Podcast: The Ride - The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

Hauntcast: The Fright returns! With a journey to the Fifth Dimension courtesy of Mr. Rod Serling. And we immediately fall in love with an unbuilt attraction we just learned about. H:TF-The Cemetery Gate begins October 14th: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus VOTE! Verify that you're registered and make a plan to vote on or before November 3rd 2020. Find voting resources here: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/vote 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. Today's podcast episode is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Opened in 1994 at Disney MGM Studios. Still in operation, waiting for you. We invite you, if you dare, to learn how each host was scared of the ride during childhood, and in some cases, adulthood. And discover how 21 kinds of tobacco make for 20 wonderful Chesterfield smokes.

Today on the return of Hauntcast the Frights, the Scream Park podcast hosted by three headless men and their ghoulies. I'm Scott Gravedigger, joined by oh uh take it uh my name is i kill girl stone girl like girl not girls not girl stone like girl stone so sorry sorry i mispronounced that girls specifically i just said girl instead of girl that really screwed every everyone up i'm so sorry that was confusing anyway he almost got away with it until his confession was laid bare in a funny halloween name then 25 girls have been recovered we all all the listeners of his podcast suspected but they never knew for sure until that fateful tower of terror episode michael michael suppressed so much until in one episode it all came out

um but hey let's also bring in uh jack-o'-lantern slimed in oh great i'm glad we refreshed the spooky name banks um it's a pleasure to talk to you both i kill and jack-o'-lantern um and it's a pleasure to be here in hauntcast the fright once more uh i'm excited due to various other things like our tour last year or mini mini tour, there were other things going on in October. We didn't get to do the full month, but we've got it cleared out. This is an October full of frights and delights. Yes. Well, technically, we did miss one Friday, but it's going to be plenty of Fridays. Five Fridays.

Five Fridays in October this year. You don't want to do too many frights. Oh, yeah. People get rattled. Five main't want to do too many frights. Oh, yeah. People get rattled. Five main feed frights, too many. Just seeing the scary logo that we have and hearing the scarier music and hearing our scarier names

is putting all the listeners at severe risk of shrieks and diarrhea. If we did it five times all month, it would just be too sustained and you couldn't how often during honk has the fright do the listeners have just horrible diarrhea i don't know um i mean at least at least when the new one pops up in their feed or when they see a tweet i mean you get into the meat of the episode and maybe you're only diarrheaing you know

seven times or so but you know there's a lot loaded up right beginning it's like somebody or even seeing the name tower of terror or snow white scary adventures that's a little diarrhea paying every time right or they hear like oh jason likes hundred grand bars better than milky way like and they have a horrible diarrhea because they heard that scary about jason and halloween candy he'll never find zero bars in this day and age yeah so it's the fright around every corner on this podcast in october there's a lot to talk about with this topic yeah yeah we're doing it we're doing a big one it's a it's a big big one and we're being big brave boys to do it um but this that does make me think uh with the candy discussion you know there's no treats trail this year obviously all this stuff's happening we don't have to go over it but the um i guess jason does that um do you end up uh buying extra candy just to have around you like uh how

do you handle a quarantine halloween uh well look as long as the aisles of your local supermarket and drugstore seasonal sections are well stocked i'll be fine you know are you jason are you gonna wait for discounts or are you going to buy during the month? Uh, I will probably buy a couple of times during the month. I think CVS discounts a lot. Like we got lunch once in between recordings and I came back with like

bags of CVS, uh, Reese's eggs, Easter eggs, Reese's eggs. Scott, are you a Reese's or a correct pronunciation? Reese's man. Well, he was going to say, yeah, I think I'm. Reese's eggs. Scott, are you a Reese's or a, correct pronunciation, Reese's man? I was going to say, yeah, I think I'm a Reese's.

Okay. Got it. Okay. That's fair. Though, I'm not even sure your answer, Mike, because you did say correct, but also it makes me think you like saying Reese's better. Well, I think it's funny saying Reese's, but Reese's well I think it's better I think it's funny saying Reese's but I I Reese's now look I look I'm not I'm not I'm not not guilty for mispronouncing I I called a guag what did

I call it guave agave agave oh agave yes multiple so look I I already so I'm I'm screwing up too here so I'm not I'm not out of the woods. Yeah, yeah. I, well, I'm going to try it on for size. Maybe I'll shift to becoming a Reese's person. It didn't feel right. I think I'm not like having the joy and abandon that you need to have to say Reese's. You need to be a much more of a free spirit to say Reese's. Yeah.

So too uptight. Well, I'll work on it. I'll try to drop that word in to our conversations all month as much as I can um but for now let's tackle we're guys we're opening with a with a bang we're doing a big old major major attraction uh this is exciting twilight zone tower of terror uh been looking forward to this conversation a lot and i think as usual we'll put a little bit of a put it in a little bit of a box here we're going to mostly just talk about florida and the california version not mission breakout guardians of the galaxy not tokyo version we haven't done paris but scott you've been there and this is that is pretty similar so it just is exactly

the same i believe as uh as california um only with worse theming on the way in that's the i can get that out of the way right now that you just sort of like even they managed to do a little like some lead up it's kind of weird in the corner over there in california adventure it is like it's odd it's certainly not the grand build-up of sunset boulevard in florida still better than france though where you just kind of like round a corner and pass by like a poster for signs or something like some out-of-date movie and then just oh tower of terror is here and the other thing that makes me crazy is that you can see the back which is unthemed like if you're on harbor boulevard uh if you're at harbor and catella the former location of nixon's hamburgers of course um you could you know you could see the back of that building and it's sort of unthemed but you let that slide with disney you know they

they don't really theme the back of the cars land rocks you know that's not you know they they dress the side that you're where you're in the park um paris you're just in there and it's just like a like a blank facade it's terrible um so i'm sorry to start on a on a sour yeah but that does clear out every everything that there is to say about the france one uh there's i was gonna say there's one other thing they have extra little like they have like different scenarios they put in the elevator shafts on special like weekends as well they have like a little bit extra magic with like some more dropping i didn't know that um that i just they announced i don't know if they've actually put it into uh put it into use yet but they announced it at a certain point so they're trying different things

and they also kind of do a similar thing in tokyo with like they have like there's some scarier iteration yeah that they they advertise specially i mean that's sort of true of all of these in a way that they've like found ways to to randomize it and increase the scares i mean that's when i when you think a tower of terror you definitely think of of the ads and that not only are the ads when it opened but then there's this other wave of uh i'm trying to remember um oh like you know the fear every drop and like uh double was it double trouble like they had so many promotions i know what you mean like the one the one i wrote down was t4 so it's like the fourth iterations they're calling it t4 and which maybe implies there's up to four drops or maybe more like big drops which also had the phrase

the tower is in control yes okay so the very first iteration was one big drop. Yes. Two years later. That was it, really? Yeah. Yeah. And you have to imagine maybe a little anticlimactic because you waited so long those first few years. It was the star of the park at that point. Do you remember, Jason, going on this? Because I went on this pretty quickly when it was open. We just happened to be going that year. Or it was the year after. It was Rock and rock and roller coaster and tower of terror were both open and i was uh and this opened in 94 right yeah 94 but didn't rock and roller coaster open in 99

that was a while there right all right then i'm confusing my own trips i went on this pretty quickly after it was open so maybe i'm confusing my two trips with rock and roller coaster but i remember not being like let down by the drop is really what i'm getting at yeah i mean the build-up is so satisfying uh as for me i think i think it opened in between like trips my family took so i think i would have gone on 96 so it may have been two drops at that point but it was still brand new still like uh hour to 90 minute wait at least i just remember the first time getting the full extended queue and the gardens were so cool like it was so it's supposed to be dilapidated but disney is so good at uh landscape architecture like the dilapidated gardens are

beautiful and the other thing is there were misters hidden everywhere so it was a little spooky and also much needed because it would have been like the middle of summer oh sure yes yeah that's a cool way to do it it kind of seems like fog or something i also remember when this ride showed up on the scene obviously i didn't i didn't actually go on it until with you guys in last october um i i it opened i think i because i went in 92 and 94 so the second time i went to disney world it was there and i remember feeling more unnerved everywhere at the resort because of the mere existence of the tower wow really just that you would see it from epcot or you'd see it from a hotel or you'd see the ad with the like shaking elevator the the billboard on the way in or you'd see it on the in-room tv it like loomed

over the whole trip it like just just the notion of it made my second time there so much scarier because you knew you were gonna do it press yeah no because i knew i wasn't gonna do it i didn't do it then oh i see i see okay you when i was not no i and i and maybe the maybe the inner shame of knowing there wasn't even a chance that i was gonna give it a shot yeah i i felt similar with alien encounter because that was also new. Yes. Maybe that whole trip was just shame in the back of my head.

Yeah, shame that I wasn't going to do it. And also like what happened to this place? This was a magical place for little kids full of castles and fairies. And now there's so much horror around every turn. Why did they add things young people might enjoy and be thrilled by disgusting didn't make any sense to me there's gonna be more looks behind the scenes of my favorite films

and that is all they should ever add i i felt anxiety because of alien encounter because i was like thought it was awesome when i was reading about it then we got there i famously of course if you listen to the old episodes chickened out and i was it definitely like it like stuck with me the whole trip of like your dad and your little sister went on it and you didn't you loser but i wasn't like i was once it was like decide we had gone to magic kingdom and i wasn't going to go on it i guess i kind of put it out of my mind um yeah yeah i mean i didn't i didn't build up the bravery until last year and i'm so glad i mean as i've said before really tokyo was what did it because uh aaron when when we were there my wife was like you're not going to come all this way and not go on this tower of terror and thank god

because that thing is incredible and then it like um you know it made me have to go do all the other ones and guardians and everything um erin was very that was maybe her biggest trip disappointment because we were uh she was newly pregnant at the time and that she was really looking forward to doing uh uh the florida tower of terror so apologies to erin if you're listening to this we'll we'll get there one day yeah i um i do remember since you both mentioned being scared as children uh going when this was open i was so excited to ride it at the same time all of the marketing for it featured footage of people standing in an elevator that drops and i was like this is insane disney just puts you in an elevator standing up and you're going to drop and then as we're like this is like driving me crazy as we're

like in the line and i'm like oh there's rod surly obviously as a weird little child i love the twilight zone um i was so excited to see rod Serling and the queue and everything. And then the doors open and there's seats and seatbelts. And I'm like, oh my, thank God. Just thank God. But I feel like it was another one where like my memory as a child, and I'm probably just misremembering, is I could not get a straight answer from cast members.

Like when I would ask like, does the rock and roller coaster go upside down? Or does the Outer Limits Flight flight of fear like is it super scary like and no one would tell me uh and i did that once and there was a um there was a refresh of space mountain where i went and asked okay when this was redone was a launch added and maybe i didn't have the word launch at my disposal and i had to say like does it have the thing where it goes super fast all of a sudden which if you say that to a space mountain employee they're like yeah yeah like uh yeah it's a fast ride what do you i could not get a straight answer and obviously they did not add a launch so i braved it anyway but that was my launch fear

even the like the idea that they might have put one in there was too much for me launch that's interesting because yeah rock and roller coaster is my first launch but i don't know when when is the first time you knew what a launch was do you think how old do you think you were well when would when did they start putting them in there i mean yeah rock and roller coaster could have been the first one like around then and mummy yeah um yeah i mean i was a teen by the time oh yeah i was i was a teenager who was deathly afraid of the mere notion of launches just to clarify not a child wow i think just because i wasn't even that familiar with launches when i did rock and roller coaster i i realized that made me feel bad i've said this before so i'm not gonna get that

far into it but it made me feel better because it would go quick it would be over quick I hate the suspense of rollercoaster I hate the suspense I don't like the slow climb up like that's why when we did hang time which is the thing that shit like just puts us like in a chair slowly going vertical

that's the most anxiety inducing thing that I can do because it's just all suspense and then the ride is fine which so it's interesting like this kind of ride it is the first disney drop tower and they've done less themed ones like the malibu boomer um which that one just shot you straight up like there was no build-up that wasn't that like you climb up very slowly that was just like yeah similar to dr doom's fearful that was like an off the shelf sort of thing with no theme at least dr doom they the cue is pretty good and i've and the i've never done a legs dangling drop ride sure sure really never ever ever i'm not saying i won't never done

you've never done fearful never done fearful you've never been through the latverian embassy never been received at doom bot michael this is i can't believe this yeah i look, next time we go to Orlando, or I go to Orlando, I will... I don't even want to say it. I will do Dr. Doom's Fearfall. I did it like four times, because you could just go out the exit and go around a corner and get back in line. I don't...

