Podcast: The Ride - The Simpsons Ride with Henry Gilbert and Bob Mackey

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

Henry Gilbert and Bob Mackey (Talking Simpsons) join us to discuss Universal’s The Simpsons Ride. Featuring funny queue videos, Easter eggs galore, and NO Harry Shearer characters. McDonalds Fry Cart episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus 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 contains inaccurate cartoon drinks, the horrors of front-facing Homer, bodies slamming into hard plastic, and a very rare instance of some men in their thirties talking about what Simpsons jokes they like. All that plus Henry Gilbert and Bob Mackie join us to talk the Simpsons ride on today's podcast, Le Ride. that plus henry gilbert and bob mackie join us to talk the simpsons ride on today's podcast the ride a theme park podcast hosted by three proud martin princes my name is mike carlson joining me as always martin prince number two jason sheridan that's right uh yeah i every now and then i think we're gonna run run out of like accurate semi-roasts of ourselves.

And not the case. Nope. Because it also could be, well, let's bring in Martin Prince number three, Scott Gardner real quick. Because there's other options too with The Simpsons, I think. But Martin Prince to me is the most fun. Yeah. I'm happy to not be a Ralph Wiggum. Yeah, or a comic book guy you could say because sometimes we're like salty about things he's more he's more toxic than us but that's true yeah i'm the original

toxic fan we say our whole world is comic book guys with like a smile we have a smile when we're trashing things and that's not what comic book guy would do. He sort of. We like things sometimes. I'm not sure when the comic book guy, even his appreciation has an air of malice to it. Right. So I think if we really got in depth with this, we could also like combine things like Jason's a Martin Prince and like an Abe Simpson. You could combine two. Oh, yeah.

But that was too long for the intro. So I didn't want to waste more time because, you know, we have a big topic today. Let's bring our guests in. Maybe they have ideas about what we should be as far as, like, Simpson mashups. Or what they themselves are. I'd be curious if they self-profiled. You know them from Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon, those two great podcasts.

It's Henry Gilbert and Bob Mackie. Hey! Happy to be here, everybody. I want to call myself the langdon olger of this podcast very good and and and i henry gilbert i i think you know at first i thought millhouse or martin but i think i'm more of a database that's that's my that's my guy oh nice very good yeah that's uh those are two, I would say, like, obscure, but not real. Like, for like, if you're-

I bet there's still toys of them. Yeah, exactly. But there's toys of everything. I guess that's a good point. There are toys of everything. So, we all have our identities, our Simpson identities. We are talking about the Simpsons variety at Universal Studios today. We have the experts on.

I don't know, I just realized I put a lot of pressure on you by calling you experts i'm sorry uh would you say and what would you say you know what i'll take it i am sure all right great yeah i think writing it twice qualifies you as an expert yeah authorities maybe sure oh i like that yeah that's like very official so we know all the context for the ride which is is the most important part. Right. And you guys have seen every Simpson episode, every piece of Simpson media, would you say? Boy, actually, well, for me, there is like a decade of the show I have not watched, but same here. An entire decade. Wow.

About a third of it. But I mean, we're making our way through the entire run of the show. And currently we're in starting season 13 pretty soon okay gotcha but all pre-9-11 simpsons we know it better than i'd say pretty much anybody anybody with a podcast i'll say that but yeah the uh what's the biggest blank spot like if you defined the uh the edges of what you don't know so much. You know, I think it's all the stuff right before the movie. That is my least watched stuff. And then I came back for the movie. And then every now and then after the movie,

I'd check in and like, oh, I heard this episode's good or that episode's good. And then the last four seasons, I actually have watched kind of regularly. But yeah, so I'd say the 17 through 20, pretty blank for me. For me, I think it's 19'd say the 17 through 20 pretty pretty blank for me for me i think it's 19 through late 20s so i think the late aughts to the late teens and when we started doing this podcast i felt obligated to watch more of the new stuff gotcha so yeah your sweet spot is what we're

like a lot of our sweet spots for the simpson lies i mean we're very similar to you guys in just about every it's why i love podcasts arrive because we are also anxious nerds who were scared of roller coasters and like the theming yeah that's fair um so yeah so you so you've both been on the simpsons ride at this point oh yeah yeah i've i've written it in both coasts uh bob bob just hollywood but gotcha okay um and would you say like a like your theme park people too you like theming and you like uh nonsense like we do so would you say like your first time going on it was it like this is all i would ever imagine from a simpsons thing experience i had some mixed opinions i'm sure we'll get into them but uh i don't know it's uh

up front about a six out of ten in terms of an experience i'd give the ride itself like a b b minus but i've been surrounding springfield area like that i give like an a like i love i love springfield and i like the simpsons ride okay that's interesting well and it's only grown on both coasts so boy i guess when there wasn't that you'd rank it all lower but it like yeah i i love that that springfield keeps. And yeah, I don't know. I feel like it took over some kind of generic areas of Universal and imbued them instead with really specific things that people love and areas full of Easter eggs. And some of the food is all right. Yeah. Am I wrong?

Well, especially compared to in Florida, I believe it was a food court called the International Food and Film Festival. And that was one of the grimmest theme park culinary destinations you could hit. Was it like it was kind of just a giant room, like an indoor food court? That's what I recall, that they made more festive with flags like country flags flags and movie posters and now it's you know the the fast food boulevard kind of food court but yeah i think the the fried chicken and the crusty burger food um cletus's chicken shack chicken and crusty burger is pretty solid pretty reliable yeah i would agree yeah and i like the duff it's it's just meant to be like a budweiser you know yeah that's true yeah there's there's harder duffs i think

there's been there's there's a variety that that i tend to like um and well and then you got those you got the donut neck of the woods, too, right? Yeah, the donut's terrific. Which I haven't actually tried. Yeah, I know you're into it. Yeah. Some big disappointments for me, though, were I really wanted to go to the Frying Dutchman, but it's not in the California location.

So that was a huge disappointment for me. And if you want to start talking about Moe's, I feel like there's so much opportunity there that is missed there are some parts there that are really really cool in the moe's uh restaurant location but uh after visiting the star wars uh cantina bar whatever that's called i feel like it should be that style of experience where you're seated you can get two drinks and then you leave and there are no children and they could add a lot more to the atmosphere uh that's missing the dank is missing number one yes the all-important dank is not there got no dank it's a good point that's pretty true it kind of is because at least in hollywood i

don't know the orlando uh restaurant situation at all uh hollywood yeah they're all just like connected by an open door so there's kind of just like one flow through all of the rooms. So they get a little samey. Now, I like the area upstairs, which has a lot of Easter eggs and display cases and everything. But yeah, I know what you mean where Moe's just is the same as Krusty Burger a little bit. Except that, you know, it's at least is it is themed and you got your and you got your phone. You got the phone that you can pick up and hear. Wait, but it's not Bart prank calls, right?

What am I making this up? There's something weird with the phone. That phone doesn't do nothing. I picked up that phone. It doesn't say anything like there's an outdoor outside of the quickie mart. There's a pay phone that that has like jokes that come out of it. But I, I swear I've never heard anything out of it, but it does have the love tester. Like the love tester is fun. That's a pay phone that that has like jokes that come out of it but i i swear i've never heard anything out of phone but it does have the love tester like the love tester's fun that's a good reference that's good yeah and you can't the quickie mart phone i don't know but i don't

know what's on the quickie mart phone oh if you pick up if the phone rings outside the quickie mart this might just be in orlando but uh by the millhouse bench there's a pay phone and if it rings and you pick it up like say professor frank, Professor Frank will say, hey, there's an escaped monkey. Can you guys help us find it? Or something like that. Like, you'll get a phone call from a local Springfieldian that's, like, original dialogue recorded for the place, which I always thought was cool. That's really cool. And particularly because, like, the, you you know these actors uh they don't come

cheap and they're like and in his area's case he's such a big name so it's kind of crazy that he recorded jokes that are only if you know to pick up a phone this is one part of the theme park i am pretty impressed by that yeah yeah i guess we i don't know if we've mentioned that yet if you haven't been on this ride uh most of the Simpsons voice cast does their characters with the glaring exception of Harry Shearer. Yes. None of his characters appear. According to a, of all things, TMZ article,

it was due to scheduling conflicts and availability conflicts. Lies. I don't believe that for a second. Yeah, I don't. Maybe he wanted them to call it lay ride and they're like no harry no no no i was i was coming in with the little a little less show uh edge as well i that's i think i find it so funny and if you don't know all this like harry shearer's level of removal from The Simpsons is a lot higher than the rest of the cast. I think probably the most visible way of conveying that

is his lack of participation in the ride. But I really like that he, you know, because he was famously difficult on Saturday Night Live and probably in other capacities, and I like that he has one thing that's his pure thing. This is Harry. There's only, there's one piece of true Harry art. And has anyone heard it?

Has anyone ever made that mistake? Maybe a clip? If I like Harry, I like The Simpsons, I'm sure I would like Les Show. And then, oh boy, oh boy. Bob, Henry, are you thinking about a les show podcast perhaps would you go through a podcast perhaps i had the same experience and actually i didn't encounter le show until uh the george w bush administration and somebody posted a clip of a music video he made uh called waterboarding usa so scott there's a beach boys parody you can listen

to and it's playing all the beach boys uh in a song about waterboarding and it was uh it was sort of like a wait wait don't tell me style of humor it was you know edgy subject material but very gentle right do you know that he i guess not a lot has changed since that particular administration because he put out an entire album of Trump songs. And it's him as Trump. But his Trump is like, I'm trying to think. Oh, he has a song that's just like, son-in-law. I love my son-in-law. I didn't know Trump was so nasal.

I didn't know Trump sounded so much like Ned Flanders. Was that a Duncan Shane parody? That's kind of what I sang, isn't it? Son-in-law. I think there are no parodies. I think it's all original melodies so that he doesn't have to pay money to the original artist. Not only that, but all of his thing now also is mocap. So he does like Polar Express style.

He is playing Trump. So there's some studio somewhere where he's covered in dots and ping pong balls and physicalizing Trump to make these like very upsetting looking music videos that have a thousand views where do those go just on youtube i think maybe my damn channel i recall him having a heavy partnership with my damn channel if anyone recalls those three words just like a manchurian candidate activation phrase i forgot about my damn channel jason's stomping out of the room i don't know what he's gonna do something bad his eyes went red what's in that guitar case well not to the 2020 election last year uh sorry in 2020 uh matt geraning started a youtube channel

he posted one video and it was a short he commissioned about trump and dan castellaneta is singing a song as trump and i love dan but his trump is not that great and to date that's the only thing that's ever been posted on mac araning's youtube channel well you know to be fair we all had a lot of grand plans at the start of the pandemic you know i went and got a video capture card i'm like maybe i'm gonna twitch stream now and i did like three and i was like this is a lot of work i yeah i think with sheer it's just he's such like a jerk like even the other spinal even the other spinal tap guys in interviews are just like yeah he's a jerk like i i half the time we're not speaking to each other the other half

time we make stuff like even he i remember his wtf uh sheer and he admits like yeah I can be a tough guy to work with but then he would say stuff of like when I worked on SNL I told Lauren to his face he was a fraud and I was like you know that's cool I'm cool with that but he famously has never been that happy with the Simpsons if you listen to the commentaries he

has been on the record hating episodes everyone loves even back to the early 90s like he was a vocal detractor of Homer at the Bat and Cape Fear as well. Really? He's been in the press publicly saying, oh yeah, the show has really lost it, multiple times throughout history.

That's true? Yeah. In one of our research things for the Lady Bouvier's Lover, which is like, that's such a classic. That's the one with McGaggy's birthday, all that. Like there was a, I think, let's say LA Times, but that type of profile of like the writer's room, here's how they write the episode.

