Podcast: The Ride - Star Wars: Secrets Of The Empire

Episode Date: May 25, 2018

Your hosts travel to the outer reaches of the galaxy (Glendale, CA) to experience Star Wars: Secrets Of The Empire. A "hyper-reality" experience from the good people at The Void. NOTE: This episode contains spoilers for Star Wars: Secrets Of The Empire. Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/ FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Warning! The following podcast contains a not entirely confident explanation of haptic feedback. Special shoutouts to K2SO and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And a fond farewell for the Glendale Galleria Restaurant 90214. Today we tackle the Star Wars Hyper-Reality Experience Secrets of the Empire. Enter the Void on Podcast the Ride. Welcome to Podcast the Ride, the podcast hosted by three men who would gladly take jobs as longshoremen at Pixar Pier. I'm Jason Sheridan, joined today, as always, by Mike Carlson. Hey, yeah, that sounds like a pretty good job. You're unloading candy for Bing Bong. Not bad. Yeah.

His new Bing Bong's candy emporium. Bing Bong's and that chicken restaurant are opening there. We've all seen the art for what's coming in Pixar Pier and Disney's California Adventure. But we haven't seen the crates. What do the crates look like at the pier that we are to unload? Yeah.

Us two and me, the third host, Scott Gairdner. Jason, you have to introduce the firewalls. Yeah, this is Scott Gairdner. You started talking before I could introduce you. No, I figured I just, I was trying to save you the work. I wasn't trying to. Scott Gairdner and You started talking before I could introduce you. No, I figured. I was trying to save you the work. I wasn't trying to.

Scott Gairdner, and I love saying my own name, too. So, two birds with one stone. Yeah, well, let's look out for those jobs. Yeah, we all need to work. I mean, we don't really have regular jobs. We're in the entertainment business. You never know when you're going to get your next job often and and if we could get you know some actual work doing like honest to goodness real labor i think we would all it would be good for us get a little

like most entertainers we romanticize uh a blue collar back breaking labor yes yes that's true and we'd like arrogantly assume it wouldn't actually be that hard. Right. Yeah. Yeah, if I wanted to, I could make the shift. Yeah, yeah. I could carry stuff all day. It's just I got too many ideas I want to figure out. I'm a creator.

We're storytellers. We're some young creatives, and we just have too much to give in that department, I think. Yeah. Loading with ideas. This room is filled with whiteboards, and they're covered in different shapes. We have too much to give in that department, I think. Yeah. Exploding with ideas. This room is filled with whiteboards, and they're covered in different shapes. You use different shapes to tell different kinds of stories. Different shapes of different cards.

A pink octagon is different than a blue rhomboid. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh. We are so creative. Let's say you crack stories. Yeah. We're all about breaking stories. But if we have to break down crates, we can do that, too.

That's as specific as I could get about long shoreings. Yeah. I know that you wear like a hat, like a winter hat that's kind of falling off your head, maybe, when you're a longshoreman. Even on sunny Pixar Pier. Yes. And also people know what you are. You talk like this. This is the voice, I think, of a longshoreman. That's what I Pier. Yes. And also people know what you are. You talk like this.

This is the voice, I think, of a longshoreman. That's what I know. Yeah. A platonic ideal longshoreman would have that voice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like an idealized. An idealized.

You're saying that that might not be accurate, that some longshoremen don't talk like that. Yeah. Okay. It's possible. It's possible. We know so much about real things in the world. We don't just have our yeah okay well i was impossible it's possible we know so much about real things in the world we don't just have our heads in the fantasy clouds we know about real stuff i worked at the container store for years okay i planned closets for people i told them

where boxes were and i told them where other types of boxes different types of boxes that might not be. This was labor. You were basically a dry longshoreman. Yes. An indoor longshoreman. I had a neat and tidy blue apron on. And I had a, there was a certain. Which you still wear. It's torn and worn and sun bleached.

I certainly do. I like people asking me questions when I go into a retail store. I want them to think that I'm some sort of authority. Yeah, no, no. I think as many container store memories as you can fit into the podcast. Is this the first time it's come up? I think I mentioned it maybe perhaps one other time.

I think once before, yeah. Yeah. Look, I have a lot of container store memories. My first job, one of my last jobs really because I haven't had a job in a long time. But yeah, it's a great place. I was in a Container Store a couple months ago, and no one asked me if I needed anything,

which, first of all, is against sort of the code of the Container Store. You should be very accommodating to people. On top of this forthcoming. And no one did, which I thought was maybe a problem with corporate, and I was going to write a letter, but I forgot. But yes, I want it. I feel you have lost the luster that you once had.

Also at the container store, and this does drive me nuts, they taught me that when you would do an announcement over the speaker, you should not hang up the phone because you hear that noise of the receiver hitting that clunk noise of like the the head like the receiver hitting that that clunk noise so when in ralph's or whatever and they you know say

something about io4 you hear that horrible noise the phone makes when it hangs up we don't do that at container store you put your finger you hit it before and then you put the phone down yeah so it's a much cleaner sound and then you you say, have a container-y day. Yes. And you walk out and there's a man in a corrugated box waving to you. It's Corgi, the container store mascot. That part is not true. Corgi in that he's named after corrugation?

Yeah. I don't know if things are corrugated at the container store. Oh, we have corrugated. Oh, good. Oh, do you? container store we have corrugated yeah oh good oh do you yeah we have corrugated boxes well look how much more helpful you are still just on a podcast than the people who are in the store right now yes that's true and that's a store that you can upsell people at like when people are trying to get their shit together if you start like oh well what about a couple of these little boxes to go in the bigger box like i think most decluttering books say figure out what you need and then go to the container store but a lot of people start by going to the container

store oh yeah yeah there was look we we sold a bill of goods to many people and they probably it didn't help them at all yeah in a way sure i mean if you utilize the products correctly it certainly helps but for many people they went in thinking that they were going to change their lives. And no, they just spent money. They filled the pockets of the fat cats in Texas at corporate, at Container Store corporate. At Big Container. At Big Container. Big Container fat cats.

Yeah. You just moved recently. And did you feel that your Container Store knowledge helped you move more efficiently? No, no. I'm disorganizedized i am a disorganized person uh in some aspects not everything but in a lot of aspects uh no it didn't help me uh uh it helps me i will know how to plan a closet a little bit even though my closet looks like shit right now but if i ever have a giant closet i will know how to make shelves and put them in the right spot uh you will not be addled by the big problem that the richest people have i don't even know where to begin to find my own stuff yeah i need an atlas to get into my own closet uh you'll be the most organized rich man there There are a lot of rich people in the Chicago suburbs

that have closets that I designed. Wow. Which is just, it's a night. People will, once they hear Podcast the Ride, they'll be like, whoa, did you know Mike from Podcast the Ride is who planned this closet? And then the house value will go way up. And they'll be like, he got away from containing?

That seems like a misstep for him they will say that they won't be wrong should have stuck with what he was good at he was very good at this and he decided to go out to california and blow it a lot of uh money in those chicago suburb closets i mean there's got to be you know obama's birth certificate is there he's real canyon birth certificate is there sure he real Kenyan birth certificate is there. For sure. He went into a container store in disguise. Yeah. Now, if I wanted to hide something. I want to hide something in a non-descript container.

I planned everyone. I planned Rahm Emanuel's closet. I planned Reverend Wright's closet. Obama's reverend. I planned the weather underground guy. Yeah, weather underground guy what's that guy's name yeah yeah bill ayers i planned bill ayers's closet uh and i planned uh man cow muller famous radio personality man cow muller's closet now on like fox at two in the morning and a lot of your containers are full of the bodies that oh but we don't even

know about that obama had to dispose of in order to get the job to begin with yeah yeah yeah there were trunks i would suggest trunks to people and i knew what they were for but i was against company policy for me to like that's the chicago way right you know oh yeah yeah yeah well the daily family the dailies the capones you know yeah. When they go like, I need a trunk. And I was like, got it, my man. And then we went back there and I showed them. And then I would be a very download thing. Why doesn't Mueller or Leaker Comey talk to Mike Carlson?

These containers contain all the answers. It's a cover up. This has been a lovely tangent into the world of right-wing conspiracy theories and organized crime uh at the start of a star wars episode that's true we're gonna have to change the title of the episode to star wars secrets of the empire slash the container store part one uh slash hashtag the truth well there's one there's one other topic that I'd like to squeeze in before we enter the void, which is that I just returned from a trip to Vancouver, Canada. I left this dear country of ours for a few days and missed it so. I was pining for everything that's been making America so fun lately.

And I had a wonderful time. I had done Toronto and I'd done Montreal, but I had not done Vancouver. And I was very excited to be there because there's a lot in Vancouver that was set up in the wake of Expo 86. If you're not familiar with World's Fairs in general or Expos, if you're a fan of Epcot Center, I like Expos and stuff because they give you that epcot vibe uh you know there's that uh there's that uh futurism and idealism towards the future and a lot of bland music playing everywhere and uh and weird robots there's a guy named ernie there's a robot named ernie running around the uh you ever seen a picture of ernie i don't think i have should i look it up

right now oh look up ernie yeah should i just google Ernie from Vancouver? Yeah, Ernie Expo 86. Oh, that's good. There's a lot of cute bots out there in bot lore, but I think Ernie is one of the most adorable bots. And in fact, he was a topper on our wedding cake, on Aaron and I's wedding cake. Really? How about that? It was Vancouver Ernie.

Do you look familiar? Yeah, yeah. If you're listening at home, do yourself a favor. Look up adorable Ernie. He was rolling around was rolling around yeah oh that's very cute and very in your wheelhouse I feel like oh yes absolutely uh uh yeah blocky 80s logos and faceless minimal adorable robots it was the the top of our wedding cake was Ernie from expo 86 and R2-D2. R2-D2, we gave a little bow tie to, and Ernie, despite being a boy, got a veil. Ernie was the bride. And it was a wonderful cake. I loved our cake. But we got to see Ernie's birthplace, his home. And among the things that Expo 86 left

around Vancouver is a place called Science World, which has this big, awesome Epcot-y dome to it. And that place is home to the OmniMax Theater, where Back to the Future, the ride, was tested. As we talked about in that episode many months ago, there was this alternate version of the ride that they ended up testing up in Vancouver and canceling and starting over because it was making people sick.

And I will tell you, I sat in that very dome where it was tested. Pretty major motion sickness. Wow. Really? Still? Yeah, I thought so. While watching the film that we chose to watch,

which was a 1988 French movie about beavers called Beavers. And as you were following beavers around their meadows and watching them build dams and such yeah we got a little we definitely uh got a little motion sick which doesn't happen to me often it doesn't happen to me on boats or planes but uh watching the flight of the beavers yeah apparently it did it did it for me what year was it sorry 1988 uh pretty old movie and it was filmed with it like in it was an original imax or i'm not sure maybe omnimax uh movie as well which i i liked getting

to see like a janky old film like there were jib shots of this thing revealing the grand vista of the dams that were built which were incredibly impressive i'm very impressed by beavers, or as the French called them, le castor, as they said constantly. Le castor. They teach their children work ethics and minimal architecture. Has that been playing exclusively since 88? No, it was a special thing.

Every day at 11 at Science World, they have a slot called Teacher's Choice. So if you are a Canadian teacher and you want to do a field trip, you can call ahead and they'll pick whatever. And for some reason, this group of English-speaking kids wanted to see the French film Beavers.

