On this episode, I'm back with our journey into imagination series as I sit down with Zach and Daniel, the WDW aristocrafts. Today's June 25th, 2024, this episode's 679 of the Main Street Magic Podcast. ♪ Jeremy and Rhonda are more than a little fond of Disney World ♪ ♪ So they make this podcast to share it all with you ♪ ♪ Reports and resorts, top ten lists of all sorts ♪ ♪ Main Street Magic's bringing it home for you ♪ Hello and welcome to another episode of Main Street Magic. I am your host, Jeremy Stein, and while I'm not joined by my lovely wife Rhonda today, I will soon be joined by my friends Zach and Daniel. But first, make sure you check us out on the web at mainstemagic.com as well as follow on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at mainstemagic as well as on TikTok at Emissen Podcast. If you want to be part of the community and join the conversation in addition to livestreams from the parks and our weekly live show, you can head to Facebook and search for the Main Street Magic community and ask to join. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you get brand new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. If you're planning that trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World, it can be very overwhelming and the time's just downright frustrating, especially when it comes to booking your advance dining reservations. But don't worry because mouse dining removes the frustration of booking Disney dining reservations alerting you when they spot availability for your desired restaurant, date, meal, and time. Visit EmissenFriends.com to use this free service. Zach and Daniel are WDW Passholders and a Disney loving couple whose previous YouTube channel focused on Disney pins, parks, projects, and more. Today we talk about content creation, underrated and overrated Disney movies, the battle against Epic Universe, a fifth gate, Disney negativity, and a whole lot more. Let's welcome in Zach and Daniel. Zach and Daniel. Hello and welcome to Main Street Magic. Thank you all so much for joining me this evening. Hello. Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much for inviting us. Yeah. This has been a while coming and it's so nice to finally meet you, Daniel. I've had the opportunity to meet Zach in the parks a couple months ago there. We were lucky enough to run into each other, so but excited to get to know more about both of you, all things Disney, all things kind of content and the way that you navigate parks. But the one thing I always start off-- Isn't that the best part when you're like all excited because you don't know people and everything? Because like it's like you 15 minutes from now is going to be like, "Ugh, really? That was cool. It was really boring." And you might think the same thing about me. So this is perfect. This is how we'll get it started. But yeah, I always start with to find out like where does your love of Disney come from? What draws you to Disney to the point that like myself, you're your big Disney fans that are visiting the parks all the time and even so much that you moved even closer to them. So where does that all kind of spawn from? I think it's two very different answers because we arrived at Disney in two very different ways. So I'll let Zach go first because his is shorter. Okay. My first visit to Disney was back in 1995, maybe, when Disney was a vacation destination for me because I'm from the Midwest originally and then I did not visit Disney again until technically I visited Disneyland first when we were in California in 2017. And then we came back here and we moved Florida and I can't actually tell you what it was. Maybe it was just like stirring up those childhood memories and being like, oh, this is fun. I like this and it's not just for kids. There's plenty of things for me as an adult in his mid to late thirties to do here as well. Yeah. So that that's that there. Yes. It was much shorter. I love how to the point it is though. It's like I went. I liked it. I wanted to continue going. Yeah. So, I mean, ultimately, isn't that everybody's story? Yeah. I mean, really when you get right down to it, it really is. No, my first trip to Disney was before I could remember. So there's a picture of me on Main Street underneath the Christmas tree in December of 1971. My dad was holding me. So I have been at Disney World every single year since it's opening a few years off when I was living in other parts of the country. Wow. Yeah, I've always been a when I was a kid, I'm a native Floridian obviously, and I grew up close enough to Disney that, you know, in high school, when you skip class, that's where you went. You went to Disney is like this Disney has just always been a part of my life when I was in my early twenties, Pleasure Island was happening was a big thing. So a lot of my early twenties were spent, you know, with the Pleasure Island annual pass going there all the time and counting down the New Year's Eve every night. And then yeah, it's just we, I had moved away from Florida for quite a few years. And when Zach and I, I'd say like probably about a year after we were together, we were living in Georgia and our company decided to relocate things back down to Florida. And I'm from here and I kind of missed it. And so yeah, we moved back down to Florida and immediately, you know, started going to Disney. Wow. One of the things. So I'm an OG Disney. That's awesome. Yeah. I think we even used part of the moving expenses that the company paid us to buy our first set of annual passes. That's awesome. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Man, skipping school and going to Disney. Dang. Well, that's pretty sweet. Yeah. That's awesome. So you, were you an annual pass holder back then? I mean, this was everybody, I guess, at that point? I honestly, you know, funnily, funnily enough, the annual pass program didn't come along until I was in my twenties. It originally started as what they called Disney's three season salute. So it would primarily be spring, fall, and what's the other one that I'm missing? Spring and fall. You got two choices. Winter. Yeah. Spring and fall and winter. Basically, you couldn't go in the summer, but the three season salute was, you know, basically three months out of the year, you could go to Disney without paying your admission. And then they expanded that to a four season salute. And then, I don't know, several years after that, they actually converted it, you know, to the Florida resident annual pass that we all know and love today. There didn't used to be different tiers. It was just, you, you got the annual pass. You were blocked out for the summer, you're blocked out Easter and Christmas. Other than that, you could go, uh, so, yeah, what was the question? Yes, we've been, I've been annual pass holders for as long as there have been annual passes, but not contiguously, like I said, I moved away and yeah, there's a period in the, in the early 2000s where I, I wasn't in Florida, so I don't know what happened at Disney. Okay. Do you roughly remember like a, a cost around, around what a cost was back then for when those annual passes were first introduced? Yeah, I want to say I found a three season salute in my Disney box. That's why I keep looking over here, uh, has the price stamped on it. I want to say it was either a hundred and eighteen or a hundred and twenty dollars for the four seasons. So that was the, the four season. I also have like one day ticket from back then, which was thirty eight dollars. Um, wow. Back in the, in the mid eighties mid, mid, the late eighties, also as I was reminding somebody else the other day, the whole concept of going into the park and riding all the rides, uh, for free wasn't an original concept. That didn't come along until the mid eighties. You were still using coupons, right? We would the ticket books and so you would pay a very low admission price to get into Disney, like three or four bucks, but to do anything you had to buy, you know, a coupon book or a ticket or you, you know, the eight tickets for transportation and the beef for the shooting gallery and stuff like that. And early on when they, when they switched over to a one price, you know, so they increased the admission and then you could ride everything. You had to wear lanyards, like that's, that's how the cast members knew that you had prepaid and that, you know, that you weren't just sneaking into the line, you know, that you, you had the, the, the lanyard. Wow. Yeah. So, and now I know I've already gone off on a tangent because this stuff just fascinates me. So like with those coupon books, were you, were you buying what you wanted specifically for that trip or were you purchasing your book or using whatever? Right. So they had combinations of, of books, uh, you know, it started off with just, you could buy a book, the most commonly used tickets. So like, you know, a single book would have like two A's, two B's, three C's, four D's and five E's, right. E's were your big ticket, you know, your space mountains or, uh, you know, that's where the e-tricket attraction, that phrase comes from, you required the tickets. But if you were there and you just wanted an extra D ticket or you could also buy individual A, B, C, D, E tickets, they would cost more than the book, right? The book was bundled and it was cheap. And then later in the ticketing fan, it's phased before they went to the one size or one price eats all, you know, rides all, uh, they had e coupon books. So, you know, for a discount, because a lot of people were buying the e tickets. And so they, they bundled, you could buy like five e tickets for a discount on what you'd buy individually. So, okay. Interesting. So, I have one of the ticket books, um, from, from then, yeah, we used to have it all these things. It shoved in drawers. Oh, yeah. I have, I have the 19 October 1st, 1971 edition of the Tampa Tribune, uh, that was stuck up at our lake house for a long time and I, I rescued it. It's probably disintegrated by now, but every so often I'll pull it out and read it. Uh, it's, you know, a day of fun doesn't come cheap. I think what it was a family of four could be expected to spend upwards of $40 for a day, including hotel. Wow. Yeah. So if only my, my parent, let's see, this will be my parents 50th anniversary. So they went, they got married in 74 and they went to Disney. Um, so they, they actually flew down from Maryland. Uh, that's where I grew up and, uh, they flew down, I think the day after their wedding got married on a Friday, uh, flew down on Saturday, I think they might have gone to the park Saturday and came home Sunday and that was their honeymoon back in 74. And so they have some of those, those ticket books and they've got like a brochure from the hotel and, um, but