Podcast: The Ride - The Parks That Made Us

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

We take a look at the local parks we went to growing up in California, Illinois, and New Jersey! Red (The Red Robin Bird) episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide WATCH THIS EPISODE: https://youtu.be/QFn7Ow0z2DM FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever, dog. Warning, the following podcast is the origin of the podcast The Ride hosts. It may contain hamburger factories, substantial boats, and t-shirts that would make the Big Johnson people embarrassed. Come learn about Mike, Scott, and Jason's very regular childhoods. It's the parts that made us on today's podcast, The Ride, where today we stop thinking about the theme parks in our heads and focus a little more on the theme parks in our hearts. I'm Scott Gairdner, joined by Mike Carlson.

I'm acting. I didn't know what that. I thought that was legitimately choking on food. Choking on my own emotions. I see. Emotions. Beautiful. That's good.

That's what I want today is choking on emotions. Let's all be doing that. Jason Sheridan. Yeah, let's get this actor some more jobs. Let's get this man booked. Well, please. I say booked. Jason and I beg for work every week here. We beg for work on the show at this point. It's pathetic. So, yeah more jobs. Let's get this man booked. Well, please. I say booked. Jason and I beg for work every week here.

We beg for work on the show at this point. It's pathetic. So yeah, please, if you didn't hear that. We don't do it every week, and I don't think you should start. That's true. But as much as you feel like you need to. Yeah, that's true. It's happened a few times.

Yeah, that's not so much our hearts. That's more our guts, the rumbling, the stomach acid churning in our guts. Needing hunger? I feel like. Having hunger, needing treats? I, that more just anxiety pangs a bile, you know? If we're talking like, if you want like the lone gunman

from X-Files on your show, three guys who are a little quirky, a little strange, if you've ever seen the X-Files, there were the three kind of guys that were like Mulder would go to like for research and they were kind of like conspiracy theory guys

and they would give them information, but they were a little odd. And they had their own spinoff that didn't, I guess, do well. This is the three of us could do that on some show, I think. Sorry, you're pitching us as people who had their own show that failed. Well, no, no, I'm saying in the future we could be on a show, we could have a spinoff, and then it would fail. But you're okay with the failure of the eventual show

as long as we get the rates for recurring on a more popular show. Yeah. Primetime Fox, a full season of that? Primetime Fox, one season in 1999 or 2000, whatever that was. Were they on more than one season of X-Files or there was only one season? Yeah, more than one season of X-Files. Okay, well, so the lone gunmen are doing fine then.

Yeah. I would assume. I mean, I don't know, but I'm just saying this is where we're available in the same sort of like, oh, these three quirky guys for a show. If your show needs three quirky guys, here we are. If your show is looking

to hire three whites at once, just a big glut, let's really up the white numbers. Maybe that's part of it. I don't know how, but maybe that's part of it. It's mocking the idea of that. It's an ironic use of us and that. That's right.

So here we are. The new lone gunman ready to be inserted in your TV show. Yeah. And today you'll see the soul and the heart of us. We'll see where we came from, the origin story. That's right. Yeah, that's the idea what what we're doing here today is mike and jason and i are all going to talk about a park or a themed

attraction that meant a lot to us growing up that's like way deep in the psyche. And you might say, well, you do that all the time. But today this is not we're not talking no corporate Disney Universal. The man, man, that's not what it is. We're talking about places that were local, that were homespun and where even though we maybe recognize the flaws and the chintziness it's always going to be in there like it's part of us it affected us part of our

origin story as Jason said yeah so we're excited about this there's a lot there were many places even I think we could have picked multiple places but we've chosen one. So there's sequel opportunity for this episode too. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, especially because I think we all, being that we all like fetishized some place that wasn't even meant to be enjoyed. You know, like in my case, the Fry's Electronics that was based around Alice in Wonderland. Like that's a viable, but God knows I've talked enough about fries, but like we probably all have like, there was a post office and the roof was interesting. And that was like the thing that had a lot of impact. Oh yeah. I think I've said this before on the Woodfield mall episode,

or maybe before there was like a shoe store that had a little like circle, like that you could kind of sit in. I forget even how to describe it, but there was like a little play thing in the shoe store. And I was just like, this is the greatest place i've ever been trying to picture and that's probably a chain and i can't think of the name of it and people probably know exactly what it is there's a slide inside as well okay to get in the store you if you were just a kid sized there was like a hole kind of that you could like walk through and you could like chill out in this

sort of hole you had a special entrance a special entrance for kids in the small store. Basically, yeah. Like the Imaginarium, that's what I said. The Imaginarium was a store with a little door. Yeah. I miss doggy doors for children. I don't think I've been anywhere with my son with a tiny door meant for him and that I couldn't fit into,

that I'd be humiliated if I tried to go into. And we need more of those. We should. Somebody really should make. I mean, there's been so much talk of like Wonka attractions over the years. Somebody should make that like door, the tiny door at the end of the weird room when they're about to go into the factory. Something like that. Obviously, that's not the way it's portrayed is impossible.

But there's a version of it where you could do like kids only could fit in a certain door. Make all those blustery dads and moms have to get on their hands and knees. Make the mom and dads get hurt. Make them scrape their knees. Wear down their already worn down limbs. Everyone's wearing suits and dresses because I guess it's English in England in this 1960s in this scenario. They were all fancy. That was like Disneyland in the 50s and 60s where you dressed up.

They did. And I guess that's a momentous day. And they probably knew that Willy Wonka dresses up. Yeah. Well, they had to match. There is a class element, I feel like, to Willy Wonka because like Charlie and his grandfather probably have the least amount of money of all of them, too. So that's probably part of it. But also people dressed up back in the day.

So grandpa is wearing a suit, but it's probably like a less nice suit than the others. Yeah, those snooty other people. They're on to him. And remember, it probably stinks. Of course it stinks. He's sleeping with the other grandparents. He's got his own elderly stink

that's amassed the stink of the other elders. And then they make nothing but cabbage stew in there. So probably every article of clothing has kind of a cabbage reek. He could have taken his annual shower though before. I don't know. Was that the situation? There was one shower? Maybe.

I think it was a bath. Yes, they would do a bath. So that makes sense. But also using it for also cooking up cabbage in there to make stew. They're getting the bath water to eventually eat. Multi-purpose cauldron, yeah.

Will they show the grandpa bath in the Chamolay, whatever the new Wonka. Chalamay. Chalamay, what's his name? Excuse me, I apologize. I like Chamolay. Chamolay is funnier.

Will they show it in the new Wonka, the grandpa bath. I sure hope so. I'd like to see every detail. And like with crazy CGI. Yeah, CGI grandpa in water. So anyway. Childhood parks.

We're talking. Yes. So like, yeah, the little one, the one, the places that felt like ours, where maybe you could go, you know, like you could talk to other kids about if you've been to Disneyland, but anybody could go to Disneyland. These places felt like, like almost to me, like maybe I'll never meet anyone who also knew these places. Unless in your case, it was like, oh, all the kids in your area are talking about whatever your thing is i think my case a lot some of the kids were talking about it i think it was it's pretty well attended it's been around for a long time so i wouldn't be shocked if people in the area at least went once sure sure yeah but it definitely it was not getting disney levels of attendance

so but it is still open and it's been open since 81. Mine is. I guess should we roll into mine? We didn't talk about the order. I was going to say I mean let's roll into yours. Does it make sense to go for the person to go last who thinks that theirs is the worst? Yes. But do you think that's

yours? No. Okay. I don't think so. Jason? No. Okay. Maybe it's me then. You think yours is the worst maybe? I think it might be the yours. No. Okay. Okay. I don't think so. Jason? No. Okay. Maybe it's me then. You think yours is the worst maybe? I think it might be the worst. Yeah. Having just been and revisited, I would say it's seen better days. I haven't just been, but mine still seems kind of charming.

Yeah. I think Mike should start because a thing of mine I didn't realize until I was a little deep into it. There's kind of a, it shares some things with what little I know of Mike's. Okay. But mine also has gotten increasingly more elaborate where I learned things today when I was working on stuff where I was like, well, I didn't know that. And like, oh, this is a very funny folly for a thing to occur.

We've got follies to come. Follies to come. Follies. Not novelty garden architecture. I was trying to find follies for mine. Roller coaster construction mishaps. I was trying to find follies for mine. I don't think I found any major follies that have been documented.

Well, then by all means, let's dive into yours, Mike. And I also think that something we should, let's compare, contrast these. We'll all lay our specific parks and places out. And based on those, we'll determine who had the best childhood. I think it'll be a winner. I think it'll be clear. So, yeah, I guess let's start. Brian, I have a video that I sent.

It's a pirate video. I think we should probably start with that. This is a newer commercial just to give you a little taste. Discover a buried treasure filled with summertime fun at Pirate's Cove Children's Theme Park in Elk Grove Village. What theme park? Pirate's Cove? Children's. Children's.

Children's theme park. Adventure for everyone day two to nine to explore. So that's Pirates Cove. The graphic design has been updated. It doesn't maybe look like it's been updated. Home of the slowest moving kids in the whole state. Pirate's Cove. So I went there. I don't know how young I was.

I was probably five or whatever. And I brought up this place a couple times. And I think I've brought up a few times. It's not five timers, but it's a couple times. There was a UFO ride back in the day where you would go inside and there was a video that would play that would show you launching into space and i thought it was 100 real oh cool and it flipped i was it made me nuts i thought we were going into space and i was so scared what's happening actually on the road what kind of ride are we talking we're talking

a little ufo shaped place you walk inside you sit down and they hit play on a VCR. So not even does the room not move? Oh, this is not not even a ride. This is just a video screen that shows you like, hey, now here we go. And then there's like a shot of the UFO that you're supposedly in. It's probably like night, which doesn't make sense either because it's daytime when you're in there. But your kid brain maybe doesn't put it together. And then the UFO launches off into space. And if you're little enough, you believe it.

Or dumb enough, I guess. You believe it that you're going into space. I wish I had that still. How great would it be every day that you think things like that or that you take everything at uh on faith at a theme park yeah i love that it would love to be tricked fully i love to get yeah in wrestling they say worked i love to get worked i love to get tricked i like it when i think something might be real but it's not that's fun now is it also maybe scary maybe it would also turn your day into a terrifying nightmare of like oh my like if

you go to disney you're like i was on a runaway train and then i was in a rocket ship going into the middle of the space like maybe it would be a little too intense depending on your level to go into a mountain yeah and there was a monster in the mountain several times and he swiped it yes on a woman in a puppy coat started screaming at me. And she told me she was going to like take me and help put me in a puppy processing plant or something like,

it would be a little too much. I think that the face character should be saying something like that. There is a dirty old house where the dead do not rest. Almost a thousand ghosts. There's a haunted house telling me that they're going to kill me and put me in the. Almost a thousand ghosts. There's a haunted house telling me that they're going to kill me and put me in the house. Countless ghosts.

