Podcast: The Ride - The Monorail!
Episode Date: December 7, 2018We’re talkin’ monorails! The highway in the sky! Disney World’s lawsuit waiting to happen! Please stand clear of the doors. Por favor manténganse alejado de las puertas. Mission Tortilla Factor...y episode now available behind the Second Gate! 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
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Forever Dog Podcast the Ride.
Welcome to Podcast the Ride, the theme park podcast hosted by three guys who are exactly like the three caballeros, except all whiter than Donald.
I'm Scott Gardner, joined by Mike Carlson and Jason Sheridan. What's up, fellas? Hey, hello, I'm Michael. Yes, those three caballeros, I love them. They're great.
Yeah, I do too, and I don't have a problem with them being on that ride that they're on.
Oh, yeah.
Some people get mad about just any characters being added to anything just to be difficult.
But it's still, hey, as long as that ride is slow and creepy and has zero weight whatsoever,
I'm happy with the Mexico boat ride.
Oh, yeah.
That's great.
I also would just say they like, they're not Donald,
but the other two are cool.
They are cool.
Yeah, it's just dawning on me now
that Donald is their Caucasian friend.
Yes.
So, yeah, unlike the three of us,
Jose, what's the other one's name?
I'm blanking on the other Caviero's name.
I think it ends with an O.
I don't know what it is besides that.
Looking it up now.
People are screaming at their phones.
Yeah.
Come on, guys.
Anybody can just...
I can picture them better than some family members.
And yeah, I'm blanking on...
Yeah, picture them, sure.
Jose and...
Is it Panchito?
Panchito.
Panchito and Jose.
Look, anybody can think of some information
and immediately Google it and get it themselves.
But only in this source can information be delayed by 10 seconds
while other people look it up while manipulating other machines
that they're operating.
I'm sweating a little bit now.
I'm trying to get it under the wire there.
Would you have known Jose, though?
Did you guys know Jose?
I also don't know
which is which.
Oh, this is...
Hold on.
Oh, I'm sweating again.
Oh, no.
We don't need to tell people
which is which.
Look it up.
I do not remember
their last names, though.
Look it up.
I'm not sure they have.
They're all Caballero.
And Donald adopted
the last name Caballero
just for that series.
Jose is the one with the hat.
The straw hat.
Gotcha.
Not the sombrero.
Which color?
He's this guy.
Jose is green.
He's green.
Yeah, I guess that would have been easier.
Got it.
Than showing me something that the viewers, the listeners can't.
Oh, man, I'm covered in flap sweat.
Oh, no.
Okay, okay.
Well, here, let's get off
the caballeros then and let's change topic and i wanted to address something that just happened
kind of freshly uh as we record this episode we're recording this pretty uh quickly after
the passing of former president george hw oh yeah bush uh um he he has just passed away and you know
what especially in today's divided times there is always a rush with these politicians, whether it's Bush, whether it's McCain, to cast the final judgment on them and just to vilify them if you disagree with them or to wash over their sins if you are a fan of them.
But I'm not here to do any of that.
We are theme park journalists.
And I think what we should do in light of his passing is talk about his robot.
The George Bush robot has been operating at Disney World in the Hall of Presidents since 1989.
Free of incident, free of, you know, oil leakage that shot into the audience.
His head never snapped off.
As far as his clothes didn't slowly
drift off during a performance, that
robot has been solid and
sturdy for three decades running
and I think it's only right in light
of the passing of his likeness,
the real human George H.W.
Bush that we
declare George Bush to be the animatronic
of the month. Oh, okay.
Yes, that's what that was. Okay was no i just want to you know i i just can't think of a better way to honor the passing
right a career politician and a uh you know a grandfather a public servant for uh for many
years than to say his robot was cool this bro, yeah, you're saying this has nothing to do with politics.
Absolutely.
And that's like the benefit of our area and the podcast that we're doing.
We don't have to make this rash decision mere hours after he died.
History will determine that.
But I will say that robot is great.
And I think, you know, he performs a thankless task because he was the final president who did not speak in his actual voice. Right. And I think, you know, he performs a thankless task because he was the final president who did not speak in his actual voice.
Right. From Bill Clinton on, the real president has gotten to do the voice.
And George Bush, all he gets to do is blink and nod and look around and sort of gesture slightly when each president is mentioned.
And, you know, so it's you know i just i just i just
want to thank him for his years of mute service uh i think he's he's done a great job at worst
benign the animatronic george bush there he did not oversee the hall of the central intelligence
agency which flooded the magic kingdom with crack cocaine in the 80s, unlike possibly his living counterpart.
He didn't arrange an animatronic
war on drugs and try to buy
crack in front
of the Hall of Presidents. Yes, they did
not set
up a 19-year-old
inside the Hall of Presidents.
The robot did not do that.
The robot did not do that.
He didn't set up a 19-year-old robot and send them to jail.
This is good because then when Trump passes away, we have to honor the Trump robot because the Trump robot did not do anything.
No.
He represents something, yes, but he didn't do anything.
He does that weird finger gesture that we talked about.
He does the finger thing.
But he was programmed to do so.
And again, fully operational. programmed to do so and again fully operation i think the really the only one according to a uh
america's funniest film videos clip that i'm very fond of uh there there's there's some there was
one time when lincoln was giving a speech and then he slowly like started tipping at the knees oh
yes and falls backwards right uh so and if there's if that such an incident happened to any other
presidents i don't know about it or it wasn't on film.
This might be where we as a country, you know, people always say coming together and we have to see eye to eye on things.
Maybe if we all embrace the robots at the Hall of Presidents, we all can become a little bit more connected and a little more understanding of each other. presidents all divide not just on democratic and republican lines but on you know republic rat like whatever like the washington generals like whatever the weird old political
parties were the washington generals i think they were all part of the washington generals that
became the the opponents of the harlem globetrotters that's right yeah um but you know
yeah people of all kinds of parties are the bull moose, the weird stuff Teddy Roosevelt was part of,
they all stand there and they get along.
It's civil.
They all, I mean, they don't have a discussion.
They all just sort of stand around and blink at each other.
But even that, hey, that's something.
That's better than most politicians get along these days.
We should set up a poll, and maybe we talk to Len Testa about this because len um from the disney dish podcast is always talking about numbers he's
in charge of the guy that tells you what like how long wait times are like when attendance is
gonna be maybe he can exit poll um for popularity outside of the hall of presidents to see what the
robots approval ratings are because i think they're all going to be high. I think if we all kind of take this mentality.
How low could you possibly go on one of these robots?
What's your expectation of them?
I think people will give the Trump one low because, you know, of how bad he is as a person.
But I think Len will have to just say and specify, we're talking about the robot.
Did the robot do a good job?
Did its hands move?
Did it look at you and then shoot lasers out of its eyes at you?
No?
Well, then that's good.
That was a good robot.
Did it emit a piercing scream that deafened your child?
If no, then it's a great robot.
Did it say, why was I born?
And then try to crawl off the stage at you?
If it didn't, then it's a good robot and you should rate it high.
So let's see if we can get all these robots
to have their approval ratings high.
The robot does not stand there
and describe things as very legal, very cool.
It would have to be programmed.
There would have to be a human behind it to program.
And even if it did that,
the robot didn't say that.
It's not the robot's fault.
No.
It's just repeating what a deranged madman but even he didn't do he didn't do anything wrong either as he asserted well that's
you know i was i was thinking like it seems like something's up with trump and russia and then he
sent that very legal very cool text i'm like you know what he's right i'm letting him off the i
think he's i get it now i see now i was worried about it not being legal, but if it's cool.
It's cool, man.
If anything, we probably owe these robots apologies because we have endowed them with this fake skin, these similes of living villains.
Yeah, that's true.
I don't know.
History shows most presidents can be villains. Yeah, that's true. I don't know. History shows most presidents to be villains.
An old Big Al country bear animatronic
who is now the Donald Trump robot,
I'm assuming,
because that's how they do it.
They do reuse things.
I believe Big Al,
and this could be totally wrong,
is the Oogie Boogie on Haunted Mansion now,
on the Haunted Mansion holiday.
Oh, yeah, that's an interesting theory.
That's apocryphal, yeah. So they for sure sure do stuff like that i don't know if that's specifically right
and but so there's it's a chance that the trump animatronic used to be a character you loved
and now it's not his choice it's robot choice to put the trump skin in the wig on and now everyone
hates it that's not fair to the robot he was it was potentially the head of like a splash mountain crocodile or something sure or a goose i guess a crocodile would be too long
yes you'd be yeah i'm glad they don't cut all those corners because if they installed a donald
trump and he had a big long uh a snout like a crocodile you'd be like wait a minute something's
up they just painted a crocodile head flesh color
although i would like to see that all the presidents a crocodile head
uh well you embarrasses a crocodile that's like taking your you have a very funny
president hall of presidents video on is it where can you find it
i don't uh it's it. It's on my YouTube.
It's called Hall of Inaccurate Presidents.
Right.
Yeah.
Where it's like not the real names of presidents.
Yeah, past George Washington, it's all nonsense.
Right.
Like Daniel Flintstone and Jonathan T. President.
Right.
But the next logical step would be to like just add in like anthropomorphic alligators
and a suit.
Yeah.
Well, you know what we're talking about.
You'd have to call this Hall of Presidents under new management.
Oh, that's great.
The Enchanted Tiki Room many years ago.
I don't know if all the listeners know this, that the Tiki Room's kind of been the same thing since the 60s and never changed in Disneyland.
But in Disney World, there was this brief, bizarre period where Iago and Zazu showed up
and like, wait a minute,
we're changing things up around here.
So same thing, Iago and Zazu
take over the Hall of Presidents
and turn them all into critters.
Whenever we do the Under New Management episode,
that will also be the second Howl at the Moon episode
because that's the only
way to make uh under new management palatable you mean we'll all we'll have to drink a lot of
yeah we each drink a bucket and then we're like okay so then iago this motherfucker so he's like
a beer is not gonna do it the only only goo is gonna get us through talking about that attraction. Yeah.
Well, hey, I like this.
Some like, you know, just mixing and matching.
Why don't they, like the attractions should all get to trade.
I say put, you know, FDR and Truman and John Quincy Adams on the riverboat in Splash Mountain.
Yes. And take a goose and
who else is on there?
I guess, you know, like an
old country dog and put them in the Hall of
Presidents for a little while. Sure. Let them
take little vacations and visit each other
and be pen pals. I think that's also a great
plus up because the Hall of Presidents is
kind of a cursed attraction in that they can
never tear it down.
The outcry would be so obnoxious.
It would seem like a reaction to whoever the sitting president was.
And it's clear that from now on, the president will always be a divisive figure.
So you don't want to piss off either side by tearing it down.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it seems like Carousel of Progress will probably be there for a long time
because Walt always wanted it to stay, but...
That too, Uncle Orville, pretend he was a president.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Put one of the presidents in a bathtub on stage.
Orville D. Naptaker.
Well, Taft famously couldn't fit.
What was it?
He was a large man.
He was a large boy.
What if... That's not the
first time a large boy will come up
on today's episode, which is about the monorail.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're getting to it.
One more, Pitt.
Here, solve the Yeti problem
by removing the Yeti, putting him in the
Hall of Presidents, and then taking Andrew Jackson
and installing him on Expedition
Everest and have him swipe at you as you
go by. Might be too scary. Or maybe a gun with because he's you know he dueled a big musket sure famously
at the yeah who would have thought that at the top of everest is andrew jackson the ghost
presumably or a zombie or an undead andrew jackson yeah which now it sounds like I'm pitching a sequel to Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. So like
a real random movie. So random.
So random. This is what's
going to be good when we do all these.
