Podcast: The Ride - Three Broomsticks with Zach Reino

Episode Date: November 30, 2018

Cornish Pasties. Scotch eggs. Shepherd's Pie. You know: theme park food. Zach Reino (Off Book Podcast, CityWalk Saga Theme) stops by as we discuss the Wizard World of Harry Potter's delightful pub. Club 33 episode now available behind the Second Gate! Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/ FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever Dog! the land, now here just the restaurant. Zacharino pulls up a chair at the Three Brewsticks on Podcast the Ride, the theme park podcast hosted by three men whose favorite songs are as follows. Jason Sheridan, Grim Grinning Ghosts, Mike Carlson, Blood on the Saddle by Big Al, and Scott, Tomorrowland Area Music Loop. Right on. Yeah, dead on. I listen to that Tomorrowland music loop when i when i write sometimes because it's just me too pleasant i was using it for that exactly just like nice instrumental kind of like you know like mall music but slightly spacified you know i mean really i like to call it the colloquial name though the uh the bubble shuffle loop oh right of course the

first song on it is the song bubble shuffle by jazz guitarist larry carlton you really lit me up you set me off right at the top of this episode mike yeah it is like i said something i was i was getting jason very excited on the tokyo episode because i was talking about different food stuffs and certain different experiences and rides and the excitement i saw in jason's face you matched i believe when i said tomorrowland area music loop yep 80s smooth instrumental jazz but but also but it's i i like that answer better but it's in tight competition with another part of me oh sure yeah i like we're here to change the world too but the the song on bad that is at the end of captain eo also one of my favorite

part of the songs i would like to keep talking about this but let's bring the guest in he's a musical man we'll do it uh you know him from the great podcast off book this is zach reno ladies gentlemen very special i literally i do get the phantasmic theme stuck in my head all the time it's really good i think at one point when like limewire was still a thing i downloaded just the audio for it to listen to it particularly there's a part where like heffalumps and wuzzles kicks in with like a hardcore electric guitar it's like and it's like it's legitimately badass yeah yeah and they kind of say they add lyrics to those are bad there's a guy and i hate him and that's why i'm just like package like he's i don't know what he says but it's bad it's like not cool but the

guitar itself is cool yeah i think Fantasmic is really great. Although side note, when we went out with the Crafts, Richard Nicholas Craft, who did the That's From Disneyland gallery, they're pretty versed in like music and score and stuff. And we brought up Fantasmic and they said, well, you know, and they said to look up the 1988 Winter Games song done by David Foster, one of my favorites. Lame musicians. It's pretty close.

Look it up yourselves. Oh, boy. We're extremely phantasmic-y. I mean, here's the thing, guys. Western music, we don't use quarter tones, so we only have so many notes. We only put them in so many orders before it works. What I guess I'm saying is, thank you so much for having me. I'm happy that you're here happy for you for doing it.

We've completed the off-book collection. We had Jess on. That's true. We've had you on. That was easy. Yeah, that's it. Two for two. But not Zach's first appearance on the show.

He's had multiple appearances on the show. In fact, I believe it is 17 appearances. That's very specific. Yes, because Zach, of course, sang the City Walk saga. Let's go take a walk. Be careful. People are going to cry all over their phones. People were oddly

emotional about that song. First of all, Michael, it's a great song. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's very, very good and it was stuck after recording it was stuck in my head a lot after singing it but I was walking through City Walk you guys Zen Zone was popping off

at 8.30 at night on a Sunday wow like full and I've never seen anyone in the Zen zone before. So I feel like, one, Y'all really turned it around. Two, I walked by the fountain that the sector keeper passed away in.

Well, it's a happy ending, but yeah. Right. Yeah, things worked out. I don't have to spoil anything if you haven't heard the saga. But yeah, he's in a better place. He's fully dead. Has been for a while he's still dead yes but um well that's boy that's that's nice to hear at night it is odd going to use the water

coffins in the dark it's weird it's real weird yeah did you find yourself kind of just hanging around stores kind of singing it like half under your breath but hoping that maybe someone discovered someone with stars born me yeah not recognized from your uh your very popular podcast recognized from our from singing the song on our pod i'm trying to think of like what the phrase would have to be that i could like casually just say hoping that someone to not be too obvious i think i'd be like oh a place where oakland raiders merch is sold you say that out loud outside the store yeah oh what do you know um i don't think i real i don't think i clocked that there was such an enormous hot topic there it's a it is a lyric in the song and i don't think i've ever realized

that there was one there before and i didn't until my wife nicole was like what is this oh it's a massive hot topic uh yeah there's look there's a lot of stuff there that a lot of people don't realize and we just were doing our civic duty by i can't believe you guys did it everyone's like it's truly i when i describe it out loud now it's wonderful i'm so happy you did but i also cannot believe that you did. Well, and thank you for contributing to it in such a wonderful way. Do you feel like you were like channeling

any particular influence or vibe in your vocal performance? Yeah, well, I had direction from the composer in this song. It was supposed to be... Mike, what did you say? You said... I don't remember.

You said do it... I can look it up. You said do it intense but also sincere it was not it was meant to sound like someone trying very like to say very stupid things but to do it as if it was like a very beautiful

as opposed to doing it more you don't want to be in the like power balladee like poor man's Jack Black like you're trying to do it no Dan band or something no band bands jack black probably would have been okay poor man's jack black

doing intense vocals is a lot of fun there's other stuff in that lineage someone doing it badly I'm looking through my directions and I'm not sure what did I say here that was the vibe that I got I think you may have just been like I know what to do you sure did And I'm not sure, what did I say here? That was the vibe that I got. It was. I think you may have just been like, I know what to do.

You sure did. It was beautiful. Oh, thanks, guys. And now I feel like I'm, I was trying to think of a good analog. Like, not the right, it's like you're the Celine Dion and Mike is the Diane Warren. Sorry, I gender flipped both of you. But I'm like, you know, to be around the songwriter and the singer for the diane warren sorry gender flipped both of you but i'm like okay you know to be around the songwriter and the singer for the first time right it's electric i'm happy to give you that experience you know what i think it was i think if i was channeling anyone it's probably it was like a matchbox 20 ish like type thing yeah one feels right it feels like can you help me

one thing about this is this is not necessarily theme park related one of my favorite things about zach ever is that he said that and this is gonna make scott very upset and i just realized it now he thinks that counting crows are a much better band than the beach correct correct oh why are you putting those together because mike asked me those two well he knows i love counting crows is unironically my favorite band so mike was basically just being like better than this and i was like yeah for me yeah 100 well for me is a fine qualifier i get that that that that helps me out and you're also making my wife happy because she hates the beach boys it's a big our

big our literal biggest difference is i'm a real beach my wife happy because she hates the Beach Boys. Our literal biggest difference is I'm a real Beach Boys worshipper and she hates them. It's important to also know that I don't know anything about music. It's a very important role. But you are very musical. Skilled in music. Thank you. But I don't know anything about bands. I had to say Matchbox

20 because I didn't remember that Rob Thomas was his name until I was saying it and even then i wasn't super confident until this moment when you all affirmed it that was the name of the singer of that band that is also a 20 year old band sure yeah yeah all the reference points at the moment on the table are pretty uh including celine dion and diane warren i'm no hipper than anybody and the beach boys and larry carlton uh i'm sounding like a very old man right now yeah the most recent artists are mike carlson and zacharino

what recent music am i into yeah carlson reno yeah there's this there's this song from this podcast all about city walk that's my podcast that i'm on so So I'm into that. People, I saw somebody today, they want it on iTunes. They want us to sell it on iTunes. I don't even know how to start that process.

I don't even know. I do know. It's very easy. Oh, okay. Oh, cool. It was like at one point in time it was not. Well, it is now. I mean, it depends on... How do I register with ass cap i need to like join and then like you need to get where are you gonna get royalties from the songs ass cap is ass cap is music ass cap is the one that is like 25 to join for forever or something oh is that right it's a it's a union that we're talking about by the way for anyone who doesn't

know ass cap is a composer's union it's basically it's a one-time fee it's very union that we're talking about, by the way, for anyone who doesn't know, ASCAP is a composer's union. It's basically, it's a one-time fee. It's very, very easy to join it. All of the composer unions are except for one. And I forget the name of it. Um, and yeah, so you joined that.

Then you go to like tunecore.com and you're like, here's my track. I'm putting it up. They say, where do you want it? You say iTunes and Spotify. They say, do you also want it on zoom?

And you say, no, I don't. What is this? They say, here are like five other streaming services you have never heard of in Latin America. Do you want it on those? And then you think like, well, Latin America is a huge listening audience. Do I want it to be on Latin American Spotify?

And then you still say no, and you just put it on iTunes. And Spotify. And that's it. Wow, you've done this journey and then the cash comes rolling in and then the cash comes rolling and you live off those residuals from that one track because you know spotify famously pays artists right very very well of course yes our podcast is available on spotify and we're not quite sure how that happened so uh ours is too and and i know many people listen to it on spotify and as far as i

know we've never been paid through it maybe earwolf has and they're just like keeping that money but also i truly don't know it's all very confused how did these things pop up and why it's there's nothing that's a feeling we probably all have all the time like what something I did is here that's something I would get paid for absolutely not never all right I'll never mind but whatever it's a hey it's if these things are out there check out the UCB

show on stars on demand right now anyway I mean enough talk about the biz though right but at least I'm glad now the listeners at home know how to sign up for... Put something on iTunes if they want. No, not to sign up for ASCAP, but how to, once signed up, get their music out there. So any aspiring musicians, you weren't expecting to get a tip today, but you did.

Here's my second one for you. Lander, L-A-N-D-R dot com, will master all of your tracks with robots for very cheap and is it good yeah really better than i can do i'm not a man i don't know mastering should i remaster the song citywalk song through lander.com no i don't think you need to pull vocals too much out of that mix do you it's pretty i jacked the vocals up i had a lot of compression on them oh if you want to maybe it's very cheap wow we could talk about yeah we'll talk michael's got a new project is mike a better producer than brian wilson from the peach boys i don't know i think that's a question for the ages we'll put it up to

the audience yes um so look zach you're a music guy. You love Fantasmic. Today we're talking about Three Broomsticks, the restaurant from the Hogsmeade part of Harry Potter land. Yeah, we kind of did the overview with Jess, but it felt like with you coming on, it's like, well, Zach's going to want to talk about Harry Potter too, and I was 100% right. I only do want to talk about Harry Potter. I mean, I could have,

and it's also like, I grew up going to Disneyland a lot. I'm, I'm, I'm from Santa Barbara, California. So I'm not, it was, you know,

an hour and a half away. Sure. And there were, I want to say like eight to 10 years of my life where we went once a year as a family. So I went to Disneyland a lot. So were you okay? I mean, you like fun and whimsy. I know you're like, when when i think of you i think of like a person who likes whimsy

a person who likes fantasy and fun were you obsessed with it as a kid or was it just a thing you did once in a while um i was never disney obsessed but i loved disneyland right and ironically unabashedly always i think i still really really really like disneyland i haven't been in a couple years um but uh you are correct in terms of things that spark my soul as it were being in a place that like has a castle and is beautifully manicured and themed and we'll get to talking about this but i am more about theme park elements than i am about rides themselves well i mean you're in the right zone i think because we're not uh we like the rides too but we like rides with a lot of robots and we like fake rocks yeah and we like yeah that's the type of stuff we like

to obsess about and i think that's what because i i've all i've only been to magic mountain once and i had a good time and i did you know x2 which was terrifying and once was enough but it was i i'm glad i did it i had a good time i like roller coasters but i would take i will take a not as good roller i will take thunder mountain over x2 any day of the week right i mean we just did thunder mountain and we all declared it a perfect ride there was nothing that could be done or changed it's so it the goat with the dynamite in its mouth it's truly wonderful an icon an icon of the theme park or a mark a mark or any tattoo if i'm not mistaken oh is that right yes i think oh we need to have it oh yeah that's crazy wow wow um so yeah you so yeah just while we're talking disneyland so top ride like top rides at Disney real quick. Top places, top zone, areas, lands.