And then here's how they record it. And they're talking to Shearer and he's like, yeah, season four kind of sucked. This seems a little better, I guess. And he's just like that was that was in the salad days of simpsons he's just shitting all over it in the press on the record wow i remember getting the i'm sorry i remember getting the audio commentary when the dvds came out i started looking forward to those audio commentaries so much they're so fantastic

as i'm sure you guys know and uh one of my favorite episodes has always been two bad neighbors the george not w bush the george bush episode where he moves in across the street and like i can't wait to hear that one just always blew up my brain as a kid i can't wait to hear the making of it and i was so shocked when everybody who worked on it said well a certain actor had a certain problem with what he uh thought was what he called the worst satire he's ever seen in his life and they're kind of like it but it's not satire it's like a funny thing like if george bush was a crotchety guy and he's uh mr wilson on dennis the menace uh i could not believe that that didn't pass muster with them a classic

episode i i have a feeling it had to be sheer who said that there's no way like his area was just yeah and he had to do the voice which he did very well boy are the voices great well i mean not some of these other ones we're talking about but yeah classic voices yeah yeah he just wanted a return to frosty chocolate milkshakes he's like we gotta get back to the core of the show it's not just his voice that's missing uh i think someone had to point this out to henry and myself his characters aren't there as well except for scratchy there's no you know skinner or ned or burns and uh it was very conspicuous because there is a movie poster in the springfield area of

universal that should be rainier wolf castle but it's a rainier wolf castle like figure so i don't i don't know if they were doing that to spite him or if he had control over his characters or what that's yeah that's interesting i feel like he couldn't have control it feels like spite right yeah it's also the the ride implies that there is a second nuclear reactor in Springfield at the theme park in addition to the one that Homer works at. Yeah, I feel. Yeah. Did they like get a contract from the power plant for the power plant to install the equipment?

Like somehow everything is powered by just a glowing green room at the theme park i i assume that crusty got you know just he worked with burns off the record on it to get the the power for it that's that's i at least i mean yeah i wish i feel like burn should be the villain of this but it's still i think it's a great ride for story purposes a great ride but it's like burns is the ultimate villain of simpsons to me and he should be the ride villain more than even sideshow bob i think but yeah instead of just quickly passing by in a balloon with smithers who is also ari sheer who does also also does not talk that that is their it is the briefest blurriest appearance of two major characters in the show and just like no ned flanders presence at all in the entire area like that's just a

bummer you know but it's like i'm usually the first couple times i went to there i was so just like giddy of like look it's that and look it's that and i'm just telling i'm explaining every reference to either my mother or my husband uh going there but but then once i notice no harry shearer characters there that's the spell is over i'm like oh yeah there ned should be there smithers should be there or whoever like they're lucky that he doesn't or kent brockman no kent brockman i want a picture with lenny yeah oh man yeah that's interesting yeah it's it's something i don't even think i noticed immediately because obviously yeah like sideshow bob has been like portrayed as a super villain many times so i think it like take it took me like a couple trips to go wait a minute

something's missing here but you know what i will say something i recall was that um the the movie uh had no sideshow bob element and not, and not that there needed to be, but there's something cinematic about him and his appearances. Like they were always nodding to films like Cape Fear, and he was like a once a season character. So Sideshow Bob, they've managed to make feel a little special. It almost felt like he could have been in the movie somewhere. And then I remember being excited hearing that he was a big part of the ride and that the the makers of the show said they kind of saved him for the ride i

think that is like a big piece that i'm glad they they held on to and uh you know that may make does make him more special in there yeah i mean i was just gonna say that i don't want to get too much simpson i don't want to critique but like i also like albert brooks is in the movie but like why wasn't that character hank scorpio we have literally asked that to mike scully and he's like he can't remember and yeah we have our theories we i'm i'm pretty sure one producer on the show or the movie in particular did not want to have too dense a reference because they wanted it to not be a too insular movie and they wanted it to be more for like they for podcasts or for podcasts or i type thing they cut an autopia joke from the movie because they're like no who knows what autopia is that's too deep a reference to to it so they cut it so really i have a feeling too they're like well tech i think in some drafts

it was hank scorpio and then they decided like nah this is too inside they changed that villain so much he had a different toy made of him right yeah the burger king toys were a different toy for yeah man that's it makes sense that that would have been a thought at some point but yeah there's a similar thing too where uh again a rain your wolf castle thing where arnold schwarzenegger is in the movie and not rain your wolf castle which is very odd because like how do you have both how does the simpsons universe include how is there a fully functioning major movie star rain your wolf castle who is in the same world as our arnold schwarzenegger i think i think it was cowardice on their part they were scared people wouldn't

know who mcbain was and they're like no just make it make it arnold no let's not have the the parody thing just make it arnold obvious for the the big stupid dummies who go to see this movie you know i feel like all that is a bit of an overthink. Like, so being that it does feel like every human being has come across the Simpsons at some point. Maybe they were forgetting that. Maybe someone at the studio was not sure enough of that. But I feel like these characters are, you know, in the fabric of the culture at this point. And it's not just the family. It's like the entire you know 12 to 20

biggest supporting characters too they like want to change wig them because they're like folks don't know uh edward g robinson and they're gonna be so lost like we need to change you we've talked about the movie a lot on other people's podcasts but it's so strange that for a show that famously receives no notes because that was the edict from the beginning the movie was focus group to death they really relied on focus groups and screenings to guide the writing to change the characters to get rid of jokes that didn't work uh it's very strange for them to have no confidence when they famously marched forth without any guidance from the network yeah on the commentary they they because they recorded the commentary like right as the film was debuting and on the dvd commentary they said like well arizona like this but seattle didn't like that and if seattle didn't laugh really hard at this joke we wouldn't we were

about to cut it i was like i it just was a shocking lack of confidence from like the most successful sitcom ever like from and from all these people i just yeah it's it's i wish i feel like now after this how much everybody watches it on disney plus and it's been memed so much and the internet shows the love of all the esoteric stuff i'd like to hope that a second simpsons movie they'd have at least have a little more confidence for like deeper references right yeah um in in terms of uh life imitating art though i saw this going around twitter uh because of a news story um there's that bit uh in the movie where uh it's tom tom hanks walks on screen uh and he says the the federal government the u.s government has lost its credibility so it's borrowing some

of mine and the biden administration is putting out a commercial about its first year accomplishments narrated by tom hanks so in the realm of simpsons did it like that never that never stops being true i guess no they they did it again yeah by by parent by making up what would be it's very silly thing to happen that every just living in life catches up to it over and over and over again yeah yeah do we end up did people end up enjoying the movie more than not like i i at least recall my first experience speak maybe there was just something about big screen and they look elevated and there's a, there's a like kind of thicker score to it.

Like more orchestra going on. I like, I can't say that I like rewatched the movie a ton of times, but I, I at least recall it being a successful first view to me. It was fun. It was fun for like, it was fun to feel like simpsons mania again the

7-elevens theme yeah there was a feeling in the air of like it's simpsons like remember when we all like that i guess the early 90s is when it was like truly like simpsons mania so it did it was a real fun it was like my first or second year in la there was a real fun feeling around of like oh we love the simpsons again um and yeah and and i also like look scott if you're getting at the green day did the simpsons theme and you were excited by that i felt that too that was exciting as well i think i must have bled now i'm gonna manchurian candidate well green day dies went white green day dies at the start of the movie so you know you can have your cake you need it oh that's a good wait yeah that's right yeah why did i love

the movie so much this is one of scott's picks one of the 10 greatest films ever made it was like this magical time 0708 of like this new simpsons mania because like it was it was the movie and the video game and then this ride was coming too and it was like all at once like uh on one of our podcasts we had on a pal of your guys's i i played tim kalpakis who talked about working at gracie then and how it was just like the simpsons factory was like every blasting on every cylinder. They're like, we are making eight things at once that are all giant projects. It wasn't just one video game. It was a game on every

available platform. So I think there were technically four, three or four different games released, but with all writing by the staff, I mean, they were spread so thin in that time period. Yeah, that was it feels like that. it feels like now because like nothing ever stops like this like maybe we will get like in like 10 more years then there'll be

another like simpsons mania time like there'll be a disney simpsons ride there'll be a new movie like it'll just comes in it'll come in like 20 year waves maybe i mean i think i think disney's got some real plans for the simpsons and but it's very specific like i think they're waiting for a lot of contracts to end and then they really assault us with the simpsons like this is just they're pulling back and then boom we're gonna get hit with it yeah i think i can see a big new rollout when the new voice cast is announced yeah the next generation the next group of people who will do it for 30 years there's a bit wait scott can i tell the bit that you had an idea for seven years ago is that yeah yeah i don't even remember exactly but yeah scott you had a bit idea to just

like fake announce like a reboot of the simpsons was happening with a new cast but concurrently with the old simpsons is not going away it's just the simpsons are back coming 2023 the simpsons right and i don't think they look different i don't think they even say maybe it's new people doing it but they sound kind of sound alike so be the first show that could be rebooted without doing anything to affect the original so yeah i think that might be in disney's plans at a certain point um but we'll you know we'll talk about future simpsons after we we talk more about the ride and the land i think because yeah the as you're saying contracts are running out disney owns them

and supposedly there's expansions coming eventually for at least disneyland i don't know disney world a little slower uh if i can point something out so the simpsons ride opened in 2008 pretty close to get like right around the same weeks uh in in may of 2008 um at this point the simpsons ride is almost uh has been open almost as long as the back to the future ride was open when they closed it wow we're coming up on like oh they will have been open the same amount of time that's madness yeah right feel right and cheese again well the pandemic like makes timelines feel so bizarre it also makes it so i haven't i haven't been on this ride and forever kind of for that reason i

mean i've been to universal but like this is it's a bit claustrophobic in there it's not one of my my top choices to go on currently yeah um but yeah so it was a handoff from back to the future that's probably a thing to talk about um and how i remember the relief i remember hearing that back to the future was closing and being bummed out about that. And there being two options when rumors on the table, one being Simpsons and one being Fast and the Furious. And me thinking, please let it be Simpsons. Because I don't and I don't know what like, you know, I don't doubt that there's a good Fast and the Furious ride somewhere out there. But they haven't

built it yet so and i really don't think they would have done it in 2008 as a screen ride then um so i i was so relieved that if they were going to take away a ride based on one of my favorite things that they would replace it with a ride based on one of my other favorite things what are the what are the odds of that? Yeah, that did help Back to the Future going away. It eased the pain. It made it better, yeah. How many times have we heard something's going away

and being replaced by something that doesn't sound so exciting? Yeah. Or by nothing at all. You've got to remember, in 2008, Fast and the Furious was in a very transitional time period. Now it's like the second biggest thing in the world now it is the simpsons yeah i think i think oddly like now they could like uh if maybe a epic universe or something like if they could build a ride that is

cars yeah not whatever this dumb party bus diesel helicopter thing tiny vin on giant helicopter yeah because the fast and furious now they've done heist they've been spies they've been the avengers with cars they've worked for shield basically like they can just do anything like hey john cena's here now hell amir is here now whatever you want they're here the flying car at the end of the last movie in space like that would work perfectly in the mechanics of the back to the future ride if we're just if it's just another reskin like that would work great right and so yeah maybe that's what the when the contract runs out maybe it is the flying fast and furious car i'm sorry i don't keep up with there's a flying car in space

in these movies i didn't see this yep yeah they go into space in the last one which honestly it felt like they were pressured like it was a meme that's like they're gonna go into space someday and so in the end of this one it feels like they had to go like fine we'll launch a car into space but we're not happy about it it's a joke it's not the actual like end of the movie or whatever yeah okay i mean in the previous one like cars had raced a submarine in the arctic i think uh if i'm recalling correctly i believe also recognized as one of the weaker of the the installments but going back to uh back to the future i think it's interesting that in terms of ip back to the future and the simpsons are polar opposites where back to

the future is not being rebooted. Zemeckis and Gale said it ends here. There's going to be a cartoon series and a ride, and that's it. And then, like, 15 years later, there's a video game. But The Simpsons, even though voice actors are dying, it will not end. Like, it will be continuing past our lifetimes. These characters will persist. But in terms of Back to the Future maybe when uh zemeckis and

gail pass away there will be a new movie in the 2030s or whatever but they were able to keep a lid on it right i have a theory which is when zemeckis passes away gail i don't know i'm looking at you gail he's the one gail would dive in on whatever gail's gail's around he's down there's already to me they have that musical that's already that's right the musical yeah yeah there's issues and issues of a comic book series some of which written by bob gail and then that telltale game the the story game yeah i i i it made me so sad at first that the simpsons had to kill back to the future like that's how it felt to me at first is because i so i grew up in florida and uh i i was a kid who was not that excited to go to disney world i really wanted to ride the movies though and i think it's because i watched nickelodeon all of the time and it advertised it so well to me and when i could finally convince

my parents to take me in like 93 or 4 for uh universal like back to the future was my favorite ride and i just loved it so so much and to know that it was going away and replaced by the simpsons and then like that was why i was so disappointed when it first showed up and why i didn't want to ride it until like a few years after it debuted because i just thought like oh they painted over the institute of future technology and they put a bunch of carnival games out front that does not say simpsons to me so much so then once they built up the springfield around it that's when i was like okay this was worth killing back to the future for yeah it's oh interesting because then you get your locate you get your