The rides are all great but let's make them more
random. So yeah. I love
random humor.
I think we all do
and the best part about it is it's
sustaining. It can
go for hours.
That's true.
I mean, commercials are my favorite of all the random humor I like.
It's the best.
Of all the content I like, commercials are the random content I like.
Yeah.
That's probably right.
All right.
Of all the content.
Skittles commercials are the best media.
Properties.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, a lot of great ideas here
and once again uh president bush the robot i mean thank you for your service we're giving you
animatronic of the month that when december's gone uh sorry it'll be somebody else but uh hey
thanks for everything um respectful honoring on our part but uh hey we're not here to talk about any of that we're here to
talk about the highway in the sky we're talking the monorail which i feel is a perfect topic for
this podcast in that it's kind of a ride and kind of a dull functional thing uh it's it's sort of
a mixture of the things that we uh you know equally weight on this
on this podcast well it's definitely functional i think it's far from dull
yeah you're right that was a not that was not a good uh uh term yes i think the monorail is very
a practical transportation thing although did not start that way i learned a lot about the
monorail researching for this yeah this was very interesting research
to get to do um and i think but yeah also though before we get into the the origins of it i mean
it's been a fixture in disney theme parks since 1959 in disneyland uh and i think a beloved part
and a fun part of the kinetic energy of the parks. But I think we've been thinking about it recently because it's been a weird year for the monorails.
Sure.
A couple of odd incidents in Disney World especially.
Class action lawsuit waiting to happen in Florida.
Right.
There was a Wikipedia page called Disney World Incidents
and the monorail section is huge.
Three incidents in 2018 alone.
God, that's what I thought.
I knew there's been a lot of weird stuff lately,
and I thought, isn't a lot of it this year?
And in fact, it is.
Those things, by the way,
so there was a monorail red down in Florida
was driving for a while with just a door open.
Yes, and that video is on YouTube
and will forever be on YouTube because multiple people
have duplicated it.
So you'll always be able to find a copy.
Disney's going to have a harder time getting rid of stuff, making stuff go away in the
social media age.
There was also a giant chunk fell out of one of them.
Yeah, I forget at which point in the track, but it almost hit a guest who was walking by.
There was a pedestrian.
It wasn't just in one of the swampy parts,
just like a big weird piece of space junk
fell out of the thing and almost hit a guy.
And then they had to stop it,
and people were trapped on there for a while
while they made sure everything else was okay.
And then at the Grand Floridian station the the door just fell off entirely
because a scooter hit it a scooter yeah someone scooter like they they miss miss uh directed it
and it just seemed like it dinged it but it's almost like if you accidentally banged like
you know shouldered the door a little.
It doesn't seem like they were going a million miles per hour
and knocked it off.
It seems like they dinged it a little and the whole door, like, fell off
and then it was just stuck there for hours.
It's a very, like, animation.
It's a very, like, roadrunner-y kind of, like,
Yeah.
Tink, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Everything collapses.
And the incidents where that one and the incident where the monorail became disabled
and the air conditioner failed
and they had to go out, open the windows
and a tractor had to come and tow it.
Both monorail lime.
Both this year, both monorail lime.
The same monorail and multiple.
Oh, monorail lime.
Monorail lime.
Get your act together.
So all of this is making, I mean mean we could talk about the monorail
at any time and this is a good topic but i like talking about at the end of 2018 a
decidedly rough year for the monorail so you know let's let's talk about its its history and the
better days of the monorail and then uh talk a little bit about its future. Sure. I mean, when it opened at Disneyland,
was the first daily operational monorail in America.
Okay.
And did not have an end point.
Like, it just left the station, did a scenic tour,
came back to the station.
Oh, the original path was...
The very, very original very very original okay okay yes
uh it was i believe it was short eight miles a pretty quick little trip now is it is it the same
path that it kind of does before you land in disneyland where it's kind of circular weaving
in and out of the autopia area and going around the matterhorn um i think similar ish but a lot
of attractions have changed
and the track's been changed so many times.
They have to keep moving it to account for stuff.
It's been close to 60 years in Disneyland
and reading about the different generations of it
in Disneyland,
it has changed so many times.
There's been four different generations
of monorail cars,
monorails themselves,
in Disneyland.
Only two in Florida,
which we'll get to.
And that's,
Florida's coming up on 50 years,
and it's bad.
There's only been two generations,
clearly.
Yeah, I don't think they've updated it since.
I saw several numbers,
but either,
I couldn't tell if it was 1989 or 1991,
but either way,
hasn't been a new fleet since then.
Since then.
Which is pretty crazy and might kind of
illustrate why they're either there's been rumors of are they phasing it out and it doesn't seem
like they are necessarily but yeah i think they need to do there's been rumors there's new ones
coming and rumors that they're getting they're just gonna take it all apart yeah which i think
there would be a big public backlash to just getting rid of it.
Yes and no.
I mean, like anything where you're like, oh, people aren't going to stand for this, but then they'll do it.
And then what?
People aren't going to go?
Yeah, no.
I mean, that would be how it goes down.
But it would be extremely.
I feel like I associate the Montreal more with Florida than Disneyland.
Because, okay, yeah, when it opened in Disneyland, it just did a loop.
Since then, since the 60s, it has two stops,
one in the park and one at, well,
formerly the Disneyland Hotel.
Now it's kind of Downtown Disney in general.
In Disney World, it is a vital part of the infrastructure and getting from place to place,
and especially probably the easiest way to get
from Magic Kingdom Zone to Epcot Zone to epcot yeah still despite the troubles is still a more pleasant and usually more reliable than the
bus system oh certainly yeah and the buses seem kind of unless i'm mistaken if there hasn't been
a new bus set up in a while the buses are we the last time it depends i feel like because the last
time i was there the buses weren't so bad.
Certain places have more buses.
So if you're going to Epcot, it's not so bad.
But if you're going to, I'm trying to think.
Saratoga Springs.
Yeah, if you're trying to go from Saratoga Springs to that's on one end of the property, what's on the other?
Is Animal Kingdom on the other end? that's gonna take you a minute I think that's yeah that's
the furthest uh yeah I remember I felt like I was driving forever to get to uh Animal Kingdom from
wherever I yeah started uh I should I don't know that I I couldn't remember the name of this but
it's from this year but there is a a Disney Dish episode, very interesting, about Florida's transportation systems
because they brought on
a former transportation person
from the San Francisco Muni system
to consult at Disney,
and he was like,
looking towards the future,
you need to start thinking
about the transit systems
in the Orlando resort as if you
were a massive city because you are sure so that's why you know so more buses and that's why you see
the skyliner is coming the gondola system which is i mean from what i have read rather than extending
the monorail because it would be something like over a million
dollars for every extra mile of monorail track for like a lot less money you can get a whole
gondola system so that's why we're they're getting that and for the demand for star wars land i think
it's very interesting they seem to really be stretching out the uh announcements about the
skyliner system especially so far they have not used the phrase air conditioning in reference to those skyline going to be air conditioning i don't
think there is it's just gonna be a little hot boxes flying through the sky yeah if anybody's
listening it doesn't know what these are yeah it is this new gondola thing it's sort of like it's
it's i mean it's reminiscent of the old skyway that used to be there but they're bigger it
actually feels a lot like the like ferris wheel, but you sit in them for a while.
I'm scared of this thing.
I am too.
I'll be honest with you.
I'm not dying to get in that thing.
And I was talking about the air conditioning thing with Erin, and she brought up a good
point, which is like, there's families getting on these things.
There are babies getting on these things. There are babies getting on these things. The smell of
hot, unventilated
plastic cells
could get awful. And then what if it
breaks and you're just stuck over some
trees in the middle of the swamp in
90 degrees? This stuff stops
sometimes. Yeah.
I am skeptical, but this is not
the first of its kind sort of thing
like the monorail was. There are urban gondola systems all over the world.
So it's like been tested.
Are there really?
Is that like a part of cities?
In Asia.
Asia or like mountainous cities.
Like, yeah, these sorts of like suspended gondola systems are like efficient and used
by people in like daily activity.
I think there's some in Hong Kong.
Sounds like a gondola lobby representative over here.
And apparently some of them do not have air conditioning
in areas like not dissimilar from Orlando's climates.
But that said, you go to Orlando,
everything is air conditioning.
Your brain kind of recalibrates to that.
So then to get into a mode of transit without air conditioning, brain kind of recalibrates to that so then to get into
a mode of transit without air conditioning i don't know i'll look oh i will try it i will do it
because we have to do it we're theme park journalists but i am weary uh wary of it uh i
don't like the dangling for that long also it feels like it's going to be up there for like 45
minutes it feels like let's just take the fucking bus or let's just like let also feels like it's gonna be up there for like 45 minutes it feels like
let's just take the fucking bus or let's just like let's walk like it'll be fast like i don't know
maybe it will be fast maybe i'm i'm totally wrong yeah but keep in mind you know uh nemo's on the
outside so that's fun that there's a painting of a character that you can't see. His journey and transits were so smooth.
So what a smooth journey he had.
To bring it back to the original Disney monorail,
has the Anaheim one ever been air conditioned?
I think it's always had just windows, right?
Just windows cracked?
Just windows cracked.
It doesn't feel like hot to me.
It doesn't. I think it's more because of our kind of temperate
climate in Southern California gets
away with it. Maybe. Maybe that's right.
But I was a little surprised. I feel like airy.
I don't know. I'm not uncomfortable in that
thing but then you're not in it for that long.
That's true. Maybe you'd notice. Neither
side of that path is super
long. But some of them are
maybe on that monorail and thinking like
the clearings on this thing are not a lot oh yeah certain points of it where you feel like if you if
you stuck your hand through that open crack that's right there that you could just do yeah you could
like you know scrape your arm against the monorail or it's the matterhorn and it snaps clean off
yeah the clearings are very slight although i've read that they um they do do landscaping for like trees and brush around
the monorail path they like have it calculative like all right we have to cut it here this is
the farthest someone could reach out a window sure okay to like grab a branch or something
okay um well it's still just in case uh case nobody stick your arms out of the thing.
Yes. Now, that said, there may be clearings
pre-
that may be grandfathered in
from building codes.
I could grab something.
When the 50s were a little shady.
Give it a try.
There's a couple places in the park
which I think I can grab stuff.
I think I mentioned this before.
The guy grabbed, when we were on the Indiana Jones ride,
just a guy in the front grabbed the rope.
Oh, God.
And I was like, that shouldn't be possible.
I thought they tested for this, so you couldn't.
No, he grabbed it.
He had a good hold on it.
And I was like, you're going to pull the robot down.
Or what if the other way, what if he actually got hold of it,
got out of the car, and the next car that showed up
there's Indy and then another guy
hanging behind. Yeah! That's fun though.
Indy and his friend.
He must be from part four.
I don't recognize him. What is that? Adult
Mutt Williams? It's Adult
Mutt Williams.
And he just drops in that car and gets
out of there? Yeah. That would be fun.
See you, guys.
And they're like, wow, that's the most active, realistic robot I've ever seen.
That would be great.
You know what, Ash?
Wait, we're talking about monorail safety.
I have with me my toy monorail.
And I can, hey, I'll let the monorail speak for itself.
Please stay clear of the doors.
On behalf of the cast of the walt disney world resort welcome
to the magic kingdom okay so that's no it please okay so that's the hold on to the handrail okay
that uh all right that is the last one uh those those pauses are uh super long but as uh uh i do
have i do have a toy monorail i was so happy to bring this back with me from Disney World like a decade ago.
And I love that it is a toy that says dry legalese.
Sure.
It does not have, though, permanent sericentados.
Yeah, you know, I thought it did.
