Podcast: The Ride - Timber Mountain Log Ride with Matt Apodaca

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

Matt Apodaca (producer How Did This Get Played, Culture Kings) joins us to talk about the most popular ride at Knott's Berry Farm! New Second Gate episode drops September 30th! Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever. Dog. Warning, the following podcast contains back-breaking manual labor, sweet pranks, a Nixon restaurant, and Rivers Cuomo? Matt Apodaca joins us to talk Knott's Berry Farm's Timber Mountain Log Ride. Get ready for lumber and splashing. It's podcast, The Ride. Welcome to Podcast The Ride, a show hosted by three men who, under normal circumstances,

record the show sitting butt to crotch, butt to crotch, butt to crotch, similar to today's attraction. I'm Jason Sheridan, joined as always by Mike Carlson. Hi, I'm here, and I insist that we do that because it makes me feel loved. I, you know, and I seconded it because I feel the same way. Scott Gerriter is also here. Yeah, and the only issue is that we all fight over who gets to be the middle, who gets to have the most love. That's true. Jason usually comes into a recording and he yells, Middlesees.

You gotta call Middlesees. I recording and he yells, Middlesees. You got to call Middlesees. I'm the fastest at calling Middlesees. We got to learn to call it via text before we get inside. Yeah, I know. But I always forget. He gets us. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, we haven't had that contact in a while. And I assume we're all missing. And I take Duffy and friends and I use them to sort of recreate that while I'm recording. I'll have Duffy in front and Shelly Mae in back. Oh, sure. But it's not the same. Yeah. Yeah.

Me and all my Rex's. We all we all line up by height. I take the back in that case because they're all very small and i don't want to block their view of the virtual log ride that we all go on together that's right and you're kind of a father figure to those rexes you know yeah absolutely yeah yeah um and only to them and only to that yeah disregard you being an actual father no i'm not letting some baby take their well-earned territory uh let's bring in our guest uh our guest today he's a producer of how did this get played a wonderful podcast on the earwolf network uh it's matt apodaca and i realized i did not ask

how to say your last name before we started recording. You nailed it, baby. All right. You did it. All right. Five stars. Thank you so much. Another win for Jason. This is unbelievable.

I got the intro out. I got the guest name right. Everything's coming up Jason today. When we get to talk about old timey bullshit and guys named Bud Hurlbutt and stuff. This is a big day for you uh defunct ride uh fabrication companies too so uh thank you for doing the show matt um now you when we were talking about uh uh you know your theme park experiences or stuff you like you you had mentioned you grew up uh pretty close to disneyland and knott's berry farm is that right i'm a i'm a socal kid i guess i technically grew up within the county of los angeles uh but i was like i'm like the very

edge of it so very orange county adjacent so i spent a lot of time um at knotsberry farm and um at disneyland in particular um but we because we had annual passes to knotsberry farm and that was just like a thing that my mom if she had to like work on the weekend would just like drop us off there while she was at work so we weren't like so she would at least know where we were and she's like well they're gonna one burn all this energy at a theme park and then i'll pick them up and then they'll just be like too tired to be bad when i got home they did it work we were no we were really really bad really bad kids i have two other brothers and so like and we're all i have a twin brother and a younger brother who is two

years younger so we're all like you know i guess what the three stooges i guess just like being bad being bad kid so when you hang when you say being bad you mean only spending like one hour exploring the replica of independence hall not yeah not two hours we went straight to the thrills and didn't get to really honoring the history of America, which is part of the Knott's Berry Farm experience that people do often neglect. Yes. Do you have any memories? I always like to ask, do you have any, like, teen, strong teen memories from hanging out?

Because that's such a, I think, important part of everyone's theme park teen experience is like these weird. Sort of, but like, they're all like, I don't know. I feel like, like other people would probably have stories that involved like groups of

friends, but I just have like, I had two brothers, so I just spent a lot of time with them. But then like, then they're all then also then would tangentially involve my mom. Cause if my mom wasn't at work, she was also there with us. Cause she um young and um we would like prank call her at knott's berry farm

like we would call her work phone collect and like so one she'd have to accept a charge because she thought something was wrong and then we'd just be like, I miss you, Mom. It wouldn't even be bad. It would just be like, Hi. We thought we were pranking her. That's the sweetest prank I've ever heard. Yeah, that's usually what it was. It would just be like, Hi, we miss you.

Or that we were bored, which is such a spoiled little brat, SoCal kid thing. We're bored on a very far pick. Are you done with work? So stupid. I mean, that's nice. Yeah, that's a good place to be

you know if you can be bored at a theme park i guess you can just be bored anywhere and not spend that the money to be there instead right um were you ever just around would you always stay in knots or would you go into any of the other great parts of the greatest city in the world bueno park well so yeah there you know a of Buena Park even to this day has remained unexplored. If Buena Park was in a video game, most of the map would still be red for me.

I just have not gotten to it. But that strip, that strip leading up to Knott's Berry Farm, I think, well, there's some, well, there's a lot of shit.

There's like the medieval times is like, all right, like it's, that's good for like a fun sort of just like, you know, maybe like tongue in cheek outing. For an excellent meal, for the finest meal.

Well, yeah, I wouldn't, it's like, it's, it's better than any meal I've ever had. Certainly. It's great. That's a great, For an excellent meal. For the finest meal in the city. It's better than any meal I've ever had, certainly. It's great. That's where you go if the Pope's in town or something. You take the Pope to... If you're entertaining a Pope, make sure he's going to want to be in a palace

first of all. He'll get to sit where the king is, I assume. The king will make room for him. I would hope so. Otherwise, I hope they're prepared to shut down. Yeah. But they just added a portals.

He drives the Popemobile. Sorry, I was going to say, he drives the Popemobile on the dirt before. It just runs over the jouster. Yeah. Pope always wins. Sorry.

That's just like, it goes, like, knight, sure, most knights, you know, would beat anybody but the pope sorry pope always wins he wins he demands to take home a soup pitcher the pitcher they walk around holding soup in that they serve with you funny enough that's the same demand jason yes when we were there i always wanted like a sword i always wanted like a light up sword

and then like the one time i got one like i had it for like a day and then i was like well this is bullshit it's not even good like it's it's a bad souvenir it's a waste of a souvenir a cup would be better because you could use a cup longer yeah it's practical yeah yeah um Yeah. Yeah. Um, I cut you off. What were you saying before? Oh, there's like a Porto's over there in Buena Park now. And I'd say gigantic Porto's. And I feel like the quality across like Porto's in general is like very high.

Like it's very hard. Like there's only, there's not that many of them, but there are more now than there were like, like even five years ago or something. Um, but they're all very good. Um,

there's a claim jumper over there that i've i think i've been the like the most full i've ever been in my life like eating at the claim jumper like not in a good way i hated it i hated that i ate that oh yeah i was like this is what it is they're they're offy yeah that should be on their like sign outside like eat more than you ever have and hate yourself. It's like I ordered what you would think is a normal amount of food, but for some reason it was just so dense. I was just like, how?

I didn't even eat four meals. It's not a good place, is it, right? Clean Jumper is, I figured out it is not good. I think it's bad. I don't want to accept what you're saying, but you probably are right. But I feel like I've eaten like, I go, oh, I have a club sandwich. And then they bring over like three plates.

Like each part of the sandwich has its own plate. It's so big. And then I do finish it and I go, well, that wasn't very good. And you're always eating there right before you got to go to the airport. So that adds to the stress solo it is a definitely one in burbank yeah in in an office building in in terms of

the hierarchy of landry restaurants it's definitely leaning more towards rainforest cafe than yard house uh not yard house uh chart house i would i would tip that scale the other way i would think i i think rainforest cafe good you know i went to the last one in the los angeles area which is at the ontario mills mall uh i was there with with old bug main and we i thought the i had legitimate ribs very good ribs i was likeingly, so I was picturing just bullshit. And he was very excited because they had a menu that was all like it said this was developed by the executive chef at the Animal Kingdom location. Oh, wow. They highlighted specific Rainforest Cafe chefs.

And he was like, you can taste it. You can taste the Animal Kingdom magic. Yeah, it's coming straight from the top. These recipes are coming from like the prime location. That's great. The most high pressure location. I mean, that's the spotlights on you at that one. So, yeah, I was said now.

And we were like, I think the only people in there on a Tuesday afternoon. It's one of the last things i i did before uh the lockdown and it got me uh transitioned to there being no people around anywhere that's so that's a that's a while to think about i don't even remember what the last restaurant that's such a memorable restaurant to go out on if restaurants never come back my final restaurant and like a sort of glitchy speakered elephant that no one was paying attention to you can't confuse it with any other ones all the way on what yeah it was very just that fluorescence who cares we don't need a mood here the only thing that would beat it is

like oh yeah the last thing last place they ate before quarantine was chucky cheese yeah or like soup plantation because like that closed because of this like imagine you're like there the day before they closed right actually genuinely the last one i read the last restaurant i went to is closed now the place conrad's in glendale, this diner I really like. It's where I was there when I looked at the TV and what? No more NBA. Oh, fuck. And then now that place does not exist anymore.