Because you're a brave boy. You were a brave boy and still are. I gotta see those views. got to see those views. I got to see those views. I try to cut you down by making fun of your Reese's pronunciation, but it's just because you're braver than I am. Oh, thank you so much. No, that's what it's all about.

All of the undercutting. Because you've had so many more years of tower of terror experience that is true but i had multiple times doing the research for this where i truly felt like an idiot where i am like learning i did i did not know that if you stare at the morocco pavilion i didn't see the tower it did not occur yeah you could it did not occur that they were that close that they built like minarets almost on top to make it blend in tie together right right so if you're in epcot center and world showcase and you're from certain angles you're staring across at the morocco pavilion they colored this tower of terror to fit with epcot's morocco i know i never noticed that fits in the sight line yeah yeah i never

that's very cool i saw the photo they had on whatever site i was on and it was i was like oh wow i probably stared right at it yeah i didn't realize it kudos yeah we will um the thing i was going to get to is that yeah this is the first disney drop tower and i think it it came out of they knew they knew they wanted to do that like splash mountain before it. Like this is a genre of ride. That's very common, but we haven't done it ourselves.

It actually maybe wasn't that common. And I think the way that it mainly existed before is sort of like maybe the only one of these we've talked about on the show is the tower of terror ripoff that we encountered at movie park, Italy. Again, I never remember the name of it,off that we encountered at Movie Park, Italy. Again, I never remember the name of it. Movie Land? But that was this, if you didn't hear the episode,

that was this ripoff Universal Studios that has a ripoff Tower of Terror that says Hollywood Tower at the top. But that is not where you're in this room that fits several dozen people. You're in this very claustrophobic little cage basically that rises up that that is the slow climb that's the thing that you would be afraid of yes yes um so i think that was the main way that drop rides existed and and in disney's pursuit of trying to do a ride like this that's what maybe they were originally thinking that they had to do. And if you've ever been on one of these rides or you heard us talk about that rip-off-y one,

often how it goes is it's this slow climb up to the top and then you jolt forward to the other track and then you go down in such a way that it curves you until you're on your back at the bottom, which is so weird and like low rent and carnival-y it's like uh yeah it's like it's like almost like you're on a water slide kind of thing yeah which that's weird why do you accept it on a water slide like of course i'll be sort of like naked and unattached to anything and end up on my back but doing it on a ride with a

physical piece feels so shady. Yeah. Yeah. And that one of those is often themed to Superman, the escape. It's so crazy how some of the most recognizable characters in the world translated into any number of languages have the most like rickety six flags, ask a death traps named after him. Well, that's Six Flags.

I mean, that's obviously Six Flags. I mean, that's part of the appeal. It's part of the thrills, you know? It's a different kind of thrills than the storytelling, like playing on the senses that Disney Imagineering does. Yes. They made a deal with the devil, the Looney Tunes and the DC characters. Like, there's so rarely a good ride

or attraction based on any of this beloved ip i saw someone saying uh someone was calling us out and i can't remember who it was uh because we were talking about the fact there's no good looney tune ride but apparently i forget which park it is there's a loon there is a dark ride looney tunes in the park with the elf gremlins that had the elf and gremlins ride. Oh, is that right? And I wasn't even on my radar, but it is kind of an old school, like, 90s animatronic ride that looks pretty cool.

Okay, okay. Cool, because it's like 30 years old. Oh, okay. So it's a little rinky-dink, but like, it's like, feels like what we would have loved. But it's closer, yeah, to what we but like it's like feels like what we would closer to yeah to what we're looking for when we were talking about that so we gotta we gotta look into that more but well that's the episodes we've talked about doing are like let's track batman in the parks

and maybe looney tunes should be added to that list too oh yeah what have they actually pulled off and is this uh to buy one the any good like does that do justice do we yeah not that we'll go to dubai probably we can get free tickets though i emailed the pr guy and we can get free tickets but i don't think they're gonna fly us to dubai unfortunately but maybe now that we've been around for a while maybe now that we're uh a juggernaut of podcast podcasting oh yeah they gotta put us up in first class where it will be safer for us to fly and right yeah oh yeah and uh i also want to set up where we can have jason recreate tom cruise's stunt in mission impossible four uh where he's which one's four which one oh climb in

the building because jason wants to do that uh you love heights yeah that one looks okay you're the new the new stunt i would be where he rides some motorcycle into the air and then spoiler alert for the listener who doesn't want to know it was it was on every like newswire it was on the associated press uh that's true um yeah yeah yeah so you don't you won't do the new motorcycle stunt, but you are willing to do the tallest building in the world running around it on a wire. No, I said I would be interested. Oh,

you would. I'm more interested in the motorcycle. You would, you would rather ride a motorcycle off of an evil Knievel ramp off the side of a mountain. That, yeah. Cause I,

I feel like the hardest part of that would be learning how to ride a motorcycle hmm that seems like a lot of precision on a ramp i don't know did you guys know about this um in in vegas at the uh formerly known as the stratosphere you can go out to the top level and they'll put bungee cords on you and you can just jump off the building yes and you just slowly land well lindsey and i watched about an hour's worth of videos of people doing it and i did too recently yeah and people just melt down they're standing at the top of this thing and they're like sobbing and the woman or the man who's working there who's seen this a million times is just dead inside going, it's all right.

It'll be okay. And they'll be like, can you just push me? Can you push me off? And then they're like, we can't push you. You have to jump. Like, you have to just, no, but please just push me. I just, I'm so scared. Like, it's going to be fine.

A lot of people have done this. And they're just like, they're not helping at all. They're just like, go closer to the edge and jump. And then finally, after like 20, some people like 15 minutes, finally just, you know, inch off the building and fall with a bungee cord. It's like insane. I can't imagine. I want to do it so badly.

You want to do it? Oh, yeah. Really? Well, I've always wanted to. Okay. Oh, yeah. Really? Well, I've always wanted to... Okay, part of my love of Tower of Terror, as a kid, I was so excited because it was so tall, and I love being high up. This is probably a short man complex,

but I was so excited for Tower of Terror to go up that high, and I think I've always wanted to safely jump off the top of a building. Wow. I'm kind of shocked because that seems so... I would be the person melting down for 20 minutes, I think, at the top of the hotel. I am so...

I mean, it's like $100 or $150 if you get a video. I was a little annoyed that the video risk... Let's take it out of the Patreon. You're going to do this. You know? You you're gonna jump off the top of a building here's well here's my one thing though is i think i would have to get contacts because it would all just be a blur to me and i think i would want a crystal clear view of what i am seeing so i yeah i i am very impressed with this like i just you know tentatively said that i would do dr doom's fearful ride not that the other thing isn't safe but yeah people melt down on what you're talking about yeah like a big part of it is that you have to do the jumping yeah like that's

my problem with skydiving too and i know like the first time you go you're strapped to another person that knows what they're doing um like i would have to be forced to do dr doom's fear fall i couldn't climb up a tower and then jump off of the tower a machine has to do the work for me so that's why the idea of actually stepping off of a building drives me insane so i am legitimately impressed with you saying you want to do this and we have to make this happen i think the one thing that worries me is just like i don't know it feels like there's a lot of backup cables i watch them explain like all the fail saves but i think part of the appeal is that you just slow down as you get close to the ground there's no snapback like bungee jumping snapback yeah scares the snapback would scare me that does

sound so you just yeah you just slowly land yeah wow man this is gonna be a great episode yeah uh well i don't think i wasn't planning on getting contacts anytime soon so i'm also not planning on going you have a really boring logistic to do and then and the virus has to go yeah the virus i mean vegas is a third open but uh not not a ton of stuff to do so hashtag stratosphere aden um it's good wow the event of 2024 this is tom cruise of podcast the ride and i'll go on the new york new york roller coaster that's my pledge i don't know if i feel comfortable with you going on okay fine i've done it i cannot recommend yeah i i will uh gamble in the pleasure pit at the planet hollywood casino where the women wear like slightly more revealing clothes that's the danger

i will face oh a lower cleavage that's correct yes that's the danger I will put myself in in Vegas while Jason jumps off a building. So I was starting to say, just in terms of the history of the thing, yeah, the Disney, I think, was, I forget where I got all this info, but they were thinking about doing one of those where you end up on your back. So something a little more low-renty. And something has come up on the show before that sort of pops in know, pops in and out of the history of the tower of terror. And that is this thing, geyser mountain. Uh, I know Mike,

you love this, this idea. Yes. Um, this was a Baxter thing. Yeah, maybe it was at some point. I,

um, the, the main gist being that it is like a, I guess a launch and then a drop ride where you are launching because a geyser is going off and propelling your vehicle into the air there's a yeah there's an episode of the season pass i believe it's a paywalled episode of the season pass podcast that's all tony baxter unmade rides wow wow this is in there and in addition it would have gone back by where star wars land is

which also was a place that osland would have gone if the james franco movie was a hit walk around franco now it does which that'd be fine today right oh yeah just replace him replace him with uh the old guy from the original although they don't have the rights they don't have the rights to that though but whatever oh yeah i don't have the rights to that, though, but whatever. Oh, yeah, I don't know what they'd do. But just put another Johnny Depp. Yeah, yeah, Johnny Depp is perfect. No problems there.

Johnny Depp as Oz. Yeah. So, but apparently there was some proto-iteration of Geyser Mountain that would have been the same idea except it's one of those like yeah you you end up on your back a little more so they were like pursuing that is that a way we want to do a a drop ride and that that didn't end up working out but that was the first that disney's may be thinking about doing it and it's enough in the air that it is one of the things originally proposed in 1990 when they were doing starting to plan the first big expansion

of disney mgm studios because it was specifically a half day park at some point in time if you when it opened if you can picture it without that sunset boulevard area and without rock and roller coaster there's very little going on yeah and the expansion started and muppet vision was one of those things but they were talking about other stuff to do. And I got some of this info, by the way, from Kevin Rafferty's book, which I ended up buying and I highly recommend. I think we've been overlooking Kevin Rafferty as a Baxter level person for a long time. There's crazy stuff in this book. He shows up in a lot of like cool stuff.

I think he had his hands on a ton and more than you know, because even if I haven't really gotten to read the book yet, I mainly read about Tower, but like he wrote the lyrics of the Sunny Eclipse songs. Weird stuff like, you know, we don't really like this thing, but the Enchanted Tiki Room new management was this guy. But then also like he wrote all the songs for like you know the the mater jamboree that's great like so many odds

and ends and radiator springs racers and one of my favorite things pangalactic pizza port with tony solaroni which you get a big breakdown of uh in his book and apparently he also wrote some of at least at one point in time mich, Michael Eisner's intros for the show. Wow. That's how much an all-hands-on-deck writer this guy was. He wrote the study eclipse songs and the hellos. Wow. That's kind of like how Marty Sklar would be writing a lot of Disney's internal stuff for introductions on the show and that sort of thing.

