Podcast: The Ride - Six Flags Great Adventure with Chris Gethard

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

Chris Gethard (Beautiful/Anonymous, Half My Life) joins us to discuss New Jersey's Six Flags Great Adventure. Featuring a historic Skyway, an eccentric founder, and a safari park where nature is winning. Brady Bunch Variety Hour with Eva Anderson episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever! Dog! Warning, the following podcast may contain graphic monkey jerk-off sessions, fake teenage cowboys who want to murder for real, and a special appearance by a monster. Chris Gethard joins us for thrills and spills at New Jersey's Six Flags Great Adventure to Podcast the Ride, the theme park podcast where the hosts are often referred to as good boys, but today we're Jersey boys. I'm Scott Gardner, joined by Mike Carlson.

I'm here and I'm going to do like an attitude, but not a voice. This is an attitude, okay? I want to make that a distinction. I'm not doing a voice. I just have sort of like kind of a different authority to my person today. So the only, that's, that's a good move.

The only person probably with any legitimacy to a Jersey voice might be Jason Sheridan. Hi. Yeah, sure. I spent half of my adolescence, you know, summers and,

and you know, some other weekends at the Jersey shore growing up. So yeah, i got closer than us uh and at today's topic this was my home six flags the local six flags because it's kind of equidistant between philadelphia and new york right right um well yeah this this is great i i think you know we'll talk not just about this but you know some other great theme park uh uh destinations in the garden state and we're doing it with i mean i feel like a new jersey uh expert at least a new jersey native and uh

a veteran podcaster and broadcaster the star of the new special half my life so excited chris gethard is here jersey expert on hand for all your needs so happy to be here thanks for having me thanks for for for owning that that does seem like the case you are you are a champion of this place you didn't uh you didn't flee you aren't ashamed i went back i was out and i voluntarily went back in yeah i mean i'm on a pretty uh open self-proclaimed quest to try to become like the comedy Springsteen, where like Jersey people are like, that's our guy. I would love that. That would be a huge accomplishment.

So happy to be here representing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've done a little. There's a Jersey Hall of Fame, I think we found recently. That's where I was going to go. Are you aware of the Jersey Hall of Fame? Do you think you have a way to get in? I would love it more than anything.

And I'm aware of it because when Springsteen got inducted, his speech, he said just one of the coolest things I've ever heard where you're like, that's why he Springsteen where he had some line in his speech about, he's like, I always love to watch boxing matches with guys from our home state. Cause you just watch their opponent. And when the announcer says,

Haley from the great state of New Jersey, you just see their shoulders drop a little bit. Cause they know what they're in for. And you're like, Oh, that's the coolest. You're the coolest. And such a cool idea.

What a cool thing. That's so great. Everything he says anytime during the, especially that like Netflix special, you feel like it was workshopped by like 50 of the smartest writers but you know it just like came from the most brilliant like poetic mind

on the planet that Hall of Fame where we for some reason we end up talking about Southside Johnny a lot on the show so a lot when you say a lot well for like versus any other of these type of twice yeah like a lot a lot like dough, for like versus any other of these type of podcasts. Like once or twice. Yeah, like a lot.

A lot versus like Doughboys. They never talk about Southside Johnny. I can't imagine in what context Southside Johnny's coming up. We do a lot. We like your more obscure music guys on this show. So he pops in here and there. And he's in, I believe, the Hall of Fame as well. I would be shocked if he wasn't.

Him and the Asbury Jukes. Let's get the J the asbury jukes let's get the juice yeah let's get the juke scare uh little steven i believe also or is yeah he may still be trapped in the hologram booth at newark airport where it is it's it's unclear what speech he's giving in the hologram now i can tell you right there you out at yourself as having spent time in Jersey, but not of Jersey because you said Newark. My Jersey, I... That's Delaware because you're closer to Delaware. Yeah, I... Where you said Newark.

Yeah, my Jersey stomping grounds besides Aldings to Six Flags Great Adventure were South Jersey points. So, it's incean City, Atlantic City. Yeah. Wildwood occasionally for comic conventions. My parents met in splitting a vacation, a rental house in Sea Isle City where my dad and his friends were on one floor and my mom and her friends were on another floor.

That's beautiful. That's a perfect story. Yeah. It lasted for like 20 plus years. Nice. Pretty good. Pretty good. You said Newark.

As soon as you said Newark, I said, okay, that's the Philly influence. You also probably say Wooder. I say, yeah, I do slip into Wooder. It's been great with Mayor of Easttown because I can just tell people I'm from Delaware County now. And they understand. There you go. That's how I felt with sopranos sure uh you were all we're talking about this both i'll ask this to jason and chris like your favorite park growing up maybe this is obvious maybe i even asking this

um other than like disney world or going like your favorite park that was around we're talking about great adventure today right and i'd have to go with that just because first of all it's like um it's it's the most it's the one in jersey everybody went to not everybody went to action park despite all the legends of action park a lot of people stayed away and it was pretty remote so everybody we would have stayed away god oh it was when we covered it we're like i can't i can't get into the mind space of this at all i mean it was heaven it was heaven it was like the floor to the flies it was everything people say but great adventure had its own really

macabre stories about it too and my i was there all the time because my father worked at a pfizer pharmaceuticals and they used to have their company picnic there every summer. And if you went, you got to go for that day on the picnic. And then they also gave you tickets to come back another day. So we always went to great adventure twice a year, but then there's all the smaller places too. You know, your bow crafts, your wild west cities, there's a lot of up and down the boardwalk. There's all the, all the different rides. So a lot of, of uh a lot of places in our general area sesame place dorney park hershey park also big in the philly scene but and then rye playland up near sit on the other side of new york and westchester but great adventure felt to

me like kind of the the center of gravity with theme parks that I grew up around. Yeah. That makes sense. Jason agree, disagree. Uh, yeah, I, I liked great adventure a lot. Um, and we would, we would hit a lot of those places growing up. I mean, my family was a big park family and, and, uh, a great adventure. Yeah. Dorney park is just a quick shot up to Allentown. And, uh, uh, because we were in PA, um, Hershey park was about 90 minutes away, 90 minutes, two hours. So that was our, our other big one. What about Sesame place? I made it down to Sesame place a few times. Once or twice I went

to Sesame. I remember going to Sesame place and liking all of the water, uh, attraction stuff. And, but knowing like, I am too old to be here. Like I am like nine or something. And I'm like, this is even at nine or 10, it's like, Oh, this is, I am an old child here. The last time I went to Sesame place, I went with my friend, Lenny's family. We're all a little too old. And I, I just, it just came back to me the, the memory that we actually got in trouble at Sesame Place. And I look back, it actually makes me laugh so hard because Lenny and I, we were a little too old. That's like mostly kiddie rides and ball pits and stuff, you know?

And we went in the Lazy River. We're probably in like eighth grade at the time. And one of us noticed that there's change on the ground. So we started like diving down and picking up all the change. And then we enlisted my friend's little brother and we just kept going around and around. And one of the lifeguards caught us and was like, you can't do that. Give me all the money. And we had like probably like 18 or $19 between us.

And then we told his dad and I remember Lenny's dad was like, they probably just go through and pick it all up at the end of the night themselves. That's why they're pissed. Let's go. And for some reason, my friend's daddy went back. He went 11 of that month, dollars of that money was theirs. Some of that money was theirs that they brought with $11 worth of change in our bathing suit pockets somehow. But watching my friend Lenny's dad get in a contentious argument with a

teenage lifeguard at sesame place i have not thought about that one in many years negotiation i agree that's only fair and that's a beautiful philadelphia memory right there you know it's very that mixed beats the relationship between jersey and philly could you could write volumes on volumes oh yeah i agree yeah hey i don't know anything about it i know i know wisconsin chicago that's what i know you know i know there's like a dividing line between the states and even between north and south jersey where like you can see the shops start calling sandwiches they stop calling them subs and start calling them hoagies um uh whether they call it taylor pork roll or taylor ham uh that's a big difference sprinkles or jimmies and yeah north

jersey suburbs are all kind of affiliated with new york because a lot of commuters go there south jersey is more philly but then in general it's it's funny because I feel like in the past five to 10 years, this has actually changed. And Philly's gotten very artsy and it always had an art scene, but very much so. But there was always a thread growing up of like the city, like New York City people think that they're better than you. That's why we don't like them in Jersey. But Philly people, you have to watch out because they're completely fucking insane like philly people are out of their minds so there was also that of like like like new yorkers are snooty so we don't like them for that but then philly people they're

almost like kind of like feral animals and you just don't know what they're ever gonna do and that was kind of the and i think there's still some probably truth to that that being the at least the cliche like man like a lot of my friends i will say the craziest night of their life took place in philly like when the jersey people go over there to party we're like yeah things just got way too out of control in philly that's not that's that's that's a pretty common thing i think yeah like a real like wild card maybe there wasn't even a definition of what type of craziness you'd get up to i i i remember actually and i'm not trying to like slip in an extra plug when we've we filmed at a theater in philly for my special and we were driving to the venue and my buddy Dave,

who's doing camera that night and he's goes, Whoa. And I go, what? And he's in the back of the minivan. He goes, we just passed a guy on a bike and he was wearing a Jason mask. And it was like nowhere close to Halloween. And he's like, he's just driving around on a bike in a jason mask i was like well yeah like we're in philly dave like we are like it's like like we're in phil like that's not i'm not saying that it's like happens all the time but like you should expect to see one completely inexplicable thing on a trip to philly like

that's right yeah this is not out of bounds no in his memoir like david lynch describes philadelphia as like the darkest place he's ever lived i'm not surprised one of the biggest influences on his work and then he moved to la and immediately started making a razor head and that's just what you know you come out of philly my brother went to lasalle university University and he moved down there in 1995. And I remember I'd go to visit him and I was a sophomore in high school. And it was like, I remember sleeping over his house one night and we went to a 40 store and I'd never seen in Philly. They just have stores just for beer.

