the one criticism i would hit with disney c is maybe it's missing like one or two e-ticket rides but okay sure i can see that but um but also just being there is the ride yeah absolutely well and now they're they're it's absolutely mind-blowing that they're adding soren they're adding i don't know what's going on ride wise but they're adding frozen tangled and peter pan and another a new peter pan thing that is not the main peter pan's flight ride right and has to be like i think tony back to what i was listening

to some old season pass interview with him on the season pass podcast which you should go back and i listen to those like every six months i think i listen to him on the flight yeah good barnes thanks for the interviews uh yeah so i think he was talking about like they were years ago going like, what if we did like a crazy ticket Peter Pan? So like a full scope Peter Pan with like the, I guess probably like a Cars Land scope, maybe. I don't know. He didn't say that specifically, but. Aren't they also getting the Beauty and the Beast?

Yes, that's coming soon. With the insane animatronics. That's Disneyland. That's going in Disneyland. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. As is a Big hero six thing which is not like a crazy ticket thing but it's sort of like luigi's rollick and roadsters it's one of

them i like i like those kind of attractions it looks really fun and something else i forget what um but these parks are gonna be unstoppable yeah yeah there's so much shit my like yeah the only criticism i could say was like oh it'd be nice to have like two more giant rides you got to go on and then it's like oh well in two years it'll have that yeah like i guess or three two or three they're way ahead of you how cool is it also to think of um going backwards and disney not saying well we already have a ride of this uh thinking well yeah we have a ride but why don't we do a crazy ride of it yeah which is sort of what star wars is in general there is a star

wars ride we've had it since the 80s but hey what if we did a shitload more it's a pretty exciting area to think about well there's already i mean it wouldn't be mr toad although certainly i'd love a car's oh my god size of mr toad that would certainly I'd love a car's size of Mr. Toad. That would be the greatest. But it's a little like they did a, I mean, I guess you could argue the Snow White minecart is a little bit. Yeah, that's in that genre. Absolutely. I don't know.

It leaves something to be desired, but it's very cool. It's a very cool ride. So they've dabbled in that. I mean, they have a little luxury, a little bit more autonomy and freedom with the oriental land company the company running it pays i don't know if the term legal term is licensing but you know there there is a another company helping run tokyo disney that operates a little independently from this uses disney imagineering but kind of does their own thing and i believe is partially funded by the japanese government as well you can definitely feel just the infinite pockets of that

place yeah uh and like what i can only imagine being an imagineer i bet like in the way that tony baxter speaks very fondly of the eisner era because they're like right when he got there oh my god i can do i have like endless resource to build whatever i want i bet only second to that as an imagineer was you're getting put on disney sea and there's no there's no cap on you yeah are off um that yeah because like just those videos of that beauty and the beast ride they're opening you're like oh this is gonna be incredible and it does yeah it does feels it just feels like they know when running that park that like we everything has to hit this level of good like we can't do something shitty and nothing looks shitty that's coming so not in the least yeah they aren't cheapening out the only

this is really we shouldn't uh gets too sidetracked there was that rumor that they were going to build a third park over there called Disney sky, which I was so excited about. What does that mean? And then it's, and then it was a rumor and it's not true. They were just going to expand,

but maybe that was in the pipeline at some point, which also I didn't understand. And I, maybe I said this on the show on my Tokyo, our Tokyo episode that I really didn't understand. Tokyo Disney sea was because Disneyland and then see, I didn't get thatkyo disney sea was because disney land and then sea i didn't get that until we were there i think yeah oh and disney sky oh land land sea sky so satisfying it's so satisfying when i've explained it to people oh my god it's land

and sea that's so clever right it's and i was like oh my very cynical people have been like oh i love that that's so cool and he's on tokyo bay like has a practical reason yeah man there are views where especially um the probably the prettiest zone well there's the ship is amazing to be on uh the the new york area but also the area with the aquatopia if you're on the if you're waiting for the train that takes you to the new york area actually that whole train ride you have like all of the water internally in the park and they have arranged the views to where it looks like an infinity pool. And it just goes and goes forever, even though there's a monorail and a service road back there. There is no it does not connect to the literal ocean, but it looks like it does. And that's where it feels like it is a beautification project for

the city long beach could have had this yes and we didn't end i mean whatever i mean i like what we end up ended up with but uh well the chile's yes that's i mean the ultimate beautification outlet mall empty on black friday a dome where an old insane man's plane used to be and now carnival cruise line uh boarding and luggage is happening once a month uh um i it's it's absolutely insane and uh what was i what the hell was i heading for uh um it's uh it's it's just jaw-dropping, and well, here's the other thing I could say about, um, why I was incorrect about two days. Uh, and what I can see now, uh, if you were entirely about getting the rides done, if like, if like, we're going to do the park, we're going to finish this park. Uh, then you were going to war in that way. for sure you could do it in two days.

You could maybe do it in less. I don't know. What I forgot was all the other dimensions of the theme park experience that I never do, that in my two rides and wine style of visiting now, which I cherish very much, but it is a different thing over there. And there's all of the other stuff that I never do in theme parks.

And let me go through these really fast. Just a couple areas. And then I haven't said, by the way, from the name of the episode, what we're going to end up doing to keep me on track so I don't just ramble forever and ever. I have isolated what I consider the top 10 rides in Tokyo. Not just the Disney resorts, but everywhere else. And I am calling it rides,

but they're not all rights. I think what I narrowed down to are all rights. I would also like to hear a little about your trip itinerary in general, how you thought about planning it and that sort of thing. Uh, I can go into that. Um, cause I,

I, I like what I did. As I said, the time of year that I went, I think we did, we ended up with five nights, uhkyo two nights kyoto three nights disney i would probably you know what i wouldn't even take it away from disney i'd just add to kyoto kyoto kyoto is incredible wouldn't be uh it'd be boring for me to explain it but oh my god go to kyoto holy shit uh uh and uh especially if you can find we were on our way

to a bamboo forest that we didn't end up going to but we stumbled into a park where you can visit monkeys there is a hill that you can climb and the top of it is covered in monkeys and we thought about having a whole like half day to our trip to go to wherever it is where you can see monkeys bathing in hot springs but some people told me that that is a little sad uh somebody somebody went and said it was a bit of a bummer for some reason and that kind of turned me off macaques are the type of monkeys the like red-faced monkeys that are primarily in in japan i think and uh but this gave me the taste of monkeys that i wanted uh it's and you're climbing a hill and you're wondering what the hell is this? And you're seeing like really confusing warning signs.

That's like, OK, if you see this face, the monkey is scared. And if you see this face, the monkey is angry. And you're like, those look like the same face. I don't know what you're telling me. And then we climb. And it's so steep. It is so much walking. And people are coming down and saying

oh good luck and like what are we oh no what are we heading for we get up to the top huh i wonder if we're close to the monkeys like big old monkey fight breaks out spills down the hill and we just like back up i like i'm as cowardly looking as I could possibly be. We think about just turning around. All right, we'll just eat shit on that monkey money. We won't see any monkeys. But we were brave and we got to Monkey Summit. And there were no other fights. We just happened to see the one that had happened.

But it is this incredible city view that you were ignoring because there were 80 monkeys around Just walking all around you And getting up on the binoculars and like Playing with them and turning them Of all varieties a wise Old monkey a cute baby monkey It's one of the best things I've Ever done with golden sunlight Just drenching down from

The top so go to go to Monkey mountain that's not the name of it but It's certainly what I'm calling it conquer Monkey mountain So go to, go to monkey mountain. That's not the name of it, but it's certainly what I'm calling it. Conquer monkey mountain, uh, and go to Kyoto in general. So I would do more Kyoto now. Uh, and maybe, you know, maybe a little less Disney, but, uh, maybe not the one other thing I can say, um, took a bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto. The bullet train was going so fast and I'm looking at a map and I'm seeing it quickly. We're plowing through these cities. And I thought, you know, at this rate, we would be at Osaka in 15 minutes. Oh. And my wheels are spinning. And I think, well, we're cramming a lot

of theme parks into this trip because there's things I haven't even mentioned yet that I did. And I'm like, you know what? Now that I know the speed of this thing, maybe I need to go to universal studios, Japan. I get, I tell Aaron, uh, what the bit my wheels are spinning. She rolls her eyes, but it's like, you're right. No, you're right. Yep. Yep. Maybe we got, yeah. All right. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. Uh, I, I'm thinking of everything. I asked Justin Michael, uh, the time zones hooked up. I was like, would this be crazy? I don't know. I don't think it'd be crazy.

It'd be pretty cool. Jaws. And then I looked at the refurbishment schedule. T2 was down. Oh. And that was enough to break the tie for me because that's like the main thing. I like Jaws. I like Backdraft.

I like everything else they have. But seeing T2 when we just recorded an episode about T2. If it was up. Yeah. It would have been really, it was the first If it was up. Yeah, it would have been really, it was the first day it was closed. Yeah, I missed it by one day. Well, there was a crazy, and I'm regretting this now,

is that when we were there, there was a crazy Halloween thing going on, like a weird haunt, like whatever their Horror Nights is. And it was like, you have to know Japanese to do it, which we couldn't do it, but I was still like,

could we still do it though we couldn't do it but i was like could we still do it though well in the summer they have like a full-on like anime like theming like retheming some rides anime pop-ups like and it's like for some of the months it's like l Lupin and I forget. I think it's Detective Conan in some languages. And then other times it's Attack on Titan. And so like it changes. They change it up. They do like this thing lasts a few months,

but then halfway through it changes again. So it's a whole like short run sort of thing. Maybe this is still an area that either of you can carve out being the first person to to go to universal japan i thought like how proud would i be to surprise you guys yeah that would be crazy a photo under their city walk king kong and their spider-man photo op where he's like hanging down. I mean, I feel like you got to go because they have Spider-Man 2. Yeah. If you can make sure nothing's closed.

They also don't have whatever the crazy, I think it's called Space Fantasy, whatever replaced E.T., which I hate, obviously, but whatever that is looks cool. But that was down too. So we're thinking next year. So you're thinking after Mario? Nintendo opens your thing after uh nintendo opens yeah yeah i can see that's a good idea i kind of i mean i want to go take your son have a nice trip the three of you or just the two you know what they say three is fun three's a fun there are no one has any qualms about three yeah uh i i really am interested by uh japanese baseball

culture so i would want to take in either a giants game or yeah yes tokyo dome i'll say now i did go to tokyo dome city oh we texted about that a little bit and it was during a baseball game and i thought do i do it and then i turned around and i saw the line it's one of the craziest lines i've ever seen for anything in my life so i did not see very it's supposed to be very intense i think if if you do it book a baseball game six months in advance they even have standing room which sounds like a nightmare and i read a yelp review it was like it is a nightmare oh yeah so uh do it with some foresight yeah maybe you gotta go i think you gotta everybody's gotta go if you're listening to this you. Yeah. Maybe you got to go. I think you got to. Everybody's got to go.