That sort of connects to that. Oh, that's right. God, writing the copy on the TV shows and the attractions themselves that's cool that's still the case um but anyway he he and his book talks about the formation of this right and how so they're pitching a ton of stuff what can we do in this expansion area and somebody pitched a hotel drop ride and i think the idea was that there you find some there's some backstory where there's a murder in a pool in the basement and then that starts making the elevator you're in act weird and that makes it go up and drop and uh and maybe vincent price was was pitched to be

part of it to pitch it yeah the people pitched to be part of it are insane this cast of characters oh well there's a there's a big one or we'll get to that in a sec but the so it's some i don't know vincent price some weird story uh uh there's a murder in the put like the pitch was weird and everyone in the room eisner included is like but why does the so why does the elevator react to a murder it just wasn't really tied up he thought Vincent Price maybe wasn't relevant enough so it just kind of died on the vine Kevin Rafferty was not doing that pitch he was just in the room and he heard it and like there's something there though like the idea of a haunted tower there's like that's pretty

great and it stuck with him for a while and he even just brought it up one day to to uh another imagineer maybe kirk is his last name i forget exactly but they were talking about it and went like well is there some way to revamp that idea and make it work in the studios better and uh they were talking about well is it about adding a property to it like is there some way to tie it into a tv show like The Outer Limits they proposed, which we just talked about The Outer Limits ride at King's Dominion. And then they got to Twilight Zone. And, oh, that's kind of something. Or what if you're kind of like in an episode of The Twilight Zone?

And then they were trading names back and forth. Well, isn't there a real thing called the Hollywood Tower off the 101? Maybe it could be like that. Oh, what if it's the Twilight Zone Tower Hotel? And then Rafferty spits out, what if it's the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror that just flew out of his mouth improvised? And they both went, yeah. And they got a new meeting on the books with Eisner. Here's the pitch.

Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. He's like, I love the name, but what is it? They explain it more he says how this will be a elevator ride where it doesn't act like an elevator where it does things that an elevator wouldn't do he's like that sounds cool does is twilight zone relevant though frank wells says absolutely they show the marathons all the time it's as relevant as ever like that's an institution it will always be and eisner said it sounds good to me it'll just take money it'll take a ton of money and uh and suddenly this guy who's like done these weird robot shows in japan is in charge of a e-ticket attraction that he doesn't actually know how to pull off and a big important thing about the Twilight Zone, the rights were available.

Oh. CBS was very happy to license it to them, you know, and it fit perfectly within their movie and television studio production park. Right, right. Absolutely. But there was also, I guess I skipped a step of that by saying all that because also in the air was this other hotel idea, which I think is what you were alluding to, Jason, the Hotel Mel. Yes. The Hotel Mel.

Well, the other name I heard, too, was Stephen King. Yes. I found Stephen King was approached. I found that, too. Yeah. yeah notable for taking meetings with both disney and eventually universal who at one point was pitching like a scary attraction based off some of his books that would have included a fake loading where pennywise the clown would have exploded out of the control room and the ride would have continued now this didn't happen of course nothing goes away forever and that idea

was worked into revenge of the mummy oh no kidding that's nuts that a stephen king coaster like all of stephen king's ip in one ride is what it seems like right jason yeah which kind of became the the idea for the tv show castle rock it like ties together a bunch of the characters and the town and everything wow yeah so it was either going to be mel brooks or stephen king uh what i read about mel brooks is that they were trying to get him to shoot uh movies at the mgm studios disney mgm studios park, because they had full production facilities and they knew him and his son, Max,

were fans of the park. And on the Disney fandom for Tower of Terror, it said, Mel initially had to be sold on the idea of a theme park attraction after being explained

that a theme park attraction has a lasting effect of being in place and seen every day of the week by 20 000 people for like 10 to 20 years and that i think is a big like keystone a big benchmark for like why these places resonate so much because they are so many people experience them it is a shared experience of like oh you can skip a movie you cannot see a movie but like so many people have ridden these things you know right right so they end up with this idea that

i i what i figured out is that i don't think the hotel mill was was a drop ride i think it was that you're gonna be on a set and you're taken around in a golf cart like that hollywood inside baseball that you're on a back lot going i'll go on a crazy golf cart ride but through the set of sort of a young frankenstein ish mel brooks comedy war and it was just yeah it was calm it was gags yeah the village maybe would have been built the young frankenstein castle might have been there and like a village and that you could walk down but who knows how far any of this stuff got you know yeah did he maybe take any of the ideas that were being formulated and infuse them into dracula dead and loving it uh i have not seen dracula dead and loving even though i referenced it not long ago uh

so why won't we don't know probably i i feel like i might like you when the turn happened and the leslie nielsen movies got kind of like less good every time uh i was disappointed then i bet now i would like watch the lesser leslies and and go, this is better than any comedy film in the decade. Yeah. I was watching some old Jackie Chan movies, and I was like, this is so good. These are so good. These stunts are insane.

Yeah. Like, it's just like a lot. You're watching like a live stunt show. It's crazy. Yeah, right. We like old things i guess now i know i do kind of want to watch the yeah lesser leslie marathon maybe coming for me oh sure um but uh i just think it's interesting that they were like piecing this together so

slowly what about a drop ride what about a it's disney mj studios and there's a hotel well not quite and we're and then it finally all crystallized in this in tower of terror and they started planning it and budgeting it and seeing if this was going to be the thing but it was as an expansion idea for disney mj studios it was up against a different kevin rafferty idea he was working on two things that were in contention to be the big centerpiece of the expansion and the other one and i don't want to spend too much time on this because this for sure is its own episode at least a second gate uh the other one that he was pushing along was the creature's choice awards if you guys i don't know anything about the creature's choice i don't know this. Excuse me?

Oh, my God. This is why you have to get this book, Magic Journey, because there's photos of it. I've discovered some of this from some YouTube video that I didn't know where they were getting it from. I'm watching the video going, excuse me. And now I know it's from Kevin Rafferty's book because this is, without saying too much, because i'll have to save it for this episode i'm even i'm even like do we just move

this up and do it soon maybe but uh we'll figure it out but uh just to whet the appetite the creature's choice awards involves a uh the host of the creature's choice awards Awards is a character named Eddie Franken-Murphy. Wow. Yeah. And there is art in this book of Eddie Franken-Murphy. Wow. Eddie himself heard the pitch. Like Eddie Murphy was aware of the possibility of being Eddie Franken-Murphy.

Whoa. I've never seen anything about this it's in some it's buried in some other youtube video i don't remember the channel it's a guy with a british accent or something but i was watching it months ago just jaw dropped like what are you telling me right now a monster award show with it's so it's so good mixed with the fact that rafferty is working on tower of Terror, the great, like, you know, now in every park attraction that is beloved. Then this bizarre idea and Dick Tracy Crime Stoppers at the same time. Like this.

And in the book, they detail conversations he had with Eisner about like, wait, so it's a gun. Yeah, it's a gun in the car, but it's like a fun go. I don't know about a gun. Like it's so that we've been, I think, underrating Kevin Rafferty. There's a lot in the Kevin Rafferty arc. I think Crime Stoppers may be coming up too, we should say. Ooh, that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would love to. We'll off mic about how soon you'll hear about Eddie Frankenrath. Wow. It's so crazy. Yeah, we got i heard that um i'm seeing uh now that part of part of the reason is they couldn't get the rights to eddie franken murphy's famous characters uh gumbo and booqueet it's just too expensive to get those hilarious characters he would do b-o-o yes yeahO. Yes. Yeah, Boo-queet.

That's pretty good. Sorry, I guess it's Gum-Boo and Boo-queet. Tis the season, you know. And he definitely references work in Boo-verly Hills Cop. And Boo-merang. And Boo-boo-finger. Oh, Boo-finger. Wait, was he? and boo boo finger oh boo finger wait i might have been thinking of boo finger is he in no no

he's also in don't doubt yourself yeah wow do they all do they all work maybe i guess i uh my name is Boolamite. That's not quite as good. Yeah. Shrek is just Shrek. Yeah. Anyway, we'll figure that one out. This is where, if I could just go to Imagineering on a random day in 1990

and see concept art of all of this, that these things are all being, and that's just like a third of what they're working on. And I think that's why I can't abide by too much Eisner hate, because sure, he messed up later, but he also enabled a world where like, okay, what's my 315, the Creature's Choice Awards? All right, well, hurry it up, because I got gotta four o'clock about tower of terror but how to make an elevator uh move freestanding down a hallway what a great time eisner did it he certainly did uh can i just ask one question what was the creature's choice what kind of a writer

is that too big of a spoiler what kind of a thing was it like what was it it is and again i'm glad i didn't learn more because so i can't really spoil but it he he claims in the book that it would have been an audio animatronic theater show um with the like scope and amount of robots of uh the american adventure wow oh my gosh holy shit my appetite is more wedded now good i'm glad i asked yeah okay yeah unbelievable um so uh to to come we'll put it we'll put the pin in that but it was he literally what a crazy time for this guy he has two projects in contention that one they realized logistically maybe they couldn't do and what eisner was pushing and why this thing really happened and why he was sold on it ultimately

is what jason said earlier we want teens we want thrills uh for a park that at the time didn't have a ton of rides and i don't think a thrill ride initially uh this this one was it and it was incredibly expensive to do but eisner kept pushing i think the benefit of a huge thrill ride i think it'll have a transformative effect on the entire property and it did well i and i think a big impetus was that for a very short amount of time disney eventually took the leap but in terms of universal studios florida versus mgm studios universal was had more guests for a while after they got their shit together after the first like year or so it was beating mgm attendance wise so they're like

we gotta put some stuff in there and that's as you see you know star tours and muppets and tower of terror down the line a little uh kind of helped it find its foot that it was always my family's favorite part to go to like so except we love the movies and we love tv so much and and it just everyone liked it and i i feel like a lot of stuff that everyone in the family could do yeah yeah definitely something for everybody and the fact that there is thrill rides and then like here's this walking tour that it doesn't challenge uh anybody uh mermaid show like it like it became such a big variety especially after this opened yeah yeah i remember yeah we i don't know that we would have declared it our favorite but we were very into it

i mean especially twilight so which my mother is a huge fan of like i think that it was it was checking so many boxes for us uh and then it's yeah then when tower of terror was put in it was like yeah next level like finally had something i mean great movie ride is very cool i guess i i wouldn't call it like next level going on it though maybe sure maybe at the time by the sheer amount of it's still not next level i guess because there's already been pirates which has a ton of anime so it's like good it's really good and it's really fun but it's like tower of terror then felt like a next level thing oh yeah yeah great movie i think got a boost from the length too not just the many sets of animatronics but like besides universe of energy there weren't

that many long rides at the time yeah well so to that next level point part of it is one of the things that was in rafferty's pitch, which is that this elevator car is not just going to go up and down. It is going to move forward. And obviously so much of our audience is hardcore theme park fans. But I think there probably are people listening who've only been to the California Adventure version and actually don't know that in florida it the car moves you get up to a floor and it lurches down a hallway um which is some of the you know why we've been

more okay with it changing and not being twilight zone in california because it feels like well it it never in california has been the ultimate version that was, you know, had this effect. It was even in the pitch. Yeah. It's, it's so, it's like so much better. We've said it a million times. I'm sure it's annoying at this point of like how much more it adds to the ride in Florida. And I wasn't even quite clear until I was doing some research about how it worked.

