Podcast: The Ride - Toy Story Midway Mania with Griffin Newman

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

Accidental PTR Legend Griffin Newman (Blank Check, Masters of the Universe: Revelation) returns to discuss the technological marvel that is Toy Story Midway Mania. Featuring favorite games, Easter eggs, and shifting entrances. PTR Post Office (No Mike) episode up at The Second Gate. New Second Gate episode coming September 29th. Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever. Dog. to break plates with us and talk Toy Story Midway Mania on today's Podcast The Ride, where we're glad that Sarge reminds us he's not our mother, because otherwise we would not feel permission to break those plates. I'm Scott Gairdner. Mike Carlson, I assume, is in agreement. I am in agreement, yes. Saying that I am not your mother is so reassuring to me. And if all the characters on any ride at Disneyland could just remind me of that before I enter whatever world they have, it would really put me at ease. You want everyone to say, I'm proud of you, but I'm not your mother. Well, yeah, that's true. I mean, if they could put all the things, all these comforting thoughts into one sentence, one run-on sentence, it would be really helpful for me.

What your dreams are meant to do. You'll get the right combo when you're sleeping sometime. Mr. Potato Head's like, hey, you, I'm not your mother. Oh, by the way, I'm proud of you. Hey, by the way, you'll book another commercial. Don't worry, you'll work again. That was the last recording Don Rickles ever did. Yeah, Mike Carlson.

He didn't record more riffs for that luckily it's fine luckily yeah um okay jason sheridan hi hi i i'm mostly hoping that potato head calls me like gives me the carson nod like calls me up calls me over to the the carnival barker platform to bark alongside him where to just talk like to just talk like yeah you've been walking around all day what have you been up to uh you know like you've been doing a real good job covering the parks. Like I'm proud of you and I want you to come share. That's what you want someone to say. You've been doing a good job covering the parks.

Well, I cover the parks. I mean, I mean, covering your footprint. Like, sorry, not covering them as a media personality walking around i was trying to mix the metaphors or both yeah and yeah he calls me over because when johnny would call people over they would just sort of like chit chat you know they would they would evolve into guests at that you wanted to get casual yeah you wanted to get cat with mr potato head as it has gotten casual let's not belabor it anymore ladies and gentlemen accidental ptr legend griffin newman thank you very much um so i feel like now i qualify it with the accidental i hope that kind of like that adds to the uh absolutely luster in

its own way i correct people if they say ptr legend i go accidental ptr accidental um i i'm already overflowing with takes and i you know there's part of me that i i emailed you i said i'd like to do this ride yeah and then when i brought it up again months later i said because you guys said you hate this ride and all three of you went like what and i went like i swear to god there's an episode i heard where you said and i i perhaps overstated it but where toy story mania was invoked midway mania was invoked and then one of you said what if we just never cover that ride and then the other two went like yeah that's fine with me we can just not do that one this sounds familiar and i think maybe i said what i want to say that it's

me who said that but i don't remember why i would have and maybe it was an extremely dry joke or something too dry i i overstayed it when i said like you guys said you'd never do it was just kind of this energy of just like do we have to do everything maybe that's when we just never did like it was sort of this i really like this ride so i'm trying to wrap my brain i know we can let's say officially we all love defending it and then the two of you mike and scott sort of going like we could just skip that and then that's why i felt the need to email and be like balance the scales i would like to talk about this we were convincing enough that we didn't like in whatever this was please somebody find this i cannot i'm sorry we bleeped it before but we had to keep the mystery

alive now mystery solved so now i just want to triangulate a little bit yeah for uh the cliffords out there who are trying to crack this and find the time code okay i i believe i emailed you about this maybe october november december of 2020 the craziest months of that year absolutely maybe the most mentally unhinged in my book absolutely i was losing my mind yeah now i had gotten months behind on the show and that's when i sort of jumped on so i was like catching up to everything so it's not after that we know this is the thing it's like okay that helps i i stopped listening to most things during the pandemic because i didn't want to acknowledge the pandemic right and i feel like that point i was like i'm like six months behind on ptr i gotta get back into it so it was around the the the beginning of i want to say the remote remote records. Okay. Post Papa Scott.

But that territory. Like the early quarantine episodes. I love you tossing all these things off as if they're albums or B-sides or something. Sure. I love this music to my ears. Well, it's also, it's very hard. And it has, I've caught up more, but I'm still not completely up to date. I'm less months behind, but I've been like working to get up there.

You were on it. Yes, yes. You'll catch up to that one. Right. No, I skipped that one. That's easier than it's like, oh, that's one less one to listen to. Yeah, yeah, true. It's there. But I was there, too.

This dog was there. Let's acknowledge the dog. You might hear a dog throughout. I think if somebody walked by, I don't think you'll keep hearing the dog. If you keep hearing the dog, maybe you don't hear the dog. Okay. the dog if you keep hearing the dog maybe you don't hear the dog okay um but it is interesting in a very depressing way to be like three months off of timeline and hear how wildly things change in terms of our perception of the world in that period of time you know we were all so upset in

october november and then a good thing happened that cooled down something, and more good things happened. But that's the thing. Sometimes you'll listen to an episode, and it'll be like, one, I have listened to an episode, and it'll be like, and we're just in this forever. And then I'm listening to it in March, and I'm like, baby, we're in vaccine territory. This thing's done. Put it in the rear view.

These guys freaking out. Why are you so agitated? Three months later, I listened to an episode where you're like, and now everything's good. all vaccinated put it in the rear view and i was like these fools don't know what's coming for them um another odd thing i've observed is that so many kind of ptr universe figures if not regular subjects but the types of people who get discussed the types of entertainment entertainers and public figures who are often referenced by you three guys died in 2020, like a disproportionate amount.

Cause listening at the late, Stan Chera. All right. I could listen to episodes and I would be like, he went out so great. Oh, I don't want to go out like him, but there were so many episodes I'd listened to where I was like,

this is kind of a morbid run to do on Regis this shortly after he died. And then I'd be like, oh, they recorded this like six weeks before he died. Ditto. A lot of Bob Evans coming up right before he croaks. Oh, we did. He was 2020 gut. There were a lot of 2020 people who you got back into and started either for one episode or for a run of episodes like doing riff runs on.

Now he's part of the lexicon. What a, boy, what a, you found a layer to make us depressed about 2020. Zig, Freed, and Roy. We did so much Zig, Freed, and Roy. And then both. Roy, Regis, Bob. Grodin. Robbie Evans.

Grodin. Yes, Grodin. Grodin entered both of our lexicon. I'll remember some other ones. This is though, and I said this on an episode, a friend of the show, Andrew Grissom, we had made a comment, or I had said something when we were at Knott's Berry Farm a couple months ago. I go, it does seem like we're cursing people.

And he goes, well, you are also just all fascinated with people over the age of 80. This is big. That's big. It's a big factor. It's a big factor. And I think another part of it is that all of those people feel like people where it's like, I guess they'll just never die sure in your head you're like they should have died like 10 years ago right and now they've crossed some threshold and do not seem to have

been diminished in any sort of way i guess maybe they just live forever like you start to get cocky we'll do this too where like i did a like run about like ed asner and david was flipping out being like don't talk about ed asner not dying when this episode won't come out for two months and i was like we're gonna be fine we're gonna be fine and like thankfully it was the ed asner death was like two months after that you barely had a buffer yeah he's in that zone where i was like ed asner i guess he never dies i guess it's just always safe to bank up an Ed Asner run. It also makes sense that every podcaster or comedy writer or whatever is obsessed with Norm MacDonald, who is the most old man-ish, bizarrely old man-ish for his generation. Like, of course.

And then we lose him, maybe just by virtue of him being old. I had no idea how old he was. That was some of the shock of the death. It was like, the age. He was older than a generation, and he kept his disease a secret for a decade. So it kind of was blindsiding. But, let's say, we're recording this on a Wednesday. A Monday, the four of us went to Disneyland together.

Norm Macdonald came up several times. Tuesday morning, he's dead. So weird. So you would count this as part of that? A little bit. I mean, that wasn't on Mike, but it was odd. And it's not like I never talk about Norm otherwise. Yeah.

You know, it was more jarring when I would hear a Regis reference on Mike, and it was so shortly before he died, you know? Because why? Why Regis? But it was odd, because we brought up norm a number of times in different contexts within that radically they weren't even about necessarily about him he just played into it yes yeah weird uh here's the word the word quizzling i believe that was one of the reasons he came up yes used by david letterman in reference to letterman calling him don oh my

or he's calling norm yeah yeah for not being angry or don oh my or for firing him yeah yeah yeah but there's a problem with the word quizzling do we figure that out it's apparently the name of like a nazi officer or something okay but it's used as a derogatory of like you quizzling you you man who goes along with the nazis or something oh it's bad then. Yeah, yeah. Right. It's an insulting term. Yeah. Okay. It's not like you, Hitler, my favorite Hitler, you know? It's not a specific way to praise Hitler.

This guy, he's my best friend. You've got to love him. He's a real gobles. You know, it's a quisling. It's like derogatory. I think you're allowed to use it. I don't know. Which is, but like Colonel Klink, I feel, is still used as like, that's a very old reference,

but it's like an idiot. Like a dumb idiot. I mean that is a fictional We're not going to kill Werner Klemperer now are we? Have you? I assume he's already passed the Quisling definition here. Wait have you said is anyone other than me reference Colonel Klink around you in the last decade?

I'm using Colonel Klink. No I'm saying it as the thing that I use as like I feel like that one's evergreen like Lucy and Ethel you know I just watched autofocus like three days ago so it's really there's all these things

that's a reference to Bob Crane oh man now you're speaking my language that's what you don't want to hear is like you tell somebody something that's going on with you and they're like yeah it sounds like a real auto focus situation things might not work out so great for you i have a little more information here quizling by definition is a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force occupying their country so i think letterman's saying why would you sympathize with Don Omeyer? Who's a bad guy.

Who fired you. You're a Quisling for... Right, you're a Quisling. You're being a Quisling. Mm-hmm. Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian military officer and politician. So collaborated with the Nazis. Wow.

Oh, like a Benedict Arnold type. He headed the government of Norway during the occupation. So Quisling is a... I just want to point out real quick, we're in the garage here, and the door just sort of closed by itself, but I certainly felt like it was a ghost of some of the people we've been talking about. We're invoking too many...

Is it Klemperer? Is it Quisling himself? Is it all of them? Is it Asner? Is it Klink? Is it Norm? So we love you, Norm. Is it Montecore? Is Siegfried and Roy's tiger? It could be. Another one that lost... We talked about Montecore so much. Montecore died. Montecore, Siegfried and Roy's tiger? It could be. Talked about Montecore so much. Montecore died.

Montecore and Roy died, right? Both? Yeah. Montecore was alive, but Siegfried died, right? They both died. They both died. Yeah. They both died?

They're both dead, yeah. Yeah. After we did all this stuff. So we can't make one pop culture reference to anything we like, or else we're screwed. And that's going to be tough for you, Mike, because somebody you love is in this attraction. That's true. A gentleman. Let's just not even mention who is in this attraction.

You're talking about Tim Allen. Yeah. You know what was very weird? I'm sure there's a million Norm anecdotes. But learning one of the people giving a remembrance of norm mcdonald was bob dole realizing bob dole is still alive yeah but jason you know what you just did no but i was about to say i don't want to see the next five days you did it this episode was recorded before the passing of Bob Dole,

which we were all mourning. That's the exact kind of person you don't want to invoke now with the streak you boys have been on. Bob Dole represents an America that I think has passed, and we say thank you for your service. Anytime it's somewhere you go, I can't believe they're still alive. Invoking them means inevitably they will die

within the week of the episode being recorded. Passing through your brain will cause it. In advance, R.I.P. Bob Dole. You put a lot of evil on the show. I'm sorry. We caused all of this. Here's a death factoid that's kind of nice or

cool. Go ahead. I don't know if that's the right way to frame this. I'm sure you guys know this, but Toy Story 4, Don Rickles' entire performance is essentially cobbled together from Midway Mania takes. I didn't know it was Midway Mania.

I knew it was existing. That's crazy. That's the main base of it. Stuff they didn't use or even stuff they did use and we wouldn't recognize. It's a combination of both. He doesn't say a lot in the movie.

It's a lot of little sentence fragments like, hey, watch that. Watch it. Where are you going there? You know, like a lot of like little things like, oh boy. He doesn't have's a lot of little sentence fragments like, hey, what's that? Watch it. Where are you going there? You know, like a lot of like little things like, oh boy. He doesn't have like a lot of sentences. There are 65 main characters

in Toy Story 4 and most of them have five lines that easily could have been cobbled together from any number of different sessions. I will say, we were talking about this the other day. I like Toy Story 4 infinitely more than you do. I like it more than 3. I think that complaint of yours is the most valid complaint against Toy Story 4. It is the one I co-sign the most.

Specifically that I felt like it was designed to open up the universe, right? That's what you're talking about? No, not that complaint. Okay, you don't like that one. The complaint of just, they've gotten to a point where the universe now has 60 main characters. Oh, sure, yeah. Toy Story is unsustainable by the fourth movie. Like, it just, it's...

And we go and we meet more and we're bringing back one who's not here. Yeah, we end up with so many. To flash the other thing I said about Toy Story 4, which I do like. I don't dislike Toy Story 4. It felt like they were redoing 3, but then, spoiler alert if you haven't seen it, Woody leaves, they go off to have an adventure with Bo Peep, and I felt like they were correcting a mistake where three left the toys in a different kid's playroom, which gives them all the same

restraints of like, now we got to get out this giant window. How are we going to do that? Now Woody's out in the universe, like he's out in the world. You don't have to get stuck with the same, like now we're in a daycare, now we're in a school, like we don't have to do necessarily that. That's a big four thing for me one of the reasons i i prefer it is that i i think that is the the more correct ending to this series if god willing it actually ends here obviously they will always find ways to do things with the toy story characters right yeah but if like this is the last canonical theatrical film yeah i think that's the better resolution to it and like i know i think

toy story 3 holds a lot of value for people just make it clear main reason i'm doing this episode toy story is my favorite thing in the world like period point blank it is like my number one fandom of any stripe yeah and there's toy story rides out there there's a lot of toys rights but this is probably the most like uh notable like like the the big maybe the best use of everybody it's definitely like the most high profile i mean i have a lot of thoughts on this uh and i think it occupies an interesting space because we were even trying to i don't know if it was before after the ride queue talking about where this ride lands in sort of the timeline of the disney pixar

acquisition and them trying to immediately get as much out of these characters as possible right i think there's a lot of interesting stuff there but i do think like a thing i like about midway mania is i get to see all my favorite characters again i get to spend all this time with them when there have been a lot of like the other toy other Toy Story attractions, which are largely great. I mean, there's kind of the cheapo, more carnival-ish ones that are just nicely art-decorated. Right. And there's Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters,

which I think is great, but it's like a particular subsect of Toy Story universe. Slinky Dog's kind of only Slinky Dog and the Penguin. This is kind of the most, here's everybody, you meet all of them,

they all do something. Right, and everyone has their personality come through in a way that like some characters don't get their moments in Toy Story 4. And it's like, you're willing to give them Rickles because he is no longer on this mortal coil. Sure. They had to work with the scraps they had.

