Podcast: The Ride - The Christmas Special Christmas Special

Episode Date: December 15, 2017

Jason, Mike, and Scott whisk you through their favorite Disney Christmas parades and specials from the 70s, 80s, and 90s! Avery Schrieber and Art Carney fans rejoice! 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

Feral Audio Nancy Kerrigan, Dr. Wunderbar, Secretary of Florida Catherine Harris, Henry Kissinger, Avery Schreiber, Sandy Patty, Don Pardo, James Cameron, Suzanne Summers, Jerry Van Dyke, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, time permitting, Santa Claus, and your hosts, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, and Mike Carlson. Ho, ho, ho. Welcome to Podcast the Ride, very merry Christmas edition. I am Mike Carlson, and I'm joined by my co-hosts as always, Jason Sheridan. Hello, happy holidays. And Scott Gairdner.

Ho, ho, ho indeed. I'll second you on that. We're very excited. You can feel the holiday spirit in the booth. I can feel my mic stand tipping over, so it's one of you guys talk while I deal with this. Yeah, yeah. So we're very excited because today is Christmas time, and it's a very exciting time because we get to revisit some of our favorite specials that take place at Disneyland with some of the most wonderful stars Hollywood ever had to offer. And we're going to poke around and, you know, have a little fun, goof around, and just enjoy the season.

Yeah, these were the Disney, the very merry Christmas parades were a big thing in my house, like, growing up. Like, we would wake up on Christmas morning, come downstairs, open presents and stuff, and it's like, now we've got to watch the Christmas parade. I would halt the present process. I would happily put presents aside in order to go watch a Mayim Bialik interview families from Wisconsin on the streets of Main Street. John Stamos and Henry Kissinger are in Epcot. Is that real?

That sounds real to me. No, that's not real. Well, Kissinger has, there are pictures of Nixon and Kissinger in Epcot. Nixon is all over the parks. Nixon is all over the parks, but not at Christmas. Right, not at Christmastime. Nixon was not allowed in Disney at Christmas, but he was during during the regular season he made a brief appearance as the ghost of christmas yet to come in a very in a in a lost disney uh christmas the one like wearing the

hood so when he revealed his face it was very oh nixon yeah um assorted surprise um there are a lot of okay yeah so we're talking about all these all these disney tv specials primarily the very merry christmas parade which has been a tradition since 1983 and there are a lot of presidents in these there's a big presidential presence uh from the just the few that i skipped through you you get a reagan you get a bush there's one where you get reagan and bush both of them uh uh bill and hillary clinton uh a lot so many presidents took the time to took the time aside to make appearances and address the disney viewing audience and talk a lot about the glory of the lord yeah which i don't know that uh if if did ob Obama show up in any of the later ones? It should also be mentioned these parades have, like, evolved over the years as, like, the media landscape has evolved.

Like, in the early days they were much closer to, like, kind of a throw-together variety special. I think I said in a text, Jane, we have, I said, like, these were a lot more, like more loose and wild when people thought TV was trash. And now, as the 90s went on and the 2000s went on, they're a lot cleaner. You can tell there's brand integrity people making sure, alright, Neil Patrick Harris can do this and he can be with

Tinkerbell, but we're not really pushing Cinderella right now. Everything's very clean and 40 minutes and perfectly edited and that sort of thing. They're very glossy. It's very unlikely in a Very Merry Christmas parade post-2005 that anything, like, interesting or odd will happen, as opposed to if you were watching the 80s and 90s ones,

you'll see some, like, truly bizarre small talk from Regis Philbin that makes you question like you do that you're a host professionally and this is what you're saying to people on the street he'll like put a microphone up in front of somebody and then not wait for the response and pull away immediately and like it's a little more live

to tape feeling Alan Thicke goes on riffs where he has no end in sight. He'll sort of get close to a sexual double entendre. Yeah, they're just, they're sloppier affairs in the 80s and 90s,

which is what I love about them. They're unprofessional, really. Yeah. Like highly unprofessional. And appear to be actually live on Christmas Day, some of the segments. I mean, it says live,

like now they just shoot it all. They've already started shooting, like, in mid-November for specials nowadays. Yeah, if you, perhaps somebody listening has been to a Disney park in November or December and seen the signs that are up everywhere, we are taping for a special today, so

be aware that you are on camera. I feel like I've been around for like a, in the periphery of a Stevie Wonder performance at the base of Sleeping Beauty's castle or whatever. Yeah, they seem to collect these performances all year. Yeah, Bruno Mars sings your favorite public domain Christmas carols. That'd be pretty good though.

Again, that sounds real. Yeah, it does sound real. You can say, a lot of these specials are wonderful time capsules of the year and era they are from. This year, Migos performing chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Sniffing at your nose. That sounds real. Did that happen?

Could be. You'll have to tune in this year and find out. Hey, look, they do get a lot of Hollywood's top performers. I listed just a few of who has been in these things. Well, it's not a very impressive list once I'm looking at it. But they have had Beyonce. In the year of her height of relevance, Nancy Kerrigan performed a special holiday ice dance. Huge in the early 90s.

Ice skating. Yeah, there was a special. That's the Bronson Pinchot one. Oh, I'm not sure, actually. I don't know the rest of it. There's a special where it's Bronson Pinchot both as himself and as like a heavily made up Jack Frost character. Wonderful. Who gives Snow White and Belle and Beast and Mickey and Goofy.

Again, this would not happen now, all of these characters together. He gives them mission. Like, you have to go get this in this part of the park. But then he's also Bronson Pinchot with his niece. And seems like he's like, oh, come on. Please, I just want to sit down. Like, that's the whole gimmot with his niece and seems like he's like, oh, come on, please, I just want to sit down. Like, that's the whole gimmick with the niece. And this is intercut with, like,

footage of Scott Hamilton and Nancy Cara, like, skating. Oh, wow. Figure skating at the height of its power. Which, well, she had the deal with Disney World, like, post her Olympics victory. Although, after all that, I don't think she got the gold. That's the thing, right? Oh, yeah.

After, like, Tanya versus Nancy. Tanya didn't get anything. Nancy did not get the gold either. But still, but, like, you know, she was triumphant ultimately after all that, that situation we'll hear about in the Margot Robbie movie. But she, like, isn't there something where she was on a Disney World float and she said, this is so corny on mic. I think that's a story I'm remembering correctly.

Yeah, yeah. She kind of threw Disney under the bus. She didn't know it was a hot mic. So when you watch Nancy Kerrigan ice dancing for Christmas, just know she's faking it. Yeah. Those smiles are not true. I was going to say, Tanya Harding, of course, famously had that deal with Six Flags

post the incident, and was on all of their floats for their Christmas parade. Yeah. She did a nice dancing routine with the little old man. Yeah, the Vengabus guy. Vengabus man.

Look those commercials up. And, Dr., for some reason, Yeah, the, we like the party, the Vengabus, the Vengabus man. Old man. Look those commercials up. And for some reason, Henry Kissinger also there. Yeah, Henry Kissinger. Well, he came to drag the Vengabus man back to hell. His duties as Secretary of State oversaw all countries, including hell. Including hell, yeah. Yeah, it's still part of your jurisdiction as a world leader.

We're going to have to keep a running list of who I've said is in hell now. Wait, yeah, there was somebody last time. Was it Don Pardo? Don Pardo and like a ride or like a show. I think you said the company Go90. Oh, Go90 and Don Pardo. Which is accurate. That's correct. Verizon's Go90. It's the only place you can watch it now.

Well, so what else about this thing? Okay, so we're going to talk about some specials that are not the Very Merry Christmas Parade, but that became the kind of codified Christmas Day Disney special, and those have been hosted by a number of people over the years but primarily Regis Philbin has been a part of it since the early 80s. First as a man on the street reporter, sideline guy, and then

ultimately up in the booth. You also get a lot of Joan London. Joan London is all over these. These are, sorry, I was going to say these are people that are in the ABC family often, people that are in the abc family often people that are associated with the actual network which would eventually disney bought it in the 90s but they always had a sort of affiliation with them yeah uh so that's that's the thing these these

specials that we grew up loving and making our parents watch every christmas morning, they are just like a hodgepodge of promotion of ABC shows and ads for Kissimmee St. Cloud. It is like pure propaganda streamed into your home, but we ate it up. As a child, I was like, what is Kissimmee St. Cloud? Can you explain it to me? Because I... I believe it's just an area right outside one of the gates of the park. It's just a county or a neighborhood.