If you're listening to this, you got to go. Everyone find a way to go. It's so fucking great. So I was on my way to the non-ride things that are why you need to go, which are in a couple categories for me. Characters. I don't meet the characters. I never do. Only on a rare occasion am I like i like oh let's get a picture

with minnie you have no choice you gotta meet characters especially when you walk into uh before really before the their main street world bazaar starts uh if you just the courtyard at the front of tokyo disneyland every once in a while there's just this explosion of characters, unrelated, just 12 of them run out. And do you do people just get up in a line? No, they cluster around the characters who somehow managed to keep track of who was the last to walk up to them. It is like seeing a celebrity get mobbed by autograph hounds and they like make make time for everybody it's crazy i don't think i saw that happen uh that's sorry i mean there's lineups too you wait 90 minutes to meet duffy or whatever but these little like character street parties i was thinking how so many advertisements

for disney parks over the years have been here's uh you know like you're partying in the streets with mickey and donald and you then you get there and it's as formal and functional as it could be this really felt like i'm at a street party and i don't know who i'm gonna turn around and see uh i had a great time with the following characters easter dale as i said the gray Aristocat, Captain Hook, and one of the three little pigs. I have photos that I will cherish and really good times with all of those characters. Do I care about any of them? No. I don't know which Aristocat.

I do. Boy, Chip and Dale. They're pushing Chip and Dale really hard right now. They're pushing Rescue Rangers really hard right now in Japan. And it was exciting to see. And I bought a gadget and, uh, it's great.

But, uh, like these, who cares? Characters were so much fun. The gray Aristocat like grabbed two girls from the crowd and like, kind of like, like put his hands up to his head and like spun around.

Like he's dry. They're driving him crazy and he grabbed the girls and walked away with them like you're coming with me and then he backed up to aaron and added her to the mix too oh my so i lost aaron to an aristocat uh uh and then and lots of little things like they're pointing at people's toys and a girl walked up and had the gray Aristocat on her bag. And he was like, yeah, there we go. And then he pointed at a different one that was not him and went, no, boo, get out of here.

Wow. And then back to him. And the character bits are just a blast. Aaron got to meet Susie and Perla, the Cinderella mice, who we've had sensed that they have an odd amount of presence in Tokyo Disneyland. I wonder if we'll get to meet them. We were literally the line was cut off. We did not. We couldn't meet them, but they saw Aaron losing her shit and they came up to her on the way out.

Both hugged her. She said, you're my favorite. They heaped so much. They like did. I'm not worthy to her like wayne and garth wow magic all of the character performers are incredible uh uh a pure land too it's just like the it's it feels like an elevated art it's more like mime or something like these people are so good not to insult anybody there's great's great characters in the US parks, but holy shit.

Characters. Bathrooms. Oh, yeah. We just released our Tangled Bathroom episode. Mike, you were talking up Tokyo bathrooms. Absolutely right. Oh, my God. The degree of cleanliness, the seat warming.

The options if you need a little extra cleanliness help uh while you're in there uh the parks are crawling with children i think the u.s parks have pretty good bathroom cleanliness considering however these are facilities that thousands of babies are going in and out of every day so they just are what they are i didn't smell shit anywhere probably in the entire city but especially the parks how do they manage that i mean i think it's a combination of a very diligent janitorial staff and everyone uh cleans up after themselves there yeah it's a much different there's not as much litter on the street there's not that many garbage cans i. I don't know if you noticed that around. Yeah. Which does that encourage you to like, Hey, hold on to this and go throw away, go throw it away when you can. I think that's

absolutely. I think, yeah, it's just like you carry it home as opposed to, so there's no psychological way. Like, I think you just get used to either not taking a cup with you from the restaurant or you hold onto it. so you get home and discard it. Yeah. Yeah. You're annoyed at first. I want to throw it away now, but then it makes you do it in a place that can handle it. Yeah. So it's a combo probably. You know, it's the other thing, uh, sanitizer for the seats. Oh yeah.

You don't just put down the paper. You don't say, I hate the crumply paper that you sit on in the bathrooms. Those are awful to sit on. They have essentially hand sanitizer. You put it on some toilet paper, rub down the seat, and then you sit on the seat. Why isn't that standard practice everywhere? I would like a robot to do that, though. I don't even want to. Sure.

I mean, there's those weird ones that are like plastic that you hit it and it's like a conveyor belt that goes around. Have you seen those? No. I don't know. I've seen these a couple times. I don't know where specifically, but it's like the seat is covered in plastic. You hit a button and then it goes and like new plastic like rotates around, but you can't tell if it's just the same plastic there's no real way to know unless it was covered in shit and now it's not that would be the only way you would know

you see in hotels a lot now their remotes are like um what's the term like bacteria resistant or whatever tv remotes oh i don't know what that they've coded in something like it's antimicrobial is that what it is um but but you see that every now because you always hear about like oh the dirtiest parts of hotels like the the tv remote aaron sprays them down that's the first thing she does when she gets anywhere makes sense yeah they can have cleaned all the surfaces but a thousand people have touched that remote the first thing i do maybe less nowadays because i'm on my phone all the time but like when i was younger i would just as soon as i walked into a hotel room turn

the tv on like without even thinking and my parents would tease me about it because you get tv that's not your tv different channels or an information channel most importantly the holy grail hbo is good but an information channel that loops every hour. There's that time in Vegas when you had to leave the dinner early at the bachelor party because you were feeling a little ill and we came back and you were asleep. But the King of Queens was on the TV. I was probably looking for the information channel and dozed off before I got to it. It was also the time was about 10 30 p.m

yeah it was about 10 i thought it was five in the morning but i had a layover in vegas like an unexpected layover where they put you up at night and and that was what i settled on to like fall asleep to oh man because i i checked my luggage too so i didn't have another change of clothes so I was just like joylessly sleeping in this this strange hotel with like the Vegas information channel on I have watched informational videos about the Mandalay Bay dolphin encounter more times than you can count sure it never changes there's no invite I don't want to do the dolphin encounter I just want to watch this some dull person dolphins love being in the desert it's really better for them yeah it kind of aerates the air it's the blubber

uh um i don't know if they have blubber um uh what am i what are my categories oh oh uh uh merchandise i don't shop in the parks here and And so much of the merchandise is generic. But there, it's cute stuff. And it's like one of a kind. If there's something on a ride, you're probably, if there's some components of a ride that you like, there's probably a toy of it. And you can, like, I gotta have, I need to have some little trinket to remember this unique experience I had spent so much time shopping and and is a little thing, but I converted some yen coins into Country Bear Theater. Oh. Crushed Yen?

What's that? Crushed Yen? Is that what it is? I guess so, yeah. Because you weren't crushing American pennies, right? No, it was, yeah, yeah. It would have been a little hundred uh and these are and specifically uh for mike uh trixie and for jason the sun bonnet trio um i'll hand those over i can

also hand these later uh look at them now but uh um uh let's see uh for these are nice not bad right and very specific and like it's not just of the theater in general there's the choose your character i hope i chose well oh yeah we forced jason to be associated with the sun bonnet trio before my girls he likes it uh for for jason to uh commemorate your taste in rides and your taste in treats, I have for you a little die-cast, a 445 scale Mark Twain. There's these wonderful little vehicles. There's a massive collection and even like a catalog of them, and they're so cool.

They have them for the monorailsails for the buses that take you to the hotels they have for the ride the journey into the center of the earth vehicle i bought a bunch of these things i think they're so cool but i got one of the of the mark twain that's for you and then i liked this a lot a uh this is a plastic churro that is also a pencil on the inside that is vaguely mickey ear also if you look at it down the barrel so great uh i like that a lot we're tokyo disney resort where dreams come true uh in uh in churro form the multi-use churro can't eat it though sorry, we'll see. And for Mike, I mean, here, brighten your home with this and share this with Lindsay, but a tiny plush of our beloved. Oh, it's Shondew.

Shondew, the most adorable character. Throw Shondew here. I shall. Thank you very much. Shondew, good luck on your journey to Mike's arms. Hey, you've survived. Congrats on your journey. Thank's arms hey you've survived congrats on your journey thank you for sean do that and then and as requested oh a specifically requested item a t-shirt well i'm for sure venmo which is oh no let's call it a gift it's uh from the tokyo disney resort this is a shirt

that is an exclusive thing that Mike wanted Which is a pastel design Of Mickey bars But very detailed Mickey bars Yeah so like the Mickey Not ice cream but popsicles essentially But it's his head And there are different colors and they're all over

And I follow it on Instagram There's an account that just posts when new merchandise Pops up in Tokyo Disney that's how i knew about this so i it popped up like you're there or you were they're going to be there in a day or two and i'm like oh shit i want this and you said like if you happen to run into it i figured i couldn't miss this and i saw it the first night so uh thank you very much i won't throw this i'll uh i'll deal with that but that's just a design they don't sell those Kind of popsicles

They do They do Wait really Oh my goodness I have a picture One of my pictures I think I posted On Instagram

I'm eating that same popsicle Oh really I didn't realize that Because they're very similar to I think someone posted On our Facebook group An old Those old Mickey popsicles

That was like Mickey, Donald, Minnie And Goofy And they wereofy. And they were the different flavors and they were the full body. Yeah. Do you remember those? So like, I have a great affection for those and this is close cause it's just a head. Right. And it's pretty detailed for a popsicle. It's a pretty fun design. Many, many colors are presented. We'll post a photo of it. Get one if you go there. Um, and, and, you know, speaking of treats, that's the thing to discuss, but here's, here's what we'll do. Let's, uh, let's take a quick break. And, you know, speaking of treats, that's a thing to discuss. But here's

what we'll do. Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, I have several mini lists, one of which is my favorite treats of the trip. And then Scott's Tokyo top 10, the best rides in the city of Tokyo. Welcome back. Let's continue our journey. Good luck, Mike and Jason, on our journey through my trip. So, all right, here we go. In order to sort of guide this discussion so I don't just ran rail forever, I've picked out, and it was tough do as tough to do as uh as navigating the fake rock final four uh tough to narrow it down to the what i consider the 10 i don't know if i i mean i guess i'd call them the 10 best rides but it's also it's a highly uh subjective list it's definitely it's the 10 rides i had the most fun on during my vacation. But before that, I have a couple of mini lists, which I'll try to make go a little faster. But one of one of those lists is treats.

Another thing I'm I am the least treat of boy of this treat boy laden podcast. And but, you know, in Tokyo, you couldn't help it. Everything, everything looked fantastic. Everything had a giant line and you knew that wasn't arbitrary. It's not just them being fetishy about we have to try everything. You're like, if there's a line, it's got to be good. And it was I was always right on. You know, I'll also give this update. Anytime Tokyo has come up, I've been I've expressed concern for

Aaron my wife is a vegetarian and how is she gonna fare in Tokyo in general and especially in the parks great did great there are very few vegetarian options I will say that but vegetarian curry curry is really good there's so much curry in the parts great awesome that as their hamb. Javis Curry's awesome. That as their hamburgers or whatever, that's a great trade-off. That's fantastic. And a really good margarita pizza at this sit-down restaurant in the Mediterranean area. Vegan might be tougher.