Yeah. Well, you want to talk about that? Yes. Real quick though. I want to see if anyone came across this because since you mentioned that push forward uh i found on one of the like fan wikipedia wiki pages or fan sort of things as it was describing the differences between the east coast west coast tower of tariffs it was saying like oh and they took out the fifth dimension uh sequence where you push forward in the florida version which the imagineers were never happy with and i had never heard that before i don't believe it i i usually check stuff against multiple sources but this just

made me so angry i was like what are you talking about they didn't like that's the whole that's the whole kit and caboodle that's the whole deal like maybe what they were generalizing it's not that they didn't like maybe the the the more nuanced opinion might be well it was all it's always a problematic in terms of function that that's the most likely part to break down or something because they it is interesting they never reprised it even the tokyo one which is really fantastic doesn't have that effect right i mean i've heard tony shit talk the california tower of terror tony baxter because it doesn't have that sequel he said like that's the big important sequence in the ride because it like that's when you finally

like it breaks your expectations of what an elevator does so that's what like he says that's so important to the rye which makes sense because that's really the moment when you go oh i didn't know this could do this which it's so funny that this got pitched and sold to eisner and wells with no plan of how they were actually going to do that it's like what a crazy that that tells you how much they were just in the money at the time that like i don't know figuring out and then rafferty had to leave that meeting with sklar and he was i think kind of freaking out like does that mean did he just say like do it yeah yeah you're in charge of any ticket now and you got to go learn some stuff so i don't think they did have a plan. And I guess, so let's talk about what they came up with. Yeah.

What's the easy way to explain the technology? Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to sound like the biggest idiot in the world trying to do it, I think. It's basically there's a ride vehicle inside another mechanism that makes you go up and down. There's the shaft, but you're actually in a vehicle that down there's the shaft but there's another you're actually in a vehicle that crawls into the shaft right and there's there's technically three parts there's the going up one there's the one that pushes forward and there's the one that quickly goes up and down those are three different mechanisms right different so it's like uh

categories okay so there's like a big like let's say that okay like how can i say this the dumbest way it's a big cube there's a big cube with some ropes on it cords cables another little box where the people's chairs are go into that big cube that cube just lifts everybody up to the top then the people leave their little vehicle out of that big cube they push forward they see all the fun stuff in the fifth dimension room and then they get loaded into another big cube that's held by different ropes and cables yeah and then it's the mainly cubes that's what you big cubes is what i'm talking about we love cubes on this podcast uh and then instead i think my my impression was that it kind of

free fall dropped you but that's not what it does there's like a mechanism that's basically just shooting you up and down it's like pushing you up and down it's not just free it's not just sort of free falling you it's completely controlling your speed and you're going faster than you would if you'd free fold if they were just to drop like any like if they were just to drop the cable you would be going slower and feel like less uh intense emotion than you would the way they do it now you are being pulled yes that's a better way to describe actually and the the the the fact i saw is if you hold a penny in your hand as you fall you will beat the the penny will hover in the air a little because it's falling at the speed of gravity and

you are falling faster than that because you are strapped into a vehicle being pulled uh down i would recommend not doing that on the ride though i would recommend because you might miss out on some of the hilarious bits that people do as they're falling some of the very good jokes that people like to scream i would say what do you what do they do what have you had yeah what jokes are you talking about i they're just so funny, I can't remember. I'm just laughing too much. I'm not sure, actually, though, because, like, Haunted Mansion, we've talked about it.

Yeah. I know people like to yell stuff in the room and scream, and we're not fans of that. You can call us old men. I don't care. I like to sit and enjoy the atmosphere. But Tower of Terror, I've never been like, oh, well, there's that bit again. I think people just, when you are at the top, when you're holding at the top for a second,

someone will go like, oh, I can see my car. Really? I feel like I've heard. I have definitely heard. I've never heard somebody do a joke like that at the top. I do like to hear genuine people like oh my god oh my god like tom you didn't tell me it was this like you know genuine anguish is very that's interesting i'm not i'm not trying to troll or anything i just truly never like nothing sticks out to me when

i'm at the top of any of these drop rides where i get annoyed scott i guess you haven't been on many but um yes not enough for there to be a recurring trope um uh yeah i can see my car would that bother me if i heard it i don't know if it was my dad maybe i'd give him some credit it all depends on the delivery quite frankly you know yeah yeah so interesting also just like the the parking lot is not in that view. If you're being accurate, you cannot see anybody's car. So I have a problem with it on a factual level. Well, I'm going to pay attention to this. Do you find that you have that happen on Guardians a lot or no?

Guardians, it's hard to tell. Just it's so much noise. There's so much. The music is so loud. Sometimes you can't even hear a rocket. Right. I like his little jokes, you you know they're pretty polished leave it to the professionals like rocket yeah yeah that's that's our stance um that that yanking faster than gravity situation that's another thing

i found in the rafferty book that they went and um talked to the otis elevator company who did end up uh putting in the elevator mechanism for this attraction and they went to a recently opened 50 story uh elevator the shaft that they had they had built for some high rise um and they kind of just like talked about logistics and then they got went up to the top and then said take this thing down the fastest it can go and uh there was reticence about that you sure okay well let's give it a shot and then they did and they didn't feel anything they didn't even have like any heart drop and they were like that's really the fastest yeah it pretty much is and that's when they realized we can't just rely on what elevators already do we have to pioneer new elevator technology if we actually want to be able to be weightless or really feel something right um but that is a funny thing that

a real elevator company built this to do as is said in the imaginary story the opposite of what elevators are supposed to do yes i think in the imaginary story they're talking about like the people at the elevator company were like freaked out a little bit. Yeah. Like we have to do the wrong thing. We make this go the right way. We make it make it do the right thing. And now we have to make it do the wrong thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Very strange. The other thing that the moving through, I mean, I guess in a way, the spoiler, the end of Rise of the resistance is sort of like a mini version of this and that you're in a vehicle that moves into a another little cage that drops uh it's sort of similar but this sort of is is it is it the first trackless ride vehicle that little sequence because it's it's move you're moving along a wire huh that is guiding you right that's a good question one end of that fifth floor to the other, the fifth dimension. Maybe.

I'm not sure. That's a good question. I don't think I ever realized those autonomous guided vehicles, like, they have batteries. The batteries have to recharge in between, like, goes. Like, as you are getting off or getting loaded like they are charging the batteries yeah it's the time i don't i mean i don't understand a lot of mechanics and technology but i truly can't wrap your head around all the moving parts of something like this yeah which so i mean that like i don't have anything um you know intelligent to say here about my experience finally going on this other than, holy shit, waiting so long and then not doing it until last year.

I don't think I'd ever seen a video of how the fifth dimension worked. I think I'd saved it to try to be brave and do in person. Yeah, it's a jaw drop. And I feel like we got lucky we were in a group last year where I felt like a lot of them hadn't done it either. It was like getting applause and gasps the way that various rooms in Rise of the Resistance do. And certainly for me. And that, boy, that split of that neon light when you enter into that final, that is so haunting. That is such a stirring moment

that I feel like ended up in my actual dreams. That is so affecting and crazy. Yeah, it's, yeah, that moment, I'm trying to think if that's like, yeah, like that's the most like stark, I mean, probably like it's such a, I don't know why it's such as like a simple, that's such a simple effect.

And for whatever reason, sticks out so strongly. Yeah, there's almost... Yeah, there's like nothing happening. Right. A door opens with a neon light that just sort of slowly appears. And yet it's so much more minimalist

and scary than a lot of what's in any other Disney attractions. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I what did you guys watch any twilight zone episodes to get ready for this no not really okay uh i i was um i watched the nick of time which is one of the shatner ones uh because that's one of the easter eggs the the fort little devil fortune-telling device right is in the queue and uh i was like i don't think i've ever seen this one before and as i'm watching it i'm slowly dawning on me like oh this one is uh bad this one is not good it's just like i think william shatter's character just is obsessive compulsive like there

it it is in the way that at 20 the terror at 20 000 feet he is right at the end this one is just like oh this guy's just a worry wart this i don't know the lesson uh i and i think they just put this in the queue because the prop is distinctive but uh it's a good life i watched the first few minutes of and that is unsettling immediately which the kid with the powers yeah that's that's the one that the rod serling intro in the ride is pulled from right yes which is another thing that never dawned on me and it it's so much of it is in that episode in his introduction yeah he says that like they cut it in in the episode he's in front of a map of the united states not in front of an elevator bank and the line i have oh tonight's story on the twilight zone is somewhat unique and calls

for a different kind of introduction this as you may recognize is then in the ride they cut that off and they show you ride stuff and i don't think you ever see serling again um but in the yeah in the episode it's a good life then he it's actually kind of convoluted you're like why are you showing america and then they end up with a boy who has mind powers and can control people's thoughts as parodied on the simpsons it is one of the ones of the simpsons parodied yes and you know what's another weird thing about it's a good life it was it's one of the four that is in twilight zone the movie and it's directed by joe dante director of gremlins who directed the pre-show video for tower of terror yes that's cool and crazy yes a lot of theme park movie credits

to his name uh i feel like has he done other ride stuff yeah what is well he did that uh haunted lighthouse uh 4d that i am like a very much want to know more about the christopher lloyd thing that will play at bush gardens and sea worlds i feel like there was another ride thing he directed that's i'm blanking on right now but like was was it god yeah did did the tower of terror probably the most notable one um that's a huge one another reference to it's a good life in the hotel lobby there is a poster promoting the anthonyont Orchestra, which is a pretty good joke because that is the little boy with powers. And in the episode, he hates music. Oh, that's funny.

Yeah. Oh, that's a good little dry thing. Well, then he would have really hated that that little intro to his episode was sampled. In fact, the same one that's used in the ride, the somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction, is sampled on a song called Threatened,

which is a song by Michael Jackson, the final song on his final album, Invincible. It starts with a little Rod Serling sample. Another fun fact about the song threatened it sucks awful that entire you know you can and there's things that are like you know with everything going on you're like oh but i want to retain i still want to listen to billy jean or whatever no one is fighting for invincible it's garbage front to back he rejected rock your body timber lakes rock your body he said no so that he could do 16 tracks of just like

uh uh give it a try put it on on spotify and see if you uh disagree with me i have a feeling i'm not going to disagree with this yeah i'm not'm not going to fight you on that one. That was a challenge to anyone. Anyway, if you like the song Threatened, and you feel threatened by my dislike of Threatened, then I don't know the end of this sentence. I don't know what... Do we know of Michael Jackson's road to Tower of Terror? Hmm.

Did he do a Disney World trip when it was out? We know that he went to Fantasia Land to go on the Michael Jackson thrill ride. His own ride, yes. Yeah. Feels like he must. Yeah, did he get the idea? Did he say like, I want this to

start like the Tower of Terror? I don't see. I just searched his name in the ride and nothing popped up picture wise so who knows we'll have to dig deep we can't though there are many photos of people on this attraction um do you guys have we have good photos of you on this do you have childhood photos of you up at the top that's a good question i don't think we have any childhood photos of us doing this i have from recent trips i have some of the cool like videos they've been doing recently yes this was the first ride at walt disney world that had on

ride videos offered to purchase they have a fully like they put you in fully in like an edited video of like with shots of like the whole tower and then the thing crashing, but then inside they cut to an actual video of the whole cabin thing going up and down, and it's kind of in slow motion. It's pretty cool. Wow. We don't have the video of us on it.

We don't have video of us because I did not have a Premiere pass at the time, which allowed me to have full photo pass privileges. That came with, because you at one point had the the pass that works for both right because you went to both when i like west coast and east right when we were planning our first florida trip i crunched some numbers and i figured out that if i upgraded the annual pass to a premier pass i don't think it makes sense any more money wise but at the time it was actually the kind of reasonable and i was like actually if you just put the money we're

going to spend on the tickets into the premier pass we can get the premier pass and get uh more perks and that was part of it yeah geez like your videos my family did that in uh when we were in the vacation club we went like back like two years in a row and i think we went in august and we knew we'd back the next year maybe more likely june or july and it was just like oh it's let's just get annual passes like this is cheaper than buying like you know multiple sets of five-day passes or seven-day passes or whatever and you just feel like a king. You feel like you can go. Part of it, you know, having an annual pass to Florida, you're like, well, maybe we'll go next weekend.