It's just like it was just an area that spent a lot of money on their tourism budget in the 90s. There was a commercial with a target that had arrows shooting at it. A bullseye that says an arrow goes close to the bullseye.

Here's Disney World. Here's. Yeah. Here's Disney World. Here's Universal Studios. Here's SeaWorld. And here's Epcot separately. Yeah. Counted as a different thing. And then here, in the middle, Kissimmee St. Cloud. The final arrow pierces the bullseye.

I remember this so strongly. I'm six years old and like, I need to go there. Get me to Kissimmee St. Cloud as soon as possible. It worked on me so hard. I'm doing a podcast about this shit. Still, that's how much of this bullseye thing is in my brain. And I think that'll be a lot of today's episode. It's a mix of our comedy brains going like, what is Jerry Van Dyke on in this?

What is happening and then the other half is just like i sincerely love this very much uh this is burned in my brain uh since i was a child i don't even consciously remember it but it'll pop up in my dreams or it'll surface in my subconscious it is just the most tender moment when tommy Toon befriends the children and ushers them into Sleeping Beauty Castle. I just wept. I wept. Yeah, there's so many wonderful moments in these things. And my overall point as we start talking about moments from these Christmas specials is for anybody listening who's already home for the holidays or who is heading home for the holidays,

maybe got a lot of time to kill with your parents, with your family. You don't get a lot of new holiday specials this year unless there's also a David S. Pumpkin's Christmas special. I'm not sure how many new ones we're going to have in 2017. And how many times can we watch the Peanuts? How many times can we watch Linus give the speech? How many times can we watch the Christmas Story kid times can we watch linus give the speech how many times can we watch the christmas story kid get his tongue stuck to the pole i think it's time for some new holiday classics to enter the holiday lexicon so i say when you're when you're home with with your

with your father with your mother with your with your nieces and nephews whatever it is say you know what we're gonna do do tonight, family? We're watching specifically the 1987 Very Merry Christmas Parade off of YouTube with commercials for Kissimmee St. Cloud because three nerds told me to. Yeah. So who wants to go first, gentlemen? Well, I will go first because it's the earliest in regards to the year. And your special predates the Very Merry Christmas Parade, which started in 1993. You're going to talk about an older one from 76, correct?

Yes, this is 1976. It's called Christmas in Disneyland. So we're going to zoom through it, and I'm going to try to fill in the blanks. So if I leave something out, let me know. But I'll set it up for you. All right, there's a couple kids, and they're with their grandpa. And their grandpa's played by Art Carney. Art Carney of the Honeymooners.

That's probably his most famous role, but he was an old actor and was in a bunch of- Academy Award winner for something else. Yeah, something else. Not sure. Yep. Let us know. And he was a song and dance man. He was one of those jack-of-all-trades entertainers.

But in 1976, he's very elderly. He's playing a character named Gramps. That's what they call him. So they're walking around Disneyland, and Gramps doesn't like Disneyland. Gramps thinks this is kind of all bullshit. Like Bronson Pinch show earlier, this is a running thing in a lot of these specials, is the guy who's not into the spirit, who just wants to find a bench. Which is fascinating.

Why would you advertise that? Why would you? In your specials, dredge up that syndrome that people do have about Disneyland. Yeah, when you get overwhelmed by, like, the heat and the noise and just drinking too much soda. I would think, though,

that they're sort of trying to tell the parents, hey, if you spend the day here, you'll, you know, I don't want to spoil what happens at the end to old Gramps, but maybe you'll go through the same journey that Gramps went through. Oh, boy. You'll start out and you'll hate it, but by the end, oh, my God, your world has been opened up and you believe in magic again. Good for Gramps. Well, how does this journey play out?

So, okay, here, we'll start here. And this is just, you'll get a gist of sort of Gramps' mood. Oh, Gramps, isn't it wonderful? Isn't it beautiful? To waste the time and money. Come on, Gramps, I want to see everything. You've seen enough. You've seen one for you, you've seen them all. I didn't want to come here in the first place.

Sorry I let you kids talk me into it. Now let's get going. I've already missed a half day's business. I've already missed a half day's business. I've already missed a half day's business. We just got here, and you promised us a good time. A good time? I'll tell you what a good time is. A good time is working and earning money,

not running around some park laughing and singing. So Gramps is just a real pain in the ass. He talks about he missed a half day of business. He doesn't specify what the business is. It's just that he loves earning money and that's it, and no fun. Today, in 2017, he could

be checking stocks or trading or whatever from the park, but this was not the case at the time. It's like, I hate fun. I hate sunshine, and pollution is good. This is Graham Gramps. I am the stereotypical angry man. He didn't even have an internet cafe brought to you by Treasure Planet to go check his email at.

That is made up, but could also be real. Again, I thought that was real, possibly in whatever special you're going to be talking about. There was definitely internet cafes at the- Innoventions must have had previews of Prodigy or whatever in 1997. In the Dudley Do Right episode, I talked about the store that briefly sold Rocky and Bullwinkle merchandise very quickly morphed into an internet cafe. Internet cafe. But our old, yeah, Gramps didn't have this at the time. Right.

And this is, by the way, they've also been in the park for maybe under an hour. Yeah, they're like outside. They haven't even been in there. It's like outside. It's at the main gate. Well, they go in a little bit and then they just come out and it's like under an hour and it's like, I don't know, Gramps is really being a dick. Like, he could have given it a couple hours.

It doesn't make any sense. They didn't go on a ride. He's just like, no, no, we're not doing this. Gramps should have loved that part of the park because it's an old-timey town like he probably grew up in. What the hell, Gramps? I know.

So, okay, Gramps tries to leave. He tries to take the kids out, which, God, he's just a big pain in the ass. Hope you had a good time with us today at Disneyland. Everything was fine. Everything was fine. Just fine. Give my regards to Mickey Mouse.

Tell him he has a nice place here. Goodbye. Well, what about your kids? Did you enjoy it? I'm sure he would have loved it if we got to see it. But Gramps wouldn't let us. He doesn't believe in having a good time. I don't. I don't believe in your kind of good time. While we're on the subject, I don't believe in Christmas either. Or fairy tales, or talking mice, or dancing penguins.

Well, uh, what do you believe in? I believe in making money and minding my own business. I wish more people would. Goodbye. Can we do anything, miss, so that we can stay? I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do. It's a shame, too, but I have a feeling your grandfather would have won that prize money, hands down. Hands down?

What prize money, hands down. Hands down? What prize money? Oh, no. They give a prize at Disneyland for the biggest disbeliever, but you have to go before the head of the Department of Disbelief, you know, to see if you really qualify. All right, so that's Sandy Duncan, a star of stage and screen. Reading a first draft script, apparently.

Just have the characters say what they think and want. Say how they're different from each other. Don't embed it to your exposition. So Sandy Duncan shows up, and she's wearing that Mouseketeer horse racing jockey outfit. The old tour guides had this riding crop and jockey hat.

They still kind of do. Yeah, the VIP ones. It's like a weird, I was thinking it's sort of a weird, like the Playboy Mansion had the bunnies, like Walt must have had sort of a jockey fascination maybe. Kind of a plaid thing. He's a plaid man. Scott style. You mean you, Scott?

No, I didn't. The Scots style. The Scots people of Scotland. Sure, sure. Oh, no. Oh, but I'm into the riding craps. And you refer to it as Scott style. We all know.

You want to do it Scott style? Pick your tartan. Pick your shade of plaid. I'll tell you exactly where to aim. All right. Pretend that's the bullseye and and my ass is Kissimmee, St. Cloud. By the way, I just Googled, and it just seems like the tourism website now is just Kissimmee. It seems like they changed the branding.

There is still St. Cloud. St. Cloud dropped off. I think it was just towns, like the Twin Cities are two cities next to each other. It seems like it was just a couple panels. Was there a redistricting? Do you think gerrymandering affected the Kissimmee St. Cloud tourism budget? St. Cloud, hard Trump voters, Kissimmee. Yeah.

One more blue. After the Bush election in 2000 in Florida, I think there's probably some funny business up down there. Catherine Harris, right? Yeah. That was her. Oh, yeah. Catherine Harris.

Another host of the Disney parade, Catherine Harris, right? Yeah. That was her. Oh, yeah. Catherine Harris. Another host of the Disney parade, Catherine Harris. So, anyway, back to this unpleasant old man. Wish he had a chance to vote for George W. Bush, but he probably didn't make it that long. I don't think he did. Sandy Duncan. So, she lies to the old man and says there's a disbeliever prize that they award to the biggest disbeliever at Disney. And this guy falls hook, line, and sinker for it. Ironically, believes.