Like this one is just 40s beverage distributors. Yeah. Pennsylvania liquor laws are kind of weird. It's it 40s? Beverage distributors. Yeah. Pennsylvania liquor laws are kind of weird. It's insane. You can get beer at one place or you can get it at a takeout at a pizza place. You can get a six pack and then liquor and wine you have to get at state stores. It's very complicated. We were at this 40 store and we paid.

And as we went to leave this guy uh walked into the door and he was wearing sweatpants and no shirt and he was carrying like a weed whacker and he's like hey you guys got any change and we're like yes sir of course we do like what are you gonna say like sure of course you watched us get our change and you're you're wielding a lawn implement like a weapon so yeah yeah, yeah, we have changed. We have changed. Yeah. I know that Philly,

I know that Philly fanatic, but if you walk around Philly, are there like a bunch of those? Is that like a, like a type of animal that's just roving the streets? A species, yes. Hundreds on hundreds.

You know, we should, we should talk about the actual park topic, but I do have one more question. Jason, Jason is a very, I would say he does not into a lot of wild stuff as a kid, but he does sometimes surprise us with mentions of East Coast stuff. And I was going to ask Chris, did you eat the meat Scrapple as a kid? Scrapple is kind of that area's Taylor ham, which was mentioned.

Okay. They're both these kind of like hideous mystery meats. Like definitely, you know, like, like pork products made out of like a bunch of like pig lips and toenails and rights and stuff like that. And yes, Scrapple, I think I always associate more with Pennsylvania. Taylor ham is similar kind of I call it Taylor Ham because I'm from North Jersey you will see I promise you

you will see tweets from people when this comes out going like fuck you it's pork roll because people get really mad it's either whatever you call it it's like a very sort of looks like Canadian bacon like a round pork product but it's just so gross it's like

dirty and you fry it up on a griddle and a lot of times you eat it on a sandwich with egg and cheese and it's so delicious i i stopped eating meat a few years ago and i still and like i have one thing's gonna get me to go back it's taylor ham it's it's like every time you eat it you probably take 36 hours off the end of your life but it tastes really good please don't say that i don't have a lot of time left if that's the case i've just eaten my weight five times over and taylor pork i just yeah it's so surprising because it's such a though i never knew about anything about it as a kid or even even like up until a year or two ago and then when jason said it it sounded like something a little rascals ate so well on the board some of the boardwalks it's like you go to burger places and you can get a cheeseburger or a cheesesteak hot dog or you get a pork roll

sandwich just pork roll and cheese and you add ketchup or mustard or lettuce and mayo and my favorite place to get it burned down burned down like a few months ago and and it was next to an amusement park like in an amusement park uh the arcade of an amusement park that was a been in big hangar that had been moved from a world's fair do you want to do a parody song that blew up the scrapple man in philly last night i like that yeah the boardwalk legendary. I mean, I'm sure you guys have talked about the Jersey shore boardwalks, right? A little bit. Not yet.

A little bit. Not yet. Please bring me back because. Waiting for the Opus. Because there's also these, there's a lot of boardwalks down there that'll have these big spinning wheels. That's just like pay a dollar,

spin the wheel, win a prize. And very often one of the wheel win a prize and very often one of the prizes is a two pound um log of taylor ham like i can just imagine you're out you're out you know you're showing your girl a good night you get the cotton candy you go on some rides you play the game where you try to get the frog to the end of the lily pad and the next thing you know you got to carry around a two pound log of meat all night because you got over ambitious some of these wheels are so funny you could literally win a carton of cigarettes you could

win wow like like any random bullshit man the jersey shore is those boardwalks you guys would love he would love man we gotta we gotta go it sounds like. We got to do it. Well, I want to get there and do, in lieu of a live show, just get people, find this place where you win the ham and have Jason, the audience members just pay Jason until he wins. It's just like everyone collectively win Jason a ham. Yeah. Yeah, that would be great.

Jason's game for it. I didn't play the wheel. That's North Shore. Again, that's the North Shore. That's Asbury Park and Seas Heights. Uh, Wildwood a little. Yeah. I would say Wildwood and seaside are regarded as the two sleaziest, like there's rides and there's games and fights out on the boardwalk. And then pleasant is a little bit more family, but still elements of that. And those are, those are the ones i think of that have a lot of ride driven stuff yeah the bigger coasters and and there's something okay

everything you just listed it seems like there is some like there's varying degrees of trashiness to a lot of these places and then when we were going back and forth on what are we going to talk about, and we, you know, Six Flags Great Adventure came up, there's also this place Wild West City, and we know you're a fan of Action Park. Collectively all of this is just like so many of these places are so dangerous and accident

plagued. Like the quote, incidents section on the Wikipedia of this place goes on and on and on. We'll dive in, but I wanted to ask you real quick on the way, because you brought up this thing, Wild West City. Yeah. Which I take is a, I mean, it's what the title is. It's like a little miniature Western town where there's little shows and demonstrations, like horse shows and whip shows and the like.

Yeah. And they do like a shoot out at the okay corral show and it's i believe it was built in the 50s and it really hasn't been updated it's kind of in in some ways it's actually kind of lovely that it still exists and it's hanging on because it's in netcong new jersey it's like the middle of nowhere and they have a bar that serves the saloon serves real beer to parents and then the kids run around with these shows and then i this was something i had thought was a a legend and then recently found out it's real because i do a new jersey podcast with friends of mine and my one

buddy was like no this is real and he found the news articles that two of the cowboys uh at wild west city had developed a hatred for each other and one of them put real bullets in his gun and killed him during one of the shows and tried to play it off like a brandon lee accident oh my god like oh i thought it was blanks i don't know how that happened and then they found out no you just that was your that was your alibi to kill him in plain sight and by plain sight we mean during a show aimed at children and the whole and when i tell you that the whole place is smaller than a city block i'm not exaggerating like it's tiny it's tiny wow wow and you're gonna you're gonna pull off a uh a murder you think you're gonna successfully pull off a murder with with a boy with a bunch of suspects willingly like the whole point is for these suspects to the suspects paid to be here yeah yeah it's really

not a not a not the toughest case to crack i would imagine yeah put a bullet in the gun and you shot that man and there's all these everyone saw it yes there's an audience there's a a paying audience yes these children have no reason to lie they saw what they saw it was it was like a one of them was a bandito and the other one was wyatt or i don't know which was which i don't know who shot first but these are and these are teenagers the day that a teenage wyatt erp shot a teen bandito. What a day. That's so insane. There's a lot of strange, a lot of really intense stuff where

I grew up. Really intense places. Yeah, well, that's kind of, that's what I'm getting at is like, I just try to dissect the character of it all and how do these parks end up so particularly insane and full of incidents and accidents what is it about the the place well it's a really good question and i thought a lot

about it and i think that um for whatever reason maybe it's because it is between new york and philly and maybe there's like some insecurity too i'm sure but there's like this i think there's like some insecurity too, I'm sure. But there's like this, I think there's this real like priority on being tough in New Jersey. Like you kind of have to be tough and that's a very valued thing. So I kind of feel like it's sort of built for these sorts of places because it's like, not only is it like, you should go on this roller coaster that's super high it's almost where we're from like the more rickety the better and the less safe it is

the the more you got to like demonstrate your balls by going on it so there's almost like a death wish uh where i grew up with i think it's the short way to put it. And there's like a sick pride in getting hurt and a really unhealthy obsession with, you know, don't be a pussy to just like put it frankly. Hopefully by the voice, you can hear that I'm mocking that attitude. But especially in the 80s and 90s, that was really, really omnipresentresent and not just in theme parks like being a music kid who used to

go to punk shows there were always fights like there were just always like it was there was just a lot of you always had your guard up you always felt like things were going to go wrong you kind of expected them to go wrong and for some reason we found it very fun and funny when they did. And it was almost like a point of pride to be at the center of a disaster. So yeah, Jersey's just a place that's very kind of obsessed with toughness. I think to its detriment for as much as I love New Jersey and obsess over it. I hope my son growing up there doesn't feel this constant need to just sort of prove his toughness but that was always there so it's like the more potential that a thing could be a disaster it was sort of like that was like moths to the flame almost you know in many areas of growing up the danger anything was like dangerous like thrived

at least at a certain time because obviously like there's still stuff that's there that's dangerous but obviously like theme parks now are like the disnification of so much of stuff or the corporatization of so many things have happened but i assume yeah there's we were talking about there's still places especially in jersey where you can feel it still you can feel the danger yeah i think yeah jersey knows it's not new york jersey knows it's not philly it's like we know that there's a lot of derision towards the state and it creates this kind of internal pressure cooker it's also so densely it's the most densely populated state so everybody's on top of each other all the time so it's like you're

constantly you constantly always feel like you're kind of being judged or looked at or you know like you don't want to go on a ride and scream because you know that somebody's right there he's gonna make fun of you and it just creates this thing of like i said this thing that's very hard to verbally explain that's just oh that's the thing where i might get my head lopped off well then i should just go do it because why fuck you that's why like that's kind of the attitude the whole place i found um this picture of a sign that's in in today's park six flags great adventure i had i I vaguely remember seeing this sign, but it's surprising to me a little.