it's, it's all behind, you know, it's all stuck to a page behind plastic. So I've never like unearthed them to try and flip through anything and see what it looks like. Cause I'm pretty sure it would just fall to pieces at this point. Yeah. So it is really fun to look at because you forget, unless you were there, you forget, people used to swim in the seven seas lagoon, like there was the out in front of the Polynesian was a swimming area. Yeah. It's like you could swim in the lake. Um, you know, you took out little sunbird sailboats, you know, there's a little one, one two man sailboat. You could take out paddle boats, you know, most people, you know, cause they still have the pontoon boats, but you know, you can, you've always had those in the little, what are they called? The sprites. Oh, I haven't seen the sprites lately. They don't read those anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I think those are done. Um, so, so you, you both then are adults living in Florida. You've decided to, to start creating some content to start a YouTube channel. Why? Like what was, what was your process in deciding that that's something you wanted to do and then going through with that and starting to create content? Like what was that kind of all about and, and creating your channel? I, I like gadgets and, uh, I've always done podcasts, like I, I, I do a podcast that I do with my best friend that we've been doing for the last, I don't know, 20 years. Um, and, uh, you know, as a big gay podcasting community that we are part of that we know people from and whatnot. So the, the concept of doing a podcast with Zach was, you know, an easy jump, but I think because we wanted to play around with cameras and stuff and we would have been watching a lot of Disney vloggers. We're like, well, instead of doing a, a, uh, you know, a Disney, uh, podcast, we could do, you know, a YouTube channel and Zach wanted to do something focused, right? He wanted it to be, he didn't want it to just be a general channel where you go to the park and ride the rides or whatever. And so, uh, we had just started doing some pin trading. So we kind of, you know, started as just a pin trading channel, uh, all the way up into the point that they shut down pin trading. Yeah. Uh, and then we, we had to pivot and we ended up back in a podcast. So, but, uh, I'll, that's my story. Again, there's always two sides. So I'll let Zach. Yeah. Well, I was going to say Zach, what was, what was that like, had you done anything like that before where you're doing something on camera in your voice? No. And I hate the sound of my own voice. Everyone does everybody of their own, not yours, but your own obvious. Watching our videos back is torture for me because I'm like, I do not, I, I don't like how I sound. I don't like how I look. Um, I seem to recall after you, we, we, we watched a lot of Disney YouTube, we, we hardly watch any anymore, to be honest, um, and I seem to recall someone on the other side of my computer screen saying, you know what, we could get recognized in the parks. Let's do that. Yeah. Mm hmm. And I mean, and we did. Yeah. Yeah. So it kind of started a little bit, but a little bit like a, you know, an, an egotistical thing like let's see if we can be as big as, you know, a Mr. Morrow or a Tim Tracker, which God, we never did. Yeah. We never, we never did, we never will be, um, and that's fine. We, we were always going to be a small, a small channel, a, because I mean, the, the Disney content space is so crowded, no matter the platform, whether it's podcasting YouTube or TikTok or whatever the kids are doing these days, I don't know, um, but yeah. So I, I, I had never done anything like that. And then he suggested we do it. And we did. Well, here we are now, we, you know, we, we haven't put anything out in months. We all have been busy. We moved that. Yeah. Yeah. We, we have been busy. We moved. But then I'll let Zach fill in the rest cause I, I don't believe there will ever be another episode. Yeah. I think we're pretty much done mostly because we, we could set up a space for a studio in this house. However, it would require a lot of finagling because the main room in the house is all tile, which means the sound bounces, which is we would have to install those sound thing in my bobs. Yeah. But I mean, the, the big one is I'm currently on the road literally to becoming a cast member. And once I'm on, I don't want to accidentally say something that's going to put my job in jeopardy. So yeah, yeah, I, I, I think we're done. Yeah. And I mean, realistically losing one podcast isn't going to kill anybody's, you know, uh, yeah, podcasting is weird. It either catches on or doesn't. It's really hard to at any point kind of spike your listener base. You pretty much, you know, when you start off new, that you've got this very small period of time to kind of make an impression and get people to start listening. Yeah. And I think, you know, we left with what 1000 subscribers, no, 13, 1400 subscribers to our account. And it's like, you know, we're happy with that. And it's, we'll just kind of, we did, we, we never intended to make money or this was never a, you know, we both have real jobs that we enjoy doing. And so this is not, this is nothing more than a hobby. Yeah. Right. And we had always said, if it ever gets too tough or we ever get bored or, you know, extenuating circumstances, you know, we'll, we'll quit. And that's the blessing of it is that it was never our primary source of income and was never going to be our primary source of income because once you tie your fate to something like that, yeah, you're, you're along for the ride, no matter how much you might end up hating it. Yeah. And I always feel sorry for people who have made their, their living off of talking about, let's say Walt Disney World. And I'm specifically, I'm talking about blogs, right? So there are a couple of blogs that they make their, the entire way that they make their living in higher staff and pay staff or whatever, it all comes down to, you know, talking about Disney and new things at Disney and reviewing things at Disney and blah, blah, blah. And I feel like over the years, there becomes kind of a resentment that builds in there that kind of slants everything to be negative because they just, on the one hand, they're sick of Disney and they hate having to do this. But on the other hand, they're making, you know, this is their living and this is what they have to do. So that influences kind of the, the bitterness of the blogs that I see sometimes that's my, that's my theory anyway, is just that, you know, you look at someone, look at someone like Braden on YouTube who started off as just this really positive kid who now absolutely hates Disney, you know, it just, he takes every opportunity to make every dig that he can. And yet that's how he makes his living. Right. So, you know, he can't just pivot and start talking about, you know, I don't know, microscopes or something, right? It's like YouTube is one of those things that it is very niche and it's like the reason that, that youtubers talk about the same things is because, you know, you veer too far out of that little segment and, you know, you lose veers. Yeah. Well, and the other thing on, on that side is that at any point, you know, Disney can sever any artery they want that, that feeds into the, so, you know, when you are a full-time content creator, you know, at any moment, Disney can decide that they're, they're shutting this portion off that portion off. They can like, you know, one thing you do that they don't like and, and they're, you know, revoking your annual pass or something like that, or even, or even less extreme, I feel like the posting the full ride pre, you know, ride point of view of Tiana before any of the bloggers could even ride it. I felt was a little shot over the bow kind of like, Hey guys, yeah, you know, those millions of views you get by tripping over each other to be the first, it's like, you know, we could be first always. Yeah. I do. It's seen, I'd never watched the, the ride POV apparently it was terrible. Yeah. Really? They shot their toes in a foot. Yep. Yep. Yeah. It was edited. I watched it. Yeah. It was, it was edited to take out parts where you would have just been floating. I think the real problem is having ridden it in person. The real problem is is things just look different in, you know, so like fireworks are so much better in person than you could ever see, no matter how good the camera is, there is a disconnect there and a lot of the Tiana scenes are just very layered and they've got a lot of really cool effects that are going on that you can enjoy in person because it's very low light things, you know, that not necessarily would translate to a camera very well. Yeah. No, agree completely. Do you ever see getting back into, because Daniel, you're still doing that podcast with your friend, but do you see the two of you ever doing something again that may be outside of Disney? Is there something else that you're passionate about that you could see like, hey, we like, we like doing this as a hobby. So maybe we'll go into another space, you know, on another topic. I don't think so. I think part of the reason that we were so sporadic on YouTube is it just a lot of work editing video and making, you know, you don't think about it because a lot of these Disney bloggers make it look really easy. And there is, you know, every video you see where it's like, where you hear someone talking about what you're about to go, like, let's even say someone like Mr. Morrow, he's going to like, hi, friends, we're going to go into the kingdom and we're going to do that. That gets filmed at the park, right? When you're sitting at editing and you realize you don't have, you didn't film something that needed to be filmed, you know, now your entire video, right, you is ruined or else you have to go back and film it again or do a voice over or something like that. And it's like, you know, to, to make sure that you get, you know, you actually tell like coherent story is hard to do because we don't think like that. We don't think like I'm going to film every single second, you know, right? Yeah. And when you try, because I've tried, it doesn't work. Yeah. It's hard. And kind of going back to your point too, is, you know, you see a lot of these, these creators and channels and sites that have been around for so long, you know, people just automatically assume that they're going to love doing that forever. Right. And that's not the case. It's still work. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't understand and to your point of saying how much work goes into simply creating a video or a podcast or any other, you know, form of content. I mean, it's the same. You, you know, a lot of people start off with a day job, a nine to five that they absolutely love. And a couple of years later, they don't so much. And I think people kind of just assume that that same thing can't happen to someone because they get to go to Disney a lot or, you know, to somebody who's an acting or a musician or, you know, these, these kind of jobs and titles that I think people glamorize so much. Just assume that all of it is just incredible and it's rainbows and sunshine and it's not a lot of times. It is. It's tough work and it's a lot. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Especially I have a lot of friends, well, not a lot, but I have several friends at her in L.A. that are actors. And as as exciting as you may think that is to, you know, be on an episode of Murder She wrote or something, it's a whole lot of sitting around. It's a, it's a whole lot of you going, you do your dialogue, which is a two or three minutes at the, whatever setting you're at. And then you go sit in your trailer for an hour while they move the cameras to a different position so that you can film that exact same scene again from different angles where they got to change the lighting and this, you know, so an actor literally sits on set for 16 hours a day. Most of that time is just sitting around waiting for stuff so that they can get up and say there are three lines, right? Yeah. That's, that's got to take a lot out of anybody. It does. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it does and the same thing goes with planning and preparing and doing a lot of these things. So, well, I definitely want to get to know more about you guys, so we're going to move to the house. Oh, but listeners, he's reaching for the hat, which means we've reached the 15 moment, the 15 minutes where he's now sorry that he asked. No, this is the best part. Yeah. No, this is going to get just better and better than it already is. So we'll, we'll go through and I'll pull randomly some questions and, you know, we'll get through a couple of these and I promise I'll let Zach talk because I feel like I have really been dominating the conversation. That's, that's me and any conversation that Ron and I have with someone is I'm the one that, that is predominantly doing the talking and, and tend to take over. So yeah, totally, totally understand that. All right, we'll start with this one and, and you guys answer as you would like. What do you think is the most overrated IP or Disney movie? I'm, I'm going to let his doc answer that. I have to think. Yeah. You have to think. Yeah. The most, the most overrated. I said, I think Daniel's got one ready to roll, right? It's a, I feel like it's in Kanto. It's like as much as I love Lynn Mel, Lynn Manuel Miranda and I loved Hamilton. Those songs and in Kanto aren't that catchy. It's like, it's like, we don't talk about Bruno has got a couple of sections in it that are catchy, but overall I just, I can't whistle it. So it's like, I, I just feel like in Kanto was overblown for what it was. I feel like onward, big red, what was it, the, the, the, the, the, the turning, turning red. Yeah. Turning red. Yep. Way better films than in Kanto could ever have possibly been. Yeah. So see their light of day as they deserved. And of course within Kanto, I mean, with the soundtrack doing very well, I think Disney's now at that point of putting it everywhere they can. Did you guys check out the new sing along it at Epcot? We did. We saw it briefly the other day. Yes. And it was well attended. I'm wondering if it's going to maintain that level attendance as it gets hotter. Oh my gosh. And it's, you know, whomever decided to design Communicore Hall thought that an outdoor area with no shade was a good idea. Mm-hmm. But you're, you're skipping the questions, Zach. What is that? Did they go on? Zach. An overrated movie. I said, I said, I said in Kanto and half the people stop listening. So it's. Well, I'm going to drive off the other half. Okay. Frozen. I'll let it go. No. No, I will not. I have nieces that when Frozen came out, were the perfect age for it. They were in love with it. They were singing the song. I actually managed to avoid hearing, let it go for about six months after the movie came out and then it played on the radio of all places. And frozen itself was a fine movie. It didn't need a sequel. Yeah. Frozen two is terrible and they do not need to make a Frozen three or four yet they are because that IP prints money. Yeah. Yeah. It does. And they're going to continue. That's where we're getting a Toy Story 5. That's where we're getting, you know. And Toy Story 4 was also horrible. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like Toy Story 4 would have been better if it had been called a Toy Story Story. Like, because it wasn't the toys. It was just, yeah. Excellent adventure. Yeah, or something. Like if it was, you know, how kind of like they do with, you know, Star Trek or something, like they'll have subtitle, you know, it's all Star Trek, but this part is deep space nine or whatever. It's like Toy Story 4 should have just been Woody and Bo Peep, you know, or the, yeah. Yeah. You could have different off shoots. Yeah. Different off shoots that aren't within that entire actual, I guess, yeah, same timeline as it goes on. Yeah. Buzz Light, you're sitting around in Toy Story 4 and he said six lines or six words the entire movie. That's a good point, actually. I don't think I'd ever thought of it that way, but that's your spot on with that one. So now that we've driven off your other, your entire listener base. Now it's just us. There we go. Hey, this is how we roll. All right. Now we can really get deep about things. All right, well, speaking of Disney movies and I don't think in Kanto or Toy Story 4 will be your answer. But if you could live in any Disney movie setting, what would it be? That's a tough one. Wow, there's a lot of choices. There really are. I mean, my gut reaction would be strange world, but that's very self-serving, right? Because it's a cool little world plus LGBT normalized and we don't have that baggage. But also the cool flying bits and it looked like a kind of a cool place. It's like, I would, a strange world would be, I'm just going to go with that. Strange world would be my answer. Okay. All right. Well, Zach's not living in Arendale. So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... Oh, that's a good one. That's a really good one. Like in the arcade or in the internet? No, the internet. That breaks the internet. So... Oh, God. I don't know. I'm just going to throw a completely random one out there and say whatever the setting for Raya and the Last Dragon was called. Oh. Yeah. Raya and the Last Dragon. Oh. Yeah, okay. Just because it was really pretty and I liked the way the water moved and I... Oh. It was... Yeah. I don't know. I was trying to think of all the movies that have come out recently and I realized I didn't really pay attention to the settings and most of them. Yeah. Yeah. I thought I'm more set in slightly fictitious versions of real places. Right. You can't say Luca. You can't say Turning Red. You can't say... I guess onward because that's any small town American city. Yeah. Well, a lot of I think comes down then too to looking at location versus time period. You know? Yeah. Like, I mean, I would say Moana but I don't want to live during that time period. I don't want that. That's interesting. You know, we always... We have this saying... Well, I have this saying that Zach tolerates me saying because he's heard it a thousand times but when I hear people complain about the new DVC tower at the Polynesian resort, I always say Polynesia is a place. Yeah. It's like Main Street USA is a time. Yes. It's like, so if you were to go to modern day Polynesia, there are modern hotels there. So it's like saying that this doesn't belong in a Polynesian setting, it's just demonstrably wrong. Right? It's like Polynesia is a place. And you know, as long as you could go to that place and see these things, then it's good. Right? Yeah. Main Street is a time. You can't put like a Tesla on Main Street. Right. It's like... Right. So. Yeah. Well, speaking with things like that, I don't know if... I don't even know if there's questions in the hat but... I mean, how do you feel about the current state of, I guess you could say, the Disney fandom and with, you know, I mean, all of this, everything's changed since COVID. I mean, everybody's attitudes to everything has changed. Whether it's positive, whether it's negative, I feel like, you know, nobody's the same coming out of that time period as we all were going into it in some shape or form. Yeah. And I think the negativity that surrounds, you know, Disney World in general has just become, you know, has just heightened so much. Yeah. I mean, what do you think that even stems from? I mean, I can't... You know, we can go back to Communicore Hall and Plaza and I agree. I don't understand the design aspects. I don't understand what Disney was thinking with this that took five years, you know. For me, and we talked, you know, about how, I think before we pressed record, how much we all love Coronado Springs, you know, a lot of people when Grandestino was going up, we're probably sitting back and going, "I don't know about this big tower at this resort." But I don't remember hearing that, which was 2019. But now we're getting pretty much the exact same situation in many ways, other than it just being DVC related over at Polynesian. Like, what changed with this fan base that there's so much negativity now that surrounds it, I feel like? I think you... I don't think it's a Disney exclusive thing. I think this is more global. Yeah. And I think, honestly, I think it has to do with how we consume media over the past 10 to 15 years, or it's like we have definitely shifted away from, you know, sitting at home watching network television on a Friday night at 7 p.m. to make sure that we see the show that we want to see, right? It's like everything now is on demand. And so that means everything is now vying for our attention and what YouTube and the shorter form of content have discovered over that time is, "Oh, as long as we can be really good at suggesting something for you to watch, you're going to stay watching." Yeah. And I think by watching us, those algorithms have learned that negativity gets people to stay and watch. You know, when you read a headline, it's like, "Disney did the dumbest thing," and you're a Disney fan, you're probably going to click and see what it is they're talking about. And that is a repeating cycle in our politics, in our entertainment, in our, you know, it's like things that are negative get us to react in a way that things that are positive don't. And it