Okay, okay, okay. As a kid, it was definitely Peter Pan's Flight was number one with a ball. Which you mentioned as a possible topic. I did bring it up. And you could, I feel like you could, you have the build to play Peter Pan in a movie. Of course, never on the stage.

Only women play it on the stage. Sure, you've got your Mary Martins. Strange theatrical tradition. We've talked about Mary Martin a few times, I think, on this podcast. Yeah, she's great. That doesn't surprise me. I think it was an early one where you and I were talking about how our moms made sure we knew who Mary Martin was. Who's the other one?

Did it come up because of Sandy Duncan? Yes, that's the Sandy Duncan episode. We know all the pans. Who's the other pans? Tell me them. I forget. I don't know. I don't know all the pans. Robin Williams.

No, I'm talking about the musical. There's Mary Martin and then the other big one. Oh, Alison Williams. Nope. The biggest. The one who looms biggest of all from the NBC live production featuring Christopher Walken as Captain Hook. Wow.

This is like a repressed memory coming back to me. How many years ago was that already, too? It feels like a lifetime ago. I think it was only like two. What's everybody's favorite live musical? I can't believe we're talking. Of the last five years? Yeah, there's been a lot of them now. I haven't watched all of them, so I can't.

Because I love Grease. I've said a lot. Grease is your favorite musical of the last five years? Here's the live version. That's a weird thing with me I do not like Grease regular but I so that's how good the live one was it overshot that I specifically really

dislike Grease I was just so impressed by production value and everything this is gonna be crazy as a person that does a lot of musical theater I have not seen most of the new live I've seen like parts of Hairspray. There are cool parts of Hairspray. I filmed at the Universal a lot.

In fact, they utilized the lot in a fun way. Yeah, I did like what I saw of that one. I liked, I only saw the second act of Jesus Christ Superstar, but I thought that one was good. Yeah, that seemed pretty solid. I think it did very well. Were you in musicals? Mm-hmm. And what have you been in?

What would I know you from? You would know me from nothing unless you were watching community theater in Santa Barbara. No, I did. I started the first, well, my elementary school made every sixth grader be in a musical every year. And we did like a kid's version of Into the Woods, which basically means you stop at the halfway point before it gets dark of friends friends at a neighboring school did that when

i was growing up and it didn't occur i didn't really know that musical it wasn't until i was in college and learned about that musical i'm like wait so it's just the first half where it ends happily before all the fucked up sondheim stuff happens for children yeah for sure yeah we didn't even do the straight up kids version they i think because it was probably only i don't know 45 minutes long or whatever they were also like princes were singing country songs like one of the princess thing she's right on the money he was like in there for some reason and we all did a square dance because like it was a it was part of the program was we i think as like this ed we're learning a dance to do together as well it was wild anyway so then in junior high i

did hello dolly and kiss me kate and then in high school i did pirates of penzance lame is fiddler on the roof and anything goes in outer space because we had to take the set to edinburgh scotland and we needed a reason to have the set be inflatable so we did that there's so much going on in that set truly guys I could talk for hours about just that

by itself and then in college I did Urinetown West Side Story anything goes again normal style on an old timey boat and maybe something else but that's all I'm remembering right now wow amazing body of work you have a favorite from there

of doing it I don't know oh I did okay so there is a lesser known because it's bad sequel to you're a good man Charlie Brown that is just called Snoopy which is a bunch of dumb bullshit that should not have been turned it was like a couple of good songs in it but largely it's like you're a good man

Charlie Brown is pretty much wall-to-wall good songs and Snoopy has like a couple okay but I did I did you're a good man Charlie Brown also before doing Snoopy and that was real fun oh sure i enjoyed that one i'm i'm a noted fan of at knots when they're the little shows in camp snoopy where like charlie brown is a frankenstein head and they like they do thriller and they but they simplify the dance to just be like they spin around my my mother and this is the reason like family never went to Knott's Berry Farm because apparently this is a story we were always told and I assume it's true they used to have a sign

outside that said no dogs no Jews I don't know when they are talking about I'm assuming way way way back unless this is apocryphal and this is just something that my mother heard but they but she definitely said no this is the reason we will never go notsberry farm i mean knots is coming up knots is in its original form is a hundred years old

okay their court they they are coming up on their hundred year anniversary in in a couple years the fact that y'all haven't heard of this makes me wonder if it's real i wonder on the other hand there was a lot of weird knots is a very interesting background walter not is a very famous uh conservative man uh and that he had like a weird center in the park where you would go and learn conservative values okay but like john birch society like crazy listeners to this pod if anyone can confirm or disprove this sign existed that would be very interesting to me because that was what I was always told

was that Knott's had this sign and I feel like there is this weird lore I mean like you guys would know this better than me about Walt Disney and anti-semitism too well the Disney stuff yeah there is I mean like everyone is also vaguely anti-semitic everyone was racist and sexist to some sort of degree.

And there was so much anti-communist stuff back in the day. And a lot of that was legitimate fears of communism. And then a lot of it was coded anti-Semitism. Someone let me know if there really was a no dogs, no Jews sign it, not specified. I feel like we would have seen that. That's kind of what I figured too. I bet there's some truth to something. I bet there's truth to something in there.

I bet there's some thread that you go like, oh, he's a very conservative man and he wanted, because they have a chapel on the grounds as well. So maybe there is some, there is some obviously religious element there. But I wonder, maybe. I'm so curious. Maybe.

I don't know. We would have seen, I think we would have seen it. Well that is not. They are not selling that in their throwback merchandise line. You can't buy replica no dogs no Jews signs. I don't know. A no Jews sign

that doesn't sound too Nazi. Very good. Very good. That was sitting there because I found myself over the years describing something with a Nazi vibe As being Nazi And I've done this in public places Out loud

And Aaron has had to say Do you realize what you're saying here? Sounds like you're saying Nazi You have to get that word out of your vocabulary But I brought it up here I believe we're talking about plays and musicals and stuff i believe jason played a nazi when he was in like when i was 10 years old i played a nazi spy in a children's musical was it like sound of music or something else no it was

okay there is i think the company is called and i think i've talked about this on the show before there's a company i think it it's called Pioneer Drama Services. They churn out all of these musicals. Are you sure it's not called Das Pioneer Drama Services? No, it is not. But they churn out all of these musicals specifically for middle school age kids because there's like 30 to 40 characters.

One character always tap dances because inevitably there'll be a kid who has taken tap and a handful of people get solos. But then there's also a lot of extra part, you know, a lot of one line roles and stuff. And so the first play I ever did was a play called Kill Roy was here and it was about a USO in New York City. And I played a roving hypnotist that was an entertainer at the club but he was also feeding uh he was a nazi spy he was like but and they like they made me i got it because they're like and everyone when you're auditioning uh try to do a german accent for some of the lines and i i got the german accent down but it

wasn't until like a month before the play they're like wait it doesn't really make sense that he would be doing the german accent while doing the hypnotism accent so then they're like can you try and do a british accent and i like tried my best and god knows what it sounded like but then in the scenes when i'm meeting with the other nazis then i'm talking like you know talking like this and the the the ths sound like v's and you're very good and that's it yeah that's pretty much it they kept i kept having to watch they're like oh go watch this movie i think it's called iq and it's about it's from the 90s and it's about walter mathau yeah walter mathau plays out inside and he tries to help like some young couple fall in love yes and they're like well he speaks in

german he's got a german accent that's a new wrinkle i had not heard that part of the story before i 10 by the way 10 years old 10 years old and i have no memory of this movie even though i probably watched it like five times to try and get the accent down and I like learned my line like had my lines down pat you're emulating Walter Matthau like the original Homer Simpson oh yeah all the best voices

yeah Matthau roots the original yeah Dan Castellan is original Homer voice is very Matthau-esque kind of Bart talks like this more than he does how he would eventually sound. This is madness. This is wild. Let's keep calling out Patreon content.

I want to hear a reading of your scenes from Kill Roy was here. I bet I will look at Christmas and see if I have the script. I know I have a copy of the full script. I've begged you. Where is a videotape of this? You have a full script of a play

that you did when you were 10 years old exactly we all haven't done 30 plays in musicals okay we hold on to these precious memories well we were supposed to give the scripts back but that year but and i did but that year because it was my first one my family got so invested my mom photocopied the whole script so she could run lines with me and so i always had this copy in like a keepsake box but mike really wants me to bring back the videotape because they would videotape them i have a three camera shoot production that was edited but i have this v it's the only copy I have. So I have to figure out how to, because I'm so afraid of traveling with it if it gets damaged, or I guess I could get it duplicated at Walmart, but then I have to hand it off

to a teenager at Walmart. Just film off the TV for now. It won't be perfect, but it'll get the idea across. Oh, that's actually not a bad idea. That literally didn't occur to me that i could put a little ipod hey and there's ways to hook two vcrs up i don't want to get back into ascap uh just list a process territory but you can hook up two vcrs and do a little dub oh i didn't even think about that's what i what I used to do because I made copies of three camera shot local plays from my high school.

So I was the media crew. So you, the actor, and me, the media crew need to put our heads together. Oh, yeah, we can. Bring this piece of art back to life. See, if I am traveling with a copy, I would feel a lot better. And Mike, you do have a VCR here. This is a good question for you guys what is the disney property that has not been turned into a stage musical that should be oh interesting oh that's a great question captain eo fleshed out by other michael jackson songs

and the tomorrowland music loop yeah new lyrics michael jackson captain eo jukebox music that was another i was in leader of the Pack, the Ellie Greenwich musical, which is all Brill Building songs. And like Phil Spector is a character in it. There's like hardly any story because it's mostly like 30, like the do-ron-ron and going to the chapel. Sure. Captain EO is the best answer except for my answer,

which is, of course, Country Bear Jamboree live on Broadway. Oh, man. Country Bear Jamboree live on Broadway. Oh, man. Country Bear Jamboree live on Broadway? By human beings in bear costumes. Well, my first thought was, and this is a movie, not a ride, but it was Robin Hood the Fox. Oh, yeah. Great. Not so many songs, but a few.

Yeah. Full music. It's like a half musical. I want to say there's eight to ten songs in there. It's just on stage it would be like the whistling for two hours. You would have to. Mainly whistling. Mostly Alan and Dale whistling, yeah.

You would have to flesh it out. But that's good. You want to have to add things. If you had an orchestra. You definitely have to write some more songs. You can go to the Great American Songbook and just have them sing a lot. Or like Delta Blues-y kind of stuff. more songs to go to the great american songbook and just have them sing a lot or like delta bluesy kind of stuff a lot of the songs are abbreviated versions though in the country bear so i think if

you maybe just did the full versions of all of them i think you guys should do a live the three of you should do a live country bear jamboree of course sure because it is the best idea i have ever had i'll start right now. We will stop doing this podcast. There's not been a live Country Bear Jamboree show. And then seven years later, we open off-Broadway. Oh, man. And it's literally all of our time up until that point.

That's pretty good. We get sued and it's over. Yeah. Opening night. They wait for us to start the performance, then send in lawyers. You can get around it. You just call it like... Southern Bear Jamboree.

Good old bears sing a long time. Jamboree. Jamboree. Jamboree is fine. That's all you got to do. Southern Booze Jamboree. That's good. All right.