And it's the bluntest side. It reads, Warning, line cutters will be ejected from the park with no refund. Anyone who leaves the line for any reason must return at the end of the line. And usually, like, that's polite or you know manners dictate that and people you know if they have a good excuse people usually let people through but that's a really stern sign to put it like a family entertainment center a lot of exclamation

points yeah it's very yeah it's like pointing a finger at you yeah to be clear probably this is at the one that's probably the most above board option in new jersey this great adventure and and one of the nicest six flags too because it's filled with like it's got a lot of interesting stuff it's filled with a lot of tall trees there's a big lake um there's a questionable safari park that's uh you know main things to talk about by the way with great adventure oh please yeah yeah the safari park i just remember we did it a couple times as a kid and um you drive your own car through it and yes you didn't just used to do that you can still do that. Now, I think they've put up more fences because the slideshow I found from like the 70s

showed like giraffes just crossing the road, big cats right next to the shoulder of the road, like lions and tigers. And it's like... The Great Adventure Safari. There were rumors about Great great adventure the big ones being the things everybody heard were the biggest one was uh you have to wear a hairnet on free fall if you have long hair because a girl's hair got tangled up and her scalp got ripped off everyone

in new jersey heard that story i think there's versions of that around the country i think that's a very popular park urban legend. I know that their haunted house did burn down and a bunch of kids died. And a bunch of people got really messed up on this ride. Lightning loops, this roller coaster that went in a backwards loop. So, yeah, and that set a safety precedent for like worldwide roller coasters had to upgrade like safety measures. Because of lightning loops? Yeah, because of lightning loops wow i didn't know that well they didn't want to incur the the punishment uh that was

leveled at six flags like whatever uh board or bureau regulating these things uh rules not in favor of six flags and they were forced to pay one thousand dollars the like ultimate price i what was the way what was the lightning loops thing what was the the accident do we know uh i believe the safety harness uh let's see uh i have it here uh lightning loops a teenage girl was thrown from the train because she was seated on the wrong side of the shoulder restraint. That'll do it. So I think that means she's sitting in front of the restraint, so not locked in at all. So yeah, that's the wrong side, I would say.

It's behind is traditionally where you sit. That's how I interpret it. But then there's other little things. Like Chris was saying with the safari park, we were told at the entrance of the safari park please retract your car's antenna oh yeah or unscrew the antenna otherwise monkeys will rip it off and then they will wail on your car we gotta talk about this because i was saying all those legends about what happened in the park you always heard those you talk to anybody who grew up around my era though the safari was where the true insanity happened um i went through it so many times you're not wrong those animals

were running free uh an emu once attacked my car once started slamming its face into the window right next to my poor brother my poor brother all these weird things happened to him and emu started trying to smash the glass i saw elephants having sex there there was a really there was one of these crazy things where and me and my friends have talked about it for some reason it was always church groups you'd see these church vans and they'd always be the ones rolling down their windows trying to like feed a giraffe cheez-its and then the next thing you know there's like animals charging the church van and then the Wranglers got to come out. But the baboons were legendary.

You just mentioned the thing about the antennas. That was very true. There were a few other things about it because from what I remember, the baboons, I think, were the last section of the safari. And it was known that they were like not under control. They had these pink butts. I remember that. And the two things you knew the antenna thing we all heard. And the other thing that was so great was if you remember in the nineties, they're still around today, but they're like real classic cars.

Those cars that have kind of like the um you know it'll be like an old man car with like that leather or pleather top half if you know what i mean yeah like uh the antique cars antique cars were like a go-to at parks like this for like kids rides now they well now they'd be antiques but back then you'd still see like a 1984 chevy celebrity or monte carlo or. And some of those cars from those era, they had these tops. I'm sure there is a name for them, but they basically be material and there would be signs everywhere. And before you ever showed up, you were told, if you have one of these cars that has like a fabric or material top, don't drive it through here. These baboons will destroy it. And it almost became part of the fun.

Cause you'd be in this line of cars inching through and you'd be looking around, go to any of these assholes. Did any of them do it? And you'd see it happen. These baboons would seize upon these cars and you just see a dozen baboons coming, screaming with joy, ripping it apart. And I mean, you'd see, I had baboons have sex on the hood of my dad's car. They'd be jacking off. They'd be having sex. They'd be throwing feces. Like, and I remember so distinctly that at the end of the baboon section, there was a guy, it was like

a fence that I assume must've been electrified. And there was the opening for the cars to get out. And there was a guy who would sit there with like a bunch of, I think probably like German shepherds, like attack dogs. And he had like a taser. And his whole job was that when the baboons try to like

flee through that car entrance, he has to like use these dogs and this gun to get them out of there and get them off the top street cars. And the safari was lawless in the best way. And I have a lot of really good memories about it. But yeah, it was just so well known. I tell you, anybody who was a kid when those cars were still on the road right now,

who went there, knows exactly what I'm talking about. These baboons would rip these things to shreds. They rip them to shreds and it was the best because that's another thing another thing about that jersey attitude is like sometimes bad things will happen to people and there's very very little sympathy if they deserved it like in jersey it's kind of like if you want to drive your dumb fucking car with that fabric top through and a monkey rips it up i will laugh i will not feel like i'm not gonna feel bad for you at all because it was uh the safari is one of the great underrated uh chaos pits of new jersey is the great adventure safari hands down that place is the best i've heard it's better now but i i hear that it's not uh not totally it's yeah it still says like allow 1.5

to 3 hours to get through and that's um it back it would back up a lot we'd just be sitting there and then you'd see a car a few ahead of you and it's just like do they have their windows down some a crete an animal is coming towards that car and you would you yeah you would see people like put the windows up put the windows up yeah just some needs to try to feed a rhino a rich cracker and now all of us have to wait here 90 extra minutes for this thing to stop trying to tip this car over onto its side it's just the best it's just the best and when you were a kid chris because we three are notoriously for the podcast listeners not in in the you know widespread america uh scared kids we were three kids where we the littlest thing would make us

nervous like when you were eight or nine were you cheering at the baboon jacking off on the car i was also a very scared kid i was constantly terrified i mean i was raised in a generation where it was just satanic panic and sure and kidnappings and all this stuff so i was scared all the time but but I took a lot of sick joy in other people's pain, I guess you could say, like similar to the action park thing where, you know, you'd wait at the bottom of, you know, everybody was waiting by the Tarzan swing to cheer when people got completely obliterated. Same thing. I would say pretty much, you know, the first time you went through the great adventure safari, you were probably psyched to go look at the animals. Every other time you went through it, I would say that it was probably increasing percentage wise, how much you were just there to see dumb idiots get their comeuppance. And that's true. That's what the whole theme of it

was, was like, you could maybe, you know, you could see an emu and it might sprint right past your car or if you want to uh throw a cheeto on the ground next to it now you might see a an angry emu attack the passenger seat while your mother screams and like there's i gotta say like i know it maybe is a little sick but like it's really funny to watch it's really funny to watch because it's not there's a million signs that say don't behave like an idiot and there's so many signs there's just so many things you shouldn't do and then you see somebody who's just ignoring all of them to do those things and yeah maybe now i now I'll get to see, now maybe I get to see a swarm of over overstimulated baboons ejaculating all over your windshield.

Like that's, that's awesome. It's like instant karma. There's really something to love there. Yeah. They should have like just videotaped 40 years of this and made a clip show out of it. Like animals attack clip show. Oh,

I bet they could have. There's gotta be a lot of footage smuggled out. I also know it's in, it's in Jackson, New Jersey. And, uh, two of my best friends from college are from Jackson.