Oh, man. I guess I could have seen it coming. RIP Conrad's. Any Glendale locals? Matt, the last place I'll ask is, do you have any fond memories of McThriller, the McDonald's in Buena Park? You know, is that the one that's like right there? I've been to that McDonald's and I don't remember. I mean, I feel like every McDonald's I went to as a kid was just like, oh, my God, is this going to be the best day of my life?

Are you kidding me? I'm at McDonald's today and i get to play in here but i don't remember like did that i feel like that one maybe had like a kiosk that had like n64 controllers um like way past when um like n64 was like out i feel like they had it through gamecube like they had them for like a really long time um but I don't remember like being particularly like, now this is McDonald's. And I say that, and I don't mean to drop this flex and I'm very,

very sorry for what I'm about to do. I am from Downey, California, which is home of the oldest operating McDonald's. So I, I come from a place with a very exciting McDonald's. Wow. I've been there.

I've been to that one. There's like a little museum essentially yes and it's you know boring but it's like kind of cool like there's it is sort of just like hey look at old menu yeah like it's not anything that's like that cool but it's like to see old pictures and like to read a plaque about uh you know uh how Ray Kroc is a hero. Yeah. Wow, they've got Ray Kroc's loafers. These are the loafers he was wearing when he put the nail in the coffin

of the McDonald's brothers. This is that powdered ice cream he switched to for the first time. This is the handkerchief he let that lady borrow who he stole and became his wife what are the chances that ray crock ever set foot in walter knott's freedom center wow uh seems like they could have been friends yeah friends hi i would think i would hope i would hope that he got to that's what i'll say i hope that he did um i mean we i'll look i'll google it i don't think we're gonna have a result but i'll try feels like they they would have gotten

along well actually while you google that i just want to share the fact that um i mean i always bring up mcthriller because i love that there used to be a ride in there and isn't anymore. But I forget another big McThriller detail, which is that it's the only place in my life where I've ever won a claw machine. Wow. and it was very it was very like you know 50s date where uh i'm i'm there with erin my now wife and uh she married me because of this because of my it was a dare it was a bet the pride was a ring you gotta marry me yeah yeah look and there was a yeah the bear was there was a little bear that was attached to a luckily a four $4,000 wedding ring. I only put in a quarter, but no, I like,

I went for it and I went for this awesome looking teddy bear that was wearing a little shirt that says Pepsi bear and, and Pepsi bear has been in our home ever since we love Pepsi bear. So I'm really fond memories for me there the only thing i ever won in my whole life um and the mcthriller had a simulator yeah i think so there's very little information about what it was i don't think i ever got on it but i remember being like well we have to do this right and my mom was like well no we're going to we're going to not what do you do what no yeah yeah we need to find in the maybe it's in the archives it's got to be in the archives somewhere what it was what the simulator

actually was yeah yeah uh because if it was mcdonald's themed and that's what you really want is that it was like a a trick that you're you know trying to run over the hamburglar and stop him for good yeah yeah you're like riding Grimace or something and... Yeah. Oh, you're on his back? Yeah. Swinging wildly. Get on my back, quick! I'm gonna punch that

bastard! It was probably just though like a simulator explaining to you how great Ray Kroc was. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah yeah it was just you would like and then you're like running over people on your way to the top maybe yeah it's like a dark ride slash like hall of presidents like simulator so it's like a screen that's showing you these things it's not built all the way in and it's but it's like an hour and a half and you're just like why am I 90 minutes feature length

a part of a ride where you have to watch him meet Harry J. Sonnenfeld is that the right I'm trying to quickly look up who BJ Novak played in that movie oh yeah I only see the first part of his name so that might be

I'll go with Raleigh Smith. Then he meant Raleigh Smith. And then the thing shakes wildly. When you shake Raleigh Smith's hand for the first time, the simulator goes up and down to simulate shaking. Yeah, that's good. They should make this. So that's what McThriller was.

Yeah, no. You can feel Ray jump for joy when he divorces his wife, Ethel. Younger woman. The founder popped up on one of the streaming services in the last few weeks, and I went, oh, the founder, and I'm like, wait a minute, I sold the founder.

I've seen this. It's the best kind of movie. you don't remember having yeah it's it it it feels like it stuff started with like the social network and then like you hit money ball and then you get to the fit like all of these like biopics about guys like i yeah they just kind of drop off and like that falls in like a like a sort of subcategory for me that i i'll like any movie that's like this where it's just like watching like people like a boring movie where people just do their job like that's like i love that like i don't think the like the post is obviously a very good movie but it's also like they're just doing their job and i watched every like second of that movie just be like this is the best movie i've ever seen i love this

so yeah that makes sense so you would watch a movie about uh well what is his name wells wellington bud hurlbutt uh wendell excuse me you watch a movie about wendell bud hurlbut making miniature uh antique trains yeah that would be a top 10 movie for me i think no conflict just yeah yeah i'd go for the hurlbut um i don't know i'd have to look up what he looks like. I don't know. I don't have off the top of my head a good hurl, but biopic. In the movie, it's Chris Pine. Sure.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Why am I thinking it has to be an old man? Yeah. Chris Pine. Oh, the hotter, the better.

Yeah. Yeah. The better. Because then you're just like, I have to pay attention to this thing. This thing. I got hunks doing this. I'm in. Yeah.

Hunky is a log builder yeah boy bud hurlbutt i'm so excited we get to say that name a lot but i guess yeah we we talked to you about your uh or jason jason was asking about your your knots experience and uh and this this is a Knott's classic. Were you especially fond of this one? Was this a good early? Did you like this one before you were willing to brave bigger, tougher rides? I feel like, yeah, this was from my early childhood. This was as far as I would go outside of Camp Snoopy. I'd be like, well, i have to get on the log

ride you know so then i then you know i feel like when did jaguar open like that was probably like 97 or something i think sounds right uh and so i remember being like okay well that's like a roller coaster but it doesn't have any loops that seems like okay uh and then like get on that and there was uh you know there's some rides i'd never been on to this day because i was like well i'm never gonna get on boomerang and now it turns out i can't i think i think it's done um yeah but i loved the log ride even though it has no discernible it has nothing for a little boy to enjoy there's nothing there is nothing fun about the log ride except that you are you get splashed and there is like a fun drop but like maybe there is something to trace this back

to like just watching like these men do their job uh like has impacted how i enjoy media because that ride is just people sawing and then like sitting down after sawing and like that's it that's the whole ride yeah that's a knots like tradition is just to see people kind of doing their normal day yeah yeah it's just like at least i don't know not to talk about uh disneyland which is only like a few miles away um but it there at least those rides are based on like ip that you recognize so like even if it's like not a whole lot going on you're like oh great look there's a thing that i remember or you know at least in camp snoopy there's like snoopy iconography and in in this part of the park it is only old like like i guess loggers and and miners and stuff yeah doing a tough job hard physical labor

yeah the uh the ip of the calico ghost town is the fortitude of the 49ers the steadfastness of the american west yeah the most intellectual property there is yeah they used to i mean knots was an easy um like school um what is that called field trip field trip uh type thing or like if it was a summer day camp situation that would be like the last place we would go at like the final week. Uh, uh, you know, excursion was not very farm, uh, on like the Friday of that last week of camp.

And you would go, uh, and you know, just drink as much, uh, boysenberry punches. You could, uh,

as much as you could have. Oh yeah. That sugar will go right to your head. Yeah. Cause not, not has the bare minimum of educational stuff. And I am a little sad I never saw like a 90s Knott's where they were just jamming in a roller coaster in like any storefront.

Like they would just jam in roller coasters wherever. Because like nowadays, Knott's looks all like freshly painted and like Timber Mountain Log Ride, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019 was kind of the the big impotent like they were like well let's redo this a little and that kind of set them off on a streak of like gussying up their like older rides and being about becoming a charming park again as opposed to just uh here's a steel pink coaster next to a steel bright purple coaster next to a just a big unthemed drop it got like the skyline

got sort of ugly for a little while and now it's like the homey nice park again it had to sort of reckon with like like i don't know i mean it's it's very much in disneyland shadow you know like because it is sort of like the lesser park but it's a little cheaper for entry and like it has some it has things that disneyland doesn't have which is like legitimate thrill rides um but it's a mess like i think the park is a mess uh and it's a mess. Like, I think the park is a mess. Uh, and it's, I mean, in the, I haven't been in a couple of years, I think, but, like, the last few times I was there, I was like, it's remarkably dirtier. You would never see as much filth on the ground at Disneyland at any given time that you would, because, like, they won't allow it there.

