Podcast: The Ride - Star Trek: The Experience

Episode Date: May 24, 2019

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there was a Star Trek attraction at the Las Vegas Hilton. It featured two rides, Quark's Bar, a Museum of the Future, a gift shop, and, shockingly, none of us ever went to it. Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus More Star Trek attractions next week on The Second Gate! Patreon.com/podcasttheride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! Set course for a frontier called the Las Vegas Hill. It's the Star Trek experience on Podcast the Ride, the theme park podcast hosted by three men who boldly go on and on and on to anyone who will listen about one pre-show videos and robots. My name is Mike Carlson. I fumbled the joke too. You warned us. I warned you that the joke too. You warned us. I warned you that the joke was lame. I wrote it about five minutes ago. I also had my cursor in the middle of it as I was reading it,

and then I fumbled over whatever word. Well, look, if something appeared, and if you were reading a teleprompter and then a bug flew into it, could you really be expected to take responsibility? No, I'm sorry. I have sympathy for you and i enjoyed it thank you i'm scott scott gardner uh jason sheridan's also here yes i was trying to think on the drive over of a boldly go joke and just didn't didn't have it and i was like no that that'll be two and then you gave up and you started thinking about that one uh yeah well i figured you would have it because i think it's

easy to fair to say that you are probably the biggest star trek fan out of the three of us i think i could easily say that i think you could fill in almost anything and that would be the case almost and i'm a bigger fan of everything except for in the case of this episode politics of who owned what vegas hotel at what time yeah no you are the king of that yeah yeah yeah so it's a perfect episode there's a lot for all of us to talk about yes there is uh and i guess for then what would jason's be i guess um you know fried tribbles um uh yeah fried there's good snacks to talk about um uh yeah the very stiff promotional uh footages well my thing which uh i it's it's the vegas episode oh yes you kind of it is the first thing we're addressing yeah we haven't

really talked vegas too much oh and just to say in general we're talking about star trek the experience which ran from what 97 98 to 2007 98 to 2008 i believe in that range late 90s to late uh 2000s and this was an immersive star trek experience that was open at the las vegas hilton what then was the las vegas hilton it included a ride it included 40 experiences restaurants the only like really big immersive like miniature star wars i'm sorry star trek theme park uh that has existed thus far yeah the rumors are uh flying around about that other stuff yeah and to clarify it is not star trek the adventure or the star trek adventure who knows there was another thing at universal studios where they inserted guests

into a star trek movie or show but we will be talking about that on the patreon yeah star trek block but today right now what you're listening to is about las vegas yeah well we're doing this of course to celebrate the star wars land opening soon uh because honestly as you're looking through this this really is similar to some things that we've read about star wars well as you as we've heard for a long time that we will be going to a very immersive uh multi-part experience part of which recreates a very famous ship and all of the interiors and hallways and corridors and rides where there's like the ride part of the ride, but buildups and weird elevators that take you there. Turbolifts. And turbolifter.

And a place where there are actors who are very steeped in the mythology and various languages. A lot of actors. Tons of actors. Who are really committed and really love it. Really committed. tons of actors who are really committed and really love it and a space themed bar that offers colorful drinks that are in like tubes and steam up and shit uh you know we've been hearing about this coming to disneyland for a long time and something very similar to it existed in the

magical land of las vegas but a decade ago and both uh bars presumably uh in terms of the cantina at star wars uh very much products of their times in that like uh we live in a time of craft cocktail uh exhausting craft cocktail nonsense and uh quarks was more of a time of like really dense looking pizza and buffalo chicken fingers yes Yes. That was the height of themed entertainment. And melon liqueur and alizé and something called razzmatazz in the drink warp core breach. I'm really excited to talk. Yeah, the menu. But one thing at a time.

One thing at a time. We haven't really talked Vegas much at all, which is very exciting. I hope everyone thinks that Vegas is in bounds for us to talk about on this podcast, because, you know, if it's less theme parks and more themed experiences, Lord knows the 90s were an explosion of themed experiences in Las Vegas. And that's what ultimately led to this Star Trek thing. But we haven't talked about all of the bullshit bullshit used to be at the excalibur and the luxor and all that there's too much and when this episode comes out i will be in las vegas hey yeah okay me and tell me to do something weird i mean that's that's true like tell me if there's an experience or something don't like i'm not gonna like eat uh shit out of a toilet or something and you're not gonna do that thing where you like ride a tractor like move like mechanical arms

around there's some attraction that's like you know drive construction equipment around a field i might do that if it was close to the hotel maybe it depends i'd have to look into it i need to see a yelp review something that'll come up later in this episode uh you do have the opportunity uh to see something in las vegas called bongzilla but i'll elaborate later as to what bongzilla is all about okay um i know that we've like i think people have even tweeted us or i've seen discussion on facebook what's like theme park stuff in vegas and there's not as much as they there used to be yeah like you were just looking for what the hell do you do when you're there um i've recommended strongly the uh movie that plays in the m&m store

which i hope you check out i hope we can do it yeah oh you know it good i recommended something that is sadly actually gone uh the uh circus circus where you could get a drink served in a toilet mug uh vince neal vince neal's was the answer. We were trying to figure out which scum rock, scumbag rock guy. You would guess David Lee Rock. I was thinking it was David Lee Rock. Who I didn't think is a restaurateur, although it's waiting for him whenever he wants to do it. But Vince Neal has a thing? But it's gone.

I think it's gone. Well, the restaurant might still be there. I gotta get to Vince Neal's restaurant. Tatuado in Circus. Because there's that stretch with Margaritaville, Cabo Wabo Cantina, and Toby Keith's. I love this bar and grill. Oh, that's right. And then there's, is that also where that Guy Fieri restaurant that where we ate?

Oh, well, that was by the link. Is that still there? Oh, yeah, you're right. That was farther down. Yeah, where we very sadly ate like chicken lo had guys chicken lollipops we competed in guys cheesecake challenge oh we did get the cheesecake this uh it was jason wins when cheesecake is involved i i don't think anyone ate that didn't even seem like it had defrosted all the way we ate it though we ate it there was no victor that day it was it was a sad we We were on the way out of a weekend in Vegas,

and nothing was particularly good that we ordered. Nachos topped with a lot of cojita cheese, which doesn't really melt. It's such an odd choice. You usually sprinkle a little on top, but this was just so much. I'm sure the meal was set at reasonable prices. I don't recall, but probably not.

Probably not. But I don't think it was that. I would assume it was overpriced. Yeah. It was at the end of, real quick, I'll tell this story. Yeah. So this is my, Mike's, Mike, like Star Trek, Scott likes Vegas, you know, who owns stuff in Vegas. And I guess I like experiencing one crazy night sort of stories.

Yes, that's true. But the story I'm going to tell is not a crazy night at all. Well, it was a crazy night for me. It is a mild, very mild night. Even though the stakes could not be lower. So, all right. Keep crazy night in your head as you listen to this. Yes.

So, to Jason, what I'm about to describe is a crazy night. So we were there for a bachelor party. We went to, I forget the name of it, but it's like a German beer hall. I know what it is. It's called Hofbrauhaus. Hofbrauhaus. Okay. And there's a woman in like Lederhosen who comes around and will paddle you for a dollar.

If you want to do a shot out of a... Yeah, if you want to do a shot. Which is like, you know, I'm not... That doesn't... A lot of people signing up for it. Like a lot of people getting paddled during the meal. Not you, Mike. Not believe it or not me. Not me.

And so we were... It was a big group of us for this bachelor party. And prior to this, there was a weed cookie that was eaten by some people, Jason included. Mike included? I had a little bit of it. You had a little bit. I think you had a lot more than me. I thought I took a little piece and I was wrong.

Yeah, no, because I remember being like, oh, it's a little. And I don't even think anything was felt. I didn't feel anything, really. That's what I would do. I would take the tiniest little sliver but when jason's got a cookie in front of him no matter what the ingredients are if it was pcp tunnel vision uh so we're eating so we're at the beer hall we're having a fine time and then uh a friend of ours came over and there was a man this part is a little bit hazy. So tell me if you remember this better than I do. There was like a band playing or lip syncing.

Or lip syncing. We were never quite sure. They were in the back of the beer hall. Yeah. So they were at the back of the beer hall. One of them had some sort of animatronic hat. It looked like the sorting hat from Harry Potter because the hat was moving too. I don't remember the moving hat. I don't know if that's true i think it was just a bit was moving a little i think it was a big hat the hat was it was a big in my mind the hat is this is interesting

because now i have never we've never talked about the moving hat i but we regardless we there is a full band and we don't know if they were playing or lip syncing. Possibly playing to a track or something, but we couldn't tell because we were in the, we were in the front of the restaurant and that was in the way back. Because this was a restaurant that had a real vibe. It had a real atmosphere, a real joie de vivre because you had to do like toasts and you had to bang your beer steins and stuff.

It's a process. It's sort of fun. Yeah. So my recollection. And then it got weird. toasts and you had to bang your beer steins and stuff it's a lot of process it started fun yeah so my then it got weird my recollection is that then you started laughing a little bit too much at everything started laughing a little bit a friend of ours came over and he made this is where my memory is fuzzy he made the comment that the hat on this man looked like pharrell's big hat pharrell at the time had been wearing that large like he had just worn the big hat was like dudley do-right kind of style hat and you lost it like i've never seen you laugh so much and you kept like kind of like pharrell's

big hat and you were laughing like i've never seen you see in my mind i was the one who could who said for else big it's very that's very possible and that's why i could barely get it out it's very because it was also just a little past the topical uh uh deadline for that joke that brief window that's funny because it's not it just became non-topical yeah yeah right right so you were laughing and everybody everybody started catching wind that you were laughing and everybody kind of came over and like we're joking around with you and you were having a great time and you had this giant sandwich you had a long like a foot long it was like a foot long sausage because this everything was platters it was like oh you got you picked your your meats and then you got like two or three

sides and i i wasn't that hungry. I was like, oh, I'll just get the one sandwich on the thing. How big can it be? Because it was also cheaper than the other platters. And then it was bigger than everyone's regular meals. Sounds like it was bigger than Pharrell's big hat. It was. It was appropriate.

And there were like big burly men at this table with us like eating. You were the biggest plate of food by far of anyone I think. Or just at least the look of it. And you held this thing up. It looked like Homer's sandwich in the episode where he keeps finding it and he gets sick because he's eating it.

And the second, but the second smallest beer. Not the smallest beer because they were mean to anyone who ordered a pint. They were mean to Mike. I had the smallest beer. I accidentally ordered a smaller beer than the average beer, which was a regular sized beer. Mike ordered a regular pint. And I got roasted.