crusty burger and your moe's and your quickie mart now like springfield is in a theme park as opposed to what is clearly like a world's fair expo kind of building with glass bricks and stuff they put a plastic crusty in front of it and it didn't feel like fully formed yeah i mean that felt yeah obviously made it feel like a full land not not as big as some like adventure land or frontier land or something in disney but like a land where you were actually feeling more immersed um but i also say like the ride itself they they definitely want the extra mile to even make that feel like a new fresh part of the universe and they and they went of course in the pre-show they hand off there's this narrative reason for why the back to the future right has changed because they have christopher lloyd be doc brown and basically side what is he signs the deed over for the institute of future

technology and well he's about to he's like oh right yes yes forcibly i uh uh frank sees what happens professor frank is going to visit his friend doc brown what have they done why is this crusty land now he gets in a delorean to stop it from happening and ends up at the exact moment that doc brown's signing something that will protect the institute uh the lawyer uh who is oddly named mr friedman i don't know the significance of that thank you mr friedman and he gets hit by the delorean that appears out of thin air uh thus damning the institute to turn into crusty land um but crusty shows up and doc is immediately um kind of a supplicant to like immediately kissing up to him and calling him his boss so Doc accepts it really quickly

yeah it's I think one of the strengths of this ride and it is a ride that stands alone and functions like well as a ride but also commenting on a lot of theme park tropes and like features and stuff

in a way that's more cutting than when like disney kind of pokes fun at itself you know yeah for sure i mean that yeah they go they and when i'm someone's about to say something really dumb they go hard making fun of disney yeah that's not really that was i was about to say something really stupid sounding but no they they go harder i suppose if you're if everything's relative yeah and i and you have to think that has to do with in general that uh the universal team seems to have figured out the ride mechanics and the fun um you know like trickery of it. Like clearly they brought to the table, well, a ride can do this and this and this, but the writers ultimately were responsible for it,

including Matt Warburton, who we got to talk to. He told us great stories. Yeah, that was great. An episode from about a year ago. Yeah, yeah. That was nice because I think we were pretty sure he was heavily involved in it. And then while we're talking to him,

oh, clearly he like maybe like uncredited a little bit super um oversaw it and seemingly the the premise came from him is what he was implying like the at least the notion that you are on a ride that is that has been hijacked and is falling apart while you're writing it so you got to give him a lot of credit for for that because that's a lot of fun yeah it really does have like the simpsons touch of the simpsons satirizes blank kind of thing and this and even though the show has already by the time the ride happened they've done so many great jokes about like specifically disneyland just mocking disneyland even with all that they still like they can make fun of the they make fun of the Kitty Ride and they make it the Happy Little Elves, which I love that it was like, they

could have used any, like, dumb Kitty Ride, but they used, like, a season one thing of the Happy Little Elves and brought them back. And then they get to make fun of, like, Pirates of the Caribbean, too. Like, it's all, and I think it also helps that, like, they're in Universal, so I would think Universal bigwigs are like, oh, you want to make fun of Disney? Yeah. Let's go. We're going right at it.

Let's go hard. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Universal kind of like very early on was like, well, we're the old for the older audience that were a little bodier. A great line.

They definitely said the word body for sure. For sure. Many, many times because people do say body everyone says everyone yeah that word it's a common word uh uh but i i mean there there are some very like good jokes about part like um at the very like start of the ride itself like lisa says i'm scared and and homer says sweetie they won't kill you in an amusement park as long as you have a dime left in your pocket like that's pretty good like pretty dark pretty dark and they're right also like anyone every now and then someone asks like will

i be like if i go to disney alone will i get on a list or will i be tracked and i'm like no as long as you have it that is the answer as long as you have a dime in your pocket you're fine yeah well you're just jason you're just saying that to yourself to relieve the feeling of being alone in the park oh i don't care no i have never cared uh i'm a wild man there's there's so many great jokes in it about like yeah i mean jokes about day old churros they have squeaky voice teen does a joke about not being allowed to have facial hair is like an old disneyland like employee rule like there's there's some oh yeah that's pretty deep yeah it's fun it's fun to be walking through a satire of a bad place but they still have to you know

get you to have fun and spend money so you can eat a crusty burger but based on the show crusty burger is disgusting crusty won't even eat any of his own food you don't want chicken that's handled by cletus but you're going to spend 14 on chicken fingers there yes oh and moe's is disgusting yeah it seems like real bad news so it's funny that now they just have people earnestly lining up for modes and and while you're sitting there eating the Moe's food, you're surrounded by TV showing you clips about like gross food jokes they did on the show. Yes, that's I mean, the line, the queue and everything like the clips and then the new clips really like I think the first time I went on it, I would have been happy just going through the line and watching the highlight reel. We're just like, hey, that's a pleasure this one's good like this is this is what i was like in the line for the first couple years i was like oh yeah remember

this one this is funny isn't it it was pretty frankie like you couldn't just dial them up whenever you wanted on your phone right yes um now i know scott is a line hater but i love that the hang on that's not exactly right there's some nuance to that but but but it's one of my favorite line experiences being in that line because you know it's it's so simple that it's just like yeah look at every reference all over here and and just watch clips of simpsons with other people but i do feel a kind of connection of if i see the other people there's the people in the line who are just like just still looking at their phones but if i see another person looking up who cannot resist looking at the screen i'm like yeah that's you're

my friend we're gonna laugh at this captain mcallister joke together i have had a similar feeling of like a lot of these people aren't even watching the screen what's wrong with them this is itching and scratchy land i mean you gotta love that about it that it's especially and for us for all of us i think that they have curated not just a bunch of great simpsons clips but simpsons material about theme parks which they like you know so much of not just the great itchy and scratchy land episode which i think they show most of but there's duff gardens and mount splashmore like in those early years there was so much theme park and theme park adjacent stuff so seeing it all collected and mixed with new stuff it's really

funny it's just such a strong block of material yeah um i was one of the things i think uh imaginators have talked about a lot i'm sure we've talked yeah we've talked about it a lot is like you know there's budget concerns for things people in the blue sky phases when everybody has these grand plans for things and often i think tony baxter was saying like the audience never knows like what we wanted to do they only see what we have like what they're actually experiencing i would i feel like the simpsons might be the only thing or the only ride experience that you can see because they have it on a map what they would do with the money like they've crammed actually more ideas

and shown you like hey if we had the money we would have tried to make this a whole park like you don't see that in star wars there's not like maps of the banta ride that we didn't get like you don't like i don't i can't think of another example of like oh man can you imagine if they had like the room to do this crusty land map like i like that even helps i think and i think probably you don't want people like disappointed but that does actually help my experience to make me feel like oh man crusty land that would be cool i guess i'm in crusty land this is a bigger universe I'm in. And then you get to explore the whole giant ambitious idea in the ride

itself. No, I, I, I've had the thought in the line. They have one of the, one of the new jokes that they animated for it is it's Cletus and all of his kids.

And he's giving you tips on how to sneak food into the park and eat the, eat it there. I was like, I no way way even if they're like most risque would disney allow a joke about like hey let's have a tell people how to steal sneak food in here and not pay for food you know yeah um i think the disney policy they still yeah i don't i feel like that's a let correct me if i'm wrong someone i feel like you can bring food in but it's not heavily ever it's not recommended yeah i think if you're bringing coolers worth of food there's

that picnic area outside the entrance of the park where they'd really prefer you but if you can fit stuff in a backpack but to you but but yeah yeah as long as you're not bringing in a knife to spread the cheese with okay to henry's point though it's not like there's a Disneyland commercial and Mickey at the end is like, make sure to bring a sandwich so you can save some money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that's never even, they can't even suggest that. It's just like if you read the fine print, it's like, oh, we could actually bring a meal in, huh? Okay.

No, they're certainly not thinking about that. I mean, I just saw a news story that, like like Iger and JPEG salaries almost doubled last year as like at the start of this year, like all food went up 50 cents to a dollar in Florida. And it's like, oh, man, you guys aren't even trying to hide this shit anymore. Like mask off down in Disneyland or Disney World. Well, that's it's always literally mask off. You do not wear a mask at disney world that's the world uh i think that with with stuff like this with kind of undercutting what theme parks are in general and these specific digs it a lot i mean largely disney but there's little universal digs to self digs i think that this ride

doesn't come out the same way under disney and it kind of scares me to think that this could be i mean if this goes whatever we've all had a chance to do it i like it but i've done it um but were there to be simpsons stuff in the disney parks i don't know i think they're not quite because you can already like let's be honest here these disney plus shorts are oh no yeah i mean right like i'm a little scared about this combo in general i think a disney uh simpsons ride in a disney park would be the simpsons advertising disney properties which is basically why they bought these characters. I think they're just promotional tools for new programs and movies.

The teeth are a little, you know, the teeth get removed a bit more and Homer's like, ha ha. I mean, they'll make jokes about, Hey, we have to suck up to Mickey mouse,

but actually we're literally sucking up to Mickey mouse right now. As you're watching it. What if Hans mole man was one of the seven dwarves? Yeah. Yeah. Easier stuff. Like, I mean, yeah yeah we all saw plusiversary we know we know what it's going to be like yeah i couldn't bring myself to watch plus i saw like three frames of it and just like that i think that tells me what i need to know okay i think they yeah they the simpsons are like now brand ambassadors essentially so yeah yeah they wave their i mean that's that is a funny thing about like for a show that is really

subversive and that probably uh took all of our young minds in a into places that were more like liberal and progressive and and free thinking i think you know because it has ideas in it that affect at least in the 90s it is funny that it's now it's just as with like the the unironic food locations it's funny that like come visit the simpsons give the simpsons a hug and like and you see them on the banner when you're leaving the park and uh like nothing else in the banners as you're leaving universal is subversive in the least i don't think optimus prime and the minions like there's nothing else that is a show that has like really cutting and weird stuff yeah it's like i'm trying to think like the clothes like if there were characters even in the park now i guess chewbacca i saw refuse a hug

and a picture with somebody in star wars land which thrilled me to death because that's so much fun but i i do think and i've seen like the villains like at disneyland have a little more sass to them like that's true yeah they they can they can be like loki can be like get away from me governor or whatever some bullshit like that but like they but they can't but like the loki can talk like the the homer you meet can't talk he's just gonna wave at you but like no i ah man there's like there's so there's good mean stuff in the ride or in the uh the waiting line that i just could not imagine disney would let i mean also with disney i keep waiting for the day it hasn't happened yet it was the first thing i looked

up on disney plus of like okay is the joke that roger meyer senior made a film called nazi supermen or our superiors is that joke still in here and it still is they haven't cut it yet but i'm waiting for that day me too yeah i it's it yeah i think most things are still up but it does feel like there's from what's the what's the one they censored on disney plus is it uh who's but michael jackson episode well that one but i'm talking about then they was a splash or something they censored oh the bottom yes the bottom and splash is all smeary yeah and i think they censored adventures in Babysitting as well. They took out an F word in that movie.

Okay. Yeah. Like, I feel like even towards the end of the ride, when Kang and Koda show up and say, foolish Earthlings, don't you know all rides must end near the gift shop? That's too far. That's too far. We cannot have that.

In the same way, like, disney started producing more of the like being more hands-on with the episodes it's like okay homer has to be shown to be a good father not at the 20 minute mark but at the six minute mark you know yes it's what's the only thing oh sorry go ahead oh no i was just gonna say like boba fett is i the spoiler alert boba fett's a really good guy by the way now so i just so yeah i could see you rude for him yeah you're rooting for him and i think yeah homer they may have to retcon all the times homer's been an awful husband and an awful father i'm so perpetual child abuser yes so comic effect for many years so fucking mad about boba fett i cannot i i'm not i'm not one of those star wars

fans i don't even care about like the bounty hunters but boba fett just constantly going like hey we can all be friends can't we let's all get along i was like i i found out you don't have to watch it someone told me that's an applicable quote for so much stuff i haven't heard anyone talking besides an occasional complaint and so like i i am never up on tv like i am halfway through both midnight mass and white lotus and that's like five or six discourse cycles ago so uh yeah i don't know what's going on with boba fett i know there was like greasers or there was like American graffiti-esque youths. I don't know. Yeah, people were upset about that, but I'll say this.