I mean, you don't, but you do feel like you have some freedom. There's a freedom in knowing you can do that. Well, also in the 90s, they had a lot more aggressive ticketing offers, which came back after 9-11 and are um somewhat back right now although we are not advising you to necessarily uh rush out and do it but i believe universal currently has a buy two days get three days for free which is not usually how economics works yeah they're doing like six that's like six flag offer where it's like yeah uh walk by the entrance and get a year free wave at wave at a valencia teen and get a free year of admission yeah

yeah within five miles of the park and it'll just automatically be on your driver's license you just like scan it and then you get into six that's right yeah yeah so uh that might be coming back across the board after the pandemic is over at all yeah the theme parks um we've talked about the uh the rod serling intro and we're maybe jumping all around a little bit but but uh you know that that's really fantastic i also just want to give it the credit of i feel like i they're from the same year, and I associate that video piece with Forrest Gump, in that the idea of pulling somebody from old footage was the most difficult thing in the world to do.

It was, like, such a magic trick at the time, and I think we take it for granted now. And, of course, if you do visual effects or anything, you know, like rotoscoping is really difficult. Like they had to cut him out frame by frame, which he's standing still. So that helps you. But if you watch the that's what would surprise me when I watched the real footage that they pulled it from, that he was like in front of a totally different background. And they married it. It's not like he was like in front of a green screen where they could just put something different behind him right to really like work that yeah and the impression is very good too that's fair yes and that guy uh which i have his name written down here somewhere he does the he

does a rod sterling voice on the new twilight zone oh yeah when he like because he in the the one that just came out yes all right yes, right. Yes, because there's like this weird appearance. And that's him. He's back. Shouldn't spoiler it. His name, God, I have his name somewhere here. I think it's Ben something. He has a name.

He has a person's name. I'm sorry if you're listening. You can look it up. Joe Dante, the name of the man who directed the intro. The rest of the intro is great, too. So this whole story of, oh, this is something I wanted to talk about. Jason, you brought up, like, what is the lesson? You had a problem with, like, what's the Twilight Zone lesson of that one Shatner one?

So with this, five people get in an elevator. There's a movie star and her kind of also hollywood uh bow i don't know what he he does exactly um there's a move like a little kid actress like shirley temple and her uh caretaker or nanny or something and a bellhop and these five get into an elevator halloween night uh 1939 and it is struck by lightning and they end up in the fifth dimension what's the lesson what's the what's the twilight zone but remember well don't do well now the lesson for us is uh next time you check into a deserted hotel on the dark side of hollywood make sure you know what kind of vacancy you're filling uh but i don't know what lesson those people were supposed to get yeah it seems like it's not their

fault in any way no it i don't think they that was yeah they were not at fault i some i've been some twilight zones supposedly don't really have a strong like lesson the famous ones i think do but sometimes it's just a kooky adventure kooky supernatural scary adventure which i guess is what this is but rod serling certainly presents it as if we're supposed to learn something by the end of this it's got that judgy yes exactly he's judging five people who dared to like they, they put a woman. Like normal. She wore a fancy fur coat. And is it like you're trying, you like, I don't know.

Is that it? Is she an animal killer? Is it about fame? Is it like they came to Hollywood with big dreams and they sold out. Like they only did commercials and they didn't do authentic film and make points about the world. Pushed the medium forward. Right. They just, they were, it was very basic.

Their ideas about film and culture were basic. Did the bellhop steal from the customers of the hotel? Did he, like, take luggage? Did he pull schemes that way? Maybe, was he being punished? Perhaps, yeah. it's unclear i think it's kind of a choose your own adventure who's who you think is at fault and what they need to learn and what we why are we caught up in it why do we have to be punished yeah i know for their non-crimes yeah these people got in an elevator and then it fell and now you're gonna

fall i think is it about not doing your research maybe that's to tie together jason's point is it like you got to do your travelocity you have to like read the reviews so this is on you for not reading the reviews of the hollywood terror hotel that say don't stay here it hasn't been open since 1939 and and maybe it's actually a larger point because i'm sure disney gets a lot of people complaining about lines and when do they go and they don't know what the ticket situation is and what is a fast pass and where do you get it and i'm sure disney's so annoyed because it's just like look it up do your research and they made the tower of terror to say we're gonna pull this is what should happen to you who don't research you should go and complain you'll become ghosts we could do that to you if

we wanted so learn your lesson when did the haze drop our regular elevators you could have real elevator mishaps in the swan or the dolphin but instead we're going to teach you this right when did the haze code take effect could these be decadent pre-haze code hollywood denizens you know the the the code that the government like man the the studios agreed to abide by to not have like a woman sitting on a bed with her foot off the ground. Hmm. Two people smiling at each other. I'm still against a woman sitting on a bed in a movie. Mike, you are a big proponent to bring back the Hays Code. Bring, amp up the Hays Code.

Separate beds. Why you're an I Love Lucy fan. Yes. Yes, that is the main reason. Yeah. Maybe were they, this would have been too early, or they they aren't communists that's what i was just about to say is it there's a chance that the five of them were communists and they were being punished for it i wonder is there is there a secret lesson that the imagineers know but we don't know and he's never said where like and it was maybe even like shot

in some regard and then they decided like well you know you're not gonna be in that room for too long so let's just kind of have it be a random horror event right and we don't want to like offend somebody who might actually fall into whatever these five people are doing

yeah and they don't want to like if the back story is that it's the problem was with the movie star and the guy that like they are going up to the to a room to have sex before marriage and that is why everyone is punished right and they decided well do we really want to like lay that guilt trip on anyone living in sin who might be going on this ride we don't want anyone living in sin to go on the ride but it might happen right and they knew that the subtext would be there and you could you could kind of understand it maybe just without without having it as a conscious thought in your own head so and there are consequences for the other hotel guests the

people who had to abandon their mahjong game in the lobby the guy who uh in the opening special they're like look someone got here from a colder climate put their overcoat down got their hotel key got their newspaper and it's just left here so uh i'm assuming everyone evacuated when it was struck by lightning and that's why they left all their stuff you know i saw a lot about this mahjong game and of course my first question jason is were you a mahjong kid no i that is i don't know how to play mahjong i don't know how to play backgammon or bridge and that's my heart my heart broke each time you said each of those games because at least. Because at least Bridge, I was like, come on, Bridge. And then it was not, you didn't play Bridge.

As someone who likes old-timey bullshit, like, it is shocking that I have not learned those things. We should learn how to play during quarantine.

That's a perfect time to learn. Can we play, like, online Bridge? You need four. We'll have to, can we teach the sector keeper to play Bridge? Yeah, I'm sure. I feel like I, can we teach the sector keeper? To play bridge?

Yeah, I'm sure. I feel like that is a fact I know, but I could be wrong. Maybe you need minimum four, but you can play more with bridge. We got to figure this out if we're going to play online bridge. I was a big Moncala kid. I liked Moncala, where you put the stones and the little divots. We played Moncala. The stones.

Yeah, I played Moncala. We're all Moncala, where you put the stones and the little divots. We played Moncala. The stones. Yeah, I played Moncala. We're all Moncala kids? Yeah. Wow. Is that the new tagline for the podcast? Three Moncala kids. Three Moncala kids. Three grown Moncala kids. Right.

Maybe. It's pretty reliable. We'll roll it around in our heads here. Whoa. Three grown Moncala kids? I'm in. Wow wow screw these other podcasts i'm never listening to comedy bang bang again yeah i'm hanging out with these moncala guys week after week we truly become a juggernaut and of of podcasting and dubai flies us out after that

after we explode yeah uh maybe it's like go which i don't know how to play either the japanese the white the white black pebbles that you turn over you're trying to get the whole board uh as apparently they say maybe even more complex than chess um but uh interesting yeah i'll have to learn all these games yeah uh mark's mark silverman is mark silverman's voice. You're like, I think it's been something. I thought I think I was seeing Ben Silverman, the NBC, former NBC executive. Why do we all know that? Why do we all know that Ben Silverman? I don't know.

Oh, too mired. And we were warped by Disney MGM Studios. Now we know who executives are. And Robert and Robert Evans, I think i think also yeah you bet we do um there's in in trying to conjure backstories well they heard okay we haven't talked about this that and when we certainly we're not going to because if you're gonna i think this is a topic to cover in a uh to divide off in a separate uh um haunt, the Hauntcast, the Fright Down the Road. Um, there is the film. We haven't acknowledged the made for TV movie with Kirsten Dunst and Steve

Gutenberg, which now those, those two play characters who are not in the ride, but they are exploring, as far as I know, the legend of these five, who this mishap happens to. And I think because of the movie,

uh, there's enough information to cobble together, at least their names. Um, Carolyn Cresson, that's the movie star played by Melora Hardin in, um, uh, in,

in the film, uh, film, uh, Gilbert London is the movie star. Dewey Todd, Dewey Todd, great name is the,

uh, the bellhop. Sally Shine is the little kid actress, and the nanny is Emmeline Partridge. Now, you might in the movie learn why they deserve to fall down in the elevator. Maybe you discover they're all living in various kinds of sin and bad people and it uh it had to happen um but i don't know i we'll watch we will get there yeah we have to do that yeah uh but the the i'm sorry the the uh disney.fandom.com has a little breakdown of all of these characters i think based more on what happens in the movie and uh that leads to this trivia section for all of the characters.

And I clicked on this. And this is, I think, some really fun trivia that I learned about these characters. Sally is very clearly modeled after real-life child actress Shirley Temple. This might be an indication that Sally's life as a child actress was particularly hellish, given the amount of atrocities directed at the real-life Temple during her time in the spotlight. This might be an indication that Sally's life as a child actress was particularly hellish, given the amount of atrocities directed at the real-life Temple during her time in the spotlight. What? Like, just because she's in, like, a dress and has curls, that means that her life was hellish?

That's kind of a leap. You mean the actual, you actually mean Shirley Temple or this actress? Well, no, I know things happened to Shirley Temple, but why does it then follow that sally shine had a hellish life i guess and then yeah i was just gonna say that is the assumption that any especially back that any child actor probably had just an awful time of it which i mean probably yeah you you would have to assume but i just like that that is pulled from one shot of a girl moving from a desk to an elevator well her life must have been hellish she must have been starved and made to work for 48 hours in a row and fed a diet of meth sheep sperm and monkey gonads um additionally then on the other page for emeline partridge the nanny sally shine being made to

resemble shirley temple could be an indication that emeline was somewhat abusive regarding sally's career and operations given the tragedy like so now we're judging the the nanny like the nanny beat up sally or like was gonna throw her going to throw her out of the hotel window? Look, it was... Where is this fun trivia coming from? I don't get it. It was still a few decades before the Eddie Munster law took effect, you know? Before they got a little more protection for the child actors.

Wait, it's not Eddie Munster, though. Isn't it Jackie Coogan, who was Fester? Was it Fester? I know Jackie Coogan was an advocate for child set safety. The Jackie Coogan law ensures the financial well-being of child actors by mandating their employer set aside 15% of the child actor's gross earnings in a Coogan trust account where it can be monitored i got my spooky shows mixed i would love if there was an eddie munster law though is

there a different law you're thinking of that eddie munster the character from the munsters enacted maybe there was an episode where he went to like he went to the local government and he got something like uh more like uh dragons are now legal in everyone's house or something oh sure so it was a zoning issue he made it uh illegal to discriminate in a workplace against people with the werewolf widow's piece yeah you can't fire somebody just because they have a pointy haircut uh by the way, Al Lewis has been coming up a lot who played Grandpa on the Munsters. Al Lewis was 42 years old on the Munsters.