Vegan's probably very tough. But vegetarian, we did all right. And in the city in general, she had some of the best food she's ever had. Quite literally, I think the best pizza we've ever had, which sounds crazy. Oh, interesting. I think it is true. At a place that I don't remember the name of, it's in the Nacameguro area. And it's on the show Ugly Delicious with david chang i think i'm getting that right uh i don't know look it all up if you want good pizza neapolitan pizza in japan it's unbelievable

uh but so disney treats uh i'm gonna do these just as three number three little green dumplings little green dumplings the name for the mochi oh Oh, yeah. The Toy Story alien mochi, which was very good. Not like mind-blowingly good, but a pretty neat snack. Are you guys aware of this? Are you familiar with this before? Sure. Did you do it, Mike? Yeah.

Well, I didn't do it. I had a Gudetama mochi. Oh, I didn't do that. I'm jealous of that. Yeah. Oh, boy. I didn't do any Gudetama food, and we didn't really eat in Sanrio. The food wasn't so great, but I liked that mochi.

Well, thank you for, you gave me that heads up, and we just went to like an adjacent food court in that area. That's another thing in Japan. Food court food. All good. Convenience store food. Good. Train station food. You sent us a picture from 7-eleven or post it one and i wanted

i hear it's great the food is great there i mean you your picture was very funny because it was men's dress shirts next to pornography oh yes i was switching back and forth between uh how quickly you could get from a nice dress shirt to uh kind of raunchy pornography And then just like great rice treats One step away Salarymen work long hours They kind of need everything in one spot For the convenience My favorite 7-Eleven treat was the Coke That was flavored to lemon and vitamins

Vitamins? What's the flavor of vitamins? I don't know it just said lemon and vitamins So I got it Did you do any like hot food from 7-Eleven? No I didn't I didn't either but it all seemed good I didn't do McDonald's admittedly

Oh we did too much McDonald's Really? Good stuff? Yeah I mean it's not too different Not like incredibly better I did get like an interesting like Tea with turmeric in it or something Like an iced tea with turmeric no they had some cool drinks but nothing like crazy turmeric turmeric what did i call it turmeric

it's cummerick a cummerick oh come right yeah uh did you do like sodas i think like i'm not a soda person even in like weird unusual ones but i'm told the sodas in the park are cool um i feel like i did a little of it but nothing crazy nothing i was like oh my gosh okay okay um well yeah little green dumplings not oh my gosh but anyway you get a little like uh plastic dish of three mochi and you don't know what flavor it's going to be till you bite in but it's i think we got all three uh uh it's the neapolitan it's strawberry chocolate vanilla and they're very cute and a lot of fun good treat uh number two a potato churro this is familiar to you you didn't do this uh this was at a cart inside the volcano and uh a big old line and we wondered what the hell's up

with that it's got to be good for something they like come out like in and out and they like okay now what do you there's like a pre-order situation it's that level of intensity uh i don't this i think you would both love the potato churro um uh i wrote down notes it's kind of salty on the outside and then soft and potatoey on the inside um so it's like churro texture but more like the innards of a french fry people say it's like a giant french fry but i found it to be almost also a little bit like if you gave like if you let the best chef in the world make a domino's breadstick that's oh interesting it almost sounds a little like a Knish. Oh, I think so. Yeah.

I'm not super Knish familiar, but that sounds right. Yeah. Really unique and odd. But they had a Nemo Colors churro, like bright orange, over by the Nemo ride. That was fantastic. You can't go wrong. You don't even need to listen to my top three just buy anything you see and it'll be great um but my number one curry popcorn did you do popcorn we had

chocolate popcorn i don't think we did the curry popcorn we did a few we did honey uh over in the poo area we did caramel and they're all. And they all make the park smell great. Yes. Anytime you're passing by a popcorn cart. Oh, my God. They also release whatever they consider an Easter smell before the Easter show starts. And great smells throughout Sanrio Pureland, too. I could have ranked the smells, but I'm not prepared for that.

But curry, number one this like savory popcorn uh so unique we had just chocolate i think i'm trying to remember maybe we had one other flavor but it was not curry that sounds good i mean there's so much curry there yeah so you don't want to go overboard with curry and yet this was you know so you know there seemed to be like a soy sauce one there were a couple of uh uh there's some like chinese barbecue kind of popcorn but i didn't i didn't know how big of a deal the popcorn is how big of a deal the collector uh things you there you can get your popcorn in a mark twain and you carry it around your neck all day uh would they fill it with um uh egg custard because custards are big there right too because i

they are yeah i don't know if i had any custard in the pot i feel like i had decent custard somewhere in japan but uh i think you'd you'd be able to find a way or after the day's over go to 7-eleven just diy pour a bunch of custard into that Mark Twain custard and like red bean. I love red bean as like a filling and stuff and, and curry and right. Like if I knew how to make this stuff, like I should learn how to just make that. Cause I would like eat some of the stuff every day. Yeah.

If I could. I know me too. And it also feels like, even though you're like stuffing yourself, it feels healthier on some level. You feel the freshness of everything. I think just less processed food there, more fresh stuff. I am fighting every urge I have to become that guy who's like,

well, so I've just been in Japan. So I'm doing, I'm sort of, I'm eating differently because I don't want all that, you know, all that stuff that's not good. I'm like, and putting, I'm like tempted to put lanterns up in my apartment i'm like oh yeah i'm teetering i'm becoming the worst yeah we were doing that bit for months yeah all fairness it is the country that invented cup noodle as well so like you know not swings both ways swings a lot of ways not everything is the highest of taste so what but what you're saying is you don't want to go to the sushi restaurant we discovered after this that says like happy hour half off and the happy hour runs from noon

till 10 p.m it's like so it's half off so that's just your prices that's your prices for your operating hours it's not so much happy hour yeah i like that place i like it too i just think it's funny that they're like half off during the special time trying to trick us i just don't know if i'm gonna like the taste because it's like you're getting fresh fish when you're in tokyo and well we were watching we were watching um and this is a very popular anime but uh my hero academia which is uh which is all it's hot topics main display now if you go by in the mall hugely popular but lindsey was like i don't know i'm really not gotten into anime and then we were watching it she's like you know now that we've been there yeah oh did it get you then we were watching it. She's like, you know, now that we've been there.

Yeah. Oh, did it get you on that train? Well, it's a little bit like, you know, we're kind of like more familiar with the culture now and like, huh, you know, so like it is, that's real, but also like very aware of how annoying it is, how annoying we could be of like, you know what? It's a little more connected to the culture. So like we really like the music and the art that's produced there. You were skating the most delicate line. It's exactly where I'm at.

I do not want to be an off-putting dude. Maybe I just have to do it in my own quiet ways. Yes. And actually really what, I mean, I can tell you what it means for Erin, which is she's very committed now to find out way more about the mythology of each and every san rio character oh yeah it's less of a lifestyle thing and more about what's that tall carope what's his deal yeah and she will know and we'll talk about it soon uh hey wouldn't be uh

scott gardner trip report if i didn't rank the three best drinks oh hell yeah of the trip um number three the manhattan at the teddy roosevelt's i didn't get it on the boat what'd you have there uh i can't remember the name it was like a fruit it was like a fruit uh purpley drink uh with sugar on the rim really sweet really great i'm trying to remember the other one there was one other one i had and i can't remember did we do a lemon drop anywhere somewhere yeah but not there yeah that's like not my genre of drink but i would like i liked it when i had it um you know it was first of all i also to thank you mike i might have missed this teddy roosevelt's lounge i might have been unaware of it had you not talked it up uh the downside of this is that it is demonstrably a

better drinking location than even my beloved carthay circle lounge yeah i think did you did you sit in the main room or did you sit closer to the bar uh we the main room because that's we were by the bar and it's a little less good over there. Oh, okay. Oh, we see. We thought about going back. It's not bad. Because you want to sit by those bear pylons. Yes. In the big area, we were like, that was probably the place to get seated. Yeah.

Yeah. It is great. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. I walked around and I took pictures of all of the teddy. There's a little teddy bear. Just nice to pay tribute to TR. Of course.

TR. While in Japan. The only thing that I could take solace in in this excellent drinking location is that it was certainly no Carthay Manhattan. It was nice and a great place. And that's more why I'm putting it on there. It's not as if it was an incredible Manhattan, but a great place to get a drink. Right. Just a blast.

Erin was pointing out. So we the in line for that bar and she was pointing out just look at the carpet right here even as beautiful as carthay circle is you can feel that the carpet is like a little beaten up this place looks like opening day there's not one square inch of disney sea that doesn't look like opening day yeah it's wild yeah yeah incredible um it's just like a little bender in there although i will also i'll talk up another thing that we america does better uh with this no my number two the italian white wine at the ristorante di canaletto in the mediterranean area of DisneySea. Excellent pizza there. I think the only like nice vegetarian meal in the park, but a pretty good one. And you know what? I hate to say it. I think that pizza might have ruined Red Rocket's pizza port for me.

No, I'm a guest. As beloved as the hamburger pizza is to me no just having like really good pizza i mean there is good pizza i guess in the disney parks but uh yeah at a sit-down restaurant in the you're just you're comparing it immediately to the worst theme park pizza you've ever had and i i think i've said before the best pizza is is uh viaoli or Napolini, whatever it's called in Epcot and in downtown Disney out here. It's the same outside restaurant group running those. Wait, the Epcot one is the same? It is the same people running it.

Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, okay. I believe. Yeah. And that is, yeah, that is excellent. Yeah. The Epcot one hypes up more that they tried to find the water that's a chemical makeup close to the mineral count of Naples. That I think what I have sensed is that from this really good place I went to that I cannot remember the name of, but it's themed after both 20,000 Leagues type submarines and Beatles yellow submarine at once.

And you take a submarine spiral staircase down to like a beetles room this restaurant in nakameguro god i don't believe the next time you go you have have to have to go there but the um this place seems to be very like it's the right water it's all that there's four ingredients but it's the best ingredients there and i'm told the pizza has only recently gotten really good in japan and this place seemed like part of that probably i thought it was great uh and just nice to have some solid wine because wine not so good in japan there's one downside we are near napa uh and uh in the central coast it's just better here so i'm thankful for that i like our manhattans i like our wine but

it was nice to have some of that in uh in disney um also like everywhere in japan seems kind of like do you want the red wine or the white wine you have two choice like there's no menu it's like which bottle of the two right right there was a there was a tiny amount of selection at this place, and it made us very happy. Beer, very popular in Japan. Yeah. Japanese whiskey, which is closer to scotch, right? Killer whiskey. Yeah, yeah.

Justin Michael mentioned a place that we ended up going to called Bar Ben Fittich. It is a very, like, super, like, Harry Potter-y. And you just, there's no menu. You just say, like like what base you want, and they'll give you the greatest thing you've ever had. Wow, great. So whiskey's, yeah, whiskey's killer. I didn't do a ton of sake.