They fit right in with like a Dexter Jetsters aesthetic for that space diner. So I can't be upset about like... Yeah, that was pretty plainly wrong. That was very prequely. Very prequely. So yeah, I can't be mad at that. I'm fine with those guys. And plus they got Stu the Meat Man

from Strangers of Candy as a major character. Oh, yes. Pesquasey's in the show. Yeah, there's great... Yeah, I'm just commenting on the idea that like, yes, Disney, it seems to really want to make sure

everybody's a good guy. Do they explain why he's got like baggy black fabric instead of baggy baby blue fabric is that explained at some point yeah boba fett that's a good question i don't know well so of course after he was fished out of the after escaping the uh sarlacc pith he's taken by the jawas who steal his armor from him and then he is adopted by the tuscan raider group who then retrains him over a period of months if not years they it's kind of fuzzy the timeline and then he takes on the black cloak of the tuscan raiders so perhaps that's why he changed his undergarments so kind of like working with what you got all right it's possible it's possible

the sarlacc uh the juices in the sarlaccacc's stomach made that material, degraded that, because he was in there for so long. The armor itself held up because it was strong enough. So we had to get it different. Oh yeah, Beskar doesn't melt, yeah. Right. So anyway, does anybody want to talk more about this? I did read an interview, a short interview with the guy who originally designed the outfit,

and his vibe was like, yeah, we just kind of had to make it look cool and alien. Didn't have a lot of money. Did what we could. That's what so much stuff is. Some guy made it in theme parks and Star Wars and everything. I don't know. We did it. We banged it together.

All you nerds think there was meaning behind every little button i want to go back to crusty land just the title crusty land because that location did not exist in the show before it existed in universal because we had a mention of euro crusty land which exploded uh we had duff gardens and itchy and scratchy land so and in the arcade game there was a crusty land that is level two but in the show it did not exist until after this theme park uh attraction happened oh um yeah and i think it's funny that they with the invention of this like there's a you know you have major theme parks in the world already with itching scratchy land and and now just so now to add crusty land on top of it and like i'm not sure where itchy and scratchy land and and now just so now to add crusty land on top of it and like i'm not sure where itchy and scratchy land is i guess that's far away but other but crusty lands next

to springfield or in springfield and i was like what are the other okay we got tough gardens we got crusty land these are all parks that i believe are in springfield i don't think they're even adjacent they all throughout the history of the show. There's something called Block-O-Land, but also there's Lego Land in this world. So both Block-O-Land and Lego Land. There's a little park where Lisa decides to become

a vegetarian called Storyland Village. There's a Santa's Village. Storyland Village turns into Praise Land, Ned Flanders' religious theme park. There is a park called Disneyland that is not affiliated with Disneyland That's separate from all of these There's the water park Mount Splashmore

A different water park called Chlorine Dreams Indoor water park There's the Discount Lion Safari A whole other theme park called Plaster Mountain That's pretty good right There's something called Wet and W wacky world there's an abandoned park called six flags over crusty in the future

there is something called cretaceous park that's in a future episode that i think is like jurassic park and then there is i think this world includes both epcot the real epcot and f cot and i don't know what the f stands for so these are all theme parks servicing the

springfield area the most theme park rich city in the history of man i boy do i wish i could live in in springfield no i that you can tell the writers love theme parks so much and get so much like energy out of it like we also like jeff martin this was something that we in one of our interviews uh we we chatted with him he's like in season two guy and uh he he wrote the uh the duff the the small world parody song and he mentioned us he had also written another song for that same episode in season four uh that was going to be parodying of Pirates of the Caribbean. And it was about how un-PC the whole ride was. But apparently the song had the word rape in it about how they rape and pillage.

And they're like, you know what? No, not using that song. They decided back in 1993. Wow. Fascinating. And kind of before the PC uproar a little bit. So he was like calling out the oddity of it well that's fascinating wow they were trying to go even deeper because that episode

has a ton even before itching scratchy land they hit it's small world jokes and hall of presidents jokes and main street electrical parade jokes yeah those aren't casual theme park going jokes those are people that know what they're talking about one what was it i always forget the episode but al jean like said he wrote a like season 11 or 10 episode while waiting in a line at disney it was a mom and pop art was written in line at disneyland right probably in several lines wow and not about theme parks huh huh strange interesting hey we've all tried to do a little work at the theme park. We've all tried to write some scripts at the theme park. Place, escape, clear your mind.

To that end, in terms of obscure jokes, and boy, would I love to, I mean, hopefully we get to talk to him again. I'd love to know, just to throw out things to Matt Warburton, and was this one of yours? Because I feel like the more specific it is, that seems likely. And this one is so,

this isn't even a Disney thing. This is like, just theme parks in general, especially like middle America. This joke in the line that Krusty says, for those of you who like the latest music, we've got the 1950s doo-wop review starring distant cousins of the original platters.

That is so, boy boy that's everything there's that kind of thing in hershey park and kennywood and dollywood like there's so much 50s in theme parks boy is that right on that is such a deep cut yeah i really like the joke about a crusty wearing a sports jacket made out of lincoln's diary yeah that's a good one oh yeah yeah i i mean i i also like that uh when crusty even tells you like hey you made it here like when you get into the last room before you get to get on the ride then crusty says hey you made it here only 45 minutes left in the line i'm just kidding i have no idea how much longer you're gonna be in this line yeah there's about an episode's worth of original animation in the line and when you get to the safety video i mean a lot of the stuff is kind of risque for just a general uh line audience

watching tvs but i thought the itchy and scratchy stuff was genuinely shockingly violent i mean his skin is torn off in that safety video. It echoes one of the most horrific shorts when his skin is torn off by the escalator. There's not as much blood, but still, I was surprised to see that. Yeah, it's a very good point that there is no, I don't know if there's any other safety video in the history of theme parks that shows you what might happen to you in a deadly way when you go on the ride. That is pretty crazy. a hand coming clean off like they do depict things that could and in some cases have happened yeah not on this ride but in other if you keep following the sequence of videos

saicho bob points a hand like a full-ass handgun at the simpsons for like a while yeah i couldn't believe it was a realistic gun and not like a joke gun like a harpoon or gun or something you know something that is not an imitatable act but it's like no it's like a nine millimeter just right at you it said that he tried to kill a baby they point that out like and the baby even the baby yeah this is all stuff that maybe universal maybe would have pulled a little back on like right now i i wonder if it like if it would be the exact they would let all the same stuff happen today well anything happens at horror nights wow that's a different thing oh you know that's another of my favorite modern simpsons episodes and i think now it's like eight

years old but there's an episode called halloween of horror that is the first time they did a regular halloween episode that is not a treehouse and it's about they take bart and lisa to the a halloween horror nights type thing lisa says she's not scared but the second she gets there she freaks out and has a panic attack because it's so scary and they have to like help her get over that the whole rest of the episode and as a t as a youngster who was terrified of halloween hard nights and still hasn't gone because it still i feel like that root fear like i love that episode like that's that's like my favorite modern simpsons episode oh wow i wow. I got to watch that one.

I forget that we have this in common, that you have the afraid of stuff, as you reminded us at the beginning of the episode. It extends to roller coasters and stuff, too. What's your level, Henry? I have gotten better at it. So, like five years ago, when I first rode the Guardians of the Galaxy ride, which I only did because I'm a Marvel fan, it scared me, but I was like, I like five years ago when I first rode the Guardians of the Galaxy ride, which I only did because I'm a Marvel fan, it scared me, but I was like, I have to ride this.

So that one really screwed me up. But then I did the Incredicoaster like two years ago or three years ago and it kind of reset me and I actually can take a hard ride now. I had a similar journey. The Incredicoaster is my max and i was afraid to do it but someone pressured me into it and i had fun uh i will say the guardians of the galaxy ride makes me think i'm going to die not as fun as the incredicoaster but unlike mike i can't take the journey to overcome my fear of haunts uh i just can't go with you on that but i respect you for overcoming that

it's something that i can never do thank you uh i appreciate that i will say though i mean i'm not pressuring you to do anything but i will say if you ever do i would say horror nights is the easiest one to do because they're really just like you're motoring through those things so fast that if you ever feel the inclination to try something and it and a lot of a lot of haunted house fans i think don't like it for this reason but you're in like just a steady stream of people and that is not as scary as like getting thrown in a room or just somebody telling you that there's a minotaur waiting for you in an escape room like that's a lot different than just like walking by and seeing a bunch of other people get like a fairly obvious scare that's about to happen so in the future also has a polish like a bunch of other people get like a fairly obvious scare that's about to happen. So in the future, also has a polish,

like a level of polish that independent haunts or haunted hayrides or even knots. I feel like try to one up themselves a lot or just go give the, the scare actors a little more freedom. There's more freedom. Yeah. Universal kind of pulls back a little. And after a couple horror nights

houses you will actually get the rhythm of how it works other like knots and other things are on different like houses are different knots but kind of with the horror nights you're like oh i okay i see there's a i can see in the the blackness there's a person about to jump out like you can see you can kind of feel at a certain point but that's look i'm just saying in the future i'm not saying you have to go uh do it um but yeah that would be my recommendation starting there i i have another like childhood uh parks thing that like is about how much i don't like roller coasters or didn't as a kid like i uh so i grew up in florida and a couple years like the like fifth grade or sixth grade uh class trip was like we'll take you to a theme park and so uh because i live like jacksonville florida like three hours from from orlando and so one year

uh we went to epcot and i hated it because i was like i've never been to magic kingdom and you're taking me to epcot like i i wasn't ready to appreciate epcot i thought it was the boring like learn something place uh and then the next year we were finally going to go to magic kingdom but then some do-gooder baptist asshole at the school like their parent learned that on the day we had planned was the unofficial gay day at at magic kingdom where the gays show up in their red shirts and you know and it now disney has super embraced it but back then it was you know just this thing like parents were like did you hear it's a gay day we're gonna well i'm not sending my kid there that day and so we had to go to bush gardens which for a person who likes theming and doesn't like roller coasters was i hated it so much could not stand bush gardens so man yeah

that's a bummer so then how did you fill the day were you trying to hide in i told my friends like i'll write it later you guys go without me and then i would like just i guess bush gardens is a zoo so you can hang around like zoo things a little bit but yeah it's like bush gardens if you don't like roller coasters and you can't drink yet like what what the hell good is it yeah it's easier yeah at least it's at least they have the zoo it's easier to fake than six flags when i would like if i went when i was a teenager and i would just be like oh yeah you got yeah you guys do this and i think i'm gonna do the next one i think like that's when i'll you said to like lie your way through the day i'm like i'll do this

like i'll do the i'll do the uh ferris or the carousel i'll do the yeah was this gonna be the next one if this technically is the next one i oh it's a bummer it's not a roller coaster but you know i did say next one i'm a man of my word oh why don't we take a photo with mrs taz it's like i can do a log flume do you want to do that let's just do the log flume again i can take one drop yeah that was so good and there's not much of a line we should go on it again because i just yeah i when we would go to like hershey Park or something people just wanted to hang out and like maybe do one or two rides and I'm like we do this at the mall every weekend I know we're not supposed to go off alone

but I am good day I'm going to ride I want to ride the coasters you would have screamed at me you would have been like 12 years old and you would have been like screaming at me we are doing these coasters I will leave you alone or you would say like you sit on the bench and i'm you sit on the bench at the exit yeah you sit by the dip and dots cart right i'll meet you there this is still the case

i describe going on one ride and otherwise just uh having a couple glasses of wine you're like what i like that now especially with how much legwork you have to do to go to disneyland nowadays so yeah i think once you're once you're over 30 you could just play the my back hurts wild card because most people will believe you that's my back's killing me today it's gonna really mess me up yeah that's a good that's a good little hack um yeah true uh can we have to plant the story beforehand to get this oh it's it's sprung up i don't know could we look at this crusty land map which i really really like oh yeah yeah which and this is pure matt warburton we found out right he said he had this frame this is like this is completely um i'm sure there's jokes in here i

don't know it's a little yeah and and i can read we can can you read them yeah um oh yeah oh yeah i don't know any of these no no yeah yeah yeah this is pretty stuff yeah this is what i was saying when i was like that was saying this suggests a larger sort of theme park and i could imagine what like a matt warburton would have wanted to build had they had like an insane budget um but yeah there's crusty land main entrance there's crusty land main street mount, which is, I think, this right here, right? This Krusty sort of stone face. Oh, well, that's in the ride. Some of this factors into the ride.

