Podcast: The Ride - What The Hell Is Going On In Anaheim?

Episode Date: November 9, 2018

Mayoral and City Council Elections! A Cancelled Garage! A Cancelled Hotel! An Uncancelled Sandwich Restaurant! We discuss some of the dramatic, recent events affecting the Disneyland Resort and Anaheim at large. And we try to understand the Mickey's 90th Spectacular special. Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/ FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! that have been publicly available for three days. Today, the good boy War Room finds out what the hell is going on in Anaheim. This is Podcast The Ride, the theme park podcast that is suddenly deeply invested in local politics because the story involves sandwiches. I'm Scott Gardner, joined by Mike Carlson and Jason Sheridan. Hello, my name is Mike Carlson, yes, and I love sandwiches, but not as much as the man sitting next to me. Yes, and I'm Jason Sheridan. I have not

eaten lunch yet, and that has fired off something in my brain. Oh, God, we lost you already. I chose the wrong word. I triggered you. Yeah, that's okay. I think I'll be good. I had a slice of wheat toast with Nutella on it. Nutella on sale recently. Sorry, haters, but a I think I'll be good. I had a slice of wheat toast with Nutella on it. Nutella on sale recently.

Sorry, haters. But a big old jar of Nutella. The haters. How much was it on sale for? I think it was... How much was it? $2? $2.50?

Something like that? Off or $2.50? $2.50 after. I get a dollar cash back. Okay, not a dollar. Okay, that's all I want to know. Got it. Okay.

This is, as you will hear, we're going to weave a story that relates to the very recent midterm elections that does, in essence, emanate out from a sandwich restaurant. And we're very excited to do this highly topical, this politically charged episode of Podcast the Ride titled What the Hell is Going On in Anaheim? A question that we've had for a while and we're going to try to answer it here, although the election sort of changes what might be going on in Anaheim. But before we get into that, I should mention, as always, the Patreon, the second gate is open and this week there is a new episode entirely dedicated to our good friend, hashtag Botanicus.

Anything we'd like to plug especially? It's about 90 minutes of a deep dive into the secondary characters of the E.T. universe. As long as the episode that we did about the E. the ET adventure, the entire ride, our first episode, we've now equaled that length just about a single character. Yeah, we've gotten much better at podcasting. So you can basically pay $5 a month. We have three extra bonus episodes. We did Disney Quest and now the second episode in November is Botanicus.

We've announced third is Club 33. We're going to talk about our visit there. So, yeah, if you want to hear all about the flop glopple and Senator Gribblebs, the ET senator in the third Star Wars prequel, please go over to Patreon.com. When I say it out loud, it sounds bad, but it's so good. It is a strong episode, I feel. I feel really good about it. I was very pleased with it.

It starts out with Jason eating a protein bar and... Oh, yeah, more information about you haggling. Yes. Oh, yeah, the protein bar incident. There's a great haggling story. There's a great time where we stop in the middle because it seems like you're taking selfies during our record. So, yeah, go ahead over there, patreon.com.

Yeah, that you can see on our Twitter. Slash podcast. You'll also learn about the book sequel to E.T., where E.T. helps Elliot make time with a girl. Make time. Oh, yeah. Or neck, whatever the wholesome old-timey ways of saying that sort of thing are. And also where Elliot's phrase for his brother, penis breath, is put in E.T.'s mouth.

And I was thinking about that since we recorded it. And E.T. does not hear Elliot call his brother penis breath. Oh, yeah. I think that's before he lands. And I think that's just like a one-time insult. I don't believe, unless it's all off screen that elliot is constantly referring to his brother's penis breath yeah it's a good point uh i as you as will maybe be revealed i could email somebody special to ask him about that question but i won't say who i'm talking about

interesting uh and then i guess the last tease i have for this uh paywall episode of Botanicus is that who is a mysterious new character that has been created who is Potanicush that's all I'll say yeah who is Potanicush you'll have to enter the second gate to find out so go go to patreon.com slash podcast the ride and purchase your patreon park hopper today yeah I look the holidays are coming up lots of travel time you need some more podcast content to enjoy on cars planes trains automobiles i like that you added that extra sell because it was like well if they weren't completely invested in hearing about botanicus it was like we do have a lot of long car ride coming up, and I really should. You know, you got to look to the future, right? That's true, you do.

You know, we all engaged in an event this week that I would describe as being akin to a long car ride. A major event in the world of Disney that, in fact, is on in the background as we record this T-vote. I'm talking about Mickey Mouse's 90th birthday celebration. And before we get into the local politics of Anaheim, I feel like everything's happening under the shadow of Mickey's 90th. And yeah, Jason and I were, I think Mike was not watching it live, eschewing your duties as a theater journalist. Yeah, that's true. But doing a routine all three of us fall into where two of us are very active on a group text and one is clearly, yeah.

Checked out. At the movies or driving or in the shower and totally i honestly i may have been sitting on this couch watching something else how's this how are you i think i mean lindsey was we were sitting watching something i think and i was like oh they're watching the mickey special okay well i'll get to this later and then also part of me was like i don't want any spoilers but i never i didn't get to watch this i'm watching a lot of it now for the first time and now I'm watching it with the sound off. So yeah, um, I'd like to say that I put on this special 100% because I saw a silent clip

go by on Twitter in which Mickey Mouse with the fully articulated head, the smiles and talks and blinks that Mickeykey mouse was playing the drums and so in that regard i was not disappointed because he sure did play the drums and i was just oddly little kid tickled by seeing a cartoon character play a real set of drums if he'd just been pantomiming nothing but knowing you could see he was hitting every tom and every symbol and i really enjoyed that he uh mickey plays the drums in several different theme parks uh disneyland specifically first he plays at the end of there's the one parade i forget what it is in disneyland where mickey is on the end of the big end of the float and he's just going nuts on the drums and it's my

favorite thing and i don't know they haven't done it in a while um but it was a parade i'm trying to think it's not soundstational soundstational was the pixar one no soundstational was the one in uh florida i think it was the afternoon parade i don't know about that maybe it was out here too the pixar play parade is the one you're five four three two fun no human being could possibly keep all these parades straight disneyland it is the soundstational parade it's coming back and it's coming back it's soundstational and the big finale of it is mickey standing up playing the drums and it's he's doing it he's not panamiming it and i have so many videos from the years of being like and like giggling under my breath and like mickey's playing the drums it's coming

that is exactly where i i was like like i was laughing in a gleeful it like it it just tickled me on this bass level yep uh yeah this is as pure as i can get is my love of mickey playing again agent cooper it's coming back i tuned in to see mickey play the drums uh and in order to get to that i had to wade through a lot of other stuff um i have this whole thing where sometimes i'm watching entertainment that has uh celebrities that i've never heard of and sometimes people say well this is because you are old and you just don't know who the hip new celebrities are. And other times I feel I am being gaslit. And these people are not actually that famous.

And there was a time, there's an 80s, obviously, okay, I'm always going back to 80s things. But there was, I think, a 1988 Mickey birthday special where he like goes to cheers and family ties and, and he's hanging around Felicia Rashad and Cheech Marin. To me, these are like mono celebrity, mono culture celebrities. I don't know who so many of the people in this special, am I,

am I wrong? Or am I just kicking and flailing and denying that I am old, but I don't like, look who's on right now. This is NTC one, two, seven, Or am I just kicking and flailing and denying that I am old? But I don't like, look who's on right now. This is NTC 127, and it's their first live performance of an English language song. They're a K-pop band. They're a K-pop band with about a dozen members. And as I said in our group text, these sorts of ensembles always make me nervous because i have read articles similar to they operate similar to like minuto did where like you have aged out it is time for

a new member and they will oh my god mickey's dancing with them now mickey's dancing holy shit this is your first time seeing this i'm just seeing the whole special for the first time i know he danced earlier and i loved it and now he's back out here's here's what's i will go right back to your question in a second i i had tickets to this show and each segment that comes on i'm a little more regretful that i didn't go because because my i asked my sister i got tickets i just signed up for them like a any normal human then they said you know it's taping down by usc which is like if you live up in burbank it's like gotta go all the way down there was it the shrine yes okay and then it's like you got to be there too it doesn't start till seven but you got to be there too and you got to check in and you

got to dress up oh yeah this is bad i did that same the same like that that level of amount of time for the in order to be a seat filler at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards. And it was kind of a big hassle. Although my girlfriend at the time got to shake peak Lindsay Lohan's hand.

That's something. The whole cast of Mean Girls accepted an award together. So actually, you know what, maybe it was worth it. But it was many, many hours and kind of a pain in the ass. Yes. By and large, if you've never been to a television show taping, the word to call it would be interminable. Right?

That's how you say that word? I think that's right. The worst. Except for the old. I'll speak up for my friends at the Conan show. They made that a pretty tight, fun experience. I was always pleased. If I had friends who came to visit, was like oh that was good and we weren't waiting around for hours and

hours and there's no retakes and there's no but you could tell this mickey thing from miles away must have been the most tedious event shows because they're so timed out and structured tend to be quicker sitcom tapings tend to be hell because it's like you go to see a play and if a scene in a play didn't go well you'll just see that scene again and again and again until someone is happy with how that scene went and then you end up like you know 11 hours in it's like all right round two of pizza yeah pass them down get them all the way down to your neighbor single slice of little caesars and your single bottle of water although as you said that did you have that thing trigger in your brain again a little bit because

i am a little caesars fan let's count the food you references are a little caesar uh so yeah so anyway i basically i was like you know what this is gonna be a big slog and then i was worried because we watched that disneyland special a few years ago which is like the anniversary of disneyland and i don't think there was barely any disneyland in it it was just a really shallow like look at the like movies and tv that we have and it was nothing about the park so i was like there, there's that, maybe there's barely any Mickey stuff in this, but now I'm seeing it. Mickey has danced twice already.

He's played the drums once. And I'm really feeling like we should have gone. That's all pretty good. But again, like so much of it was a slog. I mean, I'm just going to like leaf through the, what we were texting each other.

I like, I mean, Jason's texts on and of themselves. Mickey has made his grand entrance and now is doing a dance number to I Can Make Your Hands Clap. All right, that was great. I'll say this.