I saw many, but by their math, there's a lot more I haven't seen. Yes. One of them came home with me. So that's why I'm just calling you right now. I'm quarantining. I assume it's the same rules as COVID. I feel like by two weeks, that ghost is going to be gone. I just want to be safe.

I don't want you to get haunted. And be careful. I saw my dad give his credit card. He paid for us to go in this place. This nightmare world. We chose this. We gave our hard-earned money away. So, yes, exactly.

I thought I was going into a real pirate ship. I thought a lot of it was real, obviously, as a lot of little kids do. So now you may wonder why was there a UFO in the middle of Pirate's Cove? I don't know the answer to it. I don't know the answer to this question. I could not find even documentation that the UFO was there. I know it was there unless somebody's going to tell me this is some weird, like there was a one-off UFO attraction in a parking lot somewhere, which I do not believe. It was at Pir somebody's going to tell me this is some weird like there was a one off UFO attraction in a parking lot,

which I do not believe it was at Pirate's Cove. Yeah, there's two reasons, I think. One, you can't copyright pirates or aliens. That's true. And two, yeah, just get in there. Kids like it probably. Yes, of course. Kids like aliens.

Kids like pirates. So let's put up a slide pirate slide one real quick just to give you kind of an overview of what the park looks like. This is, again, a newer map in a newer version of it. I was very. So, yeah, this is if you're. Yeah, we're on YouTube. If you're just listening and you want to if you're dying to see what this park looks like. Now, a lot of it hasn't changed i would say that the big showpiece is that pirate ship right there which is number five pete's pirate ship pete is the pirate okay this is the ip of the elk grove village park district is pete the pirate you heard i assume

you heard him in the commercial there that's a performer playing pete um And this was like a really impressive ship to a kid because it had like stocks. It had like a little jail in like the bottom floor of it. But then you could go on the top and they had the, whatever, the big wheel, and you could spin the big wheel around. And going on it as a kid, that was the whole thing. That was the attraction to me,

is going to get to hang out on the ship. And they had like, I'm trying to think how to describe it. It looks like it's gone, but you used to be able to hold on to like these big yellow plastic pieces that were on zip lines and like fly down into a bunch of sand. Wow. Does that make sense? remember like something like not one of those where you'd hold on like kind of with your two hands but one there was just like a you would sit on this yellow like seat and you would like hug this like yellow piece of plastic and then they would shoot you down into the sand and that was so much fun and going to this thing yeah as a kid felt you knew it wasn't disney but it was it was pretty fun and felt kind of special. And I'm impressed that it's actually still there.

This was built in 1981. I saw some figure of like $750,000 to build this, which, look, if you look at the video, it seems a little high. No offense to Pirates Cove, but it seems a little high. I believe they had that little train ride that we saw in there and they had the ship and they had like a carousel of some kind, but this isn't we're not. There's not like an e-ticket to be found here, which is okay. Maybe there was like

a bunch of chemicals in the ground or bodies. They were raising a bunch of corpses and that added to the expense. Can we go to pirate slide six? Now these are these are walk around costume characters that i don't recall seeing oh wow but these are fun these are fun as hell pirate and that's pete with a giant head and a giant smile like imagine like imagine mickey

mouse at disneyland but he had like a big set of teeth. Like imagine Mickey just like with his like big like Ren and Stimpy style human teeth. And the bottom row of teeth as big as the top. That's really the unsettling part here. Imagine all like remember Sonic's teeth. We all remember Sonic's teeth from the first version of the Sonic the Hedgehog trailer. Oh, sure. Imagine those teeth on any of the costume characters at Disney or Universal,

like Woody Woodpecker with big teeth or Frankenstein with big teeth. And yeah, you're kind of in the ballpark of what this Pete the Pirate looks like. Yeah, he looks a little like a minor league baseball team mascot that is going to do a foot race with other minor league baseball mascots and whether they're

a pirate or a watermelon they're all smiling yes uh uh they're all smiling what lucky team has a watermelon for a man gotta be gotta be a watermelon i mean everyone sends me i've gotten it delights me to no end when someone tells me hey a minor league baseball team has a hot dog mascot now or like has a Scrapple mascot now. And I'm like, well, I guess I got to buy more hats. Scrapple mascot? Is there a Scrapple mascot? There is a Scrapple one, I believe.

There's a pork roll one, I think. Oh, my God. We got to look into that. A big piece of Scrapple, though, is either just going to look like a brick or like a scrappy. Is it called scrappy? I don't know. I don't know if they've assigned names to the character. Well, you can't just wet our whistle a little bit.

We need the full meal here. This may be a topic before the Boys of Summer are gone, that we look at minor league baseball. That's fine. Yeah, I'm comfortable with that. Before the Boys of Summer are gone. Yeah, the Boys of Summer. The term refers to baseball when baseball's over.

The song Boys of Summer is about baseball players calling it a season, basically. Well, I'll love you even after the Boys of Summer are gone. I didn't know this, honestly. That's what I always heard. Really? Did you know this? No. About the Boys of Summer?

I didn't. I've tried to not think about the boys of summer as much as possible well i'm gonna take a wild stab based on the general music tenor of the show that you both are fond of the song the boys of summer i both for both the atari i was just in a you guys i was in a casino just yesterday and i kind of like the boys of summer. And I went, I was like, Jason. You did a mic point? Yeah, I did a mic point. The point that you do when an extremely obvious and omnipresent song comes on.

I think it was. In public. I think it was that it was playing in the bathroom. But then when I came out into the hallway of the conference center, they were playing like Turn Down for What or something. And I was like, well, they got got multiple tracks they got multiple music setups because uh taris of course the only difference is they changed the sticker that's right that's a black flag black flag sticker isn't that interesting what are you talking about there's a line uh i saw like a deadhead sticker

on a cadillac in the boys of summer and then they change in the Atari's version to I saw a black flag sticker on a Cadillac. Yeah. But then it's that's the only lyrical change in those two versions. Is there anywhere in this pirate park I can drown myself? Oh yeah, Buccaneer Bay Boats. I saw it. It's number eight.

I'll let a boat hit me in the head. I don't actually have a photo of that because it's not that interesting. I think they're like little kid paddle boats. And I can't remember if they had that when I was younger. I was always a little bit, I guess, scared of those little boats. But they're very shallow. So let's see.

Let's go to slide three. Okay, wait, no, no, hold on. Hold on a second. Let me wait a reveal. I'm realizing it's a reveal. Oh, okay. I want to look at it. So when I was like nine or ten, let's say, I remember them announcing a big expansion for this place, this Pirate's Cove.

It was a big thing coming next summer or whatever. And I was pretty psyched. And it was a new theme. It was Camel thing coming next summer or whatever. And I was pretty psyched. And it was a new theme. It was Camelot. Oh. And my kid brain was like, when I saw a photo of this, I went, holy crap. This looks amazing. This is like some crazy like Disney style castle.

Now, I haven't thought about this in 30 years or whatever, or 20, however old I am. And I found a picture of what camelot looks like okay all right and here it is okay okay uh remember i built this up very big in my mind place of this is slide three okay oh no it's like a giant like plastic like what you'd have in your backyard just very big yeah it is not bad but i went whoa that's it my memory my memory of it was that was going to be a big castle like the ship was a big ship that's not the case i mean it looks fine it's it's a this is a smallish theme park and you were imagining when like looking at that artwork of galaxy's edge before it opened like like yeah

like the ornate painting that was up outside of the site. Yes. You thought that Camelot would be a 20-acre endeavor. Right. The castle would tower high into the sky. Right. I think it's like, it looks like it's maybe 25 by 25. And there is a big dragon slide, which is awesome.

And there's a little photo of it here and we'll put some more photos online does the um in the map it looks like the dragon had an eye patch does that uh square with your memory no i don't remember the dragon i'll say this about it i believe when camelot was installed it was the last year we went okay that i was too old for it after this. So I don't remember a lot of Camelot. Camelot was not in my prime going days. This was sort of a, I would love to know exactly, but no one was documenting this. No one was documenting my life this hard.

Right, because in the commercial, in the audio of the commercial, it said ages two to nine. Yes. And that is a certain kind of park park yes where it's like oh you're too old for this there's no role like the other place that i went to a lot was santa's village that at least had a roller coaster or two there were at least something like that had a uh like a tilt-a-whirl yeah which is something everyone can enjoy but this is a little kid park so yeah

so i did not get to i don't have many memories of camelot other than just seeing like an ad for camelot so is a parent uh at pirates cove struggling is there is it just like well it's something for them to do i there's i don't think you can get a drink if that's what you're asking um i wasn't but i guess that's a that's a fair question being that like no i'll say that i have not had a drink with my son at Chuck E. Cheese despite having recently taken him to a far away Chuck E. Cheese for him to see a full munch. Right. I did want to introduce him to the band, which I did one by one. That was a short trip, though.

Yeah. If he was having a full birthday there. Yeah, I would maybe partake in beer and wine. Maybe dad has a beer. Yeah, yeah. Maybe he was having a full birthday there. Yeah, I would maybe partake in beer and wine. Maybe dad has a beer. Yeah, yeah. Maybe he has a wine. It was also 10 a.m. And I'm not that bad yet.

Yeah, yeah. Plus, you want to be clear-headed for the show, for the rock and roll show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, uh. Does Chuck E. Cheese do Boys of Summer? Can you do a quick Google while I'm talking about this? Oh, I'd love that. Let me see.

Especially early 90s Chuck. That seems very possible. Yeah, I think so. Where they do the song Sincerely, but then like, gee, Jasper, I love baseball. See, then the baseball players are going away. Didn't you know what that's what the song was about? It's November, way past summer. So you know what that means.

The Boys of summer are gone. It makes me hate that in the song. The boys of summer and slightly after and slightly before. Baseball ends in October. Baseball goes forever. It's not just summer. Boys of summer. Not by a long shot.

I got to look up that too. Stupid handling. Well, fall ball's got a very different feel to Middle of Summer. Fall Ball? Fall Ball. You've never heard of Fall Ball? I've never heard of Fall Ball. The playoffs in the series?

Let's see. So there's a better, let me get a better picture of Pirate Slide 5. This is a better picture of the pirate ship because this is the main attraction here. Okay, yeah. And it's pretty, it's, again, in my mind, it looked like the Black Pearl. This isn't quite that but you can see there's like levels to it there's cannons like you can pull like as a kid you can pretend you're pulling the cat they don't let you climb like the top to get in the observation tower or

anything obviously that would be too dangerous but this felt like stepping this felt like the closest thing to home maybe other than a chucky cheese where you could get in some sort like sort of imagine your place sure you could get in some sort of imagineered place. Sure. You could get in some sort of immersive place. I can't recall anything else like this other than like miniature golf and you walk through a castle but then the rest is you know. Right. It was not as themed the whole way through. I would have loved this for sure.

Yeah. A lot of this sort of stuff near me it was either indoor family fun centers with a small arcade maybe a pizza kitchen and like laser tag. Or it was a pool and one water slide next to I-95. You're like, is this the best place for this? Is this the best place?