Like, their people are, those people at Disneyland are just constantly sweeping. Like, uh, but at Knott's Berry Farm, you could walk by barf like for an hour like the same like puddle of barf you could walk by it like three times and like it still wouldn't have gotten cleaned up at not yeah yeah yeah knots i feel like knots i can still get lost in so i feel like they probably don't have as many janitors and then also maybe the janitors are getting a little lost walking around as well they just don't have great uh bearings on the park because you're like oh there's like just dead ends there's a lot of dead ends it's not that's a good point yeah but matt would you know your way around if you were just plopped into not could you take people around or would you need to like yeah wait where

is that is that in the 20s or there was a time yeah that yeah you have to know the numbers of like where we are um like i there was a time probably in like maybe the mid 2000s like uh like to like early like 2010s where i would have been able to do that but now that information is just like it's lost like because there's i i used to go there it would be like a sort of like on off situation where i'd have like a disney pass and then the next year we would do knots and then there were some times where we had both and then we would just start neglecting knots berry farm because you know come on yeah it's a weird way to go constantly for a whole year no and like because we would go like

there was like just for an example we'd go to knots probably like on some weekends but there were a couple times like there was times when we had disneyland passes or i'd be at disneyland a couple of times a week because it was not that far away and it would just be like something to do like after five when i was off school or something um there yeah i seriously yeah uh there has been a little bit of a fight for the i think the soul of knots in the last so many years was kind of we were talking about and i do think the people in charge know they're going in the right direction they just plussed up their raft ride with a little more animatronic uh fun um and i think it's also just like people have such affection for like classic knots one of i think i'm sure we've

talked about it after the fact but we had an interview with uh disney imagineer tony baxter and my favorite part of that interview two years ago is that he said that one of the things he does in his spare time is sits around with his friends and tries to think of how to fix nots berry farm that's amazing that which was like i popped so hard yeah i can't believe that's the coolest thing i've ever heard because like if anybody can do it probably like that's incredible um scott that's a wrestling term meaning uh exploded with like cheer it does not mean got a boner i see see that's what i thought but i was like fine i was okay with it yeah i mean i mean did i get maybe like kind of a boner the word hard was in there too so i popped hard yes what's so weird about it it's wrestling i popped a hard one yes yeah

mike but it's slang in some other industries too that's fair i mean it's honestly it works in whatever context you want it to work sure okay yeah flexible verb yeah yeah um yeah that was that was very cool um but i also i guess um growing up if you were a sort of at the middle school as a teenager uh in that age range did you find this ride was it exciting because there was a drop or was everything leading up to the drop as sort of dull and workmanlike? I think, yeah, because there's honestly, I don't know. I feel like I would get on that ride and it would just be like, because it's, you know, it's not a quick ride, but it's not like the longest ride either. Like the Calico Mine Ride, you're sitting in there for a while.

But like the log ride is like probably like four minutes long or something. So it's just nice to, one, you're sitting down, down you're getting a nice breeze you're maybe getting a little splash it was more like uh utilitarian than it was fun like you're sort of like well i'm gonna just get a little bit of a rest and a bit of a splash uh and then you get a little thrill from the drop and like the drop is the whole thing i'm not looking around being like these animatronics are so good because Because when I was going it hadn't been refurbished yet, so they were old and shitty.

I knew not before I guess they started caring about it again. They were starting to add a bunch of stuff and they were just going SimCity all over it and just putting stuff wherever it sort of fit uh not

really thinking about like the theming of it or whatever uh and it was you know i still liked it i like it's also like you're waiting in line and i guess then that's like when you're like talking it would like you're you know my brothers or like our you know our group of friends or whatever and it's just a nice it's a nice cue you know it's uh you're sort of just like in the rocks and i'm getting like i'm looking at a picture of it right now and i can like smell the water like you know that water smell oh yeah it's so yeah it's not like it's like i don't know i think it's one of the there's something about it that is classic that like when you're on it you're just sort of like wow this ride is so old uh but it's like i think i would probably place it um in in like the upper tier of rides at knots like even

though it's not there's nothing fancy about it i still just think it's like it's great it's not even the best log ride i've ever been on like but it's like it's good sure sure but it's but it's a it's a themed knots experience which they aren't all of them are not it's like it's good sure but it's but it's a it's a themed knots experience which they aren't all of them are not it's the least offensive log rat i've been on yes that is the funny thing it beats last mountain by about 20 years it is somehow less problematic in this day and age because like do we the most the most i, like, well, there's a couple of hitchhikers with bindles. I guess that's unfortunate, but they seem in good spirits. And it's not like you slow down and hear anyone's philosophy on the ride, any of the robots.

We don't know anything about them. That's true. We know nothing about them. We don't know who they've killed or what what other dark deeds they've done they're all like daniel plane views uh with dark stories to tell you know honestly they all if you look at each robot on this and and on the uh mine cart ride at knots every man look into his eyes and you know he's killed and that he has seen some shit and his movie would make an insane, excuse me, his

life would make an insane movie. It's just a matter of did he kill for good? Was it to save someone or help the world in some other way? But he for sure has killed. I mean, I would say most of them have not killed for good

most very terrible kills definitely haven't no right we should say for anybody who doesn't know this ride or what's what's in it exactly so it opened in 1969 so you know this as jason said way before splash mountain way before you know it's a little past parts of the Caribbean. Rides with a bunch of animatronics are not very common, and they were pretty rudimentary at the time. But it was not the first log flume. There had been a couple of those, all kind of built by the same company, Arrow. But this was maybe the first heavily themed one. And if you haven't been on it, just to help the viewer the listener picture it

it's you you you are just in a literal log a logging factory essentially you're like you go through a mill and then where you you are seeing real machinery that would have been used to prepare logs and then that sends you through a... And I didn't realize log flume was a real thing. It was a way to transport logs upstream. So, you know, they'd build

these big chutes and you'd pass through towns and see, you know, forest creatures and stuff. So I don't think I ever understood what the story was exactly. You're in the factory and then your log is being sent up a river where you see little settlements and animals and that kind of thing so that that's what what's happening narratively in this ride yeah i didn't realize that either but then there's like i've seen a couple i'm sure old cartoons where it's logs going down a river so it's like oh yes i should have known that before

i should have put that together yeah well you because you could just send a log down the river but what if you want to go up the river well you got to build a flume and they would in the 1800s build these things people would try to ride them like a ride but obviously that was far more uh dangerous than the theme park log flume experience is the rider supposed to take the pov of a of a logger or the log i think you are a log maybe i think because nobody's ever being a log writer is a weird other experience like only the craziest daredevils in 1870 are doing that and you hear sounds i don't think i ever put any of this together too that you hear grinding which is supposed to indicate that the log is being um sheer i don't know what the word is like you're going through log processing essentially

yeah so i would Maybe he is you. Maybe you are a log. They would address you if you were a log rider. Because they'd be like, you're crazy for doing this. I can't believe you're the most wild person in the whole wilderness. Yes. Yeah. Be careful, duck.

You might get commands and stuff. The only thing is on the Halloween overlay, a bear does address you at the end of the ride. So is he talking to you or the log? Because he goes trick-or-treat at the end. And would he be saying trick-or-treat to a log that's been processed? Maybe. Maybe if you're an exceptional log,

because you get to see the logs being cut down at the start, and then you get to go to a hootenanny, regardless of the seasonal overlay or not, there is a hootenanny in the middle of the ride, and then you go up the processing hill and dumped down. So maybe you are like the one millionth log, and they're celebrating you being sent down the flume yeah your your role on the ride is millionth log the specialist log but that's every log but if every log has that experience then every log is an exceptional log can every log be an exceptional log the answer of course is no but in the narrative of the ride you're not supposed to see the other logs it's the same way where like you know rise of the resistance is really you're only supposed to be going only you're really yourself in the little party you're with and you're not really supposed to know that there's a whole line behind and the subtexttext of all of Walter Knott's rides is that like, well, yes, you are exceptional, but you had to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

You know, you had to work for it 80 hours a week, you know. He admired the log, the mighty log that helped to build America. You know, so this is really a tribute to the log. You know, it housed people. It kept them warm. Yeah. You know, we don't give enough credit to the log at this day and age.

We kind of forget. We've forgotten. And I hope that younger people can, you know, pick up where we left off. Well, I think kids today, now that they've done a little sprucing up of this, will really more appreciate the mighty log oh yeah and what we all live in places that involve wood but none

of them look like logs so we forget the importance of the log i assume i'm looking at all of your zoom screens and none of you live in a log cabin no no and that's no and that's my shame yeah that's my cross the bear i have i have to deal with that the only real patriotic way to live is a log cabin the way lincoln did there's a um there's like a concession stand that i love that's near the log ride and it's not like a good it's not like it's a special concession stand but it it's like you get, it's like right when you get off in the exit, there's like straight across and you're like, okay, now it's time for some funnel cake, baby. It's like right there. It's right by the bathrooms. Yes, exactly.