And they told us, it was just us in a big field trip group, which was kind of funny. I hear a lot of kids laughing at the beaver antics or the when the baby beaver uh uh encounters a skunk for the first time and then runs away like a lot of word foley uh beaver sounds i recommend beavers in general by the way excellent uh excellent film and i like that but i like that it was like a like a janky all the jib movements were real clunky it was very not digital it was very um you know uh it was very analog but in a charming way anyway beavers made me sick because if you look to the side of the screens you know like seeing

a forest and with a lot of trees those trees with the fish eye like bend like crazy yeah yes yeah yeah not straight at all so now i understand why they had to start over with the back to the future ride uh uh more i mean i know the audience was clamoring to hear more about omni max curvature issues did you wander into the projection room to see if maybe they had an old reel of the back to the future ride just hanging around there yeah just sit you know there there wasn't there was not that but they on in the exit you do get to pass by the the projector which is an incredible sight it is like the actual thing yeah yeah it's like such massive military looking technology and you see the film reels and it feels like it's like a foot

wide what they're running through that thing it takes up so much space in the room i'm so impressed by old crazy imax technology i don't know how any of it was ever done do you know what's playing in there not during the teachers thing uh there's some space movie narrated by jennifer lawrence it's you know like any imax theater in a uh in a science setting they're cycling through a lot of things. I think there's probably something to be had. If IMAX counts as themed entertainment, which I'll declare it does, I would like to delve deeper into some of those odd,

like Michael Jordan at the MAX. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that the correct name? Something like that. Predating Space Jam. That was at Navy Pier in Chicago. Michael Jordan's first uh oh sure okay and uh um the what there was a rolling stones imax movie i believe maybe multiple rolling

stones that sounds right it was uh right in the center uh downtown philadelphia there's the franklin institute named after ben franklin which the the uh the original institute of future technology the game of the franklin institute is like it's a museum but it's fun or it's like a museum but it's like whimsical like you walk through a giant version of the human heart like you walk through all the valves and stuff that's pretty cool there's play areas and they had one of the first imMAX, if not the first IMAX, in Philadelphia. And we'd go on field trips or, like, you know, go into the city on a Saturday with family. And, yeah, we'd usually go to the Franklin Institute. You usually pay an extra eight or ten bucks at the time to see an IMAX thing. It was always nature or science-based as opposed to now where it's it's like you can just see pretty much anything

in imax but it did feel like you know a treat in the way that i think of like theme parks is a treat it was special it was rare there wasn't that can only be done there it's place specific yeah yeah yeah it yeah it is really impressive like watching this this this dome just engulf you uh it's really amazing because it's bigger than the Universal City Walk IMAX. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Much bigger. And curved and like wraps all the way around it. Which we were just at the other night.

We were just there for the premiere. I left with a headache. Jason was depressed by it. Jason felt sad for all the little children that would see this movie because they would be so sad going into the summer also myself i don't know sad for you it was funny because a lot of people people some people who don't like it like oh it's boring or it's stupid or whatever

but jason was like was affected just too sad freaked out by uh yeah well by one of the effects like in the ending is upsetting. Yeah, I mean, this will be out for a few weeks, but I guess we should just avoid talking about it for another month or two. Yeah, we won't say what the effect is. An effect is depressing enough? But I found it unnerving. Huh. And then in the other part, I realized, yeah, usually what happens is we come out of these movies,

and I, like, a very, Mike pointed this out, that I'm very cheery and I'm like, oh, that was fun. Because it's like, oh, it's a thing. We go to the big IMAX opening night. Maybe have a drink of margaritaville beforehand. And this one I left so bummed. And Mike came out going like, yeah, it was great. It was good.

Yeah, I, yes, I was very enthusiastic about it. Usually I'm like, oh, pretty good. Or I liked enthusiastic about it usually i'm like oh pretty good or i liked it and usually you're like yeah hey but because mike you're a real death merchant uh-huh you are a friend uh friend of the show who has yet to do the show nick mundy uh he also liked it he went with us and he immediately was like you're gonna hate it by tomorrow right that's what he said to me i was like i like most of these people complain about the marvel movies i like most of them like you just you know it's and it's tomorrow today and it hasn't happened yet so wrong again monday i like come on the show and argue me on the show yes let's

yeah let's movie fight it out yes any but But that said, my headache was not the content of the movie. It was the fact that it was an IMAX 3D. And I already have pretty big glasses. And to put those on top of it, it gets a little jarring. Like we had good seats, but I feel like the 3D, I don't move my head a lot. I feel like regular movies, I move my head more. And this, I feel like it was just kind of planted. So that was my, not quite motion sickness, but that was my IMAX old man illness.

Well, look, you go see beavers, you might get motion sickness. But on the other hand, no depressing effects in this. The scariest thing that's going to happen is when a bear tries to break into the dam. Spoiler, he doesn't because the beavers built it to last. Wow. Yeah. That sounds like a movie Jason would come out of, like, glowing.

I think he would love beavers. I can't imagine, I don't want to meet a person who wouldn't love beavers. Yeah. Who wouldn't love Le Castor. It was so charming. But you know what? That's not the main thing.

This is going to take forever. That was about, that was three lines of my notes, and it's already taken up 80 minutes of the podcast. What I mainly wanted to talk about is I got to experience an attraction called Fly Over Canada, which is another IMAX-related experience. It also stemming from Expo 86. This is this big pier area that has a hotel and it's where ships leave from in the Burrard Inlet. I think I'm getting that right. Anyone in Canada, let me know if I was

wrong about that. But yeah, they had an IMAX theater there that was about to close and they wanted to see if they could figure out something different to do with it. And I think a local company pitched, they wanted to do something like really specifically canadian so they figured out this attraction where you fly over canada and this ride is soarin it's not even similar to soarin it just is soarin and i found this really strange that there is just a freestanding soarin uh not in the disney park because disney is so notoriously litigious it seems odd to me that they would just like yeah do it that's fine and what year did this open um hmm a couple years ago 2013 i want to say yeah i think yeah yeah soren well established it's the same color scheme wow it's the same

blue lighting like the little like the rails that you hold on to. You keep your belongings in the same place. I think the hang gliders, quote unquote, don't swing out in that erector set kind of way. They don't do that upward and forward the way it does in Soarin'. It just moves straight ahead of you. But that's the one thing I will say about this. I think the range of motion may be better, possibly, than Soarin'. Yeah, there was a little bit more going on. It's a newer ride.

Yeah, and I believe that people who worked on Soarin' for Imagineering went on to do this. Turncoach, I say. Yeah, yeah. I don't care for that. Betrayers. I don't know that they own the ride system for soren maybe not like i think disney has trademarked older ride systems or like we talked about the kuka arm like yes exclusive rights being sold to it but i think this was a third party came up with that might be why then

yeah maybe the and and it's and by not doing the erector set thing by having it just swing forward maybe the system is different enough that dis could not claim that they own it. I don't mean to say something opposite to what you were saying, but I do believe I've heard Tony Baxter talk about a gentleman in Imagineering who did come up with this system. Uh-huh. So you're saying... No, no, no. I think you're right.

Because I've heard that, too, that they couldn't figure out how to swing the... He came up with like out of his like a Raptor set and thing. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I think that story is true, but maybe... I don't know. But it doesn't use that system is what I'm saying. I see.

Otherwise, it's exactly the same as Soarin', but it's just different the way it gets you to the screen. Yeah, I see. But I just... It's the same color scheme. It's the same lighting. It is so utterly similar. Is there a guy who was like a side character on Seinfeld

that does the introduction of it? Maybe he's a side character on a Canada-specific show. He's on Bruce McCulloch's Young Drunk Punk. He's the putty of Canada. That's the only one I could name. The Warburton of Canada. Iunk Punk. He's the putty of Canada. That's the only one I could name. The Warburton of Canada. I'll assume this guy was the putty of Canada. Yeah, but there is, it's the same.

He's also in like a flight suit. There's a joke about, sorry, hey, sorry, you can't bring your hat on. Then it cuts to a Mountie instead of a mouse ears thing. Wow. All the same steps of joke. Yep. You can't have loose belongings.

Sorry, I've got to put that hockey stick away. And it's like cut the same just steps to joke core yep yeah you can't have loose belongings sorry uh we've got to put that hockey stick away uh and it's like cut the same yeah yeah yeah yeah wow and then the guy the guy smiles like that's okay and he's missing teeth uh i loved it all i don't mean to sound like i yeah i saying that i think that it's odd that there's another soren please don't take it down or anything and as if this podcast would cause that uh uh i love i love that there's another soren please don't take it down or anything as if this podcast would cause that uh i love i love that there is that there is a freestanding ride just like next to a convention center and a hotel in like the deep city of vancouver wonderful i think that's so great uh uh and uh yeah the the whole thing was was pretty neat and well done. And oh, well, I should also say, oh, yeah, it's eight minutes long, twice as long as Soarin'.

So you're paying a little more, so you got to get bang for your buck. And they don't have the turnover rates that a theme park attraction would have, so they're able to make it longer. Right. And I should tell you some of the places that you get to go. You get to go to Muskoka, see some classic boats. You go to Wheatland Hutterite Colony in Rockyford. It's real pretty up there. You go to Lake Magog.

You go to Bella Coola, see the heliskiers. That's pretty neat. The heliskiers? The heliskiers. I wrote that down off the website, but I couldn't tell you what a heliskier is. You jump out of a helicopter and start skiing. Oh, okay. That's awesome. Whoa, that's really insane.

That's hardcore. Huh. All right. Well, I should find out more about heli-skiers. But yeah, it's really neat. One issue I would say is that as opposed to jumping from the Eiffel Tower to the Serengeti to the Taj Mahal, I don't know that I know the difference between Craggy Mountain and Lake Magog. It kind of just becomes you're in a bunch of fields for a while.

That being said, still pretty. And yeah, you get to see some fireworks just like in Soarin'. You get to go over Niagara Falls. That's nice. Yeah. One complaint that I do have, though, is that there is a part in Soarin' where there's like a little bit of water in Soarin', correct? Yeah.

Do you get sprayed? Do you think there's a spritz, maybe? Yeah. I don't know that there is. Maybe it doesn't happen. I think it's so immersive. Oh, maybe it's just pine. Pine and orange.

Yeah, I think it just smells. I don't think you get sprayed at all. It's all scents. Okay, okay. In this ride, you get sprayed hard in the face. Oh, yeah. Universal. It is a shotgun blast universal yeah it's way more

universal for some reason they just they want to obscure your vision and on these right and it happened four times so many and it is just a thick cloud burst and uh we got we got off there and my wife like couldn't see for a little bit. And I think it just messed up her contact, and she replaced it. But we were wondering for a sec, did you get an eye infection from Fly Over Canada? So if I had any notes, I would say maybe not such a gigantic stream straight in the face. But otherwise, hey, Fly Over Canada, great work. If you're adding up to the vancouver area check it out uh um and uh yeah um oh they also do it they do a christmas version i'd like to say where which is the same ride you still go to lake magog don't worry like

magog okay good but then you fly over santa's workshop and stuff and they pump in gingerbread scents oh that's fun and then there's a halloween one that is even more exactly the same except i think a witch flies through every once in a while but it did all it did make me think changing up soren but doing like holiday overlays of soren i think is a great idea for the disney parks do you mean just have like a witch randomly go inside or like actual difference um well i mean sure that is there a popular disney witch uh i guess it's i'm thinking of the warner brothers witch that one that one witch the june foray witch right um i now i don't have great ideas for the but like how about you know uh jafar hijacks your uh youacks your little magic carpet rider?

Hades. Yes. James Woods shows up in the middle. Uh-huh. And plunges you down into... Is he also from Hades? Is Hades the place? Yeah, because his name is Hades for sure.

His name is Hades. But he seems like... I think they call it the underworld. That's the name of the god. Yeah, yeah. They don't call it Hades. I think they just call it, but that's the name of the god. That's the name of the god. Yeah, yeah, they don't call it Hades. I think they just call it the underworld. They don't call it hell.

They don't say like, Hercules, you're going to hell. This is the debate though because Soren is so, even though, well, now I'm taking this back.

I was going to say, Soren is just real world locations with no characters. That being said, Tinkerbell shows up at the end of it and totally ruins the reality of the fact, of the, yeah. Well yeah well also you're constantly

flying over main street at christmas time no matter the year there's a lot of lights yeah so if you want to if you want to really believe you are hang gliding in march and that last scene really fucks it all uh yeah that would you expectancy like a grad night like you're expecting to see kids like in the alleyway where uh the ice cream window used to be sneaking cigarettes oh yeah sneaking sick puffs maybe maybe it's just like when you go into egypt you see the pyramids it's just like the the pyramids have a big bow on top like there's just little little fun things to do that way why is there a bow? Because it's Christmas time. Oh, I see.

Oh, okay. I missed that. Like a big pyramid package. Like a Lexus December to Remember sales event with the big bow that goes on the cars. Yeah, it's like a Lexus December to Remember sales event. I like that. Christmas decorations on the Taj Mahal. Uh-huh.

Yeah. Or when that glacier starts to melt in the antarctica or the antarctica scene it's like there's a snowman that's like waving goodbye to the glacier and it's frosty and he's got his his old silk hat like i'm i'm due to die soon yeah that'll be me in the briny soon uh there's a way to do it i guess what i'm saying those polar bears could crack a coke so we know they're the Christmas Coke bears. We could do some more product promotion on that ride, too. I think that would be good for them.