But that's just like, I wish Rex had anything to do in that movie. You know? There's so many of them. I think that movie really does wrong by Jesse, who's my single favorite Toy Story character, I would say. very endearing i mean like i i love forky now but forky has only one movie to compare to like jesse's the the jesse arc into is just perfect yeah yeah um but but yes it's like you know ptr uh a friend of the show uh jeff garland buttercup like has like a successful joke in that movie right like he has like a runner that pays off two three lines that are funny yeah

they build and it's three beats and the third one really lands and it's like a little frustrating that like they couldn't do at least that for all the characters yes it is one of the things that now going on midway Mania again, and I want to say this is the first time I've gone on it since 4 came out. It's just nice to see characters get spotlighted in that way. You know? Yeah. It's a thing I enjoy about that ride where like as much as it's like,

it's a screen ride, it's a shooting ride, like really? And that felt a little more novel at the time. And I was going back onto the ride this it's like, it's a screen ride, it's a shooting ride, like really? And that felt a little more novel at the time. And I was going back onto the ride this time going like, am I gonna be weary about this now because of everything else that's become like this? There's something nice about just being like, here's like four minutes with Sarge. You know?

Like it's just, here's some Sarge time. And you're going into these different silos of theming of Toy Story. It's a thing I love about Toy Story is you have these characters that would not exist in the same universe under any other premise. And you sort of get to go to like all of their, here's Sarge world, here's Woody Old West world. Because it's just a kid owning toys, Toy Story means you get to have sci-fi and westerns and dinosaurs and military. And everyone plays their role pretty straight and it's nice that every little zone you go to is like themed you spend some time with the characters i

believe pixar actually did the animation themselves i think that was a big deal it's all the real voice actors like i think this ride has a lot of production value in that way that having been said front loaded right off the top i just don't want to forget this because i almost said it walking off the ride and then i went no i should hold on save it save it you know that ride opens i believe in 2008 correct yeah disney acquires pixar in 2006 we were talking about this that cars was the last movie of the disney deal as i closed out what they owed them post-Toy Story. The original Eisner-Katzenberg deal was five films, sequels don't count.

Yeah. Post-Toy Story, it's a bug's life. They got screwed on Toy Story 2 because it was supposed to go direct-to-video, and when they pushed it to theaters, Katzenberg went, no, no, no, no, no, no. Eisner went, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It doesn't count. You owe us four more. And that started a lot of the contentiousness between Disney and Pixar for years that made people think they would split up And Katzenberg went, no, no, no, no, no. Eisner went, no, no, no, no, no. It doesn't count. You owe us four more. And that started a lot of the contentiousness between Disney and Pixar for years that made people think they would split up when the deal was done. So then it was Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Incredibles, Cars. And that should have been the end of the loop, right? And they were like, free market. I forget if the deal happens right before or right after Cars. I want to say right before because when people were, like, I was reading Jim Hill all the time.

This is when I got into Jim Hill because I was like, I want to understand the Pixar acquisition. Oh, you had a Jim Hill era. Yes. I mean, not that. When is everybody, it's like, that's a good question to ask people. When did you get into Jim Hill? Like, what was your, what was your hill of fun? My thing for me was it was the pixar acquisition

which was like the first thing eiger did and the muppet acquisition which was the last thing eisner did and i was so protective of both of those worlds that i was just like i don't know how i landed there but it was like this is the only guy who seems to be really going into the weeds on everything this means for these companies like honesty and like warts and all stories and then i just got into reading all of everything reading his superstar limo pieces and whatever but that's how i got turned on to him when was everyone else's gym well i jim awakening oh i think only a few years ago i think probably around the start of the dca redo uh but but what i was going to say off of your point yeah um i

think the pixar acquisition happens because eisner is out because steve jobs absolutely eisner were like oil and vinegar like two big personalities who did not see eye to eye the story is that everyone thinks there's no way disney will be able to get pixar back because eisner has like really sullied the water right yeah and um pixar starts independently producing their next three movies wally uh up and ratatouille were all produced independently self-financed and they were like and whoever acquires us gets these three movies which is why they're the three weirdest Pixar movies. It's why they're the three where it's like, how did this get made? That aren't necessarily

like, and there'll be obvious part two and part three of these. It's true blank check shit where it's just like, someone's going to buy the next three Pixar movies. We do whatever we want. Very idiosyncratic. I think maybe the most right i would say

the most interesting i think that's the most interesting time although pixar for i mean i was like 10 when toy story came out and so like i think that was the last one where i was like fully i was like all in sure sure you know but but it's, that run is really interesting. And that's, like, 2007 Ratatouille, 2008 WALL-E, 2009 Up. And then 2010 is Toy Story 3. Because the first thing that happens is, like, Eisner slams the door behind him, right? Everyone's like, this is irreparable. Iger takes over. His story is that he, like, goes to the parks.

And he goes to one of the parades and he realizes that the only characters in the parade from the last 10 years are Pixar characters that Disney has created no characters in the last 10 years that have had any staying power and that it's just Pixar and he just goes like my first order business is I whatever it takes and he goes to Steve Jobs and he's like you have all the leverage you name your price i we need you guys it's yours we buy you outright it's not right like we keep doing we do another deal with you that could and jobs said the fact that eiger came to him with that much humility is like the thing where he was just like i liked that but he wasn't playing hard

ball with me after katzenberg and eisner were always trying to like be a step ahead that he was like we're fucked, we need Pixar. Name your price. Oh, weird. Steve Jobs liked people being subservient to him? Odd. Who could have seen that coming? He liked Iger self-cucking.

But so they pay all this money. I think Cars comes out right after that. People were like, they spent too much. The Cars merchandise the first year alone, like, pretty much makes back everything. Right? But the first thing Iger says when he takes over is like, Toy Story 3 has got to happen now. Oh, okay. It's been, at this point, seven years.

You fast track that. By that point, we're already getting into way more. There are lots of, we're past Harry Potter. We're into this. You don't just do two movies. Right. And three could never happen because Pixar was like, we'll do it if it counts.

And Eisner was like, doesn't count. And they were like, then fuck you, it doesn't happen. Weird. The direct-to-video. When Eisner was playing hardball with them, he started this animation company, Circle 7, that was named that because they were housed in an old ABC 7 building.

For some local affiliate or whatever. Because he was going to do Cinderella 3 Twist in Time to Toy Story, basically. Right? He was going to make a sequel, but like the cheap sequel. Yes. ABC 7 is our affiliate. Los Angeles is an affiliate. Okay.

I wasn't sure because ABC 7 is also New York. It's in Chicago, too. Yeah. Last seven. Lucky number seven. But yes, that's where I think Circle 7 animation was. And they announced when they were just like, fine, Pixar, you want to leave us? That's fine.

Finding Nemo 2, Monsters, Inc. 2, Toy Story 3. Like, they announced all of that. Imagine that world. All these gross, bad, like losing half the actors every time. Yes. The Toy Story 3 premise was that Buzz gets recalled. He's defective and they make everyone send all the Buzz's back to Japan. And all the toys have to travel to Japan to rescue him from the factory.

But he's like lost his mind. He's gone like psychotic. Who knows? Maybe. It's not like outwardly it's not as bad as uh there be there's no fraction in the uh title that helps we're not in lion king one and a half we would have gotten there yeah but so uh eiger like immediately makes good but it's like you got to give me toy story 3 come on guys let's stop dicking around and then jason i think you were telling me that you had found in your research that midway mania was originally developed as a mickey concept well this see this i found that through jim hill they were talking about it because of the straight line from uh i let me see if i can get this right uh pirates of the caribbean the battle the battle for buccaneers gold okay uh uh which was which is what which is an attraction

yeah pirates of the caribbean battle for buccaneer gold it was it was a game at disney quest that replaced the hercules game okay and this was like you were on a pirate ship and you were firing a cannon at other pirate ships before this moment it before i heard that it did not dawn on me that the toy story midway made here uh gun thing you use is a cannon basically oh yeah oh sure yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that makes sense so but and he was the one who said that that i think was very very early on because i was digging for a while and i could not find any articles about that but i think in like early early in the development imagineers may have been like maybe this is a mickey midway thing you know

that's like mickey's still on the the ferris wheel you know it's like yeah yeah and then you don't really have a mickey ride yet right but that even that placement within the pier would would make a lot of sense yeah i just it just seems uh conjecture on my part but it's like eiger comes in they close the deal it's 2006 toy story 3 is greenlit and it's like immediately how do we do as much of toy story as we can that movie is four years away what's the quickest we can get something in the parks what's an idea we have that is somewhat modular it's up for grabs that any ip maybe well right and another thing going on is like we we have to do something with California Adventure. Right, right.

This is the canary in the coal mine of like, oh, we're acting from a position of power with California Adventure. It's not just stopgaps. It's not just like, get a monster thing, get a chibi tower tower in. Like, this was a big deal when they announced, we're redoing this park.

We're starting with this. What is essentially a technological marvel? That's the thing. Based on Toy Story. This ride was such a big deal when they announced we're redoing this park we're starting with this what is essentially a technological marvel that's the thing this ride was such a big like you've never been on a ride like this but like i feel like they kept on flaunting like this is going to be a very different thing yeah yeah uh um i yeah they also like I found this other history of it, though, from the Kevin Rafferty book, where the idea was, like, they had, and this might have been in the, when they're starting the process of how do we start changing DCA and especially change the Paradise Pier area, which is sort of the, like, chintziest, most off-the-shelf zone. So how do we do something that's more elevated and they like there were there still are like midway games but i think they're walking past those and saying wouldn't it be great if there's a way that you could play these infinitely uh and in a way that you could cycle more people through than having to go up to a stand have a transaction and then play the game yeah um so

they start they start figure trying to figure out what is a ride around this i think even without ip necessarily attached but what i found interesting about all this is that they may be they didn't they weren't even at screen ride yet according to this book that they were trying to figure out a way that you could have just like a bunch of balls and rings loaded onto a ride vehicle like enough that were just ever refilled and that you wouldn't run out of in the allotted time. I cannot believe that idea lasted for longer than five seconds

without someone getting the practicality of, who picks up the balls? Where do they go? Yeah, yeah. Like, bowling has a system that's been in place for a long time. We have to invent the bowling pickup system, but more complicated. Another technological marvel.

You're in a flying car. Yes, absolutely. And you're moving around to different areas, and people keep throwing an infinite amount of things. How do they not just take them, grab them, hurt each other with them, take them home? How do you not have teenagers throwing them at each other? Right. It would have to come out of a long tube. It would have to have a ske a ski ball mechanism in the actual ride and it would all have to funnel its way down and then reload into each vehicle but not ever

have it be possible for you to grab the ball right i mean just a nightmare well you just described a nightmare seems hard but i know it's not impossible maybe if they had to stay with that line of thinking they might have rigged something up eventually but once they realize screens are the thing the other thing from that book kevin rafferty by the way the imagineer responsible for this and cars and a thousand things tower of terror uh like one of the greats ever uh when he described the mickey situation he said that it was maybe it was going to be a mickey thing and he said that they ran into this weird thing where they've always had trouble at Imagineering cracking Mickey

rides because what is Mickey and his world? He's almost doing a different job every time you see him in a Homer Simpson sort of fashion. Although even Homer is defined as his main job before he has side adventures. But like what really is the base

of Mickey? and it all makes more sense in this new style weird fact that like you know as disney keeps on getting scared of losing mickey to public domain right and they keep on fighting and spending millions and millions of dollars in court to like get public domain uh to lobby the government right years stretched further and further and further back. The other thing they've done is started siloing. I'm sure you guys know this, but like different versions of Mickey, they legally treat as different characters. So if they ever lose Steamboat Willie, they're like, well, that's Steamboat Willie.

That's not Mickey. Steamboat Willie Mickey is that one character. And then like Taylor Mickey is one character, and this Mickey is one character. Like, they split it into very separate licenses. Right, right. And with separate copyrights. So, they're, like, each Mickey is actually, they're not all the same. The whole, the Mickey should end up in the public domain situation is interesting.

Because, like, for all of the evil things that disney does and the evil things disney does involving lawyers this one i'm a little like the fuck is that rule why does why do they need like they are they could not be more active a hundred years later with this character why do they have to just surrender it it's weird also what is anyone else gonna do with mickey can you imagine warner brothers being like finally we get to do our mickey project i just think the uh graffiti art when mickey goes into the public domain is just gonna be unbearable oh like oh you mean officially officially like you can do it you can do it people like to joke about like disney so litigious shutting down everyone's fun it's like do you know how much bad mickey shit we're being saved from by disney's lawyers being diligent i think it'll be funny

though when like every studio has a mickey movie that first year it's like the snow white rival like projects we're just like four untitled mickey projects we are different creative teams we're going to develop a movie podcast the ride presents mickey and we're going to develop a movie. Podcast The Ride presents Mickey. And we're going to make it. Jason stars as Mickey. Oh, I love this already. Jason, do the voice. Plum roll.

Hey, everybody. See? Great. He's Mickey. It's like accent, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah. He's wearing the little shorts.

If that's what you're asking. But you can also have Mickey who's just like, hey, I'm Mickey. Yeah, yeah, for sure. He could be like strapping and sexy. I'm Michael, Michael Mouse. Yeah, yeah. And just like a kind of hot current version of like sort of a like hipster bartender version of the suspenders. But little shorts.

Yeah. The shorts need to be little. Why bother to get the character if you're not going to have little shorts? It's been a long time. People have been asking, you know, when will Mickey get hot? Yeah. And now we can finally know. we can now 2028 exactly but like when we were walking through toontown i was saying like this this whole area is very odd now because it is so frozen in amber of like the 90s sort of take off on the 60s Disney cartoon aesthetic, which is not the best era of the shorts

by any stretch. And then they're doing the 90s. The short films, not the shorts. Oh, the shorts were great in that time. Yes, the shorts were great. There's never been a bad era for the shorts. The only thing that could go wrong is if they went long.