I saw it. It was great. I liked it. I liked it a lot. All of the dancers were very good. They were very good. And the singers, anyone singing, the singers were good.

Although the implications of Meghan Trainor singing You've Got a friend in me to her father uh with her father playing piano and then the west la children's choir backing her up like that was a very odd combination what do you mean and her father was not like a muse i was looking up who is megan trainer's dad because i thought it might be a clue as to why megan trainer has been foisted upon us. Like, oh, is he, he's like a Clive Davis. But no, he's like a...

Head of Halliburton. I think he's not really any of that. Is their parents like both dentists or something? Jewelers. Meghan Trainor's parents are both jewelers. That's not nothing. Yeah, that's money, I guess. She could be Cl davis's jewel like they could be

clive davis's jeweler you gotta wonder if it's something like that no offense to anyone who enjoys the music of megan trainer i do not and i don't understand why she sings like you got a friend of me like you you are the whitest the whitest whitest person why where did all these extra vowels in your singing come from uh not a fan um i there's i was just writing down quotes also some of the copy in this special copy is incredible very strange such as mickey was dreamed up by walt disney an american man from the midwest it truly sounds like a five paragraph essay a high schooler wrote like you know the westerns defines mickey mouse as it was all well the whole thing was a filler and then what was that other bizarre copy there was something oh uh describing mickey mouse as a round-faced

cartoon character who described in that way or was that in the narration somewhere that was it was either sarah highland or kristen bell like this special was written by they made the k-pop band write it and then translate it into english this is all like bizarre the most base english i've ever heard well and someone described like all the forms mickey takes of like and they showed like you know a toaster toaster that looks like mickey tv that looks like mickey uh my favorite was or sent down the runway in the form of a handbag and then as it right and they said that a fashion show happened very quickly while al city started to play the al city song from the end of wreck it ralph that was tweaked for the um paint the

night parade like when will i see you again oh that one yeah okay so that is weird that's coming up i have i have that to look forward to you get a fashion and then they interview you know annie leibovitz and like various fashion people about why mickey is a fashion icon and it's simplicity of design and they show you circles being formed with a compass and all this bullshit is a round face cartoon character uh my favorite uh back and forth we had was i i oh there's a warning on the screen megan schrainer in three minutes i needed that warning thank you uh i texted uh right before that was commercial the narrator said josh gad coming up and i texted that and uh scott you said always a good sentence anytime you've got josh gad in your future you'll be glad for gad

uh i don't um very very bizarre thing and then like also this probably the weirdest thing was this assertion that like because mickey dreamed mickey's indomitable spirit opened the doors to so many creative avenues and then essentially asserting that without mickey there would be no star wars and eventually or marvel Panther. No Black Panther. Like, okay, I know Disney owns these things now, but Mickey did not. What chart could you draw to where Mickey leads directly to Black Panther? Extremely bizarre. Yeah, that is very bizarre.

Jack Kirby buried again. Yeah, there's a weird, I mean, all these corporations rewrite their history, but this is particularly bizarre because they're making it like Mickey was a real person that trailblazed for Black Panther. Like the narrative they're giving off. He found spare time in his full-time duties as a fashion icon. Right. To pioneer, to invent Black Panther. You also, here's what I think is that, you know, I mean, there's, I guess there's impressive

celebrities who appear on stage like Kristen Bell and Josh Gad. They're very famous people. The Goldbergs actress is on right now. I think they just had, was it Lamar Odom? One of the Hamilton actors uh actors who lamar odom is that oh no lamar odom is the basketball player but then you then you have to sit through a lot of like phoned in like neil patrick harris didn't come he just sent in a video right and then this really rushed appearance by uh ab the crown jewel

of the abc empire right now the host of the alec baldwin show alec baldwin um hey hey happy birthday mickey he's doing it like so you can you can feel that right where they cut he's like okay i'm doing one more time and then i'm getting the fuck out of here uh and this aired two days after alec baldwin's arrest for punching a man in the face in new york city yeah they did not edit that out they did get a quick clip from the rock probably on the set of jungle crew like they got him to say like hey happy birthday mickey and he is one of the biggest movie stars in the world that one makes sense to me sure but also are we as a society not are is anyone still impressed by the phoned in cameo filmed between the trailers of whatever the real project is is anyone at home like whoa they got callie cuoco to step outside of where she lives for three seconds and have the copy half memorized.

And whether it's a Disney special or whether it's a commercial encouraging people to vote, are people, is anyone impressed by trailer videos? Well, I don't know about impressed, but I will say I was emailing with my mom about something else, and she did email me a link to this, like the ad for it.

And she's like, you did not tell me about this and I missed it. Really? I was like, was I supposed to? Like, it's of course, it's now all been cut up and put on the ABC's YouTube channel. So you can see probably 100% of it in a playlist form. So, I also also also bizarre things like when when tony hale comes out that oh yeah mickey says hiya pal mickey are for tony hale and mickey are friends yeah well mickey's friend to all really that's sort of his eye but yes specifically it does seem like he and tony have a relationship

that extends past just his normal friendship. I think it's interesting that Mickey is sitting there. Did you see, remember that Don Rickles Spike TV roast thing? Mickey is sitting in a very similar chair to where Don Rickles was sitting during his... Like a velvet couch? Yeah, like a velvet couch. The only thing that's different is that the people that come don't go over and sit with him for the rest of the show. So, like, Tony Hale's not sitting with Mickey the whole show.

They're, like, laughing it up. And there certainly is anything but a roast. Yeah, no. It's just, you know, like, praise that makes no sense about, you know. He's beyond an American icon. He's an intergalactic icon and then you know they chiseled mickey ears into the they sent something to mars or whatever yeah yeah uh to correct myself earlier the actor from hamilton is leslie odom jr won a tony for the role of aaron burr okay

married to chloe kardashian. One of the, yeah. Yeah. But both Lamar and Leslie would not have careers without Mickey Mouse. That's true. A fashion icon, a basketball lover, and a historical rap lover. Mickey has always been all of these things. Mickey loves it. We just saw in between this, one of the commercials with this, I was pointing out to Scott,

is for limited edition Mickey Mouse Beats headphones. And the spokesman in the commercial was Lil Yachty, which is a very time, like that is like, oh, okay. Yes, that is very funny that Disney is, is like the current crop of famous people but like yeah little yadi megan trainer what's on right now it's terrified me where megan trainer leads

a giant children's choir over to the couch where mickey is if i were mickey i'd be scared of that like 50 children all coming at me yeah um it's it was all a little odd the cutaways we're looking at a cutaway right now the cutaways are the fakiest thing and this is why it's good that you didn't go mike because i think you would have been directed for hours and hours this would have become such a chore yeah because they like direct the audience like when the audience is like standing up and like the look at everyone's faces and during these like shows, not award shows, but like these weird specials. Everyone will, if they're supposed to be excited, will have these faces on that look so unnatural and not what excitement looks like. But it's clear that some director was like, all right, now we need this section to stand up and clap as loud and as hard as you can.

And it's just this fake thing. And they do this a lot and they cut in inserts. And yeah, it's a big pain in the ass especially for i was saying for ntc127's performance the cutaways you know the name of this band in front of me uh what is it say it again ntc127 ntc that's a video format isn't it to export an nTC 127. Aspect ratio. They, the audience for that, I was saying I couldn't tell if it was central casting seat fillers or ABC employees

because it seemed like it was just rows of women who they're like, all right, now we're on you and just look real excited. Clap. Like,

you're really into this. I just, my big issue, you know, I don't ever want to be just blindly nostalgic and something is better because it was in the past. But let me say this. Like, I was an active fan of, like, the VMAs in the 80s and the 90s. Oh, yeah. And I like that they were sloppy.

They were sloppy. There were mistakes. People did shit and they didn't have cameras on it and they had to react and somebody acted out or these Kanye moments even up until until recently i love things like that there's an eddie murphy hosted vmas where it is so sloppy he is not rehearsed he takes a camera backstage into a bathroom and everybody's like ah like he i don't think he told people he was gonna do it it certainly wasn't blocked out why have we all accepted that these specials are so glossy and hyper edited there's no room for anything remotely interesting to happen

see i always like the movie awards better because they always came at the start of summer and i'd get to see previews of like oh what movies are coming out this summer and there was usually cool musical performances there too too. But then the VMAs always came at the end of summer. And I was like, oh, no, summer's almost over. The VMAs are here. Oh, so you have dread because you're maybe doing homework by then. Yeah, doing like, I have to finish summer reading. I have to finish this in five days.

You're saying you don't care if it's taped or live or slick as long as you get to see movie trailers and it's the start of summer. I, well, I'm very easy to trick at the start of summer. Uh, uh, sure.

But no, I agree with Scott. I like it when it's a little looser. It is so, so very slick. I mean, I liked, I,

I'm sure part, we talked about this on the, the Christmas like parade episode, um, the Christmas specials. Like we, my family watched that the christmas like parades episode um the christmas specials like we my family watch that every year like christmas morning and they're so boring now they're deeply boring they've gotten they've just gotten to the point i think where they are just trying to like mistakes are not tolerated they just the control is tightened so like because

those old specials are boring but because they were rougher they were interesting yeah and and again this is this might be nostalgia tricking me but some of those specials were like this is the shot live on main street right now and we're like well cool disney disneyland on christmas day or disney world on christmas day and now it's all like they start filming that shit in october they'll like take down halloween decorations and cordon off a little area to like yeah we're gonna film this for the christmas thing oh yeah they're movies it's inserts uh yeah they're filming audiences it's it's so preened as opposed to like let's let regis do whatever he wants and like get people's names wrong and miss here where are you from where are you from where are you from all right back to you so if we were gonna plus up this mickey special

uh what do we get regis or eddie murphy to host it maybe both of them i don't know about current eddie murphy but current regis for sure yeah that's the solution uh i just give him no time to rehearse it could even be all the same stuff I want people to trip I want Mickey's eye to fall out I want problems And then like Mickey will speak a lot Like whoever's doing Mickey's voice has to be on a mic Behind the stage and they just

Has to react to whatever people say or do Yeah sure And the audience and everybody should be fed a lot of booze And people should be able to shout whatever they want At Mickey and he has to deal with it uh-huh and still the k-pop band ntc 127 should be there right no no they're staying there yeah of course yeah uh mike i don't want to ruin the end of this for you but it does end with mickey coming out in his classic you know red pants and tail you know the shorts tails oh no no no like his formal attire his form

formal conductor attire josh gad's here uh josh gad has just showed up on screen my impression of josh gad is like the pillsbury doughboy was like hello i'm josh gad that is kind of his voice when he's doing like his his like sticky voice yeah yeah yeah he gets cheeky i'm olaf the snowman i'll also i you know i know he's not affiliated with the company anymore but no disney special is any good in my book without the terrible acting of michael eisner so my request is that still though he's not in charge of the company this event should be hosted live on stage by michael leisner that's the only way i'm happy oh uh oh yeah mickey comes out informal where all his friends come out too and then he stands who are his friends oh pluto and scooby and not ntc 127 uh i think everyone comes out at the end actually everyone from the special. And then Mickey is raised up on a platform that then becomes a tiered birthday cake.