So there's a really good like, okay, we're off the log ride. Go to the bathroom. I'm going to get in line, get a treat. Now everyone's got treats when they're done with the bathroom. It's like a win-win for everybody. That is a lot of your theme park hierarchy of needs right there in one central. So a log flume and a funnel cake and facilities, you know. You can get an icy there too.

Yes. I'm pretty sure. You can get like a Knott's Berry Farm exclusive boysenberry punch icy. Really? Yeah. At least when I was going, you could do that, and you can get that punch. But the icy version was like the treat. Wow.

I've actually never heard of that. I'm not sure if they have that anymore. But that's – Look, I was an icy kid. That would have thrilled me. Yeah. You would have lost your mind. Because I loved getting the punch. I just loved that punch, and I would an icy kid. That would have thrilled me. Yeah, you would have lost your mind. Because I loved getting the punch.

I just loved that punch. And I would get it today. I want it so bad. Just talking about it, I want it. Do you like the boysenberry beer? Have you tried that? I have not tried that. Is it as sweet?

Yes. It's getting there. Yeah. It's pretty sweet. It's pretty crazy. I like the jam. I like it. I like all of it. The real

contribution that Knott's has given us is the boysenberry. Didn't know about it before. The humble boysenberry, yes. There should be a ride where you are the boysenberry going through processing. To make the beer, to make the icy, to make the churro, boysenberry going through processing to make the beer to make the icy to make the

uh churro boysberry churro there's a and there's that um there's like this weird thing that's like right next to it that's like always closed it's like a theater it looks like a theater sort of i have a story about that place oh yeah go ahead and it's that um uh my in my high school i think this is the last time i went to knots but no i went for a not scary farm like two years after that but uh one of the last times i went was um my high school had their winter formal dance there in that like sort of like in that room um and so then you can go on the rides not all the rides are open but like the log ride was open and um that like spinny ride that's nearby, that's, like, just, like, any sort of, like, bullshit carnival ride. And a couple of the other rides, but not everything.

And the reason it's memorable is because I was a nominee for Winter Formal King. And I did get it and i won and before anyone thinks this is great i must point out that the student body did not vote me in no one the student body did not vote for a winter formal king and queen teachers did so the teachers at my high school were like you know who's a great kid man let's nominate him and it was me and a couple other really nice boys but i was the nicest boy of them all and i won the goodest boy the teacher said i was a good boy welcome brother welcome to the show safe sharing that with the other with the other good boys

yeah you started out saying you were bad and it's very clear you were the opposite well i was good but like if you asked my mom three boys like at once she was like they were uh that was nightmarish like true it sounds like you were it sounds like you were a handful yeah i'd go as far to say even like a scamp but that's lovable that's a oh yeah yes yeah those nice words always put before the word scamp yeah one of those kids that the teachers would be like matt stop talking and then i'd say something funny and everyone laughed and the teacher would laugh and they're like i can't stay mad and somebody i remember this happened to me and then i heard like it was funny because paul f tompkins has a bit about calling a crown a king

hat and somebody asked me if they could put on my king hat like while i was on stage getting it and i was like that's not what it's called and then i heard that bit and i was like see it's a thing that people say. Wow. They wanted it right then? It was your first moment to wear it? What? Did you wear it on the rides? No, I remember it, well,

I have a gigantic head and it did not fit all the way. It was just something that I had to rest on my head and, you know, the further you pushed down on it, it looked very silly um but it was um yeah it was too small uh for my gigantic head i very relatable for me very relatable were you excited when you got that honor were you like a little embarrassed because you felt like the kids were gonna goof on you or was it like hell yeah awesome no it's um back then it was probably one of the things i was the most embarrassed of like ever in like my life um and this now i sort of

like have owned it and that gets a funny story it's a funnier story now um than it was like when it was happening but it was not like anything bad was happening like like when that honor was bestowed upon me i was just like i don't even want to go to this now i gotta go to this because i'm like the teachers think i'm nice uh and then i was like well that you know i got some really great teachers i better go make them proud and so i went with my dad and went to the end of day, your teacher deference won. We went to Islands before, too, so not the worst night in the world. I'll tell you what. Well, there we go. That was great. And the log

flew. I'd love to have this day right now. I want to be the winter formal king. I have an Islands gift card in my wallet right now that I haven't used, like, that I got since Christmas, and I'm just like, just jonesing for some tortilla soup, baby. Heartbreaking.

That's the last restaurant I went to before quarantine. Wow! That's great. That's great. That's a good one to go out on. It was Saturday. It was Saturday, and we're like, hey, this coronavirus, Lindsay and I are like, this coronavirus thing is really gonna be, is it, huh? Shouldn't we lock

everything down right now and we're like yeah i guess so huh okay eat eat eat three to four days later everything shut down i was at disneyland uh the week before we went on lockdown like like it was just me too i was in i was in line at big thunder and i saw an alert on my phone that said orange county declares like state of emergency or something and i'm in line at big thunder i'm like huh okay and i remember texting and jason was like oh they just have to do that to open up some funds and i was like oh okay that makes sense got it yeah i was in vegas not too long before and i was like god there's a lot of hand sanitizer and hey i don't remember this much hand sanitizer

everywhere did you take bets on when it would be over i should have taken a prop that i should have taken the cover the spread parlay uh what if i do just a real crazy bet like what if it went for like i don't know 18 months and now that'll happen if i did i'd be a millionaire i don't know i can't pinpoint the exact restaurant because i know there must have been something in between this but the ones that stick out in my mind were the vague were like italy and roy choy's best friend like in my vegas trip good ones to go out yeah best friend speaking of quality restaurants um i dropped out for a second because i really wanted to specifically say the name of whatever the place is that you called out or you can get the funnel cakes after you go on the log ride and after some searching i determined that the name of

this restaurant is log ride funnel cake this would be on the map like which one is it oh all right there man that's probably it what the part of the charm of knott's berry farm is how sort of like slapped together it is like they could have beaten that they could have absolutely come up with something better than that but they were just like well where is it what does it serve okay great log ride funnel cake they name it like they're submitting things for like fire codes this is where the city we just need to name it something for the city say you know to release the funds that's like a translation like that's

like that what the like the official English for it would be but it's like what it would be translated somewhere else oh if you went from English to another language and back yeah and it's like a original good time pizza place yeah I wonder they I mean they've been doing it seemingly

from what we've understood they've been doing, seemingly from what we've understood, they've been doing a lot with a little. I wonder if that's even on the list of like they have a little bit of a theming idea and they're just like, yeah, but we don't have that $20 to paint a new sign. We're such pretty thin here. They have that woodworking station where you can get like a custom sign. They could do it in-house well that's one of the things i wanted to do before all this shit was to get i was literally looking up like prices on that i wanted to go to knots and get a sign made

with my you know with our my family's name on it me and my wife and my son's name and a good old car you know curly curly carved ampersand yeah and then i didn't get to do it because everything shut down i like the signs i'm glad you called out the signs they're good they're good uh those are i'm sure the person who knows them there are good i found i'm on facebook as a like on a fan page for i think the guy who designed one of the country bears sign, like the carved country bear signs and he still make commissions. Wow. Oh boy.

Oh, send us this info. Give us these. Uh, yeah, I'll send it. I forget exactly what his name is. Boy.

Well, carving. This is what, you know, this is what this ride is about. You get, you go up at the first hill and you get carved. This is a ride where you experience being carved.

That should have been the 90s tagline for it when they were really trying to bring in the teens. Hip-hop-fiant. Get carved. Get carved. Do you say carving to be in some commercials? Oh, yeah. You got to get carved.

If you want to do your campaign, get and stuff yeah all the characters um so that kind of is yeah yeah you go up a hill you get carved then you're in a shoot and then you go inside this building for show scenes which are like passing by little encampments. The first one is pretty, I mean, I don't have them so clearly in my head. I feel like it's, you know, here's a couple of people and a weird old kooky guy and a prospector. And then you, and then this town after that is way more populous and where,

as Jason said, in fact, a real hootenanny is occurring. Yes. Well, there's an animal scenes right before that there's like a campsite and there's a squirrel stealing a long underwear man's hat and there's there's a wolf and um that's where they stick the bear at halloween and then you hit the hootenanny including the animatronic of a man running on a spinning log, which is very impressive to see. Great animatronic. In terms of like... I'm going to share the screen real quick,

because I do want to give... I know we all know what the vibe of these men, these robot men are, but this one really, I think, sums up the best, and we'll post a photo of it on Twitter. This man right here, this look, this is the vibe of almost every robot man.