They razzed you. Wow. I got roasted for that. Like, I forget. It was probably something like sex, like called me a woman or something. Like they probably said something like that like I forget It was probably something like sex Called me a woman or something like they probably said Something like that I think it was The woman But this is you know it's a

Historical place you know So they have to We've been doing this since 2004 They have to insult you in the way they would have 10 years ago Yeah so this is About when the damn breaks for me so you're because everyone is saying that is the biggest sausage i've ever like everyone is talking

about how big the sausage is and then i'm like everyone's talking how big the sausage is like it's repeating like i feel like i'm in like the the the merit like is it safe is it safe like i feel like i'm in like the the merit like is it safe is it safe like i that's what to me some people's probably said it like three times but to me it's just echoing that everyone is talking about how big the sausage is and then i'm still like is the band playing or not like i feel like i'm in a thomas pinchin like novel where everything's a conspiracy everything's a trick like and because so so from my vantage point i think we like joked about the sandwich a little bit and then we started eating and talking about something else and then all of a sudden i see you and you go from you know zero to 60 laughing 60 to zero i see you this is fade again vegas we're on the

edge of the desert by barstow when the drugs kicked in like this is but this but at this point the drugs kicked off in a way or i guess you know i guess no they kicked in yeah you're right yeah the paranoia is what's starting to show up the laughing has stopped and the bats are starting to show up so i look at you and now i'm legit like concerned you are drooped over a little bit like you you're not sitting up straight and you're holding the sandwich still and it's like you're trying to eat this giant sandwich but you're falling asleep or something and then i'm like hey are you okay and you were just like yeah like you were a little hazy and you're trying to eat it and then like you're just like you were in slow motion for a few minutes and i'm like oh uh and

this happens so fast i've never seen a transformation like this through my mind is i have to get the fuck out of here so you get to a bed so this actually sort of happened i'm trying to think of the timetable how long you were actually like that because then at a certain point it was clear that some of the group was already done and leaving maybe everybody didn't have dinner and i think i didn't even have very much so i was like we are we're leaving soon let's go and you were like i have to go and i said well we're all see everyone's like packing up and we're gonna leave in a couple minutes just wait for us because you don't you go i have to go now because what i can't keep i keep my eye keeps going to is the uh woman with the test tube shots and the paddle is inching closer to us and i am like i get she's coming

for me like again i think i am in a kafka-esque nightmare where it's like someone's gonna buy that and make me do that like and i i am just like i gotta get out of here yeah sure so what that paddle could have been in your in your mind that would have seemed like 700 feet tall and like it like knocked you back to california i just thought it was like it would hurt a lot because i could tell like my sentence senses are heightened like this is like darede, but a pain in the ass. So you threw $20 on the table and walked out. Yes. And then I'll tell my side of then what the rest of the night was. And then you will tell what you did.

Okay. So at that point. Why don't I tell my journey and you tell tell what reality actually it's just good to the end of the story he got jason got married to the big sausage sandwich i got married to the they're still technically married to this day and the woman uh with the paddle broke in and paddled them both uh i went out to the hostess station and uh did the thing where when you're a little out of it you try to be extra with adult with it and it went excuse me uh where can i get a taxi around here and she said uh just go across the street to the hard rock hotel they have a taxi stand and i went

thank you and i went outside and across the street was like six or eight lanes of a major thoroughfare thankfully with crosswalks so i was like okay here we go uh uh he got across the street to the hard rock uh went up to the cab stand and went i i had like a cab and and then i gave him uh i probably gave him to like because they just whistle or they just go over there sir like they had a line of cabs i didn't need to talk to anyone sure uh but i handed that man a ten dollar bill and then i got in the cab and the cab took me back to the venetian uh and uh uh i went back to the room and uh got in bed got under the covers called the person i was dating at the time to go like hey uh just just wanted to say hi like calm you down like yeah just it down specifically And I remember her going

Where are you And I went I'm under the cubs You were so high You said cubs not covers Scott jumped out of his chair when you said cubs Cubs I was under the cubs This is also

This is like 9pm also So this is reality So I get under the cves. This is like 9 p.m. also. This is not late. So, this is reality. So, I get under the coves and I turn on the TV and I go to sleep for what I think is hours. And wake up and my friends are standing at the foot of the bed. And I was just like, hey, guys, what's up? What's going on? Everyone good on everyone good so mike what was the reality well i i think it we came back to sort of to check on you uh-huh and i think it was like

10 30 and you thought it was like you had been asleep for eight hours i thought it was five in the morning and the king of queens was on the tv yes Yes. And you were, yeah, so you were in bed. And I believe then we went out a little bit more. We did not have a very late night, though. We came back at probably 1 a.m. and went to bed. So then, this is my favorite part of the story. We wake up at 10 a.m. And everyone's deciding what to do.

I'm going to go to the pool. I'm going to go with some other people. And then another one of our friends is going to gamble. And I go, Jason, let's go to the pool. I'm going to go with some other people. And then another one of our friends is going to gamble. And I go, Jason, let's go to the pool. And you go, oh, I can't. I gotta. And I go, come on, let's go. We're in Las Vegas.

Let's go. It's a bachelor party. Oh, I go, you go, what time is it? And I go, it's 10 a.m. What are you? And you're like, I thought it feels like seven. And I go, you've been sleeping for like 12 hours. You've been sleeping for like at least 12 hours, maybe more.

And you go, go on without me. Hit me like a ton of bricks. I eventually got up around like noon, noonish, 1130 noonish. Bringing the total like 14. 14 hour sleep or so. And then I, did you not have a nap in the afternoon too i did go back a few hours later and nap so then what i did i got up and found that uh despite vegas never closing uh they stopped serving breakfast at 10 a.m uh everywhere because all

i wanted was a bacon egg and cheese and i was like walking through the mall that's in the venetian palazzo uh eventually i landed at the grimaldi's pizza and uh ate a small pepperoni pizza all by myself so and then i went back to the room and then you shopped in the michael jack living with michael jackson store and you got the free champagne flute not the one that steamed after him or the one where he walked around and said i own this i own that one he walked around with martin basheer uh and i went in because i went sirdi won a mimosa on the house and i was like yes i do and then everywhere in that store they have tvs playing the basheer basheer just that just him but just the clip of them walking around i have this tomb i have all the tombs.

You didn't buy a tomb? No. I didn't buy a tomb. You wanted to crawl in one for a nap, though. So you had the champagne, and then you went back and napped. So the whole time, it's like we're only there for two days. We're texting you, like, what are you doing? We're all hanging out. It's a bachelor party.

Yeah. You had gotten like 14 to 16 hours of sleep. Thereabouts, sure. In Las Vegas. Hey, everybody makes Vegas their own. yeah you you had gotten like 14 to 16 hours of sleep there abouts las vegas and hey everybody makes vegas their own i think you live like a king he did uh yeah i look i walked around a big indoor mall i like the gondola i looked at the gondolas for a while what is impressive i will say this about you you um when i've ever been on a trip with you it does swing either way there's been times when you are the one who's out till 6 a.m comes up sure the sun comes up and we're all sleeping and we're like wow jason's wild and then there's the vegas story where you sleep 16 hours and barely

see us uh yeah yeah i'm a man of extremes i'm a libra just constantly trying to balance those scales baby well you heard it here first you heard it here first and they really dip when you put a gigantic sausage on one end of them yeah so yeah is that your only vegas trip uh no i actually spent uh one of my first jobs i was an intern for the hbo comedy festival and then they upgraded us to production assistants uh for their they only ran two or three of them it was just called the comedy festival and they would do it at caesar's and so i stayed at i lived i lived at vegas for like nine or ten days at caesar's had a badge like we ate in the employee cafeteria wow and stuff and so yeah so that was very fun so but i mean that was work but we didn't have a lot of time off so sure well that sounds much

more pleasant yeah i've been to vegas dozens and dozens of times how many do you think i really can't every time i'm there i realize i can't count because it's a it's a go-to trip with erin and i and and her family uh and i've and i've done it for work wherein i i went to uh wayne newton's house i've i've been to wayne to shannon doa wayne newton's estate where we filmed one shot of a weird like video game ad and uh we got to uh his his young children came out and were like, do you want to see his penguins? And they were holding penguins as if they were babies. It was the strangest scenario. Did you hold a penguin? I don't think I held the penguin, but I like watched a penguin in my head.

Hmm. Someone tell me if this is impossible, that a penguin could be fed with a bottle. As I say it out loud, that doesn't seem right. No, no. I think I can see that you could see them well that may stick their beaks up and a very young one yeah well i may have watched the feeding of a penguin at wayne newton's house and took photo in like his empty foyer if you watch vegas vacation like there's scenes shot in there and that's a room i was in and that until he showed

up but i just had to myself like aaron was there too and a couple other crew people and uh that's wild yeah that's some vegas stuff but i've been like i've been so so many times and i don't even like all the stuff i don't gamble i don't like drink insanely i don't go to the the firing range i just like like being and i like dumb shows of chris angel david copperfield stuff i've seen lately but i didn't read i didn't really like vegas growing up uh i think my parents tried to do i we i did mgm grand the theme park um but it was never our favorite wasn't my parents favorite until i started going with aaron i didn't really uh i didn't really dig it but the first time we ever went together and the first trip we ever took together as a couple in fact uh was in 2006 to the las vegas hilton during which time the star

trek experience was open uh we did not go to the star trek experience and it's funny like we just remembered that and we're like how could that be like today we'd be all over that and now it seems like it that doesn't even sound like us to not go to the in the hotel star trek experience it's right there that it's the hotel you stayed at and did anyone find pricing for it like i i didn't really come across that in my head it was a lot but yeah it's something like 30 40 bucks okay yeah i mean everything magus is is to a certain extent priced to move because they're competing rooms and shows and stuff for it compete i mean lady gaga's uh residency i had a look tough recently those tickets are 700 but the magic show like copperfield has like 60 bucks you know you can get cheap if you find some weird like little ticket zone you can get stuff for cheap we did not go i think it was like the

furthest out of my theme park orbit i ever was. And probably a new cool girl I'm dating. I'm not going to just like sew and throw all that shit at her. Do you know who Quark is? I still don't know who Quark is. So that's also part of it. I think I wasn't like my theme park gene was like at its most dormant. And I'm not really a Star Trek guy. We did, however, like our elevator up to the room, like the first time we went up there,

a just married Star Trek clad couple got in the elevator with us. Oh, wow. Both in uniforms. One of them might have been a Klingon. Maybe one of them was feeding a penguin with a bottle. That's what's in all my memories. But yeah, it looms very large in the first trip we ever took together. And we went back there a few years ago just to like reminisce about that.

And what's so odd is that even though there is like no, this thing is gone and has been gone since 2008, 2009, still Star Trek, there's little clues everywhere. There's a wing of the casino that is still themed to a spaceport. And on the outside of the building, and I think probably still to this day, I checked Google Maps and it was true, the giant Star Trek emblem. Nobody bothered to take it down. Why not? That seems like if you're going to disavow this attraction, take off the giant famous shape that's on the outside of your building i mean what happened after i think might have some answers to that because the people who would go on to own this property oh sure uh what is this david what is his last name um wait who

are you thinking i'm thinking the queen of Versailles guy. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Well, now it is a Westgate hotel. Yeah, now it's a Westgate. And it's a David... What's his name? Starts with a B. Yeah, if you've seen the documentary Queen of Versailles, which we probably owe more discussion about, but it's like that. It's a timeshare building now.

David Siegel. David Siegel, yes. David Siegel. The worst man in America. He explains everything. He ties together Bush and Trump and the financial collapse. Told his employees he would have to start laying people off if Obama gets elected. Oh, my God.

Like, was trying to affect how his employees were voting in 2008. Oh, God. Oh, and wasn't he a guy, isn't it in the documentary that, like, he's like, we'll get this in the bag for you, God. Oh, and wasn't he a guy, isn't it in the documentary that like, he's like, we'll get this in the bag for you, Bush. He like knew somehow it was going to go that way. Oh, in 2000? Yeah. Like maybe he was part of rigging it in Florida, in the county where it mattered. Probably.

He has more money than God. He has the biggest house built on like American soil, or at least it was for a short time but also incredibly cheap yeah like he's stingy yeah and a mean man who's bad to his children he doesn't want to have um it's really icky and so yeah that was the weirdest thing like oh remember when we stayed here and there was the star trek thing oh it's all still here there's a whole wing of like slot machines that still looks like a spaceport. And the welcome, so like the preview center where you get timeshare presentations

is in a spaceport for no reason. And so like all the Westgate signage and like, you know, where you get the little stump speeches and then a little store, what used to be the Star Trek gift shop is now full of Queen of Versailles merchandise. They sell hot sauce and mints

and it's presented like it's me the queen of versailles like paris hilton the simple life like owning i'm kind of a trashy diva but like that documentary is very sad it's not very sad you know yeah the heights of luxury so so if you're going to vegas i'd recommend it to you might walk around the weird remnants right of the las vegas or of the star trek experience the bathrooms have portholes and like weird little like laser lines around the mirror it's so so weird uh um and yeah anyway i i but we should you know i guess we should talk about what it was before that's what it is today westgate vacations are a great deal for you and your family of course they co-own the show now

so so you'll be yeah yeah you'll be getting upsold on these podcasts as much as possible yeah fake time with your family is crucial and if you don't do it now you might die and never get to do it so invest in your family and your future that you get to pass on you can't own property as easily you can own this yeah maybe i can see if i can buy the star trek insignia sure yeah just give me that giant piece of plastic outside the hotel it's weird that they didn't because there were a lot of auctions for things i think after this or at least one and it all disappeared yeah which made it impossible to bring it back anyway before we talk about what became of it because that's all a weird interesting mess too let's talk about what it was um i mean i explained it a little bit this was this

this immersive star trek experience involved rides and restaurants although you know what there's this whole other thing did you guys look into what was originally supposed to be the first star trek experience in las vegas yes oh the the big the big enterprise the giant enterprise uh okay so the year is 1992 uh the strip is on the grow there's the mirage there's the luxor there's the mgm grant all of these family attractions that are heavily themed downtown vegas fremont street is turning into a real shithole. That's sort of like former Vegas. It's not where families go. How can we balance these sides out?