Opening in 2025, Southern Bears Jamboree. Jason, what was your answer? Did you answer? Oh, well. It doesn't have to be parks, I realized. Your question was Disney. Well, it should have been parks because I was trying to theme it for this podcast. I think Disney's open, though.

I didn't know Robin Hood the Fox ride, although I believe there is. Well, no. They're walk-around characters. They're walk-around. Yeah. Yeah. We've taken photos with them. We had a picture with them.

Yeah. Chip and Dale feel like also an obvious. They're walk-around characters. They're walk-around. Yeah. Yeah. We've taken photos with them. We had a picture with them. Yeah. Chip and Dale feel like also an obvious. They're like, they're performers. Chip and Dale, like, Hope and Crosby style buddy comedy. Yeah, exactly. Would be. But that was the rumor that was going to be Mickey and Roger Rabbit, Hope and Crosby. Oh, yes.

That's true. A Dark Horse pick. This was like, I think it might have been one of the first movies I saw in theaters. Oliver and Company. With the cat? Yeah, with the cat. With the very many dogs and the one cat? Yeah, and a little cat and the Billy Joel dog. A lot of songs in there.

The best show ever. My favorite Billy Joel song. It's a great song. That's also great. Just like that animation sequence of that song is so great. Billy Joel song it's a great song that's also great just like that animation sequence of that that song is so great because they're like walking through construction

zones and he gets the like sausages around his neck and I love that as a kid I don't know why that was so memorable to me but he stole sausages and I thought that man this dog is the coolest dog cool as hell.

I'm still I get a little like weirdly emotional from the Huey Lewis song that opens the film. Oliver don't be shy I don't wanna go I think maybe the first movie I ever saw

in the theater as a child was that movie so I think I have some just like weird baby brain stuff. I'd block it from my memory, but I just remember I saw Tarzan live on Broadway. Oh, damn. How was that? So long. People swinging around? Sure were.

Was there a Spider-Man turn off the dark stuff? Mostly swinging, I want to say directly up and back down. Mostly holding on to vines that would go up and down is what I'm remembering. No one was jumping from the third balcony i'm misremembering i didn't see it that does exist right yeah it did yeah that was one of disney's like they had the big hit with beauty and the beast and then again with lion king and i think was tarzan like the third broadway almost positive when they were doing now i'm we're doubting if i was all right i must have doesn't matter sorry what's this podcast about

i love this musical area that we're in though and i want to make all of these things happen sure yeah i mean maybe we need to revisit this at some point and like just say kind of our thoughts we need to like flesh out how these would work right exactly yeah well i let me i'll bring it back around zach what do you think about uh although there's quite a lot of music and the harry potter stuff in the parks how do you feel about that i mean you get the movie soundtrack in in a lot of the stores and in the three broomsticks and yeah the frog choir i've only ever seen recordings of the frog choir i've never actually caught it live and i've tried multiple times yeah i've just never

seen it so that's my boring answer to your question but i think that the way that music functions inside wizarding world at least la it's the only one i've ever been to is very good yeah it for the most part there's only one place where i've heard sound bleed from a different section of the park and it's the very very back of um did it did it do three broomsticks it's the outdoor section of three broomsticks that's right on the edge of springfield yeah yeah but weirdly the sound that i was not springfield it was i was hearing the like jurassic park theme it was just there was some some section walkway in that park is just playing like the generic Universal tracks.

Maybe the tram entrance is right there. So maybe you're getting like hooray for Hollywood and stuff. Could be. But I think that, and I said this to Nicole as we were leaving Freebooms just because we were there the other night, that the level at which the music is playing in that restaurant is fantastic. Because it's pervasive. You can hear it really clearly all the time, but it's not so loud that you ever feel like you need to scream over it. It's almost a little haunting.

Like I have found myself at the three broomsticks in a weird mood and then catch the right part of the music and a wash in melancholy. No, it's, that's a really- How often are you melancholy at three broomsticks, Zach? 0% of the time. I'm only ever living, I'm only ever in a 100% fantasy place. I see what you're saying, Jason, in that it's definitely not all celebratory, super up happy music.

No, it's not. Sometimes it is more melancholy parts of the score, certainly. But it's still, you know, it's fun. It adds to the magic. And you know, I'll say as we start getting into it, I went up there with my wife also on Friday and we had a wonderful time, a long conversation.

We had a wonderful beer there. The custom beer they have up there is wonderful. Which one did you have? Whatever the Scottish ale one is which is is that the hog's head uh hog's head yes the red one uh i think that was the first one brewed exclusively for did we say what we're doing are we supposed to do that we said yeah

we did say that we do we started we do it in a tease at the top and part of the design there is so that if we get way off course then we oh right we did pre-record us saying okay what it was so that if if it isn't an hour until we get to the main topic you guys did it so slick i totally forgot that's sort of the design but hey but i i still like announcing it three broomsticks so zach um yeah i know this is a great topic idea like this this within uh wizarding world because i think you know sometimes we pick these topics and you end up feeling sort of rushed honestly and within and with jess you're a comedic partner i you know she had like she clearly could talk about uh wizarding world for 10 hours each individual part of it i mean you there's two right i mean there's not much to talk about with like flight of the hippogriff but

but uh forbidden journey you could talk about easily for an entire episode and we will and you will i'm sure then you have the wand uh ceremony then you have all of the many many carts and stores in there and then you have the three broomsticks which is i think i think my either favorite or second favorite part even even compared to the the ride yeah yeah yeah you're not wrong i don't that's not an insane opinion and not because i don't like the ride but because because just for me, the appeal of a theme park is the immersive element of it. And the idea of eating in the three broomsticks is better immersion than the actual being on the ride. With the possible exception of the line rate up to the ride. Because once you're on the ride, you're like on a bench that's flying around and you're somehow part of the harry potter canon at some point i guess this

happened well you're taking an enchanted bench yeah the famous harry potter troop there was bench where they put muggles on a bench and they fly it around i also think i don't like being called out that i'm a muggle i think that's i think i think that's not but i know what you're saying because it makes you feel less special. Because what you want really is the full experience. I've never read the books. I've seen all the movies. I like all the ideas.

Yeah, I remember that from you just the episode. I meant to talk to you about that. Having not read the books. I'm also a bad reader. I'm a slow reader. Audiobooks, friend. I'm an asshole who can't read. Who does the audiobook?

Who reads the audiobooks? Someone really good. I don't know. Just listens to them all in a loop every year. You're right. I should do the audiobooks of Harry Potter the audio books? Someone really good. I don't know. Just listens to them all on loop every year. You're right. I should do the audio books of Harry Potter because I like all the mythology. I like it's all up right up my alley.

But it does seem like what you would want is you want to go in there and you want to feel special. You want to feel like you're getting off the Hogwarts Express. You're going to live in this school. You're getting away from your bad parents or your bad caretakers. That's what you should feel you shouldn't feel like oh shit they're mad at me for being a tourist here we're all dressed like shit except for the wizards here look cool i look like shit and shorts and a t-shirt i happen to be

there when they were doing some i think like nine and three four dressed to the nine and three fourths ball or something it's one of those things where just fans who are very very fancy dress up in like i think i want to say 1930s 40s garb i don't know and just kind of hung out in harry potter period appropriate to that era in the park so it was it wasn't like the school uniform it would be like you were a fancy wizard around the time of the movies that are coming out now right with a level of nerd that you like what is your level of nerd i guess what i'm asking like do you have a robe do you own a robe do you own whatever your house is which i believe i know is slytherin it is slytherin

which is i am also a fellow slytherin yeah let just review the two Hufflepuffs over here on the couch. We got two Hufflepuffs. I didn't remember. Thanks for knowing. I also, I double checked my Patronus is a St. Bernard dog. I forgot what my Patronus was. My wand is an elm wood with

unicorn hair core 11 inch and quite bendy flexibility. not terribly interesting that one but i love that my patronus was a big floppy dog that's very good yeah do you what is your patronus um i've taken mine so because i'm very interested in exploring the pottermore website to a lot of depth i have multiple accounts on there because Because the questions are so like, you can take the test two times, answer truthfully every time and get a completely different set of questions

both time you've done it. So I've gotten both night jar, which is a bird. Okay. And then rat, which is a rat. It doesn't get specific as to what kind it is. And then I went up and looked like the at the

matrix breakdown about how to get it to do all of the like all of the animals that it can give you and all the ones that you um based on what choices you make uh and i was like one question away from fox which was a bummer for me because that's your favorite that's what i would have thought it would have been um but you, we're all just like asked a butterfly's wing between a fox and a rat. And that's just kind of what we love. So you're a nerd who goes on Pottermore and tries to get every possible combination

and tries to almost beat the site. You're trying to figure out how to get what you want. So the first time I went... Like a real Slytherin is from what I understand. So the first time I got sorted, I got sorted into Slytherin and I was very shocked because I had always thought that I was a Ravenclaw. So I went back onto Pottermore again to cheat my way into Ravenclaw and realized like, no,

that's what a Slytherin does. This means you should be a Slytherin. You're doing exactly what a Slytherin should be doing. The sites got you pegged. Which is crafty. Ravenclaw is crafty? Or they're hard work? No, Hufflepuff is hard workers but also very lazy.

Slytherin is shrewd. Okay. I'm shrewd. Which is weirdly like, I feel like is a loaded term. Shrewd feels like a little bit... Snape is the most famous, right? Slytherin, Professor Snape.

Merlin is the most famous. If you want to talk about people that got like retroactively added to Harry Potter Canada. But yes, Snape. Who put Merlin in? How did Merlin get added? He would have been sort of the same. I mean, just what piece of... Perfect answer. That's very good. Oh, you mean who? Who added Merlin get added? He would have been sort of the same. Either he would have... I mean, just what piece of... Perfect answer.

That's very good. Oh, you mean who? I mean, who added Merlin? JK Rowling. But like on Twitter, like someone asked her on Twitter and she's like, oh yeah, he's a slitter. When you get...

And I, sorry, I just... What piece of media is this available in? Pottermore. Oh, it's just Pottermore. This is Pottermore lore, which is all canon because it's all written by her. But it's... When you get sorted into your house, you get a welcome letter from your house,

which is another reason why I took it multiple times because I was interested. It's like, what happens when you get into Hufflepuff? What happens when you get into Ravenclaw? What are the things that they write for you? And what are the things? Because they also all shit talk the other houses, which is very funny to me. Ravenclaw doesn't shit talk Ravenclaw in Ravenclaw's prefect's letter. But the other houses which is very funny to me like ravenclaw doesn't shit clock shit talk ravenclaw ravenclaw's prefect's letter but the other houses all do um and one of the things in the slytherin

letter is that like mervin was merlin was a ravenclaw wow sorry slytherin so merlin is a famous he's a public domain wizard at this point i guess so so you can add him so she could add like everyone who's in the league of extraordinary gentlemen into the potter universe now like frankenstein could be in yeah he could be a wizard he could not be he could just be a different bad guy so that's interesting i didn't know merlin was so merlin frankenstein is a grindelwald collaborator in one of the merlin was kind of of in the series already. Okay. Because there is an award that Dumbledore has,

which is Order of Merlin First Class, I believe. It's like an organization within the wizarding world. So Merlin, I guess, had already been lightly put into Harry Potter canon at that point, but they had never gone into any detail about what it was or who or what. Do you think the wizard who walked around

the CityWalk nightclub wizards, is he the same as Merlin or is he like a trickster since he's ripping off Merlin to some extent? We don't know much about... We're going off of three seconds

in a sizzle reel but uh i'd like to just add him officially to the pottermore canon yeah we're putting him in you know what i did see that was a little bit someone was dressed i think as grindelwald and i think as harry potter grindelwald which is johnny depp which is a weird costuming choice to be making oh so weird it's also like weird of like like Disney is is looking into rebooting the Pirates franchise like that's the rumor that Disney like the Pirates movies are super successful internationally but they want to divest from Johnny Depp whereas Warner Brothers is just stuck with them now for years but isn't is the poster that's out right now, is the poster the guy with his

back turned, is that Johnny Depp? Yes. So they are keeping him in the shadows. Yeah, kind of, but then there's also really the word crimes are so big. The crimes of Grindelwald are sneaking dogs into Australia

and also domestic abuse. You buried the lead there. Buried the lead. And then all the, I mean, because Grindelwald's like the Hitler of the Wizarding World. Straight up. The straight up Hitler analogy. In a weird world in which Dumbledore and Hitler have a weird gay relationship. Do you?