And he is just like, he looks like, I guess Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies. He looks furious. Why are you here? And he does look like he's about to shout at you. He does not. But I just like like if you've

never been on this before and you're not even going to watch a ride through just know this is the vibe the general vibe of everyone absolutely holding some copper he's near a rope he's just the saltiest ride no way no as we said no one you don't pass by anyone who's having a happy life imagine like thinking you're building this for like families and kids and no one is smiling no one has any like what do you think you'd like just did now you'd have to go the disney length but you would think like well you know kids are gonna whine you'd be like hey everybody we're making law like we're carving logs today or whatever it's no even some of the pirates in pirates of the caribbean are like

having fun like you know almost all having fun yeah it's very joyous the ghosts are all mostly having fun on haunted mansion they're like this is great we're dead and loving it like uh leslie nielsen as dracula you mean yeah, Dracula dead and loving it. I was going to say, the Calico rides are the only rides where the animatronics look at you and say, like, I look at people and there's nothing I see in them that I like. Just all the Daniel Flade view. They're all suspicious of us passing through their towns

because they think we're going to pull a false brother scam on them. Oldest trick in the book. Yeah. They have what you're saying. The long underwear man, there's some whimsy in the guy on top of the wheel,

but you would think when you were making it, we be like well we want this to be somewhat inviting and it is not yeah it's like it's there's i was saying earlier there's like almost no appeal for kids like in on this thing like at all there's nothing that if you were to like like tell a kid about this ride before they got on it like to describe it to them that would excite a kid like okay like except maybe drop and like water like those are the two yeah it is fast i don't know the first time i wrote it it's like if it always felt faster to me i mean i wrote it at a not scary farm it was nighttime it was colder but just the speed of the water did make it feel very fast they're churning logs out

they're just pushing people through that thing and it is not says it's their most popular ride wow yeah that makes sense to me i i do wonder because i never obviously went to this thing as a kid um and i immediately when i went on it as an adult i loved it because it's so bizarre and weird and such a relic of its time. But I do wonder, I probably would not have appreciated it at all as a kid. I don't know, especially having been to Disney, I probably would have been like, well, I like the drop and it goes fast, but I don't know. What else is there?

It also got a refresh, and it's hard to tell what was in the refresh and what was there before and did if if you know did they plus up existing animatronics or some of them entirely new uh but you know in i think 2013 or so was when they they refreshed the whole thing and part of that was this uh this animatronics company garner holtz putting in new animatronics and i think you know they they did everything in the um the rapids right acalico rapids which we talked think, you know, they did everything in the Rapids, right? The Calico Rapids, which we talked about, you know, a year or so back. But I think they, I think what you can definitely credit them for is the critters.

I think any little, you know, like a couple of squirrels pulling on a hat, you know, one of them stealing something or whatever. And I think this bear that we talked about with the halloween thing i think all of these are garner hold so um if none of that was there before then i mean matt you're the only one who did it at the time it seems like it was like entirely joyless barely moving i wish i could remember the bear i don't remember a bear. And, you know, I think if I'm being honest, the bear does sound like they were sort of eating Disney's lunch a little bit. And they're like, we're going to have an unproblematic bear. How about this?

You got you fucks. You don't even know what we're about to do to you. Just a nice bear that wishes you trick or treat. Well, so this I mean, we should talk about this because i think this we've definitely talked about it on the show before but uh matt you just you just laughed and smiled when we said this happened the same way we did on the ride when we did it and we didn't know it was coming we were there for this halloween overlay i think do they call the whole thing halloween hootenanny is the name of the um log ride

the overlay for the and before they did that it was uh they did a halloween thing called sleepy hollow mountain which looks like they just it doesn't look as good i saw a 2010 video it's just not the same okay sure but i yeah we rounded a corner and you know it's it's it's very confusing theming there's a part where aliens have crash landed yeah it's a lot of stuff all at once but oh my god and we rounded this one river bank and then this bear just look it feels like he's looking straight into your eyes it's it's trick or treat we just laughed like we were three years old and we're getting keys jangled for the just such pure joy that's one of the funnier things i could think of like happening on a log ride like that's pretty that's pretty good

um but i awesome i remember the theming of the the halloween one like i remember being sort of unimpressed because it just seemed like they put like like glove claws and like scary masks on some of the animatronics and then like that was it and i was like okay well that's kind of scary i'll say uh going on that ride during halloween but not at not scary farm like during the day before it becomes not scary farm is its own thing because it's they just cover the stuff so you're going through herbs yeah or just like like black curtains like covering the things or like on the scary mask animatronics they'll just put like a like like black bag over the over the mask and so you're going through it and you're just like this is like i don't know like a guantanamo log ride like it's like so weird that logger has escaped a cia

black site yeah they're about to dump that um animatronic into the ocean there was there so there was some years what walter not would have not well he would approve the guantanamo well you know necessary measures you know sorry jason i thought that joke was so good i kept cutting you off i appreciate it no i i yeah you're right um there there was um a few years where they had actor, they had scare actors on this ride, but in terms of like safety, the scare actors could very clearly only pop out

from the emergency exits because like these logs, they go fast. They can't just be like hanging by the water. So they're like standing on the pads like outside of the doorways and it's just like a leather face or uh uh you know just a general ghoulie yeah they did this yeah on the other ride too basically at the emergency exits they would station a human with a mask and then you just go ah well you were going by which i saw in some videos and when when we when we did our first scary farm a couple years ago they had stopped doing that it

feels like they're like they they they throw a lot at the wall at knots which i appreciate they go maybe that didn't work maybe they're trying maybe somebody's yeah that's what that's what i'm saying they're trying they keep changing things well to that end can I say I found a list of all of the Halloween overlays that they've done of this ride I mean there's not detailed information about most of them but just

the names this is such a blast started with Terror Mountain then Satan's Sawmill Sorcerer's Lair Nightmare Mountain Realm of the Sorcerer switcher's lair nightmare mountain realm of the sorcerer switch from a lair to a realm uh santa claus mountain spelled like bear claws scary santa pretty scary yeah i mean yeah if he if he goes terrifying if he goes rabid um camp gonna getcha You know It's put together in that camp

Naming way Red moon massacre I mean these are just all kick ass Names no matter what it's for Pyromaniacs with an X Sleepy hollow Mountain as Jason said at one point they did a Tie in to the evil Dead they did a tie-in to The Evil Dead.

They did one of the rare Knott's IP crossovers there ever was. In this video of it, I didn't get to watch it, but I think there may be characters from The Evil Dead world on it. But the absolute best one, at least in terms of description, I think it's from 1988, Toxic Terror. Because this one, there is a plot, and the plot rules this is official nots copy in the not too distant future the timber mountain logging company has been acquired by noxico inc a multinational conglomerate that manufactures chemicals plastics and industrial

grade phlegm employees mutated by exposure to the fuming mixture of goo delight in processing our guests so Jesus, right along with the bubbling waste. If the visitors survive being dunked in acid and sprayed with ooze, can they live through the final plunge into the sludge pond?

Wow. Amazing. They kept the mythology like it's still the Timberman Logging Company, but it got bought out and it's a commentary on current toxic Avengers sort of stuff. It's like the Ninja Turtles with the Ooze Company.

This is like of the era. It's topical. There's rules. Yeah, when we were talking to the people behind the scenes at Knott's a couple years ago too, it feels like I mean, we know for sure they have a lot more freedom than Disney, but they get a little budget, and then it seems like they get to make up fun names and do cool stuff with a little amount of money. So it does seem like we'd all want to do a little Imagineering, but really Knott's might be where it's at. We could maybe realistically like name a halloween overlay yeah it's uh yeah obviously yeah who wouldn't want to be an imagineer but your hit rate uh getting things through is gonna

be higher at not absolutely right oh yeah throw whatever you want out and they'll be like yeah yeah i guess but if we could design this the the sign for the funnel cake stand even, that's probably much more likely to happen than us, you know. We have a regular name or a horror name. Can we do a horror overlay of the funnel? Oh, I'm sure we can. Log ride funnel cake. Mummy cakes.

They're mammal cakes. Those kind of look like bandages yeah that's a pile of loose mummy bandages not a funnel cake that's good i was gonna say like it's cooked fingers maybe oh finger cakes finger fungal wait there you go fungal cake and you do all gross colors like green. Yeah. Like the red buns, like the red buns. They put sandwiches on sometimes. It was terrible. Your favorite,

Scott, the red buns. Waited so long for food. And then it was red buns. The red buns we ate were not good. Oh boy. But fungal cakes, this is good.

And you could put, you know, maybe you do, like, toss in a finger that once you bite it, it's like brownie pieces or something. You know, there's ways. Or you put, like, a gummy spider in there or something. Yeah, for sure. We could do this. This is more achievable.

