Podcast: The Ride - The Universe of Energy

Episode Date: November 17, 2017

The boys discuss the recently closed Epcot attraction, The Universe of Energy/Ellen's Energy Adventure. This episode brought to you by your friends in the Fossil Fuel Industry. Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/ FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Terrell Audio. discussion of Epcot Center's Universe of Energy. Strap in and enjoy Podcast the Ride, the only theme park podcast with very mild profanity. I'm Jason Sheridan. Oh, I'm Scott Gairdner. Yeah, you're supposed to say, joining me are my co-hosts, Michael, and then we say hello. Fine. I thought you would just jump in. But also, taking the cue, you were supposed to say your name, which you still have neglected to do. I screwed up.

My name is Mike Carlson. Sure is. And I am coming in hot. Yeah. And we're a part of Feral Audio, home of the Doughboys and Teen Creeps and many other fine podcasts. And today we're going to talk about the universe of energy and all its many incarnations. Yeah. And today we're going to talk about the universe of energy and all its many incarnations. Yeah, I was thinking this is appropriate for a few reasons.

One, that we're covering a couple of the rides that have disappeared in the very recent past. We just did the Great Movie ride, and now we're off to this. Also, we've had a couple of guests lately. You know, Mike Mitchell and old Bugsy Bones, the skull man who unfortunately hijacked our last podcast. Sorry about that, everybody. But now we've come back around to a topic that is so dry that we would scarcely force a guest to discuss it with us. It's good that we're getting back to the Trinity, you know, the three of us. That's what I like to call it.

Isn't that what they call Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman? Also the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. That's a good point. Is there a Disney Trinity? I'm scanning my head right now, and there's four Disney parks in Disney World, so that doesn't work. There's Mickey, Minnie, and Tron. It goes Mickey, Minnie,key miniatron the three primary characters yeah everyone's favorites is the disney lineage or in japan it's duffy

shelly may and tippy blue and tippy blue their mailman bird to tell the audience what we might be talking about those are the most popular characters in disney in japan tokyo like they beat mickey it's this bear named duffy he has no personality to speak of he was just trying to rip off build a bear and he is so hot in japan it's crazy he's got little outfits he's adorable look him up and he's got there's another there's a rabbit right like he has a rabbit friend now? Yeah. Him and Shelly Mae are in a poly thing with a rabbit. So Duffy and Shelly Mae are bears, and then they introduce Tippi Blue, who's a little bird, who's their mailman.

And then they have a friend named Gelatoni, who's an Italian painter cat. Yeah, he uses his tail to paint. And then there's another character who's a rabbit that I'm forgetting her name. I don't remember the name. We're going to do a whole episode on duffy at a certain point but yeah we are maybe that'll be me alone in a room sick whatever week that is scott gets the flu this flu season do a lineage of duffy the disney bear feel free, like parents going out of town, you guys do whatever you want.

We just tank the podcast by talking about the stuffed animal universe that is Duffy and friends. The seven and a half hour edition that is entirely Duffy. Well, yeah, that's one bit of dry arcania, and we're talking about another one today, the Universe of Energy, one of the original Epcot attractions from 1982, shifted gears in 1996 and became Ellen's Energy Adventure

and is about to shift gears again and become potentially a Guardians of the Galaxy attraction. That's the overall what we're looking at possibly the most insidious of the original epcot future world uh pavilion yeah well and for what reason of for the sponsorship of exxon like the the how much uh fossil fuel industry talking points this ride is. I mean, for the time, they do talk in the original ride a lot about, like, hydropower and solar power and wind power. They pay some good lip service to future things that they will lobby against happening.

It's basically what happens. Also, like, with this opening in 82, like, Exxon was already doing research on climate change and, like, had pretty much figured out, like, with this opening in 82, like, Exxon was already doing research on climate change and, like, had pretty much figured out, like, all of the major oil companies had pretty much figured out that climate change was real. Yes. And I read 1978 they knew, and this thing opens in 1982. 82. So they knew. And then they sponsored this right until 2004.

And even on the second version of it, there's stuff like, oh, isn't it fun to drill? Drilling is fun. There is a part in the remake, and we'll get into it with Ellen and Bill Nye, where Ellen says, well, why don't we just make everything solar? And Bill Nye says, hang on, Ellen. Ellen, Jesus. Today's one of the most prominent climate change activists, Bill Nye the Science Guy. We'll get into him later, too.

What was that? I said, we'll get into him later, too. Oh, boy. Oh, the gloves are off on this episode. Is there a way for... This one, of anything we've talked about, feels like a ride that potentially listeners might not know. What's the quickest way to explain what the hell this is?

So it's an opening day attraction for Epcot Center. It's a moving theater. It's like you get into these cars that essentially make a theater, and then they move through dioramas, and then they shift into individual cars. They shift into a line and kind of come back to the theater setup at the end of the ride and in the middle you uh you go through this like kingdom of the dinosaurs so if you have vague recollection

of a disney world trip where you went through a dinosaur world that then because that's probably the only thing you remember is the dinosaur robots and if you looked at old like if you looked at old epcot center maps there'd maybe be a little cartoon dinosaur poking up out of the roof of the thing, which was like the encouragement for kids to come in because they were not necessarily thrilled by discussion of turbines and shale. And 70s, 80s easy listening music that soundtracked the ride. That stuff is good, though. I'll argue that all that stuff was good. That was one of my highlights in checking it out again. That's actually the best. That's my favorite part of the ride from re stuff is good, though. I'll argue that all that stuff is good. That was one of my highlights in checking it out again.

That's actually the best. That's my favorite part of the ride from reexamining it today. There's multiple. There's the, like, energy. Like, I feel like we should do a Mystery Science Theater sort of thing where just throughout the ride, we just start all singing energy. I have. I downloaded, like, there's three different versions.

Right. There are three different songs, and they're all tremendous. And we'll get maybe, I guess like three different versions. Right. There are three different songs and they're all tremendous. And we will get maybe I guess I'll play them. There's an opening at the opening day ceremonies. A bunch of people come out dressed in all white and do a choreographed number and sing one of the songs. It's incredible because like Exxon employees and like CEO or whatever get up there and they speak about this and enjoy the ride. And then a bunch of people in white jumpsuits and a very ABBA-esque dance medley start doing the song. Like a 70s variety show breaks out around these very stiff suits.

Giant butterfly wing type. It's a little bit more spare than that. They don't have a lot of production, but it is in that realm. That is in the zone. This is an area, by the way, that I imagine you guys have watched a lot of these, too. As Theme Park Nerds, we are versed in the area of ride-opening ceremonies. And there's a lot of really grainy, bad videos of these things on YouTube. Like, here's, like, an awkward little ceremony where, like, Mickey Mouse hands the keys to Star Wars, to Star Tours over to C-3PO, and Darth Vader tries to interrupt it, but then

all the characters, I don't know, ask him to leave, and he does. There's a lot of great little, like, there's a really good one for Back to the Future. There's a very awkward opening ceremony for Guardians guardians of the galaxy mission breakout just recently yeah still doing these like bad like awkward things where like there's you're like oh is the collector gonna come out and then it's just it is benicio del toro but he's not in his costume and he's like are you expecting someone and then everyone's kind of confused. Yeah, you were expecting collector Benicio del Toro, and you got like three Heinekens deep Benicio del Toro, like his other project.