Yeah, that would suck. That would suck ass. There's gotta be board shorts, Mickey. There's gotta be. There's gotta be. Jort, Mickey? Mickey wearing jorts oh mickey john cena mickey yeah i can see it um that it's like the 90s like more day glow more rounded

version of the 60s mickey cartoon aesthetic that now has no connection to anything and when there was like maybe like three cartoons were made in that era and when there was like maybe like three cartoons were made in that era and when there was like 20 years of just like well i don't know mickey's inactive mickey's definitive vibe is toontown like there's nothing that's more mickey than this place because what else are they really doing with him but the shorts they do now are good and are popular they've been using more right runaway railways already there's been enough time for a generation to view it as well that's mickey they might not even know the previous so i was saying this to you where you're like saying that your son watches those shorts you watch them with him and it's like

at some age when he is cognizant enough to like feel attached to those new mickey cartoons and that aesthetic that vibe and what that personality is and then understand what's going on when he goes to the park he's going to be like what is this place why is there this weird other yeah this is nothing why haven't they painted this since 1994 right right like it's just so odd who is roger rabbit it is it is interesting to me that like on one hand oh makes sense to swap in toy story instead of mickey because toy story like all the characters have such defined personalities and as we're saying like one hand oh makes sense to swap in toy story instead of mickey because toy story like all the characters have such defined personalities and as we're saying like milieus their worlds to play in their obvious ways to go right there's like no shortage of options there but then you also go like

there's no logical link between toy story and the carnival like they get to the carnival and toy story four oh yes after yes a move a film made after the ride right but at that point in time when you're just looking at toy story one and two the sweatiness of the premise which i don't care about the premise but when they were like the idea is that andy buys a play set that's a make your own midway and he sets it up in the bedroom and then he leaves and then the toys decide to run the games themselves and it's like right yeah i don't care just let me play the games i don't care it's fine andy leave yeah i found themselves. And it's like, right, yeah, I don't care. Just let me play the games. I don't care. It's fine. Andy leave.

Yeah, I found it so specific. All this is listed somewhere. But Andy's called to dinner. So don't get on that ride and start trying to break plates unless you know that Andy should be here and he should be giant, much bigger than you, but he had to go eat his giant dinner. See, but that starts me out on the ride on a stressful note

because I'm afraid someone's going to call me late for dinner. See, but that's what that starts me out on the ride on a stressful note because I'm afraid someone's going to call me late for dinner. My biggest fear is disappointing these characters. You've been hoping that the ride vehicle will just take you into the dining room. I'm hoping one of the delays, it's not target practice. It's just like,

oh, good, you're finally here. Water, iced tea, soda. Jason wants the ride car to move into a room where suddenly he is still toy size and there's just giant food. Yeah. You know, and he's like a little puchon who's able to climb inside a turkey and eat it.

You know, they painted this pot pie with the 3D glasses on so the black light would look correct when you were wearing your 3D glasses yourself. That is a good thing about that ride, though. I feel like more than a lot of other 3D rides, I don't think that ride looks muted, neither in screen nor in actual physical.

It still looks pretty good. I mean, I think at this point, they probably could make it a little brighter, but other than that. It's not as egregious as a lot of rides, and it also, like, it's fun. And this is why I'm curious, if this opinion is out

there and maybe this is the opinion that you feared that we had or something but like are there because for sure we've said it everybody said it like a screen rides and you realize it's screen rides i almost don't think of this as a screen ride or i don't apply like the same it doesn't have the sort of the bummer aspects of things I would call screen rides. No, it's, I want, this is the main thing I want to talk about. I don't quite understand how this ride avoids those trappings. Well, I think the games, I think everything works together in such a great way. All the games are very clear and simple. Yeah.

I think satisfying. They're all very different the you know blacklight sets are nice accompaniments the 3d is not the movement of the cars is very nice it's fun yeah there's enough like real ride stuff between the games you're like oh i like what the ride vehicle does and how it looks i mean because you guys haven't done the episode yet but i wrote it with you guys and we like we do toy story mania and then i think we go over to uh the web web slinger yeah yeah now i've done that you've done you're a griffin and i hadn't done it when that ride starts i was just like fuck this ride's gonna

make toy story midway mania look like diarrhea and then i'm gonna have to pick up the pieces and do an episode on a ride that's become completely outmoded right stuck in the past that was my fear and then it took about three minutes of norm mcdonald's opening the door again it took about three minutes into web slingers to be like no midway mania is like definitively better than this and this is more advanced but i think there are a lot of things such as that web slingers really feels like a screen ride putting aside i think problems with the the game itself and the functionality of that and the clarity of that and how that premise is overly confusing and spends too much time trying to config to

describe it and explain it to you i also think when you move from one screen to another in web slingers you're just seeing like the space between two screens yeah they're trying too hard to sell you on the you are immersed in a world a door is opening and this is just what's outside this door and you're very aware of the fact that you're looking at screens, and then when the car moves, it just sort of moves laterally to another screen,

another steel door opens, and then you're seeing another thing. You're sliding, just like from left to right, yes. I think Toy Story Mania is better, gameplay aside, just as a ride, because it accepts the artifice of what it's doing.

Where it's like, here are flats, there are screens, there are big blocks. There's this premise that if you really want to know, we can explain to you that Andy was called to dinner. But also, who gives a shit? Like, who cares? The characters are talking to you directly. They're just like, let's have some fun. I find that I got a lot more stressed out playing web slingers not only because i it was hard to do but also because the intensity of the

ride of just being like we gotta stop this yeah it's kind of it's kind of yelling at you sort of shades of what there's like an arcade game it's called like jungle gogo man what am i talking about this is a game that is so stressful where so many giant spiders are jumping out at you yeah it's kind of like that i mean well it is spiders that's i guess what i'm saying we did a vr no it's a thing you're in a little vehicle and we did a vr thing in westwood that was like that where we were being attacked relentlessly by alien spiders yeah i think maybe i don't like anything like that, where there's a swarm. Well, the swarm thing for me is that there's that whole subgenre of arcade game

that I feel like often would be in movie theaters, of the Alien game, Terminator Salvation, House of the Dead, where it's like you have a gun and it's relentless and things just won't stop coming at you. Yeah, I mean, was it last episode,, two episodes ago where I was saying that does seem to be the trend in these 3D rides because we did it in Knott's. There's Knott's 3D thing for fairy tales, which is like, it's relentless. There's so much happening.

You're shooting little, I like you shooting Crafty Coyote's sons holding pies, if I'm correct, which is great. The concept is great. And we're shooting at his little son shoot my son and uh and then the yeah the spider-man it's like it's a lot of like relentless yes and a lot of stuff happening and it's like i think i said it about spider-man wouldn't it be just like it would be more satisfying if you like shot a web at nothing happening and like it shot out of a barrel and you moved your hand left yes and the barrel whipped

there and you would feel like wow i did like the spider-man thing versus like i'm throwing my arms at the sex of the sky i think that is possible to do in web slingers but i'm so confused i know it's confusing it's hard to see you know that's a great thing about toy story midway mania the color of your cannon so clean it so clean. The color on the screen, like you can see what you're doing. They play tested it with like 8 to 80, you know, to make sure like all ages can figure this out. And considering that every game, the objective changes a little bit and what you're shooting changes a little bit. The adaptation time is zero. Like you're just like, oh, it's plates now.

My plates are blue. I'm throwing my thing it's plates now. My plates are blue. I'm throwing them at the thing. It's rings. My rings are blue. I'm getting them over the thing. You're in it immediately. Immediately. A character slides in one sentence of instruction,

not like a whole entire pre-show of instruction. You're right. You're totally right about like simple clarity. You get it immediately. It's like fun and comfortable. Yes. You know, and you're just like, oh, great. I want to play this versus like, fuck,

what do I got to do now? Yeah. You know? And you note and whatever, just like oh great i want to play this versus like fuck what do i gotta do now yeah and you and you note and whatever like the other rides which are again like impressive technically and i don't dislike the other 3d rides but it feels like they got it down from like pulling the weird canon string yeah it down to the millisecond where your brain just believes it's shooting it right like it there's no question in my mind yes that it's coming out of the canon for real yeah like my brain accepts the reality of it and there's just these little like the other rides like it's off a little bit your brain starts to get confused because it's not putting it together that the web is not actually coming

out of your hand or you're shooting like when you're shooting on the uh not so here's just a basic thing the webs are way too thin and it's really hard to tell which colors that's also yeah colors are too similar way too similar yeah that's that's the single biggest issue with that thing is like i did the best of the four of us and you guys were like what did you do right and i was like i have no idea i don't know i was like i kept checking and going like did i hit some secret thing but i don't think i did and every round i was doing well and i was just like i feel like i'm failing i was literally just flailing around there's no satisfaction from doing well which you should we want and have i think a similar thing also would not just swing us into this too but

smugglers run i think maybe you have to because that's another video gamey yes uh super like highest tech of the moment which i think about which i enjoyed because i had incredibly low expectations because this was my first time going on it after two years of everyone dunking on it and saying it was a disaster and a lot of shit i thought it was like okay i thought it was like fun you know yeah yeah sure i was in the gunner role which i was i'm just shades of like it is a thin like you're done you're not sure what you're looking for looking at it's frustrating as hell yeah you said no you were like because we didn't have we didn't fill up the car so you had you could swing from position to position yeah i said i will not be the gunner i wanted to be engineer because they

they will if you only have four they'll just give you gunner and then two pilots and i was like i want to be engineer over a gunner gunner itner, it's not fun at all for me. But in the movies, very fun. The Gunner pods in the Millennium Falcon sequences. In the movies, very fun. Kind of abandoned. Why is it so fun in the movie? Yeah, it's more like locking automatic doors on a car in this.

Right. That's such a failing. Open and close. In AIM, that's the most fun thing to do in the world but they deny you of doing that on the ride i just i remembered like i knew from everyone i'd heard talk about this that there's like an absolute like there are short straw positions and everybody says engineer is but i disagree it's gunner that's what i had heard and then when you said no gunner's the one you don't want to do i was surprised because i was thinking like gunner luke and he's got the thing in the head

so that's the coolest shit in the world of course engineer you can tell what you're doing like the toy story games and you can see the results engineer at the very like get like gunner you have to like kind of like you have to tilt to the left or right like your back like yeah you're hitting a button. It's like an awkward spot. And watch the screen. And watch the screen and try to do it. And it's like, Engineer, you can kind of chill out and just go click, click. And you can pretend you're like a little kid like in Scotty in Engineering or LeVar Burton or whatever.

This gets to a key thing, which is that Toy Story Midway Mania is in no way going for immersion. Right? Toy Story Midway Mania is only aiming to give you a fun time I agree with that but I also think immersion comes from the fact that everything works in perfect sync that's the irony is then you start to get more pulled in completely immersed I think like when you're in Millennium Falcon you're more aware of the fact that it's like this is them trying to trick my brain into making me think I'm doing the thing and this has any cause and effect and whatever.

It's not seamless. Right, versus Midway Man, where it's just like, hey, come on, shoot some things. And you're like, oh my God, I'm in. And going for photo reel, which is tougher as opposed to cartoony. And I think it's why you're not so critical of graphics from 2008.

Yeah. That it's going in the same way that you're not so critical of Toy Story 2008. In the same way that you're not so critical of Toy Story from 1995. Besides the humans, who you expect to be more photo real. Here's the thing I'm surprised by.

Especially because they have done such a complete Pixar-fication of California Adventure after this. Does Cars Lane open before before after midway mania after okay shortly after right they were considering this a radiator springs kind of that i think comes up interesting i saw it mentioned in the rafferty they were like we gotta add something else to cars land could we add some sort of thing to radiator springs and i think like before they

hit on like that midway observation like oh this was almost a car it was potentially like can we put a thing in cars and of course that you know there was the route 66 stuff that was already kind of percolated so like i think this had a lot of lies. Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say, a big part of the announcement, as I remember it, is, like, Disney's mended the fence. You know, like, Pixar's back in the fold. Toy Story 3 is happening. Like, they got control of these franchises again. These beloved characters are going to be used to the best of their ability. No simple re-skinning, you know?

And, like, this ride is going to be a technological breakthrough. And then the big thing I remember them advertising is, because it's all based around these screens and the games, the basic ride can remain the same, but every couple of years we can update it and add new games. It's very easy to refresh this, which I thought was a cool idea. And they were announcing that especially because it was like, this ride is going to open two years before

Toy Story 3 comes out. But when Toy Story 3 comes out, we're going to update it with new characters you haven't met yet. And the only thing they do is, what is it? They replaced, was there a Bo Peep one, I think, at opening that got replaced with the Buttercup Ham and Eggs one?

No, with Trixie and Rex. Oh, it's Trixie and Rex. But also Buttercup gets put into the... Right. Oh, it was a ham thing, and then they put... So they add Buttercup to ham, and then the Rex and Trixie wasn't in it at all. It was originally the Bo Peep Sheep.

Yeah, Bo Peep. They do Bo Peep dirty. She's missing in Toy Story 3, and then she gets cut out of this ride, and then they do a make good with her in Toy Story 4. But that's what's so bizarre, is it's just like... So this ride and then they do a make good with her in Toy Story 4. But that's what's so bizarre is it's just like,

so this ride has now been open for 13 years. By the time Toy Story 4 comes out, it's been open for over a decade. It feels very bizarre that they didn't go like new boat, peep, new dookaboom, forky in some capacity. Ducky and Bunny, who literally are part of a carnival game.

Who are a carnival, right? It feels very odd that they didn't do at least one refresh. Especially being that they have kept that consistent with Star Tours. Yes. You would think they would have given up or gone, like, are we really getting our money's worth? Are we worried people aren't going to see the new Star wars do we have to promote but i think it's really neat that they've kept doing it yes and yeah why wouldn't you know it heartened me to see the uh

amount of uh forky merch in the parks when you get off this ride half of the gift shop is forky stuff now like forky forky sticking you know I called it. Forky's here to stay. It's weird. You were in love from the trailer it seems. I love the guy. I love the guy. But it's weird that he's

not reflected in any way. It's weird that Bo Peep, who I feel like they very much now elevated to, to the expense of Jesse, now being like the main Toy Story female.

You know? Sure, yeah. At least in merchandising and sort of branding stuff now i feel very active and everything so how is there not a game absolutely there's so much stuff you could do it it feels a little bit odd to me that they have kept the ride sort of frozen after doing one very quick update within the first two years of its open well and it's also extra weird because

they did a whole refresh of the pier exactly Exactly. It would have been a perfect time for them to do it. And now one new game added. We added Forky into the Woody game or whatever. Not added to the ride, added to the gift shop. It's great. It's kind of a miracle that there was an update to this ride at all. Because anytime they say it's modular and we'll be able to update it, it never happens. This was the one it it never happened this was

the one time it actually happens yeah and it happens so quickly that you wanted to believe like well they'll keep it going and especially when another movie happens and by the way in between toy story 3 and toy story 4 they do two tv specials they do three short films that play before theatrical films like they are doing new stuff with the characters. Yeah. Like Barbie and can antics. I mean, I guess there's a licensing issue.

There's a lot of stuff they haven't done to the toy story for fault. There are 60 main characters in this franchise now. And there are things like Halloween theming that you could do, you know, like just seasonal special things. You know what I, on that note, if they did Rex Dirty

in Toy Story 4, just watch Partysaurus Rex, which is so fantastic. That might be my favorite of the shorts. It's a great film. I'm a big fan of that one.