Huh? Does that happen somewhere? Grindelwald has a relationship with Dumbledore. Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Because Dumbledore, again, this is post-canon. And J.K. Rowling does this. She releases a lot of stuff that... Like the whole Nagini thing, which I guess I can't get too much into with y'all

because none of us have seen the movie and whatever but Nagini is Voldemort's big snake in the original movies pet question mark but in the new movie that's coming out Nagini is a character that is a woman that becomes a snake which

is problematic for a lot of reasons but I guess it depends on how they deal with it we'll see I think it was also that that they they added the the story the story is sourced from an asian culture and they just kind of cherry picked a lot of it and the snake story is the nagini yeah some of the nagini stuff yeah the lore of a person cursed to be a snake. And that's most of the Harry Potter magic is pulled from some culture or another. Like J.K. Rowling also got in a lot of hot water

when they released the American Hogwarts. Oh yeah, right. I remember this. Or Ilvermorny is like these in, I believe, Salem, Massachusetts. Makes sense. I believe is where the school is. I don't remember.

But all of the houses in that school are based off of native american iconography and it wasn't treated with necessarily the the most like yeah respect or reverence or even like uh i guess they're hmm it's been a while since I've gone and looked at it. That one is stranger to me because like, yeah, you said it in Salem, you have the Salem witch trials. That seems like a slam dunk. Like it's right there for you. And somehow you take this circuitous route and you just like trip over your

own shoes and eat it. I get the impulse because you're trying to make the world ancient. And if you're looking back to like, okay, so what would the roots of magic have been in north america it would have been native american culture right it just wasn't like researched enough or done with any respect carefully enough um which is a bummer because it's a really cool idea yeah um so so you're something of a nerd uh for all this stuff i stuff. Yeah, Harry Potter is very much your,

like theme parks to us, Harry Potter is to you. Yeah, that's fair. Maybe you enter this, do you have, how many of the clothes do you have? Do you have wands, multiple wands? Do you have, give the merch, what's your merch? So this is my similar answer to what Jessica said. I would not wear like a full Hogwarts uniform

and walk through the park. That's just, that's not me. That's not my bag. I fully respect people that can. I just can't. It's like too much for me personally. And on the until you were in the Wizarding World part, you'd feel real embarrassed. I will say though

when you're going to it right now, half of the people you see walking around Universal are just straight up wearing robes. because that's what people in city walk people going to the water coffins like you're very much not alone if you're doing it i will say though when i went i wore slytherin socks and my shirt that has snakes all over it like okay but those were like just for me i was wearing a sweatshirt over it no one else knew so you're potter bounding really because there's a new phenomenon called disney bounding where you sort of like dress a little bit it's like a subtle nod

but yeah so you're like potter bounding you have a little snake here and there but you're not doing the full outfit yeah i love it also because the idea like if i'm wearing a hogwarts outfit that means i am between the ages of 12 and uh 19 and going to school at like, I'm cosplaying as a child at that point. Like you may as well have like a beanie hat and a big lolly. Yeah. Right. Cause I'm not,

I'm like when, when, when you see people wearing a sweatshirt that says like a Slytherin seeker, like that's, you're wearing a high school football jersey at that point so it would seem like a sad guy maybe wearing his old jersey a little going back to visit his high school i love i love i um i'm into the merch stuff i don't have a ton of it i guess merch merch i don't have any ones but i think they're really cool i look at them every time i see them because as you know

they have the little i don't know tech the tech in them that when you go around to various windows in the park and move stuff it makes things happen there's more of those than i thought there were before there's one that makes like fire shoot out of the top of one of the roofs and makes a door like rattle like there's a dragon behind it it's right by the train yeah they add every now and then they add a few more i think i think they're very cool and that like as a kid i would have lost my mind for that. Sure. But I don't own any of the wands.

When did you, do you remember what age you got into the Harry Potter stuff? Yeah, I grew with the series. I think only the book, only book one had come out when I started reading it. It was on one of those things where you remember in school, you would get a magazine of like like books to buy and my mom was i think might have actually checked it for me she was like you might like this and then so i would have been yeah like 11 or 12 was that 99 or 2000 i don't remember i'm bad with and you followed book every book really like yeah from book one so

you would wait the day would you get them day of amazon actually if you bought them like later on when amazon was a thing if you bought them they would show up the same day that you would like the next morning as if you had waited till like midnight to get it at the store but later on i found that there was a hack of like weird grocery stores would have the books and there would be no line so I didn't hang out at lunch parties so much that again wasn't that wasn't like the important part for me the important part was to get the book the night that it came out wow so you're hardcore is what we're saying and you know I'm a full 10 in terms of Harry Potter right I don't I don't express it through wearing the stuff all the time

but i it's it's you default to like thinking about it and like bored online probably you're digging into something if like a harry potter thing like pops up online i will click it like there was recently leaked footage of a harry potter video game that's coming out and though there isn't too much more information than that and i looked at i watched it multiple there should be a an mm what is it rpg jason you're preaching to the goddamn there should be where you are a student at hogwarts and you go through the school and you help harry and his friends and you get sorted it would be amazing now jason you'll be happy to know that that that fact did not go unnoticed by the video game industry and there is a fact a game called Wizard 101 that is for all intents and

purposes a weird little Harry Potter clone game but it's like card based combat you're basically building a I mean it's a cool world I spent money on it I played it I'm gonna get as close as I can but you're right there I think

they're I think they're just leaving an insane amount of money on the table by not making a subscription based harry potter mmorpg guys hit me when the longer month if you're paying monthly you're incentivized to do it faster because if you're like it the longer you take the more of those fees uh accrue that's not how those games work. You have that monthly content every month. They continually update them. Most of those games are moving towards microtransactions right now,

which means they're basically free. It's free, but you pay for the skin. You pay for different outfits. There's two young guys talking about that. A couple of young guys. I know. I got Larry Carlton jazz in my my head i can't relate to this fortnight uh zach so when you're looking at when stuff's popping up about harry potter like do you have google alerts does this stuff pop up do you see like for instance that there may be a giant

new amazing harry potter coaster coming to florida next year no i'm not have you heard about this forest roller coaster what no full forest building heard about this forbidden forest roller coaster? What? No. Full forest building around a giant roller coaster with full animatronic scenes. That sounds incredible. The only stuff that I know about it, and even you guys were my clue into the fact that there are owls at Harry Potter Japan.

Or no, that's the one in the lake. They have the lake. I think they also have the owls yeah hanging out you guys you guys are my lifeline for that stuff so you guys got a I mean that you Jess has been to Orlando though right has she been to Diagon Alley I don't think she had when she was

here I think it hadn't opened yet but she not okay we've talked about if we ever end up doing an off book yeah you got a book just book down there so you have an excuse we will definitely do a show in florida yeah yeah so um yeah so you and your part your partner jessica mckinnon go to the three broomsticks to work am i correct we have had multiple right here just meetings there correct okay good because that's what i heard and that's why yeah when we heard you want to do this it makes makes a lot of sense. Because this is a thing that we do in various states.

At CityWalk, I kind of did it a little bit alone at Disneyland by myself on Sunday. We're there to do some work, which is just we want to, we love these places so much. We're just going to sit here and like not necessarily go on a ride, but just enjoy the ambiance and maybe get some work done. Maybe get a beer and just kind of like pretend you're working in a castle that you love from a world that you've spent, you know, days of your life thinking about.

Better way to open up your brain. I was trying to say my wife and I, yeah, we had like these like great meal, wonderful beers. And we're having this like heady conversation about childhood and religion and all this stuff with that score playing and the light coming in through the windows and we after like

being we were just kind of in a trance for like over an hour and then we kind of snapped out of it like wow well that was something i think that's really transported it was great yeah i think that those spaces work best when they are when they do kind of seal you off from everything, which three room sticks does very well. There's a bunch of windows in it, but they're all semi-frosted, so you can see light comes into it, but you can't see what's going on. When I was here the other day, it was the first time I had been ever there when it was black like night outside, like full black.

And it made me really think about the lighting design of the place, which is cool every light in there is meant to simulate a weird gas flame there's no like straight up lights in the ceiling type down stuff yeah there's also projections of house elves working that pop up every once while that i had never noticed before and they come in there's definitely two places but in both of the places on the walls where it's just like, you'll see a house of like carrying some trays around or something. There's multiple different ones that show up on that same screen for lack of a better. And there's like, there's owl projections also. Oh, I'm sure there are. Yeah.

I kept seeing something at like once every 15 minutes or so. And I was really looking at it this time because I knew we were going to come talk about it. But there's, there's only one actual mounted head and it's the the hog's head for the for the bar but there's a excuse me there's a ton of antlers everywhere and some of them are weird fantasy antlers of animals that are like far too big to be actual like deer or elk or stags or whatever and i thought that was very cool too oh like there if you stop and stare at it you're like well this is a mythological because it's huge because it's like there's there are some that are i want to say like 15 feet wide and it's like well this couldn't and

and and there's weird details and then there's like oh this is not an actual animal only a fantastic beast could have this sort of antler where could you find those fantastic cryptid of some sort. And there's also all of the art on the walls is like weirdly, like there's weird magical creatures like hidden in them. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Also, I'm sure this came up on Jeff's episode, no Coca-Cola products.

Like everything, Hogshead has gotten a little more leeway. I don't, I guess they had this when they opened. Hogshead does have British beers and German beers. You can get Stella in Guinness. But on the website, they list the custom ones, and then they say, or you could have one of your muggle beers. Yeah. And it makes you go, well, hell no. I'm not going to have a muggle beer.

And you put it that way. Because that's correct. You shouldn't. You shouldn't be getting a, like, yeah Yeah, yeah, especially because, as I said Beer's awesome, similar to the Duff And I, we went, we walked from Through Brimsticks over to get a

We went to Moe's and got a Holiday season Dufftoberfest Oh, wow, really? It was great, it was really Universal Studios has good beer it's crazy brewed for them and also the um what is the uh fire whiskey that is liquor made for them it's like fireball i've never had it it's i found on a a beer review site or a liquor review site like the fire whiskey is like fireball but is smoother

and people like to get it with a little strong but you dump it into strong both cider it's a little cinnamony drink yep there you go that's fantastic uh i also found i didn't realize this because uh we should say we are including the hogshead pub uh which is connected to the three broomsticks is we're includinging that in this episode. Sorry to disappoint you. Sorry to disappoint. Zach, do you know, and listeners, maybe you don't know, do you know about the drink there called the Triple?

I do not. Sometimes called the Deathly Hallows. Oh, okay. Go on. It's a layer of Strongbow cider, and then a layer of Hogshead, and then it's topped with a layer of Guinness. That sounds disgusting. So it's like it's a layer of strongbow cider okay and then a layer of hog's head and then it's topped with a layer of guinness that sounds like three different things yeah it's a lot that sounds bad i don't know if it's good uh but i thought that was very funny it's not it's a light beer and a dark beer and a cider it's a it's a beer suicide it's almost a snake it's a snake bite

that has something else going on too man Man, I got to try that. I'll try that. Yeah. I would try it just to try it. When we were there, I was buying multiple desserts just to try them because I've recently been like kind of a pescatarian. So there isn't a whole lot to eat there. Limited options.