And he starts dancing again, but a little looser dancing. And the song that is playing is Zero to Hero from the Hercules soundtrack. What? Now? Yeah, now. At the very end, at the grand finale of Mickey's birthday party. But hey, he's the birthday boy. He gets the song he wants, right?

I know we need to wrap this up, but also my big comment is that this special, if you're asking what the core of the special was, it's pretty much people come out and sing When You Wish Upon a Star and You've Got a Friend in Me to Mickey, which makes me think, so Mickey only likes the songs that his company made. Yes. He likes songs where ultimately, like, at the end of the day, So Mickey only likes the songs that his company made. Yes. He likes songs where ultimately, like, at the end of the day, the songwriting royalties go to me.

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as they have done in the elections that transpired on Tuesday. We are recording this hot on the heels of the midterm elections, which I hope that wherever you are listening to this, that you're mildly happy with whatever happened in your area. I think we can agree that it was not a blue wave, but there was some blue. There are some blue speckles and some nice things that that occurred. Very good stuff happened. California kind of ate shit, but we'll be fine.

There's some good ones. We're just catching a couple uh this one in orange county seems to have flipped blue and oh yeah katie hill uh we have a new someone yeah yeah for some reason california denied a rent control measure that uh you know probably screws us and everyone who's ever been on this podcast and everyone who's ever been on any podcast a large portion of uh california residents rent not own and uh that proposition had a lot of money coming in from massive massive real estate companies uh the no on that proposition uh so there's there are some bummers there's some good things but we were primarily

invested in the midterms as to how it affects anaheim and the future of the disneyland resort and this is all this is all legitimate stuff and i until we started talking about doing this episode i don't think we realized how much was on the line for disney and we will reveal to you as we go how things landed for disney um yes also if you are not in california or disneyland is not your like primary park home park whatever there will be plenty of theme park infrastructure talk which everyone loves uh when we do so and we will make a point to try and contextualize it in in terms of larger theme park comings and goings and uh and if none of that interests you i will still like quiz jason about his diet periodically during the episode there'll still be some treat bullshit i'm sure

uh um so all right if we're talking about talking about Disneyland and how it compares to other resorts, in Florida, they set up this fake shadow government, the Reedy Creek Improvement District. I was reading about it. Yeah, it's crazy. They're just their own government. Yeah. They did that by design so that they didn't have to deal with the surrounding city as they did when they started Disneyland in 55. You know, Disney has always had to curry favor with the city of Anaheim. And they didn't buy all the land that they maybe would have wanted to because they didn't know if it was going to be a hit or a flop. So by the time Florida comes around, they have a shadow government.

Yes. But not the case in Disneyland. Right. I read that at Florida, that Disney World government can issue municipal bonds. Hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. Just Disney, the Disney company. Yes.

Ultimately. And I'm sure we're going to talk at some point about Celebration Florida. But there was just a very good, is the YouTube channel Rob Plays? Is that the name of it? If that's what's in my head that's probably it there was a very good uh series of youtube videos about celebration florida which was all this effort to that's disney's town that they built on the outskirts of the disney world property and it was like they were gonna like lose the land if they didn't do something with it so all right let's build a town and they since have divested from the town and it was kind of a disaster and it's going back to nature almost it sounds like things are not

going great in celebration crazy colonial houses are being reclaimed by swampland and plants and alligators apartment buildings condemned uh there's a very interesting article out there about the movie theater and they built a big movie house and that the people actually really did love. And then I think AMC took over running it and then they divested from it and then the locals tried to buy it. But then there was issues with that and the building is not doing well. It's a real fucking mess. Now it's just filled with wasps. It's a wasp sanctuary.

Probably. fucking mess like now it's just filled with wasps it's a wasp sanctuary um i yeah so to it's just funny that like all right what happens if disney does control a city it's a horrible notorious mess so instead uh but it doesn't seem to be any better necessarily when they have to do a little dance with the city that they're in. So we'll step you through this bit by bit. If anybody listening to this follows Disneyland news, then you're maybe aware of a couple odd things that have been happening all year. About a year ago, we recorded a podcast in which we eulogized some businesses that were being removed from the downtown Disney shopping district. Yes, that's right. Disney announced plans to build a luxury hotel at the outskirts of downtown Disney.

And in order to do this, they were going to have to get rid of the AMC Theater, the Rainforest Cafe, the ESPN Zone, and of course, Earl of Sandwich. We did eulogies for all of these establishments. They were all going to disappear. And then they did disappear. All of these places were taken out of downtown Disney. Closed. And then to go back a year or farther, in 2016, they first announced this new hotel, right?

And the plans have since changed a couple times this new hotel was going to be a 700 room four diamond hotel built on top of the downtown disney resort so north of these restaurants that closed oh yes okay okay and and they put out some very scratchy concept art mic Mickey hugging a child in a lobby, a pool, and then the rooftop bar, lounge, restaurant that would have views into the park and you'd be able to watch fireworks there. Sounded pretty nice. And by the way, four diamond resorts are a big deal for the city of Anaheim. Yes.

Something that they want, something that they're after, and something that they are issuing tax subsidies in order to encourage to happen yes because right now but other property the people who run the garden walk mall that's right nearby have talked about building four diamond resorts too it's better for their uh convention business to have a higher tier of hotel yeah because right now the only four diamond resorts are the disneyland hotel and the grand californian hotel oh but there are multiple other four diamond resorts coming yeah like you said at the garden walk the annabelle hotel which i always thought seemed like a very nice hotel mission style building kind of right behind california adventure closed over the summer and they're leveling it and building like a a new annabelle hotel that will be twice as big and will be a four diamond resort and then

i think there's two others coming on top of that okay so this is all this is all good news anaheim is getting along with disney they're they Disney. They're going to build nice hotels. They're going to get these tax incentives. They'll add more parking for downtown Disney and there was going to be a parking garage next to it or underneath for

the new hotel and for downtown Disney. But then... But then, cut to a year later, the plans of the hotel have changed they've moved about a only a block south but the building looks it was still about the same number of rooms but it looks massive it was going to encompass the monorail stop and it was going to be built on top of like yeah the movie theater the starbucks on that part of the property oh yeah espn zone the rainforest cafe and the earl of sandwich yeah which was not very old the earl of sandwich either oh yeah true yeah 2012 i think

yeah yeah um yeah and and i think part of the reason they moved it from instead of the hotel being built over by the mickey and friends garage, which you know about because we talked about it, instead of there, they wanted to move it onto the monorail path. So they did this. It's fine, right? It's just somewhere else on our property. It was not fine. The city of Anaheim, furious about this. Technically, to move the hotel required a different address uh

like this is not the same it's not with the plans that you filed with us so we can't approve it and the tax subsidies you would get uh would not be part of this right and it also cost the move cost jobs it closed all forced all of these businesses to close now i believe they were trying to reallocate people's positions within either the resort or these independent these companies starbucks amc you know find the employees new jobs but that's still like a lot of businesses closing right at once yeah yeah um so. So Rainforest Cafe gutted. ESPN zone. If you go there right now, it still says ESPN zone, but there's nothing on the inside.

This is a very odd thing for a Disney shopping district to have just shuttered buildings. Shuttered buildings. And clearly. Playing football games on the outside TV. The outside TV is still on. Yeah, they're on. That's the outside TV. The outside TV is still on. That's the weirdest thing. I think you're right

but also I was thinking about what is the reality where these screens aren't on and the lights aren't on and it just looks like a scary building probably so it makes sense to me that something is on those TVs but it is weird. Sure. And they've made an effort to make that this zone of downtown Disney feel like a little

street fair they kept the stage going where you can see you know some swing band or whatever it is and they put up there's a bunch of food trucks um but none of it truly distracting from the fact there's a gutted movie theater um so what has happened now is a pretty unprecedented event in Disney history that a closed shop, the Earl of Sandwich, has been reopened. The Earl of Sandwich is back. I saw it with my own two eyes a couple nights ago. Ah, really? Now, I've never eaten at the Earl of Sandwich.

I have only been once. With me? I think right when it first opened, yeah. What's the read on the quality of the Earl of Sandwich. I have only been once. With me? I think right when it first opened, yeah. What's the read on the quality of the Earl of Sandwich? It is above average for Disney. So not good. Well, I wouldn't say not good. I would say it's very reasonably priced for Disney.