Like, I don't think, I have no memory. I have memories of driving by the water slide by I-95. And I know some kids who would like summer birthdays would do birthdays there i have no recollection of ever going there right but this is slip one slip and you're one slip you're in the freeway um this is so much more like lush green you know i was gonna say the grounds or that's the adult in me now like oh it's very well manicured grounds um let's go to pirate slide seven i never saw anything really here or did anything but this is oh this is the pirates wharf fun stage which i

found referred to just as the fun stage before so it seems like they can put shows up it feels like a local like uh concert band could do a performance here as well. This is a confusing scene. I feel like I'm seeing not just Peter Pan and Captain Hook, but also- Maleficent, perhaps. Maleficent. I feel like there's an Aladdin in there. Yeah, that looks- I feel like a Tangled, Rapunzel, and maybe a Snow White on the left.

Yeah. Boy, this is a- It's an all-star. The greatest crossover event ever. Are these teenagers or children or college students? Unclear. Okay. Maybe 11-year-olds.

I mean, they look older, but the backdrop is like a little bit of Pirates, I don't know, like a little town in the Pirates, whatever IP version. So this is Tortuga. There's an academy. There's a door there's an academy there's a door that says academy there's a door that says market and then there's a door two doors that are open uh don't actually have doors they're just holes in the wall called blackbeard's blackbeard's bank so blackbeard has a bank in this stage so you could put on any sort of show about blackbeard and his bank and his various i don don't know, financial holdings.

Yeah, the FDIC refuses to insure my holdings. Be sure to chain up those pens, lest you be losing them. Well, you've got safe deposit boxes, which is just McGruff. Well, you've got safe deposit boxes. What would McGruff say, but just with yarg matey at the beginning? Be careful of counterfeit banks, arr matey.

Ahoy, you land lubbers. Be careful of counterfeit bike helmets. Yarg, counterfeit doubloons. Infest pirate chests wherever. Also, you may be tempted, but don't pee in a Pirate's Jest yard. Yeah.

So, yeah, I guess they probably put on little shows here. And, you know, could we do a show on the Blackbeard's Bank stage? I bet we could. I bet podcasts are right. I'm saying. We'd be doing them a huge favor. I think so. And when I say show, I don't mean the live podcast. I mean a live'd be doing him a huge favor. I think so. And when I say show,

I don't mean the live podcast. I mean a live pirate show that I wrote for where Jason plays Blackbeard. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then Scott, of course, plays Peter Pan and I play a different Peter Pan.

I'd rather play Don Henley. I play pan. I play, I play an older plant pan and Scott plays young pan. Yeah. I need some older Pan, and Scott plays young Pan. Oh, no. Yeah, I need some ID from one of you. The big reveal at the end is that Jason is also Pan. Everyone, Blackbeard is a secret Pan.

He opens a magical chest that turns him into Pan. I was just playing dress-up. I'm going to have the Disney lawyers secretly bust the show. All right, well. They'll all be disguised. You'll think that they're pirate extras, but then rip off their pirate clothing, and they're actually there to sue you for intellectual property. Plain clothes lawyers,

like the officers sniffing drugs at the theme parks. So the one thing, I mean, look, I was trying to find some controversy, not much controversy. I found an ad for this in a Chicago Northwest Suburbs magazine, which I'll show, I'll put pictures on Twitter. We don't need to look at them now. The one thing I realized as I'm looking through this, and I don't remember if I brought this up before,

is that the Elk Grove Village-like park district seems like it's more fun than most park districts for some reason. And it, there are like party rentals, places you can go. And I remember that one time there was a birthday party in Elk Grove village and they had, I swear to God, an animatronic. I cannot find any documentation of this. I cannot find proof that it exists, but I'm almost positive that's where it was. It was inside somewhere right next to Pirate's Cove. remember being like we're right next to pirate's cove at a

birthday now here's the closest thing i could find is that inside the park district there is a birthday rental room and this is slide eight pirate slide eight and this place is called and let me just just make sure I'm getting it right. Jumps and Jiggles. Now, I don't know if Jumps and Jiggles is where I saw this animatronic, but I believe it is. I believe that at a certain point, Jumps and Jiggles had an animatronic. And I cannot prove it yet, but if anyone out there knows anything

about the Elk Grove Village Park District and Jumps and Jiggles and the history of it, let me know. An animatronic of what, you think? I don't remember. I remember a very distinct sitting in a show, like a curtain rising up and there being a robot. Based on the photo, it's kind of a circus situation.

There's some trapeze monkeys. So it could have been a monkey. There's a bearpeze monkeys. So it could have been a monkey. There's a bear on a bike. It could have been any of these things. It's got the high tubes where you're like, I don't know, 12 feet, 15 feet off the ground. And one of them leads to like a little fake helicopter, which is really fun. That looks like new. That looks like maybe that wasn't there when I was younger. I tell you this i love a nice high tube as a kid as a kid holy crap was i excited when you saw like third story tube like this yeah and the higher the better i would always

i feel like stand-ups or someone like people have stories like ew and then you stuck in the tube with the stinky kid or like someone shit or i don't know first off i knew you were gonna ask that but i feel like everyone has horror stories in the tube and i only have fond memories of hi too i don't i kids could have farted on me all day in that tube i love those tubes so much i never noticed any maybe i did notice the smell but your stand-up act is when you get in the tube with the smelly kid and it's great. And it's great. And it's great. Remember?

Look, you got to accept that a high tube is going to be a little musty in one way or another. I don't remember a single moment when I was unhappy to be in a tube. Yeah. You don't see them a lot these days, I don't think. Like Chuck E. Cheese definitely. They got rid of most of their tubes yeah but maybe independent play centers still have their what are we calling them high tubes high tubes especially high tubes ones that seemed like really high up even though I was afraid of

heights my feet were not dangling my legs were not dangling in these scenarios so it just felt like you were going up in a cool little structure especially when you were a little kid looks like it gives a kid a chance to pretend that they're John McClane. Yes. What other scenario would you have where you're having to sneak through events and be stealthy? That's true. Because this comes up that you're not called upon as a kid to save a Christmas party from terrorists very often. Exactly.

So a little. I mean, look, was I allowed to watch Die Hard until I was 17? No, I wasn't allowed. Yeah, I don't think I watched it until I was 25. Yeah, yeah. I'm still catching up on all the R-rated movies I wasn't allowed to watch. But yes, high tubes here.

So I'm putting that out. If there was an animatronic in Elk Grove Village, I want to know about it. Send me letters. Don't email me. Send me a letter explaining this. Also, Jumps and Jiggles, I just want to say, is my favorite Brian Setzer orchestra song. Yeah, that one's really hopping.

Yeah, it really sings. I would say that's a cool one, Daddy-O. I would say. Jumps, jiggles, jumps, jiggles. But I was trying to find controversies. Did something dumb happen here? And there was an issue, I think, where some of the water had too much chlorine and people got it in their eyes and they had to shut down for a little bit um and i think there was some financial issues maybe at a

certain point but it's all it was all owned by the city so i think uh as long as they're charging money and that's interesting that's yeah my my childhood miniature golf course is now owned by the city, which feels weird. You're in an arcade that's owned by the city. You're playing a giant Monopoly game that the city owns. There's something strange about it. I guess nothing wrong with it. Yeah. I don't know.

Is it a socialist's dream to have the state owning the themed entertainment? I don't know. What is DeSantis? DeSantis doesn't want to own Disney, does he? This is pork. He shouldn't, yeah. We have to cut the, why are we paying for the back and forth basketball hoops? Look, there's a lot of things wrong in the country, but if a senator or a congressperson would slip in some state-owned or country-owned theme parks into bills.

I wouldn't be mad. Just a little bit of funding for high tubes. Oh, gosh. Oh, yeah. High tubes everywhere. High tubes at the bank. High tubes at the bank. Viable transportation option, possibly.

Yes. Take a high tube to work. At the bank. I keep saying the bank. At the post office, which is government-controlled. You're thinking of Blackbeard's Bank. I am. I have Blackbeard's Bank on the brain. We'll all're thinking of Blackbeard's Bank. I am. I have Blackbeard's Bank on the brain.

We'll all be thinking of Blackbeard's Bank. There's a California, there's a bill in the California Senate to establish a Blackbeard's Bank. Oh, yeah. Public banking and Blackbeard's Bank. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. We're going to let the pirates take over the banks? We thought the current financial institutions were corrupt.

Uh-huh. Yeah, no. That's going to be a talking point in November. So anyway, this is it. Yeah, this is Pirate's Cove. This is Jumpin' Jiggles. I have a question. How maybe, if we're digging to the core here, how do you think that Pirate's Cove or Jumps and Jiggles affected you in a way that maybe even Disney parks did not?

Is there any way that we should all think about this for all of them? That this specific place made you, made any of us, the strange adults that we are today? That is a good question. Here's what I'll say about Pirates Cove

and I guess then Chuck E. Cheese is that there was something to the fact that going anywhere that was far felt like we were going to the moon felt like we were going somewhere impossible because we didn't travel a lot and we went to disney world but that felt like an ordeal i got sick going on there it felt like we were going we were no or not no well we were what's his name the other guy from the bible going to the desert moses thank you gosh moses the like it felt like an ordeal to go anywhere like a stressful thing so getting to go somewhere themed that felt nearby i think made uh that brought i guess what i'm saying is it felt like you went through such a

crazy ordeal to go to disney world that almost felt like a different universe. So seeing the stuff in your universe locally was, I'm sure, part of making me weird and obsessed with this stuff. Having an outlet for it. Getting to go home. After being on a pirate ship, after seeing Blackbeard's Bank and going home that night,

it brought it closer to the real world for me. Yeah. If that makes sense. What a day. You're lying in your little bed. Yes. bank and going home that night it brought it closer to the real world for me yeah if you're like what a day you're lying in your little bed yes and you're like wow that was really fun right important to note that the bed was little yeah it was a little your little bit your little your little boy well because mike has always been six feet tall so he you know stretched out that's right double bed i was like that rock in that picture when he's like 16 and he looks like he's a 40-year-old man. Yes.

So, yeah, Pirate's Cove. I would love to see Pirate's Cove. I wish there was a Pirate's Cove to take my kid out to. There are multiple Pirate's Coves around, but I think it's generic enough. We could all start our own. That we could each of us have our own. Each of us do our own Pirate's Cove. At least just put the sign that says Blackbeard's Bank on my kid's room.

Yeah. You'd probably think that was cool. Yeah. And then charge him to get in. I've just been to Specsavers and upgraded my lenses to extra thin and light with 50% off. Now, what else can I upgrade? My cat? Wow.

My scooter? Wow. My scooter? Oh, yeah. Get 50% off lens upgrades in the Specsavers Spring Sale. Hey, I can upgrade my kids. You chill, Mom. I'll load the dishwasher. Awesome. Exclusions apply.