may be that the positivity is ultimately better in all respects, but it's hard to measure that if they're not responding in this. So, you know, in our metrics-driven society, algorithmic society, right, more engagement means better. Well, we engage more with negative material, so hence, you know, negative material must be better. Right. Oh, sorry. I went off. No, I love it. That wasn't even a question in the hat. And it makes sense, though. I apologize. Yeah. No, it makes sense. Do you, do you both find yourselves easily falling into that trap? Or do you consciously say, "We need to try and step away from that," or put a more positive spin on it? Because I know I get sucked in. It's hard not to get sucked into that negativity. You're right. And when it's just being thrown at us all the time, are there any things that y'all do to try and escape that sometime? Yeah. So, I'm always trying to be cognizant of the fact that- I don't know where I was going to go with that. Nope. Just left my head. Okay. No problem. I feel like Disney has, or any company, as an abstract, is something you could be like, "They're just money-grubbing people that did this for nefarious reasons." Right. But we all work for companies, and we all realize that it's like, there are a lot of good people in those companies, and oftentimes things are just misunderstandings, or things are just bad policy, and there's no greedy, evil guy sitting back in the background, rubbing his hands together, going, "Oh, get him now!" It's like it really is just basic human incompetence sometimes, but people ascribe some kind of nefarious thing, or reasoning behind it. Zach and I are both stockholders of Disney, and when these things happen, it's like it's a big company. I think the people behind it have good intentions, or no matter how much you make dislike Disney, you have to give them the fact that they do respond to negative criticism, that they do change, they do alter and try to be very self-reflective, as far as corporations go. Certainly the people that work there are great, so I don't know. I think that's the thing, is people say people being people on the internet, on diz Twitter, on whatever, on diz talk. People say Disney does X, forgetting that Disney is a company made up of what 70,000 employees or something like that, in Florida, and most of those people have no say in any single one of those decisions. All that comes from the top and trickles down, so the weird design philosophy of Communicore Hall was imagineers doing their job, following marching orders within the budget they were given. Like any project? Yes. I mean, I'm a project manager, and I think the thing that a lot of people forget is budgets can change at any time. Project plans can change, they shouldn't, but they can. There might be a once in a century global pandemic, which I know people say that's not an excuse anymore, because these plans were approved after COVID. I'm like, you don't know how long these things in advance are planned. You also have to hire contractors to execute the plans, and they may not be available because of the pandemic. But go ahead, I'm sorry. But no, it's just, I think it's really easy to get sucked into the negative groupthink, and realize that this is a company made up of people who are just doing their jobs to the best of their ability. And if you don't like the final product, that's fine. But don't take it out on the people who are literally just trying to make a living and doing what they love. And I feel like it's hard to be positive in this community without getting labeled a pixie duster or whatever the negative terms people throw around are. Nick, that's the negative term. That's what's so crazy. You know? It's just, I just try to approach every discussion from a rational neutral point of view and be like, look, there are there are positives and negatives to everything. Does the company make a lot of decisions that I do not agree with? Absolutely. But I'm not going to let that negativity color how I view them and how I view, you know, all their projects or their future as a company, like you've got a bunch of people who are just ready to write them off for every little thing. It's like, are they making a bunch of silly business decisions? Yes. But guess what? That's Disney's prerogative. If you want to change that, go get a job at Disney and try and influence them from within. Right. Of course. Yeah. It's also, it could just be a, you know, a manager, some VP that that's trying to make a name for themselves that does this, but it's what I learned from my brief stint of working in a very large company earlier in my life is bureaucracy is a function of size, not a function of public private. So when we think about government, how inefficient and lumbering government is, it's not just because it's government, it's because they're big and you look at any big company and there are just insane, stupid, bureaucratic things that you have to do to get anything done. You know, you, you can't just call IT and have them, you know, fix your password, whatever. It's got to go through six channels and it takes a day. And so that day you don't work because you're locked out of your account, whatever. It's like, they don't care. It's all just, this is the system and we play by the system and what. And Disney is a huge company. And are there stupid projects and bad things that happen? Yeah, because every company has badly done projects or whatever that somehow make it to the top, right? That's all just internal politics and bureaucracy. It's like, but I don't think that, you know, Bob Chepeck was vilified to the point that everyone, you know, thought he was hiding behind trash cans on Main Street and was going to jump out and pick your pocket or something. It's just like, like literally they were upset that Bob Chepeck, like if the, if the operating hours of the kingdom changed, like, like that's what the CEO of Disney does. Right. He calls up and sets operating hours. Yeah. Yeah. It's called animal kingdom. It's like, personally, he flew, he flew to Florida, moved the trash can and left and was out. I know. Yeah. But, but at the end of the day, thesis entertainment, I love Disney because Disney is fun and I do things, you know, over at Disney because I have fun doing them and it's like, they may occasionally change things that I don't agree with, but on the whole, I've trusted them for 50 years to entertain me and they've not let me down. Yeah. So that track record is hard to, you know, just let go at it, you know, just because they did one boneheaded thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think it's, it's so much easier for people to scrutinize Disney based on size and popularity and everything that surrounds them because you don't see, you know, if in publics near us about two years ago, changed where everything was, you know, and everybody walked in and for like a day, people were like, well, I don't know where the sodas are now. Oh, they're over there. Okay. Cool. And everybody moved on with their life, you know, but if Disney does something even remotely similar, they have this target on their back, you know, that the everybody just blows up about it. But is it everybody or is it just loud people, but we have more ways to put our opinions out into the universe than ever before, right? We can put them on X, we can put them on Mastodon, we can put them on blue sky, we can put them on Facebook, we can put it, you know, there's no lack of places that I could post my displeasure for things. And then all of these social networks are set up to amplify that to just, you know, share that with other people, like, I'm going to take your, just, you know, your disdain and I'm going to pass that along. So I feel like, what was my point? I just feel like, you know, the negativity is, is, is, it's, it's entertainment. It should be, you know, enjoyable. Yeah. There. Yeah. I know. I parked my bike and I forgot where I left it. Oh, I do that all the time. But I mean, that's why I haven't even reached in the hat for another question yet because we just keep chatting about this stuff. That's why. Well, and the other thing you have to look at too is, you know, if you take the average family that goes to Disney, first of all, they have no idea what CommuniCorps, Holland Plaza, for example, was going to be, they don't care what it is now. You know, it's, it's the people that are so fixated on every single step that Disney takes, the ones that are, you know, kind of, you know, blasting that out to all these areas. But, you know, we, we took one of Rhonda's best friends back in April and she hadn't been since I think she was a kid. She had only ever been to Epcot when she was super young and, you know, for her, she's walking around and seeing all these things that, you know, Rhonda and I are like, man, I can't believe they changed that or, oh, that's great. They changed that. She doesn't have a clue, you know, down to the point that I would start to be like, hey, do you want to ride? And she'd stop me and be like, don't even tell me what it is because if I get to ride it cool and if I don't, I won't be upset that I missed out on something because I don't even know it exists. And I think those and, you know, the Disney community, a lot of us that are so focused on it often overlook that, you know, we're the ones that often bring that negativity, you know, it's, it's, and not to say that that family doesn't come in and attempt to use genie plus and get frustrated and maybe they didn't do enough studying and get prepared enough. But overall, they don't even know that free fast pass existed or that paper fast passes existed. You know, they don't have that history to go off of. So I think that their enjoyment of the parks is so much easier. Like sometimes I wish I lived in that world again, where every little tiny thing wasn't scrutinized. You know, it's tough. But you, but you can just, you can just ignore it. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah. Haters haters going to hate. Like how many people, the headlines a week before Tiana opens was Disney's most disappointing ride ever. It's like, you know, the, the narrative was already set, right. But I enjoyed it. I thought it was a great ride. I did too. Yeah. I love it. And that's going back to what Zach was saying about, you know, they were, imagine years were tasked with saying you have to put this IP in this location. Yeah. Do the best you can. And that's what I think they did. You know, now it might be a different story if they said, Hey, we have a piece of land that we're going to expand in Magic Kingdom beyond Big Thunder is where something like this was going to go. It is clear. It is a blank slate. And then they built something that maybe people thought, you know, wasn't exactly what they wanted. But I think they did a wonderful job of the task at hand, which was put this IP in this space that people are going to, you know, raise a ruckus about and do the best that you can. And I think that's what they did there. So yeah, a lot of it, you know, a lot of it had to do with the bureaucracy, the changing social environment, post like George Floyd and them standing there with this big, this big racist dog whistle kind of kind of going, Oh, we, we, we should, things are getting bad. We should probably address this, right? Or else we won't be able to. So I think that had a lot to do with it. Yeah. The climate out there was, you know, look, we all know this is stupid. You've had plenty of time to address it. You really should address it. Yeah. Yeah. And so they did. And at some point, hopefully that whole other side will let it go. We'll see. Maybe they can. Maybe they like frozen. They'll like that throw back there. I heard that frozen was the most overrated property that does hand. I don't remember where I heard that. I heard that. That was right here. We'll, uh, we'll hit rewind. Well, okay. Well, this might actually be a good follow up question. So if, if you either individually or together were named CEO of Disney tomorrow, what is the first thing you would change and we'll stick to Walt Disney World in the parks, not as like a whole global organization. But what is the first thing you would look at changing as CEO of Disney? Zach, I've talked a lot. -Oh, God. -Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do -Boldos, the walls in Hollywood Studios that prevent the park from being a complete loop. -Oh, okay. So you could take a route without maybe be filling in that lightning McQueen, all the way through Toy Story Land, and making it more of a cohesive, navigatable park. -Yes. It's the only park that has so many dead ends that you've literally, you have to turn around. -I think I would probably focus on the parks that need a lot more attractions. I feel like three of the parks need a lot more attractions before anybody ever even thinks about another gate. Let's fill in the ones we've got. So I feel like I would probably double down and triple down on new attractions for Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and Epcot. -Absolutely. And while we're on the subject of a fifth gate, just after the development agreement was announced and released to the public, the number of headlines I saw that said Disney is building a fifth gate, I'm like, "No, they are not, they have been approved to do so. They are not going to, and they do not need to, and they probably won't ever." -Right. Yeah. I don't want to see one. I don't want to see a fifth gate of Walt Disney World. -What would you even see a fifth gate around? -Agreed. Yeah. I would much rather see the expansion of everything like Daniel saying, "Let's fill out those other three parks." -You can make a full day at Epcot. -Good luck at Animal Kingdom or Studios. -Yeah. -I mean, people do because the lines are very long. Because they don't have enough rides. -Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So inadvertently, Disney has created full day parks by not offering enough. -Yeah. -Yeah. I'm with you on that. I don't want to see a fifth gate. And I keep saying too, you know, we're really going to see, especially when it comes down to ticketing, annual pass holders, all of that, what happens when Epic Universe opens. And when people start seeing, I think, the financial side of what that's going to cost. And if, I don't know if Universal will come up with a whole new ticketing system could be its own. -They're going to have to. -Like, I mean, people are going to look back at Disney and go, "Oh, you know what? Maybe I don't want a fifth gate because, wow, look at, look at those costs now. Look what they're doing to, yeah, either annual passes or having it as an add-on, as a completely separate, you know, ticket or pass, you know, so it'll, it'll be interesting to see. Yeah. Yeah. What comes out of all that? -What do you think it's going to? So it's, right now, forgive me, I'm not a huge Universal person, but I want to say that the, the past we were looking at, the resident past we were looking at was like 600? -Yeah. -Is that, is that sound about right? -That's probably about right. I was just looking at, I was just looking at premier two park and it's right around seven or so. -Okay. -And what I was shocked by, because we used to be, we gave up our passes in, in February, but we're potentially looking at them again for, for Universal. And the difference between, and this is the, the argument that I always have with people that want to claim that Disney is so much more expensive than Universal. And it's simply not when you break down the numbers. -Yes. -You know, for, for example, yes, is a Universal annual pass half the price of a Disney annual pass? Yes. Does it have half as many parks currently? Yes. -Yes. -Therefore, it's the same price. If you break it down for what you're getting, their increase, I want to say, it was well over $200 to add Volcano Bay and make it a three park to your annual pass, which is, which is nuts. You know, and Disney's offering $99, you know, you get the full fours back. -For the water park add-on. Yeah. Exactly. -For, for all of a time. So. -And not just the water parks, the water parks. Mini golf. -Yeah. -Wipe all the sports. -Yep. -Yeah. -All, I think it includes regular golf. -Yeah, it does. -I wouldn't know because we don't play golf. We just started taking advantage for the first time of the mini golf park, you know, being able to play before 4 p.m. every single day, if you so wanted to choose, as well as the annual pass holder purchasing tickets for water parks for other guests for at $49. -I'm sorry, did you say you'd just discover that for the first time and forever? -Yes, I did. -Okay. -He's put frozen in my brain now. Now, I'm going to just reference it for the rest of the episode. Well, now it's on Zuzak, that wasn't my idea to begin with, but yeah. -He's a bit of a fixer out there. -Well done. Let's see how many more references we can get to frozen before this whole thing is over because yeah, I'm loving that. Funny. I'm going to speak. -Wait, you didn't answer my question. -Oh, what do you think? So, Volcano Bay was a $200 increase roughly. What do you think the universe, so let's assume they're now at $650, which is pulling a number out of the air. -That's pretty close. -New park epic universe. I'm going to do the three park new super-pass. Obviously, they're not going to do it all in one year, right? They're going to slowly ramp up, but where do you think the universal three-park annual pass is going to sit eventually? -Almost the same as Disney's, I think. And universal's still out there selling, I mean, universal's going to come out with marketing. Everybody's going to say, "Hey, we have four parks." Because right now, they say they have three. You don't. You got two parks and you got a water park. -Volcano Bay is not a third gate, no matter how much they want to claim it. -Agreed. Yeah. -If we go by that logic, Disney has six gates already. -Exactly. But I think they're going to play that because they, now, I do think Volcano Bay is incredible. I mean, it's an amazing water park. And I understand from a marketing standpoint, let's sell it as this kind of third gate. But that's the way they view it because they think that Volcano Bay is leaps and bounds above typhoon or blizzard. And in many ways, it is. I mean, it's a much newer park. The slides, the rides, the theming, everything is incredible. But I think that's why universal views it as like this third gate and they're not going to let go of that. So now they're going to come at you and say, "Disney has this four park annual pass for whatever and credit pass, 1,400 bucks." -I see what you're saying. -We're going to sell our four park for the same price, you know? -Yeah. -Yeah, you're right. -And that's assuming that, I mean, I don't see why they would even include Epic Universe in the annual passes for the first year. -I don't think they will for the first two, three, four years. -Yeah, Michael, up that far. -You want to go to Epic? You buy a separate pass or you buy day tickets. -Agreed. Yeah. And then just think of that. -And otherwise, it's just going to be flooded with annual pass holders. -Yes. That would be it. -It's going to be the Florida version of Disneyland. -Mm-hmm. -I really hope it's worth it for them. -Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see. I'm interested. -What is your prediction first year numbers for Epic Universe? -Oh, I wouldn't even know where to start. I feel like... -Well, Universal is 10 or 11 million, I want to say, for Universal and Islands of Adventure, both roughly up to about 11 million a piece. So, Epic Universe first year. -I mean, I don't see why it wouldn't hit that on its own. Plus. -And of course, I don't have it in front of me, the sizes, as far as Epic compared to those. Obviously, I feel like it is so much more that's going to be available and to do. I mean, they're building every land with multiple rides. At this point, I feel like with two to three rides, everything's got a restaurant, entertainment. I mean, I do think they're going to pull in numbers. I don't know how much they're going to... -So, I feel like the numbers here, 2023 numbers, Universal 11.03 million. That was Universal Studios. -That's just the studio side. -But you know what? Here's... This has always bothered me about theme park numbers. Can I park my bike and go off on a trail here? -Well, please do. Yeah. 11 million people that go to Universal Studios, and then they say also 10 million people went to Islands of Adventure. I would hazard a guess that that Venn diagram of those is almost a perfect circle. -Yes. Especially there. -So, it bugs me when we talk about these attendance numbers separately, because in my mind, Disney has 21 million visitors a year, because that's what the kingdom has, right? It doesn't have 21 million plus, 10 for Epcot, plus 11 for, you know, whatever. These are all the same people. They're within the same bubble probably, or within a margin of error. So to me, Disney has 21 million a year, Universal is 11, 11 and a half a million a year. So Disney's roughly twice the size of Universal. Things change in the world, but they don't change fast. So, honestly, I don't think Epcot is going to do more than 10 million in the first year. -Yeah. That would be interesting. -Because, especially if they don't add it to the past, because a lot of pass holders are not going to, you know, also in those 10 million numbers, how many repeat wires? I'm sorry, go ahead. -Yeah. We know some very die-hard Universal people