All the shorts are great. Like, yes, it's... Yeah, the quality's pretty high on those things. I think Toy Story of Terror is really good. I just watched it

for the first time, yeah. And it's like, there should be some monsters after dark style halloween late nights a wheel midway is the first for griffin and first for uh uh for me as well i braved i dared to see monsters you were you were very scared can we say this now yeah yeah it was a lot of everyone trying to reassure you it was gonna be okay i was i think i was here because of mike i feel like you built it up we're like no it's scarier it's a lot scarier i think the song makes it scarier i think i said if i was a young kid i would i would find it scarier for sure ice because because it's darker in there and you know you were also saying

yeah right like a lot of what you think would hit you hard as a kid is like walking into the ride and suddenly everything's red and the like yeah alarms are going off yeah not the oh it's a little post-apocalyptic or something right yeah and that's what i talk about that ride is i say it's like if you went on pirates after the town burned down right like it's scarier to me yeah it's great it's great it's my favorite thing i loved it i also i don't i swear to god like there was some time on this podcast where you were building up the monster after dark song and i thought i'm going to be afraid of this song this is going to be the darkest death metal i've ever heard and then the song itself i really liked the song i am very on board with the song it's so good i want to like buy the song on a seven inch vinyl you can get it's on apple music yeah but i want it i want a physical yeah you want to hear that

when you hit the needle pops and the cracks yeah yeah on monsters after dark because you gave that exact example i got an instagram ad recently from like uh disney records of a seven inch for one side is the skeleton dance and the other side is the three little pigs and i opened the link and it was five dollars and i was falling asleep but i opened up the thing and i was like i will buy that tomorrow and i woke up in the morning it says this page does not exist and i was so what mad that like it wasn't for sale anymore i like they were like it was the last copy or the last handful of copies now have you since then found any proof that this item does exist that you didn't dream it i i i'm reasonably sure that this actually happened because i wanted to i

remember looking up wait what seven inch frames can i just also because i don't want to just assume that we know the song three little pigs what is the sound of the song the skeleton dance is anyone willing well no it just had a cool in i was more gonna buy it and buy one of those record frame and like hang it on a wall because it had the guys like doing the dance it's a thing from the 20s it's like a really early black and white yeah yeah it's awesome and it's the guys doing the dance. It's a thing from the 20s. It's like a really early black and white. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome.

And it's in one of the windows right now for Halloween. You got very excited by that, Jason. I went skeleton dance when we were leaving. Yeah, it does exist. Okay. You can get it for like $35 on eBay. It was for record store day. I'm sorry.

This does sound cool, but Disney doing record store day stuff is still kind of eye-rolling to me. They're doing so much. They go so hard on that now. Well, I found a 10-inch rare Someday My Prince Will Come. Holy shit. Wow, it's the monkey's uncle outtakes. It's the monkey uncle demo. And they pressed it on an orange vinyl.

We did Musker and Clemens on Blank Check at the beginning of this year. And I sort of just kept on stewing back on the like, it is kind of astonishing how successfully in the last 10 years Disney has been able to sell Disney as simultaneously being kind of alt you know yeah they find a way right that like the hot topic is just kind of a different disney store now and that they can do all these like vinyl releases that are like manufactured by disney yeah like nightmare before christmas maybe just reads reads as this cool retro movie. Have you ever heard of it? It's kind of this art film.

I think that was their entryway. That they had this movie that Disney was embarrassed by and that kind of underperformed. And then people reclaimed. And then Disney figured out how to monetize. And then they were like, could we do this with everything? Could we simultaneously sell Ariel dolls to little girls but also sell notebooks that look like VHS clamshells? And go like go like i'm just like i don't know what to tell you i'm like a 90s kid that is the canniest move i i and i saw a toy story when i came so close to buying that i was so close to buying like them too these things aren't bad they do they do do them right clever i mean my sister

is like my sister works in food and like ratatouille is like a big movie for us and a couple years ago i got her for her birthday like four very cool things that they had made where it was like you know a a recipe book a fill in your own recipe book that looks like a perfect replica of the gusto book and then it was like a jar that looks like the jar they have in the restaurant and all this stuff and And I was like, this is just so smart to make the products that are either like replicating a form factor or a thing you have emotional attachment to. Or here's a practical version of the thing in the movie that you can now hold. Like every time I see the like, oh, it's like a mug that's chip as a cup. I'm just like, yeah, best product ever.

Like so smart, so obvious. I have that. Yeah. Right. We have Coggsworth in the apartment that's another one yes like all of those when it's just like you can own the real thing yeah and it does sort of what it's supposed to do the lapel pin of the up grape soda bottle cap yes and i'm just like oh god yes why are you why how could you have this too emotional the

fucking monsters university hats are like the perfect example of just like, those hats are bigger than that movie is. And I think it just is because it's like, well, it's a movie where the hat has importance. So if you're going to walk into a Disney store and look at like a wall of 800 hats, you can get the one that has a logo on it, or you can get the one that immediately makes you like part of the thing. Yeah, yeah. They should, like any, if it's important in the movie,

it should exist as a physical item. You know it'll work out well. Okay, here's something, maybe a little shift we can take here, just to make sure that we do it. I feel like we should talk about these games, and we should talk about them from the gameplay perspective, and so we can step through it and we'll and we'll reveal how how we did because this was a good like like oh this is a

channel there's four of us we weren't quite in the same car but on the same vehicle there was like a little face off that happened but i feel like it was like a chance to put our skills uh to the test and display anything that we knew about how to do, uh, this ride and how to do these games. Uh, um, I, uh, Mike and I were together.

Uh, Jason and Griffin were together and the ride had barely been going, uh, before Mike and I are murmuring to each other and backseat driving. What you guys are doing is we look back, we can see where you guys are and we like turn to each other and backseat driving what you guys are doing. As we look back, we can see where you guys are. And we turn to each other without even, we just knew exactly what the other was thinking, which is like, they're doing the practice rounds.

They're doing the practice rounds. They're going to blow their energy. Big mistake, I say. They're wearing down their wrists already. This is something we learned, I feel like, a long time ago. Don't do the practice rounds. Don't do the practice rounds. Rookie mistake, in fact, I think. It's filling up on bread. Why do it?

I mean, you guys did do better than us. That is how it ended up playing out. Mike and I did better than Griffin Jason. And Griffin smoked my ass. But then Griffin and I both did very well on web slingers. Yes. Because my web slingers

trick is you just uh punch i i adapted like venom shooting the webs on the back of his hands not the other side i just started doing like air drums i just started at a certain point just yeah anything that's what i've heard just wave indiscriminately yeah but even at the beginning i was i was being diligent and doing the thwip hands and even i i don't know That's what you want to do. No, I thought I was doing really well on the ride because I hadn't been on it in so long that I forgot what the levels of success are. And I was smoking Jason. I was like, am I fucking, have I gotten great at this? And then we check in afterwards.

It was like, oh, no, you guys smoked both of us. We didn't come anywhere close to anything high for the week or the day. Nobody super threw anyone out of the water. Killing it. I did extra good for my normal score, for sure, but I wasn't in any of it. I never do better than the top score. There's people that are so good at the game. There's no reason to build it up too much.

We might as well just figure out how we got there sure the uh in ascending score orders yeah uh or i guess which way should i do mike was mike was number one i was number one uh i was number two griffin was number three jason was uh last unfortunately i'm sorry uh uh mike i believe your score put you you were the only one who graduated from beaver to cat you were a cat i got a cat is it beaver i usually looks cooler i don't disagree with that there's a fun friend i usually get the beaver um but no i got vastly the vast majority of of my trips have been the beaver this is also the only context in which the four of us would casually be bragging about getting the beaver i got yeah i'm always getting beaver right

like this is the kind of thing that would sound really gross if anyone... Look, you go on the ride, you do a jerk-off motion and at the end you get the beaver, okay? You do a constant flick. Your wrist turns a lot. That thing you do when your co-workers, you know, they're at it

again. Jeez Louise. Look, I'm not quitting until I get the beaver, okay? Think about heading down to Anaheim this weekend. Maybe I'll end up getting some beaver. Look, the only time I've ever said that word on this podcast was when I was referring to the famous Jerry Mathers character that I'm so fond of.

Okay, now that's a wholesome way to use that word. Well, the last Colonel Clink. Jerry Mathers reference. Although, you know who It's a Jerry Mathers reference. Although, you know who actually has the Jerry Mathers reference from this podcast? It's Scott, I believe. Yeah, because the house that I was born into, the first house I lived as a baby, was sold from Jerry Mathers to my parents.

Who played the beaver on an old show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't explain this to me. I was getting a little insulted. Maybe there's a new listener who doesn't know. But the house was getting sold then like a decade later. There had been multiple people in the house by that point. And we went to, my dad was like, you should see the first house that you lived in.

And there was a little like makeshift plaque that called it the Beaver House. Despite it being a house he moved into in what 1979 like i don't think this and like a perfectly plain house i will say i did just do the check during mather 73 i think not at risk so yeah i don't know of the of the blank the ptr curse my mom regularly tells me what the guy, Tony Dow, who played Beaver's brother, Wally, what he's up to because she follows him on Facebook. Wow. So this is my life still to this day. Because I think Eddie Haskell passed away recently. I'm forgetting the actor's name.

Eddie Haskell did pass away. I am also blanking on the actor's name. We did lose Eddie Haskell. I don't know that we talked about eddie haskell recently though my dad eddie haskell i feel like is still one of my father's favorite references in a in a colonel clint kind of way of just referring to someone with eddie haskell behavior you're bringing friends around you're like this guy's a real he's got some eddie haskell selling yeah who's that reference today does young sheldon have a ne'er-do-well a slightly ne'er-do-well friend well but the thing with eddie haskell was that have a slightly ne'er-do-well friend?

Well, but the thing with Eddie Haskell was that he was a ne'er-do-well who was so good at sucking up to everyone. Right, it was the balance of the two, where it's like, I'm not, the insincerity of it, you know? Yeah, yeah. I don't know, no one's been able to touch Haskell's lane in a while. You really think about it. He retired unopposed.

Retired his jersey. Do you have, I feel so stupid that I have never thought about not wasting your energy on the practice round. And yet every time I do that ride, you know, and I do it less frequently than you guys, but I certainly never go to Disneyland without going on it or world. I never go to the parks without going on that ride. Cause I want to see my best friends. Of course. Every single time, by the time I get to the final round,

where it's just hit as many times as you can, I'm like spent. Yeah. It's exhausting. Really awful. And to, and to the like. I'm good up until that point. And then I'm just losing it. Yeah, yeah.

You know, Jason, your reference, we're talking about any crossover between this attraction and sexual acts. There is something about the way that that finishes, where it finishes with a big torrent and then an explosion. And then everybody leans back in their chairs like, oh, absolutely. It's like the Jerry Seinfeldfeld bit like you're thrown clear afterward like your body literally has to move away from everyone sort of has their own style but essentially your strategy is you're going to develop a rhythm that you maintain for most of the ride and then you get to that final one you start speeding up and the intensity increases and faster and faster and faster more urgency yes right and you're

likely to get the best score if you're an active listener yes listen to what the what they're telling you to do and then you just you have that moment where you can literally just release your hands finally release your grip and just go ah and that but then also you start to actually feel like what position you might have been in that was odd yes and you go oh my my leg or my arm i shouldn't have done i shouldn't have been in that position and was it like did you did you like take some risks but maybe you did worse in taking the risk and you should have just aimed for a solid performance yeah you do you should have just stuck with what works and i'll say just from my experience you know predominantly there's that feeling then immediately

where you look at the screen in front of you and go, what am I looking at? There's the immediate, oh, it's bullseye? You sort of lose. What did I do? Yeah, you lose context sometimes. Right, what? You wake up again. I'm seeing a horse.

Yeah. I got the beaver? Yeah. This horse, there's an army man yelling at me. He says he's proud? Oh, okay. But he's proud? Oh, okay. But he's not my mom? Weird.

That's another thing. When you made your Sarge reference at the beginning of the episode, I got confused for a second. And then I realized for the first time as a Pixar fanatic that there are two Pixar Sarges. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Oh, yeah. Who have near identical personalities.

Right. Obviously, same color scheme. Both have decent presences in the parks. Similar voices. Who's the voice of Karsarge? Paul Dooley is Karsarge. Arlie Ermey is Toy Story Sarge. Both great character actors.

Yeah, those are good. But I just like that they just went back to that well, and they were like, I don't know, another militant guy? If we're talking, like, general strategy on this attraction, like, I guess, like, it is similar to maybe to a lot of these kinds of rides and to web slingers. Is it where, like, do you want to just, like, flail around, do as much as possible? Like, I don't know, there's no real strategy. Or is it better to aim for uh smaller targets secrets i think it just depends on on your

skill level i'm a smaller target secret guy and i feel like i i always tell myself like oh look up the secrets before you go on and i always forget to but i definitely i try to like i my accuracy is always very low i try to shoot as much as i can but i'm saving those shots for the harder targets for better or worse by and large if i feel like it's been a little while i haven't gotten anything i'm like maybe let me go down to the easier ones knock out a couple quick points and then go back up to the little guys sure sure i think you can really rack up points with quantity on the lower ones yes but i think where i get competitive is like i want to get those high value like i horse i even let even maybe even more competitive than with the person next to me yeah i'm like i want to get that

airplane that's really far away or i want to get hard the one that's moving you know what yourself you want it for yourself here's another thing this ride has on web slingers web slingers it's just all of those goddamn spider bots who essentially look the same with almost no variation and then you end each room with like a major spider bot right the targets are so different in this and there is that fun kind of like they react differently you know there's the added bonus to like, if you get a harder target, you get a little fun animation, maybe a little alien launches,

you know? And there's also an ASMR aspect to it too. There's a very satisfying, like the plate breaking is very satisfying noise. The balloon popping is very satisfying. Like when I hear it, when I've done it, I like,

I feel good. Like there's some extra level of it. And the variation is really valuable. The fact that you're changing sort of materials, projectiles every time. Yes. And that it does still feel kind of tangible to you. Everything flies a little differently.

Yeah. You do have to, it's a little adjust. Like this thing doesn't launch in the same way. Right. And this is blunter. And I mean, it's interesting, Jason.

I never had noticed that it was a cannon before now. But it is such an odd, like, weapon. Because it's not like Astro Blasters or Men in Black where you just have, like, a gun. Yeah. Right? Or Spider-Man where you're just flailing your arms around. Right. It's like this odd pull string mechanism that it seems bizarre,

but there's something about it being this one central thing that doesn't represent any of the activities better or worse than any others, if that makes any sense. It's funny we're talking about this ride, perhaps, and the whole relationship. It's all about Disneyney uh maintaining their relationship with steve jobs and everything getting but there's like a there's an apple level of simplicity yes

into the single button and now to the no buttons that we had like how much you're able to do on all these devices but the aerodynamics of a ring are different from a projectile that you're shooting or throwing a dart or whatever you're still using the same physical motion but the as you said like the arc of it as you're launching it you have that adaptation process every time of like i got to adjust but how do they possibly land on this single thing that is meant to represent throwing a dart or launching an egg or a rubber darts it's so many things like and it's not, is there a real game that has a pull string thing? Does that have a basis

in something? No, but it's what you said, right? That it was taken from this Pirates of the Caribbean thing? Yeah, I think that's where the early version started. And that's like a fuse a little bit on a...