So the people in charge of downtown put it out to all these themed entertainment places. What could we do? What could be the big thing that lures people in? We know today that they settled on the world's dimmest screen, which is now up above Fremont, this bizarre A-fading jumbotron that displays top-tier graphics circa 2005. But that was the second choice, because what they wanted to do was build a gigantic uh star trek enterprise um that was

so big there's a little like chart that showed how big it was supposed to be it was supposed to be as long as the eiffel tower is tall it was taller than the pyramids of giza you'd be able to see it from the sky as you landed this was going to be mammoth and probably have stuff like the Star Trek experience inside, like recreations of the decks and rides and restaurants and all that. And this seemed like a slam dunk done deal until it went up to the CEO of Paramount, Stanley Jaffe. Also the Oscar winning producer of Kramer versus Kramer before that. Yeah, I believe he appears in the Robert Evans book. Kid stays in the picture. Oh, I believe.

Because I remember him saying the audio books, Daily Jeffy. That sounds that has a little Robert Evans ring, doesn't it? Yeah. So they do this major pitch to him. By the way, the city has signed off. Vegas is like super excited about this. Everyone was except for Stanley Jaffe. Yes.

Who in the meeting, they present all of their diagrams and their videos and everything that this is going to be and do for the city. And he says, well, this is all very nice and I like what you did. But here's where I'm coming from here at Paramount. If we release a movie and it bombs, you just shove it in a drawer and forget it ever happened if i build a giant building and it bombs it's there forever i don't want to be the guy that approved this and then it's a flop and sitting out there in vegas forever which that'd be unprecedented that some vegas thing didn't work out and you just like imploded or something but he just walked out of the meeting very nice to meet you that was the end of that never built well that's it the guy pitching it was gary goddard who always seemed

like a huckster piece of shit and as we have now learned is also a creep piece of shit and i'll let the listeners google him creep might be an understatement it's not quite enough yeah gary goddard is we talked about this jason how uh how Gary Goddard is like this ghost that has haunted the podcast. We've done a lot of topics where Gary Goddard was part of, and we've discussed how do we address this, and do we discuss everything that happened with it. I don't want to, I don't think, I think the only thing we can say is, fuck you, Gary Goddard. Fuck you. There's a special place in hell. Yes. It's a bummer. If you just need a you. There's a special place in hell. Yes.

It's a bummer. If you just need a clue, he's a Bryan Singer guy. Yeah, one of his last projects with Bryan Singer, fill in the blanks. If you Google him, there's some very thorough articles. So it sucks. And he was part of some amazing things and stuff that we've talked about at length on this podcast. And it's such a bummer that we have to like... We like to talk about, and here's who did this, and here's who did this.

In this case, let's not give this guy credit. No, let's erase his legacy. Because the things he should be known for is being a creep piece of shit. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly allegedly yes just if it is true uh anyway now it's now it's up to you to figure out so do your own uh personal gary goddard or don't maybe don't uh but anyway so maybe that's good that it didn't work out because uh you know uh not a good yeah i mean look there's unlike, films, there's hundreds of people work on it, but it's usually the director is the author. Some people think.

There's different schools of thought on that. But films usually associate with directors. Themed entertainment, there's so much input from so many different avenues and different people behind it. Yeah, yeah, it's hard to say. There's a lot less. There's just the one guy yeah even stuff even like Tony Baxter of hundreds of people yeah

attractions we say like oh yeah Tony Baxter ever saw this came up with these ideas but yeah there's hundreds and hundreds of people working on these things that being said let me give a little credit to the guy who built the world's dimmest screen what is now at Fremont Street John Jurdy father father of CityWalk.

Oh, yeah. Wow. He did the dim screen. He did the big dim screen. Yes. So much credit. World's dimmest screen. Thank you for slightly brightening the Las Vegas sky.

So it didn't work out, but then cut to 1996, the same dynamic is occurring with the Las Vegas Hilton because the strip is booming. Families are going to the strip. The Las Vegas Hilton is not on the strip. It is now part of the monorail line, but it is separate from all that stuff. And it's kind of associated with old Vegas. Do you guys know much about what like the history of the Hilton for any particular reason or like the big things

that happen there i don't know i don't think so here's i didn't i didn't know any of this uh opened in 1969 it was called the international hotel uh it has first of all as not just a benihana something called the benihana village what's like an entire yeah maybe that's where you want to go i think it's still there yeah i guess so oh my god it seems like what's that yamashiro that's up on the top of the hollywood hills it seems like where it's this little like you know uh this this little like shrine essentially like that you can explore but it's ultimately for a benihana um so check out benihana village um this thing opens in 69 the first and one of the big attractions of it uh gigantic showroom because by that point you know they're attracted vegas hotels are checked in the rat pack we want to have the biggest best one

they got barbastri sand to be the first performer for a solid month second performer elvis presley and that's where elvis played like elvis in vegas equals the las vegas hilton at least until his death he did seven years you know upwards of 600 shows and that's when he lived in that hotel right and there was a suite like called the uh we called the elvis suite for a long time until it got blown up because the the wing got removed colonel tom parker lived in the hilton for a long time uh what hotel didn't colonel tom parker live in though he might have he might have hopped from play he might have also taken done 16 hours of sleep uh night oh sure at home hey just like sloppy deli sloppy oh yeah we'll all be living in various hotels someday we'll just go visit each other for lucky yeah

pick one now um i uh so oh and then also uh late 70s early 80s liberace uh everything portrayed the era portrayed in buying the candelabra behind the candelabra is the Las Vegas Hilton late 80s early 90s Wayne Newton so this is like above Vegas Vegas place but by the 90s that is becoming passe and

family entertainment is the new thing so how do we compete and they compete by arranging a deal with Paramount and Cedar Fair for the Star Trek property. Wow. Yeah. I didn't realize it. It was all in that.

Hey, there's your Vegas factoids. And the only thing that still exists is the Benihana Village. Of all of this. Yes. Interesting. Dreams have died and yet the Benihana Village remains. Yeah, that's right. This was an interesting holdover because paramount

parks technically ran star trek the experience then they got bought by cedar fair oh is that fair even kept it going for a couple years longer okay okay they did they did work out whatever licensing and when star trek the experience closed it was supposed to reopen somewhere else uh i believe at a mall called neonopolis yeah and and that i'll save you i have neonopolis yeah let's talk about the spaceships first yeah so uh yeah that's a whole thing too so but yeah but i this thing came out of the gate with a lot of hype and i remember reading about it at the time and it sounded pretty insane. And how often do you see a freestanding themed experience? It's not part of a park that has this hyped up or has this good of reviews.

This level of detail. Yeah, I remember reading about it. And I will also say I also did not go to the Star Trek experience. I was in Vegas for the first time ever in december of 2007 so could have done it i could have done it wow i was a little bit as my theme park gene was a little dormant it was probably a few months before i would get well maybe i had an annual pass already to disneyland but before i would start really reading up about stuff i didn't even think about it it breaks my heart what a dark time for both of us. I'm glad we fixed everything.

Everything's perfect now. When you stayed at the MGM Grand, I don't even think we did anything silly. The first time I would have been there for that job was the fall of 2006. But I don't think that I knew this existed. I think I'd heard about it over the years, but I'd assumed it had closed by this point. It was also a time i guess when i mean i was always as so to talk my star trek my relationship with star trek uh i was a next generation kid we were at the hospital my sister had some stomach pain and

they thought it might be like appendicitis or something and it was not it was everything was fine uh but i remember watching star trek the next generation for the first time on the TV in the waiting room and being like, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. And I, I, I wanted to live on the enterprise as a child. Like I wanted, I was so obsessed with the idea of like getting my own little quarters and the replicator and I could have whatever food I wanted. And it'd be a little Wil Wheaton.

I wanted to be a little Wil Wheaton yeah i wanted to be on the bridge um actually i think i didn't want to be on the i didn't want to like shoot like i didn't really want to shoot a phase you don't have anything to do yeah i don't want to be like visiting your dad who works there yeah or like maybe work uh 10 forward with gynon would Goldberg. There's a large support staff on the ship. So that's what makes me more upset about this is that it wasn't

even on my radar at the time or I wasn't thinking about it or I just took it for granted that it would always be there. But this was Star Trek The Next Generation primarily. Quark is from Deep Space Nine which is a show I watched a little bit but I don't I'm not way into it like I was Next Generation primarily. Quark is from Deep Space Nine, which is a show I watched a little bit, but I'm not way into it like

I was Next Generation. It seems like it sort of transitioned you. Like the main experience was more Next Gen than anything, and the ship was more Next Gen? Yeah, it was the NC-1701D, which is the proper ship from the TV show, not the movies. Okay. Because

then they blew the ship. Of course, famously blew up in star Trek generations. Oh, they crash landed the ship on an alien planet. Oh, and then they debuted. Yeah.

But then they had the Nancy 1701 E was the net. And then in first contact was the ship. And that was the ship they used. The next gen cast used for the rest of their movies. But so, but to be clear, quarks quark was deep space nine, which was a space station, not a ship. Although eventually they added a ship in later seasons.

Well, the Defiant was their famous littler ship that could go on a little mission and fights and stuff. And the second attraction added was Voyager, was Star Trek Voyager based. Yeah. Well, it had Captain Janeway, of course, from Star Trek Voyager, Kate Mulgrew, which I honestly, I watched a lot of Voyager as a kid. For whatever reason, Next Gen and Voyager were my two, for whatever reason. Can I say mine? Most of mine as a kid was watching the original show, syndication on tv in the summers i like that next gen i would watch every now and then and i remember when the action figures came out

but it never really like hooked me i associate it with uh king's dominion in virginia because they had a presence a star trek presence in that park what was it again oh we'll get to that don't worry oh yeah okay we'll do the ancillary star trek oh that's right yes head over to the patreon but i was never i i like next generation when i would see it i never really hunted it out i was much more of a star wars uh kid i was way into this before star wars my parents my parents were not into either of these things not that they hated it they like saw the first star wars that was good you know that maybe we'll see that maybe they saw the second one maybe but that was it so like i found all this stuff on my own um so i'm more like them

i don't know i've it all seems uh it all seems nice uh it's too late for me now. I just saw a bunch of the movies hit the canopy, one of the library streaming service websites. I haven't really seen a lot of the movies. Have you seen any of the movies? I've seen four. I've stolen Erin's Star Trek trajectory, which is she likes four because it has the whales. Oh, yeah. And that's the one that we like. Oh Chris Pine. I saw the first Chris Pine movie. So how many have you

seen? Of the movies? Yeah. Just the first Chris Pine movie. Oh that's it? Really? That's it. Maybe other little clips on cable and stuff. We're going to stay here and I'm going to make you watch Star Trek Generations where Picard and William Shatner meet in Montana and chop wood together and ride horses yeah the

captains finally meet and what do they do they're in a little log cabin and then they like help each other on the farm it seems like boringness is kind of built into this franchise because a lot of these the early movies from what i've gathered are a little like turgid oh yeah the first movie is very boring i like it but it's very boring um and what jj abrams did and i like the first jj abrams movie and i kind of like the second one what jj did unfortunately was try to make star trek fun and cool and sexy and no what are you doing man the exciting stuff is supposed to be when they're all like 20s gangsters or like mark twain shows up for a whole episode their idea for to boost i mean they did put a sexy lady on start on voyager but one of their other ideas to boost ratings was to regularly

have a subplot where katherine janeway would go talk to leonardo da vinci on the holodeck that was and they built a big leonardo da vinci set and cast like an actor so a big thing and they're like oh this is going to be good for the ratings when we had da vinci as a reoccurring character so like that is sort of what star trek is i think there was a fan backlash when seven of nine uh who uh came onto the show seven of nine was a borg she uh jerry ryan played her jerry ryan a very tall attractive woman uh and she was wearing like a bodysuit so to get the ratings up in season three or four it's like here's a sexy borg lady and the fans were pissed off they were mad they were mad about the sexy lady on the show. Now we're deep into like Hercules Xena era.