And they told me that there's all these like off road trails in the woods and all the kids who grew up in that area know that like, you can drive your four wheeler back there at night and just be alongside the fence so it's like you could take a date and be like you want to go see some fucking live giraffes right now so kids know how to get back there that close during the pandemic two kids i think just drove in they just found a back way and were just rolling around in there really Really? Oh, that's awesome. Like the only people who got in in that eight-month lockdown period or however long it was. Oh, I love that.

I love that. There's other stories of like, Chris, I don't know if you ever rode. We talked about this on a previous show when we were talking about Batman-based rides. But there was a kind of short- lived roller coaster called Batman and Robin the chiller, which was famously technical difficulty prone because it used a launching system that drew on the, like it drawed so much power. It was starting to cause Brown outs and it,

it, it opened for like a day or so. And then they had to shut it down for months and months and months to, to rejigger this. When, when universal studios, Florida opened a coaster with a similar launch, they built a power substation.

So they did not blow the grid for the city of Orlando. In Jacksonville and six flags learned that the hard way. So eventually this ride was shuttered because it was also very rough they kept trying to make it smoother and then uh they they took it apart and for a long time pieces of it were just sitting in a field rotting and rusting like by by the park and then they were supposed to sell it to a theme park in uh south america and then the deal fell through and then i think it just it was just scrapped but like just just a rusting batman like 10 foot tall batman insignia in a farm

i just had another memory come back um because i don't love roller coasters i've never been a huge roller coaster fan and they have there's a um a roller coaster they have called rolling thunder which is like this kind of very charming wooden roller coaster like not you know they have like the sleek metal ones with all the loops and stuff this is just one of those ones you just go up real high and it's like the clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, like that thing. And I would go on that one cause it wasn't, you know, you didn't go upside down. And there's actually a video of me that I think is still on the internet where I went on it. And my friend in the seat in front of me was filming my friend and I, and it stopped at the top and it froze, which is kind of the nightmare for

anybody who doesn't like roller coasters and it then proceeded and there's a video of me because i lost my mind it started going and i was like no wait it's broken it's broken no it's not it and i had there's a video of me having an actual uh nervous breakdown on rolling thunder oh wow but that's one of those good right like one of those old wooden ones where you're like you get off and you feel like you were just in a boxing match taking body blows you know because you're getting like tossed around side to side i always enjoyed rolling thunder well chris you got the last laugh because that uh that one closed in uh i believe 2013 no that's yeah that was an old classic still still on board with it despite

the like attack it into yours like no don't you can't kill it that's again like it's the it's the same action park thing right like what am i gonna tell you the stories about the rides where i went on and it was fun and then i got off like yeah no i wanted to tell you about the one where you were physically in pain at the end of it and also it broke while i was on it like that's that's the fun story drove you yeah sanity i have the stories about the fun stuff and then i got off yes i know what the show is a lot of the time yeah it's fun to go on space mountain isn't it yeah it's a successful journey yep we love it uh you know six flags i will say six flags still has you know of the big three of universal disney six flags six flags does still have some of the spirit we're talking about because

you can there are a lot of people not paying any attention when you're getting loaded on a ride at six flags like you can still there are antics at six flags uh and like you know teen like a lot of teen employees that are like so checked out and you you could easily see where stuff like slips in the crack so they're like i guess what i'm saying is you can still find it's like uh it's like you know it's like green day they used to be an authentic punk band, but they'll still play the Echoplex once in a while. They still have elements where they're actually trying to do the old spirit stuff. And the equivalent of that

is that underskilled, underpaid employees will sometimes not strap you into the thing right. Green Day playing a 500 seat place is similar to like a teen just going yeah are you ready okay i'm not gonna check the restraint and then hit the button for the ride to go now here's exactly you guys may know more about than i do but another thing

that my uh my co-hosts on my new jersey podcast hit me too that i did not know which is apparently in both the the boardwalk ride attractions of New Jersey, Six Flags, all the theme parks in New Jersey. Apparently a lot of the people who work there are actually very young Russian people because there's apparently some system set up where it's pretty easy for Russian kids to get a work visa at New Jersey theme parks. Wow. I've been told that a lot of these workers who might not be paying the most attention may actually be Russian people on theme park specific visas.

So I thought, I thought that might be some food for thought that would get your guy, your guy's gears turning. Sure. Yeah. That feels like we could do a two hour investigative episode about, I have not heard that. I don't know if you guys have uh i i know a little about that i hadn't heard specifically russian but at um

ocean city where my family always went there's two two parks uh playland and wonderland and yeah very young workers and you you hear a lot of like uh european or eastern european accents and and and there is a thing yeah there's a work exchange you know summer work exchange where they they they like put them up in like you know big old uh either either rental houses or old converted hotels and then they work you know make money all summer and then they go back, uh, back home. Yeah. My friend Nick, um, has also, I believe been to the exact places you're describing. Um, and he says that there are like shockingly hot young Russian workers at all of these places male and female he's just like they're stunningly beautiful russians that are the people like strapping you into the haunted house that looks like it's about to break down for good like very weird dichotomy there's a six flags

exclusively uh using like hot russian models to operate their run in in bugs bunny outfit you can't even tell they're in i don't know there's i have a story about that too if you want it sure these people in the in the in the looney tunes outfits i realize now as an adult that those that's probably not the best gig you know being out there on a humid august day yeah i that that's another thing i think adding to some of the the vibe at uh a lot of new jersey and pennsylvania theme parks these places are only open like nine months of the year because the fall and winters come so quick and uh the summers are so hot and humid like it's swampland. It's converted swampland. So, like, tensions can run high in long waits.

And so, to be in a Daffy Duck outfit, and it's 100 degrees with 100 degree humidity, like, 100% humidity. It's not ideal. And I wish I felt more empathy as a child, but I didn't. And my brother and I found it very funny to torment the people in those costumes. And there was one year we were there for the,

the Pfizer family picnic. And my brother just kept relentlessly messing with the guy dressed as fog horn leg horn. When we went to leave, there's a big fountain. That's sort of a, you know, you walk up the entrance and maybe 30 yards up or so there's a big fountain. And as we were leaving, we were walking past back, back past the fountain and my brother saw Foghorn Leghorn and he ran over to mess with him one more time.

And the guy dressed as Foghorn Leghorn took my brother's hat off his head and threw it into the fountain. I find, I hold that memory very near and dear. I'm just, you know, I think that I'm like, you're a kid a kid you're like let's mess with it let's fuck with that guy and then i'm an adult now i'm 40 i'm like that guy was probably like four years older than us pissed like it's probably his last summer before he goes to college she's like got a girlfriend she's like waiting for him to get off this dumb shift but he's gonna be even later because he has to go take a shower because he sweated off a third of his soaking wet right he's so mad he's here he's already dressed in his foghorn leghorn for his job none of the hot russians want to hook up with him he's foghorn leghorn and he's got this pimply face do we mess

with him he just takes his hat and throws it in the fountain i hope he quit that night i hope i hope that i hope some manager was like we have footage of you throwing that hat he's like i'm out of here dude i hope that was the end of that nonsense for him i would just like to say i i found some something that referenced that at one point uh marketing for six flags great adventure referred to the park as the greatest day of your life. So keep that in mind. My memory was of a radio jingle where they, they really, you know, they were stayed up all night, burning the midnight oil to come up with six flags, great adventure. We had fun. And that was it. That was it. Elaborate. Non-stop. Is there anything further you want to get in? Nope.

Non-stop all summer, I would hear that song on the radio. Do you remember Splashwater Falls? I don't remember Splashwater. Was that a ride in the park? It was. So Great Adventure had two log flumes. One was a pretty good traditional log flume. You know, it's the big circle thing.

You walk, you sit down. It goes throughout a couple different drops. And it good and there was another one called splash water falls which all it was was it went up it went over it went straight down and it was built in a way where the weight of the actual log boat would just launch a massive wave and they built a bridge that uh you could stand over and just get creamed by this wave. And when you were talking about the heat and the humidity, it brought back this vivid memory to me that is so disgusting from an adult perspective, which was there were some days, July, August, where you would go to great adventure and it was so hot and muggy that people would start their day by going through the bridge at splashwater falls

to get deluged with this like filthy theme park water just to kind of cool down so you'd start your day by going let's get soaking wet with theme park water and then work it off all day like well by noon i'll be level and then yeah if it gets sweaty again i guess i can go back and just get soaked with impetigo again you know yeah just talking about this how like the realization that as an as an adult like why did i ever think it was refreshing to get splashed by theme park why was this equivalent to a an actual shower it doesn't make any sense to me past the age of 15 or so let alone in the era before aqua socks you just be wearing your sneakers

and your socks we would do that let's walk around with socks am i ignorant i don't know what's up with aqua socks because we've talked about a lot about uh wet sock preferences on log flumes maybe this is the answer what's up with aqua socks well aqua socks are like those water shoes that you'll get that have like the rubber soles and the mesh and people wear them in the ocean so they don't cut their feet on shells and stuff and action park had a really good scam where they sold aqua socks um and then you couldn't wear them on half the ride so you still had to walk around on like hot blazing hot asphalt and then you couldn't wear them on half the ride. So you still had to walk around on like hot, blazing hot asphalt. And then you have to walk back up to get them because they made you take them off.