Right, that must be, yeah. And Jim and Lem pointed out, like, it is amazing that this thing looks like string, like a whole string. And people are yanking on them all day long. And they always seem to be in pretty good shape. I think that took a lot of engineering.

That's a great call. Because that's also, this is the kind of ride where you imagine, like, if I go on this in two years, it's going to be gnarly. It's going to be like. Well, it's like Astro like astro blasters where it's like sometimes you get a really bad gun and astro blasters hanging yeah it's hanging down and you're like it doesn't even fit in the the holder anymore right yeah but they always work i've never had like we i think the first game when we were just playing we were like is this a little off today but like you it's always consistent and you're not you're not dealing with like, oh, this one's frayed.

Right. You know, there's not even just on a tactical level in terms of what you're engaging with. Any degradation, I really sense there. It always really works. And there's never, you never, sometimes a round will end and you'll go, oh, that was it. Especially compared to who you're sitting with. But you never like bomb out. You get enough satisfaction.

You're getting those sounds that you want, Mike. Like it's you like even in one that's a little lesser. It's not like, well, I didn't hit anything. Yes. Yeah. It's like impossible. Right. Right.

It does pass that sort of like 8 to 80 test. And it also just is fun it's like aesthetically pleasing there's such a variety the music is so upbeat you have your nice toy friends saying like great job they always say great job that's right it's very encouraging right it's not like too quippy yeah it doesn't feel like they're overloading jokes. They're letting you focus on the task at hand. Yeah. Yes. And they're not throwing too much at you, which is what all these other rides generally do.

Yeah. Because if there's an element, and I've said like, obviously Transformers is a screen ride that throws a lot at you, but you don't have to shoot. If you were to shoot on Transformers as well, it would be insane. Right. But this is simple. It stays in one spot yes and it's just yeah it's clean and and astro blasters and uh what's it meant by called alien attack yeah they have the benefit of it being like a classical dark track ride so whether or not

you're doing well in the game you're still getting the experience of going through a cool themed area yes right like the toy story thing felt like oh this is the beginning of something new and then no one else has really done it successfully since then right yeah maybe because there's something about i think again where you come back to that it's a construct thing where like you don't you don't think about that really that you're just landing at tv after tv right but oddly if the ride is trying to do something more immersive than that then you just think well i'm just going from tv to tv so much more aware of it yeah yeah and then like spider man 2 i think i was saying this on the uh the marvel episode um it's like they don't put any

villains in it Which is weird But then okay so it's relentless spider bots If it was just maybe like spider training And this one level is like What I was saying before Like taking the barrel and whipping it And it's like a much simpler static task I bet it might be more satisfying

What is that also getting at Mike too? It's lowering the stakes It's not putting the pressure on you. It's not making it feel like a swarm game. It's not like Peter Parker saying, like, I fucked up, you have to fix this for me, right? It's just kind of like, hey, I'll teach you how to be Spider-Man. Even if there is a scoring system there,

it's like, that's the kind of, let me relax, tell me I'm going to do a good job. Right, if we're not going to get attacked By the Hobgoblin Right And we're not gonna do Any of that Who knows Might be weird right shit

With the Sony Disney deal Very possible Like who fucking knows Who they can and can't use Yes very possible But if we're not gonna do that Yes a simpler Spider-Man training simulation

With points Right If he was like Mr. Stark made me This training facility This is like Spider-Man's danger room Right

Yes sure And it's like You have robots coming at you But they're not just a thousand of the same little thing it's different types of tests yes by the way if it was danger room ride and it was we got to wear the visor jason and i would we would be like just every weekend is at the end of toy story it just really kind of feels like the web slingers concept should be applied to the danger room. Sure. Yes.

But yeah, no, I've said before, I want Cyclops's visor on this ride, but that's again, maybe not going to because of rights. I don't know. Although Iron Man's, you can get his, you buy his repulsor. So I guess you can use Iron Man on this. Yeah. We were looking at the, all the, well, I mean, this isn't a Web Slingers episode. I'm sorry. I was like, I'm not racing to do one, so if we want

to do a mini one. I want to get better at Web Slingers also. Yeah, I want to get better at it. I would like to do it a bunch of times and figure out how to do the satisfying things that I supposedly can do. I mean, your line, Scott, when we walked off was like, I don't think I'd be capable of doing an episode after that. I don't think I'd be capable of doing an episode after that.

I don't think I really could process what was happening. I would have to. Yeah. A lot of ride throughs. A lot of videos. Yeah. Also, just down that car thing, Manhattan also. So it's just, I don't know.

I just, I'm just not pushing. I'm sorry. What happened? I think that might have helped, though. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I just have all that stuff it's like it's over

thinky and i'm sure they put a lot of thought into toy story but like it feels like they didn't overthink it seems like some of this or some of this older imagineering i don't mean because you never want it to be like it was only good uh before but we're talking about things in 2008 and 10 and 12. Yeah, right. And we praise things when they are good when they come out now. So it's not cut and dry like that. I do just think about this guy, Kevin Rafferty.

He seems like his aim is a lot, a lot of thought than in the most simple. Like, it comes back around to simplicity and then but but so much is put into what seems like a simple breezy experience and i feel like lately there's a lot more of these things that are like oh yeah the complication of it is showing and they think that's part of the appeal look how much work we've done like i i i had not done i'd done neither galaxy's edge nor avengers campus i was doing it for the first time with you guys and uh you know i i had had i've read less about avengers campus i've been waiting very long to go to galaxy's edge and have read all the waves of response on everything you know tried to do

rise without spoilers but certainly the response to the land and like the obvious complaints of like why why is are you not putting all the classic stuff in here? Why aren't we getting to see everything we want to see? Why is it a new planet? Why is it more focused on the Disney era? All this sort of stuff. And I was like, I don't think that's going to bug me. I like these Disney movies more than most people.

I just want to walk around Star Wars land. And I get there and I did feel the absence of all these things. And then we walked over to Avengers Campus. It was not very crowded the day we were there. I think that area is probably super underwhelming if you have to deal with a lot of hassle to go through it. But the second we walked there, we saw three superheroes. Like we walked there, we were like, oh, look, Captain Marvel's over there. Wasp is up there on the ledge.

And then we left and then we came back through to get like drinks. And then we were like, oh, Captain America. Thor's there. Loki's on the ledge. And then the third time we came by, we saw a different combination of three superheroes. And you're just like, man, that really fucking works that you just walk through this Marvel area, which is visually the least interesting thing in the world because all Marvel movies look like concrete military bases now, right? All your favorite shades of gray and brown are here right like it it looks very boring during the day and they don't have enough well defined marvel landmarks

to even be able to replicate like now that they've gotten rid of the avengers tower and all these things in the movies and whatever they should just fucking build the tower well it's a different it's the marvel theme park universe right that's how they so it's a different because tony stark's not dead in right in this so they could they should and like but but even still the characters being there goes such a long way just having them walking around and i think that's so much of the toy story mania value too is just like they have these other rides where it's like astroblasters is essentially just a ride of like the buzz light you're in universe buzz light you're the real man not the action figure right like that's what astro blasters is actually yeah it is wow that idea kind of it's around the same time that they do that star command cartoon show and it's sort of like between

that and the opening of toy story 2 and the stuff that's now you know gonna be retconned by the chris evans movie uh and quality right but then you have things like slinky dog dash or whatever where it's like well you're like covering like one tiny sliver of toy story there's so much representation these movies are so big there's so many characters that can do so many things this is the one ride where you just kind of get to see everybody yeah and even though it's still mostly screen based it's like well but it's just it's top tier animation a really good voice work yes yes because like yeah if it's your movie yeah you want to see everyone right it's just nice to spend time with everyone like i you know i came out here when the ride had opened and I was like begging friends to go.

And they were like, why do you care so much about this? And I was like, you don't understand. I haven't been able to see my friends for like nine years. You know, it like really was a thing for me where it was just like for so long, it felt like Toy Story 3 was never going to get made because of the legal stuff.

And even though I knew at that point it was going to open, I was just like to be able able to sit there and see them again felt so big to me. And they're behaving like themselves. They're correct. They're correct. In terms of complications, I think the complicated stuff is all behind the scenes.

I read an Internet Archive article from the website design news and it's all about like there's three big computer systems there's a system for the vehicles there's a system for the games there's a system for the special effects and they all work together and they all like there's a lot of automation going on there's a lot of like fail safes where it's like oh the way these ride vehicles move if they don't land in the same exact spot every time that's okay because the computer will auto correct it and you won't even notice yeah and to think that this cost it only cost 80 million dollars to then develop this like stuff they had never done before and uh it i i mean inflation being what it is but like

you hear the price tag that each rise of the resistance called 500 million and those are also very impressive but it's almost like i don't there are parts reading about how they execute everything on toy story maybe where i'm like well this is almost more impressive all the more surprising they don't refresh it every five years yeah because it's like the heavy duty work's already been done yeah all you need to do is really like do new animation and come up with a new yeah well here's a yeah because i'm going to propose sort of game by gaming in a little bit and i i think what maybe one issue is like what do you get rid of not to say it's gonna be forever but like that you know is it just does that tricksy slot have to be

that one is for the new not not necessarily but i also like i do think i don't know the inner workings of this but i do feel like they could be like we have a rotation of 10 now well yeah like a start yeah like start tours there's no replete you aren't even thinking about replete right i mean it's seasonal or maybe it's this or maybe it's that or you don't know which ones you're gonna right but like it just feels like you could go like this year we're adding two we're removing this one yeah but nothing's ever like sort of permanently retired retired just drove by um yeah i think that like it's probably a victim of it being too popular still also because they don't see the reason yeah it'd be better if they just like put some static figures on the on california screaming of the incredibles

to like try to get the numbers up on that. You know what? I'm also guessing that the updates, the adding Buttercup to Ham and the Dino one were probably done at the same time as the originals and they just held on to them for two years until the movie had come out.

I would not be surprised. That was probably all done at once. Now they'd have to crack it all open again Right Because like Monsters After Dark Was started Like that was being Developed concurrently

Right Which I bet Is the time That that's Like let's slip it in Let's slip it in Once again I'm just like You had a decade

There's nine years Between Toy Story 3 and 4 And that movie kept Getting delayed And was a problem They only had more and more time to throw stuff in there. And now that the movie, the characters

have been well-received, and Forky's here to stay, it's just like... I want a Forky talk. I want a game where you're throwing... You just want to see Forky. You're really just... You want to hang out with Forky a little bit. Are you throwing lots of Forkys?

I don't know. No, you know what? No. You should shoot Forks. Well, you could do that, but also the other thing, obviously, is that Forky loves trash. Yes, sure. There's an obvious sort of trash game where you're trying to throw trash into bins, I feel like. Trash, trash.

Interesting. Trash, trash, trash. You're trying to get trash to Forky. Right. He's in the can. He keeps on popping up in cans, and you're trying to. Is it different kinds of. So, is it like. keeps on popping up in cans and you're trying to... Is it different kinds of... I just came up with this idea.

It would have to be consistently the same trash, I assume. Would it be crumpled up paper? That's what I'm picturing in my mind. Sort of a crumpled up ball. Not banana peels or something. One thing I read that they didn't do... They had a bunch of

potential games because you know they're trying to correspond it to real with real midway games right and the one was the you know uh it at uh not a simulated midway at a meal real midway you fire the water and your horse or your whatever runs along the race they talked about doing that with rex and i'm like rex that would be fun he said bullseye is the horse that would actually be the like that's the game is usually a horse race uh yeah yeah but i feel like rex upstages bullseye a lot is it rex the bigger character and i think that couldn't they write couldn't the both of them race or something another character who i think is sort of was given a bad shake i mean that's probably fair also that game like the racing you know kind of game nothing is destroyed a lot of these

are destroying balloons or plates oh sure sure sure sure sure it's such a different yeah you have to like shoot the horses and then right i'm not gonna be good yeah oh there was a there was an early pitch that was trying to knock down mr potato head and make his pieces come off in a dunking booth kind of way and then that that helps them land on i don't know if you want to shoot at the characters i think that's weird i think it's got to be these and it's not even characters at all really right besides the army men who like Want that they want to get hit with the rings so they can fly away. They want it Wait what I said army oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but but you do you do have like army men in that too Where it's just like oh those are like kind of the grunt characters

You know where they're just like. Ill-defined, so. Right, and they're just legion. Yeah. But it does help that our hero characters are all sort of playing like Barker. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not even really in it.

They're running the game for you. Which is sort of what they, yeah, I think the idea, like, was probably more like, this is sort of in the line of the Simpsons ride, where, like, it's booths and the characters are there and they stay at the booth. And that was probably more the idea was something like that. Like, do you land at a booth and, like, step right almost the way Mr. Potato Head is outside? But then instead, yeah, it's these, like, brief appearances and they slide out of the way because you don't want them around consistently um all right so let me let me throw out a couple because we can talk

about secrets a little bit too or how are you how are you gonna get good at these things first things uh ham and buttercup you're throwing eggs right it's like little wooden simulators of barnyard animals what is the what's the secret here it involves the barn yeah the this one i always forget because i know i know the volcano one and i know the um the the the rocket rocket excuse me yeah so but the barn one this is i haven't i haven't i've been waiting to look it up and now i'm not in my right spot no sure um now everyone's waiting for me i will say at like the time they you're losing points just hold on a second everyone just practice you're not gonna be best in vehicle at this rate at the time they added this i i it it it kind of warmed my heart because buttercup and ham only get to meet at the

very end of toy story 3 then there's like a a little after credit like bit when they're doing all the sort of like odds and ends little like blackout jokes in the end credits of that movie to Randy Newman's Academy Award winning song We Belong Together where you're like oh these guys are a good match. Like not just these two characters but like Ratzenberger

and Garland a similar comic energy. It's funny to have these two guys. Right where it's nice that you're like oh you get to like watch the two of them being buddies yeah you know that they're on the same operating they're running a business together right it's fun it's fun as opposed to all the other ones where you're just like well obvious pairing you know like tricksy and rex i guess is the same thing too where you're like destined right here we go's the same thing too, where you're like destined. Right. Here we go. From the same line. But they've done more Trixie Rex stuff since this. Yeah. So this is the start of it,

which is nice. Yeah. I found it. You have to hit the 500 point gophers at the bottom of the screen and make sure to hit the Fox on the hen house in the bottom corner as well. Next, you want to aim for the hundred point pigs on the lower fence. Once you've cleared them,

a cat will appear in the same general area with a 500-point value. Continue to repeat the process, and each time the cat target point value will increase from 500 to 1,000 to 2,000. So it's a very specific order you have to do. Yes. But look for this cat, maybe. The cat is, yes.