It was pretty good when I had it. I think I had some decent sake. Oh, you know what's another good restaurant in DisneySea? There's a sit-down fish market restaurant in the New York area that looks like an old New York fish market restaurant in the new york area that looks like a new york fit an old new york fish market uh and it's like as good i i think all any fish option at carthay circle rocks like yeah every bit as good maybe better at this place so uh if you're looking for restaurant recommendations uh sorry i don't have the names for you but go to the fish market one it's not that hard to find

uh um but anyway number one pretty simple the kirin ichiban draft inside the volcano it's in the bottom level it's called the nautilus galley there's a couple places you can just get a good draft beer uh in in disney sea uh but man if like when i was if you're chasing that beer in the cars area vibe shit crazy good beer uh uh real just simple like i don't know there's only one option and they knocked it out of the park i think there's like a frozen kind too where it's a little bit like ice cream or something at the top i think kieran like pioneered that oh and i think it was a thing like dole whip you could only get it like two places. Like you could get it in Japan or you could get it at the Japanese pavilion in Epcot.

But now I think it's branched out because I think I saw it for sale on like Fairfax. Okay. Interesting. Is the Japanese food, is the Japan pavilion good food wise? I think they're changing. There's a new restaurant going in there, right? Like a signature one. I haven't had too much at that pavilion. I haven't really either. uh uh food wise i think they'll change it there's a new restaurant going in there right like a signature one i haven't had too much at that pavilion i haven't really either in all of the

times i've gone next time i'm curious how legitimate do you guys know this fact about uh about tokyo disneyland that there's there was this weird thing meet the world that um that's it's what was there before monsters inc ride and seek and it was their american adventure it looks deathly boring yeah uh robots telling the history of of japan i've heard of it but i don't know much about it um i don't really either this is pretty hard to watch video on youtube there seems to be an animated stork and the robots seem very good but boy does it seem dreadfully boring and the issue with this attraction was always they tell the story of Japan and then they speed you up to modern times. And they briefly nod to we had some dark years, but then it got better.

And everyone always was like, this is pretty tricky to grace past the dark years. So it was always an iffy attraction. And I think they wanted to get it out of there and now it's a very cute monster zinc ride but i found this fact out via jim hill that they this attraction was developed for the epcot pavilion the japan epcot pavilion and they built the building for it and it's there if you go backstage at epcot there's this building that they've never used for anything interesting it was supposed to be their american adventure and instead they just carted it over to uh to tokyo wow that's interesting another interesting fact because

it's the oriental land company they almost called in the 70s all of the paperwork called tokyo disney oriental or oriental disneyland wow yeah that all it almost was opened as the probably a key name that would have been changed i i would imagine so uh uh anyway uh uh yeah real good drinks and i'll tell you what walking around the volcano with that great beer made me think well if beer factored into why i like those those and Cars Land so much, did we screw up? Maybe we screwed up. You think Mount Prometheus and all of that is the best, maybe? I think it might be.

I think I had the bias. I had a hometown bias. Well, for sure we had a hometown bias. Well, we'll have to see in 2020. When Jason goes. I think you can make the argument that Mount mount prometheus deserved to be in the last four or two for sure i mean that was that was tough in there yeah remember that was madhouse yeah manor horn make it to the final four it might have i think it's a conference issue i think if

you were like ranking if there wasn't like the pairings i think prometheus would have made it yeah and i think i mean look there were some oversights in the final we didn't i think prometheus would have made it yeah and i think i mean look there were some oversights in the final we didn't i think we should have somebody pointed out we should have put those like blue rocks from tomorrowland in orlando in the mix because those are very fun maybe i've been there i've seen them they are good and they might belong at least in the bracketing so i'm saying there were problems maybe with the bracket but couldn't be perfect i think maybe people are right another one we heard a lot was um the little mermaid stuff in florida do you consider it coral perhaps people were even doing the rationale for us well you can't put it in because it's coral but and i'm like we didn't say that you're making up a rule

yeah we that came up with the petrified trees of black spire outpost right well that's yeah i mean we'll certainly see i'm still very thankful those didn't win a different a different uh ball game in 2020 with black spire outpost and if we've all been to japan by then and we may need to yeah you can cast the final vote i at least think it should have been in final four if not final two if not final one i don't know. It's pretty jaw dropping. Skeptical about this, uh, Florida Tomorrowland rocks.

I don't know, but I don't know if they blend in with the retrofuturism. I need to, I like examine them closer in person. I've seen him. I like him. Uh, better than ours,

but, uh, California, California rocks. Let's not talk about those. Let's it's too dark. Uh, uh,

so with that said, I can now head into my top 10 rides finally we'll be talking about rides uh in in this involved i will include everything in tokyo not just uh not just the disney parks a couple of caveats before i head into the top 10 uh as i've said before poo's honey hunt was sadly down when i was there. And I think almost undoubtedly it would be in my top 10. However, it cannot be as I have not been on this ride. A good reason to go back. And there's many of those.

Uh, the other thing is we're going to have this like, all right. Uh, I knew before coming home that I was, I knew that I wanted to isolate at least one attraction and remove it from my main Tokyo episode and put it over on the second gate. I didn't know what it was going to be, but I figured there's gonna be something that I love so much that I can't even take up the real estate of this main episode to talk about it. And there was an experience so unique, so narratively rich that I can't possibly fit it into this episode. So I'm declaring right now that we will be doing a second gate episode about the pan galactic pizza port, the restaurant in Tomorrowland. This is non-negotiable.

Gentlemen, we will be doing this and as soon as we possibly can, because it's taking everything I have right to not just uh spill my guts about this thing right now i have to contain it i have to take a deep breath and save it a little bit this is one of my favorite things ever to exist i love it so much can you say the name of the character that you like uh yes why in the pan galactic pizza port you follow the uh the hijinks and the travails of tony solaroni you also meet his wife you meet his mean boss mr fusano you get to experience his machine in action the pz 5000 and uh we will be talking about all of this in depth uh over on the second gate so get ready i felt you know somebody tweeted tweeted an old Disney news magazine article about this thing right before I got there, they tweeted it at us and I was ready and raring.

And I remember seeing this as a kid and I went and found that issue. So now I know about the making of the pangoletic pizza port. It's so incredible. We will be doing that on the second gate to it. There's a ton there. I, I, as I said on my Instagram, I think I found my favorite thing of my childhood in my 30s. Right. It took till now. Holy shit. So we'll see you at the Pan Galactic. And during which I will also contain my thoughts in general about Tokyo Tomorrowland.

Oh, right, right, right. Holy shit. And I'll just briefly say here, Rex is a hitchhiking ghost droid thank you for not telling me what a delight i think we said that very cool that was one of the ways soon as you left i think we yelled it i think oh no i'm glad i made it out in time because i think we knew we had to keep that one under the hat but it is we did round the corner and we were like whoa yeah yes me too as you can imagine oh man and then there's still another rex i oh boy yeah there's just there's i i'm i'm gonna call it number one tomorrow land i think it's number one tomorrow wow

really interesting for me for what i'm after and tony solar, that's a small part of it. So I love that entryway, that blue and white entryway for, um, wait, the, for the land, the land. So those spires.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Uh, I mean, I feel like that's what they all used to look like. And they've like kept that classic tomorrow land as they all should have. What is all this nonsense of having to update it?

As we've said many times, the future is neon just keep it there what are you doing tokyo's got it right uh all right let me finally begin the top 10 list and i'll see if i can do this not painfully slowly sure uh all right so as i said this will not include just the disney parks uh it will it will not include universal studios but i don't think and i don't think anything was there that was open that would have been on the list anyway. Curious about Space Fantasy The Ride. Right.

I don't know if it would have made it. But number 10, we will start with a non-Disney. And that is, and I might butcher the pronunciation of this, the Gekion live coaster at Sega Joypolis. I have not brought up Sega Joypolis yet. You didn't go to Joypolis, correct? Absolutely worth some of your time if you're going to Tokyo. And next time you go, you got to do it. Sega Joypolis is like if Disney Quest worked.

If they did it right, if money stayed in the machine, if they actually changed things around, if it was cutting edge technology instead of 20 years ago technology, although there's still a little of that too, but in a charming way. It's amazing. They've done a great job there. And it's no wonder that celebrities have spoken so highly of Sega Joypolis. On your way out, you get to see autographs of prominent people who've been there, including Freddie Prinze Jr. who visited in 2001 and Leo DiCaprio who visited in 2000. So lots of prominent visitors. I think, I think I want to say Jonathan Lipnicki as well.

So if you want to walk in the, in the feet of giants like Jonathan Lipnicki, go to Sega Joypolis. Um, in general, Sega Joypolis is part of this crazy, they call it Tokyo beach and it's this crazy mall zone. There's so there's a, a ton of malls and a Madam Tussauds. And then there was some free exhibit that we walked into where a robot did a drawing of us. And there was a free VR ride where you get swung around on a miniature kooka arm and uh

and there's a mall that has a big gundam robot outside of it and i'd seen photos of this thing and i thought oh that's funny a big robot outside of a mall did not prepare me for the incredible scope of this uh this robot has to be seen to be believed like it makes you go why doesn't why don't any of the universal parks have a full-size transformer uh because that's essentially what this is it lets you know this is what it would be like if transformers were real and one of them was about to step on you it's and it's just sitting outside of a mall for no reason how tall is it i don't know huh could i ballpark it? It's like two stories tall? Or not that tall?

I think more. Wow, really? I think maybe more. It looked about as tall as, do you know the Maryland in the center of Palm Springs? Wait, don't. There's a giant Marilyn Monroe. Really? Yeah.

I've been to Palm Springs. I haven't seen. Like right in the center, kind of close to the General Store Museum. Oh, you get to look up that skirt yeah and it's weird yeah driving a car under do you walk yeah you walk around it yeah it's a little it's a little strange yes yeah uh um yeah weird that's very tall yeah uh oh that oh the maryland yes uh uh Yes. I recommend this whole area entirely, including Sega Joypolis. And you can buy the rides piecemeal or you can just do them or get a full day pass. One seems like a ripoff Indiana Jones. One seems like a ripoff Soarin', and one seems like a ripoff Jurassic Park.

We went on the ripoff Indiana Jones, and it's a real delight. There's like a Japanese Sala narrating the whole time. It's better than you think some little indoor ride has a right to be. Sega Place is great. There's games in the urinals at Sega Joypolis. Oh, wow.

There is a target that you aim at. And if you correctly pee on the target, the video screen will live correspond. And I watched a game where your character is like Fonzie- esque and you were firing snot liquid snot at a nerd. What? You're like drowning a nerd. And you're not. Which is controlled by your pee. And this is one of like seven options of urinal games that you can play.