Yeah, a lot of it does. That's the journey into Krusty's mouth. And then, Scott, you were talking about earlier, there is an Itchy and Scratchy Land entrance listed here. Number four. What? Oh, so this is adjacent to? Wow, this is funny. That's my question yeah is it is it the idea that crusty land was then built up like a california adventure next to

itchy and scratchy land which i should be it should be on an island then right like itchy and scratchy land because yeah as jason was saying there's a different this is a different power plant over here um or it's the same yeah no that's this i think that's the springfield power plant but that well you just you meant that there's a second source of nuclear power which is the theme part yes that that you see like you know grandpa and maggie next to and that's how maggie gets big it also might just be like oh we want to have big maggie this is the simplest you know comic book explanation. Yes, and we know in The Simpsons, there's many episodes where, like,

the geography is very different from episode to episode. Well, yes, yeah. Man, the list of jokes in this is so great. Like, the... Oh, yeah, can you go back over, Mike? Yeah, yeah. No, and they bring in some of the stuff that's in like yeah captain dinosaurs pirate ripoff like that's in the ride too which i just love the the uh gazebo just north north

of the dragon boat ride that's a good that's a good one just even an original log ride that's really funny yeah that is most of the perks right there the change loser is one of the rides joke very good joke oh that's great crusty lou studios is based there so they they film crusty as well that that's from the show that he called it in a like universal it's adjacent to wow wow right so many it should there's like so many jokes 40 jokes here this is incredible then the tooth chipper which is a reference an old reference to an old episode um oh right right which i forget is it is it duff gardens or is it ditching scratchy land i think it's duff gardens no it's at the carnival yeah it's it's in the when uh with the one with jim varney in it yeah right there's it because it's the it's the

roller coaster where literally it stops and everyone hits their teeth on the rail for the restraint which that's i don't want to make you guys scared to go on the incredicoaster again but i said a few weeks ago that literally happened to some poor kid oh i was waiting to get on it and then a kid burst out my tooth but it does have that hard stop at the end it kind of is a tooth chipper oh those there's two more i love i've never i i've forgotten these the the scrematorium of dr frightmare stein that's another one from the show of like it was a crappy carnival ride that bart and lisa are so disappointed by and oh yes where that doesn't

that is like a spring that is empty yes like it springs out but then there's no monster on it and and i also like radioactive man the ride which is like their spider-man or batman the ride for for this like in their universe man that's good yeah so there's and then at the very end get probed by king and kodos so yeah it's just so much like so much where you're standing in line and if you're paying attention and you're not on your phone uh you would see exactly what they might do with the full simpsons land which is awesome well this reminded me of something and henry you might have more info on this i'm just vaguely remembering there was a simpsons attraction at a theme park in australia and within that attraction you can watch these videos online

there is a sequel to bard versus australia you see a follow-up with tobias's family the simpsons visit them and there's more uh jokes and stuff i think it was made in 1999 yeah yeah so there was this like half-assed uh fox tried to do their own universal but in australia and and so it's like yeah it's the fox studio but they never had any real ride and so the simpson there was, it started with the story of, of, uh, you know, them sent back to Australia to apologize, but it's not the old animation. They did a whole new animation for the entire thing, but with the same, a lot of the same jokes. And if you watch the video on YouTube of like the video of the ride, there is like about two minutes of just a background with music and it's blank.

That's because it it because it was one of those oh you're in the movie type rides of like they pick out two people from the audience and say okay say your line in front of this blue screen and we'll put you in the simpsons and i think it lasted like tops five years before it went away and like uh i remember when that video first hit online like uh bill oakley and josh weinstein weinstein who wrote the episode they didn't know it existed they're like what the hell whoa yeah wow that's amazing geez man that's if you learn yeah you're there was more canon to what you created that you had nothing to do with tobias of the the australian family who bart pranks thus ending him up in an australian

trial that's weird what else do they do with them what why did they have to go back or no it's or it's just like stuff we didn't see it pretends that it's the same plot of the episode and it's just a retelling of it not a not a sequel yeah i recall lot of it is them hanging out in the living room of that family. It's not very dynamic. Weird. I remember knowing vaguely about this, though I had no idea there was new stuff or that you were in it or whatever. But I remember hearing about it and like, well, it makes sense it's an Australian theme park and they'd like do something with the Australian episode. Except that the Australian episode portrays Australia as like a miserable nation of thieves and inbreds it's like it is very mean to australia i i will say the half dozen australians i've met only like

that episode yeah we're not insulted by i think australia really embraced it brazil got mad at the simpsons but australia is like yes give us hell simpsons well i guess yeah i guess they were great that's why they embraced uh that episode uh can can i say two little things about the line uh and even before you get into really the pre-show room um one is you go through crusty's head but when you look up when you go in there and his uvula is up there and it's a it is a punching bag which is fun to go hit and i had the fun of like my my son is little and he's not old enough to go on the ride but i but i was like oh he's gonna love that uvula and he he hit the hell out of it it was great um so that's a lot of fun something do, even if you can't go on it. And then like, am I insane that I, why do I like that near that map that you were showing

us, Mike, that there is just a sign printed out with the Gracie films logo. What am I a maniac for thinking? It's kind of neat that I guess I just like production company logos in general, but it's like, it's funny that we've seen this our whole lives on episodes of this show the shh and then the little jingle and it's funny that now it's in a it's on a physical build a production company logo is on a building your brain was forming at a certain point and you were surged with dopamine from a simpson episode in the right formative time so that because should put anything at the end any visual at the end yeah anything like it could be the most disturbing image possible like some awful

caligula nightmare yeah it's just a mountain of rotting animals and you're like wow it has the same effect on me and that's why i was furious uh when you watch those new shorts they insert mickey into the gracie Films audience. They do. What? Really? Heresy. Yes. Watch to the end.

You'll see the Gracie logo has Mickey sitting next to the shushing lady now. It's true. No, no. Get out of there, Mickey. It feels sacrilegious. Yeah. That's sort of like whenever WWE nowadays makes wwe produced documentary and everyone is talking about like well back in 1991 the thing you have to remember about wwe like they're using the current corporate branding and

you but they don't have enough budget to sometimes people go wwf uh i mean wwe like it's just so bizarre you can tell everyone's struggling with it and it's like to what end are you doing this besides pleasing a 76 year old lunatic well it's uh yeah to reshape the narrative of all these corporations are just yeah like in 50 years you'll be like well mickey always owned the simpsons and he's always been sitting in that audience and of course it didn't when disney made Home Alone in 1990, they really understood how popular Macaulay Culkin would be. It paved the way for the new Home Alone, of course,

that we all know and love. Who would have ever guessed that Home Alone would have exceeded the popularity of the original and that that kid, I don't need to say his name, we all know it, but he's 10 times more popular than Macaulay. Well, did you know the brother of the actor who plays roman in succession was actually an actor too pretty interesting when george lucas pitched star wars to walt disney yeah it's all gonna blur together have you guys watched that star tours doc that's on the disney

plus the rides that made us whatever the attraction attraction thing yeah yeah that's uh i i didn't know that lucas went to disneyland on day two like that he wasn't there day one but that he went there on day two that was a fun fun bit of info to learn but yeah that's great yeah yeah but if you care about tony baxter there like as a kid like he i don't know if i forget when he started working there but i that feels familiar to me that he might have been there on day two to like that so that a young lucas and a baxter way pre making his ride and even working there at all that's pretty neat though i hate that thing it's like you get 20 minutes of learning about real star tours and even just star tours at all and then at like minute 24

they're like and you know what star tours really influenced us when designing galaxies as in the zest of galaxies edge commercial the rest of the special yeah yes yeah we want more though we still are waiting for like five hour deep dive documentaries on these rides which i don't know what the audience is i mean i guess it's this podcast's audience but we these rides which i don't know what the audience is i mean i guess it's this podcast's audience but we like i guess i don't know if that's big enough for disney plus disney plus to do like exhaustive documentaries on these rides which is what we want um like alex gibney level yeah ken burns ken burns 12 part series on start Star Tours on the scope. And get back where it's just unbroken footage.

Don't stop it. Don't narrate it. Just show me raw. If they're mumbling, I don't care. We'll try to read lips. I don't care. I just want to watch people working on the thing. Peter Jackson needs to come in and up-res all the footage and then painstakingly try

to recreate conversations to make it seamless just debating on like what color eyes rex should have oh you know uh scott would you be more likely to give book of boba fett a try if i told you there is a rex in it there's a rex model droid it's not the rex oh yeah there is a rex yeah yeah i think our audience has noticed this i've i've yeah i've been mean enough to put it on you know there's another that saves a lotx yeah yeah i think our audience has noticed this i've i've yeah i've been mean enough to put it on you know there's another that saves a lot for me again i without watching it i love the show the other perfect show really if they if there was this thing on disney plus got where you could just watch the scenes in that like bar cantina because in that that scene as well

spoiler alert max rebo is teamed up with maybe figurine dan they're in a band together in that yeah yes and they're in there yeah so like that see those scenes yeah you could should just watch for that reason yeah i want only the i want only bar and music that's really that's how i feel about the original movies though you're never gonna please me i'm the most unpleasable they haven't you couldn't even call me a star wars fan at that level they haven guess, well, we know the name of the music. I'm a jizz fan is what I am. We know. It's hard.

It can be hard to please a jizz fan. Amen. You know, me and Bob have talked about this before. Bob, I think I rode the ride with him his first time riding the ride. We went there together on an L.A. podcast trip. uh bob i think i rode the ride with him the his first time riding the ride we went to disney uh there together on an la podcast trip but i do wish it's too bad it's in 3d but i know why they got to do it but me and bob were both just like well i wish this was 2d but there's that would have cost them like 18 times as much money i'm sure to like all the perspective shifts you have to do. And it would have like, there's a reason even the Hanna-Barbera ride is like,

it's 2d guys drawn on shitty 3d models bouncing around. Like, cause it's just all the perspective change. It just, it's almost impossible to do an in 2d and it would cost way more money, but yeah, it would have to be like a more traditional, I think 3d with glasses then

to make the 2d look more like 2d my role maybe i'm crazy but something like that and scaling to imax level right right proportions is yeah much more difficult i think a lot of it the ride is kind of a strange proposition because uh you're going to it as simpsons fan and you're watching all the clips in line and it's the simpsons that you know and love. When you get on the ride, it's the Simpsons as you've seen them in maybe five minutes of the show in total on like the Homer in 3D Halloween special. So it is kind of strange

to me that, I mean, I understand why they did it, but it's just like this is not the version of the characters I ever see or ever will see. Yeah. The limitations of just that, yeah, using that Back to the future like um structure or excuse me the infrastructure uh i guess i think the only way i can justify it is that i do like when as with the movie i thought the movie was elevated a little bit

visually and it at least there's a i don't know you know there's that there's there's mood to it that they're rendered in this way that you and you only see them in in this way in this place it's still odd to me but that's kind of how i justify it is that well at least it's like a a special one time only look at these characters we like in in this format yeah um yeah i'm sure it helps sell some of the big moment like when you think you're upside down or when you're going down a roller i think that's probably easier to combine the you know visual footage with the uh you know motion base yeah with the 3d footage there's probably yeah i'm sure there's like a and i haven't been on it yet but like a runaway railway style like mickey minnie's that new ride at uh at uh hollywood studios where yeah it feels a little bit more like the cartoon but i will say when i i don't

know if i consciously thought this but i was very into that homer in 3d when he went in through i was like blown away as a child that homer was in 3d like and i don't know what year would you guys shouldn't like what year was that season seven so 96 or no it was before toy story came out yeah it was 95 a year before toy story yeah because that felt like that and then months before toy story like seeing pictures of mario 64 i was like everything's going to look like this soon yeah like this is the future which kind of is but not fully i didn't realize i'd be fighting against that now as a kid i thought like you mike like everything needs to be like this this is the future of all entertainment and now

i'm craving anything 2d because it's just so rare i wouldn't when they did the first like new mario 2d side scroller i went you can do that you can go back what like it really was was embarrassing to think about now that i was like well they're gonna of course abandon 2d games why would well you know the the simpsons movie they did a whole trailer beforehand about how like this isn't a 3d like bullshit cute bunny thing this is in 2d like they advertise simpsons movie and then mo's head pops out like in 2d but but uh this ride yeah it is 3d i mean it does make me fear that like if they were to do a second simpsons movie disney wouldn't finance it unless it's 3d like i mean that bob's burgers movie isn't 2d but that was under the fox regime that they did it that wasn't a disney

choice and they recently did a toy story parody with much better cg than what's in the right i mean it's 14 years later 13 years later but uh i could see that being an option for the future i mean there's now a cgi spongebob show yeah yeah and then uh that was oh yeah that was written by our pal julia prescott Yeah. Oh, yeah. Great. But yeah, that's what's a problem, though, with the ride making it 3D is like it was cutting edge in 2008 and 14 years later, 3D looks all right. It looks good. Yeah.