See Specsavers.ca for details. Offer ends soon. Uh, Jason, let's delve in. Sure. Great. Specsavers.ca for details. Offer ends soon. Jason, let's delve in. Sure. Great. My park is called Playland, located on the beautiful Ocean City, New Jersey boardwalk.

Would you, Brian, please bring up that aerial shot of this park? So this is just kind of establishing shot of part of the park. As you can see, you got a ferris wheel you have a um uh the type of uh ride that dr doom is oh yeah or yeah um yeah my favorite thing in this picture uh if you look in the lower left hand corner i see it you see a tilt a whirl oh i thought you meant the dairy queen no i yeah that sort of caught my eye too. So Dairy Queen comes into play later, but there is a Tilt-A-Whirl and that was my go-to every time I went to this park. Slightly past that, a little deeper, you see

a roller coaster track and that was called the Flitzer. The Flitzer? The Flitzer flitzer yes with a z uh yeah with the z so um that opened in 1994 and uh closed in 2015 and i know this because one i was very sad when it closed uh because i still stop at this park every summer when i'm back at the jersey shore seeing family uh but i also found out that local roller coasters are pretty well cataloged on Coasterpedia. Really? Yeah, because of another coaster that comes into play. So I went to Playland pretty much from when I was born to present day.

And I should mention a connection to uh mike's park uh brian will you pull up that image that has the uh pirate ship in it oh uh this park was renamed at some point in the uh later 90s to uh playlands cast Look at that. Yeah. It's all around. So it's a pirate ship, and this was very hard to locate. I found it kind of on a half-functional website. These characters that you see in the sign and on the pirate ship

are apparently named Captain Sebastian and his pirate chief. Or his parrot chief. Wow, so this is not Blackbebeard even though he has a black beard no it's captain sebastian captain sebastian captain sebastian we don't know where he banks um anyway he might have his own bank here's a more recent photo of this facade uh brian could you bring up that one uh that is charred i'll say oh no uh yeah and i so i couldn't remember if i told this story on the podcast before uh or if i told it to you guys just when we were sitting around

so you'll forgive me um uh for forgetting but um there was a fire in january 2021 uh and this facade no that's the shooting gallery we'll get to that um uh uh the front of it was pretty badly damaged and so this all was happening like i was watching the news updates. So here's the fire. This was a four alarm fire that happened in January 2021. And this was happening like in the morning as we were about to record the fortune teller episode with Avery Monson. And I'm like wiping tears out of my eyes. That's why you kept audibly vomiting. That's why you kept saying Captain Sebastianastian well because everything uh was burned uh brian if you could bring up that

aftermath picture of like everything kind of charred and burnt oh no yeah oh that's what we were just seeing that's where the where the pyro where sebastian stood that seems targeted doesn't it well uh the rival pirate the the what's the law enforcement division? That's the Bureau of Narcotics and Firearms and stuff. They investigate it because I guess they investigate arsons above a certain level. And they found it was faulty equipment like in the office space, like above or in the back. In this pirate ship? In the no, it the hangar

that whole hangar and so it's old and and crappy and maybe buildings that weren't meant to have a lot of uh electricity and yeah they probably this probably should have been like torn to the ground and right scott that's a great point um uh brian i'm sorry to just throw this at you. If you could bring up the black and white photo. So I borrowed an e-book of one of those images of America with the sepia covers you always see. So this is Playland back when it was apparently called Bingham's Kitty Rides. Bingham? Who's Bingham? I don't know who Bingham was.

This was news to me that it was called Bingham's Kitty Rides. Just a nice guy who wanted a lot of kitties around. The hangar was originally used in the 1939 New York World's Fair and then packed up and put here as the boardwalk was developing. And that's a thing you should know about boardwalks. Fires happen a lot and you think oh a cigarette on the wooden planks usually no it's electrical issues from 80 to 100 year old buildings so you're saying there was no foul play at all you're absolving any sort of well yeah because most of the actual rides were untouched like so what was taken uh by the fire was the arcade and the dairy

queen and my beloved hamburger construction company which occupied one of the right oh did this did we talked about this recently the hamburger construction company yes yeah um what's what's the deal again was there anything important about it or just the fact that that was the name uh yeah i mean the food was always great and the mascot was a little guy climbing a ladder onto a big hamburger so it was like a it was like a one inch man who would complete a hamburger for you uh yeah i see going to like sleep in it oh yeah where's he does sound nice sleeping in a big in between in between two big patties assuming it was cool or room temperature. If it was sizzling hot, I might not want to be in there.

The place was definitely not room temperature, certainly not air conditioned, mostly some fans. Shocking no one, the poor beleaguered man about my parents' age opted to just retire and not open the restaurant because they're still rebuilding. I see. So the arcade isn't back yet the arcade's not back yet no it's just kind of pylons and stuff but they are rebuilding it and they're rebuilding the pirate ship um did anything look wait you said those buildings were gone but like did rides make it there's there are things that didn't oh yeah well uh brian if you could bring up the image of the blurry image of a

shooting gallery with a gorilla in it so this is uh this was a shooting gallery again as far back as i can remember this was there and i believe the uh creatures in it were from an old haunted house attraction that when they closed it they repurposed them for a shooting gallery. And there's not a lot of pictures of the shooting gallery online. I pulled this from a very blurry YouTube video that I did not want to play because it's mostly the skeleton

coming out of the coffin on the right, screaming. Sounds scary. Yeah. So there's a gorilla. Thanks for not showing a clip. There's a Frankenstein. There. So there's a gorilla. Thanks for not showing a clip. There's a Frankenstein. There's a skeleton playing a piano. And you shoot them with like the

shooting gallery kind of guns from Disneyland. Right. And then it would just do something fun I assume. You wouldn't like kill them. Yeah. They would just move or scream. A lot of screaming. A lot of shaking. It would be funny if you hit the ape and it was just like a realistic version of like,

and you kind of grabbed the hole and was just writhing in pain. You shot smart ape. Right. Smart ape speak can somewhat convey feelings. Look what you've done to me, Jason. Why do you use your quarters to cause me pain? I hope it's just like his bow tie spins or something you are same as trump sons who shoot wild game for fun jimmy john's founder and you have lots in common um so uh could we pull up the the image of the facade that looks like it's a slide?

It's kind of curved. So when around the time that this was happening, that the fire was happening and the demolition of the ruins was happening, I was looking for pictures of the facade that were decent. And I found one from the 70s in the Library of Congress website. And I had never seen this facade before. This is what it looked like in the 70s. They're advertising a ride called the King's Tomb. And then there's the Hamburger Construction Company, which they kept this sign for decades. I see what sticks out to me right now is, of course, the Taylor Pork Roll.

Taylor Pork. That's right. You just wanted course, the Taylor pork roll. Taylor pork. That's right. You just wanted to see the words Taylor pork roll on a nice TV. That's what this is all about. Oh, me too. Yeah. Well, there's that. And then you can see the tiny man climbing onto the hamburger.

Oh, yeah. The tiny man. I like that. I like the Dairy Queen. I like the little Dairy Queen booth. I'm a big Dairy Queen fan. Do you know the Dairy Queen is still there, Jason? No, that was in the fire. No, that was in the fire.

No, that was in the fire. That was in the fire, too. So is that not being rebuilt? There's a smaller Dairy Queen further in the park. Because here's, I think I brought this up on the show, but not for a while. I swear it has been a while since I brought this up. But Dairy Queen, they have certain items on the menu that are not, if say you open up a new Dairy Queen, you are not given

access to all the different items you could possibly have at a Dairy Queen. But if you've had a Dairy Queen open for 30 years, you can still have, say, a cherry dipped cone because it's been grandfathered in at your location and they will still send you the ingredients to make these old Dairy Queen treats. That a new franchise would maybe not be allowed. Exactly. So you go to the Dairy Queen in the Burbank Mall, and you can get maybe a chocolate-dipped cone, but you can't get butterscotch and you can't get cherry.

If you go to the Schaumburg Dairy Queen, which I went to my whole life, you can get cherry and butterscotch because it's been open for so long. Clearly, this should have been the park that made you. The Dairy Queen? Yes. Yes. You could get a Nerds Blizzard at the Dairy Queen.

You could get a Cherry Dipped Cone, which I love. I recently got going back a couple years ago. But I wanted to know, this looks like an old Dairy Queen. And if they rebuild the Dairy Queen, will they still be allowed to serve the Cherry Dipped Cone? Oh, how do the grandfathered in limitations work? I would argue that it was an act of God,

the fire, or whatever you want to look. The Dairy Queen didn't do it to themselves. I agree. And why would they? Because they would lose access to all of the grandfathered in recipes. So I would say based on this should be based on location, not physical walls.

Damn it. I will argue this to the to the bastards who run Dairy Queen. I'm in full agreement. I think this is great. I think I will hope I hope the people at Dairy Queen are as reasonable as you are. Yeah. Well, and there is a second Dairy Queen location within the park. So that to me says continuity of service, during the rebuilding it's gonna you can't have different things at the different dairy queens that's bedlam i agree uh so jason when you go back and dairy if dairy queen's back there you got to tell me what kind of dipped cones you can get i'll keep an eye out did you have cherry dipped as a kid well no because we were uh we didn't really go to the derrick we went to the like local uh chain the core soft you were anti-dairy queen

no it we had plenty of dairy queens in our hometown but in jersey on the boardwalk you went to cores because they had the richer frozen custard okay did you ever go to dairy queen on the boardwalk um i must have like occasionally did you ever have a cherry dipped cone at dairy queen no i've never had that dairy queen not that well represented out here. There's more now. I would say they were not around when I was a kid whatsoever. Well, a lot of the Dairy Queens out here flip to foster freezes. That makes me sad.

Those were like franchises that broke off from Dairy Queen. Makes me upset. It makes you sick. Let me, hold on, I'm gonna act again. I'm sad. The sad noises are pretty good. Thank that's pretty accurate either me or us yeah get to that because you know if that's the starting point and we know that spinoff requires the most emotional range as would better call saul if that's where you're starting yeah think

how deep you can dig a hundred percent that's how deep i can dig. You've seen it here. And imagine the type of conversation you have with me on set. So, have we... Cherry dip cones? You ever had one? You ever had one? Did you know that you can get your grandfathered in if you want an old Dairy Queen? How old is the Dairy Queen around where you grew up? Because if it was like 90s, then you probably wouldn't have had

some of the things. But the further back it goes, I'm trying to think like Francis Ford Coppola, what did you have on your Dairy Queen growing up? Hey, look at me. Don't look away. Was there an old Dairy Queen in your town? Make eye contact with me, because I believe you're lying. Yeah. So Francis Ford

Coppola has made a return to television specifically, and he's hired the three of us, and we're talking his ear off about Dairy Queen. We could be in Tetro 2. Lust, caution, the return. Bram Stoker's Dracula 2 starring the three of us.