And I don't know. I think it's one of the better options for cheap lunch. Yes. Disney uh and I don't know I think it's one of the better options for cheap lunch yes it's one of the few counter service options in officially in downtown Disney you go to the hell hotels and get decent counter service too a couple of the sandwiches are better than others I'm trying to think the one I like like the one that's the first one whatever that one is yeah it's like they have that gobbler I feel like that was a big thing when they opened they have like the yeah gobbler's like Thanksgiving dinner on a roll okay I never had that one okay um but yeah it's like a turkey i feel like that was a big thing when they opened they have like yeah gobblers like thanksgiving dinner on a roll okay i never had that one okay um but yeah it's uh it's one of the better places to eat for seven dollars yeah it was my salvation in paris because

they i was able to go in there and get a cup of tea and a banana because I was so desperate in Paris for something not just soaked in salt. So, hey, thanks for the banana Earl of Sandwich. I think something about the brand weirds me out in general. I feel like, at least in the Paris one, I didn't love the smell of the facility. Some of the shots of the sandwiches

gross me out a little bit. Some of them seem unbelievably rich. And I have this other thing with the Earl of Sandwich, which I think will become a Patreon episode at some point, which is the owner of Earl of Sandwich, Robert Earl, who also owns Buca di Beppo and Planet Hollywood. And there is a series. You know, I don't even want to get into it i yeah uh we may have talked about him a little in the past yeah um we will delve into this the robert earl in general but there's let me just say that robert earl uh gives me an icky feeling

about this brand uh in in addition to the jet the icky feeling i get by looking at it. But you can attest to the quality of the food is like pretty good, fine. I also will recommend the Pizza Napoli, the Via Napoli, whatever the pizza slices to go in downtown Disney. Very good. I didn't know they did to go. Yeah, I think it's been closed for a while

because I think they've been redoing a lot of that. You have to demand it though. What's that? For them to do this, to slice this to go. You have to stand at the desk and say, I want to tease. With a gun? Yeah, like Jason. Oh, I see. You're teasing me.

I get it. Okay. You know, downtown Disney is in a good zone right now. I feel like they are adding some good establishments in general. Splitsville is fairly high quality. Salt and Straw. establishments in general uh splitsville is uh fairly high quality you know we'll get we'll get into this in uh you know a number of sectors at some godforsaken point in the future but this is just this this is the odd crux event that made us have to talk about a lot of stuff a sandwich

place closed entirely all the signage removed the all the the kitchen implements are out of there. And now it is back. They hired back up and it's like it never happened. This awkward situation presented by the bizarre nature of Disney's relationship with the city of Anaheim at this moment. And it started like once you start reading about all this and then it ties back to the parking garage fiasco from the year prior, which is they were going to build a big parking garage and have a whole new hub across from harbor and then the city was mad because they didn't want those businesses to suffer because it would have just been a bridge from the parking garage you couldn't access harbor and the local businesses yeah let's let's slow down because you're you're going very fast through that because that was long like visitors going fast above shitty restaurants i was just trying to make sure the

episode doesn't go three hours so but the current state of the hotel is that it was can't the project was canceled the eastern gateway which was the name of this parking garage that was going to be for people coming from disneyland from uh south of the resort uh they were going to direct the traffic coming from the south to that garage and coming from the north to the mickey and friends garage all this because and people who've been at disneyland recently now know that they are building a new parking garage right next to mickey and friends and don't worry we'll be covering it at length yes but um disney is in sore sore need of more parking because galaxy's edge is going to be a clusterfuck it's going to be so crazy when that thing oh it's crazy already every time we're there we talk about how are they

possibly going to add an entire star wars theme park, essentially, on top of what we already have? New parking sorely needed. They had this whole plan for a gigantic structure, and the city of Anaheim said no, not happening. Because they had this crazy scheme that, yeah, to get into the resort from that side of the property, you would have to go into, like, the ground floor of this massive structure through the security setup and over this sky bridge. You would not be able to enter off of the street anymore directly into the Esplanade to security there.

You were going to have to take this sky bridge in so that they could send everyone through security in the garage take the walkway above harbor in then into the esplanade that pissed off yeah all of those restaurants and there's quite a few hotels that are right there along harbor many of which market themselves as like the closest hotels to the main entrance of disney closer than the disneyland hotel and paradise pier hotel distance wise um so now there's a big clunky concrete bridge blocking views blocking your path uh that they're like sending people through the sky above local businesses that have been there for decades and decades. It wasn't a good look. I will say this.

It's a thing they need. It's a thing I kind of wish they would get to build, but not the best scenario for the neighborhood. There seems like there was a solution where they could let people exit the bridge and at least go down on the Harbor. Yeah. Yeah. But they don't want to do that because they want to,

they're trying to choke all those businesses out. So that eventually they go out of business and Disney can keep buying up property. Yeah, that's what they're doing everywhere. I mean, I think they're hoping the Garden Walk just literally like folds into the ground before they buy it. Because like they want all of that. They want everything there, but they want to pay like dirt cheap prices for it. It's got to be the plan. And this is if you haven't been to the Garden Walk, it is this shopping center.

Not even that close to Disney. It's a to be the plan. And this is, if you haven't been to the Garden Walk, it is this shopping center, not even that close to Disney. It's a pretty awkward zone. But it does bridge. It would bridge a parking garage to a potential third gate, which is sort of south of the convention center and all this stuff. So, yeah, I absolutely. And if you go around that mall, nobody is there. It is so desolate if you can imagine that the opening of the new house of blues did not transform the area immediately i really think that disney is trying

to like burn this mall to the ground without like technically doing it i mean just by the sheer nature of being a mall in america the diagnosis is not good yeah why get into that business anytime past 2005 yeah unless you can fully commit resources to like an outdoor mixed use americana uh glenn uh you're referring to the kind of thing these are la disney-esque mall outdoor mall the americana in glendale which has a trolley and Frank Sinatra music and a fountain show. Yes. So if you're going to do a fountain show and a trolley, by all means, build a mall. Sure, go nuts.

But no, not a normal mall. Yeah. So, you know, all of this combative relationship is somewhat fueled by the mayor of Anaheim tom tate and tom tate essentially was was promising to be tougher on disney and and and i think it there's been this tension that has gone for many many years it goes back to our episode about the mcghee and friends garage where you know back then in i'm sorry in the in the 90s when disney was thinking about building their second gate, not in Anaheim, but over in Long Beach, part of that was Disney saying, hey, Anaheim, hey, residents of Anaheim, taxpayers, build us a parking garage. Yes. And through the years, Disney has, or like the city of Anaheim has stood up and said, no, we're not going to play ball like that.

And it's probably never been tougher than under Mayor Tom Tate. Yeah. And like to just a few things, there's a big article in the L.A. Times about it, which is when Disney got pissed and tried to pull like the access to early movies from the L.A. Times critics and shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But like stuff like that, Mickey and Friends parking garage, Anaheim paid for it. They just paid for the whole thing and then they just charge disney a dollar rent every year and disney collects the money from it so there's like there's like so many examples of anaheim paying for something and disney getting all the money the anaheim wanted to put like a dollar tax on the tickets and disney's like no way and yeah in la times it was like that would have been a billion dollars for anaheim which is not doing so well as a city right now there's a lot of problems in anaheim i there was a little run where i was taking my bike down and riding along the river

uh that goes right past angel stadium and uh you know kind of kind of weaves through there in the eastern zone of anaheim it is scary around there there are massive shanty towns like gigantic right at the border of angel stadium and that and you know not that far from disney there are you know there are gangs and there are murders and like there's you know it's it's a like the the take disney out of the equation the city of anaheim has a lot of problems and is really struggling and needs some help yeah i california at large like so many places there's a huge homeless population like there's a huge homelessness issue uh uh and anaheim yeah it's awful i mean i would say the city council and the Disney company should be ashamed of themselves.

But corporations and government entities are not human, contrary to Supreme Court rulings, and cannot feel shame. I hope the people in charge of these organizations sleep a little poorly at night. They don't. They don't because this is uh capitalism is meant to work like that dollar the dollar of rent a year that happens all the time like anytime a sports stadium is built the city or the county or the state has essentially paid for that right yes that's a common thing but it's like it doesn't make sense if the place where you are operating your business like is suffering so poorly that like you're not helping out at all and where the people who live around there couldn't

possibly afford to go to the places that are getting right all of the money and you bring up sports stadiums let me bring another thing into this which is very similar degree of politics going on with the angels right now tom tate has been tougher on the angels than previous mayors and is like it's that kind of thing it's like no we're not gonna pay for you to get nicer luxury boxes or whatever and the owner of the angels is furious and he in fact has been threatening to take the Angels out of there. They have to stay in Southern California somewhere, but they're starting to look in Tustin. They're starting to look in Carson, I believe. So with all this Disney stuff going on, same syndrome going on with the Angels.

And it got so bad, in fact, that people perceived the Angels changing their name to los angeles angels as a fuck you to anaheim and to tom tate yeah like how dare you treat us like as we're not going to even mention anaheim and try to get tourism to anaheim uh we consider as part of la we're not giving you a name check anymore and that's one of the only things that uh that's one of the only tom tate moves disney may have liked because there's also rumors that disney will just take all that land where there's a baseball stadium and level it and put at least you know a parking garage or something or probably another park or potentially a third gate or a fourth gate oh my god yeah yeah or something else they need desperately talking about uh people taking advantage of stuff, employee parking.

Because employees have to park so far away and get bussed in. It's one of the biggest examples of wage theft in America by a company of the workers, second probably to like Amazon employees having to spend half an hour going through metal detectors and not getting paid for that time is that right that's the case yeah whether whether it's a conscious thought in the people at disney the higher-ups at disney or not i think that at least subconsciously or just by the nature of how all this works they are hoping that literally the whole city of anaheim becomes uninhabitable and

everyone needs to sell to them. Like that is sort of, I think the thinking of like, we're going, eventually this is going to be as big as Disney world, maybe in 30 years, let's just wreck everything around us. And then we'll come in and buy everything up. I don't know if they're really thinking in those terms,

but that is what's happening. That is the desired result. And also if that does happen, they're not going to share it with their workers. They're not sharing that wealth with their workers. There was an article. That'll come up too in this. Yeah.

There's been multiple articles over recent years of like Disney employees living super far away or in some cases living in their cars because they're being paid such low wages by Disney. Yes, and now Disney has committed to paying $15 as a minimum, but we'll loop back around to that because I realize there's a little caveat there. Yeah, that is incredibly loaded. So to get things closer to the midterms that have just occurred, this luxury hotel is canceled and it's canceled because of this address change. You know, you said you're going to build it there, not there.