Yeah, that actually is kind of a...
That is such a big part of my vacations as a kid, as we used to say that in Spanish.
Yeah, me too.
The Jack Wagner narration.
The voice.
Maybe that's why it stands out.
It is like the obvious stuffy old white guy saying a Spanish phrase.
He's been replaced a couple times now.
They usually sound similar.
I think they still have the Jack Wagner
part of it. That started
to get a little weird reading about, and then this
person took over, and then this person started doing
the spiel. I'm like, all right, this is too deep.
Even for me, I can't track all these
voice actors. A lot of things, yeah.
I had that in my research, too. I also
found my level of caring
about the different marks
was not what it probably should be as the host of a theme park podcast.
I started going, so what's the difference between Mark 4 and Mark 5 monorail?
I don't look.
If you're listening and you care about this more, well, I mean, I wrote down things about the marks.
I just don't I don't care that much.
I think it's hard to distinguish generation by
generation, but big picture, I think
something interesting begins to
appear. Okay, sure.
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during checkout you will be glad you did especially if you use your phone a lot like me michael going back to the very beginning it was originally called the
disney alweg mon uh monorail yeah alweg uh was a company that sort of like designed the basics of
it and then disney sort of like customized it from there well story there, if you wonder what that phrase Alweg is, it is a shortening of
the name of a Swedish entrepreneur named Axel Wennergren.
So Alweg is a weird, almost Disney-esque.
There's a lot of those weird like Mappo.
Like there was a, like what is Mappo?
It's like part of, it was part of Imagine, and it's short for Mary Poppins.
So some functional engineering wing of Imagineering was called MAPO,
which is nonsense, the Disjointing of Mary Poppins.
It was like the actual fabrication division of Imagineering.
Did MAPO work on the owl wig?
No.
No.
I think the later ones, the later ones when like disney was designing it
and then eventually when it got to a certain point they outsourced it a little okay sure so
so owlway so there's this weird like some there's some conjecture that this is like a kind of uh
you know made up because it's cute kind of story, but Walt's fascination with monorails
supposedly began when he was in Germany,
or actually, I think he was leaving,
or maybe this was Sweden,
he was leaving the set of Third Man on the Mountain,
which is the movie that inspired the Matterhorn,
and where he left that, or he was on the set,
and he sent home a postcard of the Matterhorn and said, make me this.
So he's riding high with Matterhorn ideas already and he's leaving with his wife and he like he's driving along the countryside and then sees a beam monorail and is fascinated by it, lights up and he follows it until he can see the name on it and the name is
alweg and he writes that down and says when i get or maybe he he maybe like just went to the
building right then and there that's okay so the version i read is that they were on a him and his
wife were in germany on a suspended monorail one that has the track on the top and the monorail suspended.
And it was shaking a lot.
And making her dizzy.
And making, yes, Lillian dizzy.
Lillian Disney.
Lillian Disney dizzy.
And she supposedly she said, this would be nice if it didn't shake so much.
And they were driving.
And then they saw that more of a version that you know of a version that you know of, the monorail.
The beamed monorail, which he was not aware of existing in the world.
Then supposedly Walt was like, take me to the office.
And he spoke with the engineers and people there.
And that's when it starts.
And yeah, that's the company.
But then they were working with the company.
And something fell apart.
And then they were like, we'll just build it ourselves.
So they just, Walt Disney.
So they had to have the name.
It was illegal.
There was a licensing thing.
There was a legal situation that they had to use the name.
The guy's name is also, like,
Alweg is just the first letter of each of his, like.
Yeah, Axel Wiener.
It's A-L.
It's the first and then the last,
and then it's very confusing how he got to Alweg.
By the way, Axel Wintergren
popularized the domestic vacuum cleaner.
He thought that he was the one
who believed that industrial vacuums
could be adapted and simplified
to work in the home.
So you having a vacuum cleaner in your home
is ultimately due to Axel Wintergren.
The other thing about him
is that it is rumored
that the actress Greta Garbo was working as a spy
to spy on him.
Oh, really?
Because he was friends with Herman Goring,
who is a major Nazi party official.
Whoa, I didn't know it was this guy, this monorail man.
Yeah, Greta Garbo is a spy spying on the monorail man i guess that's incredible yeah
isn't that crazy what do you know about our local connection to uh the man i don't uh alweg proposed
a los angeles monorail a system for los angeles in the 60s and they were going to take apparently
they were going to take the financial risk for building it.
And then, of course, the project just fell apart.
A big proponent of the project, the sci-fi novelist, author Ray Bradbury.
Oh, yeah.
A very friend of Disneyland, Ray Bradbury.
And apparently held on to that grudge.
Because when L.A. finally did build the Red line, did build a subway, he was pissed.
He's like, 20 years ago, we almost had a monorail.
Yeah, he said he wished it when they asked what he thought.
He's like, I want to go.
What I think is we should go back in time and take Alweg's offer.
And we didn't just have a monorail.
And his point was that subways are for kind of like cold, dark places.
It's like to provide a little bit of like warmth and light in a city like a Moscow or Toronto that's snowy a lot.
So why would you have claustrophobic, no sunlight transit in an always sunny city like L la uh so yeah we should have that's true
so owlweg was like a musk an elon musk of his day except maybe he built more things yeah he
smoked big old jays too yeah also has uh ties to a uh question questionable upbringing and political. Okay.
If you were raised in the mid-20th century,
white with money in South Africa,
you're going to come out a little weird.
Sure.
Would Owlweg have loved Rick and Morty memes, though?
Oh, boy.
I think yes.
My answer is yes.
I think yes.
In his memoirs
he spoke of a fondness
for all things dank
yeah
I love dank memes
I found
so the
the official
designator
for the Disneyland
monorail
the first daily
operating monorail
in the United States
and the western
hemisphere
wow
so
geez
so and it's
and you know I think it was like uh uh also clearly
important to walt disney because if you follow the you know clearly what he started getting into
beyond like from the success of disneyland and beyond he started dreaming of utopias and making
like making life cleaner and society cleaner and transit cleaner and and which culminates in the
the dream of epcot when it
was an actual city and community as opposed to the theme park it became so to be able to show
off this cutting edge technology show how clean and efficient it was and say you everyone could
have this if you talk to your local governments and uh and it uh didn't really happen a couple
places at monroe's butails, but not so much.
Not enough.
It kind of lined up with the rise of driving culture
and car culture in America.
But even then, and this is a thing I'm very excited to talk about,
the grand opening footage of the Disneyland Monorail.
Even back then, in 1959, there's footage of gridlock. There's roads of
like, you know, how do we alleviate all this gridlock with these cars? Well, the Mr. Disney
may have found a solution. Does that mean that you saw the same video that I did where they
illustrate traffic by they're showing a lot of overhead traffic and then cutting to sheep all packed together
and cows and animals all screaming.
And then cutting back to people honking
and then back to animals.
They're doing a crazy old manipulative editing style
to show this is you.
You're a cow or a sheep stuck in a herd
unless you get a monorail
i think i saw some of that i think i just kept seeing so much stock footage of cars i was like
let's just get to the fucking part oh you might have skipped it i jumped to the nixon's it got
great it became like a weird like exploitative documentary like like propaganda uh uh yeah yeah
your sheep you stuck in your cars.
But with a monorail, you're free.
You're free range now.
That's very funny because then with the other hand,
they also had attractions sponsored to you,
brought to you by the automotive industry.
Sure.
So buy it, but also feel bad about it
and try to get one of these.
And indoctrinating kids via the Autopia to want to drive cars,
and specifically the loudest, smelliest cars ever to exist.
And you love that smell, right?
You've said, Jason?
Did I say I love it?
You said you liked it, right?
I don't think I mind the smell of gasoline.
I think what I'll say on the smell of gasoline,
I like the smell when you're pumping gas okay. It's kind of pleasant, say on the smell of gasoline i like the smell when you're pumping
gas okay it's kind of pleasant but not the smell of autopia that's very unpleasant i mean i think
autopia should be like first on the chopping block sure i mean i think we've talked about that but
i'm talking about the smell of autopia it's bad yeah yeah oh yeah it's definitely worse than like
a regular you said you liked it uh Probably just from the association of memory.
I mean, I don't love the smell of chlorine in pools,
but it certainly reminds me of leisure and time with my family.
Well, chlorine feels very like the theme park.
Yeah.
The E.T. water smell.
Yeah.
So I can deal with it.
It's a much more pleasant smell than the Autopia.
I mean, that's true
i think this is a classic carlson you notched it and jason might have said i don't mind the smell
and in the intervening months it became j you know jason loves the smell maybe i swear you said i
like it though i yeah maybe it's possible i mean it's possible i did i don't think i like said i
liked it in the way that like i said i like jack jack's cookie
num nums well i didn't say you like it more than you go you go huff gas and then load up on num
nums all day you're a freak like dennis hopper and blue velvet oh yeah you just have a little
cranked up and you have a num num all day you have a tank full of uh of fumes from autopia yeah huff yeah the fumes make
my head numb numb and then i go eat numb numbs fuck pirates of the caribbean autopia gas smell
you're out of control jason you're scaring me
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Let's talk about that opening because I know what you're heading for i know what happened when the monorail opens the the grand opening attended by by so many stars
of stage and scream i mean the broadcast had uh i figured i kind of reverse engineered that i
believe it was art art link ladder doing like commentary and then cutting the ribbons
while you had uncle walt with him the vice president at the time and local orange county
resident richard nixon yeah his lovely wife pat and then okay so here's the setup for this so
walt does this big spiel about like we're happy to have the vice president here today blah blah blah
and he says this is the part because i always knew the thing about the road the ribbon not
cutting right watching the footage i had never seen this before and two really weird moments one
walt says he's joined by his uh lovely wife today pat and his daughters this is how he says it julia and patricia like he says julia and
patricia in the weirdest as if they're foreign names as if he like got tongue-tied and tried
to catch himself he goes julia and patricia and i'm like what the what the hell and i had to go
back and yeah that's the way it sounded and then it also gets weird
because then he turns and he's like and now to turn over to the vice president mr nixon and then
mr richard nixon mr nixon and then something and it's hard to tell from like old kinescope footage
or whatever one of the i don't know if it's walt or nixon uh says vice president
oh yes yes and i could not figure out whether walt caught himself and he was like oh i shouldn't call
him mr uh nixon i should call him vice president or if richard nixon one of the most petty men to ever lived, went, actually, vice president.
It's vice president.
But he says, Julia and Patricia, Mr. Nixon, vice president.
And then Nixon steps up and start talking.
Okay.
This is very strange.
And then they forgot that he was the vice president altogether because he got on board the monorail
and did a pass
and
an imaginary veteran and still
with us Bob Gurr who
built the monorail or was a primary
figure in building it was at the helm himself
driving it around it was this
the original monorail had this big bubble
so he's standing up and piloting this bubble
car around.
He does the pass with Walt and Nixon and his family in the car, pulls back around and realizes, oh, we left without the Secret Service.
So I had been driving around an unsecure vice president without realizing it.
Or as Bob Gurr puts it, I kidnapped the vice president. And he says that,
I think he tells this,
Bob Gurr tells the story of like Nixon laughing
and Nixon like calling the secret service incompetent.
Like Nixon like making goofing on his secret service
while they're going around.
Like they can't get anything right or whatever.
That's extra funny
because you know all of them were drunk.
Everyone was just dragged like a fish back then. Of course, probably the funny because you know all of them were drunk. Everyone was
just dragged like a fish back then.
Of course, probably the most
notable anecdote from this, and you
can see this right after the weird
pronunciations and weird
mysterious utterance
of Vice President is
Walt pulls out a giant
pair of scissors. The girls are
going to cut the ribbon.