What? What's so funny about that? I think it works. 80-year-old Francis Ford Coppola decides to make Bram Stoker's Dracula 2. Something about that, that it's not some new, it's a sequel specifically to Bram Stoker's Dracula 2. Something about that, that it's not some new, it's a sequel specifically to Bram Stoker's Dracula that he comes back for. That's right.

It's not a new Dracula. Not a new one, no. It's the same one. Jason plays Peter Pan in that for some reason. I don't know why. We filmed entirely at the Elk Grove Pirates. That's right. It's a low budget.

So what else about Playland? I remember when we went to Playland, I was messaging a little with friend of the show, Sean Rice, who we met and hung out with a little when we were down in Florida a few years ago. Okay. And because he has always like,

you know, messaged like when I mentioned Ocean City on the show, because his family went there growing up too. And I said, do you have any memories of Playland or weird stuff? I'm forgetting about Playland maybe. And he goes, well,

we were a Wonderland family. So we, it was kind of an adventure. It was an excursion if we went to Playland. Wonderland is the competing park at the other end of the Ocean City boardwalk. Rides were a little bigger, catered to the little bit of the older kids. And one reason why we did not go there, every now and then we went there, but their tickets expired at the end of the season.

Playland tickets are good forever. So we probably are still, if we go and do a couple of rides, are probably still using tickets from the early 2000s or the 1990s. So you bought them in bulk at a deal, at a discount. Well, what happens, both parks do the same thing. Off season, the tickets are half price. Right. And Playland also did a thing where on July 4th, all rides were half price.

So if the Tilda World normally costs four tickets, it costs two tickets. So that night we went crazy. So the play was to buy your tickets before the season. But if you bought Wonderland tickets, you had to use them before Labor Day or use them before mid-September. Can you further define going crazy in this scenario? We might do five or six rides in a night

instead of three or four. Holy shit. You psychos we wrote that you wrote it so many times that this happened on the filter world that's right um can i say well first of all two things um um so in an off season they would sell playland tickets for half price but you could use them if you held on to them till the next summer that's what you're saying yes you could use them every summer. So it's as if Disney gave, like Disney did some sort of a three-day deal that they do out here,

but you could hold it forever. So you could stock up. Which my family has done. I 100% believe it. Like 10 or 15 years ago, my dad bought a four-day park hopper, and he's like, yeah, we'll probably back next year or the year after. We'll use the other two days then.

But you can't do that anymore. Not really. I don't think so. Disney stopped letting you do that. So that's out. Yeah. But the Playland hack still exists. The Playland hack still exists.

But I, so I would always do the Tiddler Whirl and the Flitzer and then ride three or four were like wild cards, which one of my probably my most unpleasant ride experience happened there, too. Oh, you know that ride where it looks like the arms of an octopus and you're kind of going up and down, but you're also spinning. Yeah. My dad and I rode one of those one night and it went to the point where you're like wow they're giving us a lot of time on this ride it went past that point to like we're starting to feel queasy we'd like to get off this

ride and it's still going and we're like wave please stop please and it just kept going forever and they finally the teenager finally ended the ride, acted like nothing was wrong, but we were just like dizzy for like a while.

Yeah. And you never like, you didn't question him? You didn't push him up against the rock? What was that? What was that all about, buddy? No, I think we gave him some dirty looks or like, yeah, but it was very strange. Do you think in hindsight hindsight was it five minutes because

like those rides what last two minutes it was probably between five and eight minutes eight minutes is a long time yeah it's been around yeah it was um can i say the tilt-a-whirl if you would ask me before i guess non-disney rides tilt-a-whirl all day long was my favorite ride i loved the tilt-a-whirl i've i remember i haven't pushed it in a while i pushed that we should do ailt-A-Whirl all day long was my favorite ride. I loved the Tilt-A-Whirl. I remember, I haven't pushed it in a while. I pushed that we should do a Tilt-A-Whirl episode. I was so excited. I was so excited. I haven't been on a Tilt-A-Whirl in over a decade also.

Where is the nearest Tilt-A-Whirl from here? From here? That's a good question. Maybe something because I remember this came up I couldn't even really say what a Tilt-A-Whirl was. Or a Gravitron. That's the one where the floor drops out?

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Not really, other than maybe carnivals or something. Is there like an electric- In the LA area. Electric Daisy Carnival we could all go to and get on a Tilt-A-Whirl and only do rides.

And only do rides, no LSD. Do the music that we paid for. There's both a county fair and a state fair going on now. Oh, yeah, that's probably a good place. Okay, so that was one of my discoveries about, so the Flitzer, I was saying, that closed in 2015. And another coaster called the Python also closed in 2015. That was the first upside- coaster i ever rode and i

only rode it once because it was a rough as shit and i hated it uh the python is now located they sold them both the python is now located at a uh park called cj bar Barrymore's Family Entertainment Center in Clinton, Michigan. C.J. Barrymore? Who's that? I don't know. A very vain man, I think. Or a woman. Somebody who really wants their name out there.

I'm looking up C.J. Barrymore. The Flitzer was sold to an amusement company and now travels around to carnivals. So it's still out there. If I can find a carnival with the flitzer i can on the run i can relive my my childhood still called the flitzer still it is still called the flitzer but what's flitzing it's unclear it's kind of futurey it sounds fast um but if i could just briefly talk about what replaced those two yeah uh it's a large coaster called the gale force and uh if I could just briefly talk about what replaced those two. It's a large coaster called the Gale Force. And if we could get that image that says Gale Force on it. Yeah, here we go.

So this is a small, compact coaster. It fits in the space of two smaller family entertainment coasters previously fit in. And this is an sns coaster which is like a major coaster manufacturer like manufacturer stuff for like six flags parks i think uh a coaster some joker the ride like uh or sns coasters so playland announced that this was coming in 2016 and the other rides closed in 2015. It did not make the 2016 opening opening day. In 2017, it was operating sporadically, but everyone said it was very pleasant and very rough.

So they're like, OK, we got some new vehicles for it. That'll make it smoother and then in between the uh during the off season they just decided to retract the whole ride they judged it to be uh not not ideal suitable for a human yes so eventually 2018 comes around it starts operating uh normally and then in 2019 when they were running some tests on it two crash test dumpies uh flew out of it into the nearby hotel into the balcony or the window onto the roof damaging some uh shingles sweet like the stuntronic it's spider-man yeah so another thing to notice about Gale Force, why it might not, anytime I walk by,

it doesn't seem to be running, is it costs $10 to ride this single ride, or worse, 14 tickets. Oh, boy. So you're better off just spending the $10. And this promotional image, Gale Force, not what you want to hear when you're at the beach and uh these storm

clouds look like the sort of storm clouds that roll in before a summer thunderstorm that makes everyone flee from the board the promo image of gale force here is something where it's like this ride would not be operating in these weather conditions yes this would be extremely unsafe this is not fun this is not a fun storm either. This is a realistic storm. Yeah. Also, a bold choice to call something Gale Force that was opening five years after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the shores of New Jersey. Look, if I was going to punch up this art, I'd say, okay, regular day, but then like

a cartoon cloud making like the blow, like he's blowing like a little bit and then he's got a little brain. And his name is Gale Force. And his name is Gale Force. Now we've got original ip on there too not john force gail force yeah i love john force i uh just speaking of names real quick i was just trying to figure out what cj barrymore is yes and all i found but see i just it says who owns cj barrymore and all i see here is a guy named rick iceberg so there is there no C.J. Barrymore? That's what I'm trying.

It's a pseudonym of Rick Iceberg? Rick Iceberg might be C.J. Barrymore. Whoa. Does anyone want to guess what they renamed Python to at C.J. Barrymore's? Python 3. Nope. Iceberg the ride.

It's listed now as just Loop Coaster. Loop Roller Coaster. Boring. That's boring. Not creative. Yeah. Yeah. Stinks. it's listed now as just loop coaster loop roller coaster boring that's not creative yeah yeah thanks uh yeah no made-up words like flitzing that's what i want yeah um well what do you think if you're if you're summing it all up what is what did playland give you that the corporate parks could not well um i think uh due to my parents rational and uh cost-effective method of like all right three three rides tonight please three rides and also we want to go home it's late the past we need to go we can't go to the other one the passes will run out yeah never wonderland uh not a wonderland family you hear me it was that um and then also one summer playland just doubled in size because they took over the empty lot next door next to this historic

hotel the flanders hotel used to have these, I'll just show you guys this picture because I don't want to make our poor engineer bring up any more. But this, used to have three saltwater pools outside. Oh, there it is. Three saltwater pools. Hotel Flanders, there it is, in full bad res. Yes.

That empty lot to the right used to be, is where Playland is now. That looks like the Grand Budapest Hotel or something. It is very much a grand old hotel. And it's got a very detailed history on its website. Most of which is like, and then in this year, the Flanders fell on even harder times. Because, you know, it dates back to 1916. So it's seen some things.

It's seen some wars. But, yeah, this is back in the day where the amusement was you're on a boardwalk by the ocean and look at this public amusement, three saltwater pools. But those closed in the late 70s. That's how they all started. We wouldn't have any of these places if it wasn't just, hey, want to go to a pool? Right. Yeah. And there was a previous Playland on the Ocean City Boardwalk, which I think was just like

indoor roller skating and live music. And that, of course, burned down in a fire in the 30s. All these fires. There's a lot of fires in the history of New Jersey amusements. And New York, too. Some of them were shady. Some of them were shady. Some of them were definitely shady. The Coney Island, there were so many amusements lost to time due to fires.

Can we do the fire final four? Yes. Let's rank all of the- Theme park fires. Yeah, what are the best theme park fires? We should probably, ones with a low or zero body count would be nice. Yeah, those are out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anything that didn't kill anybody will rank. What if it killed people in the 20s? We wouldn't know them. It's not sad anymore. 100 years or over is our statute of limitation. There was a fire at a gift shop called Fisherman's Wharf

when I was very young, like six or seven. And we heard about it on the news. And I was like, is like six or seven. And we heard about it on the news. And I was like, is that the Fisherman's Wharf we go to? Which was just a shop that sold like seashells and like maritime souvenirs and Simpsons toys. Like the first generations of brightly colored Simpsons toys. It was my favorite place on the boardwalk.

And then it just burned down. Oh, it was the one? It was yours? That was the one. Oh, no. Foul play or not unclear okay unclear i'm not sure if we crack like one of these cases open we may be uh in trouble though i mean that one seemed old in 1991 i know but i'm just saying like if we uncover like some sort of mob thing going on that set a fire then like we don't want some we're gonna have to really be careful is what I'm saying yeah yeah some podcasters

are on to us yeah yeah I mean it doesn't help that like in a lot of these short towns three or four families run most things like Gillian's Wonderland is run by the Gillian's family one of the Gillian's was the mayor for a number of years well how it was Rick

Iceberg ever a mayor? Or he was far away. Oh, wait. Here we are making fun of him, and now the Icebergs rule the town. Yeah. We've got to be careful. Yeah, we're going to get some scary packages. Send mail for us to Forever Dog, not to our homes.