Yeah, yeah. They need more money. Yeah, yeah. That'd be nice. So, anyway, it opened up my eyes to the possibilities of changing up Soarin'. I think it'd be fun. I think they got something called Flight of the Dragon, too, for Chinese New Year. Oh, interesting. And I think they do Fly Over America,ica as well and it's all the same thing it's not like because because uh the uh avatar ride is very much soaring in florida but it's

like a different ride a little a different system but we talked about the holiday overlay of that correct back in the christmas episode uh what was it to make that one happen too that was the one where you throw presents out across the across pandora well you get to be the santa claus yeah you're saying basically riding because santa's got real sick uh navi santa got so sick and then you're riding in the back of the mighty akron um with a bag full of toys well i'd love to deliver presents to the hella skiers of bella cool that would be great yeah i believe that was also uh where uh people tweeted us and rightfully so they're like you guys fucked up you missed police navi dodd yes i mean yep great call we absolutely we absolutely missed that it is really on top of that shameful i mean there's a couple things we could probably make

corrections on but none more glaring than that. And I'm glad we've addressed it. It's my fault. I'll take credit because it was when I pitched the ride and I didn't think of it. And, you know, I love the idea that you can round a corner in a busy metroplex in a shopping center and that there is a big themed ride experience there. I think that's so wonderful. And that's what is attempting to be built by this company, The Void, who put together this attraction, Star Wars Secrets of the Empire. Among others, there are voids going in to a bunch of places all over the world, I guess. Voids are popping up everywhere. There could be one just on your block, in your mall, in your doctor's office. It could be anywhere.

Taking over the Schomburg container store. No, please, don't say that. Never. That was where I was born and raised, essentially. They could find a way to fit both of them into the space maybe if the void was like you got to go back in time to what the container store was like in 2002 you know if you got to experience what it was the history of the store we're already doing our our version what our ideal vr i would like to do the vr experience

of being mike carlson at the container store in 2002 that would be great having only you can put this on the correct shelf having friends walk in and just laugh at me because i'm wearing the apron and like i'm trying to look busy that's basically what it would be like high school friends would come over and make fun of that you had a job i did a lot of that i made fun of my friend who worked at start like what if i came in and ordered like i did stuff like that where like we pretend we didn't know each other and i'm kind of laughing at him but i i that was just a regular coffee transaction there's no joke there yeah it's just funny to see your friend in a context of like an adult man really is that's all it really is yeah yeah this doesn't make any sense

this isn't a shirt you'd wear in real life. This doofy idiot is actually trying to be professional. I was a utility clerk at a supermarket for a summer and putting the carts away and cleaning up spills and taking restocking items and that sort of thing. And I specifically remember friends coming by once and they're like, all right, we're going to go put some carts askew in the parking lot. And I'm like oh please

don't think it's a joke and i go out they had just to give you work yeah i think i did stuff like that though probably like i'm gonna it was a harmless thing yeah i hearts they're gonna have to go yeah yeah i that did happen to me they went and like moved the cart way far away and i had to like walk down to where the schlotzky's deli was and go get the cart which was the other side of that uh that park that uh start uh shopping but you handled it with a plumb and it's nothing that a somebody who's a longshoreman at heart couldn't take care of yes that's why i think that i'm ready for that job is because i i went through all that hard shit rough day i uneschewed four carts oh boy i need to crack a cold one after that did

your friends actually say like i'm gonna skew some carts no that seems pretty professional for a young rap skelly to say uh so the void i think we have so so the void yeah so basically the void is like it's it's it's a pretty small area but but it's virtual reality. Yeah. And it first went in, like I was made aware of it when it went into downtown Disney in California and then Disney Springs in Florida. Yeah. With this like big Star Wars thing. And it was a lot of fanfare, a lot of promotion. Made with Lucasfilm involved.

Of course, yes. With an original story. We should say before, and I think we should do because we want a full transparency on this podcast this is the first time we've been invited basically after you know doing some inquiring we were invited to this we got a perk baby we got a perk and got to experience this so we want to be like first we got the press invite we've put out feelers to places and some of them have been pretty receptive, but they often, you know, they've been receptive.

But this is the first time where they were like, hey, come check this out. You guys, VIPs. Man. And it's wonderful. And I'd just like to make a pledge and a plea. If you invite us or comp us, we're going to come. We're going to be there, baby. Yeah. or compass, we're going to come. We're going to be there, baby. Yeah, and we'll spread it to all the theme park heterinos

who listen to this podcast on the weekly. Sure. We'll get butts in your seats, in your virtual seats. We're going to goof around about controversial people in President Obama's past. Sure, but that's fine. You're going to still get people that are gonna listen to three idiots and they're gonna come to the place we're talking about no matter what we say because we're excited

about all this oh yeah and that's even if we and even if we were to give a place a bad review which i can't imagine we are about star wars secrets of the empires it was very cool but even if we did i've according to twitter we've gotten some uh knuckleheads to go to some places that were dumb and bad. Yeah. Because we told them to. Because that's part of it, too. So no one should be offended if we give something a bad review. Which we're not going to.

Which we're not. Full disclosure, we had a great time. We all liked it. Yeah, this is a blast. You know, you did remind me of something, though. When you successfully sent out this email and got us into the void, I thought, why don't I do the same thing and copy-paste some of your text and try to get comped for Fly Over Canada?

It didn't work. Nobody responded, which is, maybe I would have looked the other way on that thick mist in the face and my wife's near eye infection if I had been comped. But so, you know, we're still, we're figuring out.

Fly Over Canada, however you want to make a means to the Gairdner family. Feel free. I think they should make it right. And I think basically, look, if you're with an earshot and you have anything to do with PR, any of the big places, we're talking, obviously Disney's going to be hard. But like Knott's Berry Farm, we're listening to these other podcasts that do the theme park stuff. We know Season Pass. We know Mice Chat.

We hear these hosts. They were invited to the Boysenberry Festival at Knott's Berry Farm. Okay. Where they were invited to the boysenberry festival at knotsberry farm okay where was our invite to the boysenberry festival yeah because i was at home crying that i did not get yeah a boysenberry three weeks three weeks of non-stop boysenberry at knotsberry farm and we weren't there to cover it yeah i mean come on and if you if you let us come to bbf 19 i promise to be as as effusive and uh glowing as everyone has been to uh beyonce at coachella that's how i will treat i will treat whatever free boysenberry flavored pizza I get. I will consider it the Beyonce of food. Yeah.

So I think, look, famously the podcast Doughboys, Nick Weiger always says Doughboys can't be bought. And I'm not saying we can be bought, but we can certainly be kind of bought. We remember who our friends are. And our enemies. And our best friend at the moment, the people behind The Void.

Hey, The Void. Thank you for inviting us, Void. Love you, Void. And everyone was very nice. Everyone was very nice. Someone was a little upset with Scott for taking a photo, but that's all. Someone said...

He did break the rules, and when he did it, I was uncomfortable. Wait, did he? No one told me you couldn't take photos until the end. It was unclear. This was my issue, is that I took a photo of a TV screen with nothing did it, I was uncomfortable. Wait, did he? No one told me you couldn't take photos until the end. It was unclear. This was my issue, is that I took a photo of a TV screen with nothing on it, and I was immediately scolded for it. And I was like, well, I just thought that I could, because there was no signage anywhere

remotely implying that I could not take photographs. That's why I thought I could take photographs. That was one of our very, very minor complaints. Yes. Yes. And that's actually, that's where the complaints stop because once the television was turned on we got to meet one of our favorite characters so we're gonna say let's we'll backtrack if you don't i mean i guess stop listening uh if you don't want to hear

spoilers um uh uh which would mostly be what uh characters show up um and what the uh there's a story plot point in it um but i feel like we can't talk about it without mentioning these things so if you want then here's the non-spoiler review fun very fun check it liked it yeah check it out and yeah that's all i have that's the non-spoiler better use of the space in los angeles's glendale galleria than the restaurant 9021 foe yes we went to the glendale galleria resident peace 9021 foe no offense i don't i have no idea the quality of that restaurant i don't know if it was good or bad but i but uh going to mustafar instead yeah it. Oh, no. But the poster has lava in it. Isn't that?

All right. So sorry, everyone. The presence of stormtroopers also. You can't say that either. It's implied by the poster. No, maybe you haven't seen the poster. I guess so. Oh, my God.

Folks, we're so sorry what Scott just did to you. Bad boy, Scott, taking photos of TVs and spoiling names of planets uh a couple things to note one uh it's better not be a spoiler no i'm getting into spoilers it's the things to note not to say let's give them the official break this is the official break if you don't want to hear spoilers about the star wars void experience hyper reality that is a term I've seen used by them. Hyperreality because it's full vision and audio. There are also effects. There are very cool effects.

Haptics. There's heat effects. There's haptic effects. Haptics. You wear a haptic vest. So if you don't want to hear what the haptics specifically are, stop listening. You have survived the spoiler-free part of Podcast The Ride.

Travel to Anaheim, Orlando, Vegas, London, or Glendale, and bang out the void, and now start listening again. Or, yeah. All right. All right. Now. Okay. Hold music.

Darth Vader, Cassian Andoror NK2SO show up Jason all at once wait I got all at once I almost didn't want that one of them to be spoiled whoa what what a reveal what a stinker you are a stinker

we can build to the MacGuffin though we can build to the thing let's go way back. How do we suit up? How does the whole thing happen? Well, first of all, we should say that The Void is the work of a company that is headquartered in Linden, Utah, for some reason. Oh, wow.

Did you know that? I did not. It's like a weird, it's a big, fancy, ornate shed in Linden, which is south of, it's in the vicinity of Salt Lake lake city and that's where all this vr magic happens isn't that weird i believe so i read a little about the company too and i believe they were going to build an attraction or a park or or there and then kind of pivoted more towards this uh vr something called evermore park in pleasant grove utah which now is being built because i watched drone footage and the village of evermore is starting to be put together it is

described as perhaps a british or an english pastoral victorian perhaps even steampunk kind of place and i think and i went to the website and all of the artwork and everything looks very cool i think this will be an extremely cool place but building a theme park in what pleasant grove utah south of salt lake city that doesn't that feel like a hard rock park waiting to happen yes that seems like a very bizarre place to yeah to build a theme park with no ip with that is not where people are not coming because they're going to meet the star wars characters right um i'm sure i don't mean to be i'm just questioning the business of it right it seems very cool what they're planning please listen to our episodes on hard rock park and learn and learn learn the lessons of john benkowski i think the lessons

though of i think it would have succeeded if there was more advertising so i do think even though hard rock park was a disaster it's all the advertising, lack of advertising's fault. Yeah. You know what else didn't sound like a good idea is a place called Disneyland Park. That's right. Well, that's true. And we were just talking about, like, liking attractions in cities or odd places. Yeah, that's true.

So, Lyndon, let's get you on the map. And I guess if you are in Lyndon, Utah, you can go to their facilities and do some of these experiences. So, they've been starting to put these up throughout the globe. And some locations of the void do not have the Star Wars experience. They do have a Ghostbusters. Yeah. That Madame Tussauds in Times Square. Yes.

And I think in Toronto also. Oh, okay. I think in Toronto and i think perhaps in dubai at a place called city walk no relation in dubai uh uh yeah um is a very confusing looking like interactive mall there where they have the void um did you guys look much into the ghost busters i watched the trailer for it okay yeah i yeah. Yeah, I watched, like, the promo ad. Seems neat. Yeah, that looks cool. And to fire a person. That's a smart property, I think, to use it for. I think the potential for, you know, other properties that could use this is really great.

I mean, Disney bought some part of the company uh and so i can only imagine they're looking into other like disney properties to put in there but uh i hope so because yeah this was this was very well done and you like it's it's pumped up for the ads and everything but i watched a lot of videos on youtube promoting and stuff and people are very earnestly saying like i've this is the world i've been watching since 84 in the case of ghostbusters or you know i've been watching star wars since i was a kid and now this is the first time i really felt like i was in it like people seem to rank these experiences this i mean it definitely is you're more in star wars world than than star tours is this is the best vr i have ever

done yeah and i think ab, primarily because of combining the VR with practical sets. Like, you are walking through, like, when you walk through a doorway, you can reach out and grab the doorway. When you grab a blaster, you are holding a blaster. When you pull, like, a lever,

you're pulling the lever. But an interesting thing I found out, like, this space, I mean, I'd love to go back and see it with the lights on. This space found out, like this space, I mean, I'd love to go back and see it with the lights on. This space is just like a room with like some barriers and stuff and like chairs and a rack and like some fans. It's not massive is what you're saying.