The ribbon does not cut.
Everyone has a laugh.
Walt ends up just ripping it himself.
Okay.
Ribbons are hard.
It's like guarantee.
It's like they're trying to doom anything with a ribbon cutting.
It looks like the most easy thing to mess up possible. And he's like giant scissors, too.
Yeah.
So it's like that's, if he just had regular scissors
it would have been fine. But he has to go
and make a big show of it because it's the
Disneyland monorail and that's I think really what
screwed him. Just use regular scissors.
Yeah.
Oh, by the way
also Richard Nixon, the
sitting president for the opening
of the Hall of Presidents. He was the first
in the series of presidents
who were currently president to have a robot built of him.
And Walt would have loved that because Walt loved Nixon.
Walt loved Nixon.
Nixon and Disney go together so much.
There's so many ties that we've said before.
Another Orange County weirdo.
Another Orange County weirdo.
Nixon gave his I am not a crook speech in the basement of the Contemporary Hotel in Florida.
Of course, years after Walt's death.
It's like there's just constant Nixon in the timeline of Disney.
There's also footage, actually when I was trying to find footage of George Bush at Disneyland.
There's a YouTube video that compiles the sitting president's appearances at Disneyland,
or at Disney World, rather,
and there is footage way later, in the 70s,
I don't know if during or post-presidency,
of Nixon getting out of the monorail
and looking real, you know, just like sour
and then like suddenly lighting up for camera.
All right, are we doing this?
But like right before he turns it on,
he looks so dead inside.
If you can imagine that.
I can believe it.
Someday we'll get the iTunes review.
Enough Nixon bashing already.
What did he ever do to you?
He's a great man.
We apologize to Nixon.
So I'm knocking him down one star yeah uh the story
with nixon uh and the original disneyland monorail is interesting to me because it's the the day that
nixon rides it is the day after the first successful test happens supposedly wow of the
monorail in general yeah they had like a lot i believe i have this right they
had many tests leading up to that you know things would fall off things would catch fire
things would not make it around and i believe the day before nixon gets on is the first day
that the thing makes it like it's on its path whoa that's amazing to change to change like
to show you how much stuff has changed
obviously now there's a you have to test something 10 000 times something crazy i don't know the
number but like before they put a human being on it now think about a day before is the first time
this thing's actually worked and not caught fire and you're putting the vice president vice president
his family in the head of your company. All on this thing.
Yeah, all on it.
Not the Secret Service.
Wow.
It's crazy.
A premonition of things to come.
Disney early adopters at shit falling off monorails too.
Yes.
It's been part of the monorail story from the beginning.
It's a rich tradition of shit falling off of the monorail.
If there'd been some weird like electrical fuck up
and like a flame hit nixon
straight in the face right before they got back and then the doors open and like a ghost rider
flaming head nixon starts wandering around the station oh that's great oh kill me
or like this feels right i like this You cannot kill that which has always been dead.
I'm more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
He stays ignited.
Everything else still happens.
He becomes president in the 60s, but he's got a flame head.
Yeah.
I don't think he resigns if he's got a flame head.
I think everything goes much better, and he does his full eight years.
He does the Frost Nixon interview, and he's just like, how'd you get that cool flame head the notable yeah i'm the spirit of vengeance yeah
the ghost riders danny ketch johnny blaze richard nixon oh man oh i wish uh bob gerr fucked up he
didn't cause that flame head to happen damn it uh what could have been someone draw that the um so uh another from the that opening footage that we're talking about uh art link
letters commentary uh he name checks a couple it's like there's lots of luminaries here
uh specifically fred mcmurray was also on that car that uh from my three sons not i was gonna
say the nutty professor the nutty professor i know he was yeah yeah oh the absent okay yes um and then art link ladder the reason
i figured it out it was art link ladder he's like there's my family mrs link ladder and uh
there's my family including he literally says including my big son robert
like i i just got so delighted at imagining art link ladders large boy his large son
daddy's little daddy my big son are they in the video i can't remember because i watched
this a little while are they is his last name link letter isn't his last name link letter
letter or do they call it because because richard link ladder is the director
i just can't remember.
But I believe they're spelled the same way.
Art Linkletter.
Linkletter is spelled with L-E-T-T-E-R.
So it's letter.
I believe it's Linkletter.
Art Linkletter.
Linklater is the director.
Because you're thinking of Richard.
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Great, clarified.
For any future references to, well, when we cover the opening day special
In the, you know, minute by minute
For ten weeks in a row
Are we going to get out of Disneyland even in this episode?
With the monorail?
I suggested
Let's gun it, let's do it
The monorail is one of the fastest rides anywhere
You know, that's a fact that I
I remember hearing in one of these,
I think it was the show Disney World Inside Out,
the weekly Disney World commercial that I watched as a child
and was my favorite show on the Disney Channel.
This is why I'm a walking example of brainwashing.
They showed me ads every single week, and now I'm like this.
Now I talk about them.
I do free promotion for Disney every single week, and now I'm like this. Now I talk about them. I do free promotion for Disney every single week.
But I do remember they did a little before the break,
like, what is the fastest ride in Disney World?
And they're tipping it by showing you quick clips of Big Thunder
and Space Mountain.
And you're like, oh, for sure it's Space Mountain.
But in fact, it's the monorail because it is a real piece of trans.
But even then the monorail only goes like 35, 40.
35, yeah, yeah.
I don't think that must not be true anymore.
What would my dreaded launches?
Oh, yeah, Rock and Roller Coaster has to go faster.
That's got to, yeah, yeah, you would think.
For sure.
Though I've been doing it, man.
Now I'm into Incredicoaster.
It's all happening. Wow. But I got been doing it, man. Now I'm into Incredicoaster. It's all happening.
But I got to go to Disney World to actually,
because there's a lot more launches down there.
So that'll be my proving grounds.
Well, and there's some very interesting innovations
coming down the pipeline that may be testing you.
But we'll get to that on an upcoming episode.
Oh, yes, yes, indeed.
So another notable thing about the monorail in Disneyland,
the monorail, Matterhorn, and Submarine Boys,
the original e-tickets, the original e-ticket attraction.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, the books literally only went up through D.
There was no e-ticket.
And they all opened on the same day.
On the same day.
And imagineland without all
of those things is like imagine there's nothing in any of that it's just like fields it's like
daisies or something and then suddenly on the same day matterhorn submarines monorail and not
just those not just the subs matterhorn and monorail an expanded autopia and a motorboat
cruise so five attractions opened in one day.
Jeez.
Essentially the equivalent of like more than Cars Land like opens in one day.
That's like probably the most like important expansion of Disneyland in a way.
Because it also gets you your first steel roller coaster, the first roller coaster in general and the first fake rocks.
Yeah.
So this is a mega event for sure.
Well, even going out further,
the first expansion that Disneyland can expand and change
and also that it's doing financially well enough
to be capable of doing this.
Good point, because in that first year,
yeah, they can't think about it.
They're just trying to think about staying afloat.
Yeah.
It's the idea like, oh, we're here, we're doing fine,
and we can even add big, expensive, experimental,
potentially vice president murdering technology.
So the second we hear, we'll keep moving to Disney World.
We're going to get there.
I feel good about it.
But the first big expansion in the Mark II was where it starts going to the Disneyland
Hotel.
They expanded it out.
Now it's 2.5 miles.
And when they do that, it becomes the first monorail to cross a public street.
Excitement.
There's so many firsts in this episode.
Also acting as an actual form of transportation, taking you from one location to another location.
Yes.
Now, how often do you guys use the monorail to get in and out very often?
What's your relationship to the monorail in a functional capacity?
At Disneyland specifically, I feel like I go in phases, monorail phases.
I feel like I'll use the entrance
like a couple times in a few months
and I don't think I've used it in about a year and a half
I would agree
I wish
I wish you could do
I mean you used to be able to just buy a ticket
and do a round trip and not even step foot in the parks
I wish you could do that
you cannot do that anymore
you wish you could just get on the monroe and not
go to disneyland go down to anaheim and buy a ticket and just not see it don't do any rides
well uh no i wish you could just take a grand circle tour like you can on the train
less about buying the ticket uh but you're saying you would do that though i would do a round trip
on the monroe leave tomorrowland come back to tomorrowland yeah you mean you you would do that, though? I would do a round trip on the monorail, leave Tomorrowland, come back to Tomorrowland.
Yeah.
You mean you can't do that anymore?
You can't do that anymore.
Okay.
Oh, okay.
I feel like I mostly...
You gotta get out when you get to the other side.
Yes.
You have to get out either way.
But you can just go around, right?
Or no, you can't load it all in Tomorrowland.
Is that right?
Yes, you can.
You can get on.
What's confusing, everyone?
I just want to take the monorail from Tomorrowland,
downtown Disney, stay on the monorail, go back to the...
You have to get off.
Well, first, here's where the confusion first starts.
You were saying you wish they still sold a ticket
to let you do that.
So it seemed like you were lamenting the fact that
you wish you could just go down to Anaheim,
buy a ticket, and have a 7-minute, 12-minute monorail ride.
Yeah, I'd probably do that.
And not go to Disneyland.
That's what was communicated to both my kids.
On a blackout day?
Sure.
Which seemed possible when you said it.
We were laughing about it, but it also seemed like that's funny.
But that is a little extreme.
Okay.
But we could see you doing that.
Yeah, I could see.
Yeah, I could also see me doing that.
To answer your original question, I feel like I mostly use it to get into the parks if i left the park
like in the afternoon like it's less crowded than going down main street or if at the i was there
like later in the evening and i want to just get the fuck out of like i just want to get out of
there if you're leaving from uh tomorrowland and you don't and there's like fireworks or a parade going on
and you don't want to walk through Main Street
to get to the trams, then it can be
kind of a lifesaver.
But you know, it can
be a bummer to get into the park
via the monorail.
Good news, you can walk through
that turnstile there. That is, you're technically
in satellite Disneyland
and as I just learned you
can start getting max passes if you have max pass that monorail entrance counts so you can be not
even in the park and start reserving stuff however that pathway in is so many weird loops around the
utopia and the matterhorn and all that and it could take many many cars before you can even
get on the thing so it's maybe not always the best way to get into disneyland you could this is maybe i was this
is the most proud i've ever been of scott as he texted uh and he let us know because i didn't
even think about this idea hack wise yeah that you could start getting max passes not by going
into the two main entrances of the disney parks you can go in the monorail um which then you could
also just go through, go back out,
go over to Trader Sam's and have a couple drinks
and just get Rack Max passes up the whole time.
This is the hack, and I'm finally playing the hack game.
Welcome to hack culture.
I'm Julian Assange now.
You go.
All right, easy, easy on that. No, I want to be him now. You go. All right.
Easy, easy on that.
No, I want to be him.
That sounds cool.
You walk in.
Does that make me like I'm the Assange of theme park hacks?
All right.
Good.
I'm happy with that.
Well, the other day you were checking on our friend Andrew's's oh yeah passes from here from your apartment san
diego from san diego i was in san diego further away you're on your app going i see you're getting
on in credit coaster in 12 minutes so what happened was yeah this this literally perfectly
timed because jason had texted me and he asked me for a photo which was in my app because it was a
photo pass so i had gone in the app and i this always
happens i forget about this is that if you're linked ticket what ticket wise to a friend or
another annual pass all their stuff will show up so if you're say you were with a couple friends
and you all have it linked so you can get max passes at the same time you're linked for a year
for them or forever unless you break the annual pass cycle i think so i went into the app right
before he was texting like a photo or two from disney and i was trying to get the photo and he
went what the hell i have a fast pass oh wait a minute he must be at the park andrew was at the
park so when he texted i immediately was like ha enjoy your ride on whatever. And then Scott thought that was creepy, which I acknowledge it is.