Chili packages. That's not fair to Forever Dog. Whatever, I'm not taking the hit. Icy package. Iceberg will put your head off. Can't find me, Iceberg. Ice iceberg iceberg will take your head off and he'll put it in a big cube you don't want that so you're so the big the big takeaway this park taught you thriftiness yeah taught you how to save a couple bucks but also like they they did rotate rides a good amount. So I knew like, OK, there's some stuff that never goes away and some stuff that does change. And then occasionally there's like a whole other section apart because like the park practically doubled over over the course of like one year. I think the Playland people bought.

Oh, wow. There he is. Oh, Rick Iceberg. Oh, my God. We found Rick. This is Rick Iceberg's LinkedIn. This, wow. There he is. Oh, there's Rick Iceberg. Oh, my God. We found Rick. This is Rick Iceberg's LinkedIn. This has been sprung on us. Yeah, Michigan.

He's in Michigan. Oh, my God. Okay. What have we learned from that? President of C.J. Barrymore's Clinton Township. There might be some power there. I don't know. And a president.

We're going to have to dig in here. Rick Iceberg. Do we have a new guy? We'll see. Do we dare join to connect? This might be the, our method of finding a lot of people we want to talk to might be LinkedIn. Yeah.

Way more than it's Twitter. Oh, 100%. Yeah. We should really get on LinkedIn. How much, I am on, I've got a burner on LinkedIn that I used to look up. What's the name? CJ Barrymore? I don't remember what the

actual name is is it a fake name it's a fake name yeah oh wow you know what it is i think i don't know if it comes up right what do you i don't know no i'm not gonna tell you no i'm not gonna tell you because i use it to poke around on on theme park people oh wow okay um. Jay Mysterioso. The guy with the big mustache. Or is he Icon or whatever it is? How much power do the auto workers unions have in Clinton Township, Michigan? Oh, I don't know. We have to find that out before we make one more joke about Rick Iceberg. That's right.

Well, moving on to me. Do you want to close it out? Yes, please. All right. Well, I would like to talk about the Balboa Fun Zone, which is part of the Balboa Peninsula in beautiful Newport Beach, California. And we landed on this as an episode topic. We're going to talk about kind of these core childhood parks. And it happened to line up perfectly with that I was going there in a couple of days that my parents had rented a little house on Balboa Island. It's like a place where you rent little German cottages.

And then there's like the one nice street with the little bit of shopping and the fun desserts. And so we did a little three generations trip where we took the boy down. And it was it was just a it was a wonderful, nice time. But it lined up nicely to where I could look at this this place that I went all the time as a kid with fresh eyes. So it worked out perfect, basically. So Newport Beach, it's like half an hour from Disneyland probably. My dad spent a lot of summers there.

We would go down to visit my grandma who lived there. The area is maybe mainly known pop culturally as the basis for where Arrested Development spends a lot of its time. The Banana Stand is based on this area. Like the main drag of what's confusing. There's Balboa Island, but then you go to the peninsula. But anyway, this frozen banana stands around and there's that deal where two of them claim to be the original and they're only five doors from each other

and they're mad at each other. What's the general feeling on Frozen bananas? Because I wouldn't be fighting to claim them. I don't think they're... I'm not a fan, really. Like them once in a blue moon. You know me and bananas. It's a little bit of a little allergy.

Oh, yeah. What am I saying? Maybe the Frozen, though, somehow... You know what? I'll say this.... somehow knocks out the bad elements. Frozen does probably help knock the bad elements out. If it's got the chocolate outside of it, it's better. Just frozen by itself is not always the best.

If you like take a banana. Sometimes you have frozen bananas if you're making a smoothie or something. If you want to eat it, it's kind of, I don't know. I don't love it. But if you got some chocolate a little bit on the outside, it kind of, it's a good flavor. But I think it depends. Yeah. I think it depends.

They dip them right there. Yeah. That's a pretty, there's these things called Balboa bars that are really fantastic that are kind of like hand dipped Klondike bars. Oh, yeah. And while the chocolate is hardening, then you can dip it in sprinkles and Oreos and stuff. My kid loved it. I loved it. It might be up there.

My dessert zone might be like it's the white. It's like vanilla with chocolate casing. They'll do that at California Adventure. They will make a version of that where they dip and they'll put some sprinkles or nonsense on it. Clarabelle's. Oh, really? That's up at the front of the park. Named after the cow character. I think so. Yeah, you're talking about the one next to Starbucks,

right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one where you can get the Mickey Sunday in his pants. Sometimes. It comes in his little legs. It comes in his pants, yeah. Oh, it comes in his pants. It's not what I... No, no, no, no. Dig in. You yeah it comes in his pants it's not what i make his pants no no no no you said it but that was when they first opened they were like hand-dipped ice cream bars and then pick your

what you wanted to roll it you know chocolate chips sprinkles i think those are still there they're still there yeah okay good this this little main drag whatever you call it and bobo it's like a it's a real like stroll down memory lane for me because there's the two dessert places and then right between them is a very compact little church where we would go on on vacations and uh i remember it really specifically from when the uh the sermon was The only one I remember was when the sermon was all about dogma, when the priest was furious about dogma. Yeah, yeah. There is a film coming out.

I don't remember the details. There is a character who is, like, what's Chris Rock in it? Oh, he was the 13th disciple. That's mainly, I think it was, that's what they're trying to shock you with. They claim that there is a 13th apostle. Apostle. And he is quite profane. It's the only sermon I remember.

Wow, that's so funny. The movie wasn't that popular. No, it's weird that it even got on the radar of we're going to be mad. I remember a sermon about that and a sermon about powder. Really? Mm-hmm. Powder? It's my primary.

I'd kind of just be snoozing in church a little and then a pop culture reference. That's the movie about- I know what it is. Yeah, yeah. Why powder? What was about powder? I don't remember. Yeah.

Is powder anti-religious? Maybe. Does he have powers? Yeah. He has powers. Why? is it like a black magic thing if you get remotely imaginative the catholic league would be after your ass they'd find yeah so furious they imply that a special boy named powder has powers akin to jesus christ were they mad about phenomenon like the john? Like the John Travolta? I don't remember a sermon about Phenomenon, but that might have been an off summer.

I might not have been in Balboa. Michael was the Travolta angel movie. Oh, they loved Michael. No, Michael's a nice one, though. Yeah, they loved Michael. That's an affirming movie. But maybe they didn't like Phenomenon. Am I conflating Phenomenon and Michael?

I believe you are. Everyone does all the time. Essentially, it's like the same vibe and obviously the same primary cast. It's an Armageddon deep impact kind of thing. Except the same star. Except the same person, yeah. And then Powder was different. Though Powder, I do get kind of confused with Phenomenon.

Yes. Because they were both like people that had like a problem that killed them? Maybe. I've only seen Phenomenon. I've not seen Powder. Kind of like Jesus. Kind of like K-Pax. Kind of. I never confused K-Pax with these other ones. He never confused K-Pax. There's only one K-Pax.

So which is the twin? Is it Michael and Phenomenon or Phenomenon and Powder? What's the what? Which Powder? What's the what? Which is the what's the what? Which are the twin move. It's like a two sets. Phenomenon and Powder are similar.

Phenomenon and Powder are, I think, thematically similar. And Michael and Phenomenon are just Travolta. They're just Travolta feel goods where they're playing Motown songs and he's dancing around in a big coat. Elton John. Eric Clapton, I think, if I could change the world, was on the soundtrack to Phenomenon, I believe.

I believe we've talked about Phenomenon before and I believe I explained that my sister and I, when we came home from seeing it, we got a string and we tied it to her Barney doll's hand and we started making barney do phenomenon moves let's make barney play we knew it was funny we weren't like like we love phenomenon we were just like hey mom look what barney's doing and he's like making a spoon move or something barney's phenomenon barney is phenomenal okay just don't play powder there's

no no playing powder in this house no no we did not play powder wow wow uh um well you know if they were opinionated about pop culture back then i think that culture has has remained uh in this area because here's okay when i say that uh i got to experience this area with fresh eyes i kind of wish that i didn't have fresh eyes. I kind of wish that I didn't have fresh eyes because there are some things that I could not unsee. This area, if you don't know, all of Orange County where Disneyland is, it's a very conservative area. So I shouldn't have been surprised, but it's also just I didn't remember it from my childhood and it's probably louder and prouder now.

Things you might see are there was a private dock that had a mast. Then they're flying flags. And one of the flags is a thin blue line flag. And another flag is a don't tread on me flag, which if you're in the area, not just of boat ownership, but of dock ownership. I think that's the that's precisely where you are not being tread on. Yeah, no, no treading is occurring. It's all where you are not being tread on. Yeah. No treading is occurring. It's all, they're not creative signs either. At least give us some fresh signs, I feel like.

Well, which we'll get into. Okay, good. Thank God. Well, less flags and more shirts, which we'll find in the theme park. I'm very excited about some of these finds. Also, one thing that really

caught my eye was a very ornate, like a nice life-size sculpted statue of Ronald Reagan in a private backyard. What? We could see because it's overlooking

the marina or whatever. So just among the plants, well, it's a half Reagan. That's how you save money if you want one in your home, I guess. A bust, technically? But is it a bust? Because a bust is almost like shoulder. It was all the way waist down. So you had like full suit jacket.

You had all of his buttons. And he's waving. But like having, I know they all love Reagan. Yeah. But enough to where you're going to pay for a Reagan statue to where you live. You need to live with a half rate, with a slice down the middle Ronald Reagan. Like a magician cut him in half. Yes.

In a box. Like the cleanest cut. Yeah. A perfect magician's cut. I'm trying to think about this. Okay. Like the cleanest cut, a perfect magician's cut. I'm trying to think about this. Okay, do those type of conservatives love Reagan as much as I love, like, Michelangelo from the Ninja Turtles? I'm trying to think because I have, you know, quarter scale toys of characters I love, you know. So I'm trying to think, would I have a Michelangelo cut off at the waist full?

Like, it sounds like this is one-to-one. Was it bigger than Reagan would be, or is it about a human size? I think the size, yes. So it's like one-to-one, basically. Would I pay for that in my backyard? Oh, yeah. I don't even like Michelangelo. Which turtle would you get?

Michelangelo. Oh, he was your guy. Who was your guy of turtles? I think it was either Leonardo or Donatello. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. So I'm thinking, I guess, in their fantasy world, Reagan is as cool as Michelangelo,

which, by the way, not true. Bullshit. No, obviously not. Not nearly as cool as Michelangelo. So I guess I could see it. I guess I understand it from that perspective. If you think of, yes, to a conservative in the 80s, Reagan is your Michelangelo. Yes, exactly.