Oh, sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Here are the titles. We'll do this first. In Disneyland. Starring Art Carney. Guest stars Glenn Campbell, Brad Savage and Terry Lynn Wood,

and special guest star Sandy Duncan. Christmas in Disneyland is brought to you by Post Raisin Bran cereal and Jell-O pudding. Post Raisin Bran, the cereal with so many plump, chewy raisins you get fruit right down to the last spoonful. Post Raisin Bran, the fruit and cereal lover cereal. And by Jell-O Pudding.

Kids love pudding. Kids love pudding. That's that Mad Men era, golden age of advertising. You come up with slogans like, kids love pudding. It took Don Draper as a guy an episode's worth of angst and turmoil.

He had to go to Palm Springs and fuck some lady. Yeah, he got beat up and left in the desert and had to walk back to town and came back to a meeting with kids.

Kids like pudding? No. Kids love pudding. He left New York thinking it was just kids like pudding and then came back from his odyssey with kids love pudding. I realized something on my journey. Post Raisin Bran, too.

Also a fun series. I love Post Raisin Bran. And you love pudding, I assume. I do love pudding. I would clarify myself as both a Raisin Bran man and a pudding man. A pudding boy. Yes, I'm a Raisin Bran man and a pudding man. A pudding boy. Yes, I'm a Raisin Bran man and a pudding boy. And a little pudding boy.

A little pudding boy. Very appropriate for Christmas. You would have a glass of pudding every morning for breakfast. Yeah. Why did I feel so bad at the start of every school day? Figgy pudding. Every Christmas morning, figgy pudding. Every Christmas morning, figgy pudding. Every Christmas morning. Your parents kept up the tradition of foods that stopped existing after 1911.

Yeah, we exclusively ate food from Christmas songs. Partridges. Roasted partridges. So they go underground and they meet Dr. Wunderbar. And Dr. Wunderbar is also played by art carney and he looks like a sit-in marty krofft style albert einstein character and they don't really address why he's there but he's a kooky wizard and he has like a magic he keeps talking about his magical screen where he can see everything in the park and he's somehow in on this con immediately that

they're fooling this other this old man And they tell him there's a list. He has 10 things that he has. There's 10 things that he cannot do by the end of the day. It's a little convoluted. We're already in the world of disbeliever contest. Dr. Wunderbar was definitely gotten out of Germany by the OSS, like, secretly to help us build rockets. Oh, yeah. Too crazy for the German government.

Too crazy for NASA. Disney picked him up. Kissinger hired him. He's a sleepy, kooky old Nazi, basically. So, like, they go down, and they see him, and he's, like, he's sleepy. They gotta wake him up, and it's a whole thing, and there's...

Ahem. Ahem. You heard every word you said. Excuse me, Dr. Vandervaar. We thought your office was always open. Office is always open. That is true. It's never closed.

Day and night I'm on the job, wide awake and full of pets. What can I do for you? But there's never, they don't address who he is, why he's there. He's not even a Disney character. It would have made more sense if he was a witch or a you know, one of the fairies from Cinderella or something. Just like David S. Pumpkins, he's not even from something. Yeah. I'm so in the woods with Dr. Wunderbar.

So they tell him there's ten things that he cannot do. As long as there's one thing that he doesn't do by the end of the day, he gets this prize. So it's like, if he just believes somebody, that's taking off one of the items on the list. So like just having faith in someone. So he has faith in them by the end and they go, oh, you've done one of them. And he's like, oh, you're tricking me or whatever. But he has nine more to go. So obviously, it's very convoluted. I don't want to bog you down.

Just show me someone Going on the haunted mansion And getting spooked I don't want to That's all I want Out of my specials Too much plot Too much plot Sandy Duncan

Then shrinks down And has a song and dance On Small World Not going to show it Not going to play any of it We're not going to You can Thank you

Have a fun time On Christmas Yeah Sandy Duncan also We didn't explain Sandy Duncan But she was like sort of, she's this like chipper, like 60s TV perennial who I believe was Peter Pan in some prominent version of Peter Pan.

She's the kind of person my mom grew up with and who I'm still disturbed by because my childhood had a lot of, I feel like I knew who all the Peter Pans were. Like, my mom, I have to teach my son about Sandy Duncan and Mary Martin. I'm pretty sure I got a lesson on Mary Martin and Sandy Duncan as well. Just because they were TV personalities and TV was king in the house. I have not been to therapy yet, but when it comes, I'm sure the first session will. I'll be getting a lot off my back about Sandy Duncan and Mary Martin. That would mix me up as a child. Uh-huh, sure.

I spend a good amount of time talking to my therapist about theme parks. I'm not going to lie. Just like that they're great? Yeah, usually positive. Usually positive. But also to contextualize other stuff. Your therapist is like a listener of this podcast, just hearing news. So they're converting Paradise Pier into Pixar Pier. Like no problem is being addressed. How does that make you feel?

Great. I'm very happy. Hey, this was a fun session. Here's $200. So Mike, is that all you have from this? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We still have the best part. This is the first.

We're still on the first special. I don't have nearly this much. My book report isn't as in-depth. So, yeah, we're getting to the good stuff here, the real good stuff. Art Carney is not the only angry man in this. They meet up with Santa Claus, played by Glen Campbell. And Glen Campbell, as Santa Claus, is pissed. Well, what seems to be the trouble, Santa?

Well, it's the elves. They're just not putting out enough stuff this year. I'm afraid there's going to be a lot of disappointed children this Christmas. Good for them. I'm going to give you some help, Santa. I saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a while ago, and they were busy. I'm sure they'd love to pitch in. Well, that would be nice.

I can certainly use all the help I can get. Nope, they're not elves. Doesn't count. I'll meet you all at the workshop, okay? And then he tells the kids that they're not going to get presents this year. There's a good chance you guys won't get presents, and then that makes Art Carney mad. So they go and they recruit Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to just do free labor.

First of all, Santa's a real dick here, obviously, because he doesn't explain why the elves aren't making toys. He's putting all of the onus on them for not actually making the toys. There could have been a baby boom this year. That's why there's more kids that need toys. There should be some reason here. So, it's a classic like evil

boss putting all of the all of his problems on the workers and not taking any of the credit or the blame. Being offered solutions but not pouncing on them. Yeah, I think it's Santa Day. The fish stinks from the head down and I think this is Santa's issue. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

So we go and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, they go help, and this is all shot on the Alice in Wonderland ride in a very strange way. And there's just like, they set up a couple shops. They set up some tables where the elves are working. And Snow White is singing about how good this is. And you see these lifeless elves, and're just like hammering at half speed. And you're like, God, what happened to these poor motherfuckers?

And obviously it's like Santa's the problem. So Snow White, they all go help, but it's not enough. So who has a skill in this group that could help make this situation better? It's clearly Gramps. Hurry up. Can't waste time. Hurry up. Can't waste time. When you're racing with them, pop. When you're racing with them, pop. And the second hand does not do that.

So basically, Gramps' solution to this is saying, hurry up to them. And this works. Mm-hmm. So he goes, I got an idea. Hurry up. Hurry up. So he yells. This is something Santa never thought to do. Right. Hurry up. Hurry up. So he yells. Something Santa never thought to do.

Right. Santa never thought about this. And then all of a sudden, it was like, oh, we should hurry. And they do. And then everything is fine. And that was Gramps' contribution to this situation. So he has helped. Why does Disney have to be involved in Santa and making toys?

How is this Disneyland's responsibility? You know what? They don't really explain it. They don't explain why Santa's workshop is set up in the middle of Fantasyland. They don't really go into it.

I guess it adds up. The North Pole's kind of like Disneyland. It's all just one stop shop. Yeah. So basically after this, then there's the saddest song and this will be the last bit.

There's plenty more, but this will be the last bit is that Gramps basically lets the kids know why he's so sad. Okay. I know I've been dying to know. I mean, he's very general, but there's actually some character work

being done here, is what I'm saying. Oh, this is what Art Carney won the Oscar for. You must learn never to trust anyone. You stick with me and I'll show you the ropes. When you two get to be my age, you'll be glad you listen to me. Also, these kids are the worst singers. All kids are the worst singers. I am your age.

Will life be sad? Will I be proud too? Will I be proud to Will I be mad For everyone Who happens to come my way And will I say Love's not what I need Love's not what I need

Love's not what I need What is happening? Just do work. Why was he sad? Hold on, hold on. We get to it. Will I be doubtful? Or still believe Santa Claus And all of the things he does?