It's not massive. It takes up a very small footprint. I was reading about the company. I believe they could use that same space and put a new thing in there tomorrow without changing the physical space. Wow. And you could even maybe run multiple shows like at the same time at the same time.

Yeah. It's not huge. Oh, another thing I found out, which I didn't realize doing it, it worked on me so well is the term here is misdirected walking or redirected walking where you think you are oh i'm walking in a straight line and that's what you're seeing in the helmet it seems to be a straight line you might be walking in a curve but it tricks your

brain really i didn't even know that that's interesting utterly mind-blowing you can look at diagrams showing how this works like i saw one that is there's kind of a diagram overhead and a side by side with what the guy's seeing in his helmet and what he's doing in reality and he's like literally touching a wall hugging the wall and it looks like it's a it's a hallway that extends for 50 feet straight ahead of him and instead he is walking around a completely curved wall and he has no idea and there's another i watched another demonstration of it where they like they they send a guy down a big hallway and then they ask like what do you think you just did i went like 20 feet ahead of

me and he walked like like diagonal into the side it's so great there's something where uh like the vision like what you're seeing is curving a little bit ahead of you just anticipating your movements and and because and i i saw an overhead of the downtown disney one and it's just they took out two stores to do this yeah the fossil and rip fossil and something else so the and but you yeah you feel like you're exploring like giant spaceships and planets and stuff it seems like such an effective use of like especially dying storefronts like when malls and spaces and malls are going out of business you plug this void thing in and you get so much out of so little i right before we came here i sent you guys a link there's already competition they already

have there's an alien the you know ridley scott aliens there's one in uh orange california orange county cal the outlets at orange the outlets i have to name them all uh called aliens uh descent and it's a similar thing to this where it yeah it's a storefront you have vr now that one supposedly they don't uh there's not a backpack. I think they use, like, they might use, like, wrist and ankle stuff to monitor where you are. But they're using a different system. So, this is already, like, a competitor. We need to get free tickets to the Alien VR. So, if you were listening and you work there, holler at us.

Which might cause us all to have some sort of episodes. I was going to say the Alien thing could scare the shit out of us. It would scare us there might not be a thing in pop culture scarier to me than the xenomorph yeah that might be number one i'm not dying to come face to face with the xenomorph i'm not either but as theme park journalists i feel that it's our duty to have these experiences, to give the public our opinion on them. And I'd still rather do that than, you know, a 40-foot drop where ragtime birds sing at me. For some reason, that's more terrifying to me. I would rather go on the Xenomorph alien VR than Splash Mountain.

That feels pretty silly as I say it. I should do all of these things. Yes. At least those. Now, you're not getting me. I was with Matt Mazzani, our past guest earlier. He's trying to convince me to go on, what is it, X2? What's the-

Oh, the spinning roller coaster. Why in the world would I brave X2? Yeah. Sorry, Matt. No dice. We'll see. Maybe if you successfully complete the mission, the alien mission,

maybe that will give you sort of the strength. It'll bolster my confidence in general. So maybe. Yeah. That one, I think, would be interesting to do because not a batch of movies that typically end happily. Alien? No. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, as opposed to, I mean, you'll get eaten. It's probably no specific spoiler to say that, you know, if you do pull off the mission in Star Wars, it's like, congratulations, you've done it and the galaxy is safe. There's never that moment in any alien. It's just like we can sleep for a second. That's the victory. Before another Weiland, Yutani, unnerving thing happens. I was wondering if on this thing that like

we will go back to like the start of everything but like I was wondering on this thing if somebody got shot too much would one of us like die? Obviously they can't do it because it's like hard and then like how do you disappear the person? Does like an employee just like grab you and like

pull you out of the thing? If you were to jump into lava which technically appears to be a possibility right what would happen to you then right what happened right who knows hmm yeah i mean it tricked me enough that the one there was a narrow walkway sequence and i'm like all right be very careful walk like i was like yeah it's probably you end up tightrope and we don't know maybe yeah that might we might have all been imagining that why because why would they make it of course so that you would trip um uh i truly don't and for so much of this i don't know what i did and i think if you showed me an actual lights on overhead of the room i'm not sure i that would make it make any more

sense no there's a real magic trick thing going on here and i loved it they sued up um they so they so the start of it basically is you sign your waivers because they don't if somebody falls over they don't want to be sued not a way complicated to sign they are yelling at you about they're like sign away and you're signing it correctly and it's an ipad and uh yeah so that is i mean that is a thing with vr that is a thing that i'm i'm sure as the technology changes because you could see somebody freaking out in here yeah i was worried it would be me i was gonna say scott i feel like as we were suiting up i was worried scott was gonna freak out well they i thought they did a great job of telling us if you start to freak out like raise your hand say i need say help

because we can't touch you until we hear, please help me. Like, we're not going to start messing. That phraseology scared me. That's some weird matrix we can't, it's dangerous to unplug you. You'll get trapped in the void forever. I mean, but they were pretty clear of, like, if you ever want help. But they did say, like, oh, don't just pull the thing off. Yeah.

Like, well, you got to get, there's got to be a whole system, a whole way we do it. Okay. That could probably be very unnerving. Yeah. That could really, like, that could cause you to get motion sickness or fall or something. I think also. Trying to rip it off. There was also a liability because if somebody sort of was, like, goofing around maybe and

somebody, like, pulled the thing off, like, then they would want their money back or something too. Maybe there's also an element of that. Like I think specifically they said like, we cannot pull you out of the void unless we have your expressed consent. Yes. Scary phraseology. Which is a very, yes. You sign a lot of forms and then you're led into this whole suit up room.

But you are essentially doing that when you go to Disney and Universal. Oh, of course. You're essentially doing it. You just don't see it. Yeah, yeah. You've already. There's all sorts of fine print that comes with tickets or admission tickets. Is it on the ticket?

Is it like. It's somewhere in there. Yeah. Somewhere. Yeah. I mean, there's fine print on tickets. And then, like, I'm sure there's a massive thing on legalese on the website. Mm-hmm.

Okay. So, yeah. So, the three of us were suiting up and we did we went with a friend of ours also so there were four total people should we say who the friend was? oh I guess we could mention it I guess if we wanted to

he wasn't really forthcoming he was just flying around outside we didn't catch his name yeah he was just buzzing around the Americana but yeah we asked him because we just we know he's a big fan of Mustafar so we knew that so yeah we asked him never saw his face

though never saw his face he he made the point that it felt like it was the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow because like people like they put this stuff in and you're kind of like hanging almost off of it

because it's the easiest way to put on like the jacket or the vest kind of a thing, the helmet, the visor. It comes down from a wire. You feel like you're putting on a harness that's going to lift you into the air like in a stunt show.

So the four of us are like hanging from the harness like basically while we're suiting up and it really feels like that part where they're about to just drop you into a war zone yeah yeah the suit up was the scariest part right which is when i looked over you and i was like uh-oh yeah well i also freak out i and i haven't done a ton of vr things yeah i was analyzing why i think just because i didn't know what it was going to

be in general of course but i think also i maybe i'm freaked out by hearing my own breath like in a scuba situation or when else would you i haven't put on a hazmat suit for any reason i hope i don't have to but anything i think it freaks me out in movies when you're like in the pov of somebody in a confined space and you can hear so that's something about that being able to hear my breath that here in burbank there is an indoor go-kart course and you have to put on a real racing helmet and neck guard because the cars can go up to like 35 or 40 miles per hour now driving it once i was actually doing it i thought it was fine it was it was fine and like i even hit the wall once or twice and like uh uh you know i i thought that was fine but suiting up for it was that was very unnerving so i get where you're

coming i have a similar i did a very well-paying funny or die commercial uh many many years ago that's just a joke it was not what is that hand motion you're doing what is that your fist is kind of clenched and it's going up and down as you say that? I was not making the jerk-off motion, but my voice would suggest the jerk-off motion. Is this what got them the Peabody? Yeah. But it was a video. You can probably find it.

Jeremy Piven was involved. But I had to wear like a racing helmet and i had no video it's a i think it's a hot wheels video branded hot wheels video a different time a different yeah i think it's like an eight or nine years ago and i we're all in a lot of if you're interested in the deep body of work of jason mike and scott we're all in a lot of branded garbage uh-huh um that captain we talked about the captain morgan we have not canon blast oh yeah what a nightmare that's that was i mean i don't think you'd enjoy even if you enjoyed uh enjoy this podcast um but that at least like

we we were just palling but you can see you get to see mike in a in a nice sweater wailing away on guitar yes and i have like lines this one I was no lines I just had to wear a racing suit and as You were saying I put the helmet on and I went Oh my god I hate this And I freaked out a little bit And then you get used to it and I also had a Similar thing when they put a fat suit on

Me at Conan when I did a bit that was Cut last year I had a brief panic Attack as this very very Like tight fitting suit went over my head and got stuck and i i was like yeah oh my god i'm having a panic attack and they pulled it down as like the hard as they could they slipped it over and then i was like it was on me and like everything kind of was like like and i went a little like it was like they didn't notice i don't think what was going on and then i recovered and then i was like this has still got to come off of me and i do not like it because you had you speaking of alien and you had like

a chest that's true so like a man was going up between your legs and shoving a puppet out of your chest yes it was a whole thing yeah and and they were like pulling stuff and ripping stuff and like creating like hole and i'm like oh this is like a pvc pipe is going very close to my penis like and i don't want this to be but they figured it out that wasn't that was fine they were very safe with that it was just initially so yeah but that was where that was where the the week was such chaos and then you had a full fat neck put on you and then as soon as it was finished being applied and painted the bit was cut. I spent two I barely went to the convention

Yes I spent three hours in makeup and they did the people the makeup people my goodness it was good it was amazing looking like stubble and like they went hardcore to make this thing look realistic It's not like one color there's like a

flow of the flesh tone It was a work of art. Shaded, contoured They should have won an Emmy if this thing look realistic it's not like one color there's like a there's like a flow of the flesh tone it was it was a work shaded contoured they should have won an emmy if this thing had had just right no that wasn't me worthy and then i got downstairs and it was right around lunchtime and one of the nice uh producers came up to me and was like okay uh this has been cut like immediately and i was like okay and it's like but here's the thing you cannot take the makeup off yet because we need to get like official official approval that it's been cut i go okay so i sat there and i had my lunch in front of me and it's very hard to eat with all that makeup on oh yeah you're just a fake beard it's pretty annoying right yeah so i said and this is what you learn when you've been a little bit in the business. I'm not acting like I'm a grizzled veteran, but you always, here's my advice, always ask twice.

Ask a couple times. Hey, yeah. Measure twice, cut once. That's what they say. Yes, exactly, Jason. Thank you for that. Better learn that if we're going to be working on those docs. So I said, I went up to the nice gentleman and I said, look, I would like to eat my sandwich.

Can you maybe just like ask someone and like officially, you told me it's cut. Conan himself has to approve you biting into this sandwich. And just say like, you cut that sketch, make sure, is it for sure cut? And he says, yes, it's for sure cut. And then I can go take the makeup off. And he was like, okay. And then he like checked and he's like, when the makeup off and he was like okay and then he like checked and he's like when the makeup comes back from lunch you can take it off okay 15 minutes and i was like thank you so much i really just sit there your mouth just just ruling waiting for

that sandwich yeah but many times in that scenario they would have let me sit all day that's just what happened i mean there's people are thinking about it's a million other things it's chaotic they have one episode of television so i'm not even blaming them it's just the nature of the beast what's crazy is that you're at you're down at comic-con and people at just at the convention are uh willingly wearing perhaps more difficult wardrobe people are in full ed 209s stomping around fat There's so many fat bastard cosplayers coming, or they're in that thing all day, and they're loving it. There's people who don't exercise all year who then lose 12 pounds in sweat just by wearing this costume all day.

Also, I meant the Austin Powers character. I wasn't being insulting. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not referring to anyone at Comic-Con. I realize that movie is almost 20 years old at this point. But no less beloved and relevant. I don't know about that. The world just mourned the death

of Verne Troyer. People were saddened. Yeah, that is true. That's true, but he was from the surreal life. They probably knew him from... Mainly from... Which season was he on? Was he in the one with china porch oh god that made me sad anyway so we got suited well before we got suited up we saw there was a little pre-show where as i said yes cassian andor cassian andor diego luna yes from rogue one

i was impressed i was like whoa yeah they got, they had. That also I love. A little video that's only shown in the Galleria with movie star Diego Luna. We were, this is what, we're in a shopping mall.