He's as cool as a Ninja Turtle. But how deep do they go? Are they watching Bedtime for Bonzo? Like, are they watching? Yeah, what movies of Reagan's do they like? His many shitty movies. That's a question is if you have, because i do sense that people have to pretend to like the apprentice if they love they have to like retroactively like oh yeah that was great you're

fired that's funny we love it yeah uh but do you have to oh yeah whatever boring newt rockne movie that reagan i bet some people do i bet they like and he was the finest actor, the most wonderful films. More film opinions. I stopped and ate at a charming little hot dog restaurant. I had a very good Chicago dog there and not a lot of seating. So there's, I was on like a little, a very narrow bench that was kind of like, there were literally, there were women at a counter inside literally talking over me so i'm like under them and i'm hearing their whole conversation and i could not help but start to write down details because the conversation was these two women in their 50s

60s bemoaning how they just can't talk to their daughters anymore because it always becomes a fight. It always gets political. And even when I lay out very clearly that, look, the voting machines don't give you a receipt anymore. They don't even print it. So how can you know? Yeah, remember the voting machine receipts? Sure. Which proves that there wasn't malfeasance.

If they show you a receipt, they can't have cheated. I have proof that my vote went in because they gave me a little CVS slip. Oh, wow. So yeah, you're talking... People are just like, literally the fight is happening because somebody's like, Mom, the election wasn't stolen

and then it's over. Then the fight starts. You know, we start talking about if the election was stolen or not and then it becomes political. Mom, you used to vote in a thing where you pushed a bunch of levers down and you pushed a big lever to open the curtain to leave the voting booth what receipt was generated did you

have to you had to make the curtain go like you're operating a curtain at a play did you got did you not have the like nothing that crazy no it's in um the move if you you ever seen the movie Pecker? No. Okay. There's a point where- Pecker is not powder. Pecker is not powder. There's a point where Pecker and Christina Ricci, I think, are fooling around in a voting booth. Everyone's fantasy. And it's the ones with all these little levers in it where you click down the candidate you

want, and then the final big red lever registers your vote and opens the voting booth oh it's one swoop yeah it's one yeah that locks it in wow wow that's exciting i think voting numbers would go up if they that would be fun stuff like that back all my schools were like you know polling places and so then if they were still around before after the election they would take us in and they're like here's how you vote oh cool this giant contraption oh big old levers bring those back yeah i don't know yeah i don't care who gets elected in the next presidential election i don't care it doesn't matter yeah no all i care about is big levers coming back yes um anyway then the then the conversation went in the

direction you would think it would and then it got into um uh you know and it's even it's even happening at disney and i perk up oh here we go she says well you know susan you know she's worked there forever and she just quit because they're doing the woke agenda this is the woke agenda they're going back into the old movies and they're putting in LGBT stuff what and that's not right the movies from 50 years ago and that's not right that's changing history yo yeah what does she what is she talking about they're making

they're making the seven dwarfs kiss the dwarfs are all kissing now and I just I don't think that's right regardless of how you feel about it it doesn't add to the plot we don't need to see them just kiss for seven straight minutes. She didn't say the kissing thing, though. Because I was like, for a second,

I go, maybe he's doing a bit, maybe that is what the women were saying. We're out to lunch here, so we can go pretty far. Mickey doesn't even do the magic anymore. The sorcerer comes in, and he just gets on his lap, and they make out.

And I just don't think that's right. These fucking rubes. Who would have thought decades long diets of tab and Lucky Strikes and lead paint chips would just be rotting their brains in their golden years. This is how they're spending their golden years. Not being mad at their daughters and quitting companies because of what they think they're doing that they aren't. You know, I would at least give them credit if they were like, and I wouldn't give them any credit, but it would be something if they were like, America Chavez and Doctor Strange 2 has two moms. And you'd be like, well, that is true. They at least, they're wrong, but they're saying true things.

They don't have any facts. They have no facts. They're out to lunch. No, now it's Bambambi they went back in and gave bambi two moms and it's just confusing one of them dies but the other is still around so it reduces the it lowers the stakes it's just a worse movie yeah uh so funny so susan their friend their friend quit disney because of things that aren't happening. And then, but you know what? It worked out for Susan because have you heard of the Genesis Project?

Oh, no. What's the Genesis Project? Well, it's in Kentucky and it's great. They have a Noah's Ark. They made a Noah's Ark. Let's go. Just the way, yes. They started talking about, if you remember our episode about the Ark Encounter, where they made a life like Noah's Ark with dinosaurs in it because it had to be to the letter of the Bible

and they have a creation museum and it's so we so I'm overhearing conversation about their friend who left Disney to go work for Ken Ham Wow iceberg and ham I'm not saying they're too similar I'm just saying

that's the X versus sever 2022 podcasting 2022 iceberg versus ham somebody went to work for I'm not saying they're too similar. I'm just saying they're fun names. That's the X versus Sever of 2022. Podcasting 2022. Iceberg versus Ham. Somebody went to work for Ham, which, whew. Yeah, yeah. A Disney to Ham defector. I don't know if they happen often.

I was very scared. When she brought up the Genesis Project, I was like, what is this going to be? Oh, yeah. That could have been anything. What have you heard of? Do you know about monkeypox that's going around? Well, the Genesis Project invented that. They released it to kind of just control the population and just kind of like narrow it down to who we. It could also have been just like some shell company that Trump invented or something that people have been pouring money into just to line his pockets for five years and they have no clue.

Well, the Genesis Project, they're doing a lot of good. They're eliminating Professor X and his pesky X-Men. All these memes. They're working on some excellent lasers. Yeah. So anyway, this is just all like... These are the costumed characters

of the place you went. Yes, the ghost town alive. The fun, folks flavor if you read just about people with horrible conspiracy theories and they're acting stupidly this is where you go to experience it live it yeah yeah and risk your own life because i started thinking like oh i'm literally like these women are talking over me so if i maybe this wall will protect me but if they if they feel the way I think they do about the COVID vaccine. Oh, yeah.

You should not put in there. Which, by the way, the last I'll get to the rides, I swear. But the last time I was down there about six months ago with Aaron, we went to just this nice little coffee place. And then there was a big gathering of like 70 somethings. And the conversation went where you thought it would. And then this conversation, this following conversation happened happened this guy like kind of holds court and he's like you know uh let me just ask how many people do you know who died of covet 19 and maybe one or two people raised their hands

that happened people lost some friends and he goes okay okay now how many people do you know who died from the covet vaccine and no one even in this group no one raised their hand and you could tell that this was a big deflation of the moment that he wanted because no hands go up and then he goes okay because I know three you know three people who died of the vaccine

yes yeah and it's only been they've only been around for right it's recent yeah yeah a couple months at that point yeah that was so this conversation happened in like the same half mile as this other one I described. That makes sense. So it's a scene. It's a scene down there.

But all of this, I would not allow it to tarnish the nice childhood memories that I have because I love going here with my dad and my sister. And it was fun to do it with my son. So I'm looking forward to, all right, here we go. We are heading to the fun zone. Once you get past the Reagan statues and the Genesis Project conversations,

then you get a really fun thing because you get on a little ferry. You get a ride before you get there. And there's this odd little, it's these flat platforms that hold three cars and a bunch of pedestrians and you drive your car onto the platform and then it takes you across this little body of water which is just a fun I think these are pretty rare

like little independently indie fairies I like to check out the indie fairy scene that's good yeah it did give me some bad memories because they price the fairy based on your age and they're so adults are one age but kids

5 to 11 or another. And I was down there a lot in the summer where I would, I believe I turned 13. And so when they, so whenever the guy running the, like counting the coins when you paid for the ferry, who was probably himself 16. Sure. Whenever he's, so he's going around

and he looks at my dad, dad okay so one adult and one kid and i it gave me the most anxiety like more i thought about this for more i got more stress about this than anything in my adult life i've been worried about having a kid it like i was just like gripped with anxiety about is that how young i look, please make my dad pay 25 more cents on this ferry. To make you seem cooler, yeah. Yeah, I'm curious to see how you'll handle the, like, well, if you were to have a second child, I definitely have memories of my parents going,

if anyone asks, your brother is three. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. The little vacation lies, because it could save you a lot of money i mean at disney it's the difference between nowadays 150 and zero dollars huge yeah yeah oh it just it just got me into uh minions rise of groove with the free oh yeah i tried to take him to a movie and i was like this might work if the minions are on the screen as soon as we walk in. And instead it was a bunch of little guys with spikes who were mad.

And my son got the most upset and like the quivering lip I've ever seen. And we left instantly. So I ended up being free for everybody. But I'm glad we didn't pay $10 for him to be scared of whatever opens the Minions movie. I'll never find out. Okay, anyway, so once you arrive, it's a nice dramatic entrance with a big Ferris wheel right next to the harbor. And this is just very nice. You know, I think a Ferris wheel next to a body of water like Playland had is just always great.

You get legit views. They call it the world's longest Ferris wheel, I assume, because maybe they let you be on it for longer because there aren't a lot of people down there. Sure, yeah, yeah. There's not a demand. These days, yeah, yeah. Childish Gambino music video, 3005, filmed entirely on this Ferris wheel, as well as Nick Viall's

first one-on-one date in season 21 of The Bachelor. So in the film Dirty John, also the miniseries Dirty John, which is set in this area in general. So Ferris wheel still there, still thriving. But then I keep making my way

through the Balboa fun zone and I think the fun has decreased. There's almost nothing to do anymore, which is a bum. It's like, I think it's been COVID hit and that that's the bummer about it. Uh, and developers have always been after it. Like we had to turn this into condos or something boring. And really hope it doesn't happen but it already like you know there were bumper cars and there aren't bumper cars there was a carousel that is now tables and chairs so where it was you could get a little afternoon of rides out of it there's almost nothing now what you can run into as I

referenced are some fun shirts and I think there are some slides labeled shirt. Let's talk about these really quick. Um, so here's why we're right. So zoom, zoom out of this a little,

I'm going to have to tilt our heads. Uh, here's one that says, um, uh, don't be a salty bitch. And it is the logo. It's the famous girl from the Morton salt logo. So this is fun, right?

It flips the famous Morton Salt girl on her head. It really defies all the feelings, the associations we have about the Morton Salt girl. Then there's one more. This one didn't even strike me as crazy. It's right wingy, but it didn't really hit me as bizarre until Aaron pointed out. So this shirt has a big gun on it. And it says, since we're redefining everything, this is a cordless hole puncher. OK. Now, I got a few notes.

Yeah. What is a cordless hole puncher? Well, yeah, this was Aaron's thought. Yeah, you know how hole punchers are electric? First of all, we're all using them because we all need paper to have holes that we can put it into binders. We're never not punching holes into things

whether it be a single or a three hole the hole punching our whole lives we love it yeah um but the cords we get tangled in the cords so many cords yeah think about all the hole punchers you've ever used in the forest of cords you end up tangled up in. Yeah, of course. But, you know, a gun solves that. A gun, first of all, eliminates the need for a cord when you're punching holes, but it also lets you punch holes into undesirables. It punches fatal holes. Yeah, what are you talking? Cordless.

If you took cordless out, I guess this is a hole puncher is a little flat. This is a hole puncher. I feel like. Cordless just isn't right. They're not electric mechanisms. And I looked up. There are electric hole punchers, but they don't have their battery operated. Typically.