Hopefully not. I hope when I grow old That I am never cold There's nothing to believe anymore. There's nothing to believe anymore. When I'm your age. When I'm your age. It's been easy for me.

I think I enjoy the way I am. I'm this way because of what happened to me many, many years ago. You never told us that story, Gramps. I never told us that story, Gramps. I never told anyone that story. When I was your age, nobody cared. Nobody helped me.

Nobody shared. I'll stand with me. Not even a crust of bread. Not even a crust of bread. Not even a crust of bread. Nobody said, don't cry, little boy, to my little boy. When I was your age. All right, that's enough sadness. Oh, my God.

So this is, you will not find this in the last 25 years of Disney specials. Just bleak sadness. Just a poor man who seems like he was an orphan as a boy. We just set up a world where, boy, I wish the specials were the way they used to be. Then we listen to Art Carney moan about never having a crust of bread. And today you would watch the Christmas parade and it would be like Carrie Underwood saying, Merry Christmas! Now I'm questioning why we want things this way.

What's wrong with us? Yeah, I don't know. What does life mean? There is no joy. I guess I'm sad now that I'm old. Hey, in the spirit of this special, my iPhone has like bricked in the middle of this. What?

Hooked my iPhone up to my computer and it says, we see your iPhone's in recovery mode. Reset the factory settings. Everything's going wrong on this episode. My pacemaker stopped working. I'm dying. Oh, no. It's all going to shit. So this is 1976 and it was an exciting special.

And then, you know, at the end, he makes a wish, and then there's ice everywhere on Main Street, and Mickey and Minnie go ice skating together. And then it's, you know, it ends very nicely. But this is a wacky, weird special, and it is not that way anymore. Yeah, hey, it was a big swing. I might declare it to be a miss from the brief moments that we've heard of it.

Oh my god. What a, yeah. This song is so sad. It's just so sad. And it's crazy that they would allow it on. Does he end up what's the end of the arc of Mr. Gramps

at the end he finally believes a little bit and he gets presents finally the first time he ever he mentioned somewhere he's never gotten a present before which kind of doesn't make sense because he obviously has kids because he has grandkids so you would think somebody gave the old man a present at a certain point but he sees he makes the wish for it to snow and be ice in Disneyland, and they're like, we can't

even do that. And then Sandy Dungan's like, oh, maybe we wish really hard. And they, of course, wish really hard, and then it happens. And so he gets to see Mickey and Minnie ice skating, which I guess was his dream as a child or something. Yeah. And then he gets presents from the characters. When he watched them in cartoons, he's like, but I want to see him skate.

I bet there's not going to be a feeling about these two that he'd be good at skating. When he would watch a TV through a drugstore window as a child because he didn't have a home or a television. Trying to spot on the shelves if they have bags of bread crust. Just the crust. Just the crust, please. He'd go buy a bag of crust for four nickels, try to make it last a month.

I think, honestly, I think Gramps should come back, played by a new actor in one of these specials, but that's what I'll be pitching to Disney when I go on. It's a character worth rebooting. Yeah. Christopher Plummer. Sure. Christopher Plummer is the new choice for replacing people as old crusty guys in movies. Yeah.

So Christopher Plummer is Gramps. I'm excited for it. And he'll be great at singing this song when I was your age. I was sad. I was never happy. I was just, I was never glad. Oh boy. All right.

All right. Well, that's our first Miserable special Hey Okay Here's what I will say About mine I don't have I don't have a ton of clips

And I don't have I don't have a clip Of this song specifically But I'm going to talk About the Christmas At Walt Disney World 1978 special And I do

The clips that I do have Are more on the depressing end Although not that depressing Compared to the saga of Gramps. But let me talk about this special a little bit. Christmas at Walt Disney World 78, maybe the first Disney World Christmas special. It includes appearances from Shields and Yarnell, who are a mime troupe, a husband and wife mime troupe who were 70s variety show staples. And most of the special is them, which I will not play for you because mime-ery is silent.

It won't translate on a podcast. But a lot of the special are these two mimes who are insanely creepy, if you can imagine that, and them playing different characters. You watch them go. They have sort of like that Blue Man group vibe where they're strange and inquisitive and they don't know what these human things are. So you watch them go from LAX to the Orlando airport

and then the baggage comes out and they crawl out of the baggage. They got in the suitcase because they're mime people. They don't understand that you're supposed to sit on a seat, not be in a suitcase. Doesn't that sound charming? Oh, yeah. You want what I just said to play out over the course of seven minutes?

Is it called like the click clack, the clackers or something? I don't know. Is this the same? There's a special where like a robot couple goes. Yes. This is the robot couple. this is the robot couple. This is the robot couple. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. They are similar to, although I would say less creepy than Bernadette Peters and Andy Kaufman in Heart Beeps. But they probably get along with the Heart Beeps couple. They could go on a double date with the Heart Beeps couple. You think they swing with the Heart Beeps couple. I think they might use all of their secret genital compartments and have a good old time. There's also this sequence where, if that doesn't sound fun to you, a robot mime couple, there's a very long sequence in which these two grown adult mimes are babies in the park

in like respective blue and pink baby onesies. And they kind of crawl around i mean as soon as i saw that beginning i stopped watching so i can't recap the man baby part uh it is something that is a clearly a mass of content that is only meant for fetishes um utterly utterly disturbing so uh and yet i claimed that this special was less depressing than what we were just talking about. And here is why. Because it contains one of my favorite sequences in any Disney special. And you can look up just this part on YouTube.

Please just, you at home, put in the phrase, Pablo Cruz rocks Disney's Discovery Island. This is a delightful sequence in which the 70s 70s band pablo cruz performs their hit song worlds away and uh over at the seven seas lagoon at disney world which if you're not familiar with that is the big lake that's outside of the magic kingdom and surrounding the polynesian contemporary hotels uh the thing you forget about old disney world is that it was this like water sports outdoor destination when it opened. Something that I think was a lot more important in the 70s. Then

they needed to have that as well as the theme parks. So you had your golf courses and you also had boats and stuff. And this music video lets you see Pablo Cruz trying out all the different types of water sports. You're watching these cool mustachioed dudes on catamarans and jet skis and

paddle boats um and it's all set to this song that's kind of like a i would describe it as a sub come sail away it's sort of as the like odyssey aquatic vibe of come sail away except with like way less interesting sections like the solos are a lot more limited in their musical dexterity. That being said, this sequence is so charming. It's like, you know, there's like, there's split screens and the song is so, for worlds away.

And if you just, if you look this one up and watch it, just know that my like happy place, Scott Gardner's happy place, if I'm feeling low, I just imagine that I'm in the Pablo Cruz Rocks Discovery Island video. Just catamaranning around with the bass player. If you watch this sequence and you don't smile, there's something wrong with you. There's a story in my family about one of the first times my parents went to Disney. And I hope I haven't told this before,

but my parents rented a boat in the 70s. They rented two of those like putt-putt boats where, Mike, I know you've done this before. It's just literally like there's a brake pedal and a gas pedal or there might just be a gas pedal and you take your foot off. It's like an idiot-proof like tiny little one or two person boat. You can rent a variety of boats and take it around Bay Lake. And yeah, so we would take out the little boats and yeah, you would drive it around.

The second to last time I was at Disney World, I drove it around and tried to figure out if I could get out of the boat and get into river country. The abandoned water park. Yeah. Because you can kind of see it. I knew where it was. So we like pulled up and I was like, I mean, look, I'm not a bad kid, so I'm not going to get in trouble.

But I was like, oh, here's where you would park and pop out. And I think I could make it over into the abandoned water park. If you were. If I was a bad kid, which I'm not. I'm a good boy. I'm a good kid. So, yeah. So my parents rented two of those boats.

My dad in the middle of the lake ran out of gas. I'm a good kid. So, yeah, so my parents rented two of those boats. My dad, in the middle of the lake, ran out of gas. So he's just stranded. My mom's like, all right, I'll go back to the dock, and I'll get someone to come out. So my dad's just sitting there in a boat, and then one of the boats that take people to the Magic Kingdom started coming right at him. And he's like, I don't have gas. I can't do anything. And they realize it and move out of the way, but they're still awake. There's still waves from the boat,

so then he gets moored on the rocks. So then he's just sitting there, miserable. It's the 70s, probably in polyester, just miserable on the rocks waiting for a cast member in a different boat to come get his broken down boat and that always so we so that's why we never uh when i came along we never did any of those rentals dark memories dark yeah it didn't go as smooth as pablo cruz's journey through the Seven Seas Lagoon. But your dad, coincidentally, is named Pablo Sheridan, correct?