We walked into a pretty open room and there was just like a high def normal TV and it's a pre-show and we all went, ooh. We all knew

that coming because we all like micro targeted entertainment. This Diego Luna piece of media only plays a hundred feet from the JC Penny. Yes. And the screen came on and it said a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. So like you're getting the full Star Wars. Yes.

Uh, thing. And he tells you. No, no scroll though. No scroll. No scroll. Oh, that's fair. I wanted to walk around inside a scroll. Oh, wow.

Touch the letters as they move upward and away from you. So you are rebels. You're going to sneak in to a base on Mustafar, which is the lava planet. Which is where, of course, Obi-Wan Kenobi has his iconic fight with Anakin Skywalker. Yes. In part three. The Revenge of the Sith. Okay. Of course. is where of course obi-wan kenobi has his uh iconic fight with uh anakin skywalker yes in part in three the revenge of the sith okay of course um and then it's also where darth vader builds his castle vader's castle is on mustafar you see it a little bit in rogue one when he makes that pun right to ben mendelsohn you you are sneaking in is that the character's name jason

director krennic i believe in rogue one yeah that guy Jason? Director Krennic, I believe, in Rogue One. Yeah, that guy was great. Ben Mendelsohn. Yeah, I like that guy. So you were sneaking. They've stolen a transport vehicle, and you're sneaking in in disguise as stormtroopers. Yes.

And that's your mission. And then you go get suited up for the mission. And you're going to get a little pill-shaped item that I couldn't tell if it was like a uh if that was like a thing i could hold in my hand or a uh thing that i could fit into entirely yeah it was a big crate it was a big crate we couldn't quite tell i was i was really nervous about that actually if you if you listen to the audio you recorded audio you'd probably hear me going what is that what is that what's the size of it like i was worried we couldn't get out of

here right unless i recognized what the what the cargo thing was right right is it something you sell at the container store uh it's very similar to the poster tube i feel like where you would you know of course sure uh send a poster in the mail so that that is the the mcguffin of the story that you know there's some sort of super well i think they allude to like it's something powerful it's yeah yeah it's a little vague but then the all spark he has it is like a lot like the all spark he also then has like a gunfight in the video oh yeah the angelina starts having a gunfight with someone or a blaster fight yeah because it's one of those where like we don't have much time and yes and there's there's rounds being fired and explosions going off and rumblings but he took the time

and it's so fun. A theme park trope I'm always on board with. It always gets me. It always works. And it's great too because literally within a hundred feet there's a cheesecake factory. It's so great. Like we're watching this video on a TV and I'm not being facetious.

There's an extra fun element to the fact that we're watching a pre-show ride, as you said, near the JCPenney. And we didn't know what was... You don't know where you're being led once you're in the elements. They could have walked us across the street over to the Sprinkles Cupcake ATM.

That's true. Quick. Get one. Quick, get your money out. What are they... Credit, sorry. Wow, it's so real. your eat your mustafar uh rations yeah it would have been that you it's an atm dispensing that rising bread that magic oh which

is the best part of force awakens and i like force awakens okay i agree with that rising bread uh so you're you're suited up and they they get the helmet on you but they don't put the visor down until they put you in what is literally a very tiny tiny room yes and i believe they said may the force be with you and close the doors and then he tells you put the got put the visor down now yes and the room one of you said what well i think our guests pointed out oh yeah it was like we walked into the christopher nolan's production company logo yes uh and he added buzz buzz yeah very similar very similar style to it uh and then at this point when you put the visor down we all become stormtroopers you're looking at each other and you look like stormtroopers and the room kind of has like yeah

that weird inception-y kind of yes look to it um but it's still not clear because like that's sort of almost like a loading screen basically what's going on because it's going to change abstract screensaver yeah exactly um and we should and i i do have to point out that you were looking you were looking around at your three companions yes and they are all they are all stormtroopers all doing live uh motions as they are actually doing and you're trying to wait who's who and then you turn i turn all the way to left and oh that one is jason i do the heights are equivalent i apologize are very accurate yeah yeah so like you and our our guests mystery surprise guest whoever it was uh about similar heights yeah and then me and i'm towering over and then yes jason

i mean it is it was fun to see a short storm trooper my only shortcoming with it was that it's like i i was worried the tall I was worried about running into the tall people. Like the space between us made sense. But I was kind of like, oh, right, some tall friends. Got some tall friends. This is actually, if I'm remembering correctly, and correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't Princess Leia famously say to Luke Skywalker, aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper when he's rescuing her? Yeah, so I had the real experience. Yeah, I had the real Luke Skywalker experience.

You knew what it was like. Yeah, because Princess Leia, if I rescued her, she'd be like, you're the exact right height to be a stormtrooper. I was also the first one of us to pick up a blaster and go, I think this works, and then just shot a wall. You did comically shoot your gun accidentally, like your gun misfired. Like the way the misfit stormtrooper would do yeah yeah you do kind of get to be like the you know like like the

jokesters the guys who don't belong like the only thing that's weird about this world is you and we weren't we were pretty committed we weren't like you know, riffing or tearing the thing apart. We were on board. And that, yeah, that room with all the lines, eventually it like starts to transform and you are on the ship. So, yeah, it basically changes into like sort of just what looked like kind of metal walls. And a door opens. And then like very, like too close to your personal space is k2so and he's very tall and i think we all went ah like yeah we were like yeah could say i gotta give this place credit

because like they set up everything pretty clearly but they didn't hold your hands about it like there was stuff where we had to discover by doing it and i thought that was really that was oh and for us as theme park fans that where you're constantly bit like there's a video that's kind of selling the illusion but then just like a disaffected teenager is like okay everybody step all the way into theater like you're like the the illusions are broken constantly on disney rides and the fact that you're watching like safety videos yeah before you go fight the battle but here yeah no one is telling you anything you were absolutely in the world and figure and there's massive decisions you have to make and

sort of systems you gotta unravel that you've never been warned about and you gotta react to live in the moment yeah it's weird too because they don't even like tell you be careful don't knock into each other like there's none like just general yeah stuff like that because i was thinking like oh we must be in close quarters so we're gonna hit into each other and we did you did a little bit we we kept planning who was gonna leave the room in what order i think that that did feel necessary i kept going jason first sure this one first you were oftentimes though by the door i think i think i would just say i think that was right you were trying to get out you were trying to escape every room i mean uh uh i would well i just wanted to keep going i mean like yeah i think i was the first one when the doors opened up when

the ship landed and then you got to go across a catwalk like i was walking through and i grabbed that was the first time where i was like oh this door frame i can touch this door frame yeah i didn't one thing we should have tried was touching the robot that we said it because he was there yeah yeah so a lot of the stuff so so what happens yeah so so k2so welcomes us basically into the main like cockpit of the ship and he tells us sit down and that's kind of the first crazy part too right yeah because we all four of us just sit down in different chairs you look and there's kind of the first crazy part too right yeah because we all four of us just sit down in different chairs you look and there's a bench and they like the trust that the whole thing yes like like what what it buys to here's it and then you do sit and it works you're like

now you're now you're less afraid of everything all my fear from the suiting up was kind of gone once the sit worked because your brain is now just going well this is reality and i trust it yeah i trust this reality it's a trust fall right so so yeah immediately sitting down does does really do something to you and you're looking up and it's a cool looking ship and the guy whoever the guy is a pilot up spoiler alert uh he gets killed later that's him right or am i wrong was it a different oh i forget i think he gets killed because he gets him pay a little we'll get to that um but then there's a guy piloting the ship like up high and k2so is tower he's a very tall robot yeah and he's like seven eight foot and he's in the corner and four of us are just sitting

there listening to him and your brain is like oh i'm in the spaceship yeah and you're like ah like this is cool like this is a thing when i think about the memories of this when i think of my memories i want i mean we want more time in all of it but i was like man it would be cool if we could spend like 30 minutes in that ship yeah going around and seeing what what's in there oh yeah details and talking to k2so and seeing if he like would be our friend for a long time and yeah it's it's all the it's it's all the dream of uh uh my friend tommy botcha who like his complaint about the the star wars prequels is like i just want to like i don't want to know about this plot i just want to like stare

out this window for an hour I want to treat this like I have a layover in a Star Wars airport and I just want to like I just want to look for a while I want to people watch this story who gives a shit get these characters out of the foreground let me just let some of that shit fly by

he's gonna get that wish in 2019 when star wars galaxy is edge open oh yeah he'll just he'll just get to go he'll be able to look at a skyscape and sit and be surrounded by people he's not gonna do it he's not gonna yeah too much doesn't sound like him um but so k2so is giving us directions and i i admit i don't remember exactly what he was saying because i think you're still trying to your brain is still acclimating to it that was just kind of the Star Wars

like alright everyone be cool like sort of thing he says something about weapons in there he does mention I think weapons I think he tells you to keep an eye out and find a weapon because you're going in unarmed he says yeah we're going in unarmed specifically because we can't go unarmed because I blah, blah, blah.

I don't know what he says. It'll look unusual. It'll look unusual. Don't they tell you on the way in, like, act imperial? I think that's a line in there. That's fun. Yeah. Because it takes place, like, in the Rogue One timeline.

So it's not yet the First Order and the Resistance. It's firmly in the rebellion in the Empire. No, Kylo is here. No, not yet. Soon, I'm assuming. We will face to face with Kylo. Then comes the scene, which may be my favorite scene in the whole thing. We get on a little platform.

We land close to Mustafar. All four of us get on a tiny platform over lava, and we float down to the surface of Mustafar to like this base. And it's hot in there. Yeah. They're blowing heat. Like,

and we're all, I believe we all went, Whoa, another, like just Ford idiot. It's like going, blah, wow.

He's like so impressed. I mean, and I'm being clear, but it's truly, it's awesome. It's like we're floating. You really feel you're going down, and it feels like you could fall. It feels like nobody better make a false move.

We don't want to get shot at. We don't want to fall in lava. Yeah. And Drew, what is happening to you there? I guess you're just standing still. You're on some little vibrating platform. Yeah, nothing. But it's so like this sweeping vista you get yeah it is a

great trick and reading about the one co-founder of this company has like a background in magic and illusion and tricks and stuff uh uh and i think it it shows like the thing i think that takes this above like vr that i've seen other places is not just a commitment to immersion and story, but also the ideas behind it of incorporating multidisciplinary stuff into it. Sure, yeah. And stuff that still is a physical experience makes it so much more essential than... None of us have VR in our home.

We don't have an Oculus in our home. No, we're not just at someone's house party or something, doing like, do you want to do a Jumanji one? Or do you want to do like... Which those are cool. I've done some of those. Yeah, they're cool. And they're very cool.

But yes, this is an extra little level. I also, when I've done it i've done several little vr uh demonstrations where somebody is uh watching me and like moving wires out of my way and and stuff and what a it's it's it's almost like uh one like a like an old one player video game where the person you're with just has to watch you play or maybe you trade on and off or whatever but the fact that this is a social experience you gotta drive to a place be in a place you're not only uh with friends but you're all you have to work with that you have to all like figure out stuff together it's i think i think it's what

makes the whole thing so so much more essential than other vr stuff yes um it's yeah it's place specific it's uh it's specifically a social activity yes i think it's what will elevate this void thing above other vr yeah i mean they don't even predict it i mean in in the hit film ready player one uh there are basically everyone plays vr but they don't really address like exactly how you get to a level of immersion like this they have obviously like we all know of course we've seen it and read the book but you know they have like vests and like treadmills to make it feel like you're walking but like i'm not quite sure still how any of that at home stuff would work in real life which of us have read the ready player

one book no i haven't oh okay that seemed to be an ingest i was doing that um i i know a lot of people have read it so i don't know what i was joking about i'm just an asshole we don't read yeah we are not jason's the best reader i think of the three of us he reads like old crime novels i have read the canon i have read some of the works discussed in that famous page from Ready Player One where he's like, I've read Vonnegut and Heinlein and Crichton and whatever other bullshit. Whereas I've seen Back to the Future. I know what

a DeLorean is. Yeah. As far as I go. Oh, is there Back to the Future stuff in Ready Player One? There might be a little. Look at all the Easter eggs. That's how you do it. Alright. No Vancouver Omni Max though, I'll tell you that. So I don't care. But this is like the Oasis.