But I had just seen it.
So then he asked, he wanted an Incredicoaster, but they didn't have MaxPass.
They didn't have one.
I go, I'm on it.
So in the app, I was able to get him an Incredicoaster MaxPass from San Diego remotely, essentially.
Even though you were not, your ticket was not active.
Right, but his was activated.
His was active.
So I could have gotten him MaxPasses all day.
He was leaving, unfortunately, and I could not do that.
But I got the thrill remotely in San Diego.
And he's a very kind man who likes to help his friends out.
And I felt like that was like a a dad like letting his kid
show like his like diving trick over yes like watch me dad watch what i can do very good okay
uh i he was humoring me but then he enjoyed it on you got him on the coaster i think it's a flex
the kids call that flex what does that mean more More cool terms. Like you're like showing off.
Yeah, well, that's true.
I'm sure that's part of it for me.
I think we've got an ultimate Patreon tier, which maybe we can call the flex tier.
I don't want to put a price on it, but I think this is premium.
I think this is like a $50 a month.
To kick it off, you would have to go to Disneyland with Mike and then get linked with him forever.
And then Mike, from here on out, will program your day of Max Passes from his apartment.
They can just send me a picture of the ticket and I can just link it remotely.
We're opening up potentially a world of pain or pure pleasure for you yeah to be able to program our fans
days at i feel like you will is the perverse thing i like the idea of it i think the word
that you mean to say is compulsions i think you're opening up a world of yeah i think you are
simultaneously giving mike a curse with this idea but also he will feel the compulsion to he's like well i can i i have the ability to
check i guess i should you can check imagine the honor for the listeners of the show for you to
do checking for them for them yeah uh this is we've i've talked we've already brought len up
a few times this is an idea actually len had is that there would be a service that you would pay somebody to remotely check
for you all day while you were at the park.
So we're now just dipping our toe in the water and the idea of me checking for
people.
You did offer, because my mom and stepdad are currently in Orlando.
They'll be gone by the time this airs.
So no one can murder them.
No one can try and track down my family and murder them.
What do you think of our fans?
Somebody's going to try to kill your parents? No, it's just like...
I don't know that they...
Okay.
Holy shit, Jason.
I thought it was a funny line.
It is.
World of averages.
There's a murder somewhere in our audience space.
Oh, yeah, sure.
That's probably true.
You know who you are.
Thanks for listening, but don't murder anybody.
Please don't murder us.
Stop it.
Stop it.
You did offer, like, well, if they want to give me their Disney IDs, I could book some
of their magic band magic yeah i would
absolutely do that and and and the thing was i was like oh we might have to do because my mom is not
the most uh tech savvy yeah but honestly she she has not been in a long time and she got right back
into it like she jumped right on she scott the thing she's like well we've been here two days
here's what we've been here two days here's
what we've done it would have made your head spin like the number of things that these a couple
60 year olds like knocked out in two days although after three days she's like my legs are starting
to hurt a little and i'm like well yeah you're none of us are as young as we used to be uh and
also but also we're getting up there dear mother you and your mother are the same
age you forgot to mention.
It's a rare mother-son.
Born on the same day.
But also, if you just keep doing it,
you work through the pain eventually.
This baby is having a baby.
And one of them's speaking oh my i'm alive hey
i have a more dulce tone than that
um i can't speak to the accuracy of that impression okay that's fine uh uh yeah where
are we we're way off monorail this is this is delightful. Using the monorail. Yeah, I feel like I like Mike.
We were checking and MaxPass and FastPasses.
Oh, but I think you as the Assange of this, I think you'll be the head of DisneyLeaks.
Oh, yeah.
Spelled with an I.
That's true.
And you'll program people.
So you set the price.
Maybe this is really premium.
Maybe this costs $300 a month.
This might be highly.
In addition to paying Disney the $10 MaxPass fee. because if i do it i want to do it right if if
the price is sort of low i'm not saying i'm not going to do it but i would like to give you the
full premium checking experience and that would take a lot of my time in a day maybe it's checky
leaks i think that's the phrase is good theLeaks is good. I like that. The $300 tier, you get access to the CheckiLeaks network.
Uh-huh.
So I'm going to have to...
We'll have to be on like a Discord.
Please don't give...
Oh, no.
We're doing like another distraction.
We'll have to be on like a Discord channel where I'll have to be conferencing in and
sort of seeing what people want, where they're at.
Or we'll be, just to be clear about the terms there is no there's no
there's no tier of this podcast that would have less scott gardner involvement yes i would i would
ghost any responsibility for checky leaks right is that less is that possible
oh we're getting roasted. We're all getting roasted today.
We were really just informational for so much of the show.
It's going to be hard to get back.
Maybe we'll just end it sooner than later.
We'll do the monorail again in four months.
Yeah, two months.
Well, I specifically, when we said all monorails for this episode,
I tried not, because I do,
it's become a compulsion of mine to go like, well, how many episodes could that be?
Like, could we just do the Disney World?
And I'm realizing it's like, oh, I should.
I'm a topic uniter.
Yes, that's true.
But then I'm like, oh, I need to switch it up.
But then there will be topics that will come up and you'll be like, we should do one on
this.
And I'm like, but this is tiny.
So there's certain tiny ones you like.'s true i can be yeah you go back and forth i can be slanted in my amount of fractional this is true we're all i think uh uh yeah i don't deny that
my opinions uh factor into it and that yeah if say doing three parts on duffy came up i would
probably say a stink.
But there was one we're talking about doing
where you're like, I think this could be a full episode.
And I was like, but wait!
You were mad yesterday about doing multiples on...
It all depends.
I can't deny hypocrisy at times.
It all depends.
I can't...
Okay, so Michael, credit where it's due.
We all have insane compulsions it's sure we're all
insane i'm fine honestly goofing on me about checking i love it there's certainly topics
where i don't like being goofed on but talking about how good i am at finding max passes you're
just getting me going baby also we've all benefited from your checking various things. Of course you have. This is true.
My checking has brought nothing but joy to everyone around me.
Well, I would double check that.
Nothing but joy.
Okay.
I'll call her down here and make her say it into the microphone.
Honey.
Nothing but joy.
This has been good.
Tell them how much you like my checking.
We may be going onuesday with a friend of ours
yes uh and i think it'll be a full day and i am getting ready because what i'm finding is that
i'm not invited to this day jason says yes and i've never heard of this oh yeah well we just
talked about it the like the other day oh yeah well well. It really is all coming out. You texted us from Universal the other day with Bugsy.
With Bugsy?
Yeah, that's true.
That was an accident.
We were in the area, and I didn't realize he had a pass.
That was not a concerted visit.
All right, fine.
We don't all have to go together.
That's true.
Yeah, you guys go on Saturday all the time,
and I am not dishing left in the lurching out
money for this saturday although i probably will have to take out a bank loan when star wars opens
just to get any pass well we're gonna have to pay like the giant ticket fee to get for the one like
the party that's the problem they should offer a they should offer like a star wars bank to
bankroll people who think they can't afford it and when like the guy comes out to negotiate the loan he
should be like a like a big weird well let's see how badly do you want to get it it's on car plot
it's on my episode yeah so you'll look you'll like sign a lease that he doesn't give you much
time to read on car plot makes it very good all very good. Come on in, enjoy.
And then you're like in the tank to owe him like $20,000.
It's like Scientology, basically,
where they just make you indebted to them.
You have to work at Star Wars land for the rest of your life.
Funny enough, Unkar Plutt,
the Bob Hope of the Doughboy Show comes up, Unkar Plutt,
because we're really teasing each other.
Do you consider him the Bob Hope? In terms of how many appearances Unkar Plutt, because we're really teasing each other. Do you consider him the Bob Hope?
In terms of how many appearances
Unkar Plutt has made on
that show.
That's a Johnny Carson reference.
We're really doing a teasy
sort of episode.
Yeah, wow. You really rolled.
Not the last Bob Hope
mention on this episode either.
Okay.
We'll just do the next one. I don't care about the marks. first spot not the last bob hope mention on this episode either okay oh yeah we if we get we'll
just do the next one now here let's keep moving i don't care about the marks what does everyone
want to talk about we don't have to talk about everything the marks i like the marks because
it reminds me of iron man's armor i like it that it's mark one mark two and that's what iron man's
armor has you know the mark one is the silver bulky iron man armor and then what's the new what's Infinity Wars mark it's got to be like
a ton it's like a hundred
or something I'm going to google that
what's your favorite mark everybody
I like the newest mark I think
the newest mark I do too
yeah what is that mark seven
I think yeah I think you're right yeah
I think it's great the current monorails you
get on it's kind of like a sort of
a retro vibe but without being so retro that it blasts flame in people's faces and big chunks fall off.
Yeah.
It kind of looks like the original ones, but like mixed with the kind of like molded plastic Star Wars-y feel of the 80s ones.
Yeah, and they don't have those in Florida.
So I feel lucky and special here in Disneyland to have this nice Mark 7.
So Marks 1 through 3, 5 and 7 are just Disneyland.
Marks, what would that be?
4 and 6 are Disney World.
The fact that it's Roman numerals makes it even harder to remember.
Yeah.
My brain does not retain.
I made it numbers in my notes.
So it makes sense that since the Disneyland monorail has been operating since 59, they have more generations.
That said, again, coming up on 50 years in Disney World, they should also have more generations of monorail.
They are on generation two in Florida.
So like my fondest monorail would probably be,
oh God, what is it?
Six, Mark six?
Yeah, the current generation of Florida.
That's what we're saying.
Because that's what I rode in when I was a kid,
but they're the same goddamn monorails.
Like they've rebuilt one or two,
but not a lot of them this is what happens
when people protest any change at disney world keep it like it is it's perfect now well that is
what happened with the monorails and now there's big chunks hitting people in the head there's got
to be a way to you know make that not happen with the old ones too but i guess if they're just the
way they're built maybe it's just hard to maintain as they get older. Maybe you got to.
So, well, it's also very expensive to buy a whole fleet of monorails.
And there's like five companies in the world that can build it.
That was the speculation because I think it was Bob.
Was it Bob Gurr recently who said, oh, they've ordered a new fleet of monorails but then the last company that built the monorails uh they they
an order of that size has to be noted in public records and had not been noted yet but then people
are speculating that like oh well maybe this other company is building it siemens offered to build
them a fleet for cheap or free but it would have had to have been the Disney Siemens monorail.
But they didn't want that?
They didn't want it co-branded.
Hmm.
So is Gurr full of it?
What do...
Why is Gurr...
I don't know.
He's like...
He's flexing.
He's like acting like he knows stuff
and doesn't know it.
He's just trying to get publicity.
Bob Gurr publicity.
The Bob Gurr feud begins.
Let's keep talking about Disney World.
We're kind of in it.
I mean, that's what, like, I think it's exciting that, like, what a cool, like, if Disney World is this, like, gigantic, exploded out version of Disneyland in general, to now have the monorail that just is, like, a cute little thing that makes two stops to have it now be like this primary transportation system and i like i'm so happy as a kid getting on that monorail
every time uh and the excitement of like the first arrival at epcot like the getting in that way
that's the only way to get to epcot uh i feel you gotta arrive in style. Yeah. And you see. Yes, I agree.
I'm trying to think because the Disney World is such a it's obviously such a giant place. But there's something special about it not being in the parks there.
It's the ride that's outside of the parks.
So it's your first taste of a ride.
It looks like Tomorrowland.