So each urinal has a different scenario, essentially. Yes. You have to you got to drink so much water and say good job. urinal games that you can play so each urinal has a different scenario essentially yes you would have you got to drink so much water in sega joy bliss so you have the energy to play every urinal i mean are there games in the female restrooms i don't know uh i think you're at a handicap because i feel like right how females have a more difficult time controlling with precision is there a blogger in japan who's like well the was a little uh concerned about the state of the urinal games like like nitpicking like disney bloggers going like well there's a bit of disrepair has fallen upon the mike finkeel boats just you

know the the polygons are not responding uh as quickly as they need a plus up of those pissing games now that you go to regular urinals are you like you know just like in tokyo it's like it's just like i kind of i'm bored with a urinal it's definitely been disappointed there's also there was a aaron went to a san rio piroland bathroom that like had a full-on light show oh yeah just like and there was like a script there was like a video also that my urine activated at a San Rio where you watch Hello Kitty in space. And it starts because I started peeing. It's so insane. Pureland is really going to get the short end of the stick in this episode.

And we'll get to. I think it did in yours, too. Yeah, for sure. There's so much to say about Pureland. Sinbad. Spin-offs. Spin-offs. We have to yours, too. Yeah, for sure. There's so much to say about Pureland. Sindbad. Spin-off. Spin-off's the bound. We have to section it off.

I'm just glad that from now on I can operate from a Tokyo juncture point in doing this podcast. Okay, but the Gekion live coaster, it's like the heartbeat of the facility. As soon as you walk in, ripping through the second story of this area, is a spinning coaster that also does inversions, which I'm told is a rare thing. I don't think that's common. So this just odd little spirited coaster that's also a launch. So now that I'm launching, I think it's only my second launch technically, but I was brave and I don't even like going upside down either. But man, this thing was so cool. I think they've only my second launch technically But I was brave and I don't even like going upside down either But man this thing was so cool

I think they've Like a functional Disney quest They have made this park where you can trade the rides in and out Easily and I think this used to be a shooting Rollercoaster So you're like You're moving forward And the screen's also moving with you

And sometimes You know when you're playing like a basketball shooting game and it's going back and forth and getting further and further away so that it gets harder and harder to shoot. It's like that with screens. Like at first the screens right in front of you and then it gets hard. So it gets much harder to see. You're trying to catch up with it.

It's kind of a challenging game that you're playing. It's not a shooting coaster anymore. It's now like a dance dance revolution where you have buttons under your harness that you have to hit in time and it somehow impacts your ride experience i'm not sure how because it's all in japanese but like you can change your ride and soup it up more the better you do on this thing faster i think maybe or or it just affects like the better you do on this thing. Like go faster? I think maybe. Really? Or it just affects the color scheme. Like if player green wins, then it's going to be a more green ride that you go on.

It's really inventive. Are there better rides in Disney? Probably. But I wanted to shout out Sega Joy Plus because it's really well done and really worth experiencing. I did so shitty on this ride. I thought I was doing well the whole time. I got a C. I'm going doing well the whole time i got a c

terribly grade you uh aaron got a b she kicked my ass uh but bad grade good grade uh really good ride recommend sega joy plus and the gecki on live coaster number nine let's start getting into disney uh i thought should this list only have things you can't do here in America? Should it only be Tokyo specific? However, there are some rides that are so much better done in Tokyo Disney than they are in the States. And I have to honor, though, they're almost more of a handicap in a way that they have to be that much better. And one of those is and that is number nine, the Jungle Cruise. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It's more like the florida jungle cruise which is better than our jungle cruise out here oh i didn't know that okay yeah because you got it so you there's stuff in there yeah you go in a little tunnel like a tunnel under a bridge and that's like yeah and the florida one is like that okay so maybe i might be missing out on jungle cruise evolution in general yes i forgot totally when we went back a couple years ago, we went on the Jungle Cruise and I went, hey, look at this. Right. Because out here it's

fine and I like it going on once in a while. But it's not in your regular rotation. No, never. And I think this one would have to be. There is so much excitement with the employees. There's like 20 people wearing khakis on the dock. They employ more people than most companies in

los angeles just on the jungle crews everybody's out there so excited you're there they get everybody on the car to like yell like uh i think you like they have pendants of different animals and that you choose are you like an elephant are you a hippo or whatever and whatever the sound is everybody has to make the sound together excited crowds they don't do hokey jokes they just do like are you ready here we go we're gonna go see the elephants there's music the whole time that like gives it this narrative thrust circle of life plays when you see the uh lions and then you go into this incredible uh projection mapping room is that in florida i i don't think it's like that i don't

think it's to that degree the one in tokyo yeah it seems like it's the best but i'm trying to remember i got my memories fuzzy on it so i don't know for sure is did they do this stuff at night because i didn't do this at night but it looked like it was it's really i did it at night we did it at night so yeah it was yeah i'm trying to think i can't remember the two of them are now blending together in my head i think uh-huh think i can't remember the two of them are now blending together in my head i think uh-huh so i can't remember if one the projection happens in florida but you're talking about like when you go in like the stone like the whatever you i don't even know what you call it like temple-ish kind of kind of a temple it's like it's like it's some elephant

god i don't even tell you what happens it's just really cool projection mapping and it comes out of nowhere it's so neat the whole thing it just has so much more spirit than the one in disneyland yeah and it you know whatever stupid thing they're gonna do to it when the rock movie comes out don't guys don't overthink it look to tokyo look what they did it's just so much more fun they only redid it in 2014 it's pretty recent and uh they did a great job no no rock robots please no robot i know we'll see i don't know it just make yeah ip in general pretty lacking in tokyo and uh i'm not an ip snob i try to not be an ip snob but boy nice to be in a place i just i was like every every like sight line is so clear and not cluttered and there isn't some weird loud temporary uh way to jam uh dr strange into this corner of the park or whatever it is like uh they aren't they aren't like screaming at me about lady and the tramp four they're like so much more sparing with all that stuff um that's true yeah i don't know

no marvel like anywhere yeah is that because of japan though is that because of universal oh they might have agreements are for international i think they might the spider-man because they haven't announced anything for japan for International because they do it in the Spider-Man ride Because they haven't announced anything for Japan For Marvel so I think it might be a case of Because they can do it in Paris they can do it in Hong Kong In Shanghai I think But I do think there's

They can't do it in Orlando yet unless it's like Guardians When they can't do it in Japan I think that's right Because they would have announced something for it Unless Marvel is not popular there I sense that Star Wars is not super popular there i don't is that correct i guess i think it's maybe not as popular as it is here but it's still i don't know i haven't announced star wars land for tokyo yeah no they haven't in china it's definitely not as popular um yeah they've had a real problem with that yeah yeah you know because there's like a black actor in it oh god yeah that's a problem

isn't it i believe the issue was that they had shrunk john boyega's face on the poster because he's like one of the three leads and like he all of a sudden was like in the corner tiny in the corner yeah if you we are we're not going to promise anything but it's possible this actor is smaller than BB eight. Yeah. Maybe a little tiny man and you might not even notice him in the movie. Yes, that's right.

Um, I was reading about a movie, uh, called detective Chinatown two in Japan and it grossed $544 million. Jesus. Whoa. So are we going to get rides of that? Uh,

who knows? Um, Dick Tracy's crime stop stoppers but with detective chinatown too yeah maybe uh i'm looking forward to it maybe the general sense of calm and uh just like the pleasantness of tokyo is entirely based on the fact that star wars isn't popular there like no one is screaming at each other about this they have their own issues there might be a few yes uh uh anyways uh to keep going with the theme of better in japan indiana jones and the temple of the crystal skull yep that's number eight i thought about putting this lower than jungle cruise because jungle cruise was a bigger jump i felt like i went from like 60 to 100 indiana jones is more like 85 to 100 but man it's a good jump it's a real good jump yeah it's like going on and when it first opened i imagine the track feels nice it feels nice and smooth yeah like it's operating

like at optimum performance the car feels better uh the uh the very crisp projections of the bugs. They don't try to do the weird rat thing that has never worked that well. There's smoke rats dripping on your car. That crazy contained tornado when you enter that's lit with blue light. Oh, right. Looks amazing. The head is amazing. Probably a little better than Mara in some way. Oh, you think the head is better than Mara? I think the main, not in the first tunnel, but in the main ruins room. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I think it is.

The only thing I think is better is Mara herself. Yes. The big head. That's the only thing. And the skull is cool. Yeah. But you're right. Yes.

The actual big head has more attitude and personality yeah but that's it i like that they don't do the doors i like that you're just committed to this cool room with little like pools of water uh it's the the night sky that's lit up when you enter that first ramp yep um what else the uh the the bellowing smoke ring monster oh my gosh so cool so scary such a surprise uh the sculpted heads spitting the darts you don't get day glow halloween store like decorations you get roman art for some reason spitting darts at you it's crazy that it's because we i think sure we said this is a repeat but we said like that's always the part where you talk about the indiana jones ride where

you go well that last stretch right before the ball isn't that's fine but it feels like if you're heading to the climax it should be a little something extra there in this place there is there's a really cool extra angry god that shoots fire at you yeah and then there's actually like feeling like a physical presence that's shooting darts at you yeah yeah it just feels more uh it's just a better looking room it's a more visceral effect because the statues are cool uh and then at the end indie the especially the second animatronic by the by the first the crushed boulder beat up yeah he looks like shit looks like back to actual harrison ford uh-huh he looks like what harrison ford looks like if he has to uh go out in public and speak to someone

so upset he's just put out by uh but also more clearly him i think yeah it looks more like just better more kind of spastic animatronic so So great. I feel like I had to bump some things that I really liked off the list to put Indiana Jones on. But I went on a second time. It's undeniable. We went on three times. Geez. Wow. Because single rider is easy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very well done there. So nice that they don't really have that. Nobody's using that single rider. What a good little cheat. Oh, you know what else?

In the line. In the line is not as good as our line because they didn't have to get you all the way out of the park right like they like they do here but that room with all the skeletons piled up is just a big old pile like spit out skeletons as if like a monster took them and just like ripped the skin off like a rib and tossed them back into the pool oh like the way i eat fish you do it like heathcliff style and riffraff yeah like riffraff and then they each bone hits like a xylophone when it uh heads out of your mouth um okay indiana jones great number seven aquatopia loved the aquatopia uh so so strange and unique and weird little this weird little putt around ride it's such a delight you don't

know what it's going to do when you get on. It's different every time. Looked good at day. We did it again at night. Really liked it. I think this should be a franchise in every park. I have a new Tomorrowland plan. We rip out the submarines and the Autopia.

You put in the Aquatopia and Tron. Perfect. I agree. We don't do hey kids, you want to experience the dream of driving an old smelly car? Put kids on a clean

quiet electric vehicle the way the future needs to be. If mankind is to survive the Aquatopia will show us the way but the aquatopia in the parks i think that's a good idea um they're like little wi-fi vehicles basically and then it's a self-driving cars it's forward thinking because it's also like it's not actually that deep it's a very shallow pool yeah but that's a good little trick you think you're

on real lagoon or something right um no i think that's great i little trick. You think you're on a real lagoon or something. Right. No, I think that's great. I think it's like the same technology as like the Luigi's Roadsters. Yes. Yeah. Basically. I looked it up. The second trackless ride, the first being Pooh's Honey Hunt. Still upset.