Limited options. Oh, sure. And my wife's a vegetarian, so she did not eat a main meal there. Yeah. Although I did discover you can do the bangers and mash where they will substitute the sausages for asparagus which is basically like asparagus over a bunch of potatoes and peas and

cabbage. It feels very British in a way that everything in that place kind of does in a really good way. But we got multiple desserts which were... So did we. What'd you do? I was very happy with the dessert situation. She just sat up a little straighter. There we go.

Surprisingly, I have not sampled a lot of desserts. No, neither had I. Now, they were out of one. I wanted to get the chocolate trifle, and I couldn't because they were out of it. So we got the potted butterbeer. That is the one I have had. The sweetest thing I have ever eaten, I think. It's very sweet very sweet

it's good good yeah a bit a bit much it's like too probably too rich for me and we thought about doing another oh what was the other there's another thing that sounds like super super rich and we i was glad we didn't do them both uh yeah it would have been an overload but i uh it's it's great though it's just overwhelming it is yeah but i love that they present it in the little uh in the little pot with the little latch yeah that's pretty fun it's very good it feels magical you have to eat it with a plastic spoon which sucks but i get it um and then we got the sticky toffee pudding which that's why i was worried about that being too rich i have had before and i will tell you that the sticky toffee pudding is great. It is playing with, I want to say, the same flavors as the potted butterbeer.

It's just in different consistencies. It's very caramely, very sweet. It's just one is like a baked good with ice cream on top, on top of melted caramel chips. And the other is like a straight up, uh, not a yogurt pudding. It's a pudding. It's a straight up sugar pudding. It's like chocolate mousse, but caramel.

Yeah. Or butterscotch. It's like a layer of butterscotch pudding with like a layer of caramel on it. And then what tastes like Cool Whip, a little top, like flour just on top of it. I don't mean to throw shade. It's very good.

It's very sweet. And then we also got the apple pie because they didn't have the tropical yes we did the apple pie too that's great solid apple pie absolutely and i was worried i was like is that like a dull option is that just gonna be a the piece like you get in the market that and like no it's great it comes in this little tin you got a raisin component that kind of elevates it oh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Really good. Raisin, I like the sound of that. The whole thing has kind of, it is like apple pie with kind of a rum raisin overlay.

It's a little like smokier or something. I love the idea of that. Do you have it to try? I actually did not notice that. Oh, really? Yeah, it took care of it in a sec. It wasn't immediately evident. But I had also eaten a bunch of the other two as previously stated,

extremely sweet things right before that. You're overwhelmed. I've had the soft serve version in Florida, the butterbeer ice cream. They have hard pack butterbeer ice cream now. Oh, yeah. We saw that there and I asked what it was and they were like, it's kind of how it tastes. I was like, no, no, no.

How is it actually served? Is it in a cup? They're like, no, it's just like a scoop of ice cream i was like okay yeah yeah they they didn't really there's a full ice cream parlor in diagon alley that's just delightful oh my god that's the best i dream yeah jason loves ice cream i do like dream about that ice cream parlor it's so good it's so much have you been yeah yeah a friend of ours was just there last week and I kept saying, go to the ice cream parlor. He's like, I'm standing right outside it. I would die.

I would love to go. Speaking of this same friend, his name is Andrew Grissom and I was at the funniest order I'll say I've ever seen at the Three Broomsticks is one time he ordered a cup of water and corn on the cob.

That's pretty him, man. That's a lot. We'll post this photo as long as he approves of it. That's pretty funny. You can just get a la carte anything, I think, there. What I liked was that he was texting us a lot about his trip because he was working there. So he was at Universal Studios for a week solid

and essentially living in the world of harry potter yes uh everyone's dreams magical but like the uh he was i think a little overwhelmed right away by the like he was starting to feel like am i not going to have like a fruit or a vegetable the entire time that i'm here is that not an option here at universal florida and he was we were he was we were commiserating about that fact and i threw out a joke that it was apparently too accurate for him i i said well have you been to the all pez place you got to try the pez potatoes it's fairly accurate what city walk would have and then the next day he was like hey where's that pez place i would say that in terms

of like theme park food i feel like three broomsticks is pretty good because i back when i was in india i had their like lemon chicken that comes with a bunch of vegetables which i thought was great by restaurant or theme park standards i've had their fish and chips which is good certainly good enough for theme park standards yeah well jk rowling has to approve all the food stuff or like all the tickets your house and feed it to her with a spoon yeah i mean you're not far off apparently they tried like 15 different recipes for butterbeer before they got it right and it uh uh is there's no high fructose corn syrup in it. It's all sugar. Wow.

I'm not kidding. Which I was surprised by. Very sweet, but I love it. Well, can I give a shout out? I started getting curious with the beers and everything, with butter beer, and the sort of very specific nature of this food. I was like, is there a specific person you can trace it all to and in fact the executive chef in florida okay steven jason is the guy's name went to the culinary institute of america worked at a lot of country clubs and for the hyatt corporation and then was hired uh just like very low on the totem pole for at universal studios in uh in 1990 right before it opened and has graduated

all the way up to the executive chef and he is the guy responsible for figuring out the butter beer flavor it's it's a specific guy who i think we should try to talk to on twitter because he doesn't have a lot of followers and he mainly tweets about like soccer so i feel like he might talk to us and be nice to us especially because i want to praise his work he seems like great yeah uh and and like because what like like to have to manifest the very specific flavor that children are obsessed with and why i want like millions of children want to have very badly and to do it with such success people love all of these butter beer products. So I'm very impressed.

And just really quick, I read a big interview with him. He talks about how he had people in his office go through the books, highlight every food and beverage, put tabs in the book. So he's seeing every mention of any piece of food anywhere in the books. Watched the films, paused any time they're in the Great Hall, looked at what's on the table. He went to England, Scotland, Ireland, went to pubs, taverns, talked to chefs, figured out how to make it an authentic experience from that area. Then he flew to Scotland to meet with Rowling, presented the menu, served her pumpkin juice. She tried the butterbeard. She ended up with the white foamy mustache. So like just it seems like this guy like really cared about doing this. So I want to give him his proper credit. And then this one, he's after your heart here, Mike, with this.

They ask like your just favorite culinary experiences at Universal Studios. He says, I eat most of my meals at Universal Studios. So that's something, first of all. And I have to say, my favorite breakfast is the fluffy pancakes they serve at the Leaky Cauldron. Creating this world and taking it from the books to real life will always be a memory that I'll never forget. This and the opening of Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville.

So let's meet this man. Let's have him be our friend. He's your spirit animal. As a man, though. He's your spirit man. He's my patronus. He's meet this man. Let's have him be our friend. He's your spirit animal. As a man, though. He's your spirit man. He's my Patronus. He's your Patronus. Steven Jason is your Patronus.

I'm from the sky. I'm from the sky. I'm a Slytherin, and Patronus is Steven Jason. I'm a Slytherin, and my Patronus is a human man. What I like, I was looking at the breakfast menus at 3, room 6, and Leaky Cauldron. When you said that, you made a Mr. Bird's motion with your hand. menus at at three room six and leaky cauldron i was doing the mr bird's hand but what i liked is that when you their breakfast items all come with both bacon and sausage and a fluffy croissant even the pancakes come with a croissant and i was just delighted by that wow

um the real quick the butterbeer we were talking about butterbeer butterbeer uh on a recent one of jim hill's 15 podcasts he said uh that they had like just reached like 20 million in sales of butterbeer yeah and i don't remember exactly the the amount of time it took but he said after like six months universal just when they initially opened up the harry potter world in florida they made back the money that it cost to build it just by butter beer it's like sales oh my after like six months or a year like they like it showed somebody like the ledger and they were like look we've made the money back just through the butter butter beer is their minions yeah and they have the minions too uh Concessions are like 30% of theme park revenue.

If Steven Jason had not nailed it, like he's responsible for recouping the amount of money in such a faster way. It is also outside of canon and brave for him to decide to be like, also, we have three ways of making it. We're starting with frozen and liquid and then later we're going to add in hot.

Which I have not tried hot, and I have not tried fudge. Okay. I've tried fudge, but I've not tried hot. I've tried hot, but I've not tried fudge. How is hot? Hot's great. I will say it's very sweet. You would expect it to be.

But if it's cold outside and drizzly and rainy, which it seldom is in Los Angeles, but I happened to be there one time when it was, it's perfect. It's everything you can want. I mean, that sounds great. You almost don't need the whole thing.

Cause it's very sweet. It's very sweet. Another hack I've heard, and I, I think they started selling it, but now I think, or maybe they encourage, they're like,

Oh, we don't want to encourage this. So just buy it separately is you, you order the fire whiskey and a butter beer and you pour it in. So it's like a hard butter beer. Yeah. They don't want to encourage this so just buy it separately is you you order the fire whiskey and a butter beer and you pour it in so it's like a hard butter beer yeah they don't want to encourage maybe that's good do that off-site if you're gonna do it yeah uh i've had the the fudge is good but it is insane it's too much you need it needs to be like a little tiny piece i think because they give you the big block and i didn't like shove the block in my mouth or anything but i cut a normal amount off of it and it was still like a little too much at one time y'all talked about this when when jess was on but the um oh my god what is it called

not zonko's joke shop the shop that it's attached to honey dukes honey dukes the honey dukes uh candy counter is a little bit of a missed opportunity for them still the candy is good but it's just like if they had put the amount of time into uh three broomsticks as they had into the selection of like what is available what that potentially could be if you can imagine going into like a wonka-esque shop of all the insane right candies that are mentioned in the harry potter books it's like truly uh it's it's they're leaving a ton of money on the table by having things that look like they could kind of have been bought anywhere we're zipping all around here in our topics but just since you bring that up is there something in the books, ride or food or something, that you're thinking specifically,

I wish this food or candy was in the park? So I wish they did chocolate frogs, but did it better. Because they do have chocolate frogs. They're big. They're like 20 bucks a piece. And there are, I think, somewhere between five and seven actual cards that you can collect. Yes, I think, somewhere between five and seven actual cards that you can collect. Yes, I brought them back for people.

There is no way to do this the way that it should be done. But in Harry Potter canon, there are hundreds and hundreds of wizard cards. And you buy it kind of akin to buying a... Baseball cards? Exactly. So it should be $5, much smaller chocolate, and a ton more cards. Because no one cares about the frog. You've made a chocolate in the shape of the frog.

You're done. That's great. Sorry, no one cares about the frog. What did I say? I don't know. It's for the cards. Right. It's like the gum in baseball cards.

Yes. Basically, baseball cards would have a stick of gum in it. Right. And then like that's... Whatever. It was fun to have that, but it's like the cards are sort of the thing. It's like when you eat those popsicles for those sweet, sweet jokes.

Hurry, get it done. I don't know. In the book. Sorry. I have a lot of questions about these cards in the book. Is it the only way you can get these cards through the chocolate frogs? No chocolate frog cards.