Wandered on stage. No one's quite sure what to do. And then head of Parks and Resorts, Bob Chapek, is up there, and he's not the greatest speaker in the world. Yeah, they set up a story that like you are now in the story of the ride and then some executives talk to you and then you get back into the story of the ride characters from guardians of the galaxy come out speak to you introduce resorts head bob chapack and then and like all of the care all the real actors who played the characters next to iterations of the characters

these things are always so confusing. You never see, like, we're the deepest of nerds, and we only sort of know about these. It's hard to tell. It's not like they go viral, you know what I mean? You got to see what happened at the opening of Luigi's Flying Tires. Local contest winner's thrill as Bob Chapek takes the stage. Oh, I saw a really sad one for the reopening of Soak City,

which is the Knott's Berry Farm theme park. And there was a very stiff little ceremony where the mayor of Buena Park shakes hands with the Snoopy walk-around character. And then a tiny amount of confetti goes off, and Snoopy gives as big of a thumbs-up as he can in his constricted suit. I'm a fan of these.

I know I want to watch all. We should review them all on a future episode. Well, I also really like, and I don't know if they still, I don't think they do these much anymore, but it was a big thing on ABC and the Disney channel in the nineties of like a special about the ride. We talked about the Indiana Jones one on that episode, but like the tower of terror one with Kirk Cameron is also something

to watch. Living seas with John Ritter. Yeah. They used to have enough like promotional budget to do an individual special for every single ride that opened. I'm sure they'll do one for Star Wars Land, too. There'll probably be an ABC special.

They did get Harrison Ford to introduce footage of it at whatever special that was. There was a Disneyland thing on ABC, and we watched it, and it was garbage. It was live from the Kodak Theater, or whatever that's called now. You should enjoy that. An all new

galaxy opens of delight and fun. What will await you up in the galaxy's edge? Assuming I do not perish in a flight in the near future, I look forward to Look out for replicants. Oh fuck. Wrong

project. God damn it. Callista, I need the copy. Why does Callista have the copy? She was just helping out. She was just like got roped into helping. Print it in a bigger font next time, damn it. I don't want to look at it on the iPad. I like a paper copy.

So I learned my dialogue for Witness, and it's how I'm going to do this. I think this is the second time we've done a riff on Harrison Ford's voice. I think we did it in Indiana Jones Ride 2, where he was announcing the holidays. The old Harrison. We love him. So, yeah, the ride video is something to watch for the opening video of this. The opening of the Universe of Energy. Oh, here's what I'm going to say about this ride in general. for the opening video of this. The opening of the Universe of Energy.

Here's what I'm going to say about this ride in general. This is the first time where doing the research for the attractions that we talk about has felt like work. This was so arduous because there's two rides, both of them 45 minutes long or so. So long, like a feature film to watch these videos. If you put them together, it'd be about the length of this podcast. I'll accept with much more giant holes of silence.

It's like the slowest narrator and then a 15-minute little slow jaunt through Dinosaur World with no dialogue, no music. These things were such slogs both both versions yeah i think though the the attraction itself is like a great illustration of the evolution from like the original vision of epcot to the 90sification of disney to like the possible future of like an ip based epcot yeah it follows kind of the arc that some of the other pavilions have had world of motion into test track and journey into imagination like the eric idol journey into imagination like i feel like some of the stuff that disney did in the 90s they're like well we got to make this contemporary and they weren't thinking a lot

about the fact that it could be there for 20 years like well it starts epcot starts out in a lot more of a dry like this especially more than anything is like uh a film strip you're watching in school like this is just a video that's supposed to explain something to you and then there's some robots and then they explain more things to you so like they were realizing in the 90s like this is dry as shit like this is like yeah this is this is homework to watch let's just throw a care a person people love and then that'll make everything like that'll make the medicine go down easier and what network are we thinking about acquiring right now and who is their top star tim allen we've already like used every favor from him.

Squeezed every drop out of him. Who's number two or three or four? It would have been great if they got Richard Karn or something to do. That's true. That would have been Richard Karn's energy adventure. And then 2017, it was still there. Credit where it's due, Ellen and Bill Nye are both in the pop cultural. Yeah, they're still around.

That has to be why. As is Alex Trebek. As is Alex Trebek. Who appears in the second. That's why it lasted so long. It's because those people are still people that people know. Well, there was enough time for Bill Nye, the science guy, to completely disappear from relevance. Because I remember going in the mid-2000s and thinking like

do people have any idea who this is and now he is back with a netflix series and uh constantly in the news and yeah um yeah he had enough time to disappear and come back he was just in academia for a while he was like the distinguished visiting professor at cornell when i went to ithaca like he was in town my mom is a teacher and got to meet him at a conference or something and she like it she lost her mind oh my meeting a beetle for when you're a teacher mom my elementary school like fourth grade teacher like loved bill nye we would watch bill nye stuff she loved science she loved teaching kid science and we'd watch bill nye like every other day so like 1996 like yeah sure he should be in the right kids loved him and a very popular disney uh product yeah that's right disney produced he's uh currently suing them for

like uh profits like profit sharing that he missed out on yeah that he missed out on oh my god I was more of a Beekman kid I liked Beekman more he was more funny he had a rodent sidekick yeah Beekman was definitely sassier yeah he was sassier so yeah anyway I found Beekman like sort of caustic

and unpleasant he was certainly caustic broad costumes the wardrobe cool it guys I mean I'll be honest. I have not revisited Beekman in many years. Yeah.

We'll catch up. I'm sure there is elsewhere on Feral there's a Beekman's World recap podcast. We'll listen to that before we discuss Beekman's World. Please invite me on. Whoever does that one. It is crazy looking at this ride and seeing this hasn't necessarily aged super well.

But then like looking at stuff from around the same time, like Tower of Terror or Indiana Jones. So it's like these are still both terrific. And I don't know if that was just a team working on them or like that they were totally original creations or like. Well, because the 96 redo has to like use the bones of the 80s that's true so but it is what this brings up a point of like all the rides you almost all the original rides in disney world and disneyland i can see where people were like this is going to be fun maybe a little informative and like kids and adults are going to like this yeah and it does kind of boggle my mind that they put this in epcot and we're and adults are gonna like this yeah and it does kind of boggle

my mind that they put this in epcot and we're like yeah this is great this like holds up to all the other stuff we've got in the other park like i get what they were going for but it's like wow what 45 minutes and most of it's just a film strip i understand they're like big screens i guess you the big screens are bigger they they were thinking. I loved Spaceship Earth and I loved World of Motion. Like the scene where all the fruit carts ran into each other. There's comedy.

There's audio animatronic comedy in the other. So I guess they were trying to with the update, trying to put some personality into the ride. But then if you don't know the history of it, if you don't know that it's like Ellen invading a preexisting ride that was kind of dry, like imagine the tourist last year going into this, seeing a 20 year old, uh, 20 years out of date version of Ellen

who takes you into a world of dinosaurs. It just doesn't like you need the context to even understand what you were looking at and why you're going on. I went on it three days before it closed forever. Yeah. And people there was a man next to us, an older man who fell asleep during it. Lindsay, my girlfriend, started nodding off in the middle of it. I mean, it's, you know, it's hot out there. And but still, like, it's such a boring experience.

It's hard to imagine anybody truly feeling great about this ride. And what person walks out of it beaming. And also, I found clips last night of both Ellen and Bill Nye in the recent past talking a little shit about it. Like Bill Nye makes, he doesn't explicitly insult it, but he says, and why is this a great ride? Air conditioning. And then Ellen referred to the rides and removal.

She actually talked about it on her show and kind of was side snarking about it. Like hashtag educational. And she did a bit asking for animatronic bat. Which I think is a funny bit. Like, can I have it? Now that you're done with it, can I just have it? Like, I think that's a funny bit. The truth is, it's going to be repurposed for Star Wars land.