It's always tricky, too, with The Simpsons. The way The Simpsons are drawn, and we were talking before we started a little bit about toys, it's always just a little odd seeing these character designs in three dimensions and there's super seven this company is making new simpsons toys and i'm excited to see how they look but it was it always looks a little wrong seeing them in 3d and i don't know i guess there's yeah oh that's why there's so many memes about front-facing simpsons because right outside of the in-betweens when they're turning around they rarely ever look directly at the camera because it's just so freakish and you

think about what that would be in real life if you're staring at someone who's shaped like that yes exactly it's often so scary but like bart and lisa especially is it in the itchy and scratchy that they they look up disappointed at marge i don't know what it's about oh yeah she's saying they're gonna go to albert sanctuary and for the family vacation it is a theme park i would say yeah that view which is very funny it's like hilarious and purposefully so this scary weird front-facing view of disappointed bart and lisa but yeah mostly it's uh yeah it's all and and the suited characters are kind of upsetting i'm not like dying to get photos with the universal walk around you know anybody really crusty and crusty and bob are my favorites to get

the photo with because they already look like freakish anyway but there's something about having a bart that's as tall as me like doesn't feel right you know that's the that's the one that feels the most wrong to me um if you're if we're talking freakish um here's something funny i i was curious about any information about the the opening of these rides on either coast and there wasn't anything too interesting about hollywood but florida got a little sillier and went uh went kind of all out and uh so here's a couple like funny opening day only dimensions of uh 3d simpsons i guess you could say um so they did sort of a flash mobby thing where they handed everybody uh marge wigs we're looking at a group of like 40 marge wigs and like there's a laundry hamper of somebody passing out more,

um, which is sort of, you know, like if you're a fan of the show, you're like, I don't care about that. I wouldn't be excited to like, Oh,

I got a Marge wig. But then the, um, the then president of the universal Orlando is introduced and then he walks out wearing one, takes it off about five seconds later, but that's enough time for him to say god i can't believe they got me to wear this

most you're easily embarrassed dad thing you've ever seen but then right below is the funniest thing you might see it in the background of this photo that there's a little like chamber orchestra and they play the simpsons theme when the confetti goes off and the ride's officially open look how they dressed the conductor of the orchestra it really reminds me of how on the today show when they dressed up as peanuts characters it's just as uh ghoulish and disturbing oh god this is just to say for the listener this is a like a conductor in a suit and he is he looks like crusty and it's not a cartoon crusty head his face is painted entirely white and then he's got a headpiece with the three puffs i mean it's kind of like this is something i

always wondered as a kid with there being the flintstones movie was there any possibility of a live action simpsons movie done like this practically where they're painting everybody yellow or in this case white but this is this is one of the scariest things ever i mean i guess i got the clown thing i guess it ties into that but like true dear god this guy like i i mean otherwise he's probably a good man but if this was a creature who roamed the earth looking like this, he needs to be shot in the head. This is right out of a not The Simpsons porn parody. Yes, yes.

One of the only other real world reasons that there's been people painted head to toe yellow. Yeah, nightmarish. And need I remind everyone, there is a music teacher character in The Simpsons, not featured very often. But in every opening, he's all traditionally in the show. He's Harry Shearer, though, so maybe he can't appear. Didn't want him.

This reminds me that within the past few years, we learned that there was a live-action Krusty show in development, and Dan Castaneda was going to play Krusty in live action. I don't think there were any makeup tests, but that could have happened. But Fox had a circus themed show that had already failed. So they did not green light the Krusty show. It wasn't TV Funhouse. Was the original TV Funhouse where Smigel played a terrifying clown man? Oh, no.

It was like, God, what was the name of that shitty clown show? It was just called Circus yeah and that's where like greg daniels came from and that's why he joined the simpsons uh writing staff and a few other writers from circus was well i've never heard of this guys what other um was there a phil hartman troy mcclure show as well or was that just talked about as an idea he always said he wanted to do it there they say that he said he would do a live action thing with it and i mean if he was alive in the last 20 years he probably would have done it like five times over for internet videos we'd be tired of it we'd be like all right phil hartman yeah even though now i'd kill to see him in that and be tired of phil hartman what a luxury we should be so lucky i mean

he would have for sure been either sterling or cooper in mad men he would have been one of the ad agency directors that would have had to happen sure the other one similar to this the rare crossover into live action i remember it always getting said and you guys probably know and i can't remember the name but the king of the hill that crazy priest action show that they'd watch yes uh monsignor martinez and the pilot for that just surfaced uh within the past like six to eight months wow no way really yep oh i'd love to see that oh my god did that exist somewhere that's viewable yeah it's on it was on youtube we were seeing it around because we'd we'd said it on our podcast a bunch of times like oh i want to see that pilot someday and then the second it was on

youtube someone on our discord was like guys it's finally here oh great geez i asked the right people oh my god i'm i will check that out asap well but since that crusty show failed then gene and reese for uh they just were like, well, what about The Critic? That's like a TV show. We can do that. So that's how The Critic was born. Oh, interesting. You know, if I can say another thing I wish was a little better in the ride, I think that there's too many jokes.

I hate to complain there's too many jokes, but it's like they could have they could have silence just a couple times and but there's so many good jokes in it that sometimes when homer goes like come on ball we're both ball big and round and didn't finish high school i was like homer could just be yelling here as he runs toward it i didn't need another joke it diminished the previous joke by that's the one for me i have to admit that is that like you know last round of rewrite we need something and then they talk about this in the commentaries how like the pressure of we've seen this 40 times i'm sick of this joke let's put a new one in and then you put in one that's maybe not as good as the one that you got sick of and that's the one and there's probably another one in there where i feel similar like yeah that's a little like rewriting i feel

yeah i mean that's the problem with rewriting in general. It's like, oh, we've heard this so many times. It's like, oh, you know who hasn't heard this? The audience. Yeah. It's also just, like, it's hard to catch them all. Even just, like, there's stuff I'll, like, pick up on, yeah, like, the tenth time

writing it, because there's just so much flying. Like, you're going through so many different scenarios, and there's so many lines flying it's like yeah you could have gotten away with like like a quarter of these probably even even some of the maybe but it at least like and and well i think i may have said this before oh let's just pose it i to me despite i totally agree henry that there's certain lines that like i could stand and never hear that again or we could there could be less but i like this probably not as successful of an attempt in theme parks at um hard comedy in a ride that is meant to be funny more than once

it's pretty tough not to mention that most you, there's not rides of the office or whatever. Usually it's not. Not yet. There's no Seinfeld. Yeah, yeah, this is all coming for sure. But there's not a Seinfeld ride, you know. Most sitcoms or comedy don't lend themselves to the medium, but animation does. So it's a tricky thing.

And I do think it, like, boy, you need that Simpsons level of, like, 20 people all, like, really throwing their best at it, because other things in theme parks that are meant to be funny, ooh, boy, that's a graveyard. It's actually funny. It's not just funny for theme park funny. No, it's, like, way funnier than, like, say, the Kung Fu Panda or Shrek 4D. Like, I think it's way funnier than like say the kung fu panda or shrek 4d like i'd i think it's way funnier than

those comedy rides yeah you could tell people affiliated with the show uh wrote it it's not just people brought in who kind of know the show and the sense of humor well i'll contradict my own argument i just made by saying also i get the things that i've noticed over the years i've liked are like your pirates of the caribbean or even the new secret life of pets that has so much going on obviously those are animatronic based and there's there's you can look all around you but that has tons of those both those rides have tons of gags and lines of dialogue you miss which does like reward riding again and again and feeling like you're getting like a maybe a new thing every time you ride yeah the difference is withpsons, this is all one focus on the screen.

Oh, sure. They are kind of trying to do the same thing, if I think about it. Yeah. Man, the screen, like this is the case for most regular movie theaters nowadays too, but it's like,

yeah, you got to do something with that projector or maybe it's the bulbs or like it could be crisper like sure yeah yeah it was very dim all the times i wrote it yeah yeah no i you know the last time i wrote it was uh my husband and i flew down like in august of last year when it was like hey it's back open we can just fly down for a day let's finally do it and so or maybe this was june but anyway we it was we got to ride it like private it was just the two of us on the ride thanks to the social distancing rules and so that was uh that was a fun and special experience but it was also i the ride is herky jerky a little bit but this is the first time in

the ride where i actually felt like it like little bit but this is the first time in the ride where i actually felt like it like moved me forward and like my back slammed against the thing and i was like ow my back really like hurt the rest of the day from just like wham right against it on the ride yeah because there's certain levels of maintenance with theme park stuff where it's like we have to do maintenance on this because the structure is falling apart and then there's just like upkeep level maintenance and that's usually what falls to the back of the line in terms of like allocating budgets because when they this when they switched over they did uh it was oceaneering international the company that um fixed the jaws ride took over like the mechanic like redid the mechanics from back to the future

so while it is the same sort of setup it was a new system but again that was a long time ago at this point yeah and it's also and this is i'll speak for myself like as i get older sometimes i especially going on these rides a lot sometimes i'll just focus like on transformers or simpsons i would just focus on like let me really feel how this is like jerking my body around because like sometimes on transformers like i if i'm kind of more like in tune with which my i'm kind of just thinking about the physical experience i go like man i'm getting like fucked up on this like i'm getting thrown around like in a context without the fun of seeing optimus prime i would you'd be like what is this why am i throwing me into this piece of hard

plastic over and over again um but we love it folks yeah well i oh no sorry i was just gonna say yeah it's it's like you know i i do have to admit like there's a lot that i could that i could praise about this direction. And I do. And I remember it like feeling like it came out of the gate so strong and didn't disappoint me who didn't want Back to the Future to go away. But at least it was replaced by a strong thing. The repeatability does get somewhere between the dimness of it. I do know all the comedy. It's it does jerk you around a lot.

And then unpleasant things like that electric shock sort of like the the buzzer thing at the end like all of it does end that like even that line will sneak up on you like it'll say a low amount and then you will end up waiting to load you'll end up stuck in some room for a while uh and even though i like the clips like there's something about the experience that just makes it a it's like a once every couple years maybe and not certainly not in every time well what do you guys think about getting well sucked off by maggie what what do you guys think i usually like little scents but that baby powder scent i just don't care for no i like the baby powder

scents for some reason i think it's because it's unique i get i expected a spray of water the first time i wrote it and i was like yeah because it's universal there's going to be a little spritz but yeah the baby but i also like i always have a disconnect there of like well they do the insides of a baby's mouth smell like baby powder like that's no yeah it's being near a baby maybe although you know like i'm already out of the baby phase with my kid and baby powder was never around this smell has not been in my house once i I'm not even sure why baby powder. Is it for rashes and diapers? I think so, yeah. Yeah, I guess so.