You got to show skin. And she just had a bodysuit on. It wasn't like she was. Voyager. This was also the launch of UPN around this time, right? Voyager was like the big thing helping launch UPN. So, yeah. So, Star Trek fans in general are like nothing sensational or interesting.

Like we want dry diplomacy and that's sort of the fun of it. So while I do like the JJ movies, I do think that a big part of Star Trek is dry, boring diplomacy and ethics. A lot of ethics. A lot of ethics. I like that. I mean, the first series. He drinks a lot of ethics a lot of ethics i like that i mean the first the first series a lot of royal gray tea right the first series i will say with gene roddenberry is a little sec a little sexier shatner is a very like horny captain and oh yeah women are in the skirts and like there's a

very kind of swing and 60s kind of vibe like it. Just some like guest babes that show up from different planets. Yeah. And there's weird horny stuff on all of them. And Spock. Spock has weird like. Well, Ponfar is. Yeah. Every seven years.

Do you know about this, Scott? No. Every seven years when Vulcans mate. Okay. And they get insane. There's like a couple of weeks or whatever where they get insane. So you got like stay steer clear of them when they're horny they're very emotional because they're normally not emotional

in that moment oh that's like when that's like when the amish people like go experiment it's like yeah oh i like the term wow data data has sex in one of the first few seasons or first season or I forget if it's second season. He has sex and he tells, he tells, who does he have sex with? Tasha Yar or something? That he's fully functional, which is gross. Meaning that like Data's creator, Dr. Noonien Song, he created Data and then had to work very hard on his penis like he had to work very hard on this robot penis that's fully functional you're gesturing like you have tools

like a little hammer and chisel right checklist it's like all right uh language check uh morals check ethics check the working dong check And it has to change because Data's not walking around with a boner The whole time so it has to move Like he made it move somehow realistically This creepy old doctor Or scientist who made data Which to invent technology

That can be small And then spring up and be Hard and long that's difficult It seems like it would be yeah um so yeah so uh and that it's got to tie into your brain mechanisms and something has to trigger it yeah yeah the human human anatomy is incredibly complex like they say the iris is like the most intense lens and so like they'll never be able to perfectly replicate like the human eye lenses it's it sounds

intense but not as intense as manufacturing the boner manufacturer boner yeah dr song i don't know we don't know if he perfected the boner though he might have just gotten like a version one it might have just been like two modes like yeah you also get into does does it work? Does Data feel pleasure or does it work? It works more for the partner. Well, famously, Data did not have emotions for the run of the show. Dr. Noonan's song created an emotion chip that was not fully working yet and was too much. And Data finally fully put it into his brain in Star Trek Generations and it fucked him up. He got so scared

he'd let jordy be captured by uh malcolm mcdowell dr sauron so don't have emotions ever is the yeah and then they try this and he also was trying he always was trying to grasp humor you know data he was trying to figure it out and it was always coming he was always looking like a fool because he would make a joke that wasn't funny so anyway he started just saying is this humor and pointing to his boner well he'd be right yes actually you've got it my god reicher would have liked that maybe book hard would have thought that was not cool so anyway i was obsessed i was obsessed with this so this is again why this breaks my heart so much is that it was at the enterprise from next generation and do you watch a video of this and go by god they nailed it they kind of did it seems like it yeah because like

i would really like a big maybe complaint i would have as a kid that i wouldn't really complain about would be that you couldn't sit in the room in peter pan on the ride you couldn't actually kind of walk around you you were on a path and you didn't quite get to make it your own little experience it was great but i think part of me was always like i'd like to walk around on in these settings on the rides so especially to be on the actual bridge and be in the turbo lift and walk down the hallways look exactly right that was a fantasy of mine as a child would have been unbelievable and it yeah it's and you're also it's kind of cool that you're being guided around by different crew members who can seemingly shape the experience a little bit

depending on their performance and and that it's very like here come this way it's got it seems to when you watch videos of this it seems to have like a uh like a haunt quality yeah a little bit and where it's confusing in there and here follow me but then they might be wrong and something might happen to them right it definitely isn't like uh star tours you get in a line and now it's time to get on the ship and like you're you're not cut loose but there's a little more of that feeling well should we start with so the the main ride when it first opened was the klingon encounter right but it was not called that at the time until there was a divider until they opened the second one it was just called

that was the star trek experience but now it's the clinton this is a very interesting concept for this because it acknowledges that the guests are 20 20th century people and it does it i normally i would be against it but i think it does it in such a fun way yeah i like it i like it because at first i would be like well it's better if you just you're in that century as well and you're recruits or something. And this was apparently a rewrite done by writers on Next Generation. Yes. There was I forget what writer was, but somebody was trying to write it and they were like, how do you do this? Because there's a simulator that happens.

How do you write a simulator? Did you see this? Yeah. How do you write a simulator ride? And then they're like, we're going to Disneyland. And they just went down to Disneyland and did Star Tours. For research. And then went back to the boring room and wrote the thing. Um, and that's what's something that's cool about it is

that it plays with your expectations of what you expect out of a ride. Uh, and like what I was saying that you end up with a little more freedom and it's more of a customized experience, but they like they presented initially and I, forgive me me i didn't see like video of this part but it seems like you were brought into a room where it's a lot more it's spelled out you're going on a on a simulator yeah they have a like a junkie simulator i think i've heard tony baxter talk about it like he was lined up and he goes oh and like it looks exactly like star tours and i think he was saying he was rolling his eyes like, oh, here we go. And you're watching a video that is very much the Star Tours video.

Same angles. You watch people get on it like, you know, it seems a little funny or something like they're, you know, like as you board it and you're putting belongings under your chair, but then it starts to flicker out and i any video i saw it i don't think does it justice to what the effect is no i don't i don't have a good sense of how this worked but it sounds so cool yeah so basically they're simulating you getting beamed up to the enterprise and i think what so the lights would go out and then like walls would be removed essentially so you would be in the transporter room and there would be some sort of flickering lights and noise that would sort of disorient you a little bit.

And then all of a sudden you were in a different room. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone describes it as being like very magical. Like they did a very good job of making you kind of think like what I'm not that you were actually being, but it's like, it was like, it was a total surprise to you.

Right. And the idea of them like playing with the trope of, all right, the video. Yeah, I get it. And then like, Nope,

wrong. That is not what this is. Even though later there is a simulator, but by that point they've like, there's so much more of an exciting experience leading up to it. And it just goes to show, they convey the feeling of like, this isn't a ride you're in it.

It's pretty. Yeah. It's really cool. I have to say there's a pretty good ride through video online of the full experience of both experiences. And to me, it seems like, cause it's, it's decent quality footage.

And what, what I read, I would guess that it was either officially made or from what i had seen it was cast members who knew it was going away and we're trying to preserve it yeah because like it's got like a steady cam it's got a steady cam and like there are no they were going in crazy angles and stuff and like it looks uh pretty good so um uh preserved in a way that a lot of non-disney and even some older disney stuff is not preserved on youtube right right so yeah now you're on the bridge is that correct yeah that's why i was maybe i'm a little confused

was it in the transporter room and then you walked to the bridge or no the first experience was you just ended up on the bridge and you were in the i think maybe and somebody just starts talking to you and explains that you're in the year 2371 now that's the first version at least as far as we know there's not like a really like solid video of this but the borg one i think maybe you end up in the transporter room first okay that comes later no i think this one you start you start in the transporter room because she's like this is gonna sound crazy but here's the deal and then she takes you to the bridge that's what i thought but i can't tell if they changed that a little later but yeah you've been you've been beamed into what you call the future you're in the 24th century right and pretty

quickly there is a video with reicher yes video of reicher and he explains about the whole narrative right he's the one who says the he kind of sets it up yeah um him and levar so so what jonathan frakes and levar burton both in this thing so you got real actors um and this is yeah and this is right after the show is over because the show or you know a couple years after the show is over because the show or a couple years after the show is over because the first movie comes out like 96. Yeah. So and then Riker explains to you he's the one who explains about one of you being Picard's relative, right?

Yes. One of you is which is the early it's a precursor to the rebel spy. Oh, yeah. Think about it. Uh-huh. Because they're saying they except they don't say who it is. So they share one of you is a long lost relative of Captain Picard. And you are targeted by what's is the Klingon who's blanking on you. Korath.

Korath. Thank you. Korath wants to kill you because if you don't exist, then Captain Picard won't exist. And obviously, like, that's very to uh keeping maybe the klingons at bay i guess they think that'll be crazy they think that like if picard is gone then the klingons will reign which i don't know that the logic of that holds up but fine it's a killing baby hitler scenario yeah by killing you your baby hitler to them or like the or baby hitler's great great great grandfather or mother. Right.

Different timeline rules than Avengers Endgame, which creates an offshoot. I can't explain the timeline. I thought Avengers Endgame, the timeline was actually one of the strongest explanations of time travel and, or the way timelines theoretically may work. I thought it was really simple. Really? They did it really quickly. I was confused.

Yeah, I liked it. It was just any time someone goes back in time and does something that affects stuff, it creates another timeline. But unless you put everything back in the right place. Unless you put everything back. Yeah, that seems more like set up for future stuff. So I don't know what that is.

I mean, I like timelines. I just think that it was a little confusing. But this is operating on back to the future rules where if you. There's only one time. Picard is missing because you've been transported. It's been explained. The instant that you were beamed onto the ship, Picard disappeared. Thus, nicely justifying why Patrick Stewart does not appear in this.

You're right. Not that he didn't want to. He would have loved to do it. It's just the narrative wasn't there. Yeah. A little bit of narration at the end. A little bit of voiceover. Yes. Same with Kate Mulgrew. Which is a nice little song. not that he didn't want to he would have loved to do it it's just the narrative wasn't there yeah a little bit of narration at the end a little bit of voiceover yes which is a nice little because i wasn't even sure if he he showed up on the phone yeah from a resort somewhere kate mulgrew does not appear in the other one either right but she chimes in at the

i'm now flashing to like if you scanned the room for wait someone in this room is an ancestor of picard and you're scanning the room and it someone in this room is an ancestor of picard and you're scanning the room and it's a bunch of dumpy vegas people and then in the back a very tall handsome bald man who could it be there should have been a plant every time of like a very handsome bald man an ancestor you say why what's your sir what's your name fred picard oh well we must protect you at all costs what's who are they talking about then like a klingon slices his throat you don't know what's gonna happen you're free to go then all right enjoy the slots uh shrimp cocktails available and

that's right guests aren't just from the 20th century they're from 20th century las vegas yes specifically vegas specifically vegas i like this as somebody who does think well how come in star trek or not start i'm confusing them all in star tours how is it that i'm leaving from some spaceport because i was just at disneyland a second ago now would i like the ride better if we left from tomorrow land i don't know maybe honestly i like it um but i it's the only maybe maybe the only ride where you do actually leave from where you started and then end up exactly i mean i guess soren you end up in disney world disneyland and disney world yeah true oh yeah yeah yeah so that's that'd be the other one i guess but in this one you do start you start there and then you end up there.