It like there's something like you're getting you're doing a ride before
the rides are here and a free ride it's free well yeah if you could get into the property
you can ride it for free even as a kid i was like well hey this is like a ride for free
i think that's what i that's what i got confused on early is i didn't contextualize like yeah it's the first ride you can go on
it's also a free ride you could just ride it all day around this massive property in disney world
that's a feature i miss from disneyland it doesn't really make sense to do it in disneyland no but i
do feel nostalgic for it unless they were to roll it around all of anaheim in some fun way
which is if we ever got a different park like
if suddenly anaheim stadium becomes a park or they build like they build in some weird other zone
maybe we do have monorails crisscrossing the anaheim streets that would be cool i mean i think
an interesting thing about the disneyland one is how many times the track's been moved it had to
be moved when they built the show building for indiana jones had to be moved uh actually i don't think it got tweaked too much
for california adventure it but stuff got built around it and i do think it's a huge missed
opportunity that there's no dca station or grand california station yeah true yeah yeah
like it's it's crazy to me and that
that might actually justify some of the grand californian pricing nowadays if it was a monorail
hotel yeah but it's weird because it's like well i guess yeah you go to disneyland but it's like
the big thing with grand california is you walk right into the park um yeah oh that for for
california adventure yes that is that was sort of the unique feature i
guess that was the trade-off yeah now you have a quick line straight no but you could just cross
the street to disneyland it would take longer to get there exactly like it like it would make more
sense to have it in it wouldn't make more sense geographically to put it in paradise pier but it
would make more sense since that's a little out of the way versus Grand Californian.
It would be cool if it went
through it and didn't stop.
I'll say that.
Through what? Through the Grand Californian.
If there was like a monorail. You could see that atrium.
It shoots through. It does go through it.
But like through a literally into the building.
Like contemporary style.
Oh, right. Yeah. But didn't stop.
And we haven't talked about that yet.
That's the big thing.
The thrill, the joy of the Disney World monorail
actually going through a building.
Yes.
That's right through that contemporary.
If you have the toy like I have,
and I have the toy contemporary as well,
you can send that monorail shooting right through
that contemporary just like in real life.
Delightful.
Do you put it around your Christmas tree?
I don't.
I don't have enough room.
I was really ambitious when I bought, when I came home with the monorail toy, I also bought extra track.
I'm like, I'm going to need more track because this is going to really like spread out.
And I was like living in a house with other roommates.
I don't know where I thought I was going to like, I don't know what space I i was gonna take over with a giant monorail track it's like a goal thing it's like when you buy a
shirt that's a little snug and you're like i'm gonna lose some weight so this shirt fits nicely
yours was i'm gonna buy extra track yeah yeah do you still have the extra track i said yeah i do
one of these days i'm gonna have the densest monorail network how much feet how many feet
of track do you have you think uh well the feet number is not
going to be impressive because you know it's you know six uh because it's small but like uh i don't
know um maybe it's bigger than i don't know i mean it's not a ton of extra track that's still
pretty good i mean i i only ask you about the christmas tree because there's a picture going
around where someone instead of a train set around the bottom of a Christmas tree,
has a monorail going around, which I've seen before and I think looks very cute at Christmas time.
Yeah, I would like that.
Yeah, you're right.
Goals, monorail goals.
And then if you could build it up so it goes through the tree somehow and around the tree and then down somehow.
I don't know how you'd do it, but that would be cool.
Well, and you know what's something that I actually didn't know about my monorail
until today is that, you know,
there's a lid on the top
so you can put the characters inside
and there's little like pegs
so you can make,
and there's like little versions
of all of the, of Mickey and Minnie and Goofy,
all of the main characters.
You could send them on a little monorail ride.
But what I didn't realize
is that there's also little doors that open and close, and
they can stay open, which means like the real Disney World monorail, you can drive it around
with the doors open.
So you could buy like a Max from Goofy Movie with like holding, like if they had a modern
Max and he had an iPhone, or you could even like make a little iPhone out of cardboard or plastic or something
and put it in Minnie's hands.
It'd have to be microscopic the size of the characters.
With the door open.
Record the door falling off.
Oh, you can, okay.
So you chose streetwise youngster Max
to be documenting on social media
the collapse of my monorail.
The only young person, modern young person,
I feel like Disney has made,
or I guess the kid from Coco is a modern young person, technically.
Vanellope from Ralph Breaks the Internet.
I would call Vanellope a fictional character
who lives in a magical world.
So her age doesn't...
Yeah, but she's a kid. Ralph calls her a kid. That yeah but he calls she's a kid ralph calls her a
kid that's true but she's a kid forever presumably what about hipster mickey who was always on his
phone mickey but hipster mickey's not gonna narc on his own company i don't know he's got a different
dude he's got a different attitude than regular mickey he's like the edward snowden of i don't
hipster mickey is like giving out leaks okay i think he
just wanted to get more hits he wanted to get more instagram view views basically so he's going to
put the video up because it's going to get instagram views oh i see he's just in it for
the views and for the social media so he's an influencer he's a content he's absolutely an
influencer yeah i feel like we were so tangent. I think it's obvious we were wanting to escape the monorail.
We're talking about any and everything but, which I'm loving all of it.
I'm just getting down to what are the basics?
What do I not want to miss before we get out of here?
So the monorail in Florida, of course, has three different lines.
There's the express line that goes right to the Magic Kingdom.
There's the right to the Magic Kingdom to the magic kingdom there's the right to the magic
kingdom from the ticket and transportation center which used to be a a hub i remember when we would
stay places stay at some of the hotels in disneyland you used to have to get to the tta
to transfer for some locations now there's a lot the tta uh tta uh oh i'm sorry that's
tomorrowland transit authority uh it wasn't even the right
thing t ampersand ticket and transfer fuck ttc is is what the um people mover runs on but the
the ticket transportation center tna is uh used to hey save it for universal okay
it's rowdier over there so the express line goes right to the Magic Kingdom from there. The resort line stops at the Magic Kingdom
and the Ticket and Transportation Center,
but all the hotels along the route,
the Polynesian, the Contemporary, the Grand Floridian.
Grand Floridian added last to that line.
And then there's the Epcot line
that goes from Ticket and Transportation Center.
That is the main thing now that you have to transfer there
for the Epcot line that goes
straight to beautiful epcot center yeah but before you land at the station you get to do a big pass
though it doesn't stop inside the epcot park you do get to do a big pass and weave in and out and
around some stuff and that was open before epcot opened. So the summer before, you could take the monorail down there,
go down to a preview center,
and see it all still under construction with your own eyes,
do a big pass.
My friend Dennis made a point of doing that as a kid.
Like, yes, of course I'm taking out time
to go see the almost-built Epcot
and go watch a video about what it's going to be like.
That's like when I... There used to be an islands of adventure preview center in universal studios florida and i uh i went there
like hey can we go back it's like we were there this morning and i'm like yeah but we only come
here for a day but we we have to see this because when the park opens they'll close this this is a
unique attraction
you had that thought as a kid as a kid i knew this wouldn't be here forever because the park
will be here and i wanted to learn more about the park because at the time i just kind of like uh
marathoned everything in florida because outside the magazines like magazines and tv specials you
didn't have as much could we do a full episode
about preview centers or does each preview center require its own well you know our answer
i'm just checking the boundaries see i this this i think i'm gonna walk the tight rope on because
i think it would be funny to do a series about preview centers, but I don't think they're terribly well documented.
Oh.
Especially Universal Hard Rock Park, surprisingly well documented.
And another preview center that is well documented is the Paris one,
which was taken over by French street thugs because it did stay open,
but they gutted it and took everything out,
but it was like
became full of graffiti and people were skating around and living there so late the plot of lay
ms happens to that preview center and disney army came in and seized the back seized the land back
uh um let me say another thing about the epcot one. I mean, I'm curious. I should throw out to you guys, your other favorite, like, monorail.
Your favorite monorail stop.
But for me, obviously, is that Epcot one.
That place is such 80s sex.
I love it so much.
It is so blocky.
The horniest thing you've ever said on the show is certainly about the monorail at Epcot.
Makes a lot of sense.
I'm texting Aaron to start the work
on the such 80s sex t-shirt uh done in so that each letter has like the triangles of spaceship
earth oh yeah oh you know yes yes yes uh uh no i'm no i'm hey look i'm i'm into that stuff hey
i like it clearly on a deeper level let's make the show hornier, is what I say.
No, I am weird.
Our friend Doug Jones, a guest on the show, put out a new mix where he had a lot of clips of old commercials for 7-Up made by an 80s graphic designer named Robert Abel. And we watched it last night.
And during some of these, Aaron and I are both like, oh, God.
Some of the neon in this stuff really does...
Look, I don't know.
I'm putting myself out there too much.
I get it.
No, no, I'm on my board.
I'm always horny on mic, my man.
No worries.
I'm on board, yeah.
For you, it's num-nums, and for me, it's neon.
We all got our thing.
I don't want to get too sidetracked,
but I don't know when this will come up again.
Doug Jones just texted me out of the blue, pizza Rizzo is good.
And I was like, and I'm like, oh, I just thought it was like kind of sparse of like, he goes,
no, there's tons of Muppet details.
And he like shows me like pictures of like just a very like small, I don't know what
you'd call it, like a bulletin board of some kind with like some vague
muppet references and he's like it's good and the food is good that's what i was gonna ask what's
what's what's pizza rizzo for just for it's in disney's hollywood studios and it's like supposedly
a muppet themed pizzeria but you walk in there and there's barely anything that would let you
know that it was muppets starting the doug fight again. And so I'm not even upset. I just think it's
funny because I must have
trashed it on an episode and Doug
like that stuck in his head and he was like, I'm going to tell
him it's wrong. Well, we'll hammer
all this out on the Great Pizza
Rizzo Debates.
A three-part series
with Doug.
With Doug, yes.
There will be an episode for the
prosecution an episode for the defense
and one that is the arguments I guess then
closing arguments will have to be their own thing
and okay so we're getting
into five we'll have to find a judge though
a partial judge
to answer your question I think for me
I agree
getting off that Epcot station is great
of course the contemporary
is great but like course, the contemporary is great.
But the Polynesian, walking out of this kind of cold, futuristic, very well air conditioned,
or it used to be, seems like it breaks a lot, the air conditioning and the monorail, the
contrast of that from that future-y mode of transit into this like lush tropical paradise.
Like I always, even as a kid, I was like, this is awesome.
Let's rank the stops.
Ooh.
And personal.
This is personal.
Because I think if you're going like overall iconic, it's contemporary number one.
Yeah.
But personally, I also go Polynesian.
We stayed there a lot as a kid
there was something very fun about coming
out the doors to the top and getting
on that monorail it felt like you were
leaving like it felt like a real
jarring transition from like
a futuristic thing to the like
fun Polynesian vibe to it
just get Epcot in the top three and I'll
shut up I think Epcot is
three I think it's number three, but...
I think it's number three.
Credit to the Magic Kingdom, a lot of wrought iron,
turn of the...
Like Victorian architectural style to complement the main...
Magic Kingdom is better than Blade Runner, Robocop,
Boxy Slants.
I will not have wrought iron defeat Boxy Slants.
Yeah, Magic Kingdom is not, that's four Damn right
That's four for sure, then it's Floridian
Then it's the Ticket and Transportation Center
Or TTC
T-A-T-C
Is that what we were, T-A-T-C
Yeah, that's it, that's probably it
And you have to say it
Throwing your wrist back
With your voice going up T-A-T-C, that's how we say it throwing your wrist back and with your voice going up.
T-A-T-C.
That's how we say it.
Current Disneyland ones.
Two-way tie for last for me.