What? Yes. I looked it up. I was watching an interview with him, and I was like, huh, he's still in the 2000s. He's alive. Hey, he wasn't a grandpa age.

And then I looked it up, and it was 42 and i was like oh my god as a kid i thought he was like oh he's this is a 70 year old man anyway and now he's uh now his memory lives on when uh giuliani goes to a hairstylist make me look like this give me the out lewis give me a haircut uh um so we'll we'll explore these characters when we we watch the film my condolences to sally shine for her hellish life according to this unpaid fandom.com writer um but the videos neat and then you and then of course you go up in the shaft and you see them all float away and disappear into the fifth dimension that's a

really if you watch that video how the tower of terror works that breaks down kind of the schematic of where the mirrors are where the pepper's ghost happens um i don't think i realized that you know you're looking down this hallway and then it all disappears and becomes stars and just a floating door and that the full setup there is there are real walls it's all actually there but it's a scrim so that you can fade it down and once there's no lighting you can see right through it the The characters, your Sally Shines at all, are all down below. Like there's a mirror bouncing from below your point of view in the shaft. And then it's a rear projection making the door. It's like all of these, you know, classic theater tricks all working in tandem.

Yeah, it's crazy how a lot of that stuff, even on newer rides, like oh yeah these are the old tricks these are just the old tricks like and this may be maybe slightly upgraded but like mostly just the same fun stuff that always works right the theory yeah the theory is always there uh scrim stuff scrim stuff that's scrim stuff uh i was just gonna say the scrim on the Not Scary Farm scrim at the end of one of the mazes where you'd be walking down like a normal hospital hallway and then the lights would flicker and then the scrim would change

and you'd be looking at hell. It would have changed like the walls you could see through and it was hell with a giant demon. Like, yeah, very cool. Cool as hell yeah yeah i walked into that um what have we what are details we haven't um i got a i got a sally shine thing uh because she came up of course one of the little easter eggs in there kind of connects mentioned elsewhere in the ride uh sally shine has a little stuffed mickey mouse

and that is the like there's hidden mickeys throughout the ride but the thing i i don't know i i must have seen this before but not process the implications in the library where you can find a number of easter eggs there's a piece of sheet music and this, uh, is, was an actual song from the time period. Uh, but the, and the full title of the song, I'm going to read it in how I think it's supposed to be said. The sheet music is called what?

No Mickey mouse. What kind of party is this? Uh, which I mean, that's people just used to call songs very long sentences or like my beloved i i my dearest that sort of thing but i the presence of that sheet music of the the tower of terror just imagining a hollywood lush walking into this hotel after it'd been struck by lightning going what kind of party is this like it's such a dark

joke uh is there a way to get our hands on the sheet music and try to do a cover of this without hearing any actual recorded oh wow that's a great idea oh is that possible i don't know um that might require like somebody needs to have photographed that really well the full lyrics do exist I'm back on disney.fandom.com really the unofficial sponsor of this episode um

the when when Noah planned his famous I'll try to make up a melody when Noah planned his famous arc he knew just what to do he searched until he found a park and walked off with the zoo I'm trying to make up a melody. When Noah planned his famous ark, he knew just what to do. He searched until he found a park and walked off with the zoo. With lions, tigers, monkeys, donkeys, he sailed the ocean wide. And when he lined them up on deck, t'was then some cuckoo cried.

What? No Mickey Mouse. What kind of a party is this? Well, that's the official melody. What in is this? Well, that's the official melody. I think that's the official melody now. That's probably it. Yeah. They call it then later vote for Mickey Mouse.

Let's make him our next president to Congress. He's sure to say, meow, meow. Okay. How dry I am. Have one on me. What the fuck is this song talking about? Yeah, Mickey Mouse used to tie one off in the 30s a lot more. He'd say, meow, meow.

Tie one on? Meow, meow, meow. I'm not sure. Why would he say meow? And then he'll cry, give me the facts. Give me my axe. I'll cut your tax. He'll show us all what can be done when he's in Washington. So this starts as a song about Noah, the ark, and the zoo.

And what kind of a party is it without Mickey Mouse? And then becomes about how we have to elect Mickey president. During which they call him Bolsheviki. I don't know. The strangest song in history i mean i'll look i'll elect mickey as president right now it wasn't my first choice in the primary but it's certainly better certainly better than what we have look look jack look me and me and pluto and the boys uh hanging out on toondown docks. And that big old Pete was after me

and Clarabelle. I'm trying to think. There's got to be like a quirkier characters that I'm forgetting here that I could reference for this joke to be better. Mortimer. Mortimer. Fresh boy Mortimer

Mdog Seabell We used to go down to the old swimming hole Play with the nickels Donald if you don't vote for me You ain't a duck man There that's it Oh god Look we're voting for him You ain't a duck, man. Yeah, that's it. That's it.

Oh, God. Look, we're voting for him. Don't worry. Yeah, we're voting. We're doing it. Just because we make fun of it doesn't mean we're not voting. Don't yell at us. We're voting for Mickey.

We're voting for Mickey, of course. They also, this song then was recovered in 1970. They did a new version of it, performed by Phil Harris, the voice of Baloo. And in that one, they updated it and they put in the line, let's give, let's give Nixon's house to Mickey Mouse. Phil Harris in a song proposes ousting nixon and putting mickey mouse in there which truly could anyone have any uh objection to that in 1970 how much like atrocity could have been avoided what a national i mean the whole fabric of the country could be different if we'd all listen to phil harris well that's true uh and and also if you look up phil harris's famous

album the south will rise again oh no that's real that's a real sorry you told us sorry to break that to everyone that oh no all right don't always listen to phil harris just no we got it and you said always listen to phil harris no i have a soundbite don't whatever uh lincoln project uh within our show is uh well they the mickey project to oust scott gardner from podcast the right the mickey project the animatronic lincoln project oh there it is yeah that's what it is well they they spent 10 million uh rotoscoping footage of phil harris to dab so uh

uh um well we're all right cover of this song coming cover of this song oh my god what a side track there's funny little i mean they're the most kind of the more infamous like little dark jokes uh the the pin board with the letters in the lobby for a long time you know the letters that you just like push into black felt for a long time that said uh at the very bottom it said evil tower and after 9-11 they took out evil tower uh they replaced it really i think now it says you are doomed uh a little more a little more generic but yeah that makes sense yeah probably a good call probably a good call person who realized that the person who was like checking the ride and then went oh uh oh yeah um wow wild i i'll this is less dark i i don't have

much information about this fact but michael eisner maybe you guys do michael eisner suggested maybe we could make it a real hotel yeah cool which i love the idea of that but i think logistically that was a big pain in the ass he was right then he that would come to pass hotel built into theme park california adventure disneyland paris tokyo disney sea like well it did happen yeah yeah and and we've talked about this before on the show i don't like and star wars is doing this of course but the fully themed hotel seems like it's just a money printing machine like a full like spooky tower of terror hotel would be like sold out before every other hotel if it was themed as well as like the lobby of tower of terror absolutely maybe now they can just do like a suite they just put in like one room that's a

like really lavish experience because i don't think at this point you can fit rooms into that structure no it might be too late no it's too late um they of course at least rumor wise we're talking about putting a like a tower of terror bar lounge which is you know a fantastic idea and i'm shocked that they didn't do it because like yeah all all people as we've said before all people want to do is hang out and linger in these areas and environments longer you just want to let you want to last a little bit longer being in this vibe being in a vibe of a ride you like um yeah if they could get it at the top somehow although then you have to build a real elevator that doesn't malfunction yes there would have to be regular i mean the idea that you could stay in a hotel and if you

if you stayed at like the top floor you'd probably have to pay the most money. But then you could take the elevator down. Like, you could take the ride down to start your day every day would be the greatest thing. I looked this up in Eisner's book. And he did want it to, like, not only to have a real hotel surrounding it, but that the ride would drop into the lobby. So, like like where people actually checked in people are like landing and screaming this was definitely what he wanted that's great he also i don't think we've talked about this on the show um he there's something that he cites a lot and in this case he says well it's you know it's kind of i always try to go for the craziest

idea kind of like the mickey mouse hotel um There's a story that he tells as an example of this is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking I wanted to bring to the Disney company. The area where the animation building is now in Burbank, where there's a big sorcerer's hat, that was undeveloped at the time, and when he got to Disney, he proposed building a

huge hotel that is Mickey Mouse. Like, it's a giant, 200-foot-tall tall Mickey and you could live in his arm, in his foot. I mean, I guess in his crotch probably. I mean, it's all on the table.

you could live in his seat. Yeah. Can I, do you have any seats rooms left? The seats, the seat room is the non-smoking section or maybe it's the smoking section or it's yeah do you want to be i how desirable is the seat uh on what to the general was there windows in this proposal would there be like a window seat

room like where you could like so then mickey is just like full of that's what i imagine i'm getting yeah it doesn't seem like it seemed like it would be like the Star Wars hotel where it's like there's not really windows. Maybe there was like screens inside to simulate like cartoon land outside. Right, right. Well, you black out the windows and any touches of black, so like his legs were like around his hand, you put the windows on the the black uh colors huh it's so insane it's like how it's like dr evil being in a big statue of dr evil yes it is yes

it feels like yeah like you it would come to life then it would get like cursed or like the ghostbusters would get that plasma and use it to bring mickey to life like cursed or like the ghostbusters would get that plasma and use it to bring mickey to life like at the end of ghostbusters 2 yeah with the statue of liberty like that would be well that's you know that was done you know to to like bring good vibes to new york and i think good vibes are needed everywhere right now and if only only a 200-foot-tall Mickey Mouse could walk around and wave to everybody. Oh, my God. Yes. That would do a lot.

That would fix a ton. While Jackie Wilson played. Your love. And he could. Your love. You're lifting me higher. He could pick up the old tail of the pup building. The old big hot dog.

Oh, and eat it? Yeah, and maybe take a big bite out of it. Wow, that would be great. That would be the moment that would bring America back together. If Newsom's not going to open the parks, he needs to devote, I'd say, 60% of the state's budget to making a giant, really a yes that gundam that they yeah yeah we've seen the tests of that yes we need to do that but for mickey yeah i think that's

and i want to pay for it with my taxes yeah insist um yeah so where was i thinking i've lost my trick completely trying to thought thinking fantasizing about talking about a mickey fantasizing about giant mickey and being able to wave at him and live in his seat um we could talk about uh the uh what changed in the in the dca uh or the the opening of that um yeah not to you know we could circle back to any details to the other one um but this is where when i was talking about geyser mountain forever ago this sort of grew out of some proto geyser mountain pitch in the late 80s apparently they were disneyland was getting close to doing geyser mountain rather than the tower of terror.

Like it was, we were going to get a totally different version and it was going to be in that zone. That is now galaxy's edge, as Mike said. Um, and they were maybe honing in on a plan to do that. And then California venture opened and it was a disaster and they needed to

bail it out as quickly as possible. So this idea was vacated from frontier land and they uh i remember how quick it felt like the dca was only open for a little bit and it was like all right screw it tower of terror like take that parking lot out it's uh it's becoming a tower of terror yeah it's it's very reminiscent i feel like of the story they tell about pirates in disney world where it's like they're gonna build a western river expedition or whatever and then it's like people are mad oh wait uh just throw pirates in and it's gonna be less good yeah it's like the same kind of panic panic move with us like a less good version of the thing

people like that i heard this other interesting point of view about what makes the Disneyland and the Paris ones a little lesser, which is that by the, you know, the show, the queue, basically, everything happens out in front of the tower. And then the tower is, wait, am I getting this wrong? Oh, I'm sorry. The fact that the show scenes are in the back in Florida allows the tower to be the furthest, the closest thing to you, the guest, looking up at the tower thinking, should I go on this ride or not? So it kind of seems taller. You can get closer to the big scary part and it really looms over you. Whereas it's all set back in the California and Paris ones because the queue is up in the front. Right. That seems a little obscure.