Like, they do that with robots. They just, like, put, just put a First Order uniform on it and then put sunglasses over it. You don't notice it's Ellen. You just can't build that many robots that quickly. Garner Holt just can't churn out that many animatronics in that small of a time frame. So First Order Officer Ellen

will make the command for the Stormtroopers. Ellen the Death Trooper. If you just kind of melt that skin and stretch it around enough, you can turn it into an Ackbar fairly easily. She could be a Mon Calamari, one of the Mon Calamari race, sure. I started to watch,

because there's a good amount of ride-through videos of the Ellen version, and there is not a lot of footage out there of the original version so I have to give a shout out to Martin's vids Martin's video I found Martin's vid as well Martin god bless you whoever you are like Martin makes the he Martin is this guy who makes these like hour-long tribute videos to some rides that are still open, a lot of rides that have closed, and he finds footage and concept art and opening day stuff and gets source audio and makes these ride-through,

I don't even know what to call it, documentaries, because they're really well done. They're really well researched and edited. Get some behind-the-scenes footage, and in this case, an overhead of how this ride works, which is like, I found that very fascinating. Watching the flow of it. Because you enter a giant theater, which splits off into eight different cars, which all slowly move around this entire building in sort of a hover fashion. I mean, it was like this crazy ballet watching those cars move around in this overhead.

It's a technical marvel, this ride, if not a creative marvel. Yeah. I found this video, too, and there's some pretty good footage of the actual original ride. Yes. And he does all this stuff for free. He doesn't charge for it. He crowdsources all of this stuff and then cuts it together in like a coherent narrative and like yeah talks about the yeah the history a lot and the opening of it and so watch that yeah so watch that instead of listening there's a horizon

there's a journey into imagination one like there's all of these ones that they're like that's good this is like we're all half researched and we're just goofing yeah this is yeah um we have no visuals to show you yeah no we're gonna do we're gonna do a lot of descriptions yeah it's kind of this thing where if you uh if you could just see it it's sort of a it's kind of a moving ah you just have to see it but people weren't taking full vhs camcorders to tape a 45 minute ride through i remember my mom me like making my mom like tape like i don't know mr toad or something on our video camera so we could watch it at home like as like we would take these giant video cameras down and i feel like barely use them and barely watch what we shot when we were down there but this ride is 45 minutes long so people just weren't

taping it you need a SLP to fit that on. I was going to say, tapes weren't that big. You'd have to switch tapes in the middle of the ride. Oh, that's right, yeah. So the basic way the ride is, is the first part of it is the history of energy and how energy and oil and dinosaurs. Then you see the dinosaurs. And then what's the future of energy and how energy and oil and dinosaurs. Then you see the dinosaurs and then what's the future of energy? Right. Petroleum.

Yeah, and even something like Journey Through Inner Space, which was a ride in Disneyland. The idea was you're going to be shrunk down. You're going to go see what's happening in an actual molecule and stuff. This is just like, you're going to be shrunk down. You're going to go see what's happening in an actual molecule and stuff. And whereas this is just like, here's, we're going to show you.

I guess there's sort of, they might say, well, you go back in time, right? We take you back to the days of the dinosaurs. Here's the dinosaurs while they were living, before they turned into bone and muck under the earth. But it also doesn't really work because it's about energy, and now it's just some dinosaurs. I'm really vague on what even energy... Watching two entire ride-throughs, shouldn't I sort of understand the basic concept of energy? I don't think I do.

I think I know less now. I don't really either. I know dinosaurs died, and they became oil. Am I wrong? Yes, that's right. That's right, okay. That is right. What?

Shouldn't we see the dinosaurs melted down on the ride? Shouldn't they all, like the comet hit or something, we see them melt and decompose and then turn into oil? Like at the end of Raiders? You want to see their faces? Sure, yes. You want to see a live version of that footage of the fox decomposing and being eaten by maggots?

Yes. You want that to somehow happen. You want a living dinosaur that can puff up and then slowly deflate and turn to bone. Yes. That would be an incredible... It would be incredible. And then we would see what it's like.

You would see what happens over hundreds and thousands of years. And it would actually make sense. Because really, also, these dinosaurs are just repurposed from two other... Like,ye like they were at the world's fair and then they were at the world's fair ones are still out here like i think they just copied the according to max's vid i'm pretty sure that some of them martin martin's fin whatever the hell whatever the man's name was sorry so sorry that some of them were from that from the world's fair was. Maybe someone. Shout out. Sorry. So sorry. That some of them were from that, from the World's Fair.

I guess. The most interesting thing I thought was that from the very beginning, there was always going to be a solar energy-based pavilion. And surprise, surprise, the Epcot plan changed because Exxon's like, we'd like to sponsor that, but we have some other forms of energy we'd like to talk about in addition to solar energy. Is that the history? I think that's what it said in the video. There were solar panels, though, on top of it.

And there has always been solar panels. And it's powered like a lid. Partially powered. It's unclear how much it actually powers. It's possible. It's just for, which I would like to talk about in a second the vip lounge that's also in this ride vip lounge it just looks like a lobby of a holiday inn a 1985 holiday i guess we may have her in it i guess we'll die we'll we'll do a quick jaunt here over

to the vip lounge so all of these different rides in future world have a vip lounge for their corporate sponsors yeah and this one has one that was for the Exxon. It's like if you were an Exxon employee and you came to Epcot, you were allowed into this lounge. But as you pointed out, the only perk of being an Exxon executive. Yeah, that reminds me of a childhood friend growing up. Her mom worked for FedEx, and FedEx sponsored Space Mountain for a while. And I feel like there was either – I don't know if there was a lounge, friend growing up her mom worked for FedEx and FedEx sponsored Space Mountain for a while and

I feel like there was either I don't know if there was a lounge but I feel like maybe they got front of the line payout they got some sort of perk for Space Mountain uh and FedEx there used to be a FedEx diorama as you left Space Mountain the like astronauts uh by the exit we used to be delivering FedEx packages yes yes yes yes these corporate i feel like they don't is this maybe why there's so much ip going on in the parks because i feel like corporate sponsorships going to happen as much these days i would yeah that would make sense i feel like there's less and less siemens just said no that they're not going to keep sponsoring spaceship earth oh really uh uh at&t does not sponsor indian jones anymore correct i don't just said no, that they're not going to keep sponsoring Spaceship Earth.

AT&T does not sponsor Indiana Jones anymore, correct? I don't think so. I don't see that signage up in there. That's sort of going away. I guess Test Track is still Ford, right? Is it? It's Chevrolet, I think.

Yeah, that's definitely... Honda sponsors Autopia at Disneyland. Right, yes, because they added Osimo. They added Osimo and the bird. Is the bird called like Birdo? Birdo is from Super... I think the bird is named Bird. Oh, yeah.

Birdo is from Mario 2. Oh, okay. Birdo is the egg shooting bad guy from... Our engineer is nodding along. Yes, that. Birdo is the egg shooting bad guy. Our engineer is nodding along. Yes, that is Birdo. If you could avoid Birdo's mouth eggs in the Nintendo World coming to Universal Studios, that would be painful or a bad idea. I found a website that says who can get into each different pavilion.

Or excuse me vip lounge so for the exxon lounge uh the lounge used to be available only to exxon employees but then some of them are available to like the employee of the company that sponsors and like make a wish kids and then some of them are still lounges and then some of them have been converted into just like offices there's also a few lounges scattered about like every now and then it changes. It's like, are you a Chase Sapphire member? Are you an American Express card holder? There's a vacation club lounge on the top floor of Journey into Imagination now.

What's in there? It's the old image works. It's the old. Oh, really? Yeah. But I don't think it's really working. I think it's mostly just outlets to charge your phone and couches. Which is...