And there's fun like Vegas visual hijinks at the end. Yes, which is a lot of fun. So it does have some really good logic. So I guess in the logic, though, Quark's Bar is a Vegas attraction with people dressed as the aliens. I think this is correct because I watched a video. You can watch a video that was, I think, on a voyager dvd oh yeah it shows all of the amenities it's almost like they're just pitching it to you like you can have a corporate event here um but they go into quark's bar for a while in that video and there is a part where they say we just got the

word from the 24th century j Janeway has conquered the Borg. We thought, what do we do with him? So we ground him up and put him on the menu. And that's why they serve hamburgers at Quark's Bar and Grill. So from that, yes, the mythology is you are eating Borg meat that was exported back in time 500 years. Also, Borg are humans often. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Borg are assimilated alien races, which most of them are all humanoid. If not all, I don't think I've actually can think of one that's not at least a humanoid. So, you're eating humans and aliens. Eating humans and metal. Humans and metal. Yeah. And yeah, metal implants. And yeah. And tribbles. Because you're eating triple 10 triple tenders uh-huh so yeah you're eating i mean that's a

little less weird because they they you know they don't think seemingly well they eat a little bit i guess a little yeah not so much that's more like eating a dog it's like eating a dog oh good but yeah you're eating a yeah a human i hope they're like if you know what's the equivalent in star wars if you're like what a lando burger yeah it's him it would be or like um it would be oh here here's what it would be it would be uh django fat burgers because django was cloned to make stormtroopers. Famously in the prequels. Oh, sure, yeah. It's all, supposedly,

all of the Stormtroopers are Jango Fett. Oh. So if you had a Jango-rito, that would be a tortilla in which the innards are Jango Fett's body. Well, the clone army. The clone army is all Jango Fett. By the time they get to Stormtroopers,

I think they've started recruiting. Oh, wait, that's fair. Yeah, you're right. So in the prequels, basically. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah and then by the time new hope rolls around i'm sure there's a few jangos hanging around oh yeah i i bet we'll find out the answer on the mandalorian coming to disney plus soon i bet we won't no you don't think will. IG-88 is in the trailer, though. That's fun. Yeah.

I do think you would like Star Trek more than Star Wars. Maybe. I think it's junkier. It's cheaper. It's less exciting, which I think is appealing to you. Potentially. I think there's stuff in there you would like. I'm not saying you're going to become a Trekkie, but I think there's stuff in there that you

would very much appreciate. Well, I know 60s. 60s Star Trek, I'd probably appreciate in like a Twilight Zone kind of way. Yeah, for sure. Where it's these like little allegorical tales. Well, and certainly Jean-Luc Picard enjoys a fine bottle of wine, much like yourself, right? Yes, that's true. That's got to be. Sure, that's true.

If I can just watch a guy kind of like in a nice chair swivel a drink around. Oh, sure. Yeah. And he's not a, he's not an action captain. Picard, Picard was a very like, he would have the away team do his,

his dirty work. Wow. I just get to like hang out in his study and watch him learn about history. In his ready room. Oh, but the, the only issue is he, he doesn't really like Gilbert and Sullivan.

Everyone on Star Trek. Everyone on Star Trek loves Gilbert and Sullivan. Loves Gilbert and Sullivan. There is a scene. Just like there in Sorkin shows. Yes. he doesn't he really like gilbert and sullivan everyone on star trek everyone on star trek there is a scene just like there in sorkin shows yes the one big thing in common and it also doesn't make i will give j.j abrams credit because in in 2009 star trek it is sabotage playing from by the beastie boys and it doesn't make sense that people would be listening to music that happened after 1930. Because that had not happened in Star Trek yet. Where it's like everyone likes... There's a scene in Star Trek 9, I believe, or 10.

No, I think it's 9. Where to jog Data's memory, Picard starts singing Gilbert and Sullivan. It's the opening of the movie i believe with like and it's insane it's insane that that's like a running thing through air and sort through like west wing and studio 60 is like gilbert and sullivan and that's truly what like uh hoity toy like this is what smart people think is funny and it's it's fine it's its own little thing, but it's not fun. One of my favorite things about Cap, maybe my favorite thing in Captain Marvel was the Skrull makeup.

Yeah. Because it looked like junky next generation aliens. Yeah, I like that too. Which I am just, I love so much. Oh, it's a little like sloppy. Yeah, and he's like, the suit is a little, it's a Ben Mendelsohn and he's like real clunky in the suit. It's fun. And like, it's a little like sloppy yeah and he's like the suit is a little it's a ben mendelsohn and he's like real clunky in the suit and like it's real fun and there's a point and it's it's kind of out of tone of the movie but he like takes a drink from like a soda cup that's an alien and i'm like

oh this is good i like this sounds like game of thrones now yeah um he's doing starbucks now so i'll recommend you an episode or two where there's a lot of aliens by the way are you guys excited for jj abrams reboot of the hms pinafore he's really gonna make it more populous it's just called pinafore oh i like it yeah yeah yeah got a lot more stunts now. A lot of lens flare. Okay. So, yeah. In your crew is an ancestor of Picard. You got to stay away from the Klingons who they call in and yell at you.

Korath. Korath is played by Vaughn Armstrong. So, Korath is in other things. But Vaughn Armstrong is in many Star trek shows seemingly yes and also just really fast he is in uh an episode of the show eagle heart directed by our friend jason walner the episode tramps uh just i'm just gonna leave this as a clue to anyone listening just watch find the episode tramps of eagle heart it is very relevant to our yeah to our interests and theme parks and I don't want to spoil it. And Vaughn is the father of Jace Armstrong, a guy we

know. What? Oh, I still remember it. Did you not know that? No. You didn't know that? I did not. Wow. So she produced, I think, on Nathan For You among other things. That's right. And performed at UCB. Yeah, Jace is an improv guy, very funny guy and a friend of ours. His dad is Vaughn Armstrong.

It seemed like Vastrong armstrong also on decker so he's on like all the funny shows yeah he's on he holds a some sort of star trek record of like guest stars he's been on the most series like different characters and stuff wow and he does all the cons and stuff yeah he does the con circuit yeah wow i'm so glad i brought up his name that's crazy yeah yeah very cool look up big art tramps von armstrong is great in this he's it's it's a fun klingon performance because you gotta really bring it to be a klingon uh you need the most like just screamy yelly scene chewing it's it's a lot of fun yeah uh maybe that's what i'm gonna look up i need to look up

koreth episodes i'm not sure where koreth k Korath might be a Deep Space Nine or a Voyager. I'm not totally sure. Yeah, he's later. For whatever reason... Now there's a Star Trek fan yelling at me and being like, you're a fraud because I can't think of what episode Korath is on. There's a lot of great Klingon characters. Christopher Lloyd plays a Klingon in Star Trek 3.

Oh. Which is really great. Mm-hmm. And then Christopher Plummer plays a Klingon in 6. Really? So you got a bunch of great character reactors do i think my way in is korath because i love theme park specific characters and if i could get more sweet sweet korath that's my in um but he explains like uh you know we gotta we

gotta get you guys back to your time we're gonna try to lose the klingons in a nearby nebula seems like good plan to me if there if there is one nearby and uh and at this point you're like that's where you are ushered to the real ship that is not a simulator because we dealt with that this is where you're now in a real spaceship um and during which you watch a different pre-ride video but this one's more futurey and when it starts it's in the wrong language and jordy who's doing the narration has to flip it into english and like ah there we go right which is a fun little moment i just want to say korath first appears on the ride and then does show up he was in the right

first yes yes that's the best combo yes if you take ride mythology and take it into a show or a movie and then he was on voyager then they brought korath back cool back yeah all right i'm looking up korath also jace was a full uh producer on nathan for you hey all right good work yeah um uh good show um uh hey here's something it's not good do you know the name of the ship that you get on in the in the uh yeah oh yeah yeah it's called the goddard it's the goddard fuck you goddard stop putting your stamp on everything uh so that's not good but the video is fun uh and then the the ride itself um it's more like back to the future than star tours and that there is a a screen that is stationary and separate from the vehicle that you're on. But the vehicle itself is like,

it's like if Star Tours had an open roof. It was a convertible simulator. And it shakes around and gets a pretty severe degree of motion. It seems like it could do a lot. But it's sort of a more Back to the Future ride vibe. I don't have a lot to say about the ride itself it does the ride seems a little more like cgi goopy yes um but it seems plenty neat though right yeah and like a fun little like action thing to end yeah absolutely

yeah yeah wormhole i forget everything that happened on the way but you're like being you're running around they built so many there's a corridors and the square footage of this thing is massive the turbo lift i think there's a little scene in that too as well like that shit you got it under attack and it like shakes and like that's a whole different sort of like journey to the center i was gonna say yeah like journey the center of the earth yeah um shaking elevator and that's all and it's all crazy like and then and then doors open and then another person like okay now you gotta get over here. They create this frenzy that is a lot of fun

and a little confusing. What direction am I going now? Yeah it is a haunt. It's like a and they make it more of a haunt. And I wonder how similar Rise of the Resistance especially is gonna be to this. Well we I mean we know kind of how what the gist is

for it and it's very similar it's in different orders i think of what happens but like when it opens in 2025 spoiler alert though you get on some sort of a ship first that sounds like a platform much like the elevator or something where you're all standing in a ship and it shakes a little bit but you're like seeing a screen it's the first thing i went to when it was said like it's a ride but also there's these other parts yeah that sounds like star trek experience to me yeah and then you get off that walked in another queue and then you get on the official like ride vehicle wow but i think there's fun nonsense to be had in between everything and yeah uh yes unlike the star trek experience it doesn't seem like rise of the resistance will

take you ultimately to modern las vegas yes no because you go back through time you go back in time to your time but you didn't lose the klingons no they, they followed you. They followed you, so you're avoiding a Klingon ship, but over current strip. You start at Excalibur, you soar over MGM Grand. There's an MGM Grand marquee where you can see a sign for FX, which I'm so, I need to look into this. It was some show that, like,

who's in it? Michael Crawford and David Cassidy. It's some weird, like, futuristic magic show that seems insane. It was at the MGM Grand Forever. Oh man, we need to find that. There's, yeah, yeah. Oh, you know what? Similar to that, also long time residency at the Las Vegas Hilton,

Starlight Express. Wow. The train musical. Of course. Yes, and yeah, like on a massive scale. Yeah. Great. Yeah, which it has to be to fit all those roller skaters such a perfect vegas musical yeah yeah we'll get to wait yeah we'll do starlight if anybody's excited about starlight express it's coming i am yeah so mgm grand marquee you also see a ad for a mike tyson

fight and i looked it up and this would have opened in the precise window when mike tyson was banned from fighting because he bit off holy fields here wow at the mgm grand i believe uh so incorrect got a doc points uh there uh you could not have seen a mike tyson fight right uh you also you pass by my favorite part you pass by a different marquee for another hotel that is advertising a concert by the Moody Blues. This is in a ride. Nice. Thus making it the first of two Moody Blues related theme park attractions. The second being the Knights in White Sack.

Of course. Ride. I had no idea what a pioneer this was. Wow. More Moody Blues interactive content, please. Video games, avoid. It's up to them uh use your property wisely tv shows based on their songs i know a separate show for each song yes disney plus get

on it buy them you own so many great properties buy the moody blues a jj uh abrams reboot just called satin that's the number one thing he gets in there he shaves off words that's his home renovation style uh and then you end up back at the las vegas hilton which really makes me smile that you're just looking at like a hotel brand name in this ride and then you crash into the sign very important they say we're gonna get you back to those simulators remember that you're about to get on we're gonna take you back. And then you crash into the Hilton sign. And because by then Back to the Future ride has happened, it's very important that you just crash into logos that you recognize.