Oh, well, this is, we were saying before the Oasis, yes, before we went in, this is a lot like the Oasis, and I was concerned that one of us would fall in love in there. I was worried, you know, what could happen, because we had vests on that did react. So, like, in the famous scene when, you know, what could happen because we had vests on that did react. So, like, in the famous scene when, you know, they're having, like, a romantic time in that, like, club when they're flying and dancing. Like, what if, you know, like a lady stormtrooper, like, grabbed Jason and, like, put her hands around his side or something? Like, you know, you could feel that.

That did not happen. It did not. No. Maybe in future incarnations of this, like, you'll be. No. A lot of unrequited love in this experience yes what if what if mike had to avoid the wiles of a very realistic mini mouse that's true yeah no it's not the same universe but a future vr experience

watch out for those those gloved hands grabbing at you i mean i think in the force awakens i think we're gonna have to deal with if like if for instance it was the four of us and it's the force awakens timeline i think we're gonna probably go into mas canada's bar and i'll be honest with you she's gonna be horny because that's her whole character she's like where's that chewbacca at and she's obviously horny for very thirsty she's very thirsty so I think that yeah that's probably going to be a future thing and we'll all feel like when Maz comes up and she just kind of like feels

her abs or something you're sitting over there pretending like this would be an issue I'd hate that I'd hate that getting flustered just talking about it. This is only the second ever Void experience.

I think virtual love is probably in a few versions later. We're going to get those crotch haptics going in the next incarnation. That's the word, right? Haptics? Haptics. This word, I just learned this word inside my phone. I was probably turning it on to airplane mode, and then like, wait, haptics?

What the hell? And then haptics are things that, that's the vibrations you feel. Is haptics a common word that I missed until this week? I think I became alerted to it once Force Touch and stuff was added to the iPhone. I mean, certainly in the iphone 7 where the button is not a real button that's haptic feedback like seven and later that's like what

it's called always good with the new slang uh give it up for haptic feedback or if you force touch to like get different options and it like pings you a little i see um well i mean i don't want to jump around too much but since we're talking about haptics you do end up well maybe we have to go backwards we have to go to one thing which is that when you pick up your weapon this is well that's truly wonderful platform lowers you down you get in the base and then you go like down a hallway you're trying to blend in and then you do go into a room with like a blaster rack yeah and there's four blasters and four players you pick them up that is real a truly insane experience yes i remember hearing that that was something that happened and thinking oh cool and then but to be doing it to like that they've

earned the trust where you pick up and then you can cock it and everything. Did the cocking do anything? I didn't realize cocking was a thing until later. I started to, I couldn't really tell. I think it helped with the speed of rate of fire, maybe. Did you cock it immediately? Because when you've misfired? No.

And honestly, I kind of pulled the trigger just to see what happened. I kind of like wanted to see. I thought you did like a Gomer Pyle style, like you shot the rifle into the floor accidentally. Well, I think even if we had just walked back into the back hallway with the weapons, I think that same thing would have happened. The alarm, because the alarm starts going off. Well, I would be interested to go in. Now, we're all, as everyone knows out there, good boys.

And we followed all the rules. we tried to do everything perfectly but i would be interested like if we started shooting each other would we have felt it i think i did accidentally shoot one of you yeah because it's close quarters a couple times we were trying to escape though but was did you shoot one of us accidentally while we were also being shot at by other stormtroopers no it was like in a quiet room in a moment of peace i might have um yeah forget there was a lot happening yeah yeah we're not the biggest gamers and we're not the most graceful so uh sure no so a lot of so you pick up guns and then you end up in a in a big battle across uh yeah across a big lava river uh i don't want to get words wrong something like that you're

shooting at stormtroopers and you see them fall when they get hit yeah you are also getting you make them fall it's so neat and you hit them if i believe if you hit them in the head it's like they're immediately dead so it's like golden eye 64 sweet yeah i think that's what happened but yeah it's shooting and it's also like they told us not to crawl i think that was an instruction okay but i did realize oh i could crouch yeah we kind of like crouched and moved around and dodged shots then i realized i realized this later i go this is what i thought nick arcade was the nickelodeon yes this is what i thought it was it was a miserable experience for the kids doing nick

arcade because they were just in front of a green screen watching another screen. Probably a very tiny little monitor. Yes. Yeah. Because it was impossible. No one ever won. And you'd be a kid at home going, what the? It's there. Just put your hand up.

But the kids were so lost on that show. It must have been so confusing. And probably the cockier you were, you were going to get in there and do it right. Yes. I was cocky. I never got to go to the Nickelodeon Studios very famously. But that was very cocky. Like, I can do it right yes the more likely i never got to go to the nickelodeon studios very famously but that was very cocky like i can do it it's just that the the coin was above their head and they didn't put their hand up it's obviously because they were squinting at a tiny like

low definition television yeah they couldn't tell if that was like a bad guy or everyone is screaming screaming children screaming host uh probably producers pointing no that way so yeah well you get to be mikey the iconic oh yeah uh avatar of nick arcade mikey um so now that's what this is what i want the void to do is start doing you know jungle roundup or uh yeah yeah those generic games that were on nick arcade egypt encounter i'd liked. I would absolutely love to be in any of the Nick Arcade games. Oh, yeah. No, believe me. That was a dream.

Believe me. Believe me. I would ace Nick Arcade. Perfect score. Believe me. You'd be very cocky about Nick Arcade. But so what I wanted to say about the haptics is that you shoot stormtroopers, but they can also shoot you.

And the feeling that you feel when you get shot, it's certainly not painful. It's not like an awful vibration, but it's not a nice feeling either. And it's unpleasant enough that you really want to make sure it doesn't happen to you. And as opposed to if I'm playing a video game at home, there's no real motivation for me to shoot well and do this right. The controller rules. But those feelings were so bad that I was like, I need to figure this out. I need to cover sides that you guys aren't covering. Right, right, right.

I need to, oh, I can crouch good. That'll make sure I don't get hit as much. It just like, it motivated me to do better because that right feeling sucked it sucked just enough to not hurt you which became more unpredictable when the lava monster showed up oh yes because they're they do they're throwing stormtroopers at you and once you're like all right we got them a monster comes out of the lava and you got to start opening fire on that and and it's big and it's like getting close and then it is getting into the getting to the point where it's getting so close to you your brain is going i'm a little

uncomfortable with the size of this thing like it is starting to screw you want to hold it back you want to kill it before it's screaming in your face but you you hit like its chest was like glowing a different cut like it clearly had like an unarmored part we had to go to a video game trope of like oh aim for that yeah we had hit it with so many shots i do wonder if it's like it's just designed to get this close and then it dies like so if you were just like hitting it with three and then you let it get close and you shot it again i like i wanted to know like how close could it get like that would be yeah and if we when i do you know round two three four five and six of the void i'll one time i won't shoot it at all and see if it eats me i guess that is our

like attraction instincts of like okay the fifth time i'm going to go on this i'm just going to look to the left yes like oh i'm just going to try to see if i can see easter eggs yeah in hindsight i should have when we were talking to the nice people the void i should have said look this is great but can we go on it all day can we just do it from 10 30 to 10 30 at night yeah we want to try everything in it we want to see what we weird thing we can do he's voiding too hard we gotta unplug him we yeah we may have void seizuring we may have hate everything that was our reality now and coming into the real world just didn't make any sense for us anymore yeah yeah too much don't bring me back you bastard plug me in k2so help me uh yeah so we so yeah we were shooting at this this lava monster there were

the first like puzzle isn't really a puzzle. It's just like pull the lever on the wall. And I think you did it, Jason, I believe. I did it, yeah. So, yeah, you just pull. And I think by that point I was like, that's a physical. Perfectly, you did it perfectly. That's going to be a thing.

And then, it's not, and this isn't in perfect order, but then the next puzzle was basically Simon Says. Yeah, so you got, that was a cool part because that was where us and our guests, we kind of like split up. You guys were trying to figure out the puzzle. And then we realized there was like another corner of the room and more stormtroopers started coming. So then we just started blasting while you guys were doing that.

So you can like, it's done in parties of four or like, you know, I think they try to send in groups of four. Yes. Is the ideal number for it so that was cool to like oh we'll split up we'll take naturally yeah we had to make a little plan yes and that's yeah again another figure as you were saying figure it out thing it's like in all yeah we were shouting instructions like we'll do this while you go do this it made me pretty sure that as just as we would be excellent longshoremen we would all be great in the military

yes yes i mean because we certainly had a natural instinct for it absolutely yeah i believe i'll do i'll solve the simon puzzle so to get into this iranian uh fortress that's that's what you go that's a big part of basic training is solving simon puzzles over and over again because so many different uh you know jails unlock by solving six Simon puzzles. Right. But will they ever guess green, red, green, purple? So I did the Simon puzzle. And were you doing it with me, Scott?

Yeah, I stayed in puzzle land. Yeah. You guys are brave. And I believe. So what would happen is I would get kind of caught up because I was still getting shot at. And I'll be very honest with you. You and our guest were not doing a great job holding them up because I was getting hit while I was doing the Simon puzzle.

Well, so are we. No, no. I know that. But your job was to make sure I did not get hit because I'm the one solving the puzzle. Oh, I didn't know that. I was just trying to provide cover fire, but I guess I wasn't doing a great job't i'm about to making an excuse here so basically what's happening is the simon puzzle so i would do the puzzle but then i would forget because i get hit and i turn because i got hit and start shooting and i would miss a piece of the puzzle so i failed a couple of the simon puzzles and

then i'd have to go back and watch them do it again i think scott and i like took turns and i recall you jason goofing on me during this and saying oh what's taking you guys so long which I guess that is part of the movie which I guess you know I can't be faulting you too much because like

that's something Rocket Raccoon would have said yeah what's taking you so long Star-Lord or whatever the monster Lord so I guess I was upset when I started this part of it but now I realize that

that's part of the fun of it but now i realized that that's part of the fun of it you were just goofing on your comrades do you understand why han solo is so cranky and quips so much she's beleaguered so doing this shit all day every day so all i'm saying is maybe i maybe you could done a better job making sure i didn't get shot while i was trying to help us uh but that's why i think that's when I figured out that cocking the gun did something. Because I was like, why are they coming out so slow? Because you were like, maybe I can shoot Mike in the head. Shut the fuck up.

You were taking out all the aggression from us goofing on you on the podcast. And you were like, I'll just shoot this guy in the head. Years and years of it. I'll show you who's the shortest stormtrooper i i will be mayor someday and you won't be in the in the cabinet i'm gonna be like boss i will be boss what did what a what a tremendous ending to that experience of like only you emerged from the void you had taken the three of us out and you were like, I did it alone. Well, what happened to your friends? Where are their bodies? The lava pit of Mustafar.

The forms you sign dictate that we keep the bodies and we don't tell you where they are or which containers they're hidden in. Is the void a black mirror? Man, we got a good spec black mirror now yeah yeah uh so so we so eventually scott and i solved the simon puzzle opens up another door opens up it was red yellow red yellow yellow and and you get into the bay and you see the crates you see the crate that you're looking for yes we so we see the crate uh it's like was it floating i thought it was on the other side of like a chasm or like a gap. A gap, yeah, yeah.

A chasm is like a natural. Oh, yes, I guess we were inside still. We were inside. It was man-made or alien-made. And then I think the pilot goes to get it. Then he takes it out. He opens it up, and he pulls out a sword. Yes, what looks like a very rudimentary lightsaber.

But it looks like a long sword. It looks like a knight's sword, but it has a lightsaber blade in it. Right. And it's unclear. It's a real Knights of the Old Republic shit. Right. It's a knight. Yeah, yeah.

That's sort of what I think. But it's not clear what exactly. I mean, somebody's probably really mad at us because they know exactly what that sword is from. And then the sword gets yanked away, and then I believe he starts getting tossed around. And then he gets impaled. And this is maybe, if you really don't want the final spoiler, maybe we should, one more spoiler space. All right, so if you're done with it, so if you don't want this last spoiler. You wanted to know some of the spoilers, but not the ultimate King spoiler.

Yes, who would you think would be most likely to show up on Mustafar? I wanted to know some of the spoilers, but not the ultimate. The King spoiler. Yes. Who would you think would be most likely to show up on Mustafar? And it's not Orson Krennic. He has real estate there. It's not Orson Krennic. It's the guy who owns property there. At least a vacation home. I realize now Ben Mendelsohn, Orson Krennic is also the bad guy in Ready Player One. Oh, how about that?