That's in high demand at Disney World. You need that. For Horizons, they used to have this kind of secret thing here. We should put a link to this on the website. Which would just be like, if you're a GE employee, this way. Yes. We're looking at the old GE logo

and then three arrows all in 70s beige. We'll give that to you to ogle on your own time. Yeah, yeah, I know you're dying to see it. It's funny how Epcot was, when it first opened, was a mix of these beautiful, vibrant colors, but then also some of that

70s beige, baby, scattered here and there. Which I love. I mean, the entrance to the Universe of Energy has this awesome sort of gold and red tile. Tile mural, right? Yeah, yeah. I'd also like to say aesthetically, I thought when I was watching the ride through,

I thought from the beginning I was going to love it. Like I'd been underrating it this whole time because at the very beginning, the Exxon Tiger runs right at you. And on five screens, by the way, it's the widest widescreen you've ever seen. A tiger runs right at you. It's really cool and scary. And I think he's got kind of like 80s old analog video effect trails behind him.

And then the title, Universe of Energy, flies at you. And it is like 70s superman it is such a cool opening title it might be like why i love old analog uh video effects so much i probably like saw this when i was seven and it like freaked the hell out of me so it's a step there's some aesthetically amazing stuff early motion graphic stuff that is pretty cool in the original ride yeah and and that and then some of the music, which I guess, let's figure, like, were you listening to any of these tracks? Yes. Are you pulling up?

Yeah. All right, there's a couple different ones here. I mean, this is great. This is everything you want from a theme park. Yeah, this is up my alley. There's going to be 10 minutes here where I just play things off my phone. It's sort of a R.E.S. Speedwagon roll with the changes. Here we go.

To the universe of energy. See it glow. See it glow. To the universe of energy. Boy, that's see it glow. Theme songs, music were so goddamn earnest in the 70s and 80s. Can you play the one where the guy makes it sound like he wants to fuck energy? Yeah, that's this one.

This is called Energy You Make the World Go Round. And this is a little more melancholy. There's also some, that video we were watching, there's a melancholy acoustic version of it that I could not find. This is like Styx's lady. See all the forms and the faces of nature taking its course. Feel all the wonderful motion flowing through things far and near.

Nature will share her secrets. Different time, folks. A different time. Lady energy. Energy. Energy. This is fucking. This is when people tune out.

This is like flow jam, kind of. Carpenters. i'm i'm tearing up uh i mean and then there's another i found an instrument we won't play that right now but there's an instrumental of just that first song like it's real those are great those songs are great yeah yeah fine aesthetics that song would be a wonderful song for like the first dance at your wedding if you were named Energy. If there was a woman named Energy. And we'll get to it at the end. But one of the positives, I think, is if you're doing a Guardians of the Galaxy, which is very much like retro-y playlist stuff, I think those songs got to come back. I think there's a decent chance you can put those songs back in and they would fit real well in the ride.

Was there a rumor that the ride could be like a historical journey through old Epcot attractions? Yes. Did I imagine that? I think we've talked about that before. Yeah. We're getting ahead of ourselves. But yeah, supposedly they're keeping the building the same. They're ripping everything inside out.

But I don't know. They're keeping the building the same, which means maybe, or maybe not ripping everything out. Maybe they're keeping the dinosaurs, but the idea of, which a lot of people roll their eyes at, is that Peter Quill visited Epcot. Peter Quill, of course, the famous Guardians of the Galaxy character, Starlord, for those of you who have not seen the film,

is that he, the narrative of the ride is that he went to Epcot as a child. So that seems to indicate that the ride is going to be very self-referential to Epcot Center itself. So people are speculating there's an opportunity to fit all the Epcot nostalgia from the 80s that you could possibly want in this ride, which could either be really terrible or very fun because you get to hear those songs again. You get to put Horizons, Robots in the ride. You could put everything in there,

and then the rest of the park just turns into IP. Potentially. Because Figment's not featured too great these days. Yeah. But does that... I like that. Would the typical audience who want a Guardians of the Galaxy ride have any idea what the hell's going on?

I think if you get some Guardians animatronics in there and you make the ride go fast, sure, yeah. I think it's just got to spin around in a circle so people get a little dizzy. You hear a talking raccoon, and then they can throw treats for weirdos like us everywhere. We're in the universe of energy. We've got to get out of here. What is this robot? A purple dragon?

Get out of the way, young Peter Quill. We've got to get out. I've got to get old Peter Quill out of here way, young Peter Quill. We got to get out. I got to get old Peter Quill out of here. That's the other thing. Every other Epcot thing was like three to five minutes long, and this was 45 minutes long. Like World of Motion, Spaceship Earth, Body Wars, everything was pretty quick.

And in watching the ride-throughs of these, I stopped paying attention for massive stretches of time. That's one thing you can guarantee. The Guardians of the Galaxy ride that replaces it will be like a tenth of the running time of the original ride. Oh, yeah. I would think so, unless they really want to stay true to the spirit. Guardians, fighting to save the galaxy making a better

world for me there we go that's probably what will happen so while we're still talking about the original one can we talk about the promotional Mickey and Goofy explore the universe

of energy comic book yes of course i this i so we were trying to piece this together uh yeah what because i think i had this growing up too and you said it was because they would hand this out uh outside the ride yes they would give you this comic book like either at the front of the ride or at the exit. And I still have a copy somewhere. Like this is probably the first comic book I owned, like as a kid, like three or four years old. And it is pure propaganda for the Exxon company. There's a cover where Mickey and Goofy

are just pointing at the ride, Universe of Energy, presented by Exxon. It just says that on the front of the comic. Oh, that's, wait, I remember the famous, that's why I know by Exxon. It just says that on the front of the comic, which, Oh, that's wait. I remember the, the,

the famous, that's why I know the Exxon tiger. Oh, it's the back of this comic. Yeah. Yeah. The Exxon tiger is walking down the road there. Um,

I liked this comic book a lot as a kid because before there was the internet, there weren't a lot of ways to like, you know, have a piece of Disney world in your home. It's why those, uh, the stockholder annual reports that I think a piece of disney world in your home it's why those uh the stockholder annual reports that i think a few of us had as kids so i like to look at like a really beautiful picture of the theme parks uh uh it was this uh comic is cool because it has like animated depictions of the ride um but beyond that it has a lot of weird scary

oil industry propaganda there's a crossword puzzle which has a little picture of Mickey and Goofy doing a crossword puzzle and the crossword puzzle is on a big oil barrel like this is so bonkers to look at now this is the stuff of

Dick Cheney's wet dreams I would just look at this again and again as a kid, probably before I could read, would just look at the pictures. And yeah, I felt it a nice way to connect with the park, in addition to our monthly Disney magazine, the very dry monthly Disney magazine. Oh yeah, have we not talked about Disney magazine yet?

I don't know that we have. Slash Disney news. We got that and Disney Adventures when I was a kid. We are the most, we're not susceptible to propaganda anyway. So this oil thing. So, I mean, the whole thing is like Mickey and Goofy go through the ride and Mickey gives a lot of talking points about energy and then Goofy says vaudeville jokes.

Goofy makes jokes, and I just wrote a note at a certain point that says Goofy is a fucking menace in this comic. We're not taking our energy crisis seriously. What are some sample pieces of dialogue? Do you want to do a reading of these two panels? Sure. Should I do Mickey? What do you want to do? I can't two panels? Sure. Should I do Mickey?

What do you want to do? I can't do a great Goofy. I can do a pretty decent Mickey. I'll do Goofy then. All right. I'm ready for you. My Goofy is mostly just me saying gorsh. Okay, so Mickey starts here?

No, I think Goofy starts. Okay, great. Permafrost? What's that? Gorsh? Oh, it's a permanently frozen layer of ice and soil that can be thousands of feet deep. Wow, I bet no one has to worry about ice cream melting here, yuck. So that's when, like, about halfway through this comic when I lost my...

Well, there's also, like, they're talking about how gas prices are going up, and Goofy says, Gosh, Mick, that scares me a lot. Like, the word scarce, soil's getting scarce. Yeah, Goofy, but it will help if we can find new sources of oil in our own country. Like, what? This is also, this comic acknowledges the 70s gas crisis. We can't... Great.