Yeah, we're proving it on the fly. And it goes along with kind of the playfulness of like well Halloween hootenanny it's just like a bunch of greys showed up and they put on a party for them and there's a bear who talks and a grey alien plays a banjo like fungal cakes

is kind of like mischievous kind of like a scamp designed like a like a Matt Apodaca designed it her approved scamp top scamp design and like a like a matt apodaca designed it approved scamp top scamp i would oh man if i could get that if i could go back and get that instead of winter formal king i would i would prefer top scamp well on our show that's your title yes hell yeah official top scam there's no there's no hat for it yet but perhaps in the future i'll i'd wear a hat that just said top scam i guess that would require

that would uh you know i'd probably get some look no it's fine it's like it's like jughead a fun crown yeah people like scamps people love scamps classic jughead like not not riverdale jughead who has like a body count who is like blood on his hands original harmless one yeah mike didn't you um i feel like you used it somewhere i've heard you say off hand the name of the band that plays in high realized i figured it out and now i don't know i gotta let me re-figure it out i haven't written down you had it at one point in time i'll find it and what you talk amongst yourselves in this ride yeah yeah the name of the band with the alien and the bear oh yes the like in story band because

i i have the hillbillies yeah crazy kirk and the hillbillies did the original song for the for the the new version yeah and and they were formerly billy hill in the hillbillies and played at disneyland for over 20 years and then when disneyland let them go knots got right in there scooped them right up you know that is i love it it's the most incredible thing to me. Just like a full-on sprint guy becoming Verizon. Yeah. It's like wrestlers jumping companies.

Yes. Yeah. Slightly different name, they gotta go. And even right now, like as we speak, I think it's still running. Knott's is like partially open and doing an outdoor food festival and the band cannot play,

but they recorded an original video, like a concert of them playing that plays on a giant screen by like picnic tables. Nice. Yeah, that's cool. Knott's I think has a good idea here. Genuinely, the fact that they're trying to open a little bit and just let people have some of the vibe i i do wonder if there is a step between disneyland is open fully and all

the rides are there and um can we just like walk around and experience a little bit and nobody does anything unsafe like i do feel like knots maybe is a pioneer uh in in this covet era in that way yeah yeah it's it'll be tough it's like maybe the outdoor rides are open or something is a pioneer in this COVID era in that way. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it'll be tough. Like maybe the outdoor rides are open or something. Yeah. Or just let people walk around main street.

Like you could, everything could be closed. Just let people like, would you, I don't know. Am I crazy? Or aren't there people who would go to a Disneyland where there were no rides?

Yeah. I would love to walk. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. I'd do it. Open the Panda Express at Knott's Berry Farm. Open the limited menu selection. Any clues

on that band, Mike? I think it's the Calico Coffins. Or a Calico Coffin Band. Something something like that it's just hard to make out I had it at a certain point because it's we're rushing by it it's hard to yeah and I freeze frame to get if it's the same thing I had last time where I was like I think it's this

seems right oh wait wait oh I got it I got it I got it here we go here we go are we ready yeah the calico coffin creepers oh wow hey that's even better makes me think of odin kirk as the dr demento-esque character the califoco coffin creepers is he is he daffy mal yinkle yinkle or is that so what else that's a different what's the name of the demento i'm not i'm proving i'm not a truly encyclopedic mr from the monster parties uh factor fiction sketch um let us know and we'll go hmm oh that's right

um anyway they're the creeper, that's right. Anyway, they're the creeper. Yeah, that's, I'm glad you caught that. I felt, I did feel like one was missing. Creepers is great.

Yeah. I realized I found part of it. And then I just looked at my notes and I just wrote in Calico coffin and it showed up from a year ago. The name I had written down in my notes from a year ago. yeah. This Halloween overlay, I think is

my favorite holiday overlay of all time yeah i think i think we're forgetting don't they put a big skull on the top also oh yeah there's like a face when you walk is that what you're talking about when you go in don't think at least at some point in time on the like you know wherever you're when you're heading up the first lift hill to be carved the hole that you go into i think there's a big skull up top yeah yeah yeah they make yeah that's very scary yeah very very cool um yeah really strong halloween version and there aren't a lot of halloween overlays out there so you got to give them credit and that they've tried so many that they do a different one every year it's very bold yeah and like they were sort of like i mean

because they were probably doing the like extra ticket like horror like a month thing before anybody else i think like i think universal started after probably not scary farm yeah uh i mean disneyland has their sort of like cute one that's like you know for kids going trick-or-treating or whatever but they don't have like mazes or anything actually scary but uh not scary farm has been a thing like thinking like my entire life probably yes and uh bud hurlbit the guy who created this ride was an early creator of not scary for, he was an early, like it helps head up the whole thing. Wow. And an original scarecrow.

He himself got out there as a scared. The guy who built this ride we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. He would jump out. He would like on the mind ride, he would jump out and like scare people. Um,

that presumably with permission. I don't, I i mean maybe sometimes he did it just you know going uh wildcat you know like that's like when like uh um a famous chef opens a restaurant and sometimes they're in the kitchen still even though they don't really have to yes yes right it's or like that restaurant john bon Jovi owns where he like washes dishes i mean it's for I think people that don't have much money but yeah John is sometimes there

but he doesn't have to be he's very rich yeah he doesn't gotta you know maybe he just likes washing dishes but he doesn't gotta do that Johnny washed the dishes at the restaurant didn't have to be there he wanted to be it i this could be a whole this will be whole another episode but john bon Jovi i was just made aware of uh a certain type of rosé he has

well well now we're talking uh and i believe it's called hampton water rosé ouch i was in and I went right out. Like Grandpa Simpson walking in and out of the door. I was there for 0.5 seconds. Scott, you got to have eight glasses of Hampton Water a day. Doctor recommended. Hampton Water. There's a video of him playing, covering the killers.

Mr. Brightside that has a little pop up. That's an ad for it. Wow. Most current song he knows. So I am a big fan of it already. I haven't tried it. Yeah. I may never try it, but I'm a big fan of it already I haven't tried it I may never try it but I'm a big fan Also if you cut the middle out It's ham water Oh well now I'm interested

Jason has a glass of that every night Sure Vintage In my hometown Like right before I went off to college Jason has a glass of that every night. Sure. Hammer. Vintage. In my hometown, like, right before I went off to college, they built a development of, like, very big McMansions. Like, the biggest houses are, like, some of the biggest houses in the borough. And the rumor going around was that, like, oh, you know, Jon Bon Jovi bought one of those houses, you know.

Is that where the story ends? That is where the story ends because I never heard, I heard it a number of times, but I never heard any resolution besides heard Jon Bon Jovi. Similarly in Ithaca, there was like, you know, Whoopi Goldberg has a house on the lake. You know, I can can i'll tie this into that um when i'd go hang out in newport beach uh for summers growing up uh my dad and i

were well my dad had i've said i think before my dad had a little little dinky sailboat called drunky with suey he's and he would i have so i love that name so much i'm very proud of my dad for that um but i'd go out and drunky with him and he would always give me the celebrity tour uh because there are a lot of mcmansions like along the the harbor uh the biggest one of which by far this palace uh in in the newport beach harbor area was john wayne uh and probably the residents of john wayne and his son who were the first two writers of this attraction in 1969 what a what a pull together i figured it out pointing out houses and this mansion was this and yeah i didn't know how else to get in there it the opportunity presented itself and we sailed right in um i found that to be a

fun odd fact that yeah the first writer was john wayne there's a crazy long video about the history of this ride by the channel expedition theme park and they said that wasn't even like a random occurrence it wasn't like let's well let's get a big star like somehow john wayne was being given a tour of Knott's Berry Farm and saw the work on this ride. And Bud Hurlbut, I think, threw out, well, you should be the first to ride it. And he was like, I'm going to take you up on that.

And they actually made good on it. He really wanted to be the first. And so much so, this is really odd, the ride was heading for an August opening. But John Wayne's filming schedule was such that he was going to be gone for the month of august like filming in mexico and so they were like well i mean the pr of getting john wayne is worth it so they rushed the opening of the ride and got it open in july so it opened with the cruddiest animatronics you've ever seen and exposed beams and completely unfinished unthemed parts because they wanted john wayne riding that thing

with his kid that's wow interesting wild okay yeah the priorities but on this channel if you watch if you go to expedition theme park you this guy tracked down footage from the orange county archives where you can watch john wayne given his opening speech taking his opening ride uh and you get to the best footage is watching him land in a helicopter and go immediately from a helicopter into a stagecoach that rolls him right up to the log ride um legitimately very cool the two wildest uh disparate uh modes of transportation the story of the 21st century the 20th century in one field i imagine john wayne thought he was kind of a real cowboy so when he was in

knots he was like felt at home i mean he also felt at home probably because of Walter Knott and his life philosophy. Conservative. But I could see him like being uncomfortable in the helicopter. But then as soon as he's in the stagecoach, he's like, well, I'm home, I guess. I'm supposed to be. Boy, another more terrible impressions. Oh, boy. Stagecoach. Bagram. boy another more terrible impressions from i guess they're a stage coach pilgrim i want to go to the halloween hootenanny pilgrim

where are those little missions pilgrim where's the dipping dots ice cream of the future pilgrim clear my schedule i got eight hours and i'm gonna spend it in the freedom center pilgrim if i could just swirl some dry facts around that are all related to 60s conservatism conservatism this is really odd i was like i wonder what movie he was filming and i figured it out that he was filming a movie called chism i'm no old western expert i didn't really know what chism was but on the wikipedia of chism it says how richard nixon used chism to describe his approach to law and order like i saw this movie this john way film, and this is how I believe we need to run the country is we got to do play by Chisholm's rules.