Yes. Old Pablo Sheridan. Old Pablo Sheridan. Yeah, but so another thing about this music video is that in addition to the water sports stuff, the band is performing the song next to like a little shipwreck set on the shores of Discovery Island. And Discovery Island, we've talked about a tiny bit on the show. It's this like abandoned former zoo

that's an island within the Seven Seas Lagoon at Disney World. And once they opened Animal Kingdom, they abandoned this. They stopped keeping tabs on this old zoo and thought that they cleared a lot of the animals out, but they did not. There was some urban exploration thing where people found weird vulture eggs in the corners of these. Anyway, what I'm getting at is there's a part where a vulture features really heavily into the main shot of the singer of Pablo Cruz.

And you come out of it thinking like oh cool I should go to this island go uh pretend I'm a pirate and hang out with these vultures but like looking up the history of the vultures at Discovery Island in 1989 Disney was specifically sued by the state of Florida for their poor treatment of the vultures oh the vulture pro oh no are you getting to the shed? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently there was a time. Well, first of all, the vultures attacked people. They attacked the other animals.

They were not kept in check by Disney. And at one point it was discovered that there was a, the vultures were just being kept kind of unruly in a big shed. Or maybe not a big shed. It might have been a small shed. And at one point there were 72 vultures all just kept in which is so it's like something

you'd run into in Donkey Kong Country. That's like a boss level going into the old rusty shed of vultures and Donkey Kong having to punch them all out one at a time. Unless the vultures were gold. Unless it was a bonus level. And you were trying to collect them.

Now that I would like, but just imagine opening that door, a door full of rusty shit, full of vultures. Wait, what? But isn't the ending of that, that that was just like a sheet metal shed and there was a heat wave and the vultures

just kind of cooked. Oh, God. Oh, what? Jesus. Didn't they have to pay a significant fine because of a bunch of cooked vultures? Oh, Jesus Christ. Anyway. Oh, we're trying so hard to steer this out of misery.

It's the most wonderful time. You've got vultures for cooking. Oh, no. But, you know, back in 78, the vultures were just a fun part of a Pablo Cruz music video. And there were a lot of great songs in the 1978 Christmas at Disney World special, including one that is so notable. A song sung by an old character actor named Avery Schreiber. And he, in this special, exclusively plays one of Disney's great characters, Geppetto. And I'm going to play a couple of clips of this for you now.

All right. So old Avery Schreiber, as Geppetto, is reminiscing on, I think he's finished reading a letter from Pinocchio, who I guess is not coming home for the holidays to be with geppetto oh jesus but it's still a very nice letter and it's making him look back fondly on uh happy christmas memories with pinocchio so that sets the stage for this you hear that he's still my boy pinocchio's a grown-up he moved to America, but he's still my boy. Is that canon? It is now.

What a crazy wooden puppet I make, huh? What a man he has turned into. I remember Pinocchio when he was a little child. What a wooden head he was. What a wooden head he was. What a wooden head he was. Every time I get a splinter at the work table here, I remember the time I gave him the only spanking I ever gave him. What?

This is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you. Boy, was I right. It's also now, Ken, now we know that it wasn't just in theory that geppetto had to raise pinocchio like a baby he like spanked him and punished him and as we're about to learn gave him a bath say do you remember the time that i gave a pinocchio the first bath oh was he scared he was so frightened he's telling this story to a wooden horse, by the way. Geppetto's just a crazy man in his work shed talking to inanimate objects. What's a water?

I put him in it. He floats. Then I couldn't get him out. He gets all soaked. He gets the wood inside him. He gets twisted. He gets warped. It wasn't funny then, but now we can laugh about it.

So, whoa. Here's a nice bit of education for the holiday boy. You know, forget about the story of Christ. This Christmas reflect on the story of Geppetto giving Pinocchio a bath and him warping. This sounds like he's about to take a bunch of pills or they're on the way they're kicking in right now and he's having crazy false memories he's gonna get in the tub with a toaster i make my new at a son this is a toaster oh let's give this toaster a big hug and a bath. Pre-date Disney's live-action remakes.

This Avery Shriver as live-action Pinocchio. Yeah, you think that Lion King with Beyonce is going to be fun? Give me, I want the full hour and a half tale of Pinocchio's first bath and first spanking. Ooh, ouch. It's at a splinter. But again, this would never fly. This stuff would never fly nowadays. They would never let a precious Disney property,

a beloved character like Geppetto... Ramble on with semi-improvised stories that you've never seen in any potential Disney product. You would not have been allowed to spank Pinocchio. That's out. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's problematic. Spanking is bad.

Yeah. We don't get to hear about Lumiere having to, the first time as a candle, he had to take a shower and use a loofah, which was one of his friends, also an enchanted... If you're an enchanted washcloth in the castle, I guess you'd just have to know you'd be used in a bath or shower situation for one of your friends.

You've got to do your part. Darkest episode we've ever done. Does Pinocchio come back? He never comes back. He shows up in a different plot unrelated to Geppetto in Disney World. He's in Disney World, but Geppetto is back in Italy.

Wait, wait, wait. But who's playing him in Disney World? I think one of those mimes. I think it's one of them mimes. Oh, jeez. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which also is a sequence not worth discussing. Watching this creepy little, or perhaps woman.

It might be a grown woman playing Pinocchio. What is happening? I don't know. You know, now that we look at, was this not a correct idea to do? Here, I'm sure I'll only make it worse by playing this bizarre song. Geppetto is so lonely for Christmas because Pinocchio isn't coming home that he decides to make a new friend for himself. And we watch him

pick up a full, a complete puppet we can see as he's picking it up. And then he starts kind of pantomime banging it as if he's building a new one. But we already saw the finished puppet he was picking up. And here we go. Today, I take some wood from an old tree don't you worry christmas

tree today i try to make it company today i try to make geppetto's a clone what um geppetto's clone did he say Geppetto's a clone. What? Geppetto's clone, did he say? Geppetto's clone. And let me skip ahead to what the hell he's talking about there. Aaron and I, also my wife and I at home, quite often if one of us is just like, Hey, when is that happening? And we say today, then there will always be a pause.

And we say, Today. Today. He repeats that so many times in this song also i love that geppetto is just losing his mind whenever he's not singing it's just bizarre unhinged cackling so uh so then here let's cut to the end of the song we get to see what puppet he's making and i'll turn this to face you guys i give my love to you i give my love oh my god oh my god fuck off oh my god he's making a puppet of himself it's he's dressed in the same little vest and same wig. Geppetto just turned around, revealing a puppet of himself.

Oh, my God. I give my love to me. This is far more disturbing than the one I played. A crew got together and made this, filmed it, built a set, built that puppet. This was in a time, now there's endless recorded media. There were only so many TV specials filmed in 1978 and one of them, like

70 crusty guys had to get together and film Geppetto giving his love to a puppet of himself. Let me ask a question. If you were to keep playing it, does he start kissing it? I believe so. I'll just like Oh yes, immediately. He does!

It took three seconds to tell that yes, he kisses himself. Is it one kiss or is it like he's making out with it? No, it's a sweet little kiss under the forehead. Oh, you look just like me. Oh my God. Oh, my dream of me coming into the room, giving myself a bigger hug. All right, Papa Geppetto, this is a world of sin and it is time to cleanse. of me coming into the room giving myself a big hug. Alright, Puppet Geppetto, this is a world of sin

and it is time to cleanse the sinners. From now on, Geppetto, only have time for people who look like me. The great cleansing will happen and only mustachioed old man will exist. Alright, Geppetto Puppet, we're going to

the top of the clock tower. Now you watch that to the door and I'm going to dish out the vengeance. Anyone who's not an older man, they got to go. You should have come home, Pinocchio. You should have come home. You could have stopped at this.

One of the visits to old withering memory Geppetto. Oh my god Well should we jump to Geppetto carved his own gun Out of From his workshop Oh hello gun

I wish a gun To come to life You are such a good gun Mwah Oh my god Is yours fun Jason Yes it is fun Can we jump

Can we jump to one of mine? Please, dear God, let's do it. Sometimes you discover while making an episode, you shouldn't have done this one. All right. Like America coming out of the malaise that was the 1970s, it's time to jump ahead to the go-go 80s. For the Disney Very Merry Christmas Parade 1988. Yeah. Which I believe my family, I believe we had this probably taped off of TV,

and I would watch this on repeat because a lot of it seemed very familiar to me. So I want to start by just playing the opening, like, here's who's here credit. Because I could do a whole episode just on the credits of these parades because like I said earlier they're like a perfect time capsule so exciting knowing which of your favorite stars are joining you on this Christmas morning here we go Australia, the Far East, and service men and women around the globe. It's the 6th Annual Walt Disney World Very Merry Christmas Parade.