Like, I don't know how much damage that really does, but I guess it is true. It does make the building less imposing. Yeah. I mean, Florida's being set back, seemingly like feeling like it's on a hill. You got to walk up a little bit and immediately it immediately sets the mood in a much better way than the one did in california because california just turned a corner and it's right there and they did a better job when they revamped california venture with the red car trolley to make it sort of feel period appropriate but it's still just like sitting there and it just

doesn't have the magic especially like at night in florida when you see it it's on it feels so set back in the way that like frankenstein's castle feels or any sort of scary building in a movie or something like it's just so much better it just it and it immediately starts the vibe i feel like when you get the sunset boulevard ramp up similar to radiator springs being set at the end of that whole yes drag of yes exactly um um yeah it's like you have like a it's like a cue before the cue a little bit so you're really ready to do it once you're actually in the ride i feel like when i was a kid and like you don't know what it is at all other than you know you drop and it's scary like walking up to something makes it feel i don't know for whatever reason it just makes it

feel uh more intimidating just the way that that that it's set like that um right so yeah i mean they obviously had not much of a choice to really they just were like we got to dump it somewhere so let's yeah i think so and yeah and that space made sense and they're tying it all together and it's going to end up tying into marvel too even though they've they've done this odd kind of out of place re-theming of it for now um the uh i guess the what was my other point about it i oh i think the the other thing uh by dropping that fifth dimension thing the capacity increases a lot right yeah like the least reliable part of the ride is gone and there's three drop towers instead of wait just wait no there's two in florida correct there's two in florida um

i so it's okay it's four four things to get you in the back of the building four shafts to get you up to the fifth dimension there's two fifth dimensions on top of each other those two go into no wait go it all feeds into one it all it slowly kind of narrows down there's crazy blueprints too of like and so the elevator's gonna leave the shaft and go through the lobby then go through the boiler like there's crazy blueprints for like they because i think that's why the lobby is so good like you said eisner wanted it to end in the lobby the lobby is so detailed because it might have at some point in time be considered to be a show scene you know what it's like brackets is what it is four narrow down to two

really think of it as brackets yes and then the california it's three shafts with six different places to enter with two levels so that they can load yeah you're either up top or up or down on the bottom and you can load at either one of this so they can have a car ready for the tower while the other one's doing right and there, and there's only, this is, I was confused up until like a year or two ago when it was like, yeah, you also like kind of load into a vehicle on the tower out here. I didn't realize that. Because one time I go, oh, I see now

where like the mechanism like hooks to pull you forward once you're done with the ride. And then when you push out from the exit, you get loaded into this little box and that little box that cube excuse me the cube the cube there's the three cubes so that cube is always working but the cube changes like it goes up and down to go back and forth between the levels that's the most confusing way i could have said that but the cube is always working cube is always working but the little cars are not always working they're alternating yeah yeah

this is why look you listen to the show for the jokes not for the you know you can watch your detailed explanations on youtube but in those you're probably not gonna get that joke you're not gonna get the jokes your voices and all the fun stuff. The cubes and 100 grand bar references. Al Lewis talk. No, I've seen fresh baked Disney. He doesn't just wander into an Al Lewis discussion. Come on, fresh baked.

He's alarmingly on top. Yeah, what is that? Come on. So, yeah, cubes, folks. Cubes working so yeah cubes folks cubes uh working there's some fun tricks there's some fun tricks in the california one rooms become star feet like there it's not i'm not saying it's not cool but if it had come along first and then the florida one came along could you imagine how blown away you would be right as opposed to the other way around where in one summer when one summer california got abbreviated tower of terror and abbreviated revenge of the

mummy is so funny right um and dark times dark time and of course this will save this for the actual mission breakout episode but i california then solved i feel like solved a problem we didn't know existed by making the drop sequence more entertaining and a little longer is still i think yeah um yeah which i think you can't because like basically what i'm saying is like after mission breakout which i know mission breakout is controversial still which i don't i'm a big fan it's like my favorite ride other than like Big Thunder at the resort like I have to admit it I go on it almost every time if I can go on one ride it's oftentimes that um I think it's really I think they did a really great job with it um but the actual ride itself so when we went in Tokyo's and then we went back to Florida

and the actual drop sequence basically just happens in the dark with no music and it feels a little underwhelming but that's not its fault i don't want to be negative here because before i was spoiled with the drop sequence of guardians of the galaxy there was i didn't think twice i didn't think twice about it but it is randomized now in florida yeah it's still fun um and then but then you get a taste of that at guardians too because you don't know what song you're gonna get it kind of changes and the footage changes it almost feels like now that you now that i've seen the guardians you would want something similar with the twilight zone where like you stop you see a weird creepy scene and you go back up like there's there's something to

do there i don't think you can do that though especially in florida because there's nothing there's not much in front of you in florida in california they just repurposed the normal tower of terror scenes and areas to be with those have the screens and have the one like control room part oh yeah there's no scenes in the the tower i guess that is the california innovation that along that which makes enables that guardians experience that the doors open and you don't know what you're going to get in florida the doors only open at the top right because yeah there's just no other spot i don't think there's any depth to those to that area because you're right in front of the building. No.

Versus California where, yeah, you had there was room because that's where the show scenes were in front of the building or in the front of the building. All the towers bring something to the table and they all like elevate each other and raise your expectation for the others, except for France. You stick France. You didn't bring jack shit to the table um you you know what france needed a rod sterling experience i once had which was ithaca has his archives because he taught there towards the end of his life and every halloween they would do its twilight zone marathon and a number of years they would just use the dvds but one year they used uh original masters like transferred original masters which includes the chesterfield cigarette commercials so you got to see like a solemn tobacco farmer in his fields and then a full marching band pops up

from the fields and they play a the chesterfield song and then at the marching band pops up from the fields and they play the Chesterfield song. And then at the very end of the episode, Serling says, and stay tuned next week, and make sure to, while you're watching, enjoy a delicious Chesterfield cigarette, 21 kinds of tobacco for 21 wonderful smokes. And I have tried to find these commercials for years to no avail, but it is so funny that

and because serling like in a lot of his intros like the intro of nick of time he's sitting in a diner booth smoking a cigarette on camera so you would plus up so funny you would plus up france by giving a cigarette to every rider of the ride they love cigarettes in france and so i think just put it in there because you know they oh that's the other that is one because i was wondering what do the french like the twilight zone and there's that episode uh the occurrence at the owl creek what's the full name uh occur an occurrence at owl creek uh an adaptation of an Ambrose beer story it was a short film that won the best short at Cannes

and the Academy Awards and they the Twilight Zone people just licensed it for the Twilight Zone and it is really creepy so there was a French connection to the Twilight Zone interesting did anyone

watch the Kirk Cameron special Jasonason yes yes i have do we have another hour no i know we can just hit some of the highlights so they basically like the first part of it is like uh kayfabe wrestling term for like in universe like it's a spooky hotel and then like the second half is imagineering talk and like the actual creation of it um and there's a couple of things i really i like about it that he he basically like when they're doing the transition he like explains the legend of the tower of terror and then to transition out he explains that disney built a recreation of the hotel so like it's like trying they were like how do we square this circle it's real but why would it be in a theme park so they're like and he's like so disney built a

real version and it's like there's no real need for what for this piece of exposition uh and then they go into and then i think pretty quickly we get a little eisner blurb and he basically just he's he's excited about it he doesn't say anything particularly funny but what i like about it is that all of the like lower thirds anyone who's like name pops up on the bottom of the screen, uh, it gets introduced with a piece of like lightning shooting at it. So it's like, it's like,

it's like crack. And then it like Michael Eisner appears on the bottom. And it's the same with like Marty Sklar. It's like Marty Sklar on the bottom. And they're like, I love that. It's very jumbotron. That's,

that's real stupid. Yes. Uh, it's not as aggressive probably as the noise I'm making, but it, there's a, an absolute, I love that. It's very jumbotron. That's real stupid. Yes. It's not as aggressive probably as the noise I'm making, but there's a noise and a lightning strike, and then Michael Eisner appears on the bottom of the screen, which is exciting. Kirk Cameron is like 50 pounds soaking wet in that. He is like so tiny,

and he's like wearing like the stop making sense suit. And none of his, none of his suits fit and they have written him the most flowery like narration dialogue. He's not nailing any of it. He is, he looks like such a dweeb. Like I wanted to swirly him.

They're making him do like old timey dialogue and you know, he's doing his, he's doing his best. Uh, they should have, they should have had Robert Evans. They should have just hired Robert Evans to do it. Or even like a Jerry Orbach type.

They should have had an old man do it. Uh, but yeah, Kirk Hammond's a real dweeb. And of course now he thinks, you know, the hotel is haunted by demons. Uh,

now he thinks the real tower of terror is the dnc headquarters where the democrats do their devil worship uh yes well he likes the story of the people in the elevator just suddenly disappearing because he thinks it's kind of like the rapture yeah they were living in sinners sinners kissing actors who aren't your wife you can't kiss sectors who aren't your wife uh uh my there is a moment in that mike did you catch the moment in the special with the one imagineer talking about drawings uh i probably watch it but i'm not sure what you're which part you're talking about off okay they interview an imagineer i forget his name but he's talking about being in meetings and he's working like in the meetings he's like always doodling he

and he said a word that i'm like oh that might be a new show word he says i'm sitting with a sketch pad making roughies i did not pick up roughies making roughies i i re-watched it like five times i had to hear it make sure i heard it right make sure i heard him say making roughies i had never heard roughies before that's like that i feel like that's something you might have said as a child like you when you were feeling rammy and then you would make roughies after that yeah you tumbled around too much on the playground you were making roughies after that. You tumbled around too much on the playground. You were making roughies. You too.

You and your brother. Stop making roughies. Stop making roughies. Wow, I did not catch roughies. Well, yeah, it's a new show word. We love roughies. Send us your roughies. If you have any access to exclusive Imagineering roughies,

we want to see them. We'll pay top dollar for your roughies. Listen to that season pass podcast, Find the Paywall with Tony Baxter, because he talks a lot about his roughies. Cash for roughies. Call 1-800-CASH-FOR-ROUGHIES. Wow, roughies. Is that just like a cute thing that guy said or is that actually a term i think it's just a thing he was he meant like rough sketches rough you know doodles and stuff but rough i'd never heard ruffies before wow maybe it was something they

said in the office but it just it just it's i'll never forget ruffies now. Yeah, no, it's a very memorable way to say it. Well, we're saying it now. We're all saying Ruffies. They're all saying it. We're all saying it. You're hearing it more and more. You're hearing it more and more. I had one.

Oh, wait, actually, as we talk about sitcom stars going into this attraction, I think it's come up before, but I just want to reiterate. I find it very bizarre that both Step by Step and Family Matters did Disney World episodes where they went to the Tower of Terror and it is the same ride operator with the same blocking. It is like two characters. The elevator is already full the car is full and then two characters stop at the door kind of address whatever plot situation is going on while a creepy bellhop kind of stares at them and then he starts the ride and like see you on the other side and it's the same guy um and that's really weird. But then on top of that, I found both of these on Hulu when I rewatched them. The episodes are both called We're Going to Disney World.