And then it tells you you should have, like like 50,000 points by the end of this. But there's nothing that like opens it. There's no like big ticket item. In my head, like the bar opens up or something. It doesn't say that on here. That might be the case. I just found one. This is the one site I think I've been to before.

But maybe, yeah, maybe there's a different secret that I'm not even aware of. These are like sequences and Easter eggs that like if you don't do them in the game or you you aren't aware of them it doesn't detract from your enjoyment no which is little secrets yeah right that maybe increase your score but that's what i'm saying maybe in the pursuit of it you can end up doing worse that's why you're trying so hard to get the secret it's not dissimilar to one buzz like you're trying so hard to get the secret. It's not dissimilar to on Buzz Lightyear. If you know the color codes, like, oh, this color target is worth more points than this color target. That was the earlier iteration.

Yes. But yeah, you would never know. It's not like you get upset because it's just as fun to play without the secret. But once I learned the secrets, I was elated. Not this one because I didn't know it, but ones that i know now i think that well here's so let's we'll go in around two which is rex and trixie's dino darts uh it's all kind of centered around a volcano and balloons are flying around and you're hitting them with darts and the secret is thin

strips of lava uh you want to hit those, and that causes the volcano to erupt with balloons. Now, that one, I think we both knew, and we were both trying to get it, and we did both, I think, help each other. I think it was a very good round for both of us, because I think if both people in your party are going for it, then it can benefit.

But it's not just the person trying to get it yeah and we didn't even get to the point because if you get all those balloons then meteors appear oh yeah i don't think i yeah i don't think i knew when those are even more those are worth more points and we did not get to that point yeah there so that's an extra level of success now i've also seen this tip about it um that potentially it is possible that you can do better if you are flying solo if there is not a person in the seat next to you interesting uh and i was i got curious uh about previous scores that i have gotten and i have two photos at different times where i took a photo of the screen after because i got the cat a rare instance of getting a cat and not getting beaver yeah and in both

instances i was by myself i'm sorry just to clarify you didn't get the beaver you got the pussy yes it felt like it was being left on the table fail to get beards it end up getting pulling away from the mic upon this is patreon only this is monsters after dark ptr monsters i went down and i'm solo to get the pussy and it worked out I went down to Anaheim solo to get the pussy.

And it worked out. It's so unnatural. You're like, you winced while you said that. I can't, yeah, I can't. He transforms into a different character as well, like different body language. It's like a whole thing. It has to happen to have that word come up. Staring at the ground.

Just like, I'm like rubbing my hands together like I'm being a bad boy. I can't do that. I can't commit to this. He turns to like Igor or something. His eyes turn black. Like a Peter Lorre voice would be appropriate for that. That special bottle at Napa Rose that he ordered.

He just, something happens. The Norbit. Transforming. The two times you've gotten the cat. Yeah. We're, we're by myself.

So, which indicates, yeah, were by myself. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess the logic there might be that the other person just gets in the way. Yeah, yeah. With sex itself. Just keep it solo. Amen.

Did that episode go to a very strange flavor of abstinence only education no no it was masturbation only yeah abstin masturbation based abstinence only it's just i can't follow what they're talking about are they too horny or not horny enough what's the the ultimate question from this for this podcast strange reading on all of these guys um anyway the real thing i'm saying maybe there is something to this so don't go with your friends anymore go by yourself and if you're with your friends say no you're not getting on with break off your friendships just ended right then and there yeah if there's a friendship that's teetering Take them to Disneyland Pay for it, it's a nice exit

Then they'll maybe have fond feelings for you Even though you say, hey, I don't really want to do this with you Oh, the ride? No, the whole thing This is the end of the line My addiction to Toy Story Mania ruined my life All I could do was play Toy Story Mania I could do nothing else

It had to be deprogrammed oh yeah uh i i was just gonna say like i would like if somebody sometimes like if you're on there with somebody who's like two i don't want to play or whatever like just tell them they don't even touch it and don't touch you know what will only help me it's great advice sometimes if you don't want to play don't even touch it if you don't want to play don't even touch it don't even podcast the ride 2021 i'm griffin newman i'll memeify all of these yeah yeah yeah make us stare at everything we said somebody does an out of context twitter account for podcast the ride where they just take quotes from what like episodes and why i don't remember anything i don't remember anything but this one will be i'll remember everything from this do you guys find i i can't tell if i no longer remember

anything because i've crossed whatever threshold of hours recorded or if it's just the the the covid brain just done my memory is fucked forever it definitely accelerated the absolutely absolutely i think it's maybe both at the same time but i just really when people quote back stuff to me from episodes i i have no idea what they're talking about anymore and i used to have a pretty good memory yeah i i think we've had we would have to like talk about it a couple times it would have to become like a baby aladar right that's how i gauge it if it becomes a baby aladar in our like we've mentioned it multiple times yeah but yeah that's what it takes now maybe if back when we had all only done

you know 125 episodes yeah but now that we're in whatever the hell we're at yeah yeah no it's i i i have a pretty good memory i just i i yeah there's lot of stuff I go back, I go, oh, I don't remember that. And especially when it's out of context, no clue. Yeah. It sounds unhinged when it's out of context. These will sound just fine, though. I think they'll all make sense and seem very classic. Yeah, this stuff.

I'm not going to forget this episode. I will never forget this episode. Yeah, I am so sweaty and tense from all this vulgarity. I'm never going to forget it. I don't know if we've said we're recording in Scott's garage. Correct. We did say it. Lock the gates.

I did say it. This is our first time recording in the garage, and you know what they say. You never forget your first time. The cat ranch. Make it, guys. Just come over to the garage. The cat ranch. Oh, Dennis Hoff died.

Did we mention a bunny ranch cat, whatever the hell that brothel is called? The Bunny Rants and the Cat Rants are different establishments. Yeah. Oh, excuse me. Excuse me, Mr. Expert. Yeah, so I don't know if Podcaster Ride cursed Dennis Hoff, owner of that brothel. I don't think we talked. Maybe we did talk about him.

You haven't done a Second Gate episode on the Bunny Ranch, right? It's one of America's top attractions. One of the lunatics we have not done a second gate. We did that long second gate series investigating the Phil Spector, Lana Clarkson murder, and then he died. We were just asking for trouble with that 12-part series available. You also, you almost cracked it. You guys came very close to cracking the case.

To figure out who really did it. Yes. Right. It's always been a little in question. To absolving Phil. I just look at Spector and I'm like, I don't think so. This guy, no. He's too steady.

We got to get this guy out of jail. And then, God, we couldn't do it. We couldn't free the innocent Phil. It just doesn't line up with 50 prior years of extremely normal behavior from old Phil Spender. Pulling guns on every person he's ever known.

And we never shot them. I don't believe he would pull the trigger. It's funny that he had more practice than us who might accidentally pull a trigger the first time we pick up a gun.

He was the best at not shooting guns. In a year, I'm going to look at that Twitter account and I go, are we Phil Spector truthers? I don't remember saying.

There was that one where we declared. And then what will happen is there will be a guest. And much like how you were saying that we said we never do Toy Story. They go, well, there was the episode where you guys, I have to confront you about it. You all believe Phil Spector was innocent. And that's just not the case. You said he was good at guns. And we're like, I don't think we said that.

You said the made-for-TV, made-for-HPO movie was David Mamet's most notorious work? Al Pacino's finest performance? Al Pacino's surprisingly textured in it? I found that more offensive than you absolving the actual man of murder. Very obvious. Like, wait, so wait, do you want to talk about King Arthur Carousel or not? No, that topic was, that was a Trojan horse. I just wanted to get here and say I really think that he did do the murder.

We agree with you. It's really confusing. I heard you're on tape, and it's on this out of context twitter account what else do you want i guess you're she's i guess you guys aren't innocent either yeah we should i mean we should man it's funny this came up organically but there was briefly the pitch that was going to be phil specter's midway mania that was an early kevin rafferty idea right okay you'd have to get those those darts past the wall of sound. Yeah.

Yeah. And each scream was a different group that he very quickly alienated. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The transitions were going to be little tuning radio sketches

like on that Ramones album. You'd have to, you'd have to like, you'd have to somehow like shoot orchestral parts on to let it be angering paul mccartney instead of the animatronic uh mr potato head it's like the christmas gift from phil specter going thank you so much for coming to my ride it's open there's a nicer future for all of us never thought about that scary message that's

everything you need to know right there it It's the most fun Christmas set. Wow, every one of these is classic. Oh, God. Then this is the muttering. That's like whenever my family asks me to put Christmas music on, I put that on, and it's a hit, and people go, oh, good choice, Griff, as if I haven't done it every year for a decade. And then we get to that, and there's just silence,

and everyone sort of doesn't know like should we talk over this? Should we skip it? It's a pretty album in the future. Should I do a spoken word on this one too? The devil has shown up in the middle of Christmas to wish you well. And everyone's like uh oh the devil's

here. I hope you have a great Christmas. If the devil just hops from body to body on this earth, was he Spectre for a while? Yeah. That was his 20th century body. Yeah, he produced some fantastic records and then he also did some

awful shit. Great artists are dark. A Christmas gift to you from me, a Jewish murderer. So, Green Army Men, gift to you from me, a Jewish murderer. So Green Army Men Shoot Camp is round three of the attraction. I'm not your mother, break those plates.

I gotta get my guide out here. There's no secrets in this one, I don't think. Hold on. There is no secrets. Just like Phil Spectorctor it was an open book clear as day i would say i personally this one might be the most satisfying it's fun the breaking the plates yeah there's a there's it's digital but there's somehow a tactile feeling to it and shards yeah yeah there's sh The next one might, the rings might be the most

like computer programming impressive that they were able to like figure that out. The arcs of it. Getting up and over. Up and over and landing and then clearing. Okay, I have the secret here. At the start break, as many of the higher point plates that you can, two

2,000 point plates will pop up on each side of the horizon. Hit them. They aren't static and will drop back down below the horizon if you don't hit them. Once the step is finished, the front of the mountain will sink to reveal a hidden army tank inside. What? After the army tank reveal, a wave of four 2,000 point plates will pop up in succession

on each side of the mountain. These two aren't static and will drop back down below the horizon if you don't hit them. Hit all eight 2,000 point plates as well as the 5,000 point plate that the tank shoots out at you and then repeat the process. Make sure to hit all of the plates that the newly revealed tank throws

out at you. Wow. Wow. I literally thought there was no secret and I feel like I've even seen things that said, yeah, it's not really a secret on this one. I guess the secret is so complicated. It's very complicated. But like the hidden, like the real army shows up.

Real military shows up on this ride. Sorry, I turned my blood red. This is, look, disneyeveryday.com has these secrets here. I don't want this secret. That sounds like that's doomsday. It's pretty intense, yeah. See, this is a changing times changing taste because this is what gaming the perception was in 2008 if you could do all of this really

quick you'll get all these extra points and bonuses and stuff and now in 2021 the um perception of gaming is i have called a SWAT team to your house because gamers is insane people they call swat they swat yeah so this is this yeah this swatting in this round yeah well like uh yeah or like uh you could you should be able to like dox someone on one of these levels oh yeah yeah the social yeah it's like here's the social security that's that's the sid Yeah, that's a good point. That's only available at the Oogie Boogie Bash. But that's right there. Like Halloween overlay should be mutant toys, right?

Of course. Oh, Sid's toys. It'd be fun to see them again after all this time. How fucking cool would that be? Put big babies staring at the moon in there? Prospector comes in for like a moment at the end of the woody and jesse game but like do a twisted prospector game lotso gabby gabby the mutant toys and troquist dummies yeah dude perfect those you could shoot those off of the shelves i think anybody'd be happy to just watch them they wouldn't die either they just would fall in that

broken limb kind of way and stare back at you it'd be great be really fun shooting them um um uh tank reminds me too when we were talking about how they were trying to figure out how to do this physically there are at some amusement parks like bumper tanks that will shoot you can shoot balls at each other and in theory the tanks will then suck up the balls to use again they're the the most cumbersome, clumsy, barely work sort of thing. Yeah. I've always wanted to do one of those, honestly. I've never seen that ride in person.

I've seen those at family fun spot kind of places in the middle of New Jersey. And you're looking around and you're like, is this a death trap? Does Jigsaw run this? Is this a family fun center? Yeah, we got to get that. We got to find that. We got to go do that. What's the... The ring toss is next? Buzz layers, flying tossers.

I think this is my favorite one. Yeah, I love this one, but it is hard. I find it hard to get the ring around the alien sometimes it's a good burn it's a good burn sometimes i get like real frustrated because i'm like just not in the in the groove it's the most challenging one but that makes it fun it's such a difference in the physics yes from all the other ones, but I also just like the being able to unlock all the animation from the aliens.

Oh, yeah. This is where I shined. This is where I pulled ahead. Yeah. Oh, really? There was a big jump in this? A huge jump. Yeah, yeah.

I've never done better this level because you have to get all the aliens off of that rocket ship and then the rocket ship blasts off and then there's a giant mouth. There's a big opening, yeah. They call it a gigantobot. Suddenly it's a gigantobot with a big toothy mouth.

And as soon as he closes his mouth and opens it again and then there's more, it's more points then. So you have to do, I was in a very good groove with shooting things when the mouth is closed and the mouth opened again and i was immediately back in we're always right there and i wasn't yeah and that's where i yeah that's where i got the points and it's the best i think it's the best i've ever done in that level

um and that is yeah put it shooting it in the mouth is he actually you just as long as you have the timing down you don't have to actually um like the physics aren't a big problem because it's not like you have to get the ring off over a small thing. It's just shoot it in its giant mouth. Yeah. Gigantor mouth. It's just getting the timing right when you're shooting into the mouth. Yeah, yeah. It's simple.

It's simple because the mouth is large. Right. And then it's also in this level where you have to get these rings over the top of the rocket and get it down, like slide it down the shaft. And time is of the essence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As quick as you can, getting that ring down to the base.

It's a lot of pleasure once the ring, when you see the ring slide down the shaft. Sometimes you screw it up and you get really like flop sweat again. Well, sometimes you do too quickly and things just pop off real fast, you know? Yeah. And then...

Oh, man. It's the dirtiest episode ever. I don't know what you mean. I was describing things that happen in Buzz Lightyear's Flying Consers. Classic Midway game. Not sure what you were hearing. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Andy bought a carnival that got called to dinner.

I have a crass brain tonight. I just keep hearing things. It's the garage, man. Tell me, you put the boys in the garage? In a dirty garage? A dog, a van driving by. Honestly, it's so good to finally have some man talk. You know?