Join our hosts, Joan London and Alan Thicke, along with Regis Philbin, right here at Walt Disney World in Florida, and from Disneyland in California. Join Sarah Purcell and Family Ties Scott Valentine for all the holiday magic and fantasy of a coast-to-coast Disney Christmas extravaganza. Share all the laughs and holiday cheer of a visit to Mickey's birthday land. Celebrate

Christmas Caribbean style with Minnie and all her friends. Say hello to Oliver, Dodger, and Francis, and take a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Oliver and Company. Join family ties Scott Valentine as he previews Disneyland's great new thrill ride, Splash Mountain. Catch a sneak peek at the movie

magic coming soon to the Disney MGM Studios theme park. All this and more is on its way. Okay, so a very exciting year for the Disney Company. There's so much going on. MGM is opening. It's the Disney decade. Splash Mountain is opening. Wow.

Mickey's Birthday Land, the predecessor to Toontown. And Scott Valentine is there to cover it all. And Scott Valentine is there. So Alan Thicke and Joan Lunden. It's vibrant neon colors. Regis Philbin, like we were saying earlier, Regis Philbin does Man on the Street in this, and there is a point where he's just going down Main Street, and he starts by talking, where are you from?

Are you having a good day? Asking everyone where they're from. And at a certain point realizes, oh, this is going to take too long. And he just starts shouting at people, where are you from? New Jersey, where are you from? Canada.

It's just people going down the line. So some of the stuff previewed in that. Okay, the Caribbean Beach Resort. This is a very special clip. some of the stuff previewed in that and okay, the Caribbean Beach Resort. This is a very special clip. The Caribbean Beach Resort was new that year. It was just opening. Again, like I said, we had this special taped

off TV when I was a kid. So the following is one of those things that is burned into my mind and I'll hit play and turn this around so you can see this. Arena! Hungry! Hungry! my mind and I'll hit play and turn this around so you can see this. Minnie is dancing on top of a float. Good flamenco routine.

There's a lot of dancers dancing to this popular song at the time, especially Chip and Dale in very festive outfits. Those little flamenco sleeves, those flowery sleeves. Yeah, this goes on for a while. Imagine that pace for four more minutes. In the interest of fair use laws, I'll stop it there. But yeah, looking through these specials, I had convinced myself that it was Gloria Estefan doing this.

And while there is a lot of clips of Gloria Estefan performing at Disney World, she is not in this. But this is just a thing burned into my mind. People dancing around the, Chippendale dancing around the Caribbean Beach Resort. As a boy, were you like, this is great. I love that song as a kid. I love that song. I love Chippendale.

So, yeah, but this is essentially just a music video slash commercial advertising a new hotel Disney has built. A new Caribbean themed hotel. A new Caribbean themed hotel that did have a great pool. I remember my family pool hopping

to that. Is that the one with the slide that's the dragon's tongue? No, I think that's a different hotel. I think that

this is the one that looks like an old like fort and there's like cannons and stuff. So yeah, we would go there a lot. Here's that earnestness

after hearing old men contemplate their lives. Now let's remember when we were four and all we wanted was cool water slides. Just to come out of some animal's mouth. I want to be spit out of a big animal. Can I just say also, with your fondness for conga, I had a very pleasurable experience two years ago when i the last time i was in new

york city uh my wife erin really wanted to see the gloria estefan musical get on your feet on your feet yeah and uh there we we went to get last minute tickets for that day's matinee there were only two seats left and uh and they were they were reserved because they were a little more expensive and they were the guy at the box office told us, these are the conga seats. And it was pricey, but I had a feeling what that might mean. And indeed, at the end of Act 1, the show-stopping closer of the first act was conga. And before I knew it, my wife was up on her feet and in the conga line. She was escorted up by Gloria Estefan's father from the musical. And she's going up and in the conga line she was escorted up by gloria estefan's father from the musical

and she's going up and down the aisle she's in the play this was that the happiest memory i could not have been you know we i had a feeling what conga seats was gonna mean and they they didn't uh they didn't let me down oh what a what yeah what what what a time if you hey if you're in new york go see Get On Your Feet. Get On Your Feet. Unless it's not playing anymore. It may have closed a very long time ago. There's no way to know.

Okay. So, again, in the interest of young Jason, a big part of this parade, a preview of Oliver and Company. Behind the scenes of Oliver and Company, behind the scenes of Oliver and Company, which, if I'm remembering correctly, was the first movie a young Jason would have seen in the movie theaters. Me too. Wow, how about that? So I have that very nascent baby, barely there memory,

as full of holes and crazy as a geppetto memory um i do remember being in the theater and watching oliver it might be mine i'm a year older than you guys i feel like but i feel like it might be it's one of the first movies i don't know if it's the first one i saw but it's it's for sure like one of the one of the first three you might have been a great mouse detective guy i don't think i saw that in the theater. I think I saw, was that before? I'm not sure. Land Before Time was also in the mix. They were all, it's hard to know which one.

I'll tell you what else I saw in the theater pretty, a year after this, Dick Tracy. Hey. A horrific looking movie to show a four-year-old. Anyway, Oliver and Company. This is the big movie of the year. You know, there's another clip in the special of Jeffrey Katzenberg going like, we're committed to making one animated movie a year, and we're on track to do it. You know what those were?

Those are The Little Mermaid and Eddie and the Beast and all the best ones. But this clip is real quick, and we'll post this on social media because this one's kind of visual, and it's pretty funny. It's just very funny to me. So I'll play it for you guys to see, and then I'll describe what is happening. Billy Joel was suggested really early on. Billy Joel was in sunglasses and a white T-shirt. Billy Joel, he can sing great, but can he act?

And then it worked out great. He could really act. He was really into the party. Hey, keep it down, guys. The game's on. Oh, boy, that's right. That never... That's it.

He can really act. It's just this very soft... Just Billy Joel just grooving inside in a sound booth like we are, but he's got sunglasses on and he's grooving at this very soft-spoken Disney animator just going like, yeah, he can sing, but can you act? I don't know why this is so fun. Can I ask you to role play?

Can I ask you to be Billy Joel in that moment? I'll just be the director of Oliver and Company. Now, remember, you're great on stage, a lot of great stage presence, but remember, this part really requires you to act and really just emote and really just give it your all, and it's got to be huge. It's got to jump from the microphone onto the screen. Okay, so you think you're ready, Billy? Yeah.

All right, here we go. Really act, really do it, and action. Come on, the game's on. Oh my God. You can really act, sir. Thank you, Mr. Joel. We are all weeping on the other side of the glass. Alright.

Stay cool. Alright, back to the Hamptons then. I knew it'd be easy just like writing songs. Oh boy. I mean, that's that movie I would love. I loved, that movie I loved. I loved it.

Yeah, Why Should I Worry? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. Is there more? Yeah. I was waiting for more stuff. Hey.

That's all I have from 88. Okay, cool. Hey, let's take a little break. We'll be back with more Christmas magic. All right, and we're back with Podcast The Ride, the very merry non-denominational holiday special. And let's step through a couple more moments from some of these holiday specials. Jason, I think you had one more to talk about. So just real quick, I watched the 1996 parade hosted by Suzanne Somers and Jerry Van Dyke.

And can I say... Chemistry. Chemistry. If you had to define the word chemistry, it would be these two together. Chemistry, you know, knowing what the other person you're on TV with is talking about, the two ends of the conversation lining up

and actually connecting. I was really upset that year. I loved Regis and Joan Lundin so much. actually connecting. I was like really upset that year. Like I was so, I loved Regis and Joan Lunden so much. And then like, who are these people? And Jerry Van Dyke is so like strange and doddering.

And I was like, I still have sour memories about this special. How dare you play it here. Yeah. This is also the year of the cake castle. Which I love Disney. I also love the cake castle. For those of you who don't know,

for the anniversary of Disney World, they made the castle into a giant birthday cake. So it was a big pink monstrosity that looked like a cake or cupcake instead of the famous Cinderella castle. And Jason and I as a a boy, loved it. Many people hated it.

It was gaudy. It was bizarre. It was strange. I wee-went that year, and I loved it. Yeah, I thought it was great. You ate up the cake. I would have, yeah. Scarfed down a big slice of it.