In terms of aesthetic, I mean,
I'm coming in over Tomorrowland,
and I guess to bring it back to Disneyland
before we then spend 20 minutes
just clowning on Florida's catastrophes.
I
am so disappointed that I never
got to see the Monorail
Cafe, the restaurant that used
to be on the ground floor of the Monorail Station.
It's the rowback kind of
diner. The verdict online
seems to be the best milkshakes
at Anaheim. It was just
basically kind of like a 50s style
diner with like sandwiches and stuff and that's got that's got some boxy 80s i like the architecture
of that i dig this um boomerang sort of looky 50s design my grandmother had that on like her
like kooky throwback nickelodeon nick at night. Yeah. The way 50s equals weird shapes and things wiggling around.
Yeah.
There's a cool aesthetic to the Monorail Cafe, but it had to go when Disney opens.
But that was a thing that was open from like 55 on.
It was just called the Coffee Shop, and then it became the Monorail Cafe way later into
the runs.
That's an old establishment.
It stuck around for a long time i think the history of the disneyland hotel is fascinating
because i i was wondering reading this because you always see the signs that say like over 30
shops and restaurants and i'm like where did they put them all and the answer is they essentially
built a mall that they then bulldozed to build downtown disney yeah yeah yeah there was a lot
in there and just like not even like disney- just some dress shop, a watch store, and they weren't magical
in any way.
Yeah.
It was just a boring office building mall.
It was very much like the early days of the contemporary, also very interesting in terms
of changing tastes, because there was all sorts of like, this is a resort.
Buy your resort
ware, and here's the counter where you order a box of citrus to ship home to your family.
That used to be such a novel thing before refrigeration really was as good as it is
now.
It was like, oh yeah, it's a fresh, really fresh citrus at times of year where citrus
was not in season.
Like that was a great gift for someone to bring back and you are upset that you can no longer go down anaheim and ship citrus
uh orlando i mean oh sorry uh are you upset about that uh i i think that would be cool did you guys
get oranges in your stockings growing up uh we got tangerines tangerines yeah so that's that's a lingering wait what
tangerines in a stocking yeah this is a lingering sort of thing when like citrus that was like a
treat uh i believe citrus season is you get oranges winter we yeah my my grandparents would
give us and give us stockings with scott no citrus in your stocking? No, never. What a deprived childhood. Yeah.
Santa never left a tangerine for me.
Well, here's the thing.
If you forget about it at the bottom of the stocking as you're eating your way through the candy,
a couple weeks later, it will be a moldy tangerine covered in red stocking fur.
Does that happen multiple times to you?
Yeah, of course it happened multiple times to me.
Come on.
Several years you neglected a tangerine.
You fondly recall, why no tangerines?
But then you let them die.
You let them die in your stocking.
Was not a big fruit boy growing up.
Not a big fruit boy.
Fruit is so sugary.
I know, but it's not chocolate sugary.
Wow, interesting. Jason's favorite fruit hot dogs
that's what's crazy uh when my mom my mom would have us eat it that day she would just take them
out then and like just serve it to us oh we were mostly sticking to summer sausages
did you get summer sausages in your no we didn't but we sure as hell got and gave a lot of hickory
farm samplers growing up did you guys not that was like such a go-to for and from extended family
or co-workers i'm not trying to act like we're about we we ate like crap just like you did but
i don't think we ever gave or received sausages chicago it's like what are you you just lived it
that was like water to you. Chicago
is just like one of the sausage capitals of America.
Your house was covered in sausage. I don't think we ate
a lot of sausages, honestly. We had
hot dogs and I've said liver
sausage once in a while. Sure, yeah.
Did you ever get a bunch of tangerines
stuffed together in a row and then wrapped
in sausage casing?
Oh.
Wow, what an unpleasant creation you made.
And, of course, wrapped in red stocking fur.
Yeah.
I'm going to have a nightmare about that.
I'm looking forward to that character
in that new Adult Swim Vernon Chapman stoppage,
I think.
Lambskin-wrapped tangerines.
I will have a nightmare tonight
where a flaming head Richard Nixon hands me a red fur tangerines i will have a nightmare tonight where a flaming head richard nixon hands me a red fur
tangerine sausage boy
hellscape the most uh off the rails episode oh sure hey i got i got one Did you guys ever get a chance to ride in the captains,
the cone of the monorail in Florida?
My sister did without us when she was very young.
Really?
We were walking, so my family was there.
And I don't know if it was the captain or it was another family
who was like, we have one more space up here.
Does your daughter want to ride?
And I guess my mom was like okay my mom's highly paranoid highly very worried uh so my sister went up with this strange family
and we took the loop from maybe magic king let's say magic kingdom to or probably contemporary i
think it was just one loop so maybe it was back back from Epcot. It was back from Epcot. It was Epcot to Ticken Transportation Center.
And my mom was the most tense she's ever been,
just sitting while my sister just sat with a strange family in the captain's area.
And everything was fine.
Yeah, like she was going to get abducted out of a monorail.
That's what she thought.
I mean, it was a family.
People had kids.
But yeah, my mom was
real stressed out about that and tells that story often but i didn't get to go my sister did but i
wasn't also something i cared that much about and now i would care about it more than i did probably
when i was little oh my whole family the four of us got to go up there once and and ride it demanded
i would assume no we were politely asked, probably because I think it held for,
in addition to the captain.
Of course, now the monorail in Florida is automated.
There is still a captain in there,
just to keep an eye on the controls.
But they have not allowed people to,
guests to ride in that cone since the 2009 accident where two monorails collided resulting
in one death yeah no you can't go up there it's been a rough year for the monorail but that was
the that was that was really bad and then there was also this what it this is such an insane
thing because like this is was very unfortunate no way anyone could have predicted but like that was when starbucks um
was it 2009 or 2014 uh i whenever that incident happened resulting in the death starbucks those
starbucks um parks mugs had just come out with the little cartoony and the monorail on that
mug they had to scrap all those mugs because it was the purple that was 2014 then that
was 2014 sorry then the automation kicked in in a few years before so there were mugs depicting a
murderous monorail yeah so now eventually they scrapped all those reissued the mugs with a
different color on it and then they just totally got rid of the i think it was the purple monorail
they just changed the colors entirely so that
to not be associated with that yikes it's weird it's also just weird because it's like
i guess it makes sense but it's just like well the that color is gone so don't don't remember
that bad incident who really is thinking lime you just ride lime which lime would go on they've all
had problems it seems like.
I think people are not going to remember the color stripe.
I think they're going to remember the general incident.
Yeah.
But who knows?
What do we do with these things?
The Disneyland one's fine.
I think Disney World just needs a new fleet.
It just needs a new fleet.
I mean, it was brand new when we were children.
And it's like, this is like the longest fleet, I feel they've just let this go this happens in florida they let these things
go for so long people notice it a lot less because they go only go to the parks every couple years
down there yeah but to the point where you cough on the door and it explodes off um it's skidding
down the the like slant of space mountain i don't know is there
somebody can somebody make a cheaper monorail so we can get more monorail because it does feel like
it just i wish it went everywhere i always did as a kid i was like when we went to mgm for the
first time i remember having the question like why doesn't it go here and then why doesn't go
down like why shouldn't it go everywhere why shouldn't it be a harder question for your parents to answer than
why do bad things happen to good people is there a god or why does the money all not go and of
course there weren't great podcasts like this one to speculate and they didn't have the information
that this is an incredibly inefficient uh overpriced mode of transportation
that's not caught on with the public it is efficient like okay how many people ride it
every day i think it's the most used monorail in the world there are other monorails ahead of it
but it it is very highly used and honestly it's amazing it's been used that much and lasted that long but like yeah
you got to get some more monorails in there if they're they should be working on it right now
to have new ones ready for the 50th anniversary in 2021 because unlike with richard nixon now when
new monorails are introduced they test it they put it on the track and test it without people or at
least without guests for weeks or months they're not like testing it on the track and test it without people or at least without
guests for weeks or months they're not like testing it and then like all right good to go
the next day so we can't put pence on a experimental no we cannot on day one of testing
too bad it'll be it'll be thoroughly tested before mike pence goes on the new monorail
yeah then he certainly would not get in a monorail car with strangers.
If he was stuck in a monorail car with a woman who was not his betrothed.
Only mother.
Only Michael and mother.
He would knock the door off himself.
He would kick the door off and jump out.
He's already covered in flop sweat from the shape of that monorail.
The phallic nature of the monorail.
Disney World is a place of hedonism.
Oh, and the taxpayers are going to have to foot the bill
for him to go down there, get on the monorail for a second,
and immediately leave because it looks like an offensive penis.
Well, can you imagine him in the captain's car
going into the contemporary?
No!
Mother!
Oh, my. And it's stuck gonna i don't know what's happening it's going back and forth back and forth in and out of the contemporary oh my god
man his brain would explode uh one of the most famous monorail guests as i alluded to earlier
bob hope did anyone watch that i feel like we've watched this together. Oh, my God. I've watched that a million times. From the grand opening special of Disney World.
We'll do a whole show on that grand opening Disney World special.
I mean, we'll have to do a commentary.
I love that special.
As they show the monorail going to the contemporary and who gets off it with two very young, attractive-looking plaids, Bob Hope himself.
Attractive-looking plaids?
Guides. Two very attractiveractive looking plaids. Guys.
Two very attractive young guys.
Plaids.
They call them plaids.
We've talked about Mike got a plaid
when he was down there.
I think the combination of words
I think you're right.
I think you're right.
I think you're right about them being called plaids.
The words you said in this sentence,
I think was what made it seem a little strange.
Sounds racist or something.
As a partially Scottish person,
I'm offended by the use of the word plaids.
I'm sick of people calling me a dirty plaid.
To me, it sounded like,
imagine a guy in a bar being like,
look at those attractive plaids over there.
That's too attractive.
Well, plaids are in general neutral. I meant it to mean guides. Anyway, back on track. a guy in a bar being like look at those attractive plants over there like that's too well plants are
in general neutral i meant it to mean guides uh anyway back on track uh so uh he gets off the
monorail and onto a platform that no longer exists clearly built for this and has like
stairs and a handrail that he is holding on doing some very lazy jokes into for an audience of the oldest people i have
ever seen on film like the cutaways everyone looks a million years old it's shot in such a strange
way i can't really tell if they're really reacting to the jokes or that was just shot without an
like there's some things weird about that i think there was an audience there but there's some just
the way it's edited it is very odd well they also keep doing cutaways to the the balconies the the hallway balconies inside the contemporary and you
can kind of see people but not right well so it just looks like it's shots of an empty hotel
interior we've all done we've all done live comedy especially especially you guys. You could probably attest to probably not the greatest acoustic situation
to do a comedy show in a gigantic atrium
where some of your audience is 90 feet above you
and others are on stairs way below you.
Not the optimal.
No, no.
UCB3 will be in the center.
The way they edit it, there's way too many applause breaks we were the quality of like uh he paints at the mary blair mural and he goes
wow when john wayne doodle john wayne doodles he really when john wayne paints he really paints
so like uh i also want to go back real quick He sends the plaids away and he goes,
meet me in Adventureland, girls.
And you're like, ooh.
Super sleazy.
Creepy.
I will say there was a solid joke in there because he talks about going out to his room
and Donald Duck is there
or sharing a bathtub with Donald Duck.
And he says, you ever try bathing with a duck
who was playing with a rubber man?
Which is kind
of, I think that's pretty funny.
It's like, oh yeah, by that, if
Bob Hope had a rubber duck,
Donald Duck would have a rubber duck.
It's an upsetting image, similar to
the tangerine sausage.
It seems
to me like he didn't care about the answer.