But there's only five that have actually opened. Yeah, it's still few. And then, yeah, Star Wars. Mystic Man, R.A. Tatooine. Will be. Oh, and Star Wars will be. Yeah. Okay. They're cool. I okay um they're cool i'm glad

they're happening but this was this is a very good one i love and night we we did it once at night very good yeah very fun it's you've got that it looks like the best of our tomorrow land in a way like the like the most realized version of weird future past little strips of neon that little zone and with the Nemo ride. Port Discovery, I think it's called. It is called Port Discovery, I believe. Very fond of Port Discovery. I don't know.

What's my favorite port? Probably New York, but. Sure. Well, or the volcano itself. I guess it's got to be the volcano. Right. Port Discovery is, no, Discovery Bay is what Tony's thing was going to be at the end of Star Wars Land is in Disneyland. So they've stolen a lot.

I mean, stolen in a good way from his stuff. This whole thing feels like this must be Tony's dream. Like a lot of it feels like what he was trying to bring to the parks. Yeah, Mount Prometheus, especially with all the Jules Verne shit that he's obsessed with. Yeah. Yeah. I'm almost glad we didn't hear more of his thoughts on it

because I didn't want to spoil, but he be uh very excited about this i don't think he worked on it really but uh yeah i don't think so although who knows he could be like they did it all wrong it would be so funny yeah because they'll throw stuff under the bus i just heard one of those season passes where he was like he really like let something have it i forget what uh i mean he was he was he was mad about the name Condor Flats. Oh, that's a different podcast, I think, which I've also listened to, where he was saying the theming at Condor Flats wasn't easy to add rides to. Because in Tomorrowland or Adventureland, you know what type of rides. But Condor Flats, what does that mean?

Yeah. Is it a ride where you get kidnapped by a bird? He also threw some shade at Pleasure Island on that podcast. That's what I was thinking of, yes. He goofed on the plaques that we goofed on about Merriweather Pleasure and all the backstory. He's right. They're disconnected. It's a fun story, but...

Yeah, I'm of course of two minds, but that's just too much. Yeah, but let's get the themed attractions podcast. Oh, yeah. A new show. Oh, that's what it is. A new podcast interviewing professionals. Yeah. If you want people who know what they're talking about and know the Imagineers and won't bother

them with the dumb ride pitches like we did, listen to that podcast. And I believe someone who hosts it is affiliated with the company that invited us to look at fake rocks yes that's right oh boy preview of a future episode yeah you might get to hear us talk about looking at fake rocks that's right still developing yes still in the incubation tanks uh all right aquatopia great number six very excited to talk about this roger rabbits cartoon spin oh interesting i didn't we didn't do it i owe this ride a big apology uh i i mean i don't because the disneyland version is not what it could be if there there's a mode, that's the best. And then B mode and C mode.

I think it's in C mode, Tokyo. It's a mode all the way. I was, I was hoping I would have the time and, you know, and here's what happened by the way. Uh,

the first night there, horrible, horrible weather. The only bad weather, the entire vacation. Uh, we were like, can we even do this?

We, maybe we got to get out of here this really sucks but we're in disneyland now we're paying for it maybe we should wait it out then rain lets up a little bit everybody goes to where everyone in the park goes to watch the projection mapping show on the castle thus giving us fantasyland and toontown to ourselves wow we were the only people thus uh pinocchio snow white peter pan no wait i mean literally wow we walked in and sat on the vehicle and it started peter pan had no weight this was insane this i think it helped us do this unless maybe you do need four days if it's crowded as shit but we had this lucky night where we just

jumped on everything wow that is that's key yeah yeah we really missed things for three and three and a half days i think you i i and i can see why you would have because on the saturday we were there fantasyland was a hellscape oh yeah it was horrible there was this there was this area there's this famous uh crowded area the the crosswalk Shibuya Crossing, where 19 directions all cross at once. There was a part of Disneyland that was much worse than that. And it was just because that's where the fast pass for Small World was. Right. We could not move.

It was horrible. But we got to be there on this magical night where the weather had barely cleared up and no one was in Toontown. So we were in the gag factory by ourselves. We were in Minnie's house by ourselves. We just laid down for a while, sat on a nice chair. I pretended to do the dishes in Minnie's house. Uh, it was great. Uh, but anyway, Roger Rabbit was part of that. I was like, Oh, you know what we can do that? I bet we wouldn't be able to do tomorrow. Roger Rabbit. I've heard maybe it's better it was so much better uh and no one was there by that point so the employees were like thanking us for picking their ride like you're here come on in and they're and like hurry go

and we still had to do the even though no one was there we had to do the entire queue but that claustrophobic queue that i complained about for so long we're in by ourselves running through it looking at everything quick pictures hey great we have this to ourselves not claustrophobic at all plus the lighting's better plus the paint's better then we get on the ride the control you have of those vehicles is incredible it's like those in california they're molasses in the in japan it was such precise control that aaron and i you know it's kind of a cab and another cab and we just each took one to ourselves we turned them to face each other and we did one pass of the ride just looking at each looking in each other's eyes for the entire, you had to like adjust a little bit and kind of stay on it.

But we were just locked eyes on this ride. It was so weird. The most romantic moment of the trip, obviously. Wow. But we got off and immediately got back on again and they're cheering us. Yeah, one more. They're like,

everyone in line is celebrating our presence there. And also everything worked. the dip machine worked it spit the shit they haven't done in so long it's spinning out of control it's bright green every effect looks great roger abbott rocks i am so sorry that i trashed it for so long but you do have to go to the japan man that sucks a little better we had to do it uh next time you go yes i'm sorry to make you jealous no that's okay i got to do poo so we did it twice oh boy you got a bit you got a big one on your on your list that i don't uh uh but uh yeah next time roger outscourge it's been rules uh number five monster zinc ride and seek uh it's great it's undeniable it's good fun i a little i didn't love the flashlight stuff as

much how so what do you mean too much it was too much i wanted to appreciate the robots more the flashlight is like shooting a robe at the robots of the monsters i felt like i want to enjoy this more too much busy work you could have just sat there that's true i should have done that yeah there was no scoring mechanism either So that's why I wanted a score of some kind Well I think your only reward Is making that little ding sound Yeah

If you haven't done this ride It's sort of like a shooting ride But for kids so it's tamer It's not a gun you have a flashlight And you're pointing at little Monsters Inc. M's Mostly on hats but sometimes in other places And what it does I guess or it's not a gun you have a flashlight you're pointing at little monsters inc m's mostly on hats but sometimes in other places and it what it does i guess is trigger an effect it like opens a drawer right and you get to see a monster that you wouldn't see if nobody pointed their flashlight

right but i felt like i was i uh i was on the spot to do it we only did it once i guess i should have done it a second time great robots very good ride i just was uh not as excited about it sure that's all i'll say uh well then you might be okay with i actually thought you would have the biggest problem with what i'm about to say heading for next that i would i actually thought you would like that ride a lot and then you wouldn't like where i'm ranking the next ride ahead of it interesting uh uh but here i'll just go into it now uh knowing it'll be received better number four san rio character boat ride oh yeah yeah no i'm not mad about that hey great for some reason i thought you would i was like mike will like monsters inc a lot and

just uh that'll be like too much of a leap but we both i think we monsters inc i guess was a little hyped up maybe for us too so i think both of us kind of left it going like oh good but like i wasn't not like poo or not like any of the other ones sure yeah yeah but boat ride yeah boat ride is it's really something it's yeah it's the best of it's it's junky in a lot of places uh-huh it's a junky weird little ride the end of it is pretty good the end of it is like okay here we go yes but seeing all of the characters in their sunday finest uh if i could describe the story of the ride and you know what a lot of places said this is kind of this weird small world ripoff no way it is not that it has a great story. Hello Kitty wants to have a party. She sends heart shaped invitations to you in the line and every all of her friends in the Sanrio universe. You get to see them all at the magical moment that they got the invitation to her party.

Then they all take flying machines to get to the party, each cuter than the last. And then you go to the party, which a she's in kind of a wedding dress but it's not a wedding and her boyfriend is also dressed up but they don't kiss or anything and her parents are there but it's just a regular party everybody just wanted to see hello kitty wearing a nice dress and they do and everyone goes home happy yeah it's weird uh it belongs on the list um it's we very strange uh it's i like how i'm trying to remember now back to it because it's been a little while i do feel like the first part of it is like oh is this gonna be like there's a gross feeling maybe initially where i'm like some of these don't feel like they've

been kept up the animatronics uh but i like that too because you're like feeling like you're because a junkie not kept up boat ride is fun too although i yeah i i don't think i felt that i felt the magic i felt the guy i had no problem with the cleanliness i felt i don't even mean it wasn't clean but it felt like a little like old it felt a little tired maybe initially although it is a revamp it has not always been sanrio character boat ride yes i've read that too the name is a lot of what i love about it i love the bluntness just the descriptive nature a fun ride for you to go on today uh no i we really liked it i gotta watch the ride through again to really remember my feelings about it it was the last thing we did in the day too we're a little tired but i was like oh that oh, that's great. We needed to do that. It's an overwhelming place to be.

Yeah. A better way to end it than with a boat ride, which I also, I love indoor boat rides. It gave me such shades of the, you know, the Norway and Mexico, like claustrophobic, fake indoor sky, even though you're're outside i love that there's ride scenes and then you're just in the regular lobby and watching people shop and eat but you're on a boat yeah back into the ride it has that feeling of like a weird not that i've even been there but like mall of america where yeah you're zooming in and out but it's just you're going through normal places but you're also in like a world, a special world. So it's it's inconsistent in what the reality might be. But then, of course, there's so many great fake rocks in Pure Land.

So you think rocks are good. You've got all that great stuff going on. Good, like magic, a little like fiber optic kind of stars and fireworks. It's really come to life during the show. Yes, we will get to Sanrio Pure Land. Even now, I feel like I can't talk about it a lot but really fast uh the the thing that bumps this up ahead of some disney ones is that disney rides are never going to give you japanese weirdness and this ride has japanese weirdness especially uh in the area of

the character bad bats maru there is a a penguin who is mean and has spiky hair and he does bad things in this ride. Legitimately bad. He's no good boy. You've seen all these adorable characters get their invitations. The frogs get their invitations and they're leaping around. Hooray. When he gets his invite, he's up to his bad tricks. He's gambling.

He's smoking to his bad tricks. He's gambling. He's smoking cigars and very, perhaps in the strangest scene in any ride in Japan, he is spying on a woman in a dressing room. She is like, she has, she's like, she's a bigger woman, I think a cat or something.

And she has, she's, she has like a workout clothes on and he's behind a mirror, like trying to get a peek. He's like a peeping Tom. That's actually on the crest. So that's on all the money. If you would look closely at the yen, that's a national pass, Tom.