They come with a card. I feel that universal Disney at least is catching on more that universal doesn't sort of embrace like a big crazy um like marketing merchandise opportunity like disney like pins like pins yes exactly we've talked like there is not really equivalent to so many different like whether it's pins or whether it's when disney was doing on those finalmation vinyl toys like they do have pins and they do have universal vinyl they do but it's kind of begrudging it's kind of exactly not at the same level and not at the same like amount and i would say something that both nicole and i like stopped and spent i want to say five minutes looking at not outside of harry potter because we went to it was one of those universal stores

that kind of sell stuff from all over the park yeah um and we were there specifically to see if they had a gretzko stuff in which if you haven't watched on netflix is the hello kitty company made a cartoon about a red panda who works in an office job and hates it oh yes and she's furious yeah this has come up on the show and she sings uh heavy metal to release from that and it's very very good uh watch the watch the subtitles we went to pearl land in japan okay yeah so they have hello kitty universal crossover merchandise which is very good it's like hello kitty in the jaws poster and she's above the shark, and the shark also has a bow on its head, and it's all kind of cartoon.

And it's smiling. The shark is smiling. The shark still looks scary. King Kong is smiling. Oh, King Kong is smiling. Oh, okay. Yeah, the King Kong's cute. It's like immediately a great Sanrio character.

They're like friends. It's great. They're doing a lot of great stuff. I have, the best wrestling company in the world is New Japan Professional Wrestling. I have a Hello Kitty New Japan Professional professional wrestling shirt so maybe it's just hello kitty is like hello kitty and then the new japan logo i bought it at the show in long beach last month wow but i don't think that i don't think has that character as that newer sanrio character is not there at all it's not there because i had this experience in 2014 when i was trying to find gutatama stuff at the universal sanrio store and just had not hit peak yeah gutatama

yet now you can get gutatama everywhere he's the egg yeah yes he's the lazy egg the lazy egg jason's favorite character in fiction i mean it's very good piece of bacon as a blanket it's very good i mean sorry you struck a chord i think everybody good at thomas yeah yeah we all have our good it's not they get let's get detective gutatama out in the theaters except if we're making detective movies i mean disney is the undisputable king of like merch i don't think anyone would argue that they they make so many products that are based off of their properties they find like but yeah like i'm just saying like they have a whole like collector gotta have it man i have these two tiki mugs that

i had to get on ebay because they sold out because there were a thousand people in line to get them because they're exclusive and they're only going to make a certain amount of them if they did this with harry potter and there were certain cards and then all of a sudden a hundred of them would be retired like people go nuts if you could collect wizard cards i would be fucking broke i would have every single i would like they're screwing up here by not doing this and like just taking money from you they're not forcibly removing it from you it is a like it is a like take my money scenario now what they are doing that's the weird thing they're doing it but the price point is too high to be a collector.

Because if you look at the wands they have, right? And they just released a bunch of new ones for Fantastic Beasts, Crimes of Grindelwald. And there's a bunch, like every time there's a character, they take whatever their wand is in the movie and they make a replica of it that is functional within their park. But they're all over $100. So you're never going to buy more than like two. One for you and one for your child who you don't want to share it with. Like when me and my brother each got a Game Boy one year because they're like, what, we were going to get you one Game Boy to share?

Yeah. Like, come on. Because once, and it occurred to me that like if you were made of money that would be a cool kind of like this is i guess only a slightly cooler version if you ever been to someone's house and see they have like um what's what's what's aragorn's sword called lord of the rings oh i don't know yeah i know yeah all those lord of the rings replicas if you have any of the Lord of the Rings replica swords, man, my nerd card is gone.

I've got all the Lord of the Rings stuff. We're talking about Harry Potter, not Lord of the Rings. If you see that up on the wall, it's almost normal enough to be a normal adult house decoration. Swords, maybe not so much. But the wands are tiny little things. They look cool. They look like art pieces. They look like movie replicas.

They're very cool. They're shooting much more They're basically looking... They're shooting much more still, I think, for tourists versus hardcore nerds. People that go there and have meetings at Three Broomsticks. As you guys have said, Universal is not a go-to-it-all-the-time

type park. There's just not enough there. You can do the whole thing in less than half a day. I don't think they were prepared for the amount of people that like specifically would go for Harry Potter world to just be there. And that's really all they're going for. You can imagine a scenario where they, knowing what they know now, totally redo Springfield or like add on to Springfield in a way that makes it much more hangoutable. They have hangoutable places there but yeah i mean harry potter is the first time like they had a built they had a built-in culture surround it whereas disney has always had a culture of people like

kind of just hanging around and it's not just marketing exactly towards tourists yeah it's marketing towards like idiot southern californians who want to go and line up at 7 a.m for a tiki mug and then certain ones who didn't and are mad at themselves because they should have done it and then they have to get on ebay yeah i did get it but i had to pay more than it's than the cost of it was but i feel like there was a period of time when universal was basically giving away their year-long pass oh yeah yeah they're doing much better now uh financially but it's they should have been they weren't offering and there wasn't much their year-long pass. They're doing much better now financially. They should have. They weren't

offering enough. The addition of Potter is just the perfect thing to get them to Disney level and to prove they could do Disney level. I'm kind of very upset that it doesn't seem like Diagon Alley is ever going to come to the one in L.A.

I just don't know where it would go. Yeah, we're not sure where it would go. I mean, you need to bulldoze Waterworld. Yeah, you could do that, but that's still a popular show. Could you really fit that much in there? You probably can't do the Hogwarts Express, and it's probably got to be a slightly smaller version of it. You'd have to change the architecture of the ride

of the Hogwarts Express to simulate like it was moving, and it only really moved a hundred feet or something i don't even know that that's the i mean honestly if you just want to double shop footage that would be enough for fans like me who don't like the rides are almost secondary it's the theme park stuff that you're going for you would rather have just a land without the actual ride if if it was that or nothing, 100%. I know what to do with that. Doesn't it seem like that's the thing with Diagon? It's like people like that ride,

but like it's mainly just being there. I like being there so much more than the ride, and I like the ride fine. No, but it's the fact of like, could there be an ice cream parlor? Can you do a Leaky Cauldron? I mean, those two things, way higher priority for me than a ride

a different menu the leaky cauldron than three broomsticks I want two restaurants in LA and I'll eat them both in one day give it to me I'll tease what my favorite part is is Nocturne Alley I'd love to go to Nocturne Alley watch a bunch of wizard Nazis

what are they selling there's heads that talk to you in the alley there and dancing skeletons a friend of ours uh anthony geo just took jason and i around the universal lot and we were doing some snooping oh and there is a big plot of land down down on the you know level of jurassic park um but it's probably nintendo it's probably not gonna be dying on alley i Alley you mean next to Transformers yeah right next to Transformers that's what people are saying

in a very active construction site it's a ton of land it still doesn't look like enough land it still doesn't look like enough for anything too substantial but supposedly Secret Life of Pets is going up on the top lot in the New York area who could care I agree with you.

No, but like even for... Did that make them that much money? Is that a land they can make? It's not a land. Patton is the dog now, okay? There's no problem anymore. Patton is the dog. Patton is the dog.

The dog has been recast. Who was the dog? We don't want to talk about it. No, it doesn't matter because it's Patton now. It's Patton now. I actually don't know. They've made it the correct rotund alternative comedian.

There's no problem anymore. Okay, it's Patton now. It's Patton now. Don't you have to do Diagon on the back lot somewhere and you take the train down? That's what people have said. Can I throw out something real outside the box, though? I might get screamed.

I might get shouted down. Doesn't it seem like, think about what's right next to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. What if some of Harry Potter invaded the place we call CityWalk? Oh, wait. What if you get rid of some of CityWalk? I gotta look at

the map here. I'm not sure how that would work logistically. You guys talk amongst yourselves. I'm very curious. It works underground tunnel into parts of CityWalk. Do it. It's underground underground that would be here i'll write it for you you take it's not the other green guard green god's bank ride it's a new one and it's just for taking you underground from wizarding world to the parts of city walk that

you've knocked down and you come out of the goblin bank and you go past a dragon and it's very scary and you come out and you're in diagon alley whichey, which is attached to Gringotts Bank. So it's canon. It's fine. Everyone loves it. Zach, I mean, a rumor that we've talked about before. There's also a rumor of an expansion to Diagon Alley, potentially a Ministry of Magic battle ride. Or a Ministry of Magic ride and presumably a battle breaks out like

ministry magic land is a rumor as well land oh well because third park or fourth park in orlando rumor ministry of magic land or as your third do it but as your second here no give me the things that are like yes i mean i agree i pitched a few episodes ago like yank that war of the world set out there build a diagonal alley oh my god right there that seems like maybe the primest spot it's very prime real estate but it is like it is a big people do like it on the studio tour because it is a huge set i just had a thought and this is a little bit of left turn but we were talking about how patent is the dog now and it made me thought about another beloved like dreamworks character poe the panda who is voiced by our very good friend jack black i guess can we talk about how wild it is that jack i guess just is because he's a star of a certain

um brightness is allowed to simultaneously do poe the panda and tenacious D, and no one has been able to stop him from doing that. What do you mean stop? What do you mean? You mean because Tenacious D is of an R-rated? Yeah. But there's many examples. I mean, Sarah Silverman is in Wreck-It Ralph, and she has some material that's not PG-13.

By Don Rickles. Why Mr. Potato himself used to make fun of all the races and genders. I just think And I don't dislike it I just think that it is incredibly savvy of Jack Black To have simultaneously Had a career where He can be Poe the Panda

And the house with the clocks In the house And the walls of the house His movie career is like He's more of a kid movie star than an adult movie star. But he is like simultaneously releasing like Fuck Her Gently is like Tenacious D type stuff.

I think that's a thing I've always really liked about Jack Black is he like keeps the cred alive. He'll still make a cameo in some weird thing or be in a Channel 101 thing. Let me be 100% clear. I love Jack Black. I love Tenacious D.

Their new album Apocalypto is out now they're on tour that it's very very silly and it's very fun i haven't heard yeah plug for tenacious d sure yeah just out of a out of the kindness of your jack black can get it but i'm just like so do you feel oh so you're are you trying to like you're admiring basically what i'm admiring the fact that i feel like a lot of people get so worried when they go into quote unquote children's entertainment. I think DreamWorks has done a good job with Kung Fu Panda. All the Kung Fu Panda movies are great.

As an adult, all three of them a lot. Do you like the new show? The new 3D Kung Fu Panda show, Universal? I didn't watch it. It was closed when I came. And weirdly, Pinocchio is still working the turnstile at that show. Well, because it's the DreamWorks theater. So they can swap stuff in and out now. And it will weirdly, Pinocchio is still working the turnstile at that show. Well, because it's the DreamWorks theater. So they can swap stuff in and out

now. And it will always be Pinocchio? It'll always be Pinocchio. He's a friend. He's got a gig, you know? You gotta have some income. I feel like, I don't know, would Disney have hired him to be a main voice knowing that that was

still what his other thing was? I think unless some weird conservative guy on Twitter makes a big case out of something like what happened to James Gunn, I think that no one's paying any attention and no one cares. Okay, cool. But you can fool Bob Iger and Alan Horn into firing somebody very easily, it seems. Don't do that to Jack Black. I like him a lot.

So maybe what you have just done on this podcast horn into firing somebody very easily it seems. Don't do that to Jack Black. I like him a lot. So like maybe what you have just done on this podcast is open people's eyes to the fact that there's a very filthy Tenacious D album and that Jack Black is about to lose his job as Poe the Panda. I think Jack Black is okay. We have just found out about some very upsetting material

that Jack Black, our beloved Poe that has been released over a decade ago. This man is encouraging people to fuck gently? I don't understand this at all. And hard. And hard. And hard? I...