Now, in another scenario and with another mayor and with another city council, it might be like, oh, that's an easy change to make. Absolutely. But Disney pissed off Anaheim with this eastern gateway parking garage and i think there was pressure on the city council and the mayor to be harder and for that's what they were elected to do was to be firmer uh to disney so they did not play ball they rejected this this hotel thing and then okay there's also the this as we're saying there's this issue with the four diamond hotels where any anaheim wants these things so they are offering tax subsidies which would make it much cheaper uh to pay um and make it much cheaper to build these hotels um but as part of the tax subsidies you would have to agree to a measure which is on the ballot this week and the measure is not just disney but all the all the hotels being built in

the near future have to start at 15 an hour and go up a dollar every single year. Very reasonable, like reasonable, a reasonable measure. And I'll go ahead and spoil this past, past by a slim margin in Anaheim. And, you know, this will apply to any new hotels that are taking the tax incentive. Any new hotels taking the anaheim tax incentives we'll start to go from 15 16 17 dollars and have good wages for employees this is good wages have been stagnant across the country for years so and let anyone who's like wow 15 minimum wage and in a few years 18 minimum wage people living it up in california the price of uh to live in california is much more expensive than where you may uh live and be hearing this

absolutely uh so this is good right hotels will be paying people more money disney will be paying people more money not so fast here's what happened in July. Disney says, we've heard Bernie Sanders. We've heard what people have been saying. $15 an hour. And we'll start moving things up 45 cents a year. Different than a dollar. Pretty different from a dollar.

In August, because of all of these problems with the hotel, Disney says, you what forget about it we're not going to do it and we don't need those tax subsidies so don't worry about it thus skirting measure l which this week has passed measure l would have required them to pay more than 45 cents an hour would have they've been a dollar more per worker right so they're saying you know what we did the math fuck it we'd rather not get the tax subsidies but also not have to pay our workers more yeah so it's very but but it's of course framed in a pr way of they're doing something very altruistic because they're saying you know what they like the press release and everything was like you know what it's just gotten too tense between us and the government you know what never mind those subsidies we're not going to take

them because we just want a fresh start we want everything to be good between the two yeah and also let there's one other twist to that when they did agree to the 15 minimum uh wage for union employees for non-union employees they gave them something like a $15.65 an hour minimum wage. Oh, yeah, just a stick. A common union busting, like, shitty, like, flipping off, flipping you the bird sort of tactic.

Just a shitty little dig at the union, basically, to say, like, fuck you for being in a union. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, mean, petty shit. So let me just, let's reset and make this a little personal for a minute. As you can hear, we're not happy about any of this.

And in general, you've certainly picked up that we are pretty on the left side of things politically. However, we love Disneyland. We love Disney World. You've heard us talk for many, many hours about all of these things. It puts us in a pretty odd place. And I feel so mixed up at this point. Well, sure. Well, I mean, the bomb that everyone says nowadays is there's no ethical consumption under capitalism.

Like, where should we turn our attention to? Video games? Red Dead Redemption 2? They were working people a hundred hour like 100 hour weeks to get this dumb ass fucking game that makes me so mad i just want to chill out and just watch one of my favorite movies like i don't know sausage party uh you know people were treated great and with respect yep no they pulled a real screw job on the animators no uh we all personally i'm sure have many stories of being screwed about uh various jobs in our industry and we are all in uh at least one union uh

yeah right now sometimes multiples and sometimes ones that you have to join but then they like severely limit what that union can actually do and they like those unions weak but you have to join it anyway there's uh yeah there's all kinds of odd chicanery yeah boy a lot of stuff's not good huh yeah uh everything's bad um so when we're talking about this it became kind of apparent to us i guess we weren't even really fully understanding it until weeks ago is that in times where the government kisses Disney's ass and does probably bad stuff for humans, individual people, that's the time when big stuff is built.

Yes. So very quickly it was obvious. Cause like when we were talking back about that parking garage, there was a whole other plan supposedly for whatever Marvel land was going to be. And was going to come out in the esplanade and like there was a whole like california venture was going to change because of the nature of the bridge and because they weren't going to have to put security where it currently is in that south side of it they could claim a little of the esplanade property because no one's going to be walking oh i didn't know that actually i mean this i this was never like officially announced but the word was we're pulling we're moving like the boundaries of

disney's california venture out this is all rumor but i think it makes a lot of sense because when you see her because now they have the space marvel essentially most likely is happening i mean we know a lot of it is replacing uh bugs land but there was also talk of it replacing kind of this desolate hollywood studio area that's always been sort of a problem so for them to build on top of that and then expand outwards beyond it would have been huge right because basically what would have happened is there wouldn't have been any security there at that south point and it would have just been a it would be a more narrow walkway because everyone's now been through security and all it is is just people walking into the part of the esplanade so like you could have moved hollywood land out there made a

big new ride done a whole so like there were all these plans that then got changed because that gateway project got uh got shuttered or whatever um so it affected not just all this kind of infrastructural stuff it's a little dry. It changed the makeup of Marvel. Probably Marvel. Yeah, the chances are it was probably Marvel and it was going to go over there. And now it's in Bugs Land or whatever. And it should be said, Disney doesn't need these taxes. Disney is kind of up there with like Amazon and Apple of like more money than God.

Like can do whatever they want. Yeah. god like can do whatever they want yeah once the fox merger goes through at the start of 2019 they will be a massive media company even bigger they're already massive and the greater spectrum of of media right now is that netflix dropped a bomb on everything and everywhere is struggling and uh until unless places can figure out their streaming situation and disney is almost is one of the companies that probably the only company guaranteed that when they start their streaming service i mean unless something goes horribly awry like that they're the disney's once they pull all their movies and shows from all the other from netflix hulu amazon yeah they're a

force to be reckoned with immediately out of the gate. So their new media future is fantastic. Of course, the biggest victim of that Netflix bomb, the idea of curation and taste. Because Netflix is now everything. Are you saying that not every Netflix show is a masterpiece out of the gate? Yeah, whatever. I can't even remember half of these shows like there's four new series every yeah it's it's yeah you if you liked apocalypse now maybe you'll like the miranda singh show so a friend texted me a friend from high school texted me just yesterday saying like, it's very funny that Netflix is putting out the, they paid for the finishing funds for

the other side of the wind, Orson Welles' last unfinished film. And it is available to watch now. And he's like, it's funny because they have like no movies before 1980. So like the main sort of story point of the movie of aging studio director trying to make an imprint in, you know, artist driven 70s Hollywood. There's no context there. There's no you can't watch the movies to contextualize this. They did somehow make two documentaries about finishing the other side of the wind. So I guess that kind of contextualizes it.

But so many- Yeah, Netflix will increasingly become Netflix properties from 2015 and beyond. Yes. Which is why they're making so much so that they can say, we have a gazillion hours of shows because they're about to lose not just Disney,

but probably a ton of other media companies because they've all helped Netflix get rich. This is, it's madness right now. Everything's madness on our level, on the gigantic media level. It's everything's on theme park level. Everything is bad, like I said earlier. So make sure to support support your uh local local independent self-owned media uh patreon.com slash podcast the ride podcast the ride on team public don't just don't just go watch star wars movies listen to us analyze characters in the background of star wars

movies and support us uh doing so there will be a whole dj rex episode for sure on patreon next year and you know what since this has become we'll get back on track but since this has become essentially a what's going on not just in a bad ways but good ways uh uh in the current state of the disneyland resort did you guys catch the jim hill that apparently Disney is not confirmed it's not done apparently Disney has asked Paul Rubens to reprise his role as the voice of you know I did not see that I mean that makes a lot of sense of course so that's very good news they not if I love DJ Rex being there but if it's not Paul Rubens I don't want him to talk for sure i want him to be a prop but if but if they get him and there's new rex dialogue i will be so so excited if disney came to you scott and said would you do the voice of rex absolutely not no i would not

commit the sacrilege dialogue for the animatronic to say? I would. If they need anyone to do so. After we just trashed them. We'll continue to do so. No, we're not trashing the creative people. We're screwing ourselves over in terms of the Disney relationship. I don't know. Thankfully, there's so much media, they'll probably never hear it.

Good point. Absolutely not. The show isn't that popular. No, it's not. Hey, the Disney executives, they gotta finish watching Maniac and hear it good point absolutely the show isn't that popular i know no it's not hey the disney executives they gotta finish watching maniac and the haunting a hill house just like everyone else you know and as yeah and as soon as uh as soon as scott gets the deal to write the guardians of the galaxy spin-off tv show on disney play that features uh cosmo the dog uh then we'll take this episode right down oh yeah i will be i'd be asking anyone to pull uh right as much as possible although again to contextualize it uh uh it's not just disney doing all this this stuff we're slagging uh it's everyone every company in

every field there is a reminder there's no benevolent companies uh besides charities so back to us being conflicted yeah basically the sum up was what we realized is that okay if a crazy kiss ass government there's a good chance we could get bigger better rides because now disney feels much more comfortable they're getting more money in taxes back or maybe they'll just get like anaheim will pay for a new spider-man ride like who knows what crazy thing they can trick or make lobby their way into getting from the government so what's what's yeah what's on the table okay yeah the hotel potentially tell more hotel all of these canceled plans could be back on the table we have not seen this many things canceled since that beloved Disney anniversary special hosted by the late, great Harry Anderson featuring coming soon rides, the majority of which never

came to fruition. Yeah. We could be looking at something closer to a new Disney decade where a ton happens. It's possible. I mean, obviously in the short term, I would imagine that parking garages and hotels are of the highest priority because they need more rooms. Because if you guys haven't noticed lately, the park is insane.