But why would they not like lower you? You would have to fuck up the hotel. It should be a gentle landing. Yeah. Yeah. But it's fine. It's fun. We know.

But then you're like traveling down the shaft and that's when you hear the voice of picard and you know that he has been restored to the timeline the ancestor is safe and he is safe uh and he says a funny little monologue the part of which the gist is only one of you is my ancestor but each of you guards the future. So funny. Yeah. So silly. And I just hope that Ancestor has a good life. I wish the Picard bloodline a happy history. I like the idea that Picard has so many different relatives that there's just one in each group.

Just by the way it breaks down. Oh, yeah. Every single tourist group. Yeah. Well, we're talking like 200 a day yeah yeah every day 365 um somebody some some horny picard was uh past picard was getting busy all over the nation yeah um the another great thing after you leave is that the tvs were playing a news report of ufo sightings over las vegas what i didn't know that yeah so you would get like a little thing that was i don't know if it was at

the bar it would just say like you know unknown uh unknown objects or yeah yeah we're flying over las vegas that's so fun that's like the men in black ride yeah it's just like a blackout and you justify oh here's what this was and yeah that's a very fun detail really fun wow this is great yeah on the experience the only yeah the only thing i do would prefer quark's bar to be real but that's minor because people were dressed up as like ferengi and yeah so why is that then why is there a ferengi walking around right i guess that's just like this is the fun goo fever and these are actors and they're dressed up as okay as these alien characters sure but you're yeah you're led into the well at this point it's you go through the history of the future museum which has a bunch of star trek or like memorabilia probably the

largest standing collection of star trek memorabilia um there's a lot of like boring details in the video of like this wasn't on camera but it's a replica it is photo ready but it was not photographed right this feels like this feels like what you would expect the experience to be you'd expect a vegas star trek thing to be like you walk through and there's some props and there's a video and it's only that sure it's that there's a marvel thing now in vegas that i know has like some like hulk buster suit or whatever but i feel like that will be underwhelming who is this fooling that doesn't seem like yeah and it's like there's interactive games for kids and i'm like i these games will not be fun for man in his 30s and i guess you'll have to go drink i will give you money but i won't fully enjoy it

i'm not fun for all ages only so um i guess we should back up and say that it's in 2004 they added a second attraction oh yes the borg invasion 4d uh and i don't know a lot about this i watched a video it's a little harder to ascertain what's going on but um feel free yeah i mean this is i mean it's it's very similar to the thing uh to the other one so they basically it seems like they peeled off two of the bridges or two of the excuse i'm trying to remember they basically whatever the capacity for the klingon version of it was they took some of it away take two of them away and made them the Borg. So there would be two different versions you could go on.

It would be the Klingon version and the Borg version. And the Borg version was a true haunt. Yeah, this is unnerving. Yeah, this is like true like this is Horror Nights. It's not fully well, maybe it's close. I mean, it's scary.

Cast members get assimilated, you know? cast members get assimilated you know cast members get assimilated so let's talk quickly about the borg uh 10 minutes later an hour later the borg scared the shit out of me as a kid i was so goddamn scared of the borg of all the bad guys on the show what's the borg so the borg are basically like robot men essential robot men and women so they have like weird did you know even know what they look like okay so you know they have things over their eyes with little like lights and uh basically of basically what'll happen is if a board beams onto the ship you can shoot them with your phasers like for a couple seconds and then they assimilate to the frequency and then there's like a little shield so they keep assimilating and changing and then basically if they get to you it's like a

zombie or a vampire and they just put their little hands that have little tendrils and they just go into your neck and they start assimilating you they're parasites they're like techno zombie thing happening yeah zombie thing and then they put like they fully assimilate uh assimilate you on their board cube which is a scary cube ship i was scared of the ship and that's in the ride or that in the 4d experience experience um and then on their ship it's a very like dark and like just like platforms and these like charging stations for the new borg so like there's just people kind of like this like zombies or mummies essentially and they're like charging them up as they fully become borg this is cool this sounds very scary very cool very scary uh picard

famously was assimilated on one of the episodes at the uh best of both worlds is the episode am i am i wrong about that am i gonna get yelled at uh let me just look you better drop everything and wait wait what happens to him he gets assimilated and how do they uh so that's it's a cliffhanger they end the season with picard assimilated oh no what a great cliffhanger reicher has to figure out if it's worth going in to save picard or not because this could be a bad idea. So, of course, they ultimately decide to do it and they get him back. And then they follow this plot thread through for Star Trek First Contact, which Picard is like haunted by the Borg and they introduce the Borg Queen, which is a very sexy character, very horny character, and to tie it into theme parks,

highly influenced by Angelica Houston from Captain EO. You think influenced by? 100%. Wow. She has... She shows up in this. She shows up in the Borg invasion. Oh, that's that like...

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Borg queen. So it's like half, she's like half body, and she comes down when there's all these things like it's a hundred percent captain eo all right there's a tie in there um and so they they follow that plot thread through uh into that movie okay and yeah so being in a place where the borgs are being in a place where the borg i think especially me in 2007 maybe i wasn't ready to handle it honestly because i'm such a such a brave man now uh in 2007 maybe i

would have been too scared to confront the borg i think i can now so because the premise of this is that you have been taken on to the the medical bay of the deep space nine station and the doctor what is the doctor's name uh just the doctor i mean he eventually gets a name but he's mostly it's the doctor he's a hologram oh he's played by robert picardo another great character actor he's a great character he's just very funny in this um and he's like we think you you all seem to have the genes that can like counteract the borg infection so we may be able to figure out some sort of antidote from you and

then have that and we're Picard's ancestors well it's different it's different because they're like separate I think they're self-contained stories okay oh no certainly but pause if you did them both good point good sign

someone might is a Picard ancestor who's an anti-borg so then of course the board shows up because they can't have any of that and then um uh uh they start attacking the ship and and suck suck the wing you are in on to the the borg ship and and then they come and save you and you're going through like corridors again but this time they're lit much scarier yeah it's a lot more it's got it's much more of like a scary daily and vibe yeah and you end up ultimately seeing a 4d movie that that ties the plot yeah yeah but until that point yeah you end up like you're being chased by a couple of them crew members yes yeah taken over by them. Whoa, a person gets sucked into the ceiling?

That looks awesome. That's crazy looking. Yeah, they're on like a little lift, essentially. And then they get like taken into the ceiling. There's another person I think gets pulled into the wall. There's a couple. There's another effect like that, too. A lot of red shirts eating it in this one.

Yes. Famously, the red shirts and star trek always die oh okay um but like the generic people that you know really know yeah okay um that was mostly on the first series um and then they of course i think they sent it up in the first jj star trek something like that there's like a red shirt guy he like dies immediately okay he like jumps off i think it's when they skydive off of that giant drill he eats it i want to watch all of these things so bad right now i'm so excited i want to watch the jj one i want to watch all of next gen for i'm getting so excited we're gonna have to pause and watch eight movies and then keep going yeah pause and uh okay we're back um so and then what like this also was a little similarly without being there it was really

hard to gather what borg 40 the movie was all about uh it seems a little like wonkier graphic wise than the other thing yeah the other thing i think is probably a better the klingon version i think is probably better but if you consider this like here's a b not a b ticket a d ticket as opposed to this is a major e ticket attraction this is monsters after dark guardians of the galaxy this is just a little bit of an extra fun thing yeah side attraction yeah um but it's cool seems cool it's very cool um this was in 2004 right we said that so that that they're still adding stuff and that to the Museum of the Future, they're updating it to acknowledge Voyager and Enterprise that even later on. Right.

Newer show. It feels like they're I mean, Star Trek was on the way out a little bit at this point, but it does feel like there was just a right situation, like a deal hadn't been reached. It feels like there was a chance they could have. Well, that's what they wanted it to try and get it reopened somewhere else in 2009 to coincide with the Chris Pine movie. Right. And that got pushed back and then in 2011

they were finally just like we lost it's not happening. Yeah. It seems unclear why it stopped happening at the Hilton specifically. It seemed like it seemed like it was just like allusions to like Cedar Fair said that the Hilton did not meet the terms of the contract. Maybe they weren't pumping in as much money as they needed to be or keeping it up or there was just some maintenance issue. And Cedar Fair maybe thought we could get this moved elsewhere and keep the quality high. Right.

But unfortunately, they took it to a place called Neonopolis, which is I think I could be wrong about this. I think oddly, my guess is that this is a strip mall that was built on the land that was intended for the enterprise back in 92 or at least around there kind of at the end of fremont street right um and i got interested in neonopolis a couple years ago and like oh i should go walk around there and i started walking up to it and it was as if meth zombies were like the board coming out of it was exactly like the board now that you say it it was i feel like there was literally mist and then they start just like lurching forward it really felt very video gamey like what's that is that a friend no no kill it uh it was so scary instantly it's like really

it's the end of where vegas is an acceptable place to be um and so this is a mall that does exist there's stuff there they got that novelty heart attack grill you know where you get weighed and they uh you're in a hospital gown and i think there's a thing there's a waitress thing there too like they put it mean yeah like it's like i'm gonna put a needle in your butt everything's famously unhealthy and i think oh if you're over a certain number of pounds you can eat for free jason would you let a woman put a needle in you and heart attack grill i mean i like i have vitamin b shot yeah i have at a doctor like when i've been sick with the flu or something i don't know that i do that at a place called the heart attack grill what's funny is that I know that you get vitamin B shots. You talk about it quite often.

I like that. I like the hyperbaric chamber. I want to get in a hyperbaric chamber real bad. You want to do that so bad. Like Michael Jackson? Yeah, but it healed. Did he do that? Yeah, he did.

But it healed. I don't know if it worked for him. It's keeping Quincy Jones young. It healed Daniel Bryan's concussions. It healed Daniel Bryan. Youcussions. It healed Daniel Bryan. He can wrestle again because of it. Joe Namath swears by them too. Well, and then there's,

well, you know what? There's something else that can maybe help heal the old brain up. You could go at Neonopolis. You could check out Bongzilla, the world's largest bong. Yes. I should go to Bongzilla this week. this week yeah hey go check out bongzilla

i don't know if you can use bongzilla my guess is no i don't want anything to do with marijuana you can buy a small replica uh bongzilla who something you can buy a small especially now i believe bongzilla came along when they was it pre legalization because it is recreationally legal in Nevada. I think now it is. OK, if you're listening to this right now, I may be staring at Bongzilla in real time. That's maybe what's happening. Navigate yourself while listening to this to Bongzilla. You might be planted right there right now.

There's also a Denny's with a wedding chapel. So Neonopolis is just like novelty city. And there was a moment where they were maybe going to have the Star Trek experience and where the owners were just talking as if, yep, it's coming, it's coming. And it never came. And it was starting to be, you know, like you said, they were trying to get it open in 2009 for the JJ movie and then nothing had happened. By 2010, there was just an auction where they sold off everything from the History of the Future Museum. And like the captain's chair. So that is all in the hands of various collectors at this point.

So they couldn't reopen the thing if they wanted to. And anything that didn't sell, they just destroyed. Really? That's what I saw. Yeah, I think I saw that too. Burn it all up but in a nicer thing they did decommission the attraction and the longest serving actor the person who had been there the longest there was a banner that had flown over it and they're like according with naval decommission you are entitled

and they folded it up and gave it to her and i believe she was playing a vulcan and she was in character and when they're like we're giving you this as the longest serving crew member. She starts like crying. It's a very emotional moment. Understandably. But like, yeah, they had people there from the show. They did do a big close, a big grand finale. And I like when they do that.