If I could have taken a bite of it, I would. Jason tried. I tried and did not succeed. That's what your nightmares are about still so this clip real quick let me just make sure I have the right spot okay

so this is a gospel singer named Sandy Patty doing a little number in the parade I'm gonna play it fabulous Sandy Patty. Yeah. Remember the magic.

Remember the magic. It's time to remember the magic. Your heart could just take wing. You could live out all your dreams. No matter how, no matter when You can reach that world again It's like a dream come true That lives inside of you

It's time to remember the magic It's time to remember the magic Remember the magic Remember the magic And you rock that sensation A new celebration Five, oh five, one more day 25 years of Disney magic

All right, we'll stop it there. 25 years of Disney magic. Now, what do you think they're standing on singing Zippity-Doo-Dah? A big log? A giant splash mountain log? Nope, she's standing on the Cinderella float, and a bunch of royal people are dancing. But here's what happens later in the parade. For the winner now, with the showboat from Song of the South.

Song of the South. Here it comes right now. Song of the South. And here is Square Rabbit, Bear and Fox on a big boat. So this is also weird to look at now, like Disney acknowledging Song of the South. Yeah, because Song of the South, this old controversial movie, is always part of the parks with Splash Mountain, but they don't really shove those characters out there. They don't make them such a strong part of the...

Yeah. What I was going to say is that Jerry Van Dyke, famous... Jerry Van Dyke is the one who introduced Song of the... And he screwed it up. Jerry Van Dyke is famous, Jerry Van Dyke is the one who introduced Thung of the, and he screwed it up. Jerry Van Dyke is, if always cast as like a fuck up. He always is a guy who like, he was that on when he was on the Dick Van Dyke show and when he was on, we just watched,

I just watched a Mary Tyler Moore episode where Mary's dating Jerry Van Dyke. And he's like, he's a loser guy who tries to be a standup comedian and he sucks. So Jerry Van Dyke in real life, I think is like a screw-up that's like the whole thing and then he he proves it here in the disney unless he's trying to you know tie continuity together through all of his role various roles throughout tv history as soon

as the special was done he walked out of the announcer's booth the wrong way and fell down onto main street and cracked his head. He got his head caught in a bucket of paint. Like he was walking around he couldn't. Then he tripped down some. Yeah. And ever since then

he's been talking to wooden horses and toasters trying to get them in the bath. Jason, does that take us through the 1996? Yeah, that's all myself. I also, I flipped through that special as well

and you get a special sneak preview of the live action Glenn Close 101 Dalmatians and there's this one part where they show you how baby puppies are made and they pull an inanimate sort of foam rubber Dalmatian

out of a mold and it's one of the creepiest images I have ever seen. It was kind of like birthing up an unpainted puppy fetus. It's one of the most disturbing images. In keeping with the nightmare, I could have let that go

and not talked about that foam puppy fetus, and yet I had to. You felt compelled to. It's in my brain, and I had to spread it to yours. I couldn't hold on to that memory. No. So I have one more.

And after all of this depression, let me just play the happiest thing that I could imagine. And by the way, I want to give a shout out to this one was put on the internet by our friend Doug Jones, a.k.a. Dante Fontana. And if after all this you're somehow still interested in clips from Bizarre Disney Holiday Specials and other specials from all year round. Doug made these amazing mashup. Have you guys seen these things that Doug's made? These feature length, what are they called? The Mouseketeers Escape to Splash Mountain and Golden Girls Return from Space Mountain.

These are on Vimeo, or you can order them, I believe, as DVDs off of DanteFontana.com. Just a shout-out. He made me aware of so many bizarre, wonderful moments from these Disney specials, including this one, which he's responsible for putting on YouTube. Ladies and gentlemen, a performance from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with special guest Alan Thicke. And so what we are looking at right now, and please do yourself a favor and look this one up, it is Alan Thicke dressed kind of like the Schwarzenegger in Terminator mode with leather jacket and sunglasses doing kind of a rap rock version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town. While the Ninja Turtles do a roundhouse flip surround him and the like.

And I won't play the whole thing, but you end up with slightly customized Ninja Turtles related lyrics like, he sees you eat your pizza. It is a real delight. I remember this. And this was a big, because I think this is the end of the special. Am I wrong?

Or there's another, maybe there's another Ninja Turtle appearance. I can't imagine how they would top it. Yeah, because they teased me for like an hour or two, and I remember just it killing me to wait to see the Ninja Turtles. And I don't, my memory, Elm Thick has been erased from my memory. It's just I remember the Ninja Turtles, and they're with the party wagon, the turtle van.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was thrilling to see them in one of my favorite places. Pretending to kick nothing, kicking at the audience, which didn't register. It's practice. If there were foot soldiers here, consider them kicked in the face. I think Alan adds a lot to it. Please look this up. Please look up my other favorite Alan Thicke musical number, Sweaty and Hot, from the 1987 Aerobics Championships. It's a song that he wrote that's like a love song with gymnastics metaphors

strung throughout. We're giving you a lot of homework on this one. Pablo Cruz, the many musical numbers of Alan Thicke. Check them out. So there's our brief jaunt through the history of Disney holiday specials. There's more. We could save the history of Disney holiday specials. There's more. We could save some for next year, or we could never discuss these again, because what an incredibly miserable area.

If it's not the Ninja Turtles doing roundhouse flips and singing about- Or Caribbean Shippendale. Yeah, some of it is a pure delight, and some of it is a dark night of the soul. But that's what's great. These specials are a fun grab bag, as this episode has been, apparently. Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.

And now to send off this holiday episode with a bang, we have come up with a segment called Holiday Overlay. Now, what we're going to do is we're each going to choose a ride that exists at any theme park across the world, and much like Disney does or Universal would do, we'll put an overlay on it related to Christmas or the holiday season. A temporary holiday re-theming, a la the Haunted Mansion holiday that they do with Nightmare Before Christmas, or the Jungle Cruise becomes the Jingle Cruise. Right.

That's been a recent thing. I don't know if you've seen it. They've seen it. They put Santa hats on the hippos. There's not much to it. That's really all it is. They're not doing it this year. But they're not doing it this year, right.

So there's an example of a not successful one, one that they haven't kept up, but Small World Holiday, Haunted Mansion Holiday. These become treasured parts of the holidays at Disneyland. At Halloween, they do Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy, where they project an evil space ghost that follows you around, and it kind of lightly claws at you, and it's scary. It's not much different, but it's fun. You know, it's fun to have a little bit of a change-up on the rides. So, we're each going to take a ride ride and we're going to present what we think a holiday overlay for

that ride would be. All right. So we're all familiar with the famous ride that is Avatar Flight of Passage. Okay. It just opened this year. It is in the Avatar land, which is in Disney World. And the ride itself is like a simulator ride, and it's where you take part in the beautiful journey of becoming one with the mighty Akron, aka the Banshee, which are those flying creatures in the movie Avatar. You don't need to tell us both of their names. Right. We all know. I know.

I know you guys know. I just want to, in case there's one person out there that doesn't know about flying majestically over the Mo'ara Valley, you know? The Hallelujah Mountains. Yes. And take your place along the other Navi. So, get ready to experience Pandora in a whole new way with

Avatar Flight of Passage Ho Ho Holiday. So, here's the thing. Navi Santa Claus is really sick. Like, very sick. No! Okay? And he's not going to make the Christmas Forest Gift Festival, the name of which, you know, I can't pronounce because it's in Navi, but they'll come up with...'t pronounce because it's in navi but they'll come up with a lot of apostrophes yeah they'll come up

with a better navi name for it so navi santa claus has enlisted all of you to ride on the backs of the mighty akron and deliver gifts for all the navi boys and girls so you know you give like a new like a leather groin cloth for little and i put these in the navi name generator what would be michael and navi samukhan would be my name so like he gets that or you get like a necklace that says i see you which is of course the famous line from avatar again i don't have to tell you guys but we all know i see you is the is the famous thing that i say to each other and you have to go over and you fill everyone's stockings with unobtainium, and you know, and you

give cheer to everyone. So it's basically the same ride system, it's just that now you're distributing presents. And there'll also be some virtual reality gloves, where you'll be able to, you know, throw presents at different things, so there'll be a point system as well. We're adding a whole different element

to this ride. Who spread the most cheer, a.k.a. Venarzin. They're the Navi word for cheer. So you're taking the ride, and it's basically, you know, it's not going to be that expensive, but now you're adding another element to it that's super fun. And, of course, there's going to be an original song

sung by Leona Lewis, who sung, of course, the very famous I See You, the hit song from Avatar. Why are you even bothering to explain it? I'm just in case there's one person out there that doesn't remember

the detail from Avatar. I know everyone mostly does. It'd be like saying, you know, my heart will go on from Titanic. These songs from James Cameron films

are exactly equal. Of course. Yes, they are. So, look, she sings a song, I See You, parentheses, at Navi Christmas.