The parking garage fills up. Mickey and Friends fills up in the middle of the afternoon most days. I get alerts on Twitter every day. Mickey and Friends is full. It's like we need more parking more rooms it it severely impacts like did you have a good time there today or not it makes it yeah it makes you more tired i can still have a good time when we tried to get out of the park when we tried to get out of california adventure the crowd the one time we were there and um uh uh the the paint the night parade was happening it was the infrastructure had fallen

apart like the parade was passing but the parade goes around the main entrance sort of pathways so you could not cross you could not exit the park without taking an insane rat and so it's just mobs of people they don't have enough people working directing it's crazy it's crazy and it's like i mean i'm just saying it because i want another theme park but it is once you once you've been there and you've gone for so many years and it's been like pretty bad for years now it's like make the third park i mean do something make it half the size of these parts like something right now because this is crazy like obviously so many people are going to this like like they're just trying to maximize the parks had never been better the way they've

juiced up california adventure you have two crazy high quality parks back to back only to be improved by galaxy's edge yeah and other parks don't have as we said disney world is sort of its own self-contained entity uh they've got plenty of room to spread people out uh universal orlando kind of butts up against a lot of houses and neighborhoods they still have a lot of area to work with and they're expanding uh down the road they've bought up a bunch of land and stuff to expand to they keep adding hotels universal hollywood is kind of in an odd spot because it's right in the you know right around a lot of houses and businesses and stuff on multiple elevations multiple elevations but it is a self-contained movie studio and stuff the both universals on both coasts the issue they deal with is noise after a certain point you'll

notice universal orlando not open super late most of the time as opposed to disney which just blares phantasmic and neighbors have to deal with it every night at 10 o'clock and yeah if you're lee i was we were i was in the parking garage like hearing fantastic like that the far end of the parking garage and you could hear phantasmic as if you were watching as if you were right in it um so uh yeah a lot's at stake beyond the infrastructural stuff um so this was a very important election. So let's say the specific races and what was its state. Mayor Tom Tate,

who has been tough on Disney and who has led a Disney, an anti-Disney dominated city council. Tom Tate, no longer the mayor. He has finished his term out. Reached term limit. So Finished his last term. Termed out. Reached term limits.

So it's not like he was kicked out because he was bad or anything. And when we say tough on Disney, it's still very, very PR, very discourse heavy. Oh, yeah. It's just asking basic necessities. Very, very, very tame. Like, no one's cursing. No one's like that salty Beto o'rourke saying everyone did a great fucking job or what how dare you i'm kidding it's the most human moment in politics all year it's better we're cursing on stage yeah um yeah he tried hard he did good but the um

yeah it's still it's still civil and even, the people who are, when I say quote unquote anti-Disney, they're all still on record saying Disney is so important to this community and we want this relationship to work well. Nobody's like kick them out. There's no, you know, so, so anti-Disney is barely anything. But when you're dealing on Disney's level, anything utter than do whatever the fuck you want is, is a problem. And that is why Disney has spent more in

this election than ever before. 1.5 million dollars in spending via a PAC. Sorry, I just saw today the number is closer to 1.6. The most expensive unions also spending

1.5 million, more? The most expensive unions also spending $1.5 million. But regardless, the most expensive election in Anaheim. Right. Which would indicate, like we were saying, like the plans they have are big probably for different things, which indicates that they're willing to spend this much money. This is just stuff we know about. Like there could be stuff that isn't even on the table that's not announced and uh so they have they've pumped a lot of money to certain candidates via an organization called

soar which is which stands for support our anaheim resort now soar isn't only disney it's also uh you know the it's garden walk it's anybody building fancy hotels and right now Mickey has just risen atop a giant cake and I like still playing in the background yeah the background of all this has included the Disney special Donald is in a sparkly sailor suit I like this too I would like to see this

I kind of like having a yeah this is good I like having a visual this reminds me of like taking meetings at like fancy companies and they have tv silently playing stuff in the law it's it's it makes me feel important keeping things alive and it's good to see future guest john stamos having a good time guaranteed future guest john stamos uh we'll make it happen dan that. That's the white whale. So, Disney, it's tons of money spent by Disney via SOAR. Tons of money spent by unions. The most combative Anaheim relationship ever.

So, not only is the mayorship up for grabs, but also three seats in the Anaheim City Council. Enough to flip things pro or anti-Disney. Yes, it is a seven-seat... Okay, local elections are confusing. It is a seven-seat city council, including the mayor is one of those seats. It's called a council manager government. That's the style of government. That is the style of government.

All of these seats used to be elected at large, meaning like everyone's voting for every candidate. As of 2016, due to an ACLU lawsuit, the seats, the council seats are allocated more like, oh, this person represents these districts, this person represents these districts. Makes more sense to me also it makes more sense because it is more representative of anaheim at large the older system apparently uh did not accurately represent the the people who did not benefit from that system was unfairly a large latino population of Anaheim. Once again, all of these breakdowns occurring while the TV is on mute in the background where Pluto is dancing up a storm.

This is the perfect synthesis of this podcast. And our brains. Left politics meet Pluto dancing in a sparkly collar. This is how our brains are broken. Jason is talking about precincts and I I looked, and Scott is just looking lovingly at the TV as Pluto is dancing. It's hard to be mad at Pluto.

I was trying to do both. I was like, oh, yeah, Jason Sings is very important. I also saw the writer credits, and there was a writer credit for Joe Saunders. Is that the Joe Saunders that we know? Comedy Bang Bang writer. Do you want to text him? I don't know. I am going to text him. You know what? bang bang writer you want to text him um i don't know i am gonna text it

you know what i was gonna host of doughboys spinoff the bread cast uh yes um joe saunders so a lot distracting me but let's yes let's get back to disenfranchisement uh um i uh okay so what were you driving at jason though in terms of this oh so it's a it's a it's a very specific kind of system and one that has just changed in recent years now i think the change is good um the other thing that i learned about this and uh this is apparently another thing very common and more local elections because they tend to be more managerial positions, there is less of an emphasis on, quote unquote, party politics, partisan politics. A lot of this is, again, quote unquote, nonpartisan politics, where the candidates do not have

an RDI next to their names that said if you are a registered democrat or republican you are it's very easy to look that up so you can kind of get a gauge of where these people may fall on the political spectrum which is more reliable than looking up the candidate websites all of which are the same cookie cutter templates and largely pr speak and kind of confusing okay okay sure uh yeah i mean there's a it's just basically not putting that in your face because like i've noticed that down there's a race in orange county that still hasn't been decided uh and on all the flyers for both candidates they never mention republican or democrat even though they're clearly they have a party but like just in the advertising either way they're not trying to

associate with parties so like this is like an even more extreme version of it but like do a little digging and you can make a pretty good guess pretty good guess especially some of them have ran for state assembly where you do know the political affiliation. Right. Well, so what I'm thinking is we go, how about we reveal this in backwards order? Okay. Because we have the results in front of us. We know who was backed by Soar slash Disney.

So you want to start with District 6? Is that right? That's what I'm thinking. We're Soaring over district six uh uh okay so uh uh the uh uh all right and i'm city council district six uh the uh disney uh endorsed candidate trevor o'neill anti-disney grant henninger and patty gabby and again anti i don't know I some of these I have numbers and some of them I don't wait is this Jose Moreno's district no no no okay excuse me um okay so uh but they that I'm also going I think a backwards order of what they

how much they spent on on candidates uh but okay so again most of this coming through political action committees because there's a certain amount individuals or companies can give i think it's like two thousand dollars twenty five hundred there's a certain limit on what individuals can give like two thousand dollars is the limit yes and and but the way around that you give to a political action committee who gives to your candidate of your choice it's just a bunch of fucking shit that everyone's allowed to get away with this so much cheating it was all cute it was very oh it wasn't a funny back in like 2006 when colbert made his own political action committee and we all laughed and had a good time and now it's all

uh hell since the supreme court uh ruling in 2010 that kind of uh changed and made corporations people uh uh saying limits on how much money they could give essentially limits free speech rights so like anything it's all gotten a lot worse all right anyway but at least this one depending on how it goes could lead to more rides uh possible unlike other dark evil and okay so here we go disney's endorsed candidate, Trevor O'Neill. And in the election, in District 6, the winner was Trevor O'Neill. Disney takes a seat. Yes. All right, moving on to District 3.

Now, Disney fought hard in the last election and fought hard against a candidate named Jose Moreno, who you mentioned uh who is who has served since then uh and they put up a guy named jordan brandman who lost to jose moreno i watched a little video of jose moreno seems like good reasonable guy yeah uh seems seems like good like good with the neighborhood um and uh you know again not like it's not this harsh anti-disney rhetoric he just wants the neighborhood to get a chair excuse me uh. Yeah, Disney, could we just do a little tax to fix some of the roads? I don't know. Fuck you, Jose. Go fuck yourself.

Here is one of the hard, hard, firm, ball-busting lines of Jose Moreno. If Disney has its way in this election, it's another worthwhile investment. A million dollars in an election so you can get a $300 million subsidy, Moreno said at a council meeting recently. He's right. Fuck you, dude. Fuck you. Look, I'm an in-hot communist son of a bitch. So they put up a candidate, Mitch Caldwell.

Disney's candidate is Mitch Caldwell. And the winner in Anaheim City Council District 3 is Jose Moreno. Jose Moreno still hanging on to his seat. He does not take the seat. This seems good. Moreno seems good. So hopefully he is a voice for the city of Anaheim. Never mind.

I won't say that until we're done with this. Okay, sure. So let's go to Anah'm city council district two uh disney's candidate jordan brandman who had lost to jose moreno in the prior election i don't know who was the main anti-disney vanderbilt i think is is the name uh disney spent almost three hundred thousand dollars to support brandman who supported supported subsidies for Disney and luxury hotel developments while a city councilman. So Brandman is Disney's guy. And in District 2, the winner is Jordan Brandman.

Disney takes the seat. Picks up two seats. Two so far of the three up for grabs. And that brings us to the mayor uh the main does eight candidates for mayor uh probably you know four or five of we're seemingly worthy of serious consideration main anti-disney candidate ashley eight can uh again very just like should do their share and labor background your hotel uh uh service industry background oh okay sure the way i understand it okay okay uh um and by the way also some of these you know did did disney do these things directly no did they funnel money

into campaigns that ultimately led to flyers that were like, Aitken wants the homeless overrunning the streets. And yes, Disney did lead to scary flyers. Yeah, probably. Not dissimilar to Trump's recent border fear tactics. Another candidate in this election was using the Angels logo in a door-hagging material. You are not supposed to do that oh oh really so that oh that's a that's a cheat well i i think i don't think the angels encouraged it saying you know the companies don't typically want their official like logos and implied backing of like i want to

keep this company i want to keep the angels. Like the Angels were not funding that or something. So a little bit of shady business. Yeah, implied relationship. Right. I see. Well, yes. So the main guy who is soft on Disney, who Disney supported, Harry Sidhu.