But yeah, those were like, I think they're pretty popular item in a water park gift shop. Because it's like, yeah, you can wear these and not have to walk around in disgusting wet socks. What you're saying is this is a very old thing. And I have just learned about it in 2021 and I'm talking to you like it's a new gadget. Well, they were hugely popular in the Jersey Shore when I was a kid. And I remember there was one or two summers

where my mom's like, if you're going in the ocean, put them on. I don't want, like my parents are just like, you keep stepping on shells. Just put the aqua socks on. They are not the most pleasant thing to wear but i see them a lot when people go to hawaii and they hike they hike through a mountain to like a waterfall and you don't want to like if you're going in in the the stream or whatever you don't want to have bare feet you know if it's sharp rocks and stuff it's got it's like the scrapple of footwear you know i'm not that familiar with them either and it must be more regional

yeah i feel like the best way to date them for you would be i remember them distinctly coming out around the same time that slap bracelets were hot i would put them in that same era of time yeah yeah and similar designs potentially oh yeah potentially some gearish neon okay yes yes you got it and slap a taz t-shirt on top of that and you're just gonna have a great day at six flags great adventure and some hype some hyper colors you want some hyper colors in there sure change when you touch them maybe some cross colors like there's a whole no fear i feel like aqua shots crossed over into the no fear generation this tells you exactly when this is the important work trying to culturally

date aqua socks yeah it's honestly more from serene clues i got it more of this one of the more substantial conversations we've had on this show honestly okay yeah no no it's very informative the other um oh go ahead uh well i was gonna say the other log flume which i believe is still honestly. Okay. Yeah. No, no, it's very informative. The other, um, Oh, go ahead. Uh, well, I was going to say the other log flume, which I believe is still running.

It's called Saul mill log flume and, and splash waterfalls was really wide. Uh, the technically a shoot the shoot, uh, uh, attraction and a lot of parks in their marketing and their commercials would show the big splash down and show the

bridge i think duerny park had the bridge too you could stand on and get as wet as if you're on the ride but sawmill log flume was a long like regular style log flume that it it's i forget what the area is called now i think it's called uh uh something adventures um venture alley did i see that phrase somewhere uh front frontier frontier adventure so this is like words sure yeah for our interest like this is like a very fun area because in the middle of this log flume, there is a massive, like surrounded almost by water. There's a massive two story barbecue restaurant. Uh, and then across from the log flume, there is a runaway train, like, which I always liked as a kid.

I loved, I loved roller coasters. Runaway trains were a great entry because you're like, okay, this will be a little fast and a little rickety um but it will uh it's not going to be too intense and then uh the runaway train goes around the building for the skyway and their skyway was a double cable car skyway meaning there were two cars going in each direction and it actually been transported from the 1964 world's fair campus uh and then used in six flags great adventure wow so it was an old it was old like when do you know when it was transported it was all it seems like that's old well yeah i don't know if it was just sitting in storage, because, yeah, Six Flags Great Adventure opened in 74,

just as Great Adventure, and then it was bought by, taken over by Six Flags in 77. But, yeah, they replaced the cars at some point with cars from Six Flags Great America. But, yeah, there's a historic plaque, like you can see, if you go to the the frontier event i think the skyway station there's one and there's two stations you can use it practically it goes like three quarters of a mile and you can get off frontier adventures or the lakefront

chris i bet you and your teen friends always made sure to go check out the plaque on your on your visits i think you bring a date to look to the plaque? You know, probably the things we were talking about most, oh, we're heading down to Great Adventure. Let's make sure we see some baboons eviscerating a car. If we can cause someone in a plushy outfit to have a nervous breakdown, that would be fun. But before we get to any of the hijinks, guys, let's just make sure we learn a little bit about history.

Just make sure we're really soaking up some history appreciate the kinetic energy of the frontier adventures area with trains and log flumes and and cable car you know gondolas and cooking meats that i'll say to that log flume i think is probably my favorite ride in that whole park and there's people who love roller coasters and obviously they got some badass roller coasters. But as someone who is always been scared of the old roller coasters, that log flume is a legitimately great ride. Yeah, it was always very solid. I've never been, so I don't have the rights to say my favorite ride, but I do have a favorite ride based on a title alone. And it is a Looney Tunes themed ride. And the ride is called the Michigan J frog fun float Tila.

Four kids died. Four kids died on that. No, no, no. In memoriam of the fun float Tila for say their names. I, yeah, the, um, uh-huh say their names um i yeah the um that i believe was part of another really great named

thing or promotion there which is that they um uh at the same time they added 25 new rides 25 now a lot of these were kind of like little dopey Kid sorts of rides Jason I think you know what I'm talking about You know it was just like to get the count up And obviously it increases capacity If we had a bunch of rides and it's impressive to say 25 new rides all at the same time But this caused the ad campaign Where they declared

That this was not just 25 new rides Showing up this was a war on Lines That was their promotion for the summer this was a war on lines that was their promotion for the summer of 99 the war on lines pick a side are you for the war on lines congress

had to vote get on board with the war on lines so it's just so grand so grandiose and like yeah and like violent we're in that jersey spirit again it's just so grand, so grandiose and like, yeah, and like violent. We're in that Jersey spirit again. It's not just like, hey, oh, there's a fun flotilla now. We're declaring a war on lines.

Yeah, you could just go with fun flotilla. But instead, let's tie it into the war on drugs or war on terror. People know how we feel. The most fun things that have been happening in the last few decades. Let's remind people of them before they come here. This is a place where, keep in mind, the centerpiece ride for many years was called the Great American Scream Machine.

The Scream Machine. That's what gets New Jersey teens flocking through. Let's go on a machine that makes you scream. End of subject. I uttered in the same breath as Batman and Robin, The Chiller and Viper which was it came in 95 and again commercials non-stop for viper yeah but viper and great american screen machine some of the roughest coasters i've ever ridden like immediately like out out of the box i feel

like they they were pretty rough i do know my wife is a coaster enthusiast and, um, she grew up in West chester County. So she's also been to great adventure a million times and she swears. And I've heard a lot of her friends swear that El Toro is one of the great roller coasters, uh, that she's been on anywhere, which is, I think it's an all wooden coaster. That's at Great Adventure now. And that one has a really good reputation. Again, scared of coasters. I like a good spinny ride, maybe a log flume, but I've heard that El Toro is kind of a pretty basic coaster, but that people really love it.

Yeah, I think that one's been a longtime favorite. I remember really liking, it came in 2001. It's called Nitro and it's just very big, but there's no loops, but you have a lot of air time. Like you, you spend a lot of the ride just hovering above your seat and it's very smooth too. And I just remember my dad and I riding and just like laughing cause you just feel like you're going to fly out of it, even though you are appropriately locked in, God willing. Yeah, right.

There's this one currently in the works that seems like it'll it'll really join the pantheon. I think it's opening soon. Maybe they've even been previewing it a little bit called the jersey devil we got a jersey devil coaster um which uh is that it's the tallest longest and fastest single rail roller coaster uh in the country in the world and i read that and like oh sure and then i realized i don't know what that means single rail i can't even picture did you guys look this up like i can't i don't it it's it's a very odd like it looks like there's no like uh uh i don't know gears or track or anything it's just it's a very thin track right it's like a very little monorail

style yeah it's confusing i don't know how it works defies science to me but it looks very cool and what a good name yeah i think we're supposed to open last year. Of course, the pandemic delayed it, but I believe, uh, June 13th of 2021 is, is supposed to be opening day. That is a Sunday. I looked, um, so that's a weird day to open a ride. Um, it's the devil. It's the devil. So they're open. It's kind of a themed thing. We hate God. This is the devil. This is the Lord's day, but this is all about the devil. So if you hate God and Jesus come ride the devil. This is the Lord's day, but this is all about the devil. So if you hate God and Jesus, come ride the devil. That's right.

That's the whole theme. That's how they've been actively advertising it. And I think it's working great. Goodie. War on Jesus. Goodie, what's her face? Laid in the woods and laid with the devil. That's, we all know. The commercial ends with, come spit

in God's face. We'll shoot you so high in the sky you can slap god in the face on your way before you head back down to hell at least muss his hair up pretend you're a monkey jerking off straight into heaven they have uh king da ca as well right which that's one that I look at it and I go, I legitimately don't understand how people find that fun. That looks horrible to me. Yeah. It's there's one that's similar.