And that's the ride. And I think it would be a big hit. And a happy new year. And a happy Navi new year. Oh, wow. So, the Ho Ho Ho Holiday, what was it? The holiday, right of holiday passage? Avatar Flight of Passage.

I mean, we can workshop the title specifically, you know, to get maybe something that is maybe more Navi friendly. But that's the working title, HoHo Holiday, Avatar Flight of Passage. That's a blast, and they have the technology, they have the screen. It's easy to change that stuff out, like Guardians of the Galaxy Mission Breakout. Let's get that done. Next holiday season, Disney World. Yeah, inject a little holiday spirit into Pandora. Jason, you want to do it, or I can go next? Sure. Well, you you know we recorded this

episode lately so it's fresh on my mind and I thought to myself what better way to incorporate Christmas than a ride that already involves trees to some extent so Dudley Do Rights

rips all Christmas everyone okay Dudley Do-Right's rips all Christmas, everyone. Okay? You, uh, Dudley has to save Christmas. You change the story of the ride, and you want to talk about inexpensive? This is inexpensive. You just put a Christmas tree outfit over

the Nell animatronics. You don't have to change anything. You put the Christmas tree outfit right over her, cut out a thing for her face. So it's like, oh, it's Nell, but she's also a Christmas tree somehow. And then you hang some balls throughout the ride. Maybe at some point there's a wild sound take of just Dudley going like, Merry Christmas, everyone, and the horse neighs.

So Snidely Whiplash is trying to kidnap a Christmas tree? Yes, he's trying to kidnap one Christmas tree. And he's tying one to the train tracks, a Christmas tree to the train tracks. Yes. You could very easily paint him, just give him a new hat and a new mustache, and then he's evil old Jack Frost. Oh. Oh, sure.

That's going to make the money go up a little bit, though. That's going to make, yeah. We'll have to buy one new hat. Yeah, you got to buy that new hat. Or just paint it and paint it and repaint it. But paint costs money too. Hey, I know you're trying to be budget conscious with this ride. So, you know, this is just a quickie, you know.

It's fun, fun for the folks. It helps distract people from the fact that Florida is starting to get colder and they're on a water ride. Yeah, so Dudley do-rights rips all Christmas. And maybe the horse has a little Santa hat, too. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. That sounds great.

Why not? I think we can make that happen very easily. Could you dye the water a Christmas color? Could it be red or green or alternatingly both? Could you freeze the water and have the raft slide on the ice that'd be fun i mean it'll go faster these ideas change the properties of the physics of the ride that's true it may not be scientifically literally possible but uh hey this is uh this is a blue sky brainstorming sesh. Sure. And anything goes. That's delightful.

Mine's a little bit, I'm going to do something that's a little more of a thinker. It might, you know, it's not necessarily, well, you'll see. It's a bit of a grim situation, but it all works out in the end. I'm going to take a ride that has never really had any particular stakes to it or any story. It's just kind of a ride that putts along. You look at stuff passively. And I think it could use kind of a bigger sense of mystery or intrigue. I'm going to take you guys now on Submarine Voy the sunken pole and the story here is that it's it's a future in which the polar ice caps have melted and the rumor is that in those events in the events of that that tragedy uh santa's workshop and the entire north pole compound where he works

was buried and lost uh nobody knows nobody has eyes has eyes on Santa's whereabouts or the elves or the reindeer. So we're going to board a submarine and we're going to submerge and we're going to see if we can find what happened to Santa's workshop. And like your attraction, this one can involve James Cameron. He's now in the Disney family with Avatar and he's big into discovering sunken remains like that of the Titanic. He loves submarines. He loves's big into discovering sunken remains like that of the Titanic. He loves submarines. He loves sunken remains.

So let's give him a shot to keep talking about it. He'd be your narrator on this journey, and for a while you'd just be submerging, and it would seem like, well, maybe we're never going to figure this out. Maybe we're never going to get there. Maybe we won't have any closure on this North Pole burial. But then, hovering just above an iceberg we see a little a little red and white

weather vein uh shaped like a reindeer and that's the proof that's the up at the top of santa's workshop cottage so we know there's there we go that's the proof if we keep digging so in the submarine you you blow a hole in the iceberg and you keep sinking and you discover, oh, my God, it is true. These are the remains of Santa's North Pole workshop. And it's a little bit upsetting. A little bit? You get a sense of the full depth of whatever occurred there when the ice caps in the avalanche, whatever it was that happened. You see

errant candy canes and Christmas scarves and sweaters drifting around through the ice flow. You see unworn Santa suits and belts and boots, toys that could never find a home, dollies and little horses that will never

be given to a child. Now, at this point, kids are upset, right? This isn't like kids are going to be upset. You all are both tearing up as I described this ride. But I think it's important. It involves, it sheds a light on the ravages of global warming and what is happening to our earth to know that we could lose something as precious as as as Santa's workshop. as we're arriving back at the port, the hatch opens up and a beam of sunlight comes in and who should be there

but a little old driver so lively and quick, you know that he is Saint Nick. You hear his ho, ho, ho and you discover, oh my God, Santa made it out in time. He made it out before the avalanche.

Imagine you've been in that submarine, things are as grim as they could ever be, but then you come back out, and oh my god, he made it. There's Santa, there's Mrs. Claus, there's all of the elves, and all of the reindeer, and old Rudolph himself. They made it out in time, and they moved Santa's workshop

to the Canadian province of Nunavut. Santa's workshop is up and running, and it's green now they learn their lesson it is now no longer a coal emitting workshop and uh and and you get to celebrate with them and have a uh uh uh eat gingerbread cookies and uh share a candy cane which is of course what mrs claus makes she makes the candy canes if you know the lore of so it's i i like this because it's a story with a lot of push and pull imagine the the terror of thinking that santa and all his friends

have died but discovering that they that they made it out and they're stronger than ever so the ride itself is just bleep the ride itself it feels like the ride portion of it just feels like it's a it's a it's a horrible nightmare yeah and then when you get off the ride, then you're like, oh, everything's okay. But the ride itself is horrible. The ride itself is horrible. The ride itself, when you're journeying through crumbling gingerbread houses. Right. And, I mean, you can't deny it would be effective.

It would stick with you. It would cause a conversation on the way home. It would make you talk about global warming and what's happening to our planet. I think it would be more effective than the Inconvenient Truth films. It's like touring a disaster site basically. Or going to Disney with an aging Art Carney.

The North Pole has frozen over just as his icy heart has. And that's sort of what's happened here. Look, I'm not saying it's fun, but do they all have to be? They don't. I mean, Lincoln is not fun at all. Great moments with Mr. Lincoln.

Yeah, there's a precedent for depressing stuff in the parks. You learn about the Civil War. You learn about a family torn apart. So why not see a lot of elf workstations with no one filling them with toys that will never be given? While I think your idea sounds just totally miserable, I do have to appreciate the lesson it's teaching the youth of today. Yeah, sure.

And these are things, you know, Epcot Center teaches about what might be happening to our future. We discussed the universe of energy and its discussion of fossil fuels. You know, there are issues in the park, and it's time to bring them back for the holidays. Make people realize that if we aren't careful this Christmas, there may not be another. That's something to think about. Yeah. On that note, as we all...

So imagine here's Journey to the Sunken Pole. I think everybody's sold, right? Yep. We're all sold. Great. Well, have a merry Christmas and a happy sold, right? Yep, we're all sold. Great. Well, have a merry Christmas and a happy holiday, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Make it so happy.

Hey, look, as we reach the end of the year here, just anybody who's listening, thanks so much for listening. I hope other than this episode that you've had some fun and enjoyed yourself as we've taken you on this little podcast ride. Thank you for all your nice comments on Twitter. Thank you for your iTunes reviews. They warm our hearts. And, hey, if you have any questions, we'd like to do a mailbag episode at some point, so email us any questions you have about the parks or what have you, anything.

Yes, give us fodder to kill time with on this podcast. For sure. Thanks, everyone, at Feral Audio. And, hey, it's been a blast. We'll see you, not next year. We'll see you after Christmas. We'll see you next week. Yeah, we'll see you next week.

The normal thing. All right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you survived podcast the right. Thanks. Feral Audio.