If it smelled like a milk burp or whatever, that'd be disgusting. I don't want that. Peas, strained peas or whatever you would feed a little smushed up apples, like applesauce. That wouldn't be bad. Okay. I guess not those don't seem that familiar to me as the i guess the quintessential baby smells aren't good right in general it's like sure to be avoided mostly that yes i want to go uh back to back to the future scott was mentioning it earlier i think

this is a good replacement but i don't think it feels as special as that ride because when this ride came out, there were maybe 400 episodes of the show. Now there's close to 800 or possibly more. On that Back to the Future ride, it felt like it was an epilogue to the movies. And there is not a whole lot of extra Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown material out there. This is before he was appearing on talk shows and whatnot and in Geico commercials. But yeah, it did feel more special because there's just so little back to the future content that uh it was just like oh here's one more thing i can see of this world the simpsons there is no shortage and 14 years later there continues to be no shortage of content yeah that's a very good point yeah totally like it's one of the only places that maybe will

ever exist to see these these characters as opposed to like boy yeah we've never stopped being simpsons inundated but i do like that the ride you know like back to the future is about you know of course biff has to come and mess it all up and just the same year it's like well sideshow bob shows up to crusty land and takes it over so and i always i always love the when a uh watch the ride kind of thing starts with like well this is going to be a very normal thing for you guys and then they're and then you're find out no this won't be normal at all someone changed it yes um for sure uh i when i think we met matt morburn and talked about this where uh it was sort of

almost a little late in the in the development where they were like we gotta fly through springfield like we can't just oh yeah yes that he was like he would have been more than happy to keep fleshing out the fictional theme park because clearly he did thoroughly yes that map um but that some on a basic level i don't know if it was a graining or a james l brooks but somebody's like if there's gonna be one simpsons ride ever you probably need to go to the town and and that's true that is good and that's funny and he his attitude as i recall was kind of like oh yeah yeah you're right well yeah are you that it's like on star tours yeah the original i as a kid as a star wars nerd was like the death star blew up already this isn't that well they built a third death star but

but i mean you need to do the trench run if you're gonna do it do the same with like if you're on the simpsons ride a couch gag should end it like that is it just makes sense you know thematically for the simpsons ride, you need a couch gag. Yeah. Which doesn't seem obvious either, that you could like get a, manipulate a vehicle into a space to make a live couch gag happen. It's pretty clever. I remember it like, I didn't see that coming.

Yeah. That's pretty great. Yeah. That's real fun. What's the game, the first sort of like walk around Springfield game? Isn't it like around 2000 computer games? You mean virtual Springfield? I think so, yeah.

Whenever we got that, I was like, all I want to do is live here. Yes, yes. Walking around. And it was not, it didn't quite live up to the promise of it, but it was still pretty close to like what you would imagine as a kid. Because any game that would get close to like where you could be inside the place you like the start like there was a super nintendo star trek the next generation game and it was like i want to walk around and i want to like sleep in the bed in like the captain in like the captain picard's bed that's what i

want is a game like a game and then the simpsons yeah the simpsons that game came closer to something like that yeah the park fulfills part of that dream which is why i wish more of the buildings weren't just facades like i want to go into the androids dungeon or the quickie mart that's the one that hurts the most the androids dungeon it's like no especially because it's a store it's in the world it's a store i let me go in a store and buy stuff i'll spend the money if you make another store there i'll spend money i eat in there i they had so many tables for that taste of universal food festival we realized like oh we can you know it was it was like right after vaccinated and we're like still they were spacing everyone out so much it's like oh my god there's hidden tables back here behind the android's dungeon facade um yeah it does yeah you imagine what yeah what else would

you want to do in springfield because everything is bad that's the funny thing is that every all the stores are bad um but i guess i have i have some plus ups written down to plus it up. Yes. Well, for one thing in Hollywood, they have an Aztec theater, but it's just a facade. Like, why can't that be the Main Street Cinema of Springfield? And you go in there and just like episodes are playing like six episodes at once all around you, just like in the Main Street Cinema. Like, yeah. And also, I mean, Androids Junction, too. about like yeah and and yeah also i mean android's dungeon too and then another thing is i i wish luigi's pizza wasn't just cafeteria pizza like i wish it was just some just slightly better just a

little better than that pizza for luigi's yeah um that's yeah that's a good point i was trying to think of food wise we were talking about how all the food on the show is supposed to be bad is there like a fun way to lean into the food being bad or would that just confuse most guests like the like the package it comes in looks worse it's you know they have yeah they have like chocolate covered bacon they sell there they should have more like disgusting like extra like the good morning burger should be there like yeah the worst grossest stuff oh yeah clove kvash the weird food is like because that's what like in canada their meat they meet micheladas with clamato the tomato juice clam of caesar that's what it's called yeah right um that would be good like is there a way you know and in

star wars galaxy's edge doc ondar is like sort of hanging out in the back but everybody else is doing the actual transact like humans are doing transactions for the gift shop could there be like a mo character that's like kind of over by the bar doing something or he's like smuggling the panda in the back like but more like a robot or a person in a suit where you can get a little bit more of that feeling as opposed to like people being nice to you you want to people you also wanted to be like ed de bevics or something where people are mean at mose i mean i think the one thing they could do at mose and uh we haven't mentioned it yet the flaming mo is the wrong color i know it's not flaming make me sign a waiver saying you know this fire is going to be

near you you're liable for any damages to yourself and other people i just want to see it happen in front of me yeah even even a fake out kind of a thing where they have a little display for the flaming mo where you would put like the glass behind it and a little show would pop up that you can make it like safe maybe you wouldn't actually see your glass be on fire i mean i guess you could but like even even just some sort of like pageantry to make it seem like your cut your glass was going on fire would just go a long way if if it was just purple and had a hint of grape like even that and i mean i'm also like it doesn't i get they want to i i figure they want to make it non-alcoholic so the kids can be like i want to

drink a flaming mo too dad and they can let you but i mean i wish they gave you the alcoholic choice there it's like you know we're not in disneyland i can drink here just let me i i would like an actual mixed drink uh just a purple well drink and just say oh it used to be on fire here you go and even just drink that even if they want a kid's drink like put a squishy machine in moe's i understand that's maybe not canon but like even something like that to give the kids an option oh how did they not do squishies they do have squishies they do have squishies yeah at crusty burger you can buy a squishy and i mean it's just a slushy it's just like nothing special about it they they should

sell milkshakes and label them uh what's the full term you guys must know partially partially gelatinated gum-based beverages yes yeah yeah that'd be great yeah that would be great i guess i guess a lot of this logistically they're like the audience or people your average tourist is not gonna know what that is like we can't confuse them yeah but a really good flaming mo would have i think a butterbeer effect if they pulled it off maybe they weren't like primed yet to be although this food stuff came later this came post butterbeer i bet you know they must have tried like yeah maybe there's that butterbeer is made by there there's like a committed universal chef who's very good and like like truly like uh like delves into how do i make this flavor from a movie and does research and so so if they have that person

there's no way they didn't make a go at a really good flaming yeah but yeah like i think maybe what you're you were saying i agree with too it's like we're all when all this stuff gets built it's like this gets built around the same time as harry potter but obviously they're not putting the resources from harry potter into it and then star wars is like a few years later if it had happened a little later and universal owned the property would we have gotten like even extra plus ups and then continuing to plus up because now obviously they're like the contract is up i believe in 2028 i think that's i had heard that rumor too yeah it was a 20-year contract yeah i that's when universe oh so what so that's what

so so right that so people don't know what happens but i'm saying like even the anything we're saying now even if a universal creative person was like, yeah, we really should do something. Universal probably not going to put money into something like that at this point. Well, Disney wouldn't want to renegotiate it and let them make a better Sim. If the Disney's long-term plan is we'll take, we take back Simpsons and we'll make a better Simpsons ride. They don't want Universals to get better. You know, they want it to get worse.

And I don't believe it. Yeah. I don't believe it yeah i don't think it's the situation like with marvel in florida where disney actually has like disney can't get universals like they can't get marvel rights until universal gets rid of theirs so they would have to negotiate something or universal would have to scrap the land i think the simpsons is a like a hard set contract that like if disney doesn't make a deal with them universal just has to get rid of it no marvel was in bankruptcy proceeded like that's why they made like such a universal got such a good deal on like and also this contract is forever as long as you don't make it look like

shit as long as you keep it up and i i love it's bordering the mississippi it's like on this side of the mississippi you guys get spider-'s like on this side of the Mississippi, you guys get Spider-Man. On the other side of the Mississippi, we can have Spider-Man in Disneyland. Yeah. They could go all the way up. They could build along the bank of the Mississippi.

Not on the other side. Which is like, there's legal precedent that is like been used before, but it is so funny and old-fashioned to say but when people talk like now on this side of the mississippi this will be the law but on this side no tony stark on the east side of the mississippi west side it goes yes he's fine i'll say one thing that i don't want to forget about uh that i wanted to pay this ride a compliment the simplicity of just calling it the simpsons ride which is what most park guests would probably just call it anyway

even if it was called like the simpsons colon journey to crusty land or whatever everyone just say ah let's just do let's go on the simpsons ride let's do star wars right yeah the branding at the time was the simpsons ride the simpsons movie the simpsons game yeah they were all on the same page with all that stuff. Yeah, that's perfect. I'm glad they went with simplicity instead of, like, whatever the full name of Web, a Spider-Man adventure is, or whatever. Like, yeah.

Yeah, it's Web Slingers, but then even Web stands for something. Well, the Worldwide Engineering Brigade, of course. Of course. We all. and well the worldwide engineering brigade of course you know of course we all know well if i have two big compliments i want to give to them though for the the detail they get at especially the hollywood one that vip crusty room is the greatest like i love it so much and it's only in hollywood it's not in orlando that's why hollywood's the best because like that because the other areas to sit around and like the cletus area is fine

fun and the crusty burger feels like a crappy crusty burger like so it's well done but that vip room like there's a life-size gabbo there's pictures from crusty when he was a kid uh like as as a jewish clown there's and the best part is there are original drawings of simpson caricatures all over the walls and they are signed by the artist who did them because thanks to a rule in simpsons licensing from day one any drawing of the simpsons has to have matt graining's name next to it and it was for a good reason because he's like he knew guys like jack kirby got fucked over and he's like no everybody has to know matt graining made The Simpsons. I'm the creator.

You're not taking that away from me. But an unfortunate downside to that is artists, when they draw a drawing of The Simpsons that's official, Matt Groening's name has to be next to it and not their signature. But in the Krusty VIP room, when you're in that room, you know Mike B. Anderson drew that drawing. Or there's a drawing of Mindy by david silverman or david silverman's drawing of crusty with a cigar is so great they're all they're all the kit the artist's own style not the house style of simpsons and like i've spent a whole hour in there just

like looking at every drawing and going like oh that artist that they came out in season five and now they finally got to draw this like it's it's just amazing i i love that room it feels like disney would not allow that if they were running the park that is those are off brand those are not the figures you can buy and you know uh the things you grew up with these are just different yeah that's cool i mean all the stuff in that room including those sketches and stuff i like i want to own like it's such a like i want like that gabbo doll the original art like it's a dream like a collector's dream in that room i i had heard a story that one of the artists who had their art displayed in there like it when she saw it debuted they they were in tears of just like my name has never appeared next to the simpsons

art i'm so happy like it yeah this is a tale i had heard but that's great speaking of uh sorry mike mentioned wanting to buy gabbo uh i was not impressed by the gift shop it felt like all the simpsons stuff you could buy at target with the exception of like of course you're going to buy the board license plate it's one of the best jokes ever written for television i bought one i think henry you bought three in your lifetime break every time i mean they they're not they're not the toughest of of keychains but i should be able to buy a gabbo uh a gabbo doll or something like there needs to be better exclusive merchandise it's just i mean frankly no offense to your teacher henry the t-shirt designs need some work sure sure well then the other shirts they got there just like they don't have the universal logo on them they

don't scream a universal simpson shirt it's like what's the shirt with homer on it i could buy that at like target like what's what makes it special yeah the donut the big donut is good it was not until i heard your episode guys that i realized they were actually made there and they're fresh right they are delicious i love i i love the one i go all homer the last time i was there went full homer and was like no i need the one with bacon on it the maple bacon variant oh wow i haven't tried that how is that um yeah and back to this i guess my same point i think also with the merch like harry potter and then star wars have sort of like set a new bar for merch too so like simpsons feels

like it's stuck in old theme park merch and i guess simpsons in general like there hasn't been anything that crazy obscure right we were talking about a little bit about the toys like there's itchy and scratchy robots from itchy and scratchy land toys coming out from a company called super seven but like that's starting to get hardcore for like the stuff we would all want i i mean i compliment who i salute whatever person at universal got them to do the board license plates there to like to sell because if you didn't give a shit like everybody was like well yeah why we sell the name board on this it's like a joke one person knows probably who cares but that like they it was made the decision was made clearly by some fan who would know if we are selling things with people's names on them there has to be a board there

and you will sell more of those than any normal name you have yeah yeah i think with uh the release of those uh kind of obscure figures like Poochie and the Robots, I feel like we're at least five years away from figures based on memes. Like, you can buy the Homer disappearing to the bushes playset. You can buy the actual luncheon between Skinner and Chalmers with a plate of steamed hams. I feel like they're going in that direction, they realize, because SpongeBob figures, you can buy the images that have been memed. You can buy the figures based