The scenes happen in the middle of part two. They were both in the middle of a two-parter. And they aired two days apart from each other. Wow. So if you were a big watcher of both of these shows as i was you got to see the same scene at the tower of terror twice in a week wow that's so funny i guess did they maybe shoot it on the same day um yeah maybe the same next like just double back to back maybe next like one day next next day that's like filming the you filmed the american

version and the japanese version immediately well we got the set here the camera's set up right let's just uh knock them out one and two that's funny yeah yeah uh um you know but you know what i'd like to talk about is is um the exit when you when you come down in the florida tower of terror i forgot about this um you come down in a little room with a with a little screen with the kind of famous twilight zone like what do you call it a spiral or something with the black and white um and the music playing and you're like you don't end up in the same spot you you started and which is very cool um and there's a lot of little trinkets and stuff in that little it feels like you just got dumped in a little room and then your car spins around to like gets you to the exit and i didn't realize

it until i went on it a couple years ago that caesar the ventriloquist dummy from one of the famous episodes uh called caesar and me who of course the dummy is real and the man is fake is the big revelation i'm sorry spoiler alert uh but caesar is sitting there in the room and i got so excited to see him and i'm i like twilight zone i'm i didn't know his name was caesar i'm just trying to say like i'm not like oh my god it's caesar but i said oh my god it's the dummy. And I was very excited because I'm a big dummy. I'm a big dummy fan. Yeah. There's two dummy episodes of Twilight Zone.

Yes. There's another dummy one too. I think that dummy is meaner. Okay. Maybe I'm actually confusing my dummy episodes. It is Caesar in the ride. It is Caesar for sure in the the ride but i can't remember maybe i'm thinking of i'm mixing up my dummy and i apologize folks i'm just a big fan of dummies

not necessarily the twilight zone episodes but i'm right uh so any a night of the living dummy goosebumps book big fan of that yeah uh have you ever seen the mystery science theater movie devil doll i have not with a creepy um uh the dummy's name is hugo i believe and there's something that uh my wife and i say every time like like very often when we're drinking wine which is that uh which is very often would and the uh that is that the you know that is also kind of a possessed dummy and he wants to uh have wine and then the ventriloquist says but you can't have wine hugo you're just a dummy like why i want wine i know what wine is give me some we when we decide we're gonna have wine we really often say i know what wine is

wow so you're you're dummy fans too i guess i am too yeah well you're a um you're a caesar guy i'm a who are you guys who are your dummies i'm a i'm a hugo guy jason who's your favorite dummy? Oh, well, from Batman, from Batman the Animated Series. Is it Scarface? Is that his name? Oh, Jason, are you talking about the toy I have right here? Yes, that's right. Yes. The ventriloquist and his dummy.

And Scarface, of course. Yeah. This is one of the greatest toys ever, by the way. That is great. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of funny that we all like dummies, considering that we are freaked out by things. And I'm so scared of, like, creepy baby things.

Maybe I wouldn't like a baby dummy. Maybe that's the line. Is there such a thing in media? Oh, my God. There has to be. Is there a baby dummy that would scare me? That's a good question. I mean, do you think Caesar is cute from the Twilight Zone?

That's a question I have. I think we like these dummies, but I don't think any of us are calling them cute. Hold on, let me send a photo to everyone. I like Hugo. I don't think Hugo is cute. Okay, here we go. That doesn't mean I don't care for him. Here we go.

Just so we're all on the same page, here's a picture of Caesar. I texted it to both of you yeah and then officially is caesar cute uh look i think i'm sorry but like a big thick eyebrows are just kind of kind of get in the way of cute you can look good or handsome or sharp i don't know that I would call Caesar cute, though, no. Jason, yes? You think yes? I don't know. I like the cheekbones with the eyebrows that I think are cute. And the stogie.

He got a big stogie. This is a semantics issue. I think he looks cool. I like him. You like to be cool. I think he's cool, not cute. You guys are crazy. Caesar the Twilight Zone dummy's cool, not cute. You guys are crazy. I didn't say the Twilight Zone dummy is cool, not cute.

I didn't rule yet. I have not ruled. Oh, okay. I have just posed the question. Then we await your ruling, Michael. I have just posed the question, and I'm just listening to all the different things that I'm going to rule. I'm going to say, I think he looks cool.

Yes, exactly. He's cool, not cute. It's very clear. I'm glad sometimes there's sanity on these cuteness issues. I just think, look, I'm not trolling. I'm being fair and balanced. That's a phrase I came up with. Well, then, we'd like to know more.

Obviously, I love when creatures are put into my Twitter feed. So if you think you have a dummy that's cute, if you can think of a baby dummy, and I'm not talking puppet. There's baby puppets. Yeah, it has to be a ventriloquist's dummy. Yeah, yeah. A baby. Do you think that there's a ventriloquist equivalent of baby grinch or uh baby i mean if i look up baby dummy well what about that baby navi that we've been

bombarded with that everyone's carly and our various members of our facebook group are like i blame you for this they're getting the etsy ad for like this navi baby like those like multi hundred dollar like doll babies you can adopt that like crazy people adopt do you think that's cute uh no no no i hate the i hate that guitar absolutely uh um i and and as i looked up baby ventriloquist dummy there's just i'm seeing like a a real child real child's Halloween costume where the lines are drawn on his chin and he's got the rouge. This I hate. I very much. Let's make the rules clear.

While I do like some ventriloquist dummies, a real child as a ventriloquist dummy is not cute. This is bad. I don't know. I will not be making my baby ventriloquist dummy this year. Halloween's bad i don't know i will not be making my baby halloween halloween's coming up no no no no he's gonna be troubles he's troubles all right that is cute all right but next year yeah i am seeing that uh a gentleman who's a ventriloquist named paul zerdin has some sort of baby dummy that he uses i don't know anything about the act i just see a thumbnail that he is working a baby puppet so we'll have to look into that um see what we think of uh paul zerdin um you know

i'm watching it it's neither here nor there it's not you know he actually really this this so-called baby could all he is just as easily be a 95 year old man um so it's uh uh i don't know i think i think it doesn't uh qualify oh and then he later read in the same video he does bring up an old man immediately okay all right uh i just think i think also like in this i again we we've been talking too long here i do love old dolls i i i'm a fascinated with i don't know i'm not gonna go with you on that like i i'm fascinated by of course robert the evil doll well sure uh who is terrifying i'm not gonna i'm not gonna tell you i think robert is cute though i do feel bad for robert you know if you don't know this is robert and you're he's and he's like the basis sort of for like the chucky

legend like the the inspiration for like haunted dolls i see um and i well what's an old doll that you think is cute well i'm i just said i'm a fan of old i didn't say i think all the old dolls are cute i'm just saying i'm if it's an old doll i like it scott are you going to uh dress your child like uh we all i'm assuming were dressed for picture day in school like tiny little dolls like boys and girls alike dressed like tiny fancy little dolls which was very popular in the 90s i am there's a big there's a a picture of me in a full sailor suit as a child yeah of course there is i don't know if i have a hat but the rest of it is the sailor suit and jason that's just what he wears to a party well it's oh yeah especially when it's fleet week all aboard produce this photo yeah i'll find

the sailor suit photo jason do you have to have a sailor suit photo uh i don't know about sailors i feel like i had an unseemly number of turtlenecks as a weird boy like robert like a young robert evans like a young robert evans uh yeah turtlenecks

and sweaters i did find well i you guys will like this uh and they i'm assuming it was just written because it's clearly my mother's handwriting a letter to my grandparents dated september 1988 i came across this the other day written as if i had written it what it is like i finally got my haircut and i kicked and screamed but if i'm a good boy i'll get a toy a little toy at kmart and get to ride a ride so the the the keystone for the show was implanted in my brain a lot longer ago than i thought wow i'm being ruffy but yeah wait what's the other phrase rammy what's i'm being rammy and i got into ruffies but i but i got a little doll anyway i got a little an old doll a little old doll a little old doll and we'll dress and we're going to be dressed the same. Two sailor suits.

Same size, please. Child Jason, a little older child Jason and current Jason would very much have both enjoyed the Henry Bemis action figure that is very hard to find from the Twilight Zone. Henry Bemis, the Burgess Meredith character from Time Enough at Last. They have these toys now. I know. They're so hard to track down yeah they're very expensive if you do find them they always have them i don't want a house full of twilight zone toys this is a recipe for them all to come to life and bother me what about like

a full-size caesar though you could just sit yeah overlooking the crib Crib. Hi. Hey. You awake? Wake up. Hey. Get up. Rise and shine. The day's a-wasting. Have a cigar with me, buddy.

They really in the gift shop, they should sell that. Oddly, I think I would dress my baby as Caesar. See, I don't know the safety level of prosthetic eyebrows for infants, but you could, if I discover that any are safe, I'll consider. You could do like a headband with the eyebrows attached. Oh,

that's not a bad idea. Yeah. And the rest is skin colored. Yeah, that would be good. And then like, you could work on that. I'll find this. I was going to say, do you have a, like you could work on that i'll find this

i was gonna say do you have a could you find a bottle that looks like a big cigar like give me another hit of that a little like streamer smoke coming out right like a very thin bottle that looks like a cigar that you'd put milk in this ain't bad that's good i think disney really uh blew it not having these items available in the gift shop for the tower of right i want our twilight zone branding we want our uh cigar bottle disguises and eyebrow straps for babies oh of course i have i guess i should mention that i have the uh terry cloth hollywood tower hotel bathroom and it's great it's you wear it still right practical oh yeah i still use it yeah it's hanging on the door of my bathroom we're in overtime here but you you're a bathrobe guy

i'm a bathrobe guy yeah i yeah you i'd bathrobe guy Yeah I'd love to be one I'd love to be one I have one I just Never I never do it Scott Are you a bathrobe guy?

Yeah I'll do it Every once in a while Yeah I got one But Yeah I don't know

It's all I had to do Jason Are you a bathrobe I can't imagine constantly You're like an everyday Bathrobe guy Am I wrong? imagine constantly. You're like an everyday bathrobe guy. Am I wrong? Yeah, sometimes. What? Get out of the

shower, put on that robe, sit around for a while. You're like a Robert Evans type where like you would imagine he just wore like a smoking jacket around the house or a bathrobe. So like you are just like a lounge in your robe after a shower for hours unless you have somewhere

to go uh yeah weather depending sometimes that's a little too cold you know um the difference being uh uh milk and cookies replacing vast sums of cocaine yeah that's true besides that sure maybe jason is a robert evans type um should we do we get out over time have we done it can we do it i think we can do it i think so survived haunt cast the fright an episode that a while ago was mostly about the trident and tower of terror um that that's a blast it's nice nice to talk about such a such a fantastic ride a lynchpin an institution and as we said almost this almost has to become a yearly a mini yearly series because we have to hit japan we have to hit the film and of course an entire episode devoted to the uh the systemic abuse of sally shine oh it is very evident from the one unspeaking shot of yes do we

think mission breakout that's not counted right because it's not spooky no i think it's but it's is is a monsters after dark the halloween overlay that has to be in honk cast the fright maybe on a second gate maybe behind a paywall i think so i think those are the rules okay so we have to cover it in the off season and unless we do monsters after dark first it gets very uh right we could do monsters after dark first and you have you have not you've done guardians but not monsters after dark now i haven't done monsters after dark right which i love spooky it's my favorite yeah um it does sound cool all right so this look we're not done with these towers After Dark. Right. Which I love. Sounds spooky. It's my favorite. It does sound cool. Alright, so this, look, we're not

done with these towers. We'll be back in the tower. We may have to be similarly over in the Creatures Choice Awards too. We'll figure that out. Hey, like we said, there's a lot of Hauntcast the Fright to come. We got good

topics, good fun coming up so uh stay tuned what's a monster what's a halloween pun oh um stay glue gould yeah to um uh skele-scribe to that's horrible like skeleton subscribe um look I don't know I'll tune these up later

the point is go to podcast the ride the cemetery gate uh for both three uh boonus episodes

that's good that's perfect yeah very good yeah that's great I closed that on a good one at patreon.com slash podcast the right.

I'm not going to spookify that one or the URL won't be right. Okay, very important. All right. Well, we'll see you soon. Forever Dog. This has been

a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts,

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