Did he pull each audience
member and ask if they had tried to take a bath with a i know because many of them had already
fallen asleep or were putting died during an aspirin under their tongue just in case because
that um yeah so he there's a little bit of monorail stuff in there it's it's a really weird
unless you did you have more sorry i don't want to cut off if you want to just tell his whole routine no i do it is funny to me the idea it's
doing a whole special a bit oh there's a bad joke hope comedy routine will be two hour episodes
this place is so big by the time you cross the lobby your luggage stickers have faded
it's okay that's all right you like the rubber duck one but you don't like the faded i think that's at
least a standard old joke i think some of the other ones are just like barely a premise yeah
i get that at least it's a simple premise it's clear it makes sense this is a big place and oh
my gosh it takes so long okay got it done here's one I he said something about fantasy land
he goes fantasy land you do have all the jokes
written down I have some
fantasy land he's not even on the
monorail in this this is just
in the contemporary yeah you know
what you talk about
episode division I think this is clearly
contemporary material
I agree this is contemporary
Bob Hope will return and this is the post-credits card.
We will hear more of the routine.
Yeah.
But it is how exciting
for a stand-up routine
to begin with the person
being delivered on a monorail.
Yeah, fantastic.
Yeah.
That part is great.
If only all stand-up routines
began with experimental
transportation,
like landing with a jetpack.
It would be fantastic.
Yeah, yeah,
with a big crazy propeller machine.
Trump should have, when he announced the presidency,
should have gotten off a monorail and gotten on the escalator
or whatever the hell, when he was in his Trump Tower, that famous.
That was kind of similar in a way to the Bob Hope routine,
like the strangest entrance you could make to a speech.
Poorly staged, there's no good way to shoot it.
And Bob Hope also did a chunk about uh mexicans being
rapists and yeah that was a quick yeah quick thing they cut that from air but right live
it played well live i'll say that i in terms of old uh entertainers phoning it in i i'm definitely
a dean martin man myself like like dean Dean Martin about to fall over half delivering dialogue.
Delightful.
I agree with you that Dean Martin is better than Bob Hope.
Yeah.
I guess so.
I don't know.
We're ranking our old time entertainers now.
Now let's rank, yeah.
But where does Joey Bishop fall?
Low.
Oh, low.
I think so, yeah.
Tied with Peter Lawford. fall low oh low i think so yeah unfortunately tied with peter lawler i was making lindsey's
mom and sister watch videos of sammy davis jr doing mr bojangles over the thanksgiving break
sure were they just nice did you want to like just nice move them oh they were very confused why
they were i was like well i just sort of started watching these videos the other day and i wait
we need thanksgiving entertainment have I got the thing
for you I will say this
they were like kind of non they were not
interested in that in the Sammy Davis
but then Lindsay was like well put on because
we had done a whole like couple days of
mostly them picking movies
and watching they're like well because I was like look
what I like to do is just get YouTube up and
just roll through videos and after the few Sammy Davis Lindsay was like well show them what I like to do is just get YouTube up and just roll through videos. And after the few Sammy Davis, Lindsay was like,
well, show them what you usually do.
And I go, all right.
And then I went right to Freak Like Me,
the Spider-Man, Letterman performance.
And they were much more into it than the Sammy Davis Jr.
They were very key.
They were paying attention.
Yeah, because it's funny.
Wait, also several Sammy Davis performances?
There's a couple. I mean, that was one of his signature songs
after a while. Several of the same song?
What is this entertainment?
The banter changes.
It's like the Genie and the Aladdin musical
at Calgary Adventure.
This one is facing stage right. Here, look.
It was just like two different performances,
I think.
So, we're talking all time
Jason's not the only weird
maniac on this show
we've never disputed it
if we haven't made that the most clear
there's no disputing that
yeah yeah
I'm over here
orgasming at neon
and Mr. Bojangles and Max Pass is my thing
and Max Pass
what else is there an end to
this episode i don't well in terms of uh this might be the easiest uh plus up uh florida please
stop making the monorail a death trap like please please order new monorails disneyland
keep up the good work i feel like we haven't had i mean yeah any
transportation buses cars planes monorail anything's gonna have incidents and it is like
there has surprisingly not been that many deaths or major injuries on these things that run every
day for decades i all i want is more and new.
I want more in Florida.
I don't think it's ever going to happen now.
They've obviously gone different ways
with the transportation.
I just want more and new ones.
I mean, yeah, I don't know.
There's nothing else.
But I think in the meantime,
let's not, why not,
like we could just quietly retire
these death machines
that are currently operating,
or we can send them down with a big Viking funeral.
We can start trying to crank these babies to 80 miles an hour.
Let's see how fast they can go.
Let's see how crazy we can get.
Let's start racing them.
Let's see how many laps you can do.
Oh, yeah, that's great.
Monorail races?
That's a great ride.
I will, I think they should give, they should have new monorails for that's a good ride i will i think they should give they should have new
monorails for the 50th anniversary like that's such a given to me and it's crazy to me that
that's not like been announced as far as we know yeah with the old ones i think they should clear
the routes and clear the parks before and after hours and give them over to the jackass guys
and just see what happens.
The jackass guys.
Just run.
If we're sending them out on a Viking funeral,
who better?
Do you want Steve-O, a 50-year-old Steve-O?
I want Johnny Knoxville to...
They're all old.
Do you want skateboarders to pilot around broken trains?
Can you ram the monorail into the wonders of life
building it's barely being used if we're gonna start fresh on it let's send it out
get it to jump off the track maybe maybe ollie off of i don't really know skateboard it like
bounce off the wonders of life building i don't know. Believe me, as you know, I love the hell out of Epcot.
But if you could get the monorail to just impale Spaceship Earth, worth it.
Cool.
Blow it up.
I'm there for that.
Couldn't we get the impractical Jokers, somebody younger that, you know.
You know what?
They don't put themselves in physical harm.
That's true.
You're right.
They can come to.
Jokers X Jackass.
This is a hit.
This will run on cable every hour of every day.
But they're going to compete specifically with monorail related hijinks.
I don't see why not.
Jokers is very popular on cable.
Very popular.
It's the only show on cable i believe yeah if you put
on like you know you put on tv land it's just a footage of a mirror playing a playing true tv
speed of impractical jokers highest very highly rated sal q all the gang. We know the names. We know the names.
Wigwag, all of them.
You know what?
I have one more nice little monorail thought,
which is that, do you guys recall,
all right, if there was an origin story of us not becoming the serial killers we are today,
but showing our cards of insanity,
do you guys recall the moment where, Mike,
you got us this hookup
uh via somebody who knew you from recognized you from screen junkies to go tour imagineering
and uh and i didn't know jason very well then but you you invited all of us as as the as the disney
uh the disney freaks and uh we we rounded a corner oh yeah up until that point the disney
imagineering building,
you know,
we were just so excited to be there,
but there wasn't anything,
like, jaw-dropping.
And it's just,
it's an office,
and it's fine.
And then at some point,
you round a corner,
and the hallway is a monorail.
You are inside a monorail,
and we all, like,
ah!
It was the most embarrassing display
for a bunch of grown men to do,
and the woman who had you, who gave you the hookup was like, ugh.
She was weirded out by our collective shrieks at the monorail hallway.
But hey, I stand by it.
And I like passing that info to the listener that there's a frigging monorail hallway.
Yes.
Well, she did ask, do you guys want a friggin monorail hallway yes well she
did ask do you guys want to see the monorail hallway and probably more no i think that was
she did didn't she no no no that's i think the monorail hallway was just a normal the way we
had to go that way anyway oh yeah she's talking i don't think it was announced that's why we yeah
yeah there it was not announced you're thinking of there was another hallway that just had pictures
of imagineers on the wall and she said well yeah you want to go down that you know hallway just got some pictures of imagineer and we went oh yes please yeah and
then she was like and then we're like oh look over there it's it's tony baxter on the wall and
there's bob gerr and there's like marty sklar and then she was like huh i i will say though when i
first walked in the building uh i was enchanted because like a newsroom they
had clocks with all the times of the world like we're all uh like you know and in newsrooms it's
usually like new york london paris all that but they had it for anaheim orlando shanghai hong kong
tokyo and just delightful i was delighted by these very simple store-bought clocks. You were also delighted by the cafeteria.
Yep.
Which was a normal cafeteria.
Yeah.
Yeah, you insisted on getting a sandwich, and I had to pull you out of there.
You didn't let me get it.
She's like, she's got to get back to work.
And I'm like, she's still ordering her coffee.
I never did get the sandwich.
That's one of the craziest things I've ever seen.
You trying to get that sandwich.
Your neurotic reaction.
No way.
I am 100% right about this.
We wasted so much time in the gift shop.
She was being nice enough.
We had spent like an hour and 15, and she was like, oh, can I go get a sandwich?
And she was like, yeah, sure.
And then you're waiting in line, and I'm like, no, she has to go to work.
She was still in line for her thing.
You know what?
No, there's no way.
The punchiest episode.
There's no way.
Of the podcast.
And I hate to say it.
I'm sad with Mike on this one.
Of course.
The rules of society.
That was my memory.
The rules of society.
You know what?
Polite society.
Look, that was my lunch break, too. I had to get back to work. I had to eat. You know what? Polite society. Look, that was my lunch break, too.
I had to get back to work. I hadn't eaten.
You were late. You were
late coming there, too.
No, I walked. You were late.
I walked up to the entrance with her.
We parked. She was
coming from the building. I parked next to it.
Sir, I declare you were late
because we were supposed to be there at time and Andrew
Scott and I were there. But our guide wasn't there yet. That doesn't matter. You were late because we were supposed to be there at time and Andrew Scott and I were there.
But she, our guide wasn't there yet.
That doesn't matter.
You were late because I was messaging her when everybody was there.
So I said, well, you know, we must well start.
Hopefully Jason gets there.
And then I remember we saw you park and we saw you walk the wrong way down the street a few blocks.
We're like, no, he's going the wrong way.
Well, you know, sometimes the dwarf falls off your vehicle sometimes you just go the wrong way we all have little oopsies
little oopsies for whether you're a monorail or a human being um i think if i don't say
we survive podcast the riot now we might not yeah we. We got to get out of here. We better get out of here.
I'm exhausted.
Before we end up in fisticuffs.
And you,
the listeners survived as well.
Thanks so much.
Hope you enjoyed this version of this trip on the highway in your ears.
That doesn't really line up.
Hey,
let's all here.
I'll plug the things now the uh go to go
follow us on twitter and instagram and check out the patreon at uh patreon.com slash podcast the
ride i think we've recently done one about the tortilla factory so yes uh if you're still on
the edge of your seat from our monorail journey and you want to hear about the old uh mission tortilla factory i another shocking episode two two shocking episodes back to back what is the
i guess there's some shocks in there sure absolutely uh um yeah so more shocks await
behind the second gate yeah and uh did i miss anything no i don't know t public shirts whatever you know you got you know you
guys know and uh if there's real demand for checkie leaks please let us know i bet there is
i bet there's like five listeners that are like yeah i would do that uh yes and i like mr owlweg
i'm a wealthy swedish industrialist and i yes, I can pay you $500 a month to plan my Disney days for me.
It's like I was a ghost kind of guiding their hands while they're at the
park and they're on the app.
So like I would be there with you in spirit.
So think about that when you're thinking about how much money you would pay
me to do this.
Imagine getting on a ride and Mike is kind of massaging your hands and just
play a unchained melody in your head
as it happens.
Yeah, yeah.
We're done. We're good.
There was only one set of footprints.
That's what Mike was carrying.
That's when Mike was signing me up
for the 110
Roger Rabbit's cartoon spin.
Alright, folks.
Let's get the fuck out of here.
Bye.
Forever Dog.
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