that I think, I mean- -Yeah, we know some. -Yes, but look at the number of people who buy, if they don't buy a frequent fear pass, they buy multiple single night tickets for H.H.N. -Yeah. -I feel like H.H.N. is where Universal makes their money. -Oh, yeah. -They do. That'd be a lot. -Yep. -I mean, they also make a lot in the theme park, but- -Yeah. Oh, I was just looking at Halloween Horror Nights not being a premiere pass holder anymore. And that's what got us to think. Maybe we go ahead and just- -I saw that screenshot. -I saw that screenshot, and I was like- -That's almost- -A thousand dollars for a family of four. -For a single night. -Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Express Pass is twice as much as the ticket for Halloween Horror Nights, which, of course, you don't have to do, but- -Yeah. But good luck going through anything. -Right. Yeah. And especially as not, you know, we had the pass holder perks of getting the stay-in-screen area of, you know, just, again, knowing the layout, knowing everything about it. So when you think, you know, I mean, it's the same thing with Disney, I mean, you know, Disney certainly is a lot harder to plan for and understand based on things like, you know, genie plus and advanced dining reservations, things like that. But once you get a grasp of it, you know, I think that it's easy to navigate, you know, people act like you can just show up at Universal and do whatever you want. -Right. -And that's not true. -Yeah. So if you go to this pass, that system is, other than the price, flawless. You know, if somebody says, Jeremy, explain Express Pass at Universal, I say, "You get an Express Pass and then you go on any ride you want." I mean, that's it. You don't plan for it. You don't have to open an app. -Are there two versions of it? -Yeah. There's unlimited, and then there's- -And then there's a single ride. -And then there's a single ride per- -Okay. -Okay. -A single ride. And the other thing that we tell people is if you're even thinking about purchasing Express Pass, don't and just go stay at one of their legacy resorts, that include Express Pass with the stay. You get it on check-in day, you get it on check-out day. I mean, we took my daughter and her boyfriend for her 16th birthday in January. We stayed at Hard Rock, the four of us, for one night, for $400. The three of us still had annual passes, and then we had to buy her boyfriend a two-day pass. And I believe at that point, it was buy a day, get a day free for Florida residents. And I looked at Express Pass for one of those days, would have run the four of us close to $1,200. -Wow. -So what we did is we went down Friday, we stayed for like under $200 at endless summer. We went to city walk, hung around, they played mini golf over there. We came back, we relaxed at the hotel that night, we got up the next morning and transferred to Hard Rock. So we had Express Pass on Saturday and Sunday for our two days in the parks at $400 for the night. And that's the other thing, when people start to look at the cost and the price and think that Disney is just so much more expensive, it's not, they're pretty equal. -You have to wonder, those really good hotel rates that you're getting right now, I don't think those stay that low once Epic opens. -It'll be interesting on, I think, well, especially when you look, and again, well, okay, what are they going to do with the legacy hotels there in Express Pass? You know, obviously Express Pass is not going to kick off when Epic opens, they've never done that with new rides or anything. How long is that going to take? So what is your accessibility in all to rides going to be? And then once Express Pass is added potentially to Epic Universe, will it still be included in those legacy resorts? And if they are, you're right, what are those rooms going to look like? -And or are they going to do the thing where just the Epic hotels are going to do the Express Pass for Epic and then the other hotels do the Express Pass for Universal, right? Because there's considerable distance between Cabana Bay and Epic Universe, right? -Oh, yeah, I formed down the road a bit. It's much closer to where they built Endless Summer, so, you know, Epic will really for accessibility feed from Endless Summer, from the New Stella resorts, and then what is it, the Helios that they're building in the park, yeah. Those Stella resorts, if you look at booking when they open in February, they're 200 or under a night, but no park is open yet. So just wait until that park opens, and I'll be very interested to see what the prices of those hotels are. You know, they're going to operate for a few months before Epic Universe ever opens. And so that would be the time to go just experience some, check them out. We happen to love the Endless Summer resorts because they, you know, you can still get those, I was looking at a raid for still $97 for a resident. -We haven't stayed at any universal hotel, but we did go to a universal hotel the other night for drinks. -Mm-hmm. -What was the name of it? -The bar or the hotel? -The hotel. -Wherever strong water is that? -Oh, yeah. -Saf fire falls. -Saf fire falls. -Yeah. -And the theme of that hotel. Are you familiar with the theme of that hotel? The expressed written down, someone came up with, and they wrote it down on paper. -No. I mean, I know how I feel when I go in there, but I have not seen the, yeah, the marketing statement that says, "Here's our theme." -It was pretty sure, like a Friday afternoon theme, like this was one of those, you know, phone and get in. -Get it done. -It's Friday. It's five and four. -The theme for the Safire Hill, Safire Falls Hotel is an elegant, tropical resort. -Okay. -I'm like, "All right, well, tropics is easy, we're in Florida. That's because that's what we've done." So basically it's just elegant. -Yeah. -It's like, it's like the laziest theme I've ever heard in my life is like, "What's your theme? Elegant Hotel." -Yeah. -Well, you know, that's the thing, and we do enjoy universal. We do. But again, I think when you look at those comparisons, which I don't, I still don't think are completely apples to apples, you know, when you're trying to compare universal to Disney. And in the end, regardless of the two, like, for people that love going to theme parks in central Florida, we all win, regardless. You know, if Disney doesn't want to directly combat Epic Universe opening, okay, so what? If they do, great. We win, no matter what. -I'll tell you right now. They don't. -No. -And they won't. -And they won't. -And they don't need to. -Iger's made that statement, "Hey, we've known about Epic for 10 years and look what we've done in 10 years." And I don't think he's wrong, you know, when you look at what they've opened in the past decade. I see people attacking that, you know, we've done this, this, this, this, this the past 10 years. But what about right now? -Right. What cares about right now? -Right. -People don't change that fast. -Also, even if Disney were to green light a project tomorrow, break ground on it tomorrow, it won't be done unless it's something real small before Epic opens. And when I have challenged people who say Disney needs to combat Epic Universe, and I ask them what they want specifically, nobody has an answer. -Yeah. Because they'll say something like a fifth park. -Right. -Okay. -Yeah, or something. -Right. -So the reality of this situation, if you go back and look at the numbers, which when I used to be way more passionate about social media and now we get into these arguments, one night sat down and pulled all the attendance numbers for Universal and Disney parks going back about 30 years. So it's not like this has never happened before, right? We've had new parks open within the last 30 years, and we can see what their effects are on the attendance of the other parks that existed at that time. So a lot of people like to point to, you know, not necessarily when Islands of Adventures opened, because when Islands of Adventures opened, Disney's attendance went up 2% that year, so did Universal's. But they say, "Oh no, it's when Harry Potter became a thing." And so you can take that year, whatever year that was. And Disney's attendance went up by 2%, and Universal's went up by 3%. When Disney opened Galaxy Z, right, Disney's attendance went up by 3%, Universal's went up by one and a half. It's like, it's a rising tide lifts all boats, kind of a situation, and here's my hypothesis. If we go back to the numbers argument, it is my belief that Disney has about 21 million visitors a year. Universal has about 11 million a year in the way that we count that, like people that buy tickets and go to the park every day. That's not the peak numbers, right? Those numbers can still grow, like Disney can still have more than 20 more, right. When we reach Peak theme park, and we just get no new people, it's just people moving around back and forth between the theme parks, right, and we're getting no new people, because at this point everybody's growing. When we reach Peak theme park, then we can start to worry about that. But we're not there yet. I think really what you want to pay attention to next year after Epic opens is the attendance number for SeaWorld, because SeaWorld is your canary in the coal mine, right? SeaWorld is this little park that makes, you know, it's about four and a half million people a year that come there, right? And it's been steadily growing, but it's never going to do big numbers, whatever. It's kind of a one day throwaway park that doesn't fit with anything else. And it stops growing, that's a good indication that we're at Peak theme park, right? When Lego land and SeaWorld start struggling, then, you know, okay, we've saturated the theme park market. We're not going to get anyone else to come here to do a theme park. So I don't think Epic's going to hurt Disney at all. My prediction is Disney's numbers will go up, Universal's numbers will go up, Lego lands will go up. It's like, it's a big event that's going to bring brand new people to Florida. And those brand new people that are coming here from Mario, either their parents or somebody else is going to go, you know, we're right at Disney. We really should just go to the kingdom, you know, and check it out, right? So it's like, I think it'll be people saying, you know, Disney's a three day thing, Universal's a one day thing, and Epic's going to flip that. I'm like, so what? Disney still gets a Dave's worth of business out of you. They're still making money. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I know, like when, I mean, talking about those numbers and all when animal kingdom opened, it didn't do near what Disney thought it would for overall attendance, because like you said, everybody was already coming. All they've done is add that portion, didn't extend the vacations. It didn't increase, you know, people that were visiting now. I think Epic has obviously a much better chance of actually increasing. Increasing hotel revenues. Yeah. Yeah. For everyone though. Yeah. I feel like that's not just going to be them. It has some stupid, and I heard this on a YouTube video on one of our realtors locally here. How many hotel rooms Disney World has? It's insane. Astronomical. Yeah. But that they feel per night. Right. It's just like, yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah. And I think everybody is just assuming that Epic is going to pull all these people from Disney and we're just going to walk into empty parks like nobody's going to open a Disney is going to shut down. Right. Exactly. The world is not going to happen. Right. We were all raised off of the blue laser, red laser world, like that was our steady diet of cartoons growing up, like you had the very clear good guys and the very clear bad guys and they fought each other out with their accessories that you could buy. Yep. But we were brought up in this binary thinking, right? So we just do this in everything now, like Apple versus PC, right? It's not enough that they both succeed. One has to win and the other one has to fail spectacularly, right? Every discussion on theme parks, social media devolves into us versus them and it doesn't need to Disney and Universal cater to two different audiences. There is some overlap and they are going to continue catering to different audiences who will want different things out of the parks. Why can we not just let the parks exist? Right. And that may even change for a time. Yeah. Like you may be a, you know, I love Disney, I'm going to do Disney and then you go to Universal and you love that and you switch over and then a decade later, you switch back. It's like, you know, and well, and it changes it either changes or it doesn't for everyone. You know, my wife and I have, have gone to, to Disney ever since the, oh, she's gone her whole life because she's a Florida native as well. You know, I've been down here for almost 20 years and we started taking our kids when they were younger and it made sense. It was like, all right, Disney is the place for our family of four with, with two young girls who we can dress up as princesses and, you know, and they want to see the characters and all of this. And up to two years ago, when they decided themselves as two teenagers now, we don't want to go to Disney anymore. That's not for them. You know, Universal was falling much into what they wanted to do. Now, Ron and I go to Disney, just the two of us. We haven't jumped ship over to Universal. I know a lot of people might. Universal seems like that marketing would be like, Hey, Ron, no, we should really be at Universal, you know, Disney's for families. That's what they're telling everyone. It's more for the adults, you know, or the older kids, but there is space to enjoy one, to enjoy the other, to enjoy both. And again, we win in that aspect, you know, we missed having the girls at Disney World. When we got, you know, passes to Universal, it was, it was nice to be able to go with them again and experience something like that in a vacation. But you know, it wasn't the end all be all where we just thought, all right, well, you know, we're two people in our mid 40s now. Our kids are older. They don't come. They go to Universal, you know, like, yeah, you, you want, you need that competition, right? Yeah. In anything, right? If you, if there's only one internet provider in your area, then you're going to be paying the maximum amount of money for the least amount of bandwidth. But if there's two internet providers in your area, suddenly everybody's tripping all over themselves to give you gigabit service for $30 a month, right, is like, you know, competition keeps everybody on their toes, right, when, when, when you're a monopoly, then, you know, I heard it was bad. I feel like speaking a monopoly that we really have monopolized your entire, how long do you go on this show? I feel like, yeah, I want to be going here for a bit. Yeah. I want to be, yeah, I want to be respectful of your guys time. So what we'll do, because I love the way this conversation went, and we can always talk off air some time about some more questions, but I do want to finish this off with some kind of semi-rapid fire, because these can go any way they want. With both of you, I've got a list of some stuff as it relates to Disney World, and we'll go through and see what you guys think. So your favorite Disney snack, Zach. The various caramel cookie sandwiches at Caramel Cuche, Gingerbread is the best. Yes, it is. I had the carrot cake once, and it was actually decent. It's pretty good. The Snickerdoodle is fine, but I was really happy that year when they had the Gingerbread around for like most of the year. It is so. But I'll take it during the holidays, if that's when I get it. My issue with the carrot cake one is I wish the carrot cake had actually been a cookie, as opposed to more of an actual cake. Actual cake. Yeah, and I think it would have been better if they had turned that carrot cake portion into cookie, and then filled it with the buttercream and all like they did the other ones. But Daniel, favorite Disney snack? Coconut white chocolate ice cream from La Glosset. What's it? Artistic La Glosset. Oh, yeah. Artistic La Glosset. Yeah. Have y'all done the sandwich thing there? Yes, the British. Yeah. I wasn't a fan of it. Do you remember what you like, what you got? Because you get to pick yourselves, right? We had it once, and I don't remember what we were thinking. It made the bread too mushy. Mm. Yeah. I can see that. Nobody likes. Nobody likes soggy bread. No. Especially not that lady from that show. Nobody likes a soggy bottom. Yeah. Favorite. This is why we were such popular YouTubers is those timely anecdotes like that. No, I love it. Yeah. That lady from that show. Go ahead. What's your next question? Favorite Disney park? And how often does it change? Or does it? EPCOT. Okay. I kind of thought you were going to say that. EPCOT. I love the aesthetic of Animal Kingdom just going and just enjoying the vibes, but EPCOT is very much the park that we go to most often, and the one where I find myself enjoying things most. Yeah. Animal Kingdom. Okay. Yep. Do you, now that you are a true, true local again, do you, do you find you visit just saying, because I feel like that's still very much a locals park. Is that what? No, actually I don't think we're in the Animal Kingdom since we moved. Yeah. That's funny. But I still love Animal Kingdom. Yeah. I do too. I got EPCOT all the time because there's festivals going on and stuff. It's not right now. It's not right now. It's not what I'm just saying. Yep. But to answer, I think, to answer your question, like, yeah, it was really cool one evening after dinner. We're like, "Oh, Rick Springfield's flying over at, let's just go listen to a set." And we just went over and had a beer and listened to Rick Springfield for 20 minutes or so and then came back. That's awesome. Those kind of things when you live 20 minutes away. Yeah. To be fair, we were already there for your birthday dinner. So it was right out the back door of the yacht club. But still. Yeah. But you still walk, walk right in. No park reservation needed at that point, right? That's right. Favorite attraction. Ooh. Jungle curse. Mm. Might. Like that. It changes a lot. Yeah. I would say currently my favorite attraction is probably Expedition Everest. Okay. Yeah. I think you haven't written in forever. I haven't written in. Not an animal kingdom. Yeah. Right. Something that still may be my favorite and not have written it recently. That's true. Yeah. No. Yeah. Expedition Everest. That's a badass ghost. It is. It is. It is. One of my favorites. Favorite attraction that we no longer have. So a defunct attraction. A defunct attraction. I'm excited to hear your answer, Daniel, since you've been going to see the park opener. The golden horseshoe review. No. Let's see. Oh, it's such a dumb one. It's Snow White's scary adventure, which is now a princess meet and greet area there. But he was a stupid kid's ride, but I was a kid. Yeah. And the little evil, there was this mirror effect where the queen was looking into the mirror and then she turned around and she was the old hag and it was, you know, it was two different animatronics anyway, but the not to spoil anything that's no longer there. But anyway, the point is, yeah, I scared the hell out of me. I love that ride that I wrote as a teenager just because I had fond memories of writing as a kid. So that would be the one that I miss the most. If it existed today, I would make Zach go on it every single time we were at the kingdom. That's awesome. I'm abstaining from answering this question because I've only lived here since 2017 and therefore don't have I don't have the nostalgia trap that so many people in Disney social media do. Yeah. Where it's like, I don't have any attraction. I don't have any attachment to past attractions because I wasn't around for them. Right. So the original. Oh, Canada. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They replaced that since you've been here. Oh, yeah. With Moira Brothers. Martin, but it used to be Martin Short and we watched that version as well. Anyway, go ahead. But here's a thing with the new one is that they they leaned so much into Martin Short and they did not do that with the new one when you have two of like the most popular Canadians ever and all they did was voiceovers and not even like as them I felt like. I felt like they're like, look, just read this script as monotone as you can. People that don't know this is who is, you know, or the hosts probably will take them a little while to even figure it out. Like they had a, I feel like they had a goldmine if they would have leaned into it the way they did with Martin Short, I think it would be so much better. So I think it went. Yeah. Way downhill. I've seen the new new version once favorite quick service anywhere on property resorts or springs, any of the parks. What's your favorite quick service? Satuli canteen. And there is absolutely no other contender. I would I would tend to agree very closely with that. Wow. I would have said satuli canteen, but since he's but since he said it, I will give a nod to flametree barbecue. Okay. All right. I love I'd put I'd put satuli docking bay seven. Piato is an outstanding quick service over at Riviera. It flies under the radar and you can go to Barriva and order anything on the Premo Piato menu. So you can go sit there, relax at the bar, get whatever you want from there. Favorite table service. I wouldn't that can be fine signature standard table service show. Go ahead, Zach. Are we talking special occasion table service or just, you know, where if I'm going to go to dinner at Disney, I can go to do both. Yeah, do both. What's the one that you would just be like, Hey, let's go sit down at Disney. Here's where you're going. And then pick one that's more like we're doing, you know, birthdays, anniversaries, something like that tie between Lacellier and Yasmin for special occasion and for just, oh, let's not go spend $300 on dinner. Toledo. Oh, good pick. But I like the Toledo, the caveat that I want pre-to late pre-COVID Toledo back when you could make an actual Toppa's meal out of it and still get out for under a hundred bucks. Yeah, I do miss that. We went opening night and we just ordered like all of those Toppa's. We just had pretty much everything on that portion of the menu. It's a Toppa's restaurant that has four Toppa's on menu. Right. I know. I will give a nod to the burgers than Rick's canteen at Coronado has really great burgers. Yep. Rick's sports bar. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sports bar. I don't know that we've had a dinner there. We've done breakfast there. We just had the. We go there all the time. Have you done the stuff, the chicken waffles, the stuffed waffles? The wachos. No, they, they have waffle, Mickey waffles now stuffed with fried chicken. No. Yeah. Yep. They do. It's interesting. I am not always unaware of this. Yeah. I have to check this. Now, a reason for me to go to Rick's. I'm holding up the menu now. Yeah. Tomorrow is tomorrow's a holiday. They're on a stick. I can't remember if it's three or I think it's four to an order. Last time we were, we were there, we, I just went down, did a mobile order, picked them up and took them back to the room for us to try. It's interesting. Wait. Let's take some mobile order. If you're staying there. Yes. If you're staying there. Yes. A lot of you don't know. I mean, you could also probably walk to a table and eat it outside or whatever. Oh, for sure. Daniel, what would be your special occasion? Table service. Oh, Yachtsman. Yachtsman. Or Tiffens. Yeah. Yeah. We had Tiffens not long ago. It was unbelievable. Yeah. A favorite resort? Is it Coronado? Coronado. I know we discussed before. Coronado. Yeah. I love that. That makes me happy. Favorite Disney character? Pluto. Okay. Anna and Elsa for Zach. No. No. Kristoff. Kristoff. Yeah. No. Sven. Sven. What's you? Three-way tie between stitch, figment, and the orange bird. Okay. I like this. That's very good. I feel like you should ask ChachiPiti to make you a mix up of those three. No. That would be a little scary. No. I'd be interested to see that though. That would be something that would have appeared in extraterrestrial alien encounter. Yes. Yes. That is very true. It would be purple and it would be experiment six to six, but the sixes would be oranges that were peeling. Going back to the, what would I do if I was CEO? Put something in the building where stitch was. Anything. It's just sitting there empty. I know. Even if you just put the Greek back there, put the stitch meet and Greek back there. Like do something with it. Rhonda and I were just talking about that last weekend as we walked past. Like, please just do something, anything with this right now. Bring back mission to the moon. I do not remember that. Yeah, because we landed on the moon and so we had to change it to mission to Mars. Oh. Oh. And the original attraction was mission. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Dr. Tom Morrow comes from. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. See, you're just, you're full of the knowledge and history, right? I love it. You know, it's a sad thing that we took a keys in the kingdom tour and I corrected the lady once. Did you? Did you do that recently? Have you all done that fairly recently? Yeah. We need to get back and do it again. Two years ago. Two years ago. I originally bought it for Daniel's birthday in 2020 and his birthday is March 28th and the parks closed up two weeks earlier. Oh boy. Thankfully, I got a refund and managed to book it again the minute it opened back up. Oh. Yeah. We got to keep an eye and look, we did it for our 10th anniversary, which it thinks now been what? Eight years ago. So we haven't been there in quite some time. I haven't looked at pricing since they switched to dynamic pricing for doers, but it barely changed. It was really, really, excuse me, it wasn't really expensive. I think it's just a tad over a hundred dollars. Like it was. And what annual was your annual pass? Yeah. Yeah. You get a 20% discount on it. It's really good. A hundred dollars. Yeah. And they feed you. They do. I love that tour. Well, thank you so much. Let everyone know where they can, they can find you on social media or anything else you want to share. Daniel, if you want to promote your other podcast with your buddy, that's cool too. Whatever you guys want to. This is promotion time. Okay. I'm on a pod. You don't want to listen to this podcast to gay best friends and we just talk about our lives is very boring, which is called mix minus. It's at mix minus podcast.com. Okay. That's, that's it. I'm going to check it out. You don't. You don't want to. I'll let you know what I think after it's all right, but yeah, what about a Twitter X? Whatever. You can still find us on the socials under the WDW aristocrats handle, even though we're probably finished with the content creation, I'm still going to keep the account open and keep using it and what hot because, you know, we've met so many amazing people because of it and because of the platform and the community. So, you know, and who knows, I could end up hating, working for Disney and quit and we go back to it, but, you know, I don't see that happening. Yeah. I heard, I heard that, you know, X gas numbers that are really better, the great as YouTube gold, like just constant bad stories about Disney because you're best and you hate them. Oh, yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's best if it's not true. Oh, it's even. Yeah. That's the best. I'll take things that never happened for 500 hours. Right. Yeah. The top 10 things you won't believe that Disney makes you do or, you know, those types of things are always, always fun, but I, I will say, you know, with, with a lot of the negativity and stuff that can surround Disney and, and the social media channels, when you find the folks like yourselves that are in that, that core really good community, there's, there's nothing like it when you find the right people and, you know, those are the ones that you want to interact with and that you want to build a community with this, there's nothing like it. I mean, if I, you know, if I looked at my phone and I text 10 people a day, nine of them, I become friends with because of Disney or this podcast or social media or, you know, whatever it may be. So it really, it really is a pretty cool community when you, when you find kind of where you fit and where you belong within it. And sometimes you just, you know, you just don't look them on the other side. You know, what, what's our leadership? But yeah, but I heard, I heard someone has friends there. Friends on the other side. I said, Dr. Facilia, thank you for explaining it to all the people who should have gone without you explaining it. You never know. I, I missed my own first time and forever. I wouldn't even intending to do that. And it just came out and Daniel caught it. So yeah, I don't even catch my own references sometimes, but, but thank y'all so much for spending some time with me. It was so good to get to know y'all better. And now that I know you guys are in the parks a lot more often live in, uh, right at the doorstep there. And so we'll have to, we'll have to find a time for, for around the night to sit down with y'all and yeah, yeah, hang out or grab a bite or something cause, uh, we'll go over to the, the villa de lago, yeah, three, three bridges at villa de lago at Coronado Springs. And they couldn't fit all that on, on one shirt, but I get that little margarita flight. Is it a sangria or a margarita? They have a sangria. A sangria flight there. Yeah. So funny enough, the, I think they're still using the original ones, um, the proprietor that helped open that, um, her husband at the time, like crafted all those and welded all those himself. Cause there was anything that existed like that just for them to purchase and, and mass. And I don't know if they still have the boards, they might have flipped them over. They used to have a, um, did you ever have the shrimp corn dogs that they had? I guess they're, I don't even know what you would call them, a little, a little, but they came in like almost like a butcher block kind of, and they had holes drilled in it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They, they had to basically, they just crafted all those themselves and drilled holes in them. And yeah. And then stuck the shrimp and all in there. But yeah, one thing I love about three bridges, I always say it's kind of like your local mom and pop because it constantly evolves and changes. I think more than any other Disney restaurant does. You know, they're constantly updating the menu, doing new things. Yeah. So I will admit, I spend more time looking at it across the water from ricks and eating there, but I will make a point to now that I know this new information, whatever, been there twice. We went there once immediately after opening and it was horrible. And then it took a little while. Yeah. We went, we went, we went back a few years ago and it was fine, but I will, it's never going to be my first choice if I'm a Colorado. All right. Well, we're going to meet you guys there at some point. So we'll, we'll, we'll try and sway you in the ways of three bridges. So, uh, but thank you all again. So good to get to know you and, uh, yeah, we'll see you in the parks and we'll chat real soon. All righty. Zach and Daniel, thank you again so much for joining me. I hope everybody enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. If you want to make sure you catch all the future journey into imagination episodes every month, as well as resorts, reports and top 10 lists of all sorts, make sure you hit that subscribe button and get brand new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. And of course, both myself, Rhonda, and I'm sure Zach and Daniel would be super thankful if you could please leave us a rating and review because it really does help our show grow. That's all we've got. We'll see you real soon. Jeremy and Rhonda are more than a little fond of Disney World. So they make this podcast to share it all with you. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