He's sending mixed messages, too? Well, no, he'll keep his job. I think it'll be fine. I don't think Bob Iger or Alan Horn listen to this show. And congratulations to everybody at Disney, by the way, on the smash success of Bohemian Rhapsody, Fox's biggest hit. Disney only works with the

most upstanding... Great to see Bryan Singer coming back from international waters to have a number one movie again. Truly... He's still got it. Truly incredible. A moral compass, no. Great cinematic

eye, yes. I was trying to figure out the moral compass in International Waters joke. Damn it. There's a good one there somewhere. Sailed through International Waters without the use of any sort of moral compass. There we go. Thank you.

The official director of Pizzagate Brian Singer Jesus Christ the Pizzagate the movie Jason that joke a movie you cannot

should cannot buy or you or you can buy just on the dark web that is that joke is gonna cost you a number

of different voiceover gigs I think unfortunately all your blue material over the years oh all of my blue all of my dragging for eight years

being a devil alright three broomsticks Zach have you had any of the newer entrees at three broomsticks like the Christmas ones no I haven't seen the Christmas ones but this you know they

do rotate stuff in and out they added a uh sunday roast sandwich uh the cheese toasty with chicken nicole got the cheese toasty was it good title it looked uh i mean like well yeah toasty is a much more common uh european thing to call it or i guess maybe specifically british or scottish crazy stuffed grilled cheese with a fried egg on top It's a stuffed grilled cheese it did not have a fried grilled egg on top when she bought it it had chicken and bacon inside of it she said it was very good very greasy

the bread itself she actually described as kind of garlic bread ish but it looked good It's a little too much Believe it or not it's a lot And then the last one is the Plowman's Lunch. The Plowman's Lunch. No, is that meat in it that I can't eat?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of meat. In fact, it's a scotch egg, a bunch of assorted deli meats, like three or four kinds of cheeses, a cut up apple, sliced bread, pickles, olives, and then like a cranberry chutney. I don't think all of these are available at Universal Studios Los Angeles. This was from Los Angeles. This was from I know because Jason ordered it in front of me. So I ordered it. Okay, so

I had seen this in Florida and in Florida it says serves two. And in Florida it's mostly salad and a scotch egg and some cheeses. That's what you're showing me right now is a lot more reasonable than what Mike was showing me. Yes. And again, it says on the menu

for two or more. Hollywood did not say that. And they replaced the salad with assorted deli meat. So I thought, well, this will be a lighter fare. And it was not at all. It looked like you had just

taken a tray out of a like a deli counter at a supermarket when Mike before we started recording had said he was going to show us something that you had ordered I was almost I was 90% sure you had ordered the great feast which is the banquet for I think like

six to eight people and it's just the chicken and ribs and all the sides? It's all of it. It's all of it. Yeah. Well, I believe, if I'm correct, I think Mike did the great feast for four. And it was weird because you had booked a flight out of LAX 15 minutes later.

And then you thought like, well, this is too much. I have to go. And then you went back up and just out of your for no reason out of your mouth you said another great feast please classic carlson i had to review i wanted i knew we were going to review and i want to try it twice anyway everything on this plate was very good but it felt like an ordeal once i was halfway through like the great ordeal i've never heard food described as an ordeal i was just like oh god it's it was so much and then once you said like well you can get a lot of the stuff a la carte and now it's just like i probably just wanted the scotch egg why didn't i

just say ask could i get a couple i didn't know that you could get this stuff a la carte. What's the meat in a scotch egg? It's sausage. It's pork sausage. Okay, cool. The catchphrase of this podcast is going to become, my tummy is too full. My tummy is too full. The thing most said in our experiences. I mean, my tummy was fully too full after eating most of three desserts

that they had to come with. Yeah, yeah. And a pile of asparagus and mashed potatoes and peas i think with a lot of theme park menus this goes for disney too you can get things a la carte but they don't advertise it because they want you to buy it together so if there's a hamburger with fries i'm sure 99 of the time you can get it with no fries it's just they want to sell it to you so all you have to do is go can i just have the hamburger can i have it without this there's i read a whole like article like years ago i think about like how to save money and it's like don't get cheese on the hamburger okay yeah

and that's when i think i first learned that the one of the like just asking for a cup of water because they don't advertise that obviously either they just want you to buy a bottle and want you to buy a pumpkin fizz which is very good but very sweet and if it is the only thing that you have to kind of like drink down the potted butter beer it does become problematic even though it by itself is a very good drink yeah it mixed with yeah a giant meat feast topped off with pumpkin juice mixed mixed thankfully with seltzer because i think the pumpkin juice by itself would be a little too much but the pumpkin fizz is good and I think Jessica had suggested that that is what you throw the fire whiskey

into. That is probably very good as well. Yeah the pumpkin the bottled pumpkin juice is good too but very very sweet. It's a juice. You're drinking a juice. Yeah you're drinking a juice. Like a child. You're drinking a juice. You're drinking a juice. Flavored with like pumpkin pie spices like the

whatever the cardamom nut may whatever the classic pumpkin pie that sounds right i want to throw out a broader point here that gets us outside of potter a little bit what i i was mainly i'm sitting in that that main ballroom ballroom what do you get the main i don't know the main room dining hall at three brimsticks they're just thinking this is this is so grand it enhances the experience so much that this is like that there's an experience that is so immersive and cool in this park that is not a ride and i started thinking there are a lot of these now uh i clearly uh star wars is to be great in the food department with the cantina. I haven't been to the Avatar restaurant, but it seems like that really adds to the experience and expands it. This isn't quite on that level, but I think that Cars diner is really fun.

And, you know, it keeps the story going. And, yeah, decent food there and i just i first of all i just want to say i to disney and universal how great a job the chefs are doing the the people building these places it's like it just expands these worlds in such a wonderful way but i also i also thinking i just wanted to pose in general if you now that movie-based restaurants are on the table a little more is there a place in like or or specifically a menu item from a film or media that you would most want to have done to perfection you know in a uh in a theme park i immediately i think that i would like to get uh i would like to go up to a replicator on a starship i order captain picard i was just thinking of star trek t hot and i wanted to

replicate hot yeah t earl gray hot is what he would say and it would replicate and then i would want to enjoy it in my quarters well you know you know what I was just thinking is that I think that one potential for future growth that I haven't seen before in seated around a table and the method for meal delivery is such that the kitchen is below it and dishes dumb waiter style just go up and appear like under what like you know you could magic it up or whatever but that would be a sort of that is really sort of like blending the line between what is a ride and what is a restaurant in a way that is very cool to me the other two things that i also just thought of were if you were to theme a sort of like outdoor place as a lady and the tramp eating spaghetti and meatballs in an alleyway style restaurant could be fun and a ratatouille restaurant where a rat makes your food has to be a real they have They have Tony's in Florida,

but they don't have an alleyway. That being their version of the chef's table is the alley as a special romantic. That would be great. Also, that restaurant famously fine. No one cares about Tony's. But now, I just saw over the weekend that they have a guy playing Tony.

Well, that leads to my... The top famous Tony. ...that I would like to eat at. And I've been... It's probably a year. I've been stringing this out because I'm getting close to the end,

but I've been watching The Sopranos. And I would like a pop-up... You want to go to the Bada Bing or whatever? No. The strip club from The Sopranos? No, the other way. No, I want to go to Vesuvio's. I want to go to Artie Bucco's's. I want to go to Artie Bucco's restaurant

and I want to walk around Artie Bucco to bother your table too much, to constantly be asking how the food is and trying to encourage you to order dessert and trying to tell you bad stories. I want that. Like the mom's diner at Hollywood Studios where mom yells at you if you don't clean your plate.

Just already going like, I got the sea bass. Ooh, maroon. It's crazy. HBO is owned by who? Warner Brothers? Yeah. So maybe a Sopranos land in that Dubai park. In Warner Brothers movie world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's add Sopranos. Yeah, you have some wise guys sitting at another table. They don't even need to make a scene they're just there they eat and they leave without paying they just nod at arty and they have a tab and you actually had another good idea for a themed bar on the our episode we did with jeff garland uh was a rock i believe a rockford files theme bar oh yeah well i wanted a rockford falls uh themed bar kind of and like the bartender would be uh rockford it would be an old cranky like sunburned man who would serve you what i want is

for the the sheraton universal to make things right and to reconvert it to being telly's been in fact amended perhaps to be sloppy telly's and maybe a walk around telly savalas checking in on you yeah yeah they have a lot of very generic photos hanging in that lobby like old hollywood photos those should all be telly savalas many many frames of all his projects if you're living in like the sort of like rainforest cafe vibe also where you can make a restaurant and just kind of generally theme it rainforest i'm down for that game i like i'm like if you want to do just like a general fantasy tavern right i'm not even talking harry potter i'm talking like lord of the like every every king arthur lord of the rings orcs elves whatever oh yeah yeah like that there is now the problem

is this place is famously the food is like gross because it's media medieval food yeah yeah it's all pretty like it's like a trough there's gotta be i mean like you don't consider uh the the that in real life to be round table pizza that doesn't go far enough for you oh man I wish I grew up there was a round table pizza I've only seen them in like other cities around me there's one in Burbank

is it Camelot themed no lightly right it's like a Panera had like someone like dashed a little Camelot on top like a sprinkle I don't know that it's nice like Panera had someone dashed a little Camelot on top, like a sprinkle. I don't know that it's nice like Panera. I think the theme, according to one or two old coworkers, the theme was food poisoning after they had dined at that king's table.

Oh, man. I have one more, just like the ideal meal that I would like to have. And Jason, I know you'll be into this and back me up. I want to go into the little cafe in Phantom Thread where Reynolds Woodcock meets Alma for the first time so that you can do his massive order of bacon, some scones, butter. Butter and cream. Butter and cream.

And the only thing on the menu is that big list. And then you order it, but you have to say the whole thing in whatever that accent is. And then the walk-around Alma actress will write, to my hungry boy. To hungry boy. I love it. Since it got on HBO Go,

I keep getting just a little stoned and watching theater phantom thread and making it about 20 minutes 20 minutes at a time before i fall asleep but it it feels like it's so heightened every line is so loaded and it's also just it's such an intense experience i think it's funny that's the thing about that movie it's also just such an intense experience. I think it's funny. That's the thing about that movie. It's a funny movie. Yes, it's very funny. On repeat viewings you start to see all the little cuts, all the slights they're giving

each other, all the barbs and stuff. Have you guys seen Paul F. Tompkins' recording of what he thought the Phantom Thread opening credit song should have been? I think I, yeah. It's Justin going, the Phantom Thread the's Justin going The Phantom Thread The Phantom Thread The Phantom Thread

The Phantom Thread. It's very good. He did one for Halt and Catch Fire, which my friend created. It's a really good Halt and Catch Fire! I mean, they're all good. Like the Crossfire song a little bit. It's great. Who owns Phantom Thread and where can we put that

experience what park i'm thinking practical sure sure sure megan ellison land what's the who's that woman who finances yeah yeah annapurna yeah right so annapurna kingdom okay yeah this isn't one specifically i don't know i know where it would go because disney owns it but i don't know what it would be there needs to be a muppet restaurant what is it well there is a bad muppet restaurant in hollywood studios called rizzo's which is a pizzeria but there's barely any reference to the muppets inside. It's just like Rizzo was on the outside of it. You could go full Fraggle Rock restaurant.

I don't know. What do they eat? Crystals? I forget. They eat something. They eat crystals. It's just rock candy. That's all you eat. You're the big ogres or whatever and you eat Fraggles. Every meal is a bunch of little Fraggles on the ride. that's a terrifying idea that's a

nightmare restaurant you've described imagine like sausages or other meat products but they have to like carve them into the shape of a fraggle and then you get a plate of just fried up that's that's yeah you eat fraggles the worst that's the worst idea my idea they say ouch when you oh my god um i'm wondering if the new the newer uh the toy story land at hollywood studios in magic kingdom now that we live in a pf world and i'm not talking about pft paul f tonkett's i'm talking about pf changs no i'm talking about big fuckers no this is you can divide a line in modern society the uh post forky and pre-forky the new toy story character i don't belong here i don't believe yes the the the craft project that seems to be having an identity crisis that a lot of toy Story 4 hinges upon. Will all the

forks now in Toy Story Land will they look like Forky? Will you use Forky to And then you throw Forky or there's a mass grave of Forkys in the garbage cans? Someone famously tweeted Forky is no Rambi. And they are correct.