Yeah. There's one similar at knots down over here. And I've, I'm getting, we've all, I think gotten a little braver as we've done this show. Cause we're all kind of scaredy cats when it comes to coasters, Jason,

the least of us, but like that one to me still seems like I don't know I think I'll have like a mental break going on a thing like that and it's just the fact that it's just kind of about shooting up going up coming back down like for me because I've had to over the course of doing this podcast I

got over my fear of launches I was dubbed a no launch queen and now I'm i've uh sort of shaken that off a little bit um maybe not but like for me the launch is the thing to get past and then i can have some fun but these rides where it is only the launch and then the most terrifying climb and terrifying drop and the whole thing is over in like 40 seconds that's none of what i want in a riot experience yeah it's uh i i think i will do the the notsberry farm version of it at a certain point but i do i mean maybe the speed of it maybe it's truly one of those things it'll be over like you won't even it'll be like surgery like it's so quick you'll be out knocked out so quick it won't matter you'll just bully your blur your visual

blur and you'll be like oh listen to how we explain these things that are supposed to be fun somehow. Yeah. Maybe it's like surgery. You're saying that as a positive. You know, that's a very good point. It is bizarre. I've now gotten into doing

the haunts and mazes, and I was always afraid of doing that. Those are love. Those are love. But I mean, it took like eight mazes for me was always afraid of doing that uh and those are lost but i mean it takes it took like eight mazes for me not to just be like clenched like that like the pain the stress i was feeling initially had to go away like i had to get through it like it was a like a trial by fire yeah uh there there was um it it, it's a nice story. They have an attraction called Houdini's Great Escape. And it's, we learned this, I think,

when we talked about on our European vacation episodes, it's a madhouse where it's not a haunted house. It's not quite a fun house. And so what it is, is like, it's like a con artist trying to bring back Houdini from the dead. And, and then Houdini does come back and says, you're a fraud. And then turns the room upside down. Like you're sitting in a room and all of the, like, you're sitting in like rows of chairs and then everything else in the room starts to go upside down. That comes right side up. And then it does it again. And it starts doing it really fast. And they closed it down for a couple of years. And then people were like, hey, bring that back.

It's still there. We see it. And it is back open again. But I remember that being very cool. Because we didn't know what it was when we went in. They're like, oh, well, it's kind of a haunted house sort of thing. Like they didn't spoil it. And it was super fun.

Sorry. It involved the, the, uh, a trickster and a voice says you're a fraud. And this is a bizarre, somebody's like stealing Houdini's identity. This is a really bizarre premise for a rollercoaster.

It's mostly, you have to get his social security number and his mom's maiden name that's like most of how the attraction works you're just stealing his actual zooming by grab it grab the numbers it's like a sit-down show it it talks about all this actual historical stuff because houdini famously debunked a lot of um uh charlatans a lot of people who were like fake spiritual mediums and stuff because he gave his wife a secret word and he said secret word die you go to all the the people the you know empaths we're not empaths you know what i'm talking about yes they can't the media mediums thank you and if they don't know the word then obviously they're frauds and nobody knew the word well i just realized there's something

and this might be a complete diversion that you guys should feel free to cut i just realized i'm talking to people who will either enjoy what i'm saying or find me totally insane if i may okay go ahead please the risk let's swing yeah so my parents spend a lot of the year now in orlando they're snowbirds my mom really really loves disney world and i have a two-year-old so they love bringing him so we go once a year and when we go to hollywood studios my wife has always been shocked because she will sometimes really have to ask me just come on this ride with me she loves rides it's often just us come on the ride i want to go on the ride so i've bit my tongue gone on some rides i don't like with her but she's never had to beg me to go on the tower of terror i love the tower of terror really i love

it and first of all it's right the thing disney has that i'm sure you've talked about to death is like even like even like the people dressed as the bellhops and the beat like they'll roll their eyes back in their head and you're like oh they actually like they try to make it they dress this up as something it's not like even space mountain if it was in light you'd be like this is a pretty weak roller coaster right but it's not they dressed it up right so i like all the pageantry of it but my wife goes it's pretty much just like free fall from great adventures just a free version of that and i said something to my wife where she actively told me i was insane and i don't know what you guys will think or if i'm gonna just come off like an idiot i said to her oh that's fake and she said

what do you mean i said said, I don't think, I think the Tower of Terror is fake. I don't think you're actually dropping. And she said, what are you talking about right now? And I said, well, it opens up and it shows you that you're up high, but then it closes and you feel like it. I said, I have always been under the assumption that Disney is using some sort of hydraulic thing to make me feel like I'm getting flung up and down. I don't think it's real. That's why I'm okay going on it. And she goes, it's totally real. You are going up and down. That's what you're feeling. I said, I think the Walt Disney company has us all hoodwinked and that they're very creatively holding us in place and using some sort of hydraulic system to make us all think that

we're in much more danger than we're in. And she said, if that's what you need to tell yourself to keep going on this ride with me, that's fine. But it's also one of the craziest things you've ever said. You're half right though. You are half right. Yeah.

Yeah. You can go. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're, you're not really free falling. You're being pulled down. You're actually going faster.

You're getting yanked, essentially. You're getting yanked down. You get loaded in a little box, and then you are going pretty far up and down, but you're not free falling. The little box just has cables, and it's moving you up and down, essentially. See, in my mind, you're staying almost totally still

the whole time it's not quite that's like star tours that's yeah totally still it's so it's not i wouldn't go that far but i also won't call you crazy i won't get on board with crazy version of star tours by the way as a star wars nerd that new version of star tours is a considerable improvement over the old one well this is a whole well we're not gonna agree with you a lot but i i miss the well no i just i love the uh the pilot the paul rubens voiced pilot so much i feel the loss of him they finally got rid of that weird old robot nobody oh no oh man now this is scandalous. We're going to need to cut this. Because Chris, they brought him back to be the DJ in Galaxy's Edge. He would not be the DJ in the bar were he not beloved. They wouldn't entrust him to spin the coolest tunes in the galaxy

if he was just a hunk of junk. And I'm just saying everybody has their role to play. But I was like a complete Star Wars obsessive as a kid and when you go to star tours and you're so psyched and it's some robot you've never seen before you're kind of like okay okay it's an expansive world i like that but that new one where darth vader catches you and kind of flings you back oh yeah yeah that's yeah that's where i think perspectives differ because i went on star tours having never seen any of the movies. And which ended up not coming for like almost a decade later.

So I have a Star Tours centric view of the of the franchise. So to me, Rex is like Luke Skywalker is Rex. Yes, exactly. So you are really much more of a Star Tours guy than a Star Wars guy. Oh, yes. Still very much so to this day. I still watch them and get confused. And who's that?

And what's this? And have I seen this one? But I know I've seen the ride. I've seen all these different versions. And I've been the spy twice. Pretty cool. Are you just like subscribed to Disneyney plus waiting for that rex vehicle to finally hit the screen um oh for well god i mean what i'd like to do is make is make the

rex vehicle if there's any interest in that but it seems like they're i don't know how they're feeling about comedy these days they would have to be comedy actually no it's very serious you know what there's the issue it's a drama about a robot trying to make it, trying to suppress his urges to be an artist. Yeah. That's what he ends up being. Rex is back. Rex is back and he's got depression.

I would set the DVR for that upon announce. I think we should all, my pitch would be, it's like Flight of the Navigator with Rex in the ship. But then Scott, you're the like, you play like a boy like Martin Short does in Clifford. So you are like a little boy that Rex is like kind of driving around in his, like, Flight of the Navigator star speeder. Now, look, I'd like that for me. It does seem like audiences are, I'll say, repulsed by adults playing young boys so much less myself it's an edge now i'll do it i will look i'll star in this if you get off the ground

just the commercial potential is dwindling i thought you were gonna say i i would do it for me but i think audiences would be so overjoyed um and over exhilarated that they would all be passing out and suffering from medical issues at how good this show is going to be based on what we've come up with here today. I'd say so. Like the rush to tweet. There's so much Twitter activity with, you know, with Winter Soldier and Every Mandalorian and like people would dive for their phones and just their fingers would start convulsing and they'd drop to the floor I would like to see a series that's just um six hour long episodes and each one is basically you doing my dinner with Rex in the my dinner with Andre yeah in a different theme park eatery oh geez and we go around i show him the other

stuff i i take him out of the star wars universe and then and teach him and like to give him a corn dog for the first time just an hour long conversation with rex how in a different eatery each time for an hour no real drama no need no real narrative arc. Just real mundanities. So the sodas come in small, medium, and large. Sometimes there's an extra large, not necessarily in the theme park environment, but a lot of places have refills, so they

got you covered. It's like Anthony Bourdain's Parks Unknown with Rex. Yeah, Parks Unknown. Parks Unknown. Oh, man. Well, Parks Unknown. Parks Unknown. Parks Unknown. Oh, man. Well, look, as long as if I could get some help, like moving them around, that'd be the main issue. It's just the physical labor involved.