And we can always buy oil from foreign countries too. They're riding a camel in this panel. Sometimes we can't depend on other countries since 1973 our foreign oil supplies but cut off twice. What? This is so crazy and it also did it how the website I found this all scanned

on scanned it in reverse order so I can either also you're passing by a very crucial panel yeah so there is a panel where Mickey explains how Mickey in like a parka is pointing up to a

map. A map of Alaska that shows how oil goes from Prudence Bay in northern Alaska to Valdez in southern Alaska. And you might remember Valdez from the being the site of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Only

four years after this Fun Kids comic. Only four years after this Fun Kids comic. Water flows without issue or spillage to Valdez. There's no panel where Goofy's like, why are you talking about all this stuff? What got into you? Oh, yeah, here we go. They also talk about other forms of energy.

There sure are. There's nuclear power. In the future, it could provide endless energy. Like, this is right around Three Mile Island, too, I think, right? Isn't that amazing? We love nuclear energy. CEO Rex Tillerson is doing a great job I mean it's truly

perverse this whole thing is perverse it's weird very perverse I mean look the drawings are great they are do we know who did the art

who did the art here I don't know it's funny that's a whole interesting thing in Disney's history of like the Mickey and Donald

and Goof goofy like comics, which were popular in America. Cause all the stuff that those guys are reasonably popular, but in Europe, like they're huge. Like the Carl Banks and the Don Rosa stuff is like huge. And that's why DuckTales has this like extra culture to it beyond the show. People love those comics.

So, um, extra cults to it beyond the show. People love those comics. But a lot of those guys at the height of their creative peak were not really given the credit they were due until many years later. And they were forced to slave away on oil industry propaganda. So yeah, I don't think this comic has any credits in it.

Well, no one wanted to. Walt Disney Productions. Everyone knew what they were doing. As with branded entertainment, you don't want your name on it. Walt Disney Productions and a branch called Walt Disney Educational Media Company. Oh, man. Oh, boy. Walt Disney Educational Media Company can be bought.

Elsewhere in this comic, also, Mickey makes a point of saying how coal will be around for a long time. And there's a general sentiment that runs through this comic as well as both iterations of the ride, which is solar power is a great idea. It'll be awesome once it's cheaper. That's what it's really pushing. Like, yeah, someday we'll get to solar energy, but it's just, you know, look, it's really pushing like yeah someday we'll get to solar energy but it's just eh you know look it's cosper also wind is mentioned in the ride but they didn't

draw it in the comic and you'd think like giant windmills would be a nice little page of the comic but like nope who cares that's for our children's children to worry about what if there's no wind? It doesn't work.

What is this, Holland? Fuck off. I don't recall having this comic as a kid. I mean, I'm sure I went on this. I have no memory also of going on this as a kid because it's obviously, why would I remember it? Yeah. But after you read this as a kid, did you suddenly have an urge to pump gas? Like help mom pump gas or something?

Do you remember? Only at exxon only i mean as long as it was at exxon uh we were a sonoka family so we liked we were mobile we'd always go to mobile which eventually was obviously exxon mobile and mobile yeah mobile got a spin at sponsoring our favorite attraction, the Universe of Energy. Well, you know, I guess while anything else on the original iteration of the ride, because while we're talking about the great comedic possibilities that come from the combination of jokes and oil, Disney finally in the 90s went full on comedy and transformed this dry ride, the universe of energy, into Ellen's Energy Adventure. Although it was originally called Ellen's Energy Crisis. Oh my God.

Yeah, weird, right? Jesus. And then it was changed almost instantly. Like the day it opened, they changed it with no explanation. Yeah, they were finally like a little honest about what was happening. And then, no, no, no, no, no. Chase, no, it's an adventure. It's fun.

Ellen's energy goof about. I feel like some evil scientist was there opening day and he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We got to change this. This is real. This is right. There is an adventure. Too real. Too real.

No, not crisis. It's fun. Ellen's prescient verbiage. This opened in 96, and then the episode of her TV show where her character comes out of the closet, and shortly after she had come out of the closet, happened in 97. Just a few months after. And this was, I think, I was maybe talking about this when we had Mike Mitchell here. One of the weird things about this ride, it is like, it is an Ellen who is several Ellens ago.

It was before Coming Out of the Closet, which if you can name anything about the show Ellen besides her coming out of the closet, I'm very impressed. Like, that is like the primary thing that happened on that show. And this ride is like whatever Ellen was in the early 90s. It is pre-talk show. It's pre-dancing. Pre-dancing, yeah. It's pre-Oscar selfie. Like none of the things we, like she's changed her look entirely.

Yeah, it's an Ellen that is like unrecognizable to the public at large. Yeah, it is a weird time capsule for that reason like when i saw when i was there in august like i was watching this and it is like you are there you are in 1996 there's no there's no this has to be at this time this is not timeless at all like no she the clothes she's wearing it's kind of this like 90s wide butterfly collar that makes her look like one of the roxbury guys she is the third oh yeah she's got like a suit on at one point and then she's got the like khakis red shirt like open blue oxford like which i believe is what the animatronic is yeah yeah yeah which so we've

alluded to that this like mostly this was like they replaced all of the movies in the ride but you still go through the dinosaur kingdom just like you did in the previous edition but with one big change there is an animatronic ellen fighting a big snake monster. One of the strangest tableaus anywhere in Disney World. And it was there. I mean, it's still there, probably. But up until this year, you could have seen 90s Ellen fighting a snake monster. Although that, I think they have trouble.

I think they have to really pay attention with the presidents when they make a president for the Hall of Presidents. But other modern celebrities, I feel like they've always struggled with and this ellen is not particularly ellen-esque this robot uh i i wrote down that she looks kind of like dr zeus um sort of big like blonde mop and like white pants and a big tunic shirt. The celebrities they had the best luck with in the late 80s, early 90s in terms of animatronics were like Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney. Because their faces are a little fucked up already. So it's easier to mold the animatronic.

When the robot melts a little bit, it adds to the character. It adds to the character. It adds to the character. You know, yeah, like an attractive woman done via audio animatronics. Is there, like they did the witch in the great movie Ride. I guess Judy Garland looks pretty good. Yeah, yeah. Judy Garland and Ingrid Bergman, I guess both fare reasonably well. The Sigourney Weaver. Did I call her Sigourney Weiner?

They messed up the robot. That's if you dress a dachshund. If you dress a dachshund like Ripley for Halloween. It's a Sigourney Weiner. And it's a viral sensation. Yeah, seriously. Sigourney Weiner would get, the dachshund would get invited on Ellen.

I'm burning off this meme. Talking about it. You just gave it away. You blew all the viral dough. Sigourney Weiner would be more popular than this podcast and like anything any of us ever do. 10 million likes.

Finally have something worth mentioning on our gravestone. Did you see that dachshund dressed like Ripley from Alien? Owner of Sigourney Weiner. Is Sigourney Weiner on fucking Dancing with the Stars this season? With like Sean Spicer and Anthony Sabato Jr. Antonio Sabato Jr. Fuck that guy. Man, South Park said some really rude stuff

about Sigourney Weiner. Whatever. It's part of the zeitgeist. I understand. Oh, yeah. They take on all coverage. They take on all sides. Nobody's safe.

Not Caitlyn Jenner, not Sigourney Weiner. We may be burying the lead in terms of famous people in this ride because i i for we mentioned alex drubeck shows up uh also jamie lee curtis yes as judy yeah the most maybe the biggest actress in this right yeah major actress for a disney attraction but doing that thing where it's like a bunch of people are themselves and then one famous actor is playing a character, which always kind of drives me nuts. Ellen's friend Judy, who Ellen is watching Jeopardy and she gets bitter about it because her old college snooty friend Judy appears and knows everything about energy just because she's a scientist. How dare she?