My bills were too small. If I had had the 20,000, yeah, I would have seen upskirts on the currency. Really weird, but also feels very very japanese the fact that they are a little more like out there with their perversions a little bit that this children's ride has weird like voyeurism so crazy it's yeah i think that's the thing maybe the one of the other things about tokyo disney that i was like hoping a little bit more of that vibe snuck in which it does in places but not overall like this yeah this feels like this feels like a totally different tone this is a different vibe and this is still a children's supposedly a

children's thing i i watched an anime while you were gone as well scott called a night is short walk on girl and it's so fast pace and like mostly delightful but then every now and then there is a weird little bit of horniness like that ah uh so i i yes i understand uh what you're talking about it's kind of like younger skewing but like no well it's about like college it's about like one it's a one crazy night kind of movie okay um and And yeah, it's about like a guy who has a crush on a girl and she's just trying to enjoy it. Like they're both enjoying like this nighttime festival and he's trying to get like this children's book he knows she loves. And then it gets crazy. Like there's no, there's very little cohesive plot besides that.

And then there's a crazy gangster there's crazy pop-up plays happening there's spirits it's it's insane but like yeah there's a little bit of weird kind of uh but i do recommend it was uh very fun okay oh neat uh uh well Well, the payoff, actually, you know, well, what I'll say in terms of maybe the only place in Disney where I felt a little more of the like oddness, harshness was Pinocchio's Daring Journey. Oh. Which is very well done there. That's Erin's favorite ride in any of the parks, although probably at this point it's Sanrio character boat ride. Sure. ride in any of the parks although probably at this point it's sanrio character boat right sure but she always likes that it's it's a morality play that people do bad things and then they get punished and that happens in the u.s one but in the japan one a lot more cigar business yeah yeah yeah i feel like there's like a very long room where you just are down going down cigar alley

there's 10 different stores like giant indian after giant indian storefront smoking cigars and then after as a result after that uh the the children who are turning into donkeys are much sadder they're crying thick tears they're like gelatinous they are so much more upset and just wailing it's a much more upsetting version yeah i remember this too because it's more like the movie honestly the movie is very upsetting yeah it's yeah and it's still pretty upsetting on the disneyland ride but i do remember there was like yeah more this is much more upsetting and they're much more comfortable with it that's how what really feels about actors right hi v a lady and actors like for me like

that a bunch of ne'er-do-wells yeah a bunch of scumbags like uh smoke and or jack braying jackasses it's all a metaphor for them them going into uh pleasure island is a metaphor for them joining a union yeah yeah sure if you look at the just the letters in union are flickering on the pleasure or even just United artists. Like just like, what do you mean? They own the play. What do you mean?

Chaplin and Pickford owns the place. They're all a bunch of fatty. Our buckles drunken exploits. So to that end, just like Pinocchio, horrible things happening. And then punishments, bad bets,

Maru spying on the woman. But then in the next scene she has him she caught him she he is over her knee and she is spanking him heightening punishment if I think

I don't know much about bad bats Maru but I think he might be he might not consider that a punishment we've got to look into bad bats more his back story and uh he might have been was he in the anime he watched he was in my anime too for some reason yeah just just watching fucked up shit but he just peers into the corner every once in a while uh then he is at the party but he's by himself bitterly drinking wow he looks he's a little like all the other characters are upright and waving and then he's by himself bitterly drinking. Wow. And he looks, he's a little like,

all the other characters are upright and waving and then he's sort of leaning against the bar and sort of looks like he's a few in and teetering. So a ride in which you get to see a bitter drunk. Yeah, that's great. Something else. Sure. So that brings us into the top three.

I have little thoughts about other. I mean, I could say my honorable mentions really, but we're pretty deep in this episode, I'd imagine. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm getting hungry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, then let me.

OK. All right. I'll just go. I'll just go straight to the top three because I'm especially excited about number three. The Tower of Terror. I did. You did. The Tower of Terror.

Wow. Hi, Brave. The Tower of Terror. I did the Tower of Terror. Wow. I braved the Tower of Terror. Thank you for your applause. I was so excited to tell you. I was hoping that was the triumphant return. I was in line for Tokyo DisneySea wondering, will I do it? Aaron said, yes, you will do it and you will like it. All right.

Well, that's. In a person dominating bad bets maru like a penguin enduring a spanking uh no she she informed me i'd be doing it she was correct not that bad really not i hadn't done it i think it was like splash man a lot of fear had built up although i've also heard it's tamer can you attest it is tamer yes shorter than florida no or yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure no i'm wrong yeah tamer than florida for sure it feels like the first i know they're doing a crazier thing now i think we said it where there's like it's for teens where it goes much more up and down uh but it feels like the first ride profile that i

ever went on for it it's short okay feels like a minute maybe or less and we were disappointed in it because yeah we're used to like the guardians and the one in florida and yeah we were like oh that's oh we wish it was a little longer so yeah very tame my question now is but maybe this stepped me up though where i could do guardians guardians how big of a leap do you think it is well i've always argued that the worst part of it is the anticipation not that i'm some genius friend for arguing that but uh and that's what lindsey says too because so like the fear the fear of like oh my god it's gonna drop and then it but that's gone with the guardians right because it shoots you right up would you get a

jolt right away but that feels like that feeling might be scary i'm the wrong person to talk to about that because i love it you like launches for that reason obsessed with it now and it's only in the last couple years where i've gone on it so much that i like that uh-huh but i mean yeah i don't know it's just kind of fun i don't know i just find it so fun yeah and it's anything that i was ever scared about with it was the drop itself sure so i think honestly it's like is it two i don't know two times more intense a few times what do you you're distracted by the hits of the 70s especially yeah especially yeah the song starts playing and rocket plugs in and it's like very fun i feel like i could do i might i think you can do i honestly i don't think uh and i and you know what i not

only did it the once i did it three times i couldn't get enough oh yeah oh we're gonna do this all right and then we'll do the episode yeah yeah that's probably yeah i probably need to do it before we do that we'll do it so when we go to star wars land proud i have a bravery report to give i'm so glad i did and the the tower stuff is great we'll do a whole episode about it at some point but uh the the tale of Hightower, the disappearing idol. I don't know how they did it. So cool. This might be one for me.

Yeah. This might be two, actually. I think it's two. That'd be fair. That'd be absolutely fair. I'd be curious to hear your top three when I finish mine. Although I think you would guess. Well, maybe not.

I think I can guess. So, yeah. Effects are amazing I bought a little Shariki Kiche And I love him And I only am docking At a couple of points

Because I don't like When you go into a store And the character Based on Imagineer Joe Rohde Is presented as a god Being massaged And fed fruit By beautiful women

I I couldn't disagree more I love all of that I can't imagine anything i would spend on faster we were that's not for sale you're saying that's decoration embedded in the wall that's what the thing we were upset with with the gift shop is that we wanted some harrison puppet or merch or figure same thing with sinbad sinbad doesn't have a plush or a doll or chan do is everywhere but you can't get a good Sinbad toy And the same thing with Harrison Hightower

Where the idol is in there But we were like we loved Harrison Hightower So much but and his Of course his manservant Smelding I missed Smelding So in the queue did you do fast pass all the time I did fast pass yeah

Oh yeah you may have. You may have been. You may have missed out. You may have seen the art. We did it twice. We did one Fast Pass, one regular. And there's so much wonderful art in the main lobby of him pillaging famous things from like a piece of Stonehenge or something or him and smelting smelting like hanging from the basket like this meek looking dude who is like helping him steal from like aborigine or aboriginal people like it's such a crazy um bit of like amazing paintings of him just destroying old artifacts and old

uh whatever you i don't know okay so by the end when you see him you're happy touted in this awful way it's like you know you know he's like a villainous yes and what i also think is crazy we were when we were outside in the queue there's all these female like very busty female statues oh so like not only is he's like really like Trumpian Trumpian building up a heel character Yeah you're like oh this is guy who like thinks he's God's gift to women and then you go inside And there's these immaculate paintings of him doing the worst things to like historical landmarks And like he has this like meek man servant that I believe we want Jason to play A listener did some art with Mia Smelding.

Yeah, I think we said Jason for Smelding on the show specifically. Okay, I missed this. And there's a whole guest book signed by a bunch of different rich people of the era. So like going in that main queue, we were just so, we were like wanted more time with the main queue of like looking at the art. Yeah, so by the time he of like looking at the art. Yeah. So by the time he dies, it's totally justified. He's a total asshole.

So that, yeah, at the end, there's that newspaper clipping of him with like women and like he's in the old time Scrooge McDuck bathing suit. And it's like, it's such a good, it's crazy how much stuff they produced to build up this guy as an evil shithead i am i am a little sorry i missed that huh huh well uh at the same time it is nice to get a fast pass and not wait oh yeah sure uh uh especially when you wind up wanting to do it three times yeah this is what you're told like you're gonna hate it but then you're gonna love it so much and why can't get enough of it and that's what happened to me with this ride well we'll do that on guardians because when we went with anthony geo a couple months ago we did three in a row guardians right at the start of the day wow i'm curious i think it'll be a little more i think it'll be a little more for me to brave

but you'll love you love pop music so you'll be good the adventure of what song you'll get yes true yeah uh okay number two it's in beds storybook voyage I'm putting it at two we've talked about it a lot it influenced the trip and made made it easier for me to come home it was heartwarming I teared up went on it twice I I bought a chandu I got you a chandu I want to remember him when he pounces on the drum. Oh, yeah. Bong, bong. We'll do a whole episode about this. I will say my thoughts more later.

But, oh, my God, the scope of it and seeing this town supporting each other on both. Really, at the end, it's also so, so funny how heartwarming it is. Like, we wish you well. And then he returns, and we're so glad you did well. It's just one note of love for eight minutes. It's so insanely positive. Every scene a triumph for Sinbad. He faces no adversity. You've come in at the moment that he has triumphed.