on those images yes that that'll happen soon yeah yeah because they they sell a wolverine action figure now looking cold lying on a bed in his full outfit looking at a photo yes they need the all the weird scramblings of the dud every like oh man meme dud merch would be good i feel like some of this too merch quality is one of the things in theme parks like food is like cyclical where it like oh it gets fine for a while like i was down at disney world in the fall and there was some great throwback stuff for the anniversary but otherwise a lot of the merch offerings were looking pretty stale they're pretty samesy so and then a few years later that switches and they get really specific and interesting in in the quickie mark gift shop they have like oh

this is you know a bunch of toys on the shelf but then on the design on the shelf on the side is a picture of ham ahoy the food homer ate bought in the store i was like okay you know the reference ham ahoy the next step is to sell me ham ahoy like you need to actually sell me this i want jesus h rice yeah a big bag i would for sure buy tub to know whatever is in tub with like a bunch of bees if i recall correctly yeah um i'm trying to if i mean like it just occurred to me what i would buy if anybody has a like they heard this would be my ultimate simpsons thing and this isn't well it's not ultimate because it's so simple but if i saw it in a theme park for even like for like two expensive theme park prices i would definitely buy an inanimate carbon rod

like walking out of the park triumphantly holding just this green stick i'd be really stupidly proud of myself yeah for sure i mean the new that's new super seven homer's toy has the carbon rod with it oh that's cool so like they know what they're doing as far as stuff we want um but that is it a great idea. And a simple, cheap thing. Yeah, they could just bang those out. It's like making drumsticks or something. Yeah, that seems easy. You know, another deep reference I like in the Springfield they built

is that they make it across the land, not Duff Gardens, but there's a Duff Gardens section, and you do their topiaries, but they have the seven duffs like including ones they had to make up because they don't name seven in the episode i was wondering that last time i was there that thought occurred to me like wait these these are theme park original aren't they yeah that's crazy and the florida one next to the water very nice nice to hang out by yeah and and they have they have a dumbo ripoff kodos ride which is like it's fine it's good i i like having kodos like yelling at me as i'm on a dumbo ride and oh is there

custom audio for that i've never been yeah yeah and also uh the the just like on the simpsons ride this uh the safety direction of things by nancy cartwright which she's doing like a very you know uh plain voice on it that i i really like oh she's great in that like yeah that kind of so nice it's sinister voiceover that covers the uh because again well in both cases you don't have scratchy and you don't have king both are harry shearer with some of the only characters who are visually depicted but you don't hear them so you got to do something else with the audio and nancy car right today did a great why assume on the other one but yeah i dig that voice a lot and also you know when you're in that waiting room watching the video screen there's there's uh crusty memorabilia like

photos on the wall like you can see there's even one like crusty with mac raining that's just like an extra deep reference you can find i don't think it's in every room it's just like in a few of them but i saw an easter egg that i i've i've not stared at it so this is right before we started so i i can't confirm it but i saw that apparently uh waiting in line for captain dinosaur's pirate ripoff when you burst into that room you could see people waiting to get on the ride and that one of those people is steven spielberg oh wow i didn't know that yeah apparently but i didn't somebody straight you i didn't notice somebody kind of playing out but and i thought i wonder if that's anybody and apparently spielberg so uh but i haven't i haven't looked at it enough to know interesting and i like i wonder if that's anybody and apparently spielberg so uh but i haven't i

haven't looked at it enough to know interesting and i like the sign gag in the ride too where it says like send money to universal studios like just this extra just like send him some extra money you haven't given him enough today like yeah and then they get away with a bare ass in the ride too well not during the ride but beforehand in the waiting route line where Barney's told to take off his scratchy costume and he's nude underneath. And so you see his butt and he's like, Hey, no, put it back on. Like that was, I, again, would Disney allow a butt, uh, even Barney's cartoon, but no, they'd have to blur it.

I think so. They blur it like Daryl Hannes. Yeah. For theme park. It's, it's subversive. And I guess that, well, we touched on it a little, but truly, what does anyone think happens in 2028? Because where in the world, do we get a Disney Simpsons ride? Do we get the demolition of this,

or is everyone too lazy to actually make any of that happen? Cinderella Man, the ride. Universal's dream finally comes true. I think it's gone. Yeah, I think it's time is short. And if they have to get rid of it by 2028, then it'll have to go to at least two years before. Maybe they get the jump on it.

Yeah, I guess you could completely just shut it down in 2028 but i would think if they want something to replace that it could be yeah they could they could start getting rid of it what is it what year the 2020 like in three years three or four years geez yeah when i was watching the clips of uh the animation you see in line i was thinking uh what i'm watching here was't 2008, 14 years ago. 14 years before 2008 was 1994. We were in like season five of The Simpsons. So watching these 2008 clips makes you think, this is a different era of the show. The show doesn't look like this anymore.

None of the actors sound like this anymore. They wouldn't do some of these jokes anymore. So already it feels kind of out of date. Just the 2D footage in line. And the 3D footage is different. But I feel like they can't make new footage uh so i don't see it sticking around past the expiration date yeah you know the the theory i had the only way i could uh imagine that they'd get to keep it or that disney

would be if like disney decided well this wouldn't make as much money or it doesn't fit in disneyland or whatever or if it was like some trade they make with with universal like okay you know what if you give us back orlando spider-man you can keep simpsons for another decade or something oh no way no way spider-man has a much higher favorability rating i think compared to this yeah or do that or jason you're just mad that that even the suggestion oh i'm also mad don't even say it out loud but i think if like if you burrow down and you read about guest satisfaction that is like in the top five i think the deal though what you're saying deal wise yes henry that's probably that would be the only way is if disney could figure out what they felt was valuable enough

to allow them to continue so like i guess that yeah that is possible who uh they could trade l like who who's the equivalent of like l michaels who got traded for oswald the lucky right like samana guthrie and hoda kotb like if hoda gets yeah if hoda gets traded to disney or something like maybe they'll allow yeah on good morning america would elevate that like those would both be gets for good morning america they're still pumping out george stefanopoulos content so right but you know you know where i would stick springfield in a disney if they took it back it's like the in dca where the right by the guardians ride is just nothing just nothing and like springfield could fit there and i bet disney i think uh 10 years ago when they built the springfield uh like or nine years ago that was as good as they could do it then they

did a great job i feel like disney if they cared could do it better and i would like to see what they would do oh yeah that's great and dca would fit too because like you can't have a no beer simpsons land right and and i don't see them doing uh breaking the disneyland beer rule a second time for simpsons that they already did in star wars yeah i it's a good question it's a good point maybe even because if you look at that disneyland forward which is their proposal like there would be like a bridge and that would lead to more california adventure even too if they ended up doing like something over there maybe

entirely new springfield next to pandora would be so funny that's a great theme park yeah i don't care about the blend just just throw them together those are both great the what do you do in disney world because you i think you're that's a really good point about the beer and i don't think epcot makes sense but you can't put all the new shit into hollywood studios it's hollywood studios can't be entirely lines with 70 minute weights with no small things to do yeah and they're running out of room there's gotta be there though yeah maybe like do you keep going do you build into a parking lot where like uh past rock and roller where lightning mcqueen show is now just like entirely new stuff or they

demolish Indiana Jones. But I guess they own that now too. And Star Tours. I don't know. Thankfully, nobody's dying to get Star Tours out of anywhere. I guess Star Tours is a theater. Star Tours is a theater they could reskin

if they just wanted to make Simpsons another reskin instead of a new ride. Just throw the same video in it. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the thing. You can blue sky it, but I think the issue with it ever being in Disney is that we know what they're doing lately. We're getting, and post-COVID and everything,

it's like there's going to be one amazing ride, I think, once every five years again. I don't think that they're gonna like go all out i think at best you get a reskin yeah i mean yeah like let's talk like real quick talk about this like i and i think i mentioned what probably my vote is like if you were building the ride now i think from what i know about runaway railway that's probably the way to go with oh yes true to try to get to try to make it feel like you're immersed in the actual cartoon because like even though i would like robots i think you still run into the problem that the

3d models never quite look right and i can't imagine that robots would look correct either in like a large scale but maybe i don't know unless like some are robots if it was a blend because how great would it be to see if you could think of a reason to have the robotic itchy and scratchy right that's true wire like some itchy and scratchy land stuff would definitely make me more okay with a new thing like i'd say anything from that episode i'd be so excited they could make it like a horror ride through itchy and scratchy land as the robots go nuts I mean that would be amazing and then they got to do the characters have to do all the stuff

they do in the video game like Marge has to attack robots I want all that original arcade stuff to be physicalized yeah that's a great idea and that's also a great idea for toys they all have to have their weapons video

game but yeah um totally yeah so that would be a really great video game is the the old simpsons arcade game versus the old ninja turtles arcade game well sure i don't know why the ninja turtles why are the 90s ninja turtles and the simpsons fighting i don't know i don't care yeah make it happen and scott you know it's great it does not matter no yeah nobody knows just they care he loses power plant runoff uh same thing that made blinking yeah there you go perfect right there and yeah hit him with uh hit him with the hit lisa with swords i you know i i mean also i want i would like a thing i love about it moving to disney is that i i love the springfield but it doesn't match with like the carnival games thing that they picked as the first aesthetic for it like i i wish it was a full like no this is just

springfield or just crusty land and and also i always felt the carnival rides feel kind of like cheap honestly like they just feel like a little like but i love the toys you get at them because like they may they give away a dancing homer toy i got at one of those which like they don't sell a stuff to dancing homer from the season two episode just about anywhere like they they actually get kind of obscure with like you can get an isotopes baseball hat which is like they don't sell those normally or like a radioactive man giant stuffed guy they have that there too and blinky they there's deep references in the toys you can get there but i also would just like to tell them like

here's 40 don't make me play the the knock over the cans game like i'll just give you 40 please yeah they don't they don't do that yeah i would even like a this wouldn't work or even like you go up to the thing and it would be confusing but you're like here's 40 i want that now let me play the game yeah everyone gets everything they want exactly like you can get the obscure thing you want you pay them as much money as they want and then you get to pretend pretend it's a bribe like in the carny episode yes perfect yes perfect yeah yes that would be better um if you say the line from the episode about like i'm looking for my friend mr bribe then they're like okay you've unlocked the

secret menu here there's your just give $40 and here's the thing. Great. Yeah. That's right. They should reward deep fandom. Don't hide from deep fandom. And you guys would get awarded most of all. Thank you for sharing your deep fandom and your Simpsons Ride opinions with us.

Hey, Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert, you survived podcast the ride. So yeah, we did this. So glad you could join us here. And stupid humans, don't you know all rides end in the gift shop? Let's exit through there. Is there anything you'd like to plug? Oh, sure.

Of course, we're on the Talking Simpsons Podcast. We're in our seventh year of doing it. And currently, we're on the verge of doing both Seasons 3 and 13 at the same time flipping back and forth between those you can find that all at talking simpsons podcast.com and uh or look for talking simpsons wherever you get your podcast it's that easy and we got a lot of other stuff going on there too yeah and we have a ton of exclusives on patreon it's this is our full-time job done through through patreon and so we do uh we talk we do deep dives into futurama and king of

the hill that are only on patreon.com slash talking simpsons as well as our what a cartoon podcast where we go super deep into non-simpsons sitcom related things we did one just about batman or the south park movie or uh the lion king 2 we just did so So, so many fun ones. Oh, boy. And yeah, no, thank you guys so much for having us. We've been telling you guys since we first met you, like, you know, Simpsons ride, if you ever need a game. Yeah, your listeners should know we've been needling you since 2018. You know what? It pays off.

That's right. Play the long game. No, but I'm sorry we didn't. We've all had fun with you guys together and separate on the show. that's right play the long play the long game and i know but i'm so glad we did it we've had we've all had fun with you guys uh together and separate on the show and yeah let's if you like uh podcast right listen to our episodes with them and and their other episodes and everything uh um and as for our regular stuff you can find us on the socials at podcast the ride we got merch in our t public store for three bonus episodes every month check

out podcast the ride the second gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride um and hey and next week is february but it's more than february it's celebruary podcast the rides celebrity restaurant month uh so we got big stuff coming up next month uh's all going to be a blast so stay tuned it's all changing we're rebooting just like the Simpsons maybe should concurrently we're rebooting the show along with the main show so get excited for Celebruary

and you know talking Simpsons for this long you know how I'd like to end this episode it's only right shhh do do do do do do do do do no Mickey though I'd like to end this episode. It's only right. Shh. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. No Mickey, though. No Mickey. Beautiful.

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