That's fun. It's Darth Vader. He shows up. We see the lightsaber first. He turns on his lightsaber, and then he comes out. And you hear his breath. And as you know, I don't like heavy breath. No, so we all open fire on him.

Yes, we all shoot at Darth Vader. We're all shooting at Darth Vader, and it's doing nothing. We all suck so bad. He's deflecting it. And he's getting closer and closer. And I think we're also, again, screaming because Darth Vader is about to come and get us. And then I felt that was a little quick, our interaction with him. Because then all of a sudden, K2SO now piloting the ship.

Yes, it was for sure the pilot because K2 is now driving. Yeah, he flies the ship. He flies and crashes the thing in. He Kool-A man's his ass in and kind of just knocks vader away and a platform emerges and he says here walk up the platform and get back in the ship i was so relieved thank god this is over and we got into the ship and it was exactly the same as the ship before uh and k2 was driving and he said, we did it. And I don't know if we said a prayer for our fallen comrade.

I don't know what happened. I think they said they're analyzing the data on the weapon. Right. So it's like a cliffhanger. It was a relic. They said a Jedi. Why are they collecting Jedi relics? Right.

So like we don't, there wasn't even a conclusion. I mean, maybe the next void is the second part of the story. My guess is there is that it's uh serial that it's serialized that it's there's going to be a chapter two what a great idea i'll be back that's yeah that's really cool actually like a separate narrative going on that you only can do through the void that would absolutely that would sell me it and if it's not so serialized you wouldn't understand it like you could start with that one and it wouldn't right screw you up it's still the basic thing we've got to get in and out and we got to find a thing but if yeah if you if they announced you can continue the story oh i think you yeah you knock that out and appreciate like you know on your last mission you've got this

i would that was our friend andrew grissom's uh proposal proposal of a way to make this thing more enticing and essential to do. It's not only that, but he was saying, and I think he's right, if you could keep a consistent character profile. Yes. Because we had wristbands that they'd scan. And so if that contained, if you brought that back in four months and they could refer to stuff that you did wrong or right. It's talking like the Star Wars, Star Wars land stuff where they're saying if you. You'll have a reputation. Yes.

If you do bad on the Millennium Falcon ride, they'll be like, I heard what happened on the Falcon or whatever. Like same thing with this. It would be great. Also, our guest, our friend said he thought there should be a scorekeeping element would be fun as well. That doesn't really happen. Oh, who had the most accuracy. Yeah, yeah.

Just to sort of see what that was like. I mean, it does. And I guess if we're being realistic, it shouldn't have that because that's not how the real world works. But it's a fun element of like, oh, we got to play again. I think it is a fun element. We got to play again because we got to see if we can get your higher. It'd be funny if they gave you a score at the very end, if it wasn't in your field of view, but then at the end, like. Or.

I got 40 and Mike got 100,000. Or it just got sent to you later. Yeah. I would be interested. I mean, I like playing rounds of PUBG, of Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, like, at the end of each bout of that. Like, there is, like, accuracy, kills, survival time, that sort of thing.

And I know that's very popular in those big battle royale kind of games. Yeah, so all that stuff is fun, but I get why it's not in there and it's not necessarily necessary. Well, let's, why don't we talk about pluses up, about ways to, how does this become, I think we were all really impressed by this, but how do they take this to the next could be uh analog to escape rooms and that you don't do it all the time but it's an it's an event and you go spend money and

uh get a bunch of friends together it's a you know that's a great comparison i never really thought about it because it is priced like according to escape room like yeah so it is tickets are 30 like 29.95 i'm sure there's going to be specials at some point or like group rates, I have to think. I'm sure they're looking into that sort of thing. I was very interested, when we were coming out, there was a mom and like a 10-year-old boy there like at the front desk like talking.

So what is it? And they're like explaining it and they're like, oh, okay, that sounds, and she's like, you wanna do do it and he's like yeah and she she's like okay we'll take two and he's like oh cool you're gonna do it too like so they were walk-ins they walked in and they sold them on it and you know i i think it was smart to put it in the glendale galleria because that shopping complex and the americana next to it I think people are spending a little more money at those

it's a higher end mall it's a rare mall that's not dying and decaying you eat a $10 piece of cheesecake and then you walk over and a $30 what a night ride the trolley I mean one thing I would say is like

alright in once this is cook-in, drop the price to like $20 even. Now, I don't know if that'll happen. I don't. Clearly, it's not a case for escape rooms are doing plenty well. They're all at the $25, $30 price rate. Yeah. So, I think that Alien one is a little less i think that's closer to 20 but honestly they're getting walk-ins and there were people right before us and there was people right

after us so it seems like it's doing well i think they have the the right idea attaching themselves to ip star wars being the uh the ultimate one but a ghostbusters one a cool idea although it didn't seem to penetrate as much i hadn't heard about it before but um it seemed it does seem like the test for this stuff and for the void will be like could you do original stories this way would you get people in if it wasn't you're in the star wars universe and i i think you could eventually yeah because you have to be a real staple of like entertainment Yeah. Whereas I think people still kind of go, oh, you want to go to a movie? And when they say movie,

they don't necessarily know what they mean. They don't necessarily know what movie. It's just like, well, that's an activity we do. So there'll be like five years from now, do you want to go to The Void? Do you want to enter The Void tonight? And they'll be like, what's playing at The Void? And then it could be yes.

If it's something that, or whatever, VR, whatever people use VR slang. Well, that's one thing is that maybe you need a better shorthand like a movie or escape room. Because how do you, what's the quickest you could describe this? A hyper-reality experience? Oh, you want to go to hyper-reality tonight? Not really great. I think the void, I mean, I think the void is a good name. Void is a nice name, yeah.

That is a catchy name. Good logo. I like the Void, I mean, I think The Void is a good name. Void is a nice name, yeah. That is a catchy name. Good logo. I like The Void logo. Good logo. Yeah, I mean, past guest Eva Anderson saw the guys behind it speak at like an immersive theater conference and was very impressed. So go see them talk if they're in your town. Yeah, so go see them talk.

Sure. And a lot, they've gotten a lot of good cover. Wired had an article about them. Yeah. it's all a lot they've gotten a lot of good cover a wired had an article about them um yeah i it's all interesting i i want this to work i want this to be a thing that's that's all over the country because one thing i'll say i am not on board for and i know we've all watched some of these is because a big trend in vr in parks is like yeah we have this 15 year old roller coaster and now we're gonna strap an oculus and a samsung phone to your head and it's gonna seem like superman is rescuing you and some

of these are kind of rough stuff i mean there we'll post it there's a new york the uh big apple coaster i from vegas did you not believe that yeah i watched that on the way out the door thank you for sending me that i mean a I think I sent that like three times because I come across it every month and I'm like, hey, remember this? It's so rough. Aaron and I make fun of that coaster a lot in general because it's just sort of, yeah, it's rusting away.

It doesn't seem safe. Oh, I rode it once. It's bad. Yeah, yeah. That doesn't seem safe. Oh, I rode it once. It's bad. Yeah, yeah. That was 11 years ago. But now you get in a... And it's stuck with you. You remember the headache you got or what it did to your back?

Yeah, I was walking around the strip with like, oh, my neck. Right, right. So now you get on board a big, long New York taxi cab, and you put on a phone on over your face and you see a story about a area 51 bizarre so yeah basically like to set up there's that big there's a big roller coaster outside the new york new york hotel and casino in vegas and yeah as we were saying it's like it goes inside and outside it's huge it's looking, but it's like shitty and decaying. And this VR that we'll post a link to is so weird. It's an alien escapes Area 51, and you're a scientist in a Jeep,

and then a helicopter picks you up, and you fly around the strip trying to get this alien back. When you go up that weird, like when they're sending you up, you know, one of those like 45-degree angled cliff walls that looks exactly like a roller coaster lift hill like a paved cliff in the nevada desert and then yeah you get picked up by this bizarre cyborg helicopter machine and the alien jumps into like a little console that looks like a fucking vagina that shape is so vaginal that he's in yeah yeah there's no and nothing explains the plot headphones because like you don't have much sound i don't think

and they also don't um there's no name for this it's like do you want to pay five extra dollars to do the virtual reality thing they didn't call it like escape from area 51 at new york new york wait is that true it costs extra to do it it? You get on the same coaster as everybody else, and there's other people not wearing the helmets, but if you want to pay an extra five dollars, so they're sending out coaster cars where two of them have a Samsung phone in their face. That's bad show.

To pull the industry turn, that's bad show. It's really strange and inconsistent. Marcus Limones would hate it. It's also weird because the whole thing, when I was watching it, it's like the first part I go, okay, it's Area 51. You're like aliens and stuff. But then most of it is just like you're flying around Vegas, which is what the coaster already is kind of doing. You fly past the coaster that you're on. And I don't think you can see the coaster.

You just fly past the New York, New York. You're also flying past, I think i think specifically mgm resort owned casino like it's really correct you don't go to the down to the venetian end you certainly don't see trump tower yeah it's uh it's all yeah like wait where's he going oh he's looping back around to the Excalibur again. What a coincidence. The other one that I thought was pretty rough and was much more shocking was they have one of those at the Drop of Doom

at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Yes. And it's Superman, Wonder Woman, and Lex Luthor fighting. And also, no dialogue. Literal word balloons appear. You have to balloons appear you have to read yeah it's very odd you're traveling up hundreds of feet in the air and reading it's a very odd experience then you get dropped and superman catches you of course there's a different one for there's a superman coaster at one of the other six flags parks with a different, like Lex Luthor has a levitation gun,

same gag from Spider-Man, the ride. The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, excuse me. But it's just very odd. No one's talking. There's a little bit of sound effects. You can kind of hear the Superman theme. It's probably all combining with the wind of the Santa Clarita.

They don't want to put headphones on you, and the roller coaster sounds so overwhelming anyway. This is why the tech in the Void looks great. I'm sure it probably has room for improvement, but I think in five years it'll look super photorealistic. Yeah, the graphics are really, really good, but it is a little dull and a little less bright than reality. But that's what is great to have.

But pretty good and good sound for sure. Instantly responds to everything. All of the, I mean, I'm sure there's sensors and stuff in the rooms, but most of the computing work is in the backpack. The backpack has processors and graphics. All of that's in the backpack and connects to the visor and there's I mean there's a word some word came out that like the Millennium Falcon

ride which is going to be it's not like VR but it is going to be like a giant video game that's supposed to look real to you and it has eight processors going at once for each car industrial grade like pro process yeah so for each not like consumer grade, like pro processors. Yeah. So for each. Not like consumer grade.

Each ride vehicle has eight different processors working hard to render every single part. So that basically kind of means, or it seems to mean that everything is changeable. It's not just there's a background

and a couple things you could get shot at. It seems like you could really crash through anything you're seeing. Yeah. You're going to be able to look around because all the processes working are like making everything like every piece of the background like changeable or destroyable or or who knows what exactly does this um uh aaron is uh hates all of this the idea that it's like

interactive and you have tasks and stuff uh-huh and i'd like to give a voice to the person who is uh worried about having jobs it within the ride i can't i understand that it stresses me out a little on mission space having like even though it's just essentially a button to hit um is that valid is it invalid is it like is is it is she just wrong is it super cool to well for it to be? It depends because. I don't think there's G-forces pressing on you in the Millennium Falcon. Thank God. Your head won't burst open. I think the Millennium Falcon, I think that really there's got to be a pilot and there's got to be a couple people shooting.

There's got to be a cannon guy. But there's six people. It looks like there's six people in the cockpit. So it seems, I think, and this makes a lot of sense uh there'll be a couple seats for people that just want to enjoy the show okay oh maybe you can also not really have a job so i'm thinking the falcon maybe has low impact jobs or no jobs at all in the back seats her her other fear though is that you okay if a kid gets to pilot the millennium falcon that's amazing that's so cool for the kid what if the kid messes up sucks yeah uh first off

most kids are miles better than any of us going into blind all right yes let's change that okay so what if a man in his 40s or 50s or is the pilot of the money and falcon and he can't do it i don't know any of our dads that is the thing i look believe it or not i was having a conversation with someone two weeks ago about this very topic saying hey say what say like star wars lands can be so hard to get into you're gonna wait two hours to get on the millennium falcon ride say you get in that cockpit and the person flying it sucks yeah and just like just nosedives the thing keeps crashing how spins and circles yes how do you still like kind of make that experience good for the person on it that waited two and a half hours I think

the play aspect of it will probably be closer to like less like a PS4 and more like iPhone games in terms of the mechanics of how you do this stuff you think you're on more of a track um I mean I

think it I think there are there will be decisions and stuff will be destroyable and you can fuck it up but i think they're still going to hold your hand a little it's probably this you're probably right it's probably like you're in the hangar you're trying to get out of the hangar if you cannot get out of the hangar it just like kind of takes you out of the hangar and takes you to light speed yeah r2 does it r2 does right which i suspect is what happened to us with dearth vader i think you think we didn't do it just kind of takes you out of the hangar and takes you to light speed. Yeah, R2 does it. R2 does it. Right, which I suspect is what happened to us with Darth Vader.