But besides that, I'll fill the bowers. No problem. Speaking of Disney, can I mention I i and i have not been to this park uh but i like the ripoff attractions that this park has um do tell i can't think of them offhand well six it's got enchanted teacups uh good word soup of theme park words yeah yeah and it has air jumbo which is obviously the dumbo spinner ride uh and these were there before i believe six flags purchased them um but it's yeah there's no mistaking what they are and i just love i love bootleg anything and did you have you guys seen

a picture of this i could pull it up real quick here well yeah uh here air jumbo uh here yeah jumbo uh so i really like that close legally lots of lawyers checked that um now that's not to say that they are entirely you know ripoffs and uh and generic properties because with the warner brothers connection is obviously the looney tunes but they've also involved some other warner brothers properties batman as we've said um there was a lethal weapon show for a long time and that got replaced by a show where i'm going to bring up the sign and show you what is um i think one of the most unpleasant phrases I've ever seen.

The Great Adventure Show, Quest for Camelot Knights, presented by Tyson Chicken Chunks. And let me clarify, that's not chicken, that's chick apostrophe N, implying that whatever this product is, is not necessarily chicken. What a combo of brand and beard.

Who even knows what this was movie. It was Pretty Little Nights presented by Tyson Chicken. They really wanted to make sure that one product, which was going to be pushed, because they didn't want just a general Tyson sponsorship. They were like very high on that product specifically. Like they needed that. Proud of our chunks. Are you product specifically like they need out of our chunks are you saying we shouldn't be proud of our job proud of our chunks and we want everyone a great adventure to see if you're a fan of like of two-headed dragons then you'll also

enjoy the adventurous taste of these chunks so odd the other thing about that wait let me share the screen again because there was like so i uh jason you talked about this lethal weapon uh boat show yeah a while back on a stunt show episode we did so there was that and there was like you know so there's there's boats where all the stunts happen from and then they had to turn it into a this medieval animated movie quest for camelot and they just like i'll show you a picture they just took A boat and just put a bunch of like Fake rocks but that's even going Too far to use that term that we like

It's just like rock flats Everywhere still in a boat Shape very clearly One of the laziest Makeover jobs I've ever seen Sad little stonehenge on top of it Yeah that's a sad stonehenge for sure Like a spinal tap size Stonehenge on top of it Yeah that's a sad Stonehenge For sure Like a spinal tap size

Stonehenge Yes yeah yeah They built it to the To the small proportions Not the big ones 11 inches I Yeah god

Really strange So it doesn't I don't know that that was The biggest hit they ever had Quest for Kalanites But hopefully Chicken Chunks did okay Since you're talking about Licensed stuff And Mike You know they Yeah they may have You know had some generic quest for well it's but hopefully chicken chunks did okay since you're talking about license stuff

and and mike you know they yeah they may have you know had some generic ripoffs of disney stuff but in the summer of 1994 they were going all in on a new attraction because uh as the commercial says first there was star tours then back to the future, The Ride. Now, there's The Right Stuff, Mach 1 Adventure. You all remember the 1983 film, The Right Stuff, right? About breaking the sound barrier, Chuck Yeager. Well, now it's a simulator ride. A simulator theater, in fact. Uh-huh.

And that's how they advertised it? Was that the- That is how they advertised it was that that is how they advertised the biggest the biggest cockiest walking in the room swinging like fuck those rides we've got the right stuff folks the mostly dramatic like not exactly like you don't think of it as like the ultimate well we remember kids kids when the right stuff came out they were all on the front lawn playing the right stuff with each other they all wanted to

experience it I want to be Sam Shepard no I'm gonna be Sam Shepard yeah they were all there doing it and then finally six flags capitalized on that desire it was pretty fun I mean it was just a theater it's like a D box theater theater, essentially.

Right. But I did like it. I liked anything movies, anything where it was like, this is a real movie and now it's a ride of it. I was like, good, done. You know, we're an hour from home. You know, I know it's not going to be Disney World exactly, but I'm like, cool, they have a simulator ride now.

Did you see the right Tootsie simulator? This is fine with me. Tootsie's rushed journey to work at the soap opera station every day. Yeah. Now that I'm living Tootsie in a more interactive environment, I realize how intensely stalkerish it is. A man deceiving a woman. It is. A man deceiving a woman. It's just a man deceiving a woman.

Oh, God. Get me off this ride. How can I follow this person around? That was a life lesson, right? It was like Mr. Toad where you would learn something by the end of it. What have we missed? Just to wind down here what's that big the guy who started the park is my is what i want to bring oh we haven't learned about about this

man no no no um and uh and i believe his name is warner leroy uh scott did you take a look at any of these photos anybody no not particularly no show us warner leroy all right here's warner leroy i found an article where somebody referred to him as a liberace type which obviously we like that oh cool like elton john glasses he's yeah he obviously like dressed in fun ways uh jason you have his uh interesting uh parentage uh yeah uh well runneronald roy uh we should say first he was an entrepreneur i believe was his company called leroy's of adventures uh i think i saw that phrase in here somewhere yeah and it um it it had a lot of you know food and beverage establishments most noticeably i thought it owned and operated both the russian tea room

and tavern on the green yeah for a while uh which are you know new york institutions but uh warner leroy is the son of film director mervin leroy who when he worked for warner brothers directed the classic films little caesar i am a fugitive from a chain gang and gold diggers of 1933 which is a big busby berkeley showstopper musical and then he went to work for mgm where he pitched them the idea that hey we should wake uh we should make the wizard of oz a movie whoa this guy's dad yeah this guy's dad oh my god and it's it kind of came full circle too because a little known fact is that after the right stuff simulator ride struck out they said why don't we rebrand it as an i am a fugitive from a chain

simulator rush of becoming a fugitive running down the hill oh my god it was it was really it was really fucked up it turns out so they switched it back within weeks people really jumped when they put chains around their legs oh geez it was really yeah dark and racist and exposed the prison industrial complex you can't you can't make a ride based on a movie that was pre Hayes code are you crazy this is wow this is this is some lineage yeah yeah and I was trying to find there doesn't seem to be a good letter like an easily accessible

YouTube interview because I was like I was ready to be like here's a new one of our favorite characters on the show but I still I'm gonna have to do some deeper digging to find some more Warner Leroy stuff because yeah i was not aware of him before this i uh oh you know what i i got i got one more thing i forgot that with this with the the the haunts uh came up um and there is a thing that happens here that happens at as mike jason as you guys know at uh at magic mountain we

talked about it uh on the fright fest episode and uh they they do this tradition here too uh chris are you aware of the 30 hour coffin challenge oh i i know about fright fest but i don't know the 30 hour coffin challenge no um well so so this I mean, Mike, you witnessed some of this in person, but they do it at the New Jersey one as well. That at least in this case, six contestants chosen from nearly 6,000 applications are all face off to spend 30 hours straight in a coffin. On the grounds of the Six Flags. Just, yes, yeah.

You stay in the Six Flags park. Like, you can kind of look up and wave at people because they can walk around the coffin. At least the way they had it set up out here was there was like six or eight coffins all just on the ground, and you could tour the coffins and see the people and they would maybe wave to you. And that would be the bizarreness.

Now I I'm sure you've covered this on your prior discussions, but it's 30 hours. Where do you pee? Where do you poop? You are allowed to go to the bathroom and I believe that's it. And I don't know that they, I don't think they check. I don't think they own breaks too.

I don't think they check to make sure you don't have like the bag of pee as if you were trying to fake a drug test or anything. I don't think they check that thoroughly, but I could be wrong. They dug a hole. It goes out of the coffin. What do you win? What do you win if you stay all 30 hours? Well, the one out here, I don't know if I'm stepping on something you're about to say,

Scott. I believe you win $600. Is it $666? Was it 666 was it yeah yeah yeah 666 thank you sorry it was $666 I don't know if that's worth it I feel bad if you need the money but I really wish six flags would give

them you know something a little better yeah that's not that much not a ton of money or just real like being in pain and like mental distress it's not a life-changing amount i'm not even sure it's like a month changing amount it's pretty it's pretty nothing and i so but you know we talked about it a little on the previous episode but i just ended up on a video where there's specific dictating of the rules of the

great adventure one and i was so charmed by this and i'm just gonna let this guy uh explain the rules if anyone wants to to stop and discuss any of the finer points let me know but here's a here's a quick clip um the the rules of the great adventure coffin challenge they will face challenges with live bugs, unsavory food and green goo. They will be tormented by zombies, snakes, skunks, yacht rock and baby shark. Just that, by the way, the switch from gross stuff to the threat is yacht rock. I think I'll be fine. Yeah, I happily I'll be fine. I think I will happily do the Cup of Challenge now.

I have had baby sharks stuck in my head, though, as the parent of a two-year-old, and it's not an enviable position, I will say. Yeah, I'm really hoping I can ride it out. By the time he, like, I got to, you know, a couple more months before he really knows anything, and maybe we can just miss the whole thing. But is it just going to find him?