He has. He's probably a little bit of versity but we don't even have to see that we just know he's succeeded yet again and he's turned everyone around and everyone's now he's he's playing musical instruments at every scene he's singing this glorious song and then he gets home and you're like wow what a success wow a bunch of monkeys i wonder if he had any trouble uh you know getting in with them or does one of them is one of them trying to like pull him apart no he has joined their monkey drumming band and is probably better at drumming than they are instantly yes i like the musician focus with which he's uh yeah uh yeah he's he faces no

adversity is great from second one till second last and uh it's a great ride and did i upgrade this song to best menken over part of their world part of your world maybe i may have in the last few weeks i think i said maybe this is number one well all of my disney tearing up was menken related because i also went to the mermaid uh lagoon theater show oh you with your flying aerial? Yeah, yeah, yeah. with the sisters and great puppets of flounder and sebastian if there was a little mermaid musical in your town and it was that you'd be telling everybody holy shit you guys see this little mermaid show yeah uh it's broadway it's above broadway caliber it's so great it's a good version of spider-man turn off the dark yes because she doesn't fall would would love an ursula saying that a theater is surprisingly easy to break into yeah it's all

only docket points for that uh but yeah yeah i think you figured out by the end there's only two things that could have been the top two uh and uh it was it was a little bit of a tough choice but ultimately you got to go with number one ride in the country of japan uh journey to the center of the earth holy fucking shit what a ride um i it's really great i heard you had some qualms it needed another room that's my feeling about it we were going on the ride we were like this is awesome this is awesome that shoots out you see this crazy lava monster you're like crazy monster amazing and then that's kind of it that's kind of the end of the ride because you could do two more minutes like that yeah so i think that's the only thing

that i would i mean it's my expectations of course um but yeah you would dock at points because it felt like oh holy shit now what are we gonna see and then you're kind of done yeah sure you just kind of quietly get off and you go yeah you go down like a cool zipping fast tracky thing through some cool fake rocks but that's it sure sure uh yeah i'm with you on that i do just think that the i think the the world building is so cool the the line is incredible the terra vaders uh um yeah if you and which i realized go up you're sent into these these uh these elevators that and there's all of there's like creepy smoky smells and it shakes around like mad and it seems like it's going haywire and you feel like you're falling all

the way down down into the center of the earth but then you realize wait a minute you unload from the top so it's an illusion that makes you think you're going way way down when in fact you're going up which is pretty cool yes um that's really great test track ride system right test track test track slash uh slash cars it's in that it's in that neck of the woods uh breaks down a lot does it really yeah that was the last fast pass we had for the whole trip and it broke down oh bummer oh no we did what we did it once the first day and then we were like oh great this will be great we'll do that the last thing we go on before we have to go to the airport and it broke down and

we like sat outside it for like a half hour to see if it would come back up and it did not that was over very sad uh but we got to do it i apologize for that we got lucky with it and we did it four times oh wow in choosing yeah yeah somehow like fast passes earlier in the day i think you do if you're going to tokyo get in there get fast passes right away it's kind of a war when you get into the park and then you can relax but grab something as soon as you can yeah and uh and then your day will be fine yeah these feel like packed days, which I know you don't often like to do a lot. Yeah, you're totally right. Because of all this other stuff,

because you got to meet characters, you got to have treats. Yeah, we were way more front to back. We had boundless energy. We ended up with a very packed, long episode, as I imagine we would. But that ride was just like irresistible to me. You're totally right about that.

However, those creatures you meet, it's, you know, yeah, you meet friendly creatures, day glow friendly creatures day glow creatures very et on the way down into the center of the earth and then it gets scary and there's explosions and there's lightning that's you forget about every time oh god that lightning i thought i was prepped for it but i'm not then fire's shooting out at you and when you round the corner and you see the lava monster, oh my God, the scope of that thing. So scary. Makes a big difference to sit in the front row and especially in the seat closest to the monster. Doug Jones, friend of the show, said, got to do front row on that thing.

And he gave me the translation Ichibanseki. And they were so excited. I was like, was this, am I going to seem like an American asshole bugging them? They loved that I attempted to say those two words they were like oh yes and like took me to the side and then ushered me here it is they were so delighted that like employees incredible this whole part and uh and that was the best moment i think the last ride we went on was me with the best seat in uh oh that's great in journey to the center of the earth that that drop is fantastic again sorry i was a militant about spoilers but getting to go on that ride and having no idea what's going to happen yeah yeah incredible sorry if i ruined

it for you the listener now i'm being selfish but you just shouldn't listen to the episode in general uh but um so in a way disappointing it's not in other parks, but also how special that you have to do the pilgrimage to go on this incredible ride. As a kid, I was always disappointed that after Indiana Jones, Disneyland went off a cliff. It was all rocket rods and Superstar Limo and all this garbage. And like, why didn't they build on that? Why didn't it get better after Indiana Jones? It did only in Tokyo. It's the evolutionary step between Indiana Jones and Radiator Springs racers.

It's fantastic. Radiator Springs only better because there's more characters. Characters at the end, a better last room. But I don't think you get cars with that Journey to the Center of the Earth. Amazing ride vehicle. I got a little die cast to that. Oh, yeah. I love, love, love this ride. center of the earth uh amazing ride vehicle i got a little die cast to that oh yeah i i'd love love

love this ride choosing between thrills and heart with this and sin bad but i gotta choose it's a hell of a thrill uh love it people have to go to this park and go on this ride and all of these rides yeah it's crazy um i was gonna say like we we did um 20 000 Under the Sea, which is great. And an employee was asking us there, what was our favorite ride? And that's when we were like really trying to figure it out. And she was like, I think we said Sinbad.

And she goes, that's my favorite too. And she spoke English as well. So I go, yeah, I guess we have to go Sinbad. And then I think Tower of Terror for the theming, but not the ride itself. So I feel like,, I guess we have to go Sinbad And then I think Tower of Terror for the theming But not the ride itself So I feel like, especially in DisneySea Like the theming is almost more Even important than like

Length of ride, I think now we're a little spoiled With thrills and what have you And length of ride, but they don't Care as much about that over there Oh, maybe not, yeah, yeah So it's not as big of a thing So would you go go is top three sinbad tower journey something else yeah uh maybe poo before journey oh man who's that good

i might say it poo is like four journey is really good i think the problem with journey was that it was so hyped up and it was the one i knew the least about well actually somebody knew the least about as well but i think when you're seeing the volcano when you're seeing the how the scope of this whole place i think in my head i had built it up as like there's gonna be 10 more rooms after this lava monster sure sure and like we're gonna be like teetering on a thing and there's gonna be lava under us and it felt like oh it's a lot actually smaller than i thought it was but that's partly my expectation that rush up the hill is so fun though oh yeah the spiraling and spiraling i know it's short but then like and then a light at the end of the tunnel and what is is that something good out there no it's a drop yeah i think i think also that um when we were going around outside

i think i go oh we're gonna drop back into scenes or something that we shot out and then i think probably if i had gone on the second time then my expectations were in check i know what it was given in a better assessment sure um so that being said since we went on sim bed i think maybe four three or four times wow wow um well only barely because yeah only barely a number two for me. It's all good. It's all really good. Yeah, it's all good.

Harrison Hightower, too. Just all of the detail on that we were just obsessed with. Yeah, yeah. World building characters. I feel like we got to cut it off or we'll just do it forever and ever. The top 10 did not help me make it shorter. There's so much to say. Go to this place.

We'll break off all these rides and we'll talk about other stuff. We other stuff uh we'll you know we'll hit it in other episodes 20 000 leagues i really liked but the top 10 is so packed i get it no i don't i it's 20 000 leagues a little bit lacking as well a little bit of something maybe a finale needs sometimes hard a little hard to see in there yeah but all of it how they do it is really great and still so cool nemo and friends sea rider i didn't put on there but it's great you got to do it that's fun uh uh and also uh it's i don't know how much you consider this a ride but at tokyo dome city we went on a ferris wheel where we sang karaoke in every sixth car or something is a karaoke car. And so we got to sing karaoke at the top of Tokyo. Life highlight.

So crazy, terrifying. Aaron hates Ferris wheels and Heights and everything, but was brave for this. And luckily though, most of the songs are Japanese. It did have our three, it happened to have our three favorite songs.

Wham's last Christmas. Uh, that's what makes you beautiful by one direction and aerosmiths i don't want to miss a thing and singing i don't want to miss a thing at the top of tokyo a life highlight i didn't want to miss a thing how long i don't want to miss a thing in this episode but i'm sure i did but hey we don't have to retire tokyo here no spirit can live in our hearts a canon of songs if i've ever heard one. The Great American Songbook. In a hundred years when

the tale of American music is told. Those will be the three. Wham is an American. I have so many questions, but we need to end the episode. We should just do another one of these. I don't know. Well, there's also, I mean,

another good place for it is a Pangle Act toactic Pizza Port episode Yeah that's true We'll definitely be doing that Hey if you have questions About my trip to Tokyo If you have questions About going to Tokyo

About the city itself Email us Podcast right at Gmail Thanks to all the people Who followed our trip At my Instagram At SkizzGirdner Let me tell you another thing

You know Our trip to Paris Was disappointing Because that property Is so weird It tough getting around. Disney Studios Paris is as bad a park as Disney Sea is good. But you know what? When you compare these to my two international Disney trips, you know what I didn't have in France was a bunch of people I've never met writing me and saying, I'm so happy. I'm living vicariously through you cheering me on just like Sinbad's town. That's what I felt like I had with the audience of this show. That's nice. Good luck on your journey, Scott. So thank you to everybody who cheered Aaron and I on. It was so heartwarming. This is the least snarky episode humanly possible of this show. We'll do jokes again in a future one.

We'll try to, but maybe, or maybe that's our thing. We're the not funny. There's a plenty of places being funny. It was being heartwarming. Uh, you survived podcasts, right?

And thanks gentlemen for, uh, thank you, Mike, for all your tips and everything that helped me get to get around. And, uh, I'm like Columbus.

I paved the way. Uh, so yeah me get, get around. And, uh, I'm like Columbus. I paved the way. Uh, so yeah, no, but Jason will be the bravest explorer. The grand finale. Jason goes international. Have you ever?

Um, only Bermuda, which I believe technically might be a U S protectorate. Mm hmm. And Scott's only been to Bermuda via a beach boy song. You did a group, but you lumped it. You went Bermuda Via a Beach Boys song You did a group But you went Bermuda, Bahama Yeah, yeah, yeah

And I vicariously had to imagine A hypothetical pretty mama Pretty mama, yeah Because you weren't married at the time The first time I heard that song I wrote Mike Love a fan letter And I said, thank you I'm living vicariously through you Enjoy your journey

to kokomo a fake place because that's a city in indiana finding a new hat uh yeah hey everybody thank you so much for listening thanks for all your comments and everything and there'll be more tokyo talk to come uh and uh hey follow us at uh pockets right on twitter and on instagram and follow the compass of your heart to our live show. Oh, yeah. It's Dynasty Typewriter at the Hayworth Theater, Friday, June 7th, 2019. I haven't recorded an episode since this became reality that we're doing this. Yeah.

So excited. Really want to say what the topic is and what we're doing. But we got to leave some surprises. Maybe we'll link it before we do the show. Maybe we won't, though. But you're gonna like it. But I'll say this, and this is not hucksterism, I mean, it's a little salesmanship, but tickets

are going fast. So if you're on the fence... I think there's a chance there's no tickets by the time this comes out. That is also a possibility. We might have to cut this down. There's a chance that this will be cut. You'll never hear it. Good luck on your journey to the Dynasty Typewriter website.

May your compass guide your mouse to... Parking directions are on there. Allow time for it. That is true. It's a crowded area. It's MacArthur Park. It's a high density area. But there are lots and valet options.

It is not as beautiful of an area as Tokyo Disney Seaa, but we will be your guides and your heart will swell. And no one will lock a parking lot right afterwards. Thanks for listening, folks. Glad to be back. Talk to you soon. Bye bye. Bye bye. Forever Dog.

This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. Engineered and mastered by Alex Arche. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcast.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.