Judy didn't do anything that bad. Like, Judy just happens to be very smart. I mean, she certainly carries herself in a manner I understand you might be annoyed a little bit, but Ellen didn't study science. She didn't strike me as being, like, a villain of Snow at all. Not even, not a little bit.

No, she looks composed. And everyone gets mad at that. Ellen comes off very petty is what I'm saying. Yeah. And, like, yeah, of course she knows. And she's watching her friend on Jeopardy from like the nicest apartment you've ever seen. Yeah. What's

described as a New York loft that is just beautiful. It's a real winner of New York property. Like, what do you have to be mad about, Ellen? Yeah, this show establishes a universe where Ellen lives in this giant New York loft. Her and Bill Nye are neighbors. Her favorite show is Jeopardy, and also Bill

Nye comes over to borrow a bunch of stuff for an experiment. I need some aluminum foil! And a candle and string, and it's like, wait, he's a scientist, but he's not prepared for his latest experiment? There's some logic flaws. There's some logic flaws.

Well, and they point out, like, he just walks in the door and then a separate Ellen pops up outside of the narrative to say, you know, in New York, everybody leaves their doors open. Like, why do you have to, you're deconstructing the thing you made that we're watching? Yeah. There's a lot I think that there's this this could also this ride could also be just called like Ellen's adventure asides like Ellen's constant asides she takes a phone call during it and then hangs up on the person she's

talking to just like like Bill and I's like you know this this is when the universe was birthed and she's like oh must have been a big delivery room. It's just like constant asides. Someday our oil supply might run out, but Ellen's quips never will. There's a very strange bit in this. Like after you go through the dinosaur scenes,

you go into a totally black room with a radio antenna. And there's like a bit that's like morning drive time news radio but it's about the destruction and extinction of dinosaurs and bill nye chimes in every now and then but what it really is it's a pitch black room that they didn't have to dress like it's a set they didn't have to build like all that they needed was just this black room and this one graphic like this one like fake neon projection. That's like a radio broadcast. And you're listening to Chris Berman and I believe another ESPN anchor. Is that right?

Yeah. It is a tie in to the other recently acquired Disney property ESPN. Yeah. This is a theme about like uh like disney animation there was kind of a golden age in the late 80s early 90s and then it gave way to this very unpleasant messy time and and that's that's true in the movies and i think it's true in the parks and there was a lot of bad shit in the late 90s early 2000s where they're trying to jam abc stuff this is one of them obviously this weird ham fisted Ellen thing.

Like all that, when they tried to do, when there was the soap opera bistro where you get on the sets of your favorite soaps, there was the live who wants to be a millionaire experience. That's right. ABC mashup with the parks was such a boring disaster. I found out something interesting recently.

The old stunt show at Hollywood studios, the lights camera or lights motor action. Yeah. up with the parks was such a boring disaster uh i found out something interesting recently the old stunt show at hollywood studios the lights camera or lights motor action yeah which was a pretty cool show to like doing live car stunts and stuff that was originally pitched as a james bond stunt show and the licensing uh didn't work out i think this came up on i think i'm probably stealing this from jim mills show i feel like it's where I heard it. But it's like that would have been awesome if there was a full James Bond stunt show.

But they probably still would have bulldozed it to build Star Wars. Yeah, I think at this point. Huh, crazy. No, they'd rather stick with properties like Grace Under Fire and Private Practice. Stuff that's in-house already.

The Louis Anderson sitcom. Oh, yeah. Was that on ABC? Maybe. Also, don't forget that truly one of the biggest and the deepest dregs of attractions sounds dangerous with Drew Carey. Oh, yeah. Of course. Where they cut your hair in the dark.

Yeah. You sit in a dark room with headphones on and you feel like you're getting your hair cut. That's all I remember about it. It's like maybe there were bees and then you got your hair cut. Yeah, there were two good headphone gags they could pull off.

Bees and haircut. Which is why there was a brief time where if you went on the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln attraction, you'd put on headphones and pretend that you were Abraham Lincoln getting your hair cut. Is that true? Yeah.

What the fuck? For only like a couple years. Really? Here, Mr. Lincoln, have a seat. We'll transform the, we'll pan the audio around, I'd imagine, and post on this. You'll feel like you're getting your hair cut. That's insanely messed up because back then getting a shaver a haircut was like taking someone's, like taking your own life at risk.

Because like if you got a cut and it got infected, like you might just die from a haircut or a fucked up shave. Yeah, I mean, they also did dental work, too. If Lincoln hadn't been shot, he eventually would have gotten infected by a haircut. A dirty haircut scissor? A razor would have sliced his neck. It was going to happen at some point. John Wilkes Booth was just doing the obvious. How many people died of dirty haircuts? I don't know.

Was that a epidemic? A tenth of the population every year. Walter passed away this summer. He had a bad haircut. Dearest Juliana, I'm afraid I will perish soon. There's a CGI flyover in this ride, too, that didn't age well. What's up with that? It's either before or after the dinosaurs.

It's like soaring over a prehistoric world and it's very like sega saturn level 3d graphics uh yeah uh that said there's one re i there's a great joke that i i think it's a solid joke in in one of the jeopardy sequences where like uh jamie lee curtis is explaining to to Alex Trebek like yeah Ellen used to be my college roommate our nickname for her was stupid Ellen I think it's like a pretty funny non-joke like it's like yeah I don't know I'm amazed that made it in yeah that's kind of nicely like clever in its non-cleverness yeah um well so I mean the like not that you need to know the whole plot but basically Bill Nye comes over

while Ellen is watching Jeopardy then she has a dream sequence where she imagines being on Jeopardy and missing all of the questions that are all about energy then she goes to see the dinosaurs and goes to see how solar power is not ready yet and that enables her to come back and win Jeopardy at the end

yes that's uh and it takes 45 minutes to tell that's how it was pitched probably and that enables her to come back and win Jeopardy at the end. Yes. What a tale. And it takes 45 minutes to tell. That's how it was pitched, probably. So I think it's on with Jeopardy. I know Alex Trebek will probably let us in the studio. Also, we have not mentioned the fact that Michael Richards appears in this attraction. No lines.

Is he Einstein? He's a caveman. Oh, he's a caveman. There's also a wordless Einstein in the Je. No lines. Is he Einstein? He's a caveman. Oh, he's a caveman. There's also a wordless Einstein in the Jeopardy sequence. And Ellen Cleghorn, SNL cast member Ellen Cleghorn, has a line.

She's like a PA or a producer on Jeopardy at the end. Oh. What, really? I watched it. She's got one line. Weird. Huh.

Two Ellen's energy adventures. That's better. But you're watching, here's another thing about this ride, you're watching, I mean the first like two, three minutes of it are just Ellen talking at you, doing like energy themed stand up,

and it is bombing, it is eating shit, and like Ellen is funny, I like Ellen, Ellen's funny, like watching her be saddled with this bad material, that has been dying every day for two decades at disney world there is not a laugh in the entire thing

if you watch any of the ride-throughs of it until uh michael richard shows up does kind of a like half-assed kramer uh getting like burnt by the first discovery of fire and the audience loses it finally a laugh like 25 minutes into the whole thing whoever's awake laughs hopefully it woke up others who are still asleep um yeah it i think it goes to show that uh comedy in theme parks is tough even if a line is funny once it will probably not be funny dozens of times and something as basic and simple as uh kramer getting electrocuted it's like all you can do i think comedically in a theme park it's hard to because you have to like pitch you have to hit from 8 to 80 you know like you have to like try and hit all demographics

and uh lots of people who do not speak english there are like people from all over the world at these parks so you can't really be doing kind of like flippant little jokes about 90s coffee shops. Regional stuff. I did watch one of the other Martin vids of the ride through for Alien Encounter, which is one of my favorites. Oh, yeah. I'm going to do that at some point. I want to do that at some point what i do at some point um but he had the original audio and and when the alien breaks out of its container you can hear disney

put in some like you know wild sound a lot of like you know stuff tourists would say like you know that that you you think like your fellow audience members are yelling out but it's clearly like on the track and it like it's the alien explodes out of the thing but it's clearly on the track. The alien explodes out of the thing and it's horrifying looking and someone goes, what is that? My mother-in-law? That looks worse than your meatloaf, honey.