Am I screwed? It's inescapable. It's inescapable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to know more about the goo goo um yeah what did it just say green goo and what is that it was very general about what type of goo it was is it dripped dripped on you while you're uh sleeping is it something that you have to consume while you're there the only thing you get to consume yeah it's a good question i really

they should elaborate more yeah yeah but this is just you know there'll the only thing you get to consume? Yeah, that's a good question. I really, they should elaborate more. Yeah, yeah. But this is just, you know, there'll be 30 hours for everyone to learn all these announcements. I just now just pay attention to, as this list wraps up, the person who is saying all of the rules. Meals in the coffin. Keep their body parts in the coffin at all times. And should they exit the coffin for any reason other than the allotted breaks and challenges,

they will be disqualified. So for the listener, we'd have just like a ghoul in a long burgundy coat and a top hat and like white face makeup. Just kind of reading from a list with a microphone. Very, very nonplussed. Well, it's that right there. He's in front of the old beat up hearse. He has this incredible outfit on. And then it's like, he's just holding the piece of paper and reading off of it. And it really, it really undercuts the whole thing.

Yeah. We put it on a tombstone. Like it's engraved. These are the rules that have existed for thousands of years and we must obey them tonight or it's just a dusty tome or something right yeah scroll yeah roll a scroll of some kind or yeah it would be he looks like yeah he's looking at like the schedule for when everyone's working at the park it's also very bright it's broad daylight like there are bucolic clouds and sky in the background behind it it seems really nice i know yeah and also what so what i was saying earlier about six flags like you're not gonna find a universal or disney a shot of inside the park where you can see the porta potties you will not see porta potties on theme park grounds just a shitty tent yeah and that's what's that's that that is and i i'm not even saying that ironically that is still the

magic of six flags is that they like no one noticed that that looks like shit i it's so insane the winner the winners are announced ultimately at least this year by Butch Patrick from the Munsters is that true yeah he read the winner oh I love it now have you talked

about entering let's be honest ooh that's a good could any of the three of us handle it I would i i i would i first think for sure not me jason perhaps the best sleeper jason is the most equipped because of his sleeping schedule to do well he can sleep for 12 hours at a time no problem i didn't know that i didn't know that there was a weird cage lid. I wasn't sure how open or closed it was, honestly,

the way you talked about it. But I also didn't know they, like, bothered you. I was like, oh, you can, can you just lie in there with an iPad? Like, can you take a kid out? No, no, no, there's a part where zombies walk up and are like, get up, wake up now. Oh, come on, man. Now we do the egg toss.

Oh, no. Three-legged race. I don't care if man. Leg toss. Oh, no. I don't care if it's for him. Them's the rules from the piece of paper. But you can win $600. Have you thought? I mean, yeah. Don't leave that 66 out. That's like that.

That's like the tax. Yeah, that's all back. And, you know, that's a nice lunch at the best of the west the famous you know six flags barbecue restaurants around a by log flu yeah so maybe but mike you love haunts so are you the the person to do it uh yeah i love haunts now that's true but you know if i could negotiate sort of the terms of my of a victory with six flags where like i could get some sort of the terms of my of a victory with six flags where like i could get some sort of a lifetime annual pass or something or one of those food passes that they

just give you three like three square meals for eighty dollars a year and i could get that for free like something and those passes are real like there's these weird it happens at knots too where you can you can just tack on like an extra hundred dollars under your yearly pass and you can eat all your meals at the theme park for the whole year if you want uh but if they could add something like that on i i don't know i feel like if they could sweeten the pot somehow for me not again yeah i don't know i'll think about it i'll tell you on my end i would consider entering this really yeah because it looks and i'll tell you exactly why the image of that asshole not and i think you guys are and i'm potty mouth but that guy god bless him and and not as a human but like that's the foghorn leghorn of the of the halloween season he doesn't seem

totally enthusiastic he seems unfamiliar with the rules himself that that feels to me like it's being run by someone who doesn't care all that much yeah and those are usually situations that lend themselves to very good stories yeah do that at the age of 41 that's i think i think maybe this year will be my year i'd be willing to step up in the jersey rendition if you guys want to do some uh follow up with this we all do it we all do if we all do it okay if we all do it i i am in i am in i've either rule on this podcast is if everyone wants if two people want to do it i'm in i won't what if i get my co-hosts from my new jersey's the world podcast we all enter or elect a rep in jersey you guys do it out there and we have some sort of friendly standoff between the two cliques oh east coast west coast right right nobody's

traveling even wow we're just we just like you know like uh texts like each other out and we can leave we can leave if you get like six hours in if you like kind of go crazy you can leave you know that's the challenge aspect of it so it's not like we're really stuck there once the green goo hits your face you can leave if you're like if the green goo touches my face and i'm immediately like fuck this i'm a father and a husband like yeah you can't like it what am i getting out of this 666 dollars and the content for two podcasts. It's not worth it. Yeah, I am. Yeah.

If we could ensure, if we could ensure, though, one of the cast members of the original Munster show will award us the victory. This is the problem. Getting like Butch Patrick to be bi-coastal to be able to give you that money.

I would say that I am 100% down to enter either myself or someone from that podcast on the Jersey rendition. If we can come up with a bit, I can say that we would be happy to do it because that's idiotic and ludicrous. All right. I'm I will,

I'll if I have to, if one of us has to do it, I'll do it. I will say that I will do it. I'm willing to do it. I'll let you do it. I will. I think all three of us should do it, but I will do it i'm willing to do it i'll let you do it i will i think all three of us should do it but i will do it if um my two co-hosts will be cowards no i i think uh i think you got it

brother i think we'll just be dragging you down i think that goo is your name on it i'm ready i'm ready to do it i'm ready to get in that coffin and shit wherever they instruct me to. It feels like one of those things where at the end of the day, they're not allowed to hurt you. Right. I don't think so. Some guy dressed as a zombie wants to let me not sleep. I have a two-year-old.

I don't sleep anyway. That's true. Two years. Yes. You want to throw green goo on me? There's feces on my hands pretty much 24 hours a day all day very possibly green depending on the diet i have changed my son the morning after he ate raisins you think your green goo is gonna scare me i've seen substances more horrific than your green goo there's nothing they can do baby shark i've already been exposed

to it yeah you may sleep better honestly in the coffin challenge oh yeah get away for a bit might be some truth to that i am in i'm ready i'm ready to do it i'll do it geez geez well you heard it you heard it here first uh that's all we had stuff to look forward to uh chris any closing thoughts about this place um uh anything else you want to get off your chest but but great adventure and the great adventure spirit i would just say that first of all if you've never been there's a lot to love in both um the fact that there's really good rides and it does have just a little bit of grittiness compared to a lot of corporate places. I would say absolutely 100%. If you know pretty major part of that action park documentary and action park deservedly has its insane reputation but i think that it has maybe swallowed up a lot

of the insanity that was talked about with great adventure and action park was certainly crazier significantly but great adventure is a piece of new jersey lore in its own right. A lot of stories, a lot of formative memories for a lot of people. So I do just want to, as a Jersey guy, say, let's not let Action Park sort of suck up all the air in the room because there's a lot of other places around here that are insane in their own right. And this is a big piece of that puzzle. Also, the Tower of Terror is fake.

I like the Tower of Terror truther kind of movement here. We've got started here. Pretty innocent trutherism, all things told. Pretty harmless, for sure. Yeah, no storms happening over that one. Well, yeah. Well, thank you for shining a light and for sharing the New Jersey uh theme dangerous theme park insanity spotlight with great adventure uh chris gathered you survived podcast the ride um easier than a coffin challenge

i would say uh and let's exit to the gift shop is there anything you'd like to plug yeah you know i got a new special it's called half my life you can download it uh streaming a lot of places itunes amazon vimeo and and i hope people like it check it out it's a little tour documentary stand-up special and just because it came up enough times on this i would say i do have a uh another podcast called new jersey is the world that explores all different jersey topics and episode one was actually about new jersey amusement parks so um there might be some people who are interested in that absolutely um cool cool well thank you so oh wait a minute now and gatorland there's some

gatorland presence which is sort of in the theme park i can't believe i forgot that yeah right probably the major crux of my special revolves around a joke about gatorland and then spoiler it ends with me performing at gatorland for the alligators. So you want to talk about like, and the whole theme of that joke is, Hey, Disney world's the corporate option. Gatorland's right down the road and it has rejected all corporate feeling to it. So I do have a true love for Gatorland and, and, uh, even just in Florida, man, like the wiki watching mermaid park, not a theme park, but just an insane place.

Let's insane roadside places. I love them to death. So yeah, Gatorland majorly featured, um, in a huge way and half my life. Jeez. Cool.

All right. So theme park content, very funny, special, uh, New Jersey podcast. Check it all out. Chris,

thanks for being here. Uh, as for us, you can find us on all the socials at Podcast the Ride. We got merch in our TeePublic store. And for three bonus episodes every month, check out Podcast the Ride, the second gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride. So good stuff. Really fun. Fun to talk so much Jersey stuff.

And I guess if everybody out there just, hey, make it a, make it a quest for camelot night worthy of worthy of your chicken cut your yeah cut your chicken into chunks tonight in honor of that show yeah you know yeah um it'll it'll be a great one um a great quest and a great adventure. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey.

For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.