I feel like they did that. They sent off Back to the future ride with a little ceremony and it's yeah it's nice when something's acknowledged in that way uh the can i just say one more thing about neonopolis that like i it's a shame that the star trek experience ultimately like fell victim to vegas shadiness because like this is a thing where like it seems like the main developer is shady and the city was not sure if they wanted neonopolis there at all he's promised all this stuff and owes all these taxes but then within that there was another like a separate shady guy who opened a couple businesses one of which was something called crave massive which was billing itself as what would be the world's largest gay nightclub and the space that they were going to use for crave massive was a movie theater

that the other shitty owner like it ran into the ground because it was i mean a bad movie theater all the regular stuff went wrong but also it stopped having air conditioning you know in vegas in the summer so so we're going to take a dilapidated movie theater and turn it into the world's largest gay nightclub which technically square footage wise it was except that they only opened you know two of the rooms which were former movie theaters and they didn't change the sign so just said like theater two and then that was a dance floor uh you'd go into the various rooms and drinks would be wildly different prices between like a vodka soda six dollars more in theater one than it is in theater three they said really big on the website we validate parking and

then you'd get there and they would not this thing is such a funny disaster um the guy who built it like had people overlooked the fact that he had years prior done Jail time because he Used his seven year old son's Social security number To get seventy thousand dollars in bank Loans in San Antonio Went to jail for a year And somehow this guy's still yes Vegas

Do whatever you want That's the shit that gets you into like Secretary of something He'll be organizing the Iran efforts. But anyway, and this is a fucking disaster in the thing. Like, you know, they owed $700,000 to the city. But my favorite thing about this club is that so they had foam parties, reasonable thing for a nightclub to have. But keep in mind, all of the dance floors were built out of former movie

theaters movie theaters slope they slope to one corner and they didn't fix that so all of the foam would just pool on one end of the floor as well and you'd be in there trying to dance and then just like slightly drift over to the bottom oh my god that's insane the insanest yes how was this allowed to be built and on top of that oh so if i get in though will it be a nice experience no you will be charged radically different somebody described this is almost too awful to say somebody described like we went in there and we got in the elevator and my boyfriend leaned up against the wall and it was just covered in lube. The wall? Why?

So Crave Massive at Neonopolis, hell on earth. What could have been? These things never would have sat next to each other. They're going to do a top tier Cedar Fair theme park experience next to a lube elevator? Mike and I also ended up at a- We've been to a foam party together.

What? But not on purpose. went to the it was the only bar left open like in that strip of los feliz silver lake like that it was a long weekend i remember it's like memorial day or president's day or something like that all the other bars are closed that one was still open and i hadn't even had an empty patio the patio was totally empty and we're like oh let's just go in and get some beers and go out on the patio we walk inside we didn't say we didn't know anything about the patio necessarily i can see but i'm just saying like we didn't go there because we're gonna go to the patio i was just like oh we're gonna go to the phone party no we just knew it was still open

and we walked in and there was a phone party and when you are not prepared for a phone when you're just trying to buy some coronas a phone party when you're not dressed for it or not they're intending it it's just a slip and fall hazard because everything is so soapy and we literally went and we got our drinks at the bar went out to the patio but like yeah we're just kind of like stepping over foam and stuff what's interesting it was in my old neighborhood and it's just down by that it was it used to be it's now a different place it was right by that trader joe's and uh it's i hadn't we had never been there i and i wasn't somebody's like oh you know mj's open and mj's is a gay bar and i go oh yeah we haven't we've never been in there so let's just go down there it's open so we went in there

and it was a fucking party man i didn't realize that a party on that like that street's relatively quiet i mean there's a few bars and like because that street's relatively quiet i mean there's a few bars and stuff but it's not across from the former disney uh that's where that was animated where that now there's snow white foam so we walk in and like everyone is like almost naked like they have underwear on and they're shirtless and yeah we walked in the foam party 1 a.m on a sunday night and like we went into the bathroom and the guys are like why aren't you in the foam because everyone's soaking wet everyone is like there was not a we were the only like clothes we were like yeah so then we went onto the porch

because yeah everybody was like i mean do i don't think we ever considered well maybe we should just take the shirts off and try yeah find the a log everybody yeah you're near your apartment just like head back grab some flip flops and some scuba gear if you want if everyone was on board maybe i could have been convinced it seems but even the people there for the phone party as like they're they you know the last call we're closing up you know everyone is almost eating shit everyone is almost falling even the people who came prepared are almost slipping yeah so I guess we're coming out with a stance against

surprise foam parties planned against prepare for it yeah I think it would have been good if it said if there was like a like you know a hotel has a vacancy sign or an apartment has vacancy. If it just was foam party lit up.

If there's a neon foam party sign. You just light it up and put it outside so we know when we're getting in there, we're about to walk into a foam party. Foam today. Foam today, yes. Or no foam today. It's a vacancy situation. Yeah, right. The funniest current client of Neonopolis is that is where the Telemundo affiliate is now.

The Las Vegas Telemundo affiliate is also on the third floor of Neonopolis. Functional business. Functional business. Studio. Confusing, yeah, sloping phone parties. An axe throwing, one of those axe throwing ranges. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a weird, that's, Neonopolis is

where Vegas goes to die, and it is where the Star Trek experience died. We need to mark confusing, sloping foam parties for the intro to this episode. Yeah, yeah. Oh, good idea. But, hey, let's back it up to bars a little

bit, because, you know, this is maybe a good way to close it. We gotta talk a little about Quark's Bar and Grill. good way to close it uh we gotta talk a little about corks bar and grill did you guys find out stuff about corks bar and grill a little bit but i maybe you have more i think well i do in that i i mean i have some menu screenshots yeah yeah is what i have okay so i'm glad you found that stuff uh i also found oh now i don't have it i found details of like what would happen if you got married at the uh at the star trek experience um i i read like what is like the ultimate like package yeah yeah yeah the commander package

or whatever and you get a lot of tickets to the borg encounter you mainly get like a suited like so there you will have a witness there who is either a ferengi or a or a borg you could have a borg i think i think. Yeah. If you're like a dark person. I guess so. If you're kind of twisted. If you're on the gothier side. What alien from Star Trek would you want at your wedding? Korath. Korath.

The green one that Kirk has to hit with a rock from the original show. The one, the fight in the... Yeah, the fight. Yeah. Oh, you're right. That guy rules. Yeah, I like that guy. I like a little figure of him. Mike?

I'm trying to, it's going back and forth between, I like Quark himself. Quark is played by this guy, Armin Shimmerman, who is just a fantastic

character actor. But also then there's a Ferengi played by Wallace Shawn, who I'm forgetting his name on Deep Space Nine. And he's great because it's Wallace Shawn dressed as a Ferengi played by Wallace Shawn, who I'm forgetting his name on Deep Space Nine. And he's great because it's Wallace Shawn dressed as a Ferengi. Then that being said, I also like Neelix from Star Trek Voyager, who's another weird little character actor man who's fantastic in alien makeup.

So I'm going to say I'm going to say Quark himself, but I'll take any I'll take a Ferengi. I mean, I think you would have had a generic Ferengi i don't think i know the actor unless you that's the ultimate what's the top tier of star trek ranking uh it might be commander uh i don't know uh well if you're the captain is number one okay but so then a birth role is sorry emperor you gotta do the emperor's package and they'll call they'll call the real actor for the q package. But so if you got married in the Star Trek experience, your reception would be at Quark's Bar and Grill and you could customize the menu. And we have some of link to from the voyager dvd uh where you get to watch the executive chef of corks bar and grill explain how the the menu was landed on and he is sort of doing this at gunpoint he's a little bit uh hesitant awkward and just talking about you know so we you know

we try to have some we get a little bit creative with the stuff um you know i i presented the menu and they said that's great we like that and you know sounds good now trek it out and i said what does that mean and they said you figure it out so you know that's when we came up with you know that there's like pizzas in a triangle shape or um you know we have the hamburgers or um you know we really really checked it out um here you see the the holy rings of beta zad uh which is you know we took the onion rings and we stacked them stacked them up on a pole so um you know, we have fun with the stuff. And then it cuts to a guy who's a lot more enthusiastic than the executive chef. Sorry, the holy rings of Beta Zed.

What did I say? Didn't you say that? Or maybe I misheard. I don't know. I have holy rings of Beta Zed. I think I misheard that. Written in my notes, which is always a good thing to write down anywhere. Sorry.

I do like that presentation for onion rings. It's very fun. But I think it's funny that that's presented as trekking it out because I've done that at Red Robin, which is not trekked out as far as I know. There's a place by UCB Theater of Birds that does that too. They do it? Really? Yeah.

Oh, wow. Man, they trekked it out. But so then you cut from this guy who like, yeah, so, you know, I was told to think of space and I thought of a triangle bun to a guy who loves it. It's the most cheeseball waiter. Who is he? Is he just in a uniform? I don't think he's a Klingon or anything, though. No, like a Klingon or a Ferengi would walk up to your table at this restaurant and like bother you a little bit.

But this guy presenting the specials uh hey we have and we have the wrap of con it's like a chicken fajita only it's wrapped up for you it's in a spinach tortilla uh and then he explains the hamburger uh which is ground up borg meat think of it as as b, the other red meat. Anyway, it's the most cheese ball thing you're seeing. And elsewhere in this video, it's explained that there is a drink that has dilithium crystals in it. And that if you listen closely, it might even belch. I mean, that's dangerous. First of all, dilithium crystals are what power the ship. Oh, God.

They're in the warp core. Like, that doesn't make any sense to have that. Well, one of the drinks is the warp core breach. Is that it? That's the big one that served for two, and it's got the dry ice in it. Does that have the crystals in it? Well, I think so. I can read the description.

This is from the Turbo Lift menu. It says, be careful with these cocktails. They'll send you to the upper deck, and then it's cut off from there the upper deck of drunkenness um this is like a tiki kind of drink where you like maybe two more than two people share it uh red alert order this drink and prepare to separate your saucer section what so that means okay so what that means is that the enterprise nc-1701d is able to separate the circle part at the top from the other ship. Oh, that's the saucer section. So that's the saucer section.

So that's a little cute little thing there. You know, I will say this, though, obviously, as we read these things, they're kind of funny and cheesy. I like that they wrote jokes in the menu. It's pretty fun. In this drink, five different flavored rums razzmatazz what the fuck is that i don't know and fruit juice we add pure ice crystals from the planet x03 you'll need more one you'll need more than one officer to handle this situation these drinks sound like nightmares

to me i mean i i'm excited they are the most up mike sally and the least up mine okay i'm trying to figure out the uh economics of these drinks because the warp core breach which is for for two or more 10 ounces of liquor 29 50 okay so yeah all right it's a big party drink it's a big bowl it's got dry rice a mini warp core five ounces of liquor half as much liquor 14 75 it's just straight in half oh okay it's straight in half i thought it said 475 i thought i was going insane and i was like three dollars for a two-person drink it's full of razzmatazz in the late 90s that's like how the moon i think yeah i yes i think that's my problem with it.

Let me read this other one. They don't elaborate a lot about the liquid latinum, but these flavors. Fuck me. Spiced rum, melon liqueur, alize red passion liqueur, and blue curacao will put a Ferengi into a daydream about precious latinum bars. What a nightmare. Several liqueurs. These are, these

flavors are not, they're not meant to be digested by human beings. There's one or two cocktails on the cantina menu from coming to Star Wars, coming to Galaxy's Edge. In 2019, yes. There's one or two cocktails where I'm like i'm assuming

you had a professional making this because like i don't know that like coke and bloody merry mix sounds that good or something there's some weird disparate flavor combinations i don't like any of this i mean like are you down with those mike melon liqueur i would try it try it doesn't mean you would try it. Try it. That could be like a- Doesn't mean you would love it. Because Hell at the Moon, don't forget, that drink sucked ass. Yeah, it was not a good drink. But I think like a melon liqueur could taste like a watermelon.