You think we didn't do something? I think maybe it was like, all right, close enough. You guys are, you get to go. Maybe. That's interesting. It felt so abrupt to me. Maybe we got a little,

what that experience was. Like, you have some wiggle room, but if you're screwing up, we'll keep it moving on. Our guns stopped working at a certain point when he was approaching. Oh, he like, he broke them was approaching like yeah yeah he broke our guns i think that's probably what happens but we don't know yeah so well so obvious all this is building to some like parks there's got to be a big parks implementation of this of this yeah i don't know i think that

there's some i think there's something interesting about the idea of what Six Flags is doing with their cheap Samsung thing. There's some cool idea of it. Honestly, I have not tried one of these yet, so I don't know if maybe it's kind of cool, but the graphics are janky. I haven't either. An interesting one I heard about was Busch Gardens Williamsburg has a new attraction called Battle for Eerie. I agree. And everyone puts on like a helmet, but until you're seated, you don't put on the VR part. So it's like, it's kind of like, it looks closer to when there was Quidditch goggle, 3D goggle.

So it's like a helmet with no lenses in it. And then I think either the employees come around and snap it in or they hand it to you when you snap it in so seems to be getting closer to something i mean i think that's why the parks haven't gone like full hog in terms of disney and universal is just trying to figure out like oh how do we get the headsets on how do we because there's been rumors that slows down that's a hard it's a lot of load in So it does make sense for people signing waivers and lot. You don't.

But if you can make the screens bigger and they don't have to put anything on. Like, well, there was a rumor for a long time that Tony Baxter was working on like a sugar rush ride for Florida. Wreck it. Wreck it, Ralph. You're saying the racing. The racing game. Where they would strip out all the stuff from Alien Encounter and put in carts and everyone would race. Everyone in the

room would be racing each other. So no more hot dog fart cannon? That would get stripped out? Hopefully, yeah. It's like a candy ride, so you could crash land into a hot dog thing and and oh yeah someone would fart at you sure i hope so there would have to be some farting element

uh yeah so that that application of vr in the park makes a lot of sense because you're in a station probably a mostly stationary vehicle there's a whole load in load out process you have the headset on but it's not like you're on a roller coaster with it yeah it's like that that yeah that makes a lot of sense to me to do it that way to use vr but yeah i don't know if there's it's like as far as like real estate it does make a lot more sense to me to have it in downtown disney or in disney springs as a separate out on as sort of a separate thing because one thing is that uh this stuff upgrades a lot quicker than theme park rides theme park rides could be there for

10 20 years and they'd have to be constantly upgrading to match people's expectations i mean there's some screen rides that already look old and they're like two years old and they already look old. There's probably a good application for something like, even like that Tomb Raider ride we were talking about at King's Island or something. Something that's, you're still, you're getting moved. It's like, it would be almost like that astronaut training or something. Yeah. Where you're in that big sphere. Like where you could move people around, but it's not like you have to move them

from point a to point b they kind of get to stay in a place and that way you i feel like you that's i don't know maybe it's a simpler process i don't know i guess question is what do you want to see done with this technology well i this is uh my honestly this is i was thinking like what rides now would be better if they were sort of this type of ride and not what they did? And my first thought, I swear to God, just now was Jimmy Fallon's Escape Through New York, whatever the hell it's called. Let's not do the same sort of, like, 3D movie ride. Let's get you on the show in a weird way. Like, 3D, you're walking, you walk through the curtain, you're on Fallon.

Some fun stuff happens in the audience. Celebrity cameos. You have to actually play a game with him. You have to play. That's great. I didn't even think about that. That's perfect. You got to drink Jimmy under the table.

And like, it'll be like a celebrity. You have to talk about your new project. It's you and Josh Brolin. Clip not set up properly. Confusing setup. And like, you're looking, you're staring right at him and it's him it's photorealistic fat jimmy fallon uh and there's higgins over there and you can go up and you can touch higgins and you can touch like you can do higgins is really there he's in the attraction the real man the roots they're they're there and

you can like play a pick a song like that's questlove sprains his wrist and you have to take over at the drums fantastic now we're thinking here like this is what i'm this is i think a much and i'm being funny and sincere at the same time i do think this is a better attraction it's kind of a fun idea to actually be on the show as opposed to like most people aren't like well i'd love the jimmy jimmy fallon experience which is like racing on his supercharged desk to the moon like that's not as much but i think it's just what jimmy fallon's life is like right i think if the tourists come in they would they would love stuff like that and the celebrity cameos and getting to sit there and really feeling like you were on the show and getting applause people love getting applause go into the makeup department and make a young actor wear a very constricting neck suit i'm applying

copious prosthetics and then you can go hungry guy and then you can go up and you can tour the snl offices 30 rock you know you could it's a whole 30 rock virtual 30 rock virtual 30 rock hey it's tuesday at two o'clock in the morning. You got to help these guys crack David S. Pumpkin's three. Yeah. Oh my God. Where are we? Oh no, we're in Matt Lauer's office.

He's locked the door. Get out. Get out. Get out of the way out of Matt Lauer's office. He has a button under his desk. We've got to get out of here. Fire at the handles. Override the code.

Red, yellow, green. There's Charlie Rose taking a general to make that horrible TV show he was trying to make. Push him out the open window. He's a CBS man. What does he do? He shouldn't even have a general here. He's not an NBC guy. What's that sound? Oh, no. Broca.

Broca's here. He won't leave. They want him not to anchor the news anymore. Ah, Brian Williams is lying. He's telling another lie. Oh, God. He's making me listen to a playlist of his favorite tunes. Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Lawrence O'Donnell.

They're spreading more fake news lies. Throw them out the window. Make them shatter on the ice rink. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. She's got a bunch of papers. Everyone just look away. Everyone look away.

Just ignore it. Everyone don't talk about it. Kathy Lee needs her box slot wine refilled. Oh my God. That would be, oh my God, I would kill to be

on hour three. That is, I tell you, every goddamn mom and dad who loved that fourth hour of the today show if they had virtual kathy lee and hoda and they got to grab oh my god a wine and drink it they would tell that story for the rest of their lives and i'm not joking they get that i want to do that i want to do it too but that's a slow loader because you're spending a whole hour there. Ain't nobody leaving before the hour is up.

But there can be multiple. There can be like literally make it 64 different tiny rooms and you put everyone in and you can load a ton of people that way. And they'll live respond to photos of your children that you show them. This is a legit good idea we should maybe cut from the show because it's so good. Because then we got to put it behind a paywall at least you you get to sing a song you get to sing an old standard with kathy lee you get the christmas carol you get an avatar to like you so so you get to pick your like movie star avatar as well so before on the screens like a test track you get to pick the big wheels and

stuff but like you would get to pick like who do you look like a test track, you get to pick the big wheels and stuff. But you would get to pick who do you look like or whatever. So then you get to buy the video or get sent the video of you in VR with Kathie Lee and Hoda as your avatar. Okay. So I could pick, like, I'm Joe Biden and I'm promoting my new book about what I learned from my children. Yes. Yes. How my children. Yes. Yes. How my children inspired me. And trains.

Uh-huh. And taking the train. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get to monologue about trains to Hoda. And there's one where you and Roker do the weather. Oh. Oh. Here's what it's like in your neck of the woods.

Here's what it's like in your neck of the woods here's what it's like in your neck of the woods you get to pick what neck is being looked at oh my god i know and it's like where you're from you pull again on the console before this is such a good idea was void experiences for like frozen and avengers could be fun but i we're thinking big now yeah nope we're entering the nbc universal and much like i made a plea earlier to anyone in PR at these theme parks, let me make a plea to anyone who works in Imagineering or whatever the equivalent of is. Or to who runs NBC Universal now?

NBC Universal. Steve something. Or, you know what, Disney, I want to hang with Stephanopoulos. Good morning, America. Are you kidding me? Fine. Yeah, that's great, too. I'm just saying the plea from us is that

we need to work for you. So hire us. Great ideas. We're just tossing out for free every week. I had not had this planned. This is just a great idea we came up with. Hire us and also give us free things. And we will create the experience

where you go into seth meyers's green room and drink the sparkling waters that the seth meyers guests get of course and they get the gift bag yeah you could take the gift bag home it's real it's a real item yep wow these vermont cookies are real I don't know what they give you. They got Vermont cookies, probably. Something like that. Artisanal cookies. Okay. Well, full 30 Rock. Do you get to do the other floors of 30 Rock?

Of course. The not entertainment industry ones? Yeah, the gym? The cafeteria? Yes, the commissary. Even though this isn't time accurate, is Max Weinberg still in the gym? Yes.

Blow-drying his balls? Yeah. I know where I'm spending my hour in 30 Rock. You get to go ice skating on the 30 Rock Pond. Oh, fun. I think it's a full, yeah. Go to the Auburn Pane in the basement. The Diego

Rivera murals. I think you could get the whole experience of winning in line for Saturday Night Live. Being denied standby tickets. being denied standby tickets standby tickets uh being passed by as the cast walks in and out yelling for daryl hammond to say hello and uh being being shut down or as he gets in a cab how about a meeting that lauren has with you that's bizarre where there's the popcorn on the table and he's just like kind of telling you about you know when, when Chevy and Danny were doing the show. And you're just like, what's the point of this?

And then he's like, well, you know, we're thinking about would you live in New York? And you're like, am I being offered the job? Am I not? And he's like, well, you know, we'll be in touch. And then like that's it. You have to leave and you're confused. You go downstairs and like stress eat a Red Reddington candy bar, like black snacks and again because it's not time specific marin is down there and he's like oh i just had a meeting with lauren i don't know i don't think i'm getting up i don't know i ain't

getting the update job or whatever we can do this for another hour yeah yeah boy if we don't stop ourselves now uh we'll do a whole extra hour just like Kathy Lee and Hoda. But I guess for now, we have to say you've survived. Podcast The Ride. Yeah. Star Wars Secrets of the Empire Edition. Follow us on Twitter. Rate and review us. We need the review.

So really just like, come on, do it. Because that'll get us in the charts and then people see us. Yes, the iTunes charts are very confusing and secretive. You know what? Are we way over? Can I do something really fast? We're over, but who gives a shit? This is a rare.

We just got a review, and I want to encourage you to read, to give iTunes reviews, because this one made me so happy, I actually wanted to read it on the show really fast. This is from Minus S11, a grand adventure of a podcast. Five stars. Thank you. 11 uh the a grand adventure of a podcast uh five stars thank you uh for a group of guys who do not like turkey legs pizza port dole whip parades shows fireworks fast rides drops launches or roller coasters they sure have put together one hell of a funny amusement park podcast uh i loved that review and boy it made me aware we are cranks we don't like to create the record i like all of those things but parades yeah so and i and i like parades i think i'm between all

of us one of us likes most of those things yeah uh so but you're right that the group think minus 711, S11. Yeah, we got a lot of, but I don't know. Hey, there's a lot we love. We talk about everything we love, too. It was a very charming review. I love the review. I expect that we had a recent review where someone said, I really, I had a lovely time walking through the woods

listening to these guys talk about a parking garage for two hours. Yes. Transported you out of nature into a parking garage. So leave us those. They make us happy. It means a lot. We really appreciate it. And obviously, and get us free stuff, obviously.

Free stuff, jobs in Imagineering. And also, even though I said I was canceling my Facebook, I didn't. And I started the Facebook page for the podcast. So go to Podcast to Ride at Facebook. Tsk, tsk. Yeah, group Facebook it's a Facebook group you can post you weren't terribly committal you didn't look us in the eye when you said

you were going to shut it down yeah whatever I was in the heat of the moment and sometimes you say stupid stuff we're going to be ready to forgive Zuck soon so you're fine and then we'll be trying to reopen our account we're all too busy being mad at lying james comey right guys hashtag the truth the liar a leaker loser all right thanks for listening everybody thank you goodbye