Do we think that's the pronunciation? S-I-D-H-U? Sidhu? Yeah, I would guess. Yeah, would guess so yeah yeah um so and he's been saying we're gonna keep uh we're gonna try to get angels to very i mean the easiest google is is what political party is harry sidhu in uh he's a republican and he ran as a republican for other positions and has a lot on his website about like a business small business the the real heroes of america small business like disneyland like disneyland yes and he's called it he's called disneyland the crown

jewel of the city and we have to uh you know like like we have to support them, and it creates jobs. And by the way, I'll voice that side of things, that Disney builds hotels. It is jobs. It is tourism. It's a tourist town. It's a company town. Yeah. It isn't as if Disney having a free ticket to do whatever they want

is specifically a malicious thing, but they could treat people better. Those wages could be higher. Well, it's that article. Is Disney paying its fair share in anaheim that's the question really yeah and the answer is no i think they could probably know or to pay more and think a little more about their workers well-being and not just their shareholder well-being or executive well-being because lord knows disney's executive compensation has followed the trend in america of like workers wages go up a little bit executive wages go up a lot yeah yeah yeah absolutely um okay so disney does not want aiken disney wants harry sid you and the winner of the Anaheim mayoral election is Harry Siju.

Disney's man wins significantly. And I will say a lot of these results, significant victories, not a squeaker like so many of the midterm elections that we've seen. Disney demolished this election. They got everything they want they flipped the council the gates are open they soared over campaign finance laws is very funny thank you uh yeah they won uh big i i saw the number now that it's like basically the mayor also as jason told me before this is just sort of a member

on the council basically that's how this works is like everybody votes but he doesn't have any really more his vote doesn't matter more than anyone else he's just sort of a ceremonial post yeah it's a figurehead and also he represents Anaheim when dealing with the state government federal government

any sort of that sort of thing yeah so it's and and the current the people who are pro and anti-disney stay uh so uh but that that brings it to uh what is it i think it's i think it's five oh five i think it was five two i saw is that right i think that was about right i was having trouble reading that's what i saw somebody yeah i was trying to read everyone but somebody said five to at least four, three. This is a another downside to media consolidation. It's very hard to find local coverage.

Yes. Or at least varied coverage. Honestly, the thing I was finding most up that I was just typing into Twitter, Anaheim Mayor, Anaheim City Council. And that was kind of when we were texting last night i was sending tweets i was finding from orange county reporters right giving up and like like there's there was a couple maybe one disney twitter i'm gonna pat ourselves on the back here i didn't even see this as being a huge story for everyone so like those bumper car boys really dropped the ball by not covering this a little bit more.

You're only getting the election analysis. We were eyeing it last night. We were texting each other about it. This is important info to analyze. And honestly, I think this is a pretty big... I mean, there's so much going on

midterms wise in the world that I can see why this isn't a more publicized situation. Sure, sure. This is a huge midterms wise in the world that I can see why this isn't a more publicized situation. Sure. Oh, sure. This is a huge midterm. Hopefully in the next couple of months, this is like this does get more of a spotlight from, you know, L.A. and Orange County media. Because think about this.

This is like Disney has been boxed in by a combative mayor's office and city council and they flipped it. It is pro Disney. They have their run of the city now they can do what they want yeah and measure l passed like you said but disney thinks that it does not apply to them necessarily the way the language is written it doesn't seem like it does the measure l thing is interesting because in the larger uh picture of the midterms a number of states some of them very red past overwhelmingly minimum wage increases similar to this one uh uh and i i i'll give him credit i forget uh uh not him i'll give them credit um their exact wording a writer named alex perrine uh pointed out like yeah this is

very interesting that uh left-leaning labor favoring uh policies uh initiatives propositions that sort of thing do even in red states red counties red neighborhoods uh are popular are popular with voters not necessary but that doesn't always translate to democrats or progressive candidates are popular but the ideas are popular they like the ideas of the left but they want to ask kick in uh pile driving asshole leading the ship we want real sons of bitches in charge really cornered ourselves in the insane cult of personalities that govern like uh uh politics in america that's true but it's always been like that actually i think yeah i don't think that's wrong but uh we may have been cornering ourself for plus years. Yeah, no, I agree.

So, I mean, this makes me worried that, you know, if Mickey is kind of like the overseer unofficially of Disneyland, are we going to see a rise of a more populist, mean candidate like Pete or like Captain Hook or like are we going to start seeing Captain Hook leading the shows or James Woods is Hades yeah we're going to see Hades dethrone Mickey as the primary the most popular character in Disney is now Hades so yeah the planter is going to be Hades when you walk in you're going to look for hidden Hades all over all of the rides. Walt and Hades statue has been erected in Main Street. I hate to say it, but I have read that when Hades shows up in the park, or at a ticketed event, it's very popular. It puts Disney in a weird position

because James Woods is out of his mind. As long as he's never going to do the voice again. No, no. Scott, would you take the role as Hades if offered to you? Yeah, that one, yeah. That one's no problem. Yeah, I'll be a perfect Hades.

Yeah, what's his deal? He kind of talks a little more like a natural. He's kind of a... Let's do lunch, babe. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, I've got a Spago. He's like referencing

90s Hollywood stuff. Jokes Eisner likes. Sure. Yeah, isn't that? That's my vague. I've been to Spago. I've been to Spago. I like that.

Or doesn't Hades sound like, open the gates of hell. That's Hades' voice, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. So what we have learned, Disney, why? Everything we've talked about this whole episode. Disney won. So what happens?

What do we think happens? It's a very good question because there's the, there's like the depressing end and there's the least like, well, I don't like that Anaheim is suffering, but we do get two more theme parks in the next 10 years. I do feel like that. I think you're over optimistic.

Yeah. No, I didn't say that was happening. I'm saying there's the, there's the two extremes, I think. Oh, right. Okay. I didn't say that was happening. I'm saying there's the two extremes, I think. Oh, right. Okay. I think probably, because these terms, they're staggered, these council seats, too.

So it's like every two years, I believe, that some of them come up? Yes, every two years, some of the seats are up. I have to imagine that we, I think that we're going to just see a lot of these projects we're talking about come back. I think we'll see more money for different things at Downtown Disney, maybe a Paradise Pier hotel redo, maybe one more hotel. There was talk also when that hotel was initially going to be not where it is in Downtown Disney, that it was going to be situated such that a wing of it would be the Star Wars hotel in Anaheim,

which they are building in Orlando. Okay. So there was talk that they would build that four diamond hotel, but a wing of it is the interactive, crazy, expensive Star Wars hotel. So I feel like for two years, they're just going to take care of that stuff. I think they'll build what they were already planning on building ride wise but i think that this this pro disney thing has to last for years to get like third park because there's it doesn't seem like there's any not a thought about it they do not care as long as they're making as much money as they are they can choke us they'll do limited time events other

ticketed events and like they will put off new attractions for as long as they can we haven't really had anything new new i guess guardians but that was a rescan i mean well we've cars landed five six years ago whatever galaxy's edge is coming yeah and i do think we're in the even without this they're about to build more like obviously like marvel there's going to be at least some ride we haven't even talked about how the sort of plans may be leaked and there's the spider-man ride we thought which was going to come is like now a very like lame sounding shooter 3d ride well sounds a little gutted potentially yeah yeah but i mean they're still gonna there's the mickey and minnie's runaway railway is probably going to be built and that is announced and that is well that not for disneyland is it not announced it's it's just a strong sorry it's

rumored but that has weird infrastructure implications too because that would go backstage in like the entertainment building which is also the building they launched the fireworks off of so they have to figure out where to launch the fireworks where to put all those entertainment department i think the residence homes people work out of the roofs of the apartment buildings behind the park yeah i think the firework stuff was already like they were figuring out what to do because of star wars land but it is interesting that i heard that supposedly they're just gonna gut the building the building's gonna is there already it's just an office building and they're just gonna take the floors out and then the ride's going in there whoa weird because it's a screen ride basically but it's supposed to be very impressive so it's just they're gonna the

building is big enough where they can just set the screens up and have this like a similar i'm sure it'll be laid out a little different than the only casualty in toontown is a single gift shop like you would that would be the entrance but then you would go back towards this off backstage building. No attractions eliminated, and you keep Gadgets Go Coaster, you keep Roger Rabbit's cartoon spin. It's a best case scenario in terms of attractions and keeping Toontown intact. And it's like Tony said, there's a lot more land. He said, Tony Baxter said on our live ups, there's a lot more land than said Tony Baxter said on our live ups there's a lot more land than you think at Disneyland that's still available and if you look

on the map you can kind of see what he's talking about back there so my point was just that they're building a lot of rides I don't know that that was going to change depending on this election but I think at least the next two years we're going to see a lot of that type of parking garage stuff

hotel stuff probably this hotel comes back maybe Eastern Gateway comes back we're going to see a lot of that type of parking garage stuff, hotel stuff, downtown Disney stuff. Probably this hotel comes back. Maybe Eastern Gateway comes back. I think they're probably right now parsing what this decision means for them. Do you want to take it a step further? Do we think that it's possible that some of these local hotels, in order to keep them in compliance,

that we have armed guards with Mickey-shaped armor and heavy assault rifles watching over the Howard Johnson across the street. Do we have armed Mickey guards policing Anaheim under the purview of Mayor See You? That's a sort of twisted idea I would expect from Escape from Tomorrow. Escape from Tomorrow.

There will be a rise of cat flu mayor said you will know about it and he will not do anything uh that i mean the the looking ahead to the future uh should they confirm the mickey and mic mini runaway railway presumably that would mean brand new attraction back in toontown they're not they could not stop closing toontown at like six or seven o'clock at night i would think you would have to keep toontown open all night to get people into this brand new attraction that would take some people away from star wars land and uh even if they scale back on the fireworks, do more projection-y kind of stuff, well, we got a brand new ride,

we got people out of the mess of Star Wars land. Is that a win-win for a little while until we figure out a fireworks alternative? Wait, you're saying that they're just gonna stick with what they're doing? Well, I'm saying if they do confirm that the Mickey and Minnie Runaway Railway is going back in Toontown, they keep Toontown open later at night.