Melon liqueur and regular rum, I can see. But the spiced rum is kind of rubbing me the wrong way. I'm not sure. There's no bait. What I just listed, there's not like one that's just regular. Yeah. Because if one of the ingredients was unadorned yeah okay it's yeah it's spiced rum and it's watermelon whatever too many things there's a

lot of things i'm skeptical yeah but it could be okay well you know it could be fine um what else are you guys seeing well i mean there's stuff on the menu that like like it says deep space wines which is great wines chief o'brien's bottle brews because chief o'brien was the he was in uh the transporter room on next generation but then he was the engineer on deep space nine he's colm meanie that's the actor's name so he's like an irish guy like to drink and they they make his uh little section what position he was in the transporter room and then he went to what? On Next Generation,

he was transporter room and then on Deep Space Nine, he was the engineer. Oh, so he got a promotion. So yeah, sure. And then, and he also got more money because he was a regular.

Oh, that's true. Sorry, which drink is that? That's the whole section called Chief O'Brien's Bottle Brews. Oh. So he, like they've named all the beers after Chief Miles O'Brien.

Can I read this one really fast from the Deep Space Wine menu? This would be my choice, I think. The Sacred Chalice of Ricks. Only wine from... What? Batased? Finest grapes is acceptable for the Sacred Chalice of Ricks. Personally overseen by La Waxana Troy herself.

Parentheses, Cabernet sauvignon la woxana troy is deanna troy's mother she's played by uh migel i always forget her name is migel barrett who is gene roddenberry's wife and who does the voice of the computer and she did it until she died a couple years ago wow but she even did the voice in the first jj movie oh oh so it's a little tie back and that's the voice that supposedly they've been working on because they've they've got so much of her voice down is that people want that for Siri because I

want that for Siri oh yeah oh gotcha like but so we'll see when it's if it's ever coming it's a funny thing about this menu that like I guess that's a carrot's a beloved character who oversaw the production of this wine and there's other ones like that where like Picard said these chicken fingers were okay. Like the main, not even like side character, like Geordie LaForge thought of this like French dip.

She was the one who thought to crush up Captain Crunch and roll the chicken finger batter in it. I'm curious about Captain Sulu's salad because it says a frequent visitor to Quark's bar. He was not the same time period. Yeah, it all unravels. That doesn't make sense. Yeah, that one doesn't. You got to drink enough until you don't care about conflicting timelines. Yeah.

I like shuttle salad. All right. Like, I don't know know what's an s word that's in start a shuttle oh yeah fuck it shuttle shuttle salad in terms of giving up uh similarly if i could read glop on a stick also known as jumja this station treat looks like an awful lot like a corn dog served with fries in fact it is yeah there's footage of a guy going around after people have had their food served in costume and and he asked the child it's like do you like your triples that we were told they taste like chicken but to humans everything tastes like chicken uh just kind of like razzing the ride on the raz and the kids just blank face like to smile okay i don't

know i'm having chicken don't bother me yeah dad's just dad's irritated yeah uh the one thing that bothers me and maybe it's maybe i'm not seeing it presented in a different way is that they have on the menu different ales they have klingon war war nog ale they have cardassian ale falcon ale promenade ales and then they have romulan ale which very famously through the run of most like most of the series they talk about romulan ale as being illegal it is so highly alcoholic that like you know like i got a little Romulan ale Like Guinan has A little Romulan ale behind the bar for you If she knows you and she trusts you

Like absinthe 10,000% But this is just presented it's $4 Or like the other ones This should have it's own thing This should be what you want This is the blue milk this is the butter beer This and like

earl grey tea hot should be the two things that you want to drink when you go to a star trek themed bar and they're not presenting it in a big enough way or making a big deal out of it i'm gonna make this prediction for galaxy's edge because the blue milk the kind of frozen blue milk smoothie you get at the stands is different than the blue milk in the cantina right and that difference until i sample both is going to drive me insane like you know it's like i try not to be too much of a completist nowadays but but i have to sample both milks to see which i like more what would you get on this menu on this this menu? On the Star Trek menu. Oh.

I'm not sure I have enough of it in front of me. I mean, Sacred Chalice. I'd have maybe three or four Sacred Chalices of Ricks. Mm-hmm. I think I would want to try the Warp Core Breach. With the, even as sweet as it sounds. Even with the dry ice and everything. So, there's, they have Glop on a stick, Hugh Borger.

Now, that's, this is just me Mike-splaining you Star Trek characters. Hugh Borger, Hugh is a character. They rescue a Borg at a certain point in Next Generation. And they sort of rehabilitate him. And he's like, they finally, like, they name him Hugh. And he's like a little sweet guy., they name him Hugh. And he's like a little sweet guy. And his name is Hugh of Borg. And they, like, rehabilitate him.

But he still kind of has his Borg stuff on. But he's like a cute Borg. Anyway, they grant him up into meat. So, anyway, fuck him. He's a hamburger now. I don't think I have enough of the food in front of me. Those are all from the cadet menu. Yeah, I don't either.

I have to say, if anyone out there has these old restaurant menus, if you could just scan them in a high resolution and put them in one album between this and Marvel Mania, trying to track down all the pages is a lot of work, you guys. That's so crazy. That is

the cadet menu I was reading from. Yeah, because they have Geordi's Nanite Pizza, specially engineered by Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge for a younger cadet what why is he one of the main characters took some time to engineer a pizza yeah joseph cisco's bayou linguine that's it yeah i gotta get that i didn't see that one joseph cisco is uh benjamin cisco which is the keys the captain of deep space nine yeah that's his kid and for whatever reason his kid has bayou linguine hey i gotta shout out that we're back to drinks but the james t kirk spelled like t

uh made with beef eater gin bacardi limone frizz, Frizz Vodka. What the fuck is that? Blue Curacao. What? No. Retire this ingredient. Sour Mix and Gatorade Alpine Snow. Oh, I gotta have that. Fuck you. Kirk's too smart to drink this. Gatorade. I thought that was like the

Long Island iced tea equivalent, but it's such a shit show. It says this drink on earth, a Long Island iced tea. I don't even like when places are like with a Sierra Mist float. And I was like, I don't know why that. No. Scratches, that bums me out in the wrong way. Did you find the menu with McCoy's martinis?

No. There's so many of these. McCoy's martinis. There's a Boolean sunrise, red shirt, Vulcan nerve pinch, the Badlands, and the Royale. And then on the other side of this menu is the neutral zone, which is non-alcoholic drinks. And Data's Day is the name of the first drink. And it's, of course, it's not a serious drinker of alcohol mr data nevertheless enjoys a tasty beverage every now and then especially now

that he's installed his emotions chip he needs to install a chip lets him have like water in him liquids um if he he can't taste strawberry and pineapple juice unless he has his emotion chips in. Data has actually been known to say, I love this drink. He has emotion about something only in this taste. There's also one called Wesley's Crush. Well, I mean, this is like a real tome of this menu, which is pretty exciting. We'll post like stills of this. But I think, you know what I think?

Actually, within the menu, it is listed as the final frontier. And perhaps it should be the final frontier of the episode. It'd be too long for me to read all of them. But Jason, I'm going to make you make a blind choice. I'm going to give you five dessert options by name only, and you need to pick one, and then I will reveal what you have chosen. I mean, some of them describe themselves. I had this open. I don't have it anymore.

You may have seen some of them then. But I don't remember them, so please go ahead. Your choice is Nog's Banana Split, the Pie of the Prophets, Kefarian Apple Crisp, Deanna Troi's Ultimate Sundae, and Udaberry Sorbet. Oh, well, I think I would have to go with The Pie of the Prophets.

I'm so glad you did, because having said it out loud, that gave me so much joy. I would have been sad if you didn't pick it. And also, it is by far the longest explanation. So, perfect. The Pie of the Prophets, also known as Kai Pie. This recipe for a delicious pie came directly from the holy orbs themselves. Yes.

Graham Cracker Crust, sounds holy to me, with a combination of dark Chilean chocolate mousse and Bajoran peanut butter topping drizzled with caramel and chocolate sauce and topped with chopped Bajoran peanuts. This dessert is truly blessed. My child. Wow. I love it. So it's like a peanut butter pie.

Not quite a mud pie, but I'm into it. And blessed and holy and the most sacred dessert you could have picked you did it i do like with liquor i don't like sweetness overload but with dessert sometimes i do like uh all right chocolate peanut butter and caramel and butterscotch and like all all of them like a suicide of sunday toppings there's uh on the diana troy has a drink called diana troy's chocolate obsession as well chocolate drinks are gross uh i just noticed one that i also had a giant wall of like chocolate wine for a while i'm not quite into that uh there's a drink a drink i would order that i didn't see before the riker rita that's really good. What do we got in there? Well, it's Commander William Riker's

number one drink at Quark's. Be the first officer at your table to order this taste sensation. No problem there. Made with Sousa Conmemorativo. Conmemorative, not commemorative. It's not a resolution that's very good on this menu.

There's just a bunch of stuff. Again, high resolution. Why do they think melon is a big flavor in Star Trek? I think that was just the time, right? What's that one? That's a 90s thing. That's a 90s. What is that famous melon liqueur called?

I don't know. I feel like I heard a lot of people. It's like that was their first. It's called vomit in a bottle. Yeah i think that melanie midori midori was a lot of people's first of course because it's like candy yeah oh all right well if you're trying to trick someone into drinking yeah that's the way to midori is the way to go uh what a world of wonder so much to do from realizing you're in a group with picard's ancestor to facing the borg themselves is that right to well they are they all could refer to themselves as one we are borg so how what would it be? It's like a rat king. Yeah, kind of.

To seeing the Borg, to eating a corn dog that's called Jumja for no reason. You could do everything there. And what a bummer. Tragedy. Yeah. So, yeah. Stupid Neonopolis for giving false hope to Cedar Fair. And I don't think we're going to even, like, there's rumors of,

right now it doesn't seem like we're getting a Star Trek land at the Fantastic Worlds park. No, I don't think so. Does it seem too late? Like, if they'd been more on the ball? It was rumored that it was going to replace Terminator, but as Matt Rogers said, it's going to be Bourne. It's going to be Jason Bourne.

I'm skeptical that that's even happening now we broke that story my feeling is like if stuff if i feel like the buzz has died down i feel like generally it's i'm skeptical it's going to happen right now we're hearing a lot of tomorrowland rumors so if i feel like if this buzz sustains to d23 we got something but if this dies down we don't hear anything about it for a year and a half then i think they're back to not i mean yeah it seems like fantastic uh worlds is what how to train your dragon uh universal monsters uh nintendo and fantastic beasts yeah bullworth the bullworth uh small foot but i think even if I'm sure they could do a very cool Star Trek ride and like, there's some concept art and things on like the Starfleet Academy land area, but I don't know.

I don't think it's going to have the charm that this seems to have. Yeah. This has the junky charm of Star Trek that I love. And I think if they do something, it'll be like almost too big budget. It'll almost be too. It'll be great. It could be very great. But like, I don't think they'll be like, well, we should make it look like that junky looking syndicated show that people love from the 90s.

It's going to look like a sleek JJ movie. Yeah. But if you like junky charm head over watch this transition head over to the second gate next week uh when we'll have some more star trek stuff to talk about in uh the theme park world that a junkie is the correct word to use to describe some absolutely the operative word it's yeah you're watching weird live star trek tv broadcasts and early weird blue screen and uh yeah it's a lot of fun so ice skating oh see i don't even i don't know what's happening here uh yeah so we'll get into all of that oh patreon.com

slash podcast the ride yes head there right now i'm so excited I need to calm down with I wish I had a sacred chalice of Rick's in front of me but I but I don't but if you have a head over there more Star Trek at the patreon you survive podcast the ride what else check us out on Twitter on Instagram email us at podcast right at gmail

dot com and may the force be with you what's the sign off of Star Trek well live long and prosper of course can you do it can we all do it no I can't you all can you can a little yeah I can do it both hands no

my two of mine are don't attach whatsoever I took a class in the 90s took a class to learn how to do it just kidding as far as I knew a class in the 90s. Took a class? To learn how to do it. Just kidding. As far as I knew. All right. Good fingers, guys. Thank you.

Catch our fingers on the next Patreon episode. Take your fingers and pile it to the Patreon. All right. Make it so. Yeah, that's one. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner,

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