Jesus. And, oh, sorry, I'll go ahead, Mike. No, you go ahead, yeah. Well, just, I can keep connecting a bunch of odd things that, so that's weird. And, of course, Walter Knott, as we've said many times, very conservative guy. He invited Nixon to take a tour of Knott's Berry Farm in 68. We've all been thinking about 68 because we're in another 68 right now. So the year he was elected president, he took a tour of Knott's Berry Farm, hung out with Walter Knott.

I believe met Bud Hurlbutt, the creator of this ride, and went to the chicken dinner restaurant. That's where the event was nixon hung out there and then one more thing let me complete this triangle this is so strange um like bud hurlbut made a bunch of odd like he made a lot of trains private trains like not walt disney's train but the kind that he had like this this backyard trains for people. And he made a little miniature train for a restaurant in Orange County. The restaurant was Nixon's, which was a fast food chain run by Don Nixon, Richard Nixon's brother. Oh my God.

Wow. I've never heard that before. I've never heard any of this. Yeah, Butterill built a little train for Don Nixon, for Nixon's restaurant where he sold things like literally Nixon burger you can go get a Nixon burger for 20 cents

in the year where Richard Nixon became the president and there was a Nixon's at one of the streets Harbor and Catella where now kind of like around where we did our live show at that hotel that used to be that intersection was where there was a nixon's where there's a pizza press now yeah

the way was paved by don nixon and his delicious nixon burgers did did nixon serve Did Nixon serve Nixon's favorite lunch of pineapple and cottage cheese with ketchup? Oh, no. His last meal before he left the White House was cottage cheese and pineapple and a large glass of milk. And supposedly he liked his cottage cheese and pineapple with ketchup. What? Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. you know what i love nixon up until you told me that now i don't think he's so cool anymore i think he's a weird man yes

i loved him loved everything about him you think all those videos i've made praising him on youtube weird nixon is was the nixon and nixon family were they just big theme park and themed experience fans because nixon's at disneyland walt love nixon he's at knots he's got his own family has a restaurant yeah i mean well he's a socal kid too right he's from whittier uh so maybe he just like knows these guys like yeah he's like i like to get on i think he would have become a regular on podcast the ride unfortunately i maybe but i i listened to the audiobook of nixon land a few years ago and it seemed like he was a guy who had a lot of scores to settle so he might have just

been been into all of that orange county stuff because he got to cut the ribbons and all the rubes who stayed in town he could be like look at me you bastards I was nothing now I've got big scissors in my hand you've never even had scissors as big regular scissors for you if at all

the Nixon impression is better than the John Waynene impression yeah it's all right yeah yeah i've yeah i've i've forced my nixon into things before more i'll go start doing i got a real career ahead of me being able to do a okay nixon i gotta be the next rich little or um who's that other guy i like um old old impressionist uh Travolina there you go Fred Travolina they all could all do Nixon was the main impression

in those days I wonder if Kevin Spacey does Nixon has to wait he was he's in that movie he's in Elvis and he plays Nixon right yeah he decidedly

didn't do an impression just did like his own take nixon is singing some standards uh scott did you come across the other john wayne fact kind of around this ride? No, no. The month before this ride opened, the, or not, wait, yeah, John Wayne, the month before this ride opened, the John Wayne movie in theaters was True Grit. The movie he won

the, I believe, won the Oscar for? Or at least was nominated for? He's one of the ones that you know and then he's messing around at knots yeah big summer big summer for mr. Wayne uh this is uh this is a little bit

uh well not out of nowhere uh this i want to share a quick photo here too uh walter not and bud hurlbutt on the ride did we see this on the wikipedia oh see this on the Wikipedia? Oh, yes. Figured it out. They look both like animatronics fell into the log.

They both look not real to me here. The most wooden pose from Walter with a straw hat or i guess maybe right not a straw hat but it looks like someone told walter not do something with your hands do that walter act natural act like you're having fun and he was incapable of fully fully showing fun on his face. Yeah. And then Bud Hurlbutt is this, he wears a bit, not, how do you describe this? I mean, it's a very colonel tie. It's the bow tie, but with the long strings going in. And he's got pins hanging out of his pocket. He's like at work.

You could put like Jack Nicholson from the end of the shining in this photo and it wouldn't be different it would be the same picture yeah there is just there is something very ominous about this photo already uh and i don't know exactly what it is yeah it there's just look like it looks like they're sitting very still like you can feel them sitting still but hermit might also just be like worn out because he fronted the 3.5 million it took to build this ride and that i think like sold it to knots yeah he like i found this this was in that video that he leased the like he leased the ride to them he built it but then leased like as if you know i'm trying what's a good example like the you know if uh if the teacups were built by some guy and he like he just you know rented it to disneyland

it's so weird yeah yeah i guess it's just i guess more willing to make deals when you don't have as much money as disney did like how to get something made i mean he seems like as much credit is due to him as the knots like he was the guy pushing them to like he because he worked on the the um calico mine train too and then he did this i think this he wanted to be like a roller coaster first a roller coaster that looked like a log bouncing around and then when working with arrow they got the the first modern log flume up and going at six flags over texas that was enough proof of concept success to get this one off the ground now what's your feeling about that that other one about the um the the mine ride the mine ride is i think one of the oddest just like

like ride experiences because it's not exciting and it's not like it's it's a weird like in between because like you're learning about i guess like, that this is just a thing people did. So there's a slight bit of education to it. But it's not interesting or done well. But it's like in the cart, you're sitting. The cart is one of the more baffling ride seats to me, because you're sitting in a rectangle, and you're sitting around the perimeter of it inside of it.

So the middle is completely empty so to see some of the ride you have to crane your neck and stuff and make sure you're not missing anything behind you but it's like it's long too I feel like it's a long experience yeah but it's a long time

to be knee to knee with friends or strangers yes usually when we're playing like well and when you've had our experience i mean this is the first time mike and i hung out was to check out these rides and and it was yeah a group of us i think i think uh ryan perez is there and doug jones and all of us like you know like with a bunch of children. There's a bunch of 30 somethings and then the rest is all little kids. You spend most of the ride going,

oops, sorry. We're not creeps. Don't worry. We're not going to start a podcast about this soon. It also feels like on that train ride, which believe me, I don't disagree with

anything you're saying but i love it but yeah i also love it it's boring but it's great yeah it struggles that train feels like it's struggling to get you up as well it feels like oh a certain point maybe that the brakes just break and we just roll backwards and crash into the train behind us yeah then at least something would have happened on the ride. That's true. It would be exciting. Fly out. But yeah,

knots is doing, I'm, I'm a big fan of, I think knots is slowly just trying to build out the world of these miserable people that lived in olden times. Yes. But then that's what's exciting they had they don't have it anymore but they had that one ride where i think it was called

was it called the kingdom of the dinosaurs um or it was like this like time travel ride where you went through a uh you know a mad scientist's lab and then you went through his time machine which was unready and untested and you went back and saw dinosaurs and that was also like a very long ride so like they had that they had experience what it's like to work as a person who like doesn't have modern technology and then also just like um swings like just like or just like any other kind of like regular sort of roller coaster ride the very very um it's just a it's a strange theme park and i love it and i'm i frankly do miss it i haven't been in some time and i'd love to go when it's safe to go yeah yeah we we're big fans of it and it's only yeah

they're only expanding they did a maze last year that i was very excited about that was the origin of halloween maze the origin of the ghost town. Oh, wow. Which we were like, so thrilled by that. Like you got a lot of mileage out of stuff like that, because that's like legitimately like very interesting. Like that's,

that's a good idea. So the people in charge right now are, are good and know what they're doing. Well, and you know, yeah, we're, we're all missing it.