It takes away some of the crowds from Star Wars land. Yeah, maybe the fireworks aren't as impressive for a little while, but isn't that a net positive that we get some people out of Star Wars land and keep them distracted with a shiny new attraction? Sure. Fireworks become a screen. Fireworks are attraction. Sure. Fireworks become a screen. Fireworks are a screen now. Fireworks are a screen now.

They're an orbit screen. They fly in Anaheim airspace, noisy helicopters allowed by the mayor. Right. But to go back to what Scott is saying, with the armed guards, do you think that the fireworks start to become missiles and they can shoot them at people and businesses in Anaheim

to make the businesses blow up well that's the sort of twisted idea i would expect at banksy's dismaland like captain kid's buffet will get shot at by firework missiles they're asking for it already with their military imagery they're they've with calling themselves captain they've presented an affront all these years to the Disney Resort. And yeah, now they're going to pay for it. There's been talk about drones in Disney shows, coordinated drones making shapes and making Mickey ears and stuff.

What's to stop those drones from giving Captain Kids the what for? Shooting firework bombs at them. I think that the bridge will now be maybe extended and that you will have little like kind of things that'll like areas that you'll jut out and you'll be able to walk up and down harbor above it and spit on the businesses like the tourists can spit along surely that would undo the parlay that disney has had with captain kidd's establishment for many years well that's what this is all about i think and there will be and and they'll also have increased funds to have drinking fountains every five feet on the bridge

so you can be nice and salivated so it's not just a soft amount of spit it's a torrent of spit but when you want to uh you know i forget what else is down there though the annabelle they'll hand out a dip too oh oh yeah yeah yes you can yeah you you can blacken the sidewalks outside of these places and then the yelp reviews start going down filthy sidewalks spit everywhere i would never stay here i'd only stay at the new luxury star wars hotel you know there's gotta be a review somewhere of someone going like i don't like going to disneyland i i get a lot of dirty looks when i dip when i walk around with my dip cup we gotta google that to see if that's uh that's the case i i'm thinking about something i think maybe it's you know i i what i'm concerned about with this increased power

that disney is going to have by flipping these seats i think it presents a problem for local businesses and local other theme parks like they have such power now in the face of of places like knots who we've become more friendly with and i think it's important. What I think is that there should be legislation that kind of reaches a handout to Knott's. And that's why I think we should, our PAC, the PTR PAC, should introduce a ride that would link Disneyland to Knott's Berry Farm. You didn't catch my drift. I mean, ADG, I just chose those letters at random. But it could provide for the installation of a ride based on the Apple Dumpling Gang, the ride that we pitched to Tony Baxter that would shuttle people back and forth between Knott's and Disney, and that would show that we are the greatest Imagineers of the 21st century. Well, I think that is a great idea. I think we need to make everyone know that we are the greatest Imagineers of the 21st century. But we also, this also makes sense just from other

stuff that we're doing on the podcast. What was this? The pack is ADG? Is that what we call it? What did you call it? Oh, PTR pack. The P the ptr pack would i mean there's probably a you know way to disguise that it's us uh uh you know it's it's some little acronym it's it's improve our rights iolos pack um the childless pack great uh uh and i mean really we should figure out something that wolf stands for so that we can be the wolf pack oh that's good you know so like you know well that's workers uh overseeing uh i have to figure out the math on that but the you know the childless pack the btr pack the wolf pack we all we whatever it is we introduce Measure 80 G and which I think and that's going to land with such a bang. I think it'll pass easily.

And I think the person front and center of Measure 80 G, Jason Sheridan, will prove that he has what it takes to get further involved in local politics and become the mayor of the DLR resort. Well, it's time we all rolled up our sleeves and used the levers of power to our, to benefit our, ourselves and others for we are the theme park going public. Right. And I also would like to allocate some of the money from that pack from a proposition I'm calling Proposition T. Proposition T requires all ice cream

sold at Disney to come with one complimentary topping. Unless you don't want it. I think it's time. Is there a discount if you don't want it? You know what? If you don't want it, there is a slight discount. I like that. It's like not getting chips with your corn dog.

You pay a little less. You should. Yes. I like the sound of this. This seems like a pretty fully worked out proposition it's it's i think it's time to uh pass some of the the benefits of all of this development back to the guests you know and it's certainly not going to be disney lowering prices anytime soon that would be the craziest news story theme park news has seen in years if they're like tickets are 20 less now i mean they should do that uh that would be great

but in the meantime we need to look for other avenues to get the benefits to people and i think a complimentary topping of sprinkles or nuts or fudge or however you the ice cream buyer guests choose to allocate that that is your choice i think that is a great idea i think that is a really nice first proposal um i i had an idea and i tell me if this is wild um you've been doing some reporting for us lately um there's going to be an episode on the patreon coming out you did some good reporting you went to report at universal horror nights what if we send you jason sheridan future mayor of disneyland our cub reporter to interview the mayor of anaheim harry sidhu and you sat down with him and you just talked a little

bit you sort of took his temperature on everything where it was going i don't think this is out of the realm of possibility i don't think there's a ton of people we're talking about. It's hard to find good coverage of this stuff in Anaheim. Is there a chance? First of all, would you agree to a sit down with the mayor of Anaheim? And do we think we can make it happen? I mean, I'd need to think about that. Oh, you would? Okay, you're not going to agree to this.

For the sake of the show, I'll say yes. For the sake of my well-being, I'll say I'm now covered in Jeff Garland episode levels of Flops. Oh, is that right? I don't have him here or anything. I'm not about to ambush you with him. Oh, not Jeff. Jeff is not here. Harry is not here.

Jeff's been in the closet the whole time. You're going to meet the bear now. We're going, you and me. All right, so you'll think about it. I mean, I think the fans would like Jason to sit with Harry. Hashtag Jason and Harry, I guess. Mayor meets mayor. Mayor meets mayor.

Mayor meets future mayor. How many minutes do you think it would take for my contempt for the current political system in America to just seep out of my pores? Well, I think that's a good test for you because you have to work with people that don't necessarily agree with everything. Well, you have to work with Hades and Pete. And Captain Hook. You're going to have to reach across the aisle. Yes, you're going to have to reach out to that hook. Could cut your hand, but you could learn something in the process there was uh i did see a a i think it was guy

selga posted a picture from i don't remember if this was when poo ran for president but it was a piece of paper and one side you tore off to vote for poo and another side you tore off to vote for captain hook what he was the opposite the other was on the other guy. Wow, really? Hook was running for, oh God, what was it? Was it president? Which if this was, I'm not sure that that election

corresponded with the presidency of Richard Nixon, but I feel like it might have. It was in the 70s, but I could be wrong. But if Nixon was the sitting president and then like there was, as I was saying,

like a little like weird right wing uprise. If Pooh had lost the Pooh election and then they had to do events for Captain Hook as the main president. I mean, it's entirely possible Pooh went the McGovern route and lost horizontally. Pooh at 8 percent, a crushing blow to his pro ice cream campaign. I will break a story right now that we teased early in the episode. The breadcast Joe Saunders did write on the Vicky Adversary Special. Wow.

That was him. Wow, we got to sit down with him. Oh, that's a great reason to have him on, yes. Put him in the hot seat and see if he wrote Mickey Mouse is a round-faced cartoon character. Oh, why? Good point. What if those were weird, sly attempts at dry jokes and why they jumped out at us is because it was

the wry sensibilities of Joe Saunders. It's entirely possible that our overwhelming sincerity about theme parks and such blinded us to the irony part of our brains that have been destroyed. I

hope it's possible that Joe Saunders just sent in a single pitch and the pitch was Mickey drums. And then he left. He collected a paycheck and my brain was the better for it. I'm very well. We got to talk. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We all try attempts to get the full scoop on Mickey's on the Mickey's 90th writers or the oral history of Mickey's 90th. We have promised a lot on this episode and that's just another promise we've made but i can't wait to forget all of it by friday we promise more promises um yes well mayor to mayor sit down joe saunders oral history stamos guests stamos will be a guest this This is the kind, we're starting to make

promises for 2019 and the formation of our pack. And if there's anything else you'd like our pack to get up to, please let us know. You know, I think it's been pretty fascinating to, you know, view everything going on in Anaheim through the lens of our current political climate and talk about the way that corporations take advantage of the little people. I'd also like to say that the Earl of Sandwich, newly reopened now, is presenting the item the Holiday Ham, featuring ham, cheddar, yams, and cranberry sauce on freshly toasted artisan bread. It will join longtime favorite holiday turkey starting on Monday, November 5th. Well, that was this week.

So that's the I buried the lead. That's the biggest theme park headline of the week. Enjoy those sandwiches along with peppermint brownie, peppermint brownie for the perfect quick bite holiday lunch at the Disneyland Resort. Wow. Did you you're triggering him again? You know that he hasn't had lunch. You're triggering him.

The flap sweat is now doubled. I'm very curious i i have not sampled because they always seem to be out of them when i was there the earl of sandwich brownies but i have had some uh shitty brownies the last few years i feel like they're the number one item you see in a bakery case that looks good and it turns out to be very stale well you can talk to mayor sid Mayor Sidhu about that and see what his brownie take is. More dry brownies. And maybe, just maybe, you guys can shake hands and have found common ground. You've survived Podcast The Ride, strident political edition.

This was interesting. I've been looking forward to this discussion. We'll get back to nonsense soon enough. And as we said, nonsense is available at the Patreon right now, all about Botanicus. But for regular nonsense politics or not, you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, join our Facebook group. You can buy T-shirts at uh

t public public um uh the teacher uh with we should make a shirt that's like a listing of all of the political figures jason will be sitting down with on his on his request like a like a concert tour on On my burning bridges rounds. As long as you don't burn the Eastern Gateway Bridge, sure to be built now at the Anaheim Resort. Yeah, anything else? I don't know. I think that's it. Yeah, just support us on the pack.

We forgot to plug the pack. Support the pack. We'll have another donate. We'll have a link for that. We forgot to plug the pack. Support the pack. We'll have another donate. We'll have a link for that. We can give us money. Support our podcast. That's good. Just a bunch of sops.

All right. Well, we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Bye. Forever. Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey.

For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.