Oh hey, little tiny puppet snod. I appreciate it. If you like, thank you. Little tiny puppets nod. I appreciate it. If you had to eat with pipe cleaners and they're permanently attached, you can't dismount them. That's a deeply unpleasant experience. Yeah. And also, as people have pointed out, isn't Forky a spork? Yes. He is. He's got a rounded head.

He for sure is. You know, well, I'm sorry. I keep just thinking about more restaurants and I thought you guys moved on. We'll never move on. We're just talking about Forky. I feel like Kung Fu Panda has become a de facto Thanksgiving Day

movie. It always plays on Thanksgiving Day. Is your favorite movie Kung Fu Panda and your favorite band the Counting Crows? No. No? Kung Fu Panda and your favorite band the Counting Crows? No. What a lineup. No? No? Kung Fu Panda sang Long December.

Would that be your greatest musical performance? If Jack Black sang Long December as Poe from Kung Fu Panda. But with sincerity. I don't feel like he would sing that song, Michael. This is the sort of thing Mike would do. Mike, Zach zach and i were on an improv team together for a number of years and would see each other three times a week for a number of hours sometimes four or five sometimes yeah sometimes four or five and and we would

we would all do this to each other where like you keep bringing up this is this one of your pocket like favorite things i mean like yeah i mean things? I do like Kung Fu Panda a lot. It scratches a lot of itches for me. I've never seen all Kung Fu Panda. I'm not against it. Jason. I think I've only seen bits and pieces.

Oh my god, you guys. I've seen all the Minions movies. I'm in the Minion camp. No. Kung Fu Panda. It's on almost every Thanksgiving on TV. What channel? Every channel. It's not on every channel.

It's on Fox News. It's on CBS. It's on Nick Loney. It's an anti-drug special. For real, Kung Fu Panda is a very good movie. We should have done Kung Fu Panda, the 3D movie. I haven't seen it, though. I can't talk to you about that.

Come back down to do that. Yeah, we'll come back. I for sure will. My point was, Kung Fu Panda's adopted father is a duck that works at a noodles restaurant. I know the duck because they have a character of him that has shown up in the parks and he talks to the people. If it's in the parks, we know it.

If it's not, we don't know. All the cartoon food in Kung Fu Panda looks very good. There's no reason that there shouldn't be a Chinese restaurant in DreamWorks that is a Kung Fu Panda. Well, they do do a pop-up noodle shop around Chinese New Year the last few years. That's great. I'll go to it. What about a

Counting Crows themed restaurant? None of you have seen any of the Kung Fu Panda movies. Is there food in a Counting Crows song that you would want to eat? I'm trying to think here. There's an entire album called Hard Candy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Counting Crows Hard Candy Shop.

An album that really grew on me, if I'm going to be real. The song Hard Candy I always liked. And to tie this back to DreamWorks, Counting Crows do a song in Shrek 2. So she said, what's the problem, baby? What's the problem? I don't know.

Well, maybe I'm in love. Is that? Yes. Yeah, accidentally. It's the opening song from Shrek 2. Good song. Wow. Well, we demand a Counting Crows presence in Universal Studios.

This must have, among many other things. There's a lot of stuff we have to demand. Counting Crows replaced the Blues Brothers as the Universal resident musical musical in adam durrett's wings have you so you've seen all the cars movies i assume i haven't seen the third one i've seen the first two okay you've seen you've seen multiple minions movies jason yes desp Despicable Me 1 and 2 and the Minions. Okay, that's a Minions movie. You don't think Despicable Me 1 and 2 are Minions movies? No, they're Despicable Me.

But the Minions come from there. I understand that. I see what you're saying. If you're going to call one Minions, then the other one's not. There is Minions movies. They're Gru movies. There are. Those are Gru movies.

I've seen some of the Minions shorts as well. Sure. You're a Minion man. Are you trying to go down the movies that are worse that I've seen some of the minion shorts as well sure you're a minion man so you try to go down the movies that are worse that we've seen no I'm trying I'm trying to establish

that you I know that you guys are not like snobs about watching animation you like you like Wally up right

sure you saw Brave I've seen Brave sure I've not seen Brave yeah okay so I Kung Fu Panda is much much better than brave

have you seen how to train your dragon i've never seen any of those now those i know are supposed to be very good yes i've never heard anyone go the music is great i mean you talk about like that's we're we're minutes away from having that be a theme park. I guarantee you they will make a movie about that. Going into the third park in Universal. It's an incredible world that they've created. It's not like WALL-E where you'd have to make a trash planet and be like, come hang out on trash earth.

It'd be miserable, yes. I cannot believe that you guys have not seen How to Train Your Dragon. Are there three of them or two? The third one's coming out. There's two of them so i can catch up on that i guess two three seems like a lot but it's two movies mike i'm a bad movie watcher in addition to being a bad busy watching the first 20 minutes of phantom thread

not the first one i watched one and then i pick up where i left off and then i saw it i saw it when it first came out and now i'm re-watching it. And I'm savoring it. Like, he savored that 4,000 calorie breakfast. I have 10 hours of professional wrestling to watch a week. I have theme park videos on YouTube. And that's about all I can stand. Can't you, like, boycott some of it until they pull their shit out of Saudi Arabia or whatever? Well, I'm not saying WWE.

Oh, okay. I don't know. It's all WWE to me. Oh, that's true. You're into a lot of, yeah. You're into plenty of other wrestling. Yeah, yeah. And that's all pure and there's true you're into a lot of yeah you're into plenty of other wrestling yeah yeah and that's all pure

and there's nothing problematic and we both sold our stock yes I sold my stock yeah made some money though so

yeah yeah yeah before all the Saudi Arabia stuff we're we're scot-free the only stock I tried to sell

was a bunch of chicken stock Jesus Christ who's doing that I had a cat a cat's killing a meeting wandered in here The only stock I tried to sell was a bunch of chicken stock. Jesus Christ. Cats killed a meeting wandered in here. I know that animation is not theme parks. They feel adjacent enough to me that I don't know why that's so surprising to me that you guys haven't seen this. This is a whole odd thing that I don't, like, I'm so theme park centric that, like, there's a lot of movies I only know about because they're in theme parks. Oh, okay.

That makes sense. It is different. You're fully correct. If I end up actually exploring Harry Potter, it'll be because it's a theme park thing. Now, that's a Thanksgiving. Those movies, they marathon a lot around holidays. I feel like Harry Potter movies. All year round.

All year round. We're thankful for wizards. Guys, is Harry Potter a Thanksgiving movie? The debate rages on. Die hard. Yeah, I'm going for die hard. Is it a Christmas movie? Well, all of Harry Potter does take place during Thanksgiving. It's kind of the

emotional backdrop of it. You could argue that it is a Thanksgiving movie. So it all right we answered it we solved a lot of debates we came up a lot of ideas any before we wrap it up any any final thoughts about about three brimsticks oh what's everyone's favorite entree to order well i've only had one so the one i had fish and chips okay uh i think i had a fish and chip a while ago and i think i liked it better than that what is my sandwich called again that i had the toasty the toasty i think back when i was still eating chicken the the lemon chicken that they had i should try that that sounds great it's very good uh i i so want them to bring this out here because right now it's only orlando they have uh

pasties cornish pasties delicious wonderful not a not a common dish to find in america no we don't do meat pies super a lot out here which is shocking because nothing could be more american than the idea of like taking a bunch of ground up meat and put it in like a good fried dough thing and but doing it really really well there's a place in scotland i think it's a chain i don't know if it's outside of scotland but it's called pie maker and anytime sorry i'm talking about scotland because it's like all of the harry potter uh yes and you've been to edinburgh the fringe festival edinburgh is where uh jk rowling lives when she was writing a decent amount of it so a lot of that city informs the books in like some ways i mean that's right up your alley that's perfect yeah it truly is um

there uh i can't get into it it would take it would take too long i'm saying meat pies are very good it's called pie maker that makes them shout out pie maker please open a location in the united states and do it there apparently was briefly a pie shop on sunset by ucb like a few blocks from there that had like meat pies and hand pies and so i don't think it lasted like very long wrong location where was it close to used to be sunset like heading east on sunset oops oops wrong yes you did everything you did a restaurant wrong i i found the perfect place for my fancy meat pie business right next to the improv theater and the vape shop. Next to the former methadone clinic.

That's such a bad location that Jason never went there when it was so close to a place he goes to do sketch comedy. Oh yeah, there were meat pies close, but it's such a pain in the ass.

I don't think this is gonna fly yeah i mean there's a poke place that's a block away that's very good that i go a couple of times um so bring meat pies uh to the location and make them full of uh fraggle meat and kung fu panda meat no don't eat the vans and the fraggles i'll say my last thought is i'd like to eat up in the like upstairs somewhere I so I know it's a trick but I'm like I want to go up to that second level but it's just like staircases

and tables and stuff up there it's it's designed so well the high ceiling that's my final thought of it like the physical building of it the attention to detail the ceiling is so high it makes you feel like you're in a big space it shuts you out from the outside world the sound balance is great it feels like you're walking into another world which is exactly what they want and they did it good in in terms of infrastructure i i may have

mentioned this before but like operating at full capacity inside and the patio holds hundreds of people patio is huge it doesn't look like. I didn't think it looked like it when I first went up there, but when I really walked around the patio, I was like, yeah, I could see how this could hold three to 500 people. Yeah.

It's real big. And if you go and it's kind of almost closing, which is very early for Universal Studios for reasons that still boggles my mind, it's like pretty empty. And sometimes you can pick your table and it's just like it feels it feels like a real wizard restaurant you guys yeah yeah you can actually have like little moments

of peace up there just pretty nice uh uh well that's a very nice note to end on zachary and i used to buy a podcast the ride thanks for being here that was a just a pleasant. That wasn't like a hatery talking shit about things. That was just a delight. This place is very nice and go to it if you're in the area. But yeah. Hey, we'd like to let you exit through the gift shop. Is there anything you'd like to plug? Yeah.

I mean, I got a podcast off book. It's Found Where Podcasts podcasts are it's an improvised musical me another friend of the pod jessica mckenna make up a musical it's about an hour long it's got fun fun guests and it's it's a good time just featured on uh vulture comedies uh very convoluted the 29 comics to watch i want to say 39 it think it was 39 39 comics to feature thank you Vulture I love them very much

what do we got to plug follow us on Twitter on Instagram check out our Patreon at patreon.com

slash podcast the rhyme yes you can go there right now hear the recently released Club 33 episode our experience

going to the good boys get fancy Club 33 making a fine dining ohancy Club 33 Oh the crafts our friend the crafts That's from Disneyland Gallery where we did our live show and we had

a wonderful feast there Our tummies are too full Did you wash your hands under those golden goose? What? Where is a golden goose? I saw pictures from the bathroom and apparently like the sink faucets are gold. Maybe this is just the ladies bathroom. I saw pictures from the ladies bathroom taken by Capcom when she went there.

Well, that's the one place you're not supposed to take pictures. That's the one place you're not supposed to take pictures in the club. In the bathroom. Or any bathroom. Edit this out. Well, we take pictures because as always, we are very good boys. That's right. Anything else?

Just na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, yeah. Yeah. 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.

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