That's another 96, 95 attraction I feel like. I wonder if there were joke writers on staff for Imagineering. Just your show show writers. They retire, they come into Imagineering one day a week to say like mother-in-law jokes. That's where all of the Three's Company writers went. All the Ropers writers.

It was the only place they could get work for a while. Energy themed jokes. So, yeah, when you're watching this, or when I was watching it earlier, it is, again, as far as propaganda, they're having so much fun talking about oil and offshore drilling, and they're like, did you know that one of these facilities that offshore drills is as tall as a building?

Like a skyscraper? It's like, wow. Like, can you believe it? Goofy and the comic and Ellen in the ride fall into the same role about like, oh, what about this? Could we do this? And Mickey and Bill Nye fall into the role of like, calm the fuck down. We can do it a little, but not a lot yet. Please.

Okay? How many times do I have to tell you? Look, you're not a serious person, Ellen slash Mickey. Leave it to the experts, okay? Side note, Bill Nye, when he's on these shows now arguing about climate change, he's not doing a good job. I don't know a lot about climate. I think he's eviscerating his opponents. I think he's devastating them.

I think he's eviscerating them. You're saying what headlines say, and then I watch the clip and I go, no, that is not what just happened. I say whatever BuzzFeed tells me to say. Tucker Carlson just talked circles around him and embarrassed him. And I was like, no, this isn't helping.

If those two go up against each other, the only way to know who wins is if one of their bow ties starts spinning and their head shoots up like a rock-em-suck-em robot. Both characters get a scientist on that actually has a master's degree in something. The guy's got like a bachelor's degree in engineering or something. Come on. Why is he? He's degree in engineering or something. Come on. Why is he? He's an entertainer. Yeah.

I haven't seen enough of them to know, but he convinced many groups of tourists on the daily at Disney World to not invest in solar energy. No, I know. That alone should disqualify him. I'm surprised nobody brought that up on one of these Fox News shows that he goes on. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. We're saying, though, that there's not a lot of laughs. People aren't really diehards for this ride. But I started watching one of the videos of the final ride through of this ride, and were like talking along with the dialogue and that's when I went like oh nope like I can see

if I was there I'm sure I would have probably got like caught up in the fun although the last ride of this I think was a walk off right like it stopped in the dinosaurs the last ride ever of this ride broke down and the audience had to walk off of it but they let people

like you know what, you're here, just take pictures, don't touch anything, but you can take pictures with the dinosaurs. Like, take your time. Like, the cast members were also, like, you know, into it, too. Yeah.

And also, no one cares what happens in the ride. So no one, there was not ultimately a final conclusion to the Jeopardy saga. Yeah, and I don't think anyone cared. I don't think that the audience was clamoring for the... The ride could have broken every time. Like the search for energy.

The story goes on. There's no true conclusion. There's no last modern scene where it's like, the answer is disgusting lithium-ion batteries that will be in everything and never biodegrade uh well so this this tale has come to an end uh ellen's energy adventure due to be replaced by guardians of the galaxy uh a lot of fans don't dig this this is people feel like this is a big betrayal of the epcot center uh model that to put ip intellectual property from the disney movies into epcot uh betrays the original vision of the park uh i don't care

because this could be a good new ride maybe with old epcot stuff uh i don't know do we is there anything to that we are losing the uh educational component ofcot. Does it matter? No. No, I don't think so. I think the problem is if you're going to make – People will be mad at us for saying that. Certainly, if I listen to other podcasts, the party line is, but this is against the vision. I love Epcot so much. I love it aesthetically.

You're wearing an Epcot shirt right now. Right now, I bought an Epcot prop at an auction. I've used the font and the aesthetic and a bunch of things I've done. I still am like, as long as some of that aesthetic and vibe is around, take all the rides out. We need new, better rides.

Yeah, the thing is, if they had kept up the original mission of Epcot, to make a futuristic, bleeding edge, looking to the future park, sure, I think I'd be more upset, but you have to be constantly updating it. You have to constantly be racing the future to do that. And at a certain point, they're like, well, the 90s are here, and it's not going to get much better than virtual reality and your phones might get cool soon like that's at a certain point they were just like people are going to come anyway even if we don't just constantly keep updating there's no

acknowledgement of like really recently future stuff like if you could if there was like a hyperloop attraction or something where you go to Mars. There's a self-driving car. There's so many exciting near-future things going on and none of it is represented in the park. Yes, because we're talking about

touchscreen phones. Maybe will happen one day. So at this point, if you're not going to keep up the future thing... There's no exhibit about public utilities start transit transferring electricity wirelessly like you don't need power lines anymore like that's a thing that

people talk about is that right and i didn't know that i it's it's i think it's kind of hypothetical but like the next iphones you can charge on a little mat you don't have to plug it in so like that's a baby step towards that very easy to convey a piece of technology as opposed to 45 minutes of rambling about energy that leaves me more confused about what energy is but also like do what like do what the ride the best rides do like pirates or haunted mansion or the original figment like give us a robot give us a character that we like in a robot that's new give us us some personality on the thing and, like, make a fun dark ride. And the thing could last for 50 years.

Yes. Like, if you're just presenting it like this, like, yeah, this thing's going to have to go. Like, this is so dry. Like, people will not miss this ride. Even, like, the test track. Like, the last time I rode the test track update that it's kind of blue and looks like Tron. It looks like the obstacles are generated out of the computer out of nowhere. I thought that was cool.

That looks pretty good. I do think it's crazy, though, because I saw pictures from the Food and Wine Festival is going on in Epcot right now. And it's like, oh, yeah, the Wonders of Life Pavilion is there. And they just closed it. there's just they didn't bold it's all there and like they cleared out most of the stuff and they just kind of use it as like event space but it's like that whole pavilion did they shut that down after like 9 11 when attendance was like really low does that happen but it's like body world i loved body world as a kid i love the thing where you were like the brain of a when attendance was really low. Yeah, that sounds right. Does that happen? But it's like Body World, I loved Body World as a kid.

I loved the thing where you were in the brain of a 10-year-old and a cranium command. Well, that had characters. That's my point. That had characters, yeah. Characters and personality. Body World was a thrill ride. Body World was like a Star Tours

kind of simulator. That was cool. Great character, Elizabeth Shue, the microbiologist oh yeah directed by uh leonard nemo leonard nemo yeah i remember that one at some point too sure um but uh but like you use care like fine use the disney characters and yeah keep some of the idea of epcot but like yeah like that's better than what we have now. Jesus. Like, I was there in Future World, and it is bleak. It is a bleak situation.

Just like our future world is a disaster. Yeah, an utter total disaster. Infrastructure falling apart. It's all laid to waste. I mean, if we were doing our scale of would you plus it up? Would you, what is it again? Plus it up? We always forget this stupid scale. Keep it as it is, plus it up,

burn it down for the insurance money. I'm going burn it down for the insurance money and build a whole new thing. Like, I'm a little worried that they're not destroying the building quite frankly. I think that's a thing. I think people like the rainbow-colored building, and I think people like the mural. That's what people seem

to be more sad about, the dinosaurs, the mural, and the building. At the very least, build a giant show building behind it to give us some more room, to give us some thrills, baby.

Let's get some fun. Because now, as it is, there's not that much room in there to kind of make a fun... It could be a cool slow-moving dark ride, which maybe that's what it'll be. Well, if that thing is the facade, that amazing entrance, because I love that. I'd be sad if that went.