Yeah. That's right. My wife's asleep inside, and I'm just out here with the boys at night. In the garage. In the dimly lit garage. Making like giggly little innuendos about the Toy Story ride. What a naughty podcast this is.

Lock the gates. Those are dirty things we said about the squeaky alien fucking game. Whoopsies. Did we do bad? Then you go to the Old West. You go to the Old West with Woody. And this is very grand. And Jesse.esse jesse yes yeah yeah unless she'd be forgotten and uh well and another thing not to

be forgotten here uh as you always have to nod to the great work of mr jim hanks false tom hanks right fake woody he's the only fake voice in this. Yeah, I believe so. And you know, you could complain, you could say they didn't spring for Tom and it is nice when you're watching the shorts, which not every short has Tom, but a lot of them have.

They have like, sold out for him. So it was always Jim for everything. That was like very much a thing. Tom Hanks has talked about this in interviews that he was just like, there's so much of it. I just thought it would be a nice thing to like give my brother a career.

Like he never will be lacking for work. And then when they renegotiated for Toy Story 3, part of the deal was that Tom had to do all of those shorts and specials. They worked those all in. Right. It was like a new deal for that because at that point they thought 3 would absolutely be the last movie, but they wanted some new stuff to last for the next six or seven years.

Yeah, yeah. But maybe now he's off, like Robert Downey Jr., he's off the hook because they killed Woody at the end of 4. I think so. Woody's noble sacrifice. Right. But it's, yes, even from the beginning, it's sort of like always been Jim for everything. And even post-Shorts, I think it's back to Jim for almost everything. You can complain about Jim or you can accept Jim.

Jim Hanks has been Woody more than a lot of people have been any character. I mean, it's like, is there a difference? Yes. But I like Jim Hanks, Woody. Like I prefer Tom Woody,

but Jim Hanks, Woody does feel valid to me. Yeah. It's not like a Castellaneta homer no it feels good yeah yeah it feels good it feels good it feels really good and you're gonna love the return of woody voiced by chad hanks oh i think that's gonna be really great woody got a little crazy on his adventures this time around. Oh, Woody is speaking in poor patois? Like inaccurate patois? Woody is saying it's going to be a white cowboy summer?

What? It's really weird. He's questioning the vaccine for toys? Yeah. If I can just recommend to people quickly, there's a video of tom hanks on um the graham norton show i don't know what he's promoting but it's clearly done when he's filming sully because he's in like beautiful white haired mustache i've seen whatever

you're about to say i think and and graham norton's asking him about like do you do the voice for the dolls he's like no that's j Jim and this and that and whatever. And he's like, ask about his process for doing it. And he does this impression of what it's like to do voiceover that I will not ruin for people. That is so incredibly funny. And it's one of those moments where you're like,

Oh, Tom Hanks really is just one of our best performers ever. Like the way he acts out an anecdote on a talk show is just kind of immaculate. Yeah. Yeah. It might've been on that show i feel like another time on grim norm is when he did the full dragnet city of crime rap yes which is uh also impressed that he's so able to do it exactly right and with all of the vocal risings

that's like i mean that when when michael keaton hosted snl after like birdman oh yeah and they did the sketch that was taryn killen and bobby moynihan trying to convince him to play beetlejuice and batman again and he's like saying no no no no no and at the end of the sketch he just like goes like this like cut it out and then he like turns to camera and he stares it down and he says i'm batman and he's just like right back in it and i get chills every time i watch it where i'm just like just not a day's gone but he can just at any moment drop straight into it he knows the angle he knows exactly how much the arch the eyebrows he knows the exact pitch of voice and he just like he throws it out yeah oof wow wow, he's coming back. He's back. He's back. He's back, baby. When and when?

What is it? Him and Ezra... What's his name? Ezra Miller. Flash. Ezra Miller's Flash. Is that next year? It's either next week or next year. I wouldn't be shocked. Five years ago. I didn't see it. It already happened. He's in Spider-Man 2

or something. He's Batman and Spider-Man. And he's in Morbius? He is in Morbius as Vulture. Michael Keaton plays Vulture in the MCU. He is also going to be in the Morbius movie, which is a Marvel character, but it's Sony because Sony has the rights to Spider-Man. And Sony is doing their own Spider-Verse that's independent of the mcu the sony marvel deal is so weird because part of it is like marvel gets to use spider-man in x amount of films that sony doesn't produce right which is

like him ending up in the invaders movies and stuff yes and then part of the deal is marvel has to give uh sony one like ostensibly a tier marvel character to use in every spider-man movie so it's like downey jr in the first one it's samuel jackson the second one cumberbatch in the third right yeah feige gets to produce and direct like he direct the direction of it right right but then now they're making like the venom the, Morbius, these spinoffs. Jared Leto is Michael Morbius, the living vampire. Right. Does that sentence do anything for you? Does that sentence do anything for the movie-going public?

This movie has been pushed back so many times, and obviously COVID and everything, but they keep on going, let's just knock it back another 18 months. Let's just keep kicking it back. But they can't put Spider-Man in those movies. So now what they're doing is putting supporting characters from the Marvel Spider-Man

movies in the other villain movies. So Michael Keaton can interact with Morbius because he's in the Spider-Man movies that are in the Spider-Man continuity with the MCU. I like the convolutedness. I do like convolutedness.

It's very convoluted. It's gonna get worse too. It's so much worse. Yeah. So, yeah. Tom Hardy Venom cannot cross over yet. Right. This is not dissimilar to in the late 90s. They kind of peeled off all the street like you know gritty not super super powerful characters into the marvel knights line

punisher level yeah the street level guys and and they they didn't just because those books weren't selling very well right and so they did Right. And so they gave them to people from outside of comics or they tried weird takes. Like, The Punisher is back as an avenging angel. This sentence to God, does this do anything for you? Yeah. Daredevil written by Kevin Smith. An award-winning story.

Like a landmark run. Yeah, a landmark run. And very, I haven't reread them but i remember the time being very like liking those comics a lot drawn by joe casado great art great art yes so now it is it is just as confusing and dense and then what's what's weird too is that then the marvel netflix thing is essentially doing marvel nights again where they're just like these characters can't sustain $200 million movies. We have no other outlet for them.

So we punt them off to a different department of Marvel that Feige has no oversight over. And you make lower budget Marvel TV shows with these characters. And then now they're stuck in this netherworld where it's like, are they in shared continuity with anything? Those shows started out acknowledging things from the movies,

but then the movies have never acknowledged them, and then there are ongoing rumors that they'll work them in. That they will be acknowledged. Yeah. I know what you're talking about. This is the end of this Toy Story episode, right? We're almost at the end. I guess we're here.

We're almost at the end. The shooting gallery is the last game. It's the last game. It is the last game another game last game it's the last game i again has a real world parallel over at the other park the shooting gallery which when i was leaving disneyland the other night at 10 p.m at night was very crowded yeah like always popular people trying to take the edge off yeah stupid kid yelling at me all day i want chicken fingers yeah um it's a bit you know it's a it's such a like epic ending because now you i think maybe you get to that screen and don't even realize you're next to more screens it almost like gets

expansive yeah like a big widescreen western epic as you travel and you're shooting the whole way um but you you know you wear out here i think who doesn't in the home stretch i was trying to figure out is there a stretch i should be like is there any scenario where i like i'm fine after it i try different things i mean i'll tell you the thing i do oftentimes is rather than like pulling the ball like this, I sort of hold my hand out this way, if this makes sense. I don't even know how to describe this. Straight in front of you?

I hold my hand straight out in front of me, and then I sort of notch the ball in between two fingers. And so I'm pulling the hand towards me. Yes. Does that make sense? Yes, it does, because I've tried different techniques. Because the way you want to do it, like the way you're biting my body naturally handling i think this we've gotten to the episode where we have to talk about how you handle a ball handle a singular ball dangling ball one ball is this this is how you handle one ball you like i i think you want

to grab the ball and then i use my whole arm that's how it naturally wants to go right right because you blow out your wrist if you're just doing that. Right. But the wrist, the least impact is holding it, as you're saying, with two fingers and then just pulling it like this. Yes. This is the motion. Yeah.

But I feel like I don't get as much, I don't get as many balls that way. I don't get as many, I can't get it as fast. I can't get it as fast. I can't get going as fast. I need like, for that last run where you're trying to get as many as possible and it just becomes

giant targets to just like speed round, go. And again, you want to get it to 1,000 and 2,000 as fast as possible. I definitely like

put an arm on the handle to try to give me resistance, like something to hang off of, so that it's not like it's anchored, and I'm like using like, so I'm pushing one way and I'm pulling another. All of these, we should be filming all of these gestures. I know, the gestures are all doing the same

weird gesture. Guys, God, the gestures are so funny. If you were here right now, if you've done this. They look like something else it's like an angry father like summoning a cat in the house or like a dog like get in here that's really what it's not sexual it's just like get in here uh i switch arms once in a while too yeah that's a good thing which doesn't me off, though. Ah, the stranger.

Sometimes I have to... Sometimes what I do is like... I sit on my left hand for the other games, and then I pull, so it feels like a stranger is playing the last round for me. That's what I do.

It's not the first time, also, that we've all done these motions and then had people laugh at us so that's a good point as well uh but it's just i really wish i didn't have to say i wish i could only hear your voice right and then someone and then someone in in sort of overselling that you did a great job no it was fine Ham be like, it was fine. It's okay. We can try again later. Let's not talk about it. You're making it worse by

talking about it. Let's just go to sleep. Wallace Shawn telling, let's just go to sleep. We're really still talking about this. Why must we dwell on this? I've got an early day tomorrow. It was hours ago.

I'm riding a plane. I have to go ride a plane. I'm busy. God, this is going to play great at the store later. Who is that? Tim. That's just a general. That's just a general.

Generally, this would all play well Tim Allen's a laugh factory guy I assume I think well Superstar Luma was to be Believed yeah That is canon right I think so

Look you get exhausted You get very worn out I didn't really happen to me that bad on this but i for sure you know like two minutes later you could be feeling it five minutes later you could be feeling it if you the listeners have any tips on wrist care yeah and uh how to you know because we're all getting older um how do you make your wrists uh last yeah we need their pills we can take everyone yes uh chime in on this is there any like do you do you make your wrists last? Are there pills we can take? Everyone, yes, chime in on this. Do you just agree with us that you're sore after it,

or do you have some sort of technique? Do you double hand it? Do you have a looser grip? Yeah, right. Is there like a web slingers piece of equipment you bring with you? I was just thinking that. You just attach it and you hit a button. Toys.

If these kinds of acts are getting older, or getting tougher as you get older, does toys, bringing toys in reinvigorate everything? Is there some sort of like motorized suction device you could use which has a very consistent rhythm? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you could like... Just help smooth out performance issues. And it's like themed. It's a themed thing too. So it could be different characters or... That's the thing that Web Slingers gets right that you can introduce toys into the equation and add some new dimensions and levels.

Repulsors or... It helps with repeatability.untlet wrist gauntlets all that stuff you know that spices things up different bindings yeah different bindings suit of armor different suit of armor you could wear uh i will say a weird thing about this ride that defies logic for me is that i feel like a year or two after it opened, they released it as like a cell phone app. And then also as a Wii game. Right. I think they did it for PlayStation Move and Xbox Connect.

It was that wave of motion controlled video game systems. I bought it for the Wii. I didn't like it right away. I think I never played it. What I bought, which I showed you guys the last time we zoomed, was like, I got this like plug and play thing where it's like, it's a physical cannon that you plug into the TV and then it has just this game loaded on it. So it's a lower res and the cannon is push button rather than the ball pull. I thought by buying that and prepping for like

six months before this episode i'd get very good at it so we were there in person didn't happen but but this is the thing is like i played that app for a long time until they discontinued it i have this thing now i play i remember being bummed out when they did that because i was like well that kind of devalues the ride if you're just taking the exact same game screens and like yeah making it playable at home then what's the ride got and then every time i go on the ride i'm like this is so much better it really just speaks to how the the whole interface is the whole is the thing yes it's not the graphics and anything it's just how they made it perfect and let's let's also call it out it's 3D movie. It's my favorite kind of thing a theme park can do. Hey, there we go.

It's a series of 3D movies, a thing that the at-home versions never can get. Right, can't get it right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you're not, you know, we haven't talked about, Jason nodded to it very quickly, but the effects. The effects are something.

When those aliens fly around and there's a little blast, it's mainly blasts there's not a lot of like there's not too much going on and there's surprises but they're cool yeah yeah there's like whatever like is there confetti or something that shoots or the balls like shoot out at you and it makes that like poof sound and then like you get a blast of air and it makes it all like more confusing there's like there's sometimes when you're playing to get blasted with air that's like part of the it's all kinds of shit ends up right in your face right it happens yeah we um we hadn't mentioned the um the queues yeah uh there's a lot of oh yeah weird stuff the queues in both california and florida have both been reconfigured at different points due to changing of the areas they're in.

Well, because Orlando, it's now the weird fake Pixar campus. Well, no, that's what it was. Not anymore. They moved the entrance to Toy Story Land. They flipped it. They never moved the building, but they put the entrance on the other side. It's really odd. I'm not going to do Toy Story Land. And they added a entrance on the other side. It's really odd.

And they added a third track in Florida because it's just so popular. DCA, California Adventures queue is pretty bad. That's one of the big open criticisms of the ride. Love skipping that one in the Max Pass era. But the Potato Head is all you got going for i mean the potato head really elevates it the potato head can talk to you florida has a lot more character to it i think florida does more of trying to sell you on the like here's the room here's like this box he got yeah constructed and like a giant viewfinder like the diddy land yeah giant viewfinder things and then in japan yeah two things oh you gotta say it you enter through a giant woody head it's a dream i've always had to at night put myself in Woody's mouth. Oh, it's perfect. I'm going in.

And then this area in Japan is called, I almost missed this, it's called the Toyville Trolley Park. And we all know I love my trolley parks. Yeah, that's cool. It looks really neat. It's a great design. It's very ornate, as is all of Tokyo DisneySea.

Looks amazing at night. Yes. But this is, like, you'll see this repeated. This is a big Japan travel tip that if you've ever done Toy Story Mania at Disneyland or Disney World, you can't do it in Japan. It will eat into valuable time.

It is, like, the one thing that is exactly the same. Go look at the outside. The outside is great. But I saw travel guides that were very clear about, like, you gotta sacrifice that one, because there's so much that's

unique to that park. Or maybe you have to add an extra day. You end up having to take it up to four days or beyond. Just to be able to go. Seven days. You need seven. I think you need a clean seven. You just keep moving up. It's gonna be 12 before you know it.