Nowadays, I feel like the last corded hole puncher was decommissioned when Ronald Reagan was in office. We need to get back to the time of American values, of Reagan, and of corded hole punchers. Because it makes my shirts make sense. The point, okay, so the philosophy behind the shirt is idiotic, and the attempt at cleverness is idiotic as well. Yeah, just as a piece of writing, I think of it. Yeah. I'm saying all the,

all the ways this is four quadrant stupidity. Yeah. This hits all the re-defining stupid. You know what I was thinking just now that, you know, gender has to be thought about for two seconds and that's it. Well, if we're going to do that,

then maybe let's change the names of guns let me get to my computer and type oh man you're also like okay all right great so guns we're going to do it we're going to reclassify them as cordless hole punchers you got your wish no i want that i want to call them guns damn it was a joke. Don't do it. But anyway, all this is is is pablum because the thing that I really want to talk about and this has come up on the show before I have talked about my favorite ride that anchored this place and the place has never been the same because it does not it for many years now has not had something called the scary dark ride. I think the I'm putting in there falsely. It's called scary dark ride i think the i'm putting in there falsely it's called scary dark ride right you would walk up to this facade and you would find a big a scary laughing woman i think the character is laughing sal which might have prompted this discussion before um yeah kind of like missing tooth and stringy wig and she looks crazy she's an unbalanced person um and she is wearing like a

sweater like a fuchsia sweater so okay what does that tell me about the scary dark ride that i'm about to go on well it doesn't tell you that it like everything we've talked today i talked about today is pirate oriented yeah it's all py. All of our kid things are pirates. But it's more than pirates though. It's everything. This ride is like, it's pirates mixed with some haunted mansion, mixed with seven dwarfs,

like mine kind of stuff. And isn't there a part in the Snow White ride where there's a bunch of eyes in the dark looking at you? Yeah, is it the old woods scene? I believe so, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's in this too.

And then there's like, you pass by a bunch of explosive barrels like Mr. Toad or like a couple rides have. And I don't know how the pirates, it's old treasure, but current explosives. This is the least discernible ride I have ever seen. It was so strange. It's the smallest space that a ride has ever been fit into. I swear, even a carnival, the traveling dark rides have some space and maybe even a second story. This was so claustrophobic and just jammed in there to where now it is just an office.

It has just become the corporate office for whoever's running the Balboa Funza. And you walk up to it now and it's just a gate and there's a door that says business office on it. And it's heartbreaking to me where something so odd, like such colorful local flavor used to be. And now it's just business office. It's so boring. And it's so it's all so right there in my memory. You walk up this awkward little flight of stairs.

And I remember the it's like little rounded bricks. I know I'm anywhere. It's always so eerie to walk up to this flight of stairs. I miss this ride so much. I actually, I've discovered that there is a video of it because there's a listener, Paul Durso. I think we've all met Paul. I've talked about Scary Dark Ride before. He's like, oh, there is a video of it.

And thank God one person preserved it because otherwise there'd be so many details that would be gone. Like before you you like you walk into like a crate the ride vehicle is a crate and it says i don't know they all might say different things but the one i saw says garlic on it so you climb aboard a garlic crate okay to go to a pirate's mine sure sure it's so convoluted there's's like party city decor, just like stickers and cutouts on the door. Then it's the creakiest, just like the loudest track you've ever heard.

Right. And then just occasional strobe lights and scratchy speakers that all just say, Dead men tell no tales. Dead men tell no tales. And other things say cursed BB, Bloomin' Scallowegs. And some lines are just inaudible. You just cannot tell whatsoever.

This thing is so janky. But of course, it's a jankiness that I love, that I was very fond of. And I remember, because it was this janky even in the early 90s when I would have started to go on it. And I remember thinking I knew enough already about Disneyland that like, you know, like some of these rides are from the 60s, but they still hold up. And I thought the same thing about the scary dark ride. Like presumably this is a 60s relic and it's rusted away and the speakers are bad.

But you know what? That's part of the charm and we keep it alive because that's what you do. Then in my little bit of research for this episode, I learned this ride opened in 1988. The speaker problems were not from age. They was just poor speakers. It was designed that way. Yes. Yeah.

Wow. So I'm going on this, and the ride then was as old as Rise of the Resistance is now. Right. There was no sign of this. It was really like, I mean, it's like, I guess somebody like aging a lot from drugs or smoking or whatever. Fast, fast aging. Yes. Yeah.

A rapid decline. And that's kind of what happened to the scary dark ride. Oh my gosh. Although as Paul noted, somebody in the comments claims that they did the hand painting. And it does have, like, cool blacklight painting. From somebody who claims that, they also did that for the Disneyland, the Fantasyland redos in 1983. Because some of it is legit. Like, actually, the painting is of quality if the speakers are not and the it is legit. Like the actual, the painting is of quality

if the speakers are not and the story is not. But I just, boy, I love this thing so much and I miss it a lot and it deserves better than being an office. A bunch of things all closed in the fun zone in 2005. They tried to sell the whole ride to a museum in temecula and then the deal fell through so as of 2006 it was like we're good we will give you this ride for free oh man and i god i wish i knew that i mean i wasn't i had like taken it yeah i lived

in a garage in 2006 i shared half of a garage with somebody in college so I would have had nowhere to put yeah the entire scary dark ride but oh my god today I would absolutely go through the hassle of the truck rental of moving the I'm sure very heavy garlic crate ride vehicles god if I could have the entire if anyone somehow knows what happened to the scary dark ride huh i would so happily fully recreate this in my garage never have it for parking or recording every yeah yeah um my garage might be bigger than where the ride used to be yeah it would be a downside well you could pay for the public storage facility that would inevitably get broken into like anyone everyone i know is rented public storage it's like hey uh you know that stuff you were storing if it's gone but if you kept it all powered up and then the burglar was encountered a strobe light skeleton saying oh yeah boom and scalawag that might be out of there in two seconds yeah that's its own security system learn the

folly of their ways yeah yeah this might scare them to death i hope it would oh so it sounds like uh it's the most depressing trip you could take now going down to admittedly yes the fun zone was not the high i mean what it became but well if here if i could say what actually, how this place impacted me, it's on two levels. One, I'm like, how did this affect me in a way that pirates didn't? Because you can never have ownership of those.

But you can have ownership over weird bullshit that's only in one place. And when I add up all the things that light me up, talking to people or on the show, it's always, do you know there's like a big sad bear that's outside of the Rocky Mountain Chaga Factory or there's themes in the fries

and this one's like a spaceship or there's a car wash that's like an old riverboat. For sure that all came out of the scary, like I don't want to talk about the Haunted Mansion. Everyone knows the Haunted Mansion. I want to talk about the Pirate's Mine ride in a garlic crate that makes no sense and that's bad and scary.

And where my friend smoked weed one time and I still feel bad about it. We shouldn't have befouled this place. I'm still mad. It's not somebody I see anymore. And I wonder if that's partially why. Maybe he lost me smoking weed on the scary dark ride. You know, I would love, is there any sort of research done on people's brain because also in addition to just what you're describing there is a type of person and i believe all three of us are this type of person that likes having a little thing that not

everybody knows and what is that design what is that called there's something about our brains that like oh by the way did you know and I feel like it's maybe 20% of the population has some version of this. And it's the fandom I can relate to the most. That's sort of how, I mean, the fact that when we started talking

about theme parks the first time that the word Screamscape came up the first time. Yeah. Well, this guy knows his shit. Yes, Screamscape. He's dug deeper.

Spent a good amount of time for screamscape for this episode because oh yeah smaller parks are one of they are pretty good at calling i called it as a joke screamscape a rag many years ago on this podcast that was a joke by the way i just want to apologize to screamscape in case they thought that was serious that was a joke not just because it was a funny like reference to call them a rag but also in that time, we've seen just how bad theme park websites can be. Oh, boy. Yeah, yeah. I might have met some of those ladies might be writing for Inside the Magic.

It was not a real day. LGB content going into. Yeah. I mean, those ladies are doing the same thing. They're living their own Marvel universe in their own MCU with alternate alternate reality the multigrow multiverse they're in right now especially i mean a lot of conservatives but especially q people it's like it is like yeah they get to like live in a vr simulation of life at all times yeah um but if i could if i could also be sincere what i really love about this area sure is it was like the launching point for some very nice bonding and bike rides with my dad.

And something that I hadn't gotten to do since the one-two punch of pandemic and child. And it was so that like, yes, lots of like the places run down and bizarre conversations are overhearing and confusingly written T-shirts. But riding bikes with my dad in that area nothing replaces that. So that's what made me in this zone and it's all priceless and it was so nice to do it again.

Yeah, that's great. I would have, I mean I wish Pirates Cobra here to get to do it again. I mean maybe I'll do it at a certain point if I go back. But it is, it would be fun to go do some of this stuff again to feel the memories is what you're saying. Well, now that we've introduced everybody to these places, then they'll all be cheering us on. That's true, yes. When we end up back there, when you're walking around, when you commandeer Blackbeard's Bank and take it over.

When I put a watch in a safe deposit box at Blackbeard's bank, people will be very excited. Sure. And when Jason, next time Jason saves coupons at Playland. I am either adjacent or in Playland as this episode's coming out. Oh, no kidding. Somebody might look up and see it.

You get to see the magic. It's possible, yeah. I mean, I've gone back. There were two summers I didn't go back. One because of a shitty job I had where they're like, well, we really need people. We can't let people take long vacations this summer. And then 2020, I did have tickets to go to New Jersey.

And it just, yeah, didn't happen. Well, it's going to be a great homecoming. I hope this was a good audio homecoming. And tell us your version of this, the parks that made you, because maybe they're episodes or maybe we just laugh at a picture of something cruddy. But feel free to reply with those. But for now, you survived Podcast the Ride. And yeah, I don't know.

Fun little trip, I feel. Yeah, great. I just realized I'm parked on the street and you can't park after the time that it is. No, it doesn't know at six that you can park whenever. Isn't that right? I think it's no parking after six. Oh, shit.

Well, let's get the fuck out. Hey, you can find us on all the socials at Podcast The Ride, MerchantRT, Public Store, three bonus episodes every month at Podcast The Ride, the second gate, or one more bonus episode On our new tier Club three All of that

At patreon.com Slash podcast the ride Are you actually Leaving too I'll just take a quick look You're nobody There's no way What if our cars

Are towed Scott That makes me wanna I'm gonna take my Sweet time I wanna thank Brian Thank you Brian For being great I have to go

Now you're saying We shouldn't be Thanking Brian Thank you Thank you, Brian, for being great with this. I have to go. Now you're saying we shouldn't be thanking Brian. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Brian. I also have to pee. Thank you, Sean Rice. You're going to end this nice moment with Brian. You're being selfish about your own car.

I'm thankful for Brian, too. Who cares if you're... I thank him. Why didn't you go when I went? Because I'm more professional. Oh, fine. Forever. Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production.

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