We've been so charmed by knots and we really like this ride and and and that sounds like you you haven't gotten to go in a while and you miss it and i we've all been we're in so what feels like such a an awful time right now this year but maybe if we could get out of this and go to knots and knots will remind us that the times before were way worse yeah you had to you had to be a logger a miner or work on a stagecoach and get robbed if you go way back a dinosaur might bite your head off yeah if you go like midway you could be a ghost in a in a you know a desert town yeah i mean then there had to have been some sort of outbreak in the mine, for God's sake. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, way, way crazier to see. Nods will make us appreciate that. This is really, 2020 is really the best year we've ever had. Is there a canary? Is there a dead canary in that mine? Yes, there sure is. There is, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And, you know, the part, there's a part that i was thinking about i don't know how to describe it but there's like a big like where you can only see it from like a far but it's like a big it's like the biggest part of the ride where it's like multiple layers of like work being done that and there's like animatronics like on like carts and stuff that's like a legitimately like impressive part of the ride like yeah thinking about it like uh me walking back that it is boring that's like very good like that's a good part of the ride like yeah thinking about it like uh me walking

back that it is boring that's like very good like that's a good part of it uh the scale the scale of like that they put it yeah in this ride some work went into that for sure yeah and i think a lot of the the like plus ups they did in the 2013s they kind of like we're leaning into those sorts of like going with those choices um i meant to say this earlier with like because it kind of like we're leaning into those sorts of like going with those choices um i meant to say this earlier with like because it kind of is a little weird kind of ties in with the halloween stuff at least it gives me the heebie-jeebies a little but then when they when they upgraded the ride the human figures when there was 17 of them originally it went to 40 and uh i read in the oc uh register um the they made the faces out of some of the original uh casts the original uh molds they used on the ride but uh

the hands legs and feet were made from the life casts of garter hold employees and friends oh just like real people yeah so uh i don't know why but that just gave me the willy yeah like that's that's awful i would jump at the chance oh yeah it's it's given it gave me the willies a little it's like kind of part of their soul is there yeah yeah yeah there's a piece of them like it's not as bad as like them modeling an animatronic after jack sparrow like in pirates like it's not that's that's different somehow and not as bad right yeah i would we all like to be preserved as uh creepy animatronics and corpses no no they're not gonna axidermy us i mean would we like molds of although i don't know i might be fine with that too yeah puppet me that's fine i would have to be doing something um like better than what i'm doing like with my life right now like i'd have to be like

doing something like legitimately impressive in the animatronic maybe put me on the make make me a logger i could never be a logger right now you run on the logs you run on a spinning oh my god if i could be preserved as the log runner that would be that'd be like a dream come true. Wearing a crown that says top scam. Sucking down a boysenberry punch, living the, living my life. That would not be out of place on this ride. No.

Yeah. Well, that's the way, that's the way you should be remembered. And so, so I think with that top scam from Matt Apodaca, you survived podcast the ride that was that was a blast and uh uh is there anything that let's exit through the gift shop

is there anything that the top scamp would uh like to plug well yeah i mean well first of all thank you for having me i uh legitimately love this show so thank you for having me um and i i guess for plugs listen to how did this get played you can hear um uh me talk sometimes uh with uh nick weiger and heather ann campbell about um bad or weird video games uh that's a lot of fun uh you can be on like yo is this racist or um culture kings as well uh and i have uh my own podcast that is um off right now but i just released like a i just really okay so i have a weezer podcast called what's with these homies talking about weezer where i covered all the weezer albums uh and some of the other little things in between uh and then i did a one-off of uh called so what you what you what you're talking

about beastie boys where me and john Gabrus talked about License to Ill, because that's a great album as well. So all those things are there in the What's With These Homies, talking about Weezer feed, and so if you want to hear me talk about music that sometimes people like, and most of the time they do not. I have a

quick question, Matt. Do you like on Ratitude, on the Weezer album Ratitude, do you like the song, I Don't Want to Let You Go? You know what? Because I think that's a very good song. I can't remember what I said about it, but I do think that song is good. That's one of the better songs on Ratitude.

Certainly better than I'm Your Daddy or... I agree. I don't know this one, but I'm interested. I'm Your Daddy is not a great weezer song it's not a great song like it's it's barely a good thing to say the yeah i'm looking at the track list if you're wondering if i want you to that song i love that song i think it's great that's a great that's a top weezer song i think the album starts, and there's a lot of songs, and then it ends strong. And then the bonus tracks are also not good.

More daddy stuff. More daddy continuity. That Rivers wrote for soccer, and the soccer song's not good. But yeah, just a lot of stuff there that's bad. What's the right thing about about heart songs heart songs is great

right now i think i have a hard time with the just the word like the word gives me embarrassment goosebumps yeah it is very like um tumblr like it's a very like uh it's just like it's a little too twee uh for even for like weezer but um i think the new take is because everyone's like maladroit's underrated so if everyone's saying that that means it's good so everyone can just agree that maladroit is just plain good um my new thing is that the red album is underrated not enough love for the red album what what's what's on maladroit or the red album audience audience hey follow our twitter and everything we're just a little bonus weezer podcast filter to bail if you want but uh

well yeah what's what's on either of those vision dope nose american gigolo i like that one mission i can't think keep fishing's the last one that i like i like dope nose dope nose great yeah possibilities is a good song possibilities love. Possibilities, Love Explosion's good, Burnt Jam, they're all good. Pretty good, yes, I agree. It's a great album. I think half of Red is good. I think half of Heart Songs is good, except for the part where he's like,

these are my heart songs. That's my problem, yes. I don't remember the rest. That part just consumed my memory. That part is not so good, but the rest of it i think is actually pretty good you know and i love um i love the white album and i love everything will be all right in the end and they have some good stuff on like i don't think pacific daydream is all bad i don't think black is all bad but they're trying and i i'm very excited about the newer

stuff that they've put out fairly recently. I really, the White Album is very good. The White Album is stellar. It's great. Yeah. It's so sweet. Any time. Yes. I was going to say, any time he just goes, you know what,

let's just make it sound exactly like the first two albums. Yeah. I'm going to write exactly like that. It's always good. Well, and everything will be all right in the end, too. They brought back Rico Kasich, and he was just like, I know what your guitars sound like. And everyone was like oh yeah these yes just help them tune it right yeah he's like no no you're doing it all wrong here use mine and they're

like oh i did that before you're right uh uh anyway yes i could talk i could talk weezer all day scott do we gonna say something before well we were talking before we started about how I've, I've said how they are, they are like the beach boys and that they like they'll never go away. Weezer will be doing or rivers will be doing this when he's 70 with a bunch of, uh, you know, hired guns, but, uh, but your guys Weezer take clearly is like my beach boys take, because I'll defend songs on their 2012 album. That's why God made the radio. I'm the one going actually that's why i got from

the radio uh isn't too bad summer there's good stuff on summer in paradise is the thing so uh i feel you i think i'm like i'm right there with you with another thing there's a um the the monkeys had an album like maybe like two or three years ago that is like actually yes pretty good pretty good yes at least one of the songs on that album yes oh really i've only heard the xtc ones and there's a paul weller one that's good yeah that is a oddly good album yes who would have thought that one that's like something that would come out in like the late 2010s uh and then that it would be like actually like very listenable and very good the last kind of obscure weezer song uh miss sweeney are you in favor love it i love it i think miss sweeney is like uh i wish they would do more things like that because there's something

very um uh like theatrical about it and like i weezer musical sounds bad to everyone who just heard what i just said but it um i think could be good and i think based on uh like if rivers wrote the songbook for a musical it would be great wow well i'm gonna send miss sweeney to scott if he's never heard it i am curious to know what his reaction is to it but we'll have to find out i'm not hard out unless they are covering songs that a wedding band that is my rule but i think what i said you can't stop the hustle you weren't thrilled with it if it's a song that's like a wedding if it's like a wedding band's original music would be then i have trouble too well thanks for doing this miniature what's he's talking about people are gonna be very excited that the

that the show's back two podcasts for the price of one and hey if you want more podcasts from us obviously stay on the main feed and obviously follow us on twitter and instagram and facebook but for three bonus episodes every month uh you can check out the second gate at patreon.com

slash podcast the ride and that is, and our music picks for the week, the beach boys, the monkeys and Weezer. Oh, it's like pitchfork early, early days of pitchfork.

It's great. Check it. Really digging through the bins, finding the secret. We'll do our spinoff podcast of mostly old man music mixed with 10% nineties and zero 2010s. Although, although it should be late period old man music.

Yes. We genuinely could do that entire podcast. Yes. Nineties and later albums by sixties musicians. Yes musicians yes oh no we're about to do this now bruce springsteen's outlaw pete i'm talking about for like 30 minutes and being like everyone's like what is this song i've never heard this there's pretty good stuff on flaming pie if you we got it we have to leave now or we'll have to get out of here because i also you just wanted i've been listening to the reissue of it.

All right. Well, we'll figure out that podcast later in time. Matt, thanks for being here. Everyone else, thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Bye. Forever. Dog.

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