Yeah, I mean, I'll say in defense, because the California one opened first, right? It is the original. Maybe not. No, really. They opened. This was a rare instance where they were developing both simultaneously. Florida opens a few weeks before california i believe florida's also was timed with a uh piece being added to the international space station and there was a buzz light year

toy like yes in the engineering story yeah right they put buzz in space yeah yeah it's all strange that that opened first and how it's like it's this midway game ride but then they it's so it's midway mania in california but because it's part of the pier but then it's just toy story mania everywhere else i remember thinking when i heard all this before it opened i was like is this gonna be any it's weird it's midway games but it's over there and is that just like uh plugging it in in a non-natural way and uh it all it's all like the oddly just something about the description of the ride never sounded that great to me it's like games with the and then like immediately first

time you're on it yeah just fun classic like must do it just kind of defies logic but it gets back to it sort of the stuff we've been saying about just like sort of don't overthink it do the thing that's fun show the people the thing they want to see you know just make it clean and easy the rules yeah don't get in yeah don't get in your head yeah try to relax yeah yeah right simple right if you're worrying too much about what how other people think you're doing but you do and then you're not going to enjoy yourself because ultimately like you need to be enjoying yourself right too right but also you want to make sure they're having a good time just not to do that just not worrying about how

they think you're performing just worry about yeah trying your hardest yeah you know you can't get too you can't overthink it no yeah yeah i and you have to be attentive sometimes the rules change sometimes they say throw this and then then you move over a little bit and they go actually you know it's spin this or whatever i don't know i don't even have to sustain this anymore it's unsustainable at this juncture things are at a different angle yeah i you know but we're looking like with mike and i just like worked really well when it was pleasurable for both of us. We made, we made each other better.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. We were work. Scott and I were working together to achieve a goal. Jason and I were perhaps being selfish. What? I say mutual midway.

That's it. Griffin Newman. You survived podcast. Well, I do. I do have a thing I want to say. I know. That was just by be planning the flag.

We should sort of come back to the station. Right. Uh, I, I, so I, you know, I,

uh, this was so much fun to get to go to the parks with you guys. And I joked about this when I was, uh, when I got there, but I was like, I was like having the jitters beforehand of like, Oh my God,

I'm going to meet the guys for the first time. Cause it did feel like, I think people don't know this, was like, I was like having the jitters beforehand of like, Oh my God, I'm going to meet the guys for the first time. Cause it did feel like, I think people don't know this, but like up until going to the parks together two days ago, we had never hung out outside of recording. Cause all the good records are all, it's all these long episodes. We all go like,

and so then by the time you're done, it's like, yeah, we could go like get dinners or something. But like, you're in town for a brief amount of time. But I like message you guys. I was like, we could go like get dinners of some of it like you're in town for a brief amount of time but i like message you guys i was like i'd love to be on the show then we did that we always like end up uh talking for too long before and after the record and turning what's

already a long session into a super long instead of planning a thing yeah then that after show just and then like the last time we recorded before the pandemic you were like by the way next time we should just make plans to hang out like this doesn't have to be the only structure in which before i was hanging out then the world ended and it was very much a thing i was looking forward to was being able to like totally agree yeah record with you guys again but also being able to uh uh you know actually like hang out and then cross that friend threshold and whatever and to go to the parks with you guys was like the best version of that i didn't realize the three of you hadn't gone together so it was nice that i was able to in a while this was a big impetus for

that i have the fits it was 20 months is what it ended up being yeah right we hadn't seen you in person i the last time we recorded with you in person was almost two years ago yeah yeah that's the last time i was here was october 2019 and it's now september 2021 wow yeah so like all these things i was looking forward to and you know like uh listening to the show was was a thing that really helped my my sanity throughout uh all of this you know so i'm very appreciative uh to you guys uh as friends but also just as uh uh people who make a good thing that helps people a lot. But I did in the run of listening to the show, and as I said, I was listening some months behind,

go like, I want to do something to repay the favor to the boys to some degree. I feel like I need to. I have such an affinity. I'm so excited to see them again in person and do all of this. I need to come bearing gifts to some degree. And then I caught up with some episodes. And I got very worried that I perhaps had been sniped in what my potential gift was. That's what's in your case that you brought in. It's in your rifle.

Yes, that's perfectly sized just for this one thing and i had to message jason and go here's my gift eat lead i've got the specter spirit now um a couple weeks ago uh i when we had these plans in place i messaged jason i said jason like no spoilers i'm still catching up but i might have ordered something and spent a fair amount of money on it and i'm worried that perhaps this has already been purchased in exchange and i want to know if this ever happened and he said i think you're in the clear and i yeah this was maybe the most memory workout i had to do at one point in the park scott went to the bathroom you want remind me what the thing is i wow well i messaged mike about it okay now i remember you did it right yeah right oh interesting because uh i didn't i i had purchased this and received it

before i caught up to the point about point where it was invoked on the show. But I did in fact purchase a Baby Alive Aladar. Which I want to make clear was specifically purchased for Scott Gairdner. This is not for Mike. This is for you and your son. You have

to accept this. It's now in your garage. That is for you. It's now in your garage. Wow. That is for you. It's a mint condition. Oh, boy. Dino alive. Dino alive.

Mint on card. Oh, these beautiful fonts. It's great fonts. The best of 2000. I mean, it's a good box. It is a good box. It's a very good box. Help me hatch. Let me out.

Hatch and hatch again. Feed me, in quotes. Feed me and I'll show what I can do. Dirtiest episode. Grossest episode. Yeah, really gross. It was gross enough before Aladar entered the picture. And then now Aladar's here.

And he's here to stay. Hatch your prehistoric pet again and again. Wow, you can get, that's the miracle of childbirth over and over again. He comes with the egg. For the listener at home, he comes with the egg and you can have him hatch out of the egg. This is going to be a great sex ed tool. You know?

Teaching tool. Yeah, exactly. This is where babies come from. So one day you came out of an egg. And the first thing you did was pee and burp, and I thought it was so cute. Very cute. Very cute, yes.

And then on the back of these quotes, I'm Aladar, I'm hungry, burp, let's go. Can you imagine? In the line, let's go, let's go can you imagine let's go let's go what's the thing he says in the stand together I think that's the actual but that's adult Aladar you do not own adult

Aladar no that's baby Aladar you own dino alive baby Aladar oh my god he walks he talks he's amazing I will say I have to agree i like i ordered this it took a while to come it thankfully didn't get lost like the one that you ordered for mike but when it arrived i like didn't know what it was and it was such a big uh box and um do i have this here hold on i thought i took a picture of it like oh in the overhead

this was essentially a bag I brought just to carry baby Aladar oh my god you see like a movie character cross-country you had to protect an egg pretty you were a father or bringing you were a makeshift father bringing out our to his real father, me. Yes, yes. It felt like the journey, the beginning of Disney's Dinosaur, where you're seeing the egg getting carried by all these different creatures. Clive Owen in Children of Men getting her. Absolutely.

People dying all around you. I can't find the picture of this now, but it arrived in this like huge box. And by pure coincidence, I couldn't tell if it was like a joke from the eBay seller, but I think it was pure coincidence that it showed up in a box that had like a big stamped warning of like, careful, live eggs, handle with care. Oh, wow. That's great. And I think they just reused some egg delivery box.

They were just being cute, I guess. I don't know. No, because it was like stamped on there. It wasn't like handwritten. Oh, but they still made a... Oh, they might have picked the box for that reason. It wasn't a Disney-branded egg box. No, no, it wasn't.

No. I see. No, that was just the shipping container. Gotcha. It was not part of the product. They were still being cute then. Maybe. And also, by the way,

there's so much disturbing on the box. You never know what it'll do next. There's a lot. It's different every time. A lot going on with the box. And then the more you feed him, the more real he becomes. Just everything about it.

But then there's this little thing in the corner that says, try me. And it's a hand that's putting up two fingers, and under that it says, Touch the Metal Contacts. Touch the metal? Scott, touch them. Oh, wait, I should touch the metal? Wait, what happens if you touch the metal?

I think the batteries are dead. Oh, yeah, yeah. I think, yeah. It's probably an ancient enough. There's this little diagram of the finger, more lewd finger gestures in this episode. So many lewd fingers in this episode. You have to stick your fingers in,

but then sort of curl them up until you feel the contact point. You'll know when you feel it. There'll be no mistaking. Griff, amazing. Thank you so much for guiding baby Aladar's journey

across the country. I had to rethink my packing Wow That thing made a cross country trip This is heavy You're on foot going into A train station I believe Correct

I took a cross country train From New York This had to be accounted for It made it here I've not cared across two. It made it here. I brought it across two hotels and brought it here today to its rightful place in this garage. Strangers on a train remake.

Hey man, is that a fucking Disney's dinosaur toy? Is that Dino Alive Baby Aladar in mint condition? I was going to ask you to kill a family member of mine, but you're too weird for me now. It's amazing. You know, the miracle of life comes from making contact with

the egg, and I feel so much life from this. Maybe, I think, maybe I love baby Aladar now. I mean... After all this. It took this gesture. Well, it also, I mean, now you have to care for him.

Like, it's hard not to form an emotional attachment when he's your responsibility. Yeah. You can't shut me off. I have no off position. Yeah. Griffin is saying, I mean, let it be between the lines, Scott.

This thing is cursed. Well, the last time we, you may have heard, we got to a baby Al at our toy that never made it. It didn't have it still. This is why I messaged Jason in a panic because I ordered this. It arrived. Then I got to the episode where you revealed

that you had ordered it for Mike, but it had been delayed and I was like, if I just spent all this fucking money. It's the fact that this cost a substantial amount. We had a listener. I didn't shell out for the egg. You shell out for the egg and the whole thing. For the egg, for the box, all that.

A listener told us, though, they had the same exact story, where they tried to get rid of the Baby Aladar toy, and it kept coming back somehow. It kept coming back, and they couldn't get the batteries out, I think. And the batteries had enough juice that every few months, it would just go like, without warning. So maybe we'll see i'm remembering again because memory little fuzzy at the moment yeah i remember i i think just recently i double checked with scott because i convinced myself that like de griffin by a nimgaloo and i asked you like

hey the stuff nimgaloo was covered in bugs and you threw it in the trash, right? And you were like, yeah, yeah. Oh, you slipped that in. You couldn't remember if I had bought a Nimgaloo or an Aladar. You knew both items had trouble arriving. But you couldn't remember which one I had got. This is the point that we're at. What we mythologize.

I'm going to open this thing up and it's going to say, I'm the one you tried to buy for Mike. I got into all the packaging. Made it through the plastic. Well, there was also a point where I was like, if the one for Mike arrives and Mike gets it, and then I bring one for Scott as a punishment,

then I feel like an asshole that Jason doesn't have. A punishment Aladar? That's all right. I think we all need to end up with one. I'm just letting you guys have fun. I'm just saying everyone's having a good time. One is going to burrow out from inside your stomach tonight.

I think that's where this is going. This gift is so... I have gifts for everybody, too. This gift is so much better. I just brought little gifts real quick for everybody. I want to throw... it's not nothing big They have these 50th anniversary McDonald toys Yes, and I went to I went and got a few of them ah this one's for Griffin

This is our to D2. I was hoping for toy story, but they did it did not happen Scott. I have Here Lumiere for you wonderful 50th anniversary. And then for Jason, I have a Walmart exclusive Funko Pop of the Moon Pie mascot. Yeah! Alright!

So I have that for you. I didn't know that mid-September was suddenly Christmas. When did this change? Mid-September. I think this is 2020 Christmas. I haven't felt like we've i think we made up for it today and now out of nowhere i i had something for mike and scott i brought back from new jersey that i forgot today and griffin i real quick bought you a pretzel at dca oh no if i bring that i won't have anything for griffin so well because i asked you do you want

to split a pretzel? Because we were debating how hungry we were. And then the next thing I knew, you handed me a whole pretzel. I couldn't figure out what the machination was. The short-term memory and the long-term memory are both a little fuzzy right now. I'm with you. I'm right there. I forgot you had said that.

Well, we didn't even get into the cheese thing. We'll save it for later. No, but that's its own episode. That's its own episode. Jason's cheese hollies. Not to tease the title. Kind of bummed out by the plastic cheese situation.

Man. Mike, thank you for these 50th anniversary toys. Thank you. Hollywood R2-D2. Thank you for this egg. Thank you for delivering the egg across the nation.

I will say, it already looks like right at home. It looks like it always belonged right where you put it. Underneath an out-of-time license plate. A bunch of visors. Yeah, I do have a bunch

of visors hung up in my garage. Sports almanac from BTTF2. Anyway, yeah. Thank you for that. Thank you for that thank you for uh for for being here for joy for getting us back to disneyland yeah for a great hang the other day a great episode now many great episodes truly a thing i've been looking forward to as like oh then i'll feel like the world is slightly normal again you know this is a a great thing great light at the end of the

tunnel of all of that waiting uh uh and uh yeah yeah, I'm so happy we actually got to hang in the happiest place on earth. Such a blast. Let's exit through the gift shop. Is there anything you'd like to plug? I'd like to plug Mattel's Dino Alive Baby Aladar. It's a great product. More and more Dino Alives? Yeah.

I mean, Mike, you buy a lot of vintage toys as well. I kind of can't believe what good condition the packaging is in for this thing yeah sometimes well i just i revealed to you two days ago whenever we were there that i had bought some austin powers right mcfarlane toys that are 20 years old and i am like well these are like in pristine yeah i like they must just people just might might just have them in the box That's the thing This has just been perfectly preserved So yeah I am impressed sometimes But yeah look for them on eBay

Blank Check with Griffin and David Where our podcasts are found We're doing all the John Carpenter movies That's taken us through the rest of the year And then Good Boys in 2022 2022 Would love to and then Good Boys in 2022. 2022. 2022.

Would love to. Yeah, and watch Masters of the Universe, Revelation, a very uncontroversial show that no one is upset about online. I've had really, really normal reactions to. I think it's really good. Maybe even more so if you haven't watched the old show, then maybe you like it a lot

because you're not caught up have a lot of strange baggage. But yeah, first five episodes of that are up now and the remaining five episodes will be up soon. I think you got a gun to voice Aladar next for the Dinosaur reboot. God, yeah. That's the next one to... Yeah, but people online are going to be upset

if Baby Aladar doesn't look exactly as cute as he did 30 years ago in the old movie. If Baby Aladar is a little too woke now. If Baby Aladar is woke in a new version of Dinosaur, yeah, there's going to be a lot of people online upset. There's an agenda behind his burping now. They don't even let him pee anymore. They don't.

Like, that's his thing. That's his thing. Yeah. Hey, find us on all the socials at Podcast the Ride. Merch is available in our TeePublic store for three bonus episodes every month. Check out Podcast the Ride, the second gate of Patreon.com slash Podcast the Ride. Great victorious week, victorious episode. I feel like we all got the beaver today.

Tonight. I'm not going to say anything else. It's all right. So bye. Goodbye. Forever. Tonight. I'm not going to say anything else. It's all right. So bye. Goodbye. 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.