I love that old Epcot architecture. But yeah, you open that up into a much bigger show building. Because right now it's just two theaters and a tiny space for robots. So I would say the only reason you would want to blow it up is just so we get more room for robots. More robots. More robots. Will they have robots, you think? Well, they have the rocket and the tr reason you would want to blow it up is just so we get more room for robots. More robots. More robots. Will there be robots, you think? Well, they have the rocket animatronic.

People want robots. People want less screens, more robots. The rocket animatronic is one of the best. Oh, it's terrific. Yeah. So I assume they'll make a duplicate of him, a couple of him, I'm hoping, for this ride. Robotic versions of all of the bands on the Guardians soundtrack. Robotic raspberries.

10cc in robot form. Oh man, if Rocket Raccoon could meet the singing animals from, singing food from Kitchen Cabaret, that would be terrific. Oh wow, yeah, that would be great. He'd probably eat them. He probably would. Look out, Peach Boys. There should also be... This is a reference for no one.

This whole show is a reference for no one this whole show is a reference for no one oh pretty much yeah if you get most of what we're talking about tweet at us and say I get it you don't have to say whether you like it or not just let us know I get it alright

keep rambling fellas anything else yeah I just I like the idea of the Guardians ride I like it that this will be our little Keep rambling, fellas. Anything else? Yeah, I like the idea of the Guardians ride. I like it that this will be our little, hopefully like our little place for nostalgia. And then the rest of them just give us some new cool rides that just loosely tie into imagination or loosely tie into these original ideas.

And I think keep up the, because Epcot has good merch. All the design stuff, you know, keep up the, because Epcot has like good merch. Like all the design stuff, all the original pavilion logo, like they really have made an effort

to bring back that kind of merch the last few years. Yeah. People like that aesthetic. You keep some of that aesthetic around and add some

bigger, better rides and I think we're, I think we're good. I think so. Do we all agree it's a, I mean, hopefully what they're doing to some extent is burning the ride down.

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. But we all want it burned. Start fresh. Cool. All right. Well, we'll be right back. All right. We're back with more Podcast the Ride.

And today we're going to introduce a brand new segment that we like to call Animatronic of the month. You know, folks, the entire theme park industry runs on the backs of unsung mechanical heroes, the audio animatronics. Audio animatronics are forced to thanklessly perform the same tasks over and over again every day for absolutely no pay, as opposed to the human workforce at theme parks who perform the same tasks over and over every day for something kind of resembling pay.

The point is, theme parks would crumble without audio animatronics, and today we'd like to shine a light on a random, underappreciated robot somewhere in the theme park world. What lucky animatronic will be the animatronic of the month? We're all going to highlight a different animatronic, and then you all will get to decide who is animatronic of the month. So here we go with my selection. My animatronic hails from Pirates of the Caribbean. He's a fellow I like to call Striped Shirt Pirate, trying to get the key back from the dog.

Since 1967, Striped Shirt Pirate has led an unglamorous life, squatting in a dank cell, begging to a high-status canine. His daily duties include whistling, turning his head slightly, and dangling a rope in his hands. Never once in the history of the attraction has this robot glitched out, lassoed a park guest, and yanked them back into the water. His bulbous cheeks suggest a white, dizzy Gillespie, and his striped shirt is timeless enough to be found

either on a pirate's schooner or at a modern J.Crew. Since he can never escape his seaside jail, today we salute this audio-animatronic with a hearty... I messed it up. I didn't quite get that whistle at. Trying to do the pirate whistle. Wait, here, I'll do it without the music. There we go.

Pretty good. Yeah, that's the whistle that the pirate does in the ride. That's what I was trying to do. Okay, that's my robot. Fellas, do you have your own robot selection? Yeah, I'll go ahead. Great. My animatronic hails from Splash Mountain at Disneyland, and I'd like to give a hearty well done

to the man-sized dog sitting in a spinning robot. Buddy, not only are you large as hell, you also sit perfectly still as that rowboat spins forever and ever. And sure, sometimes I get a bit of a sinister vibe from you. Maybe it was from the time I rode the ride and the rowboat wasn't spinning, so you were just sitting there

in the darkest part of the ride, totally motionless. And the fact that you're the size of the man is a little upsetting. Or maybe it's like you remind me of the man in a dog costume from that one shot in The Shining. But whatever it is, that rowboat spinning at a cartoonishly fast speed brings me back to the more innocent, peaceful place

that is the Splash Mountain Holler. So keep up the good work, man-sized dogs sitting in a spinning rowboat in Splash Mountain. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. Beautiful. Ready? I'm ready, yes. Sure, Ringo Starr, Sheila E, and Max Weinberg are great drummers but what are they missing?

the answer is quite simple they are not robots and they are also not stereotypical Italian pizza chefs my nominee checks all of those boxes he is Pasquale P. Piper drummer in Munch's Make Believe Band the band that performs at your nearest Chuck E. Cheese whether he's making the sauce

or providing a steady backbeat this mustachioed man always delivers. You haven't lived until you've heard him play the skins on one of Chuck E. Cheese's famous songs, like the Bon Jovi parody of Wanted Dead or Alive, titled Wanted, Big Pizza Pie, or the parody of Aerosmith's Janie Got a Gun, titled Kids Are Having Fun. Also, Pasquale is an aspiring comedian. Aren't we all? I salute you, Pasquale P. Pieplate, my nominee for animatronic of the month. This time I'll fade it out gently. Ah, that was a relaxing little segment.

I hope you found it as such, too. So we've had three nominees here. Let's recap. We have Striped Shirt Pirate trying to get the key back from the dog. We've got a man-sized dog sitting in a spinning rowboat from Splash Mountain. And Pasquale P. Pieplate,

the drummer for Chucky Cheese or Munch's Make Believe Band at a Chucky Cheese restaurant near you. The last name was news to me. Really? I'm excited to know it. Pieplate, yeah. He's born into a certain lifestyle with the last name pipe uh background for it uh pasquale was discovered in the kitchen he was drumming on the pie plates and munch found him back there and then input decided to put him in

the band because he was so he had such a great rhythmic he joined later, like Joe Walsh joined the Eagles. Very, yes. Not until Pasquale joined did it become a super group. You know, I feel like I have my winner in mind already, but I don't want to tilt you, the listener. So here's how this is going to work. Go to our Twitter, which is at Podcast The Ride. We will set up a poll, and you will determine who is the animatronic of the month unless of course we

forget to do any of this by the time this episode comes out yeah so uh and if we do forget uh please yell at us on twitter and we'll put it up and then we'll really know someone is listening to the show you forgot the poll what else am i supposed to do with my day i was gonna weigh all these options through with my uh significant other we we nearly broke up in the argument that ensued trying to come to consensus not realizing we could both vote individually no it's the row it should be the rowboat dog not the dog near the pirate is like ubiquitous it's a classic thing but the other the other one represents the the whole south what is this really about what is this really about i haven't been happy in years oh there it is there it is animatronics is the only thing keeping us together, and it always has been.

If our podcast was the catalyst for your breakup, please let us know on Twitter. Another thing to tweet at us about. Hey, where else can people get a hold of us about things of this nature? Oh, you can email questions, comments, concerns at podcasttheride at gmail.com. You sure can. So check out the poll. comments, concerns at podcasttheride at gmail.com. You sure can. So check out the poll. We'll post pictures of these robots so you remember who they are.

And, hey, follow us. Check us out individually at Scott Gairdner on Twitter. At Jason Sheridan. And at Fat Carlson, P-H-A-T-C-A-R-L-S-O-N. The only one who did a thing that wasn't just his name. So with that, you have survived Podcast the Ride and we'll see you next time. See ya. Bye.

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