This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shoppay boosts conversions up to 50 percent, meaning fewer cards going abandoned, and more sales going to Ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit Shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. Welcome back to another edition of the Disney Dish podcast with Jim Hill. It's me, Len Testa, and this is our show for the Week of Shimmers Day, September 2nd, 2024. Happy Labor Day, everyone. On the show today, news! Many, many listener questions. And a new Disney survey that asks, "Where did all your money go?" Then in our main segment, Jim gives us the history of Disney's big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Let's get started by bringing in the man who's going to celebrate National Literacy Day, this coming Saturday, by sitting in a library and hallucinating, while staring at tree slices for hours on end. It's Mr. Jim Hill. Jim, how's it going? Hey, it's going well, Len, but let's be honest here. It must suck sometimes to be a tree. And I'm not just talking about the fall, where never mind losing some of your hair. You lose all of your leaves, but think about it. One day, you're a majestic redwood, and the very next day, you're a roll of Charmin. You know, I mean-- [LAUGHING] [INAUDIBLE] I mean, just look, yes, some trees get to grow up to be the declaration of independence or the Magna Carter, but for the rest of the forest, you're eight feet of CVS coupons. I mean, it just-- [LAUGHING] Or one receipt, depending on how you look at it, whatever you need to measure is. Yeah. You know, trees must believe in reincarnation. I think that's what gets them through. Well, if there is-- such a thing as reincarnation, Len, I want to come back as in inert gas, and given the amount of metaphor I'm going to take already, I'm halfway there. [INAUDIBLE] I know we were like 30 seconds into the show, but Laurel and I weren't a cruise last week. And it was on Celebrity Beyond. And one of the shows was titled Elements. Oh, dear. And it was, you know, it was literally Earth Wind Fire, like, insert your own joke there, right? But one of the elements that they considered was Ether. And they described it as ethereal Ether. And I did not let that go for the entire cruise, like it gnawed on me, Jim, like a rest. Like describing Ether as ethereal is, I mean, to be honest, it's true, right? It is technically accurate, I'm just saying. But my other thing was this, my other thing was this. So, you know, it's a show called Elements. Is there a musical number there about the noble gases? That was my first question. So I'm like, you know, tuxedos, you can kind of visualize how this goes, right? I agree. I agree. And I just need to speak with the creatives behind Celebrity Cruise's entertainment. DCL, sign me up. Yeah, all right, Jim, let's do a quick shout out to subscribers. Thanks to everyone who subscribes to our show over at patreon.com/JimHailMedia, including David Graham, Todd Busocki, Scott Sanders. Hey, Scott. Perin Andrews, Ross Nesbit, and Michiko Short. Jim, these are the Disney typesetters who originally convinced Imagineering to use characters from the wingedings fonts instead of numbers for boarding groups at the Magic Kingdom's Tron Lightsicle Run, thinking it'd be more of a computer vibe. Unfortunately, cast members quickly grew tired of saying, "Sir, we've called for boarding group tape drive and you're clearly grouped Arma Chakra. Please come back later." It's your story. Wow. Okay. As far as obscure references go, that's obscure. But okay. Another thing, Laurel and I are flight to Fort Lauderdale got rerouted to Westchester County from LaGuardia, which I love it. It's a great little airport. It was not prepared for the influx of people from canceled flights from JetBlue. So we're all standing around, right? And people are confused because there's only like five gates and there's 15 flights going out and so they're staggering things. And nobody knows what flight and what boarding group they're on. So at one point, Laurel was like, "It's as if they printed the information in wingedings and we're always trying to, and we're always trying to figure this out." And I was like, "That's the funniest thing I've heard this morning." So. Okay. Okay. Onto the news. Folks, the news is sponsored by TouringPlains.com. TouringPlains helps you save time and money at theme parks like Walt Disney World. So check us out at TouringPlains.com. All right. To Jim at Universal shared details about Helios. It's newest hotel for Epic Universe and also officially revamped its hotel categories. Did you see this? Oh, yeah. But please walk us through. All right. So the top level is the signature collection and that's the Helios Grand Hotel, Portofino Bay, Hard Rock, Royal Pacific, and Sapphire Falls, which is kind of interesting. And Universal says that they offer full service amenities, distinguished service, exceptional dining and more. I will note that Jim, you've heard that Helios isn't getting expressed past when it opens, right? Yeah. Which I kind of find intriguing. Yeah. So to me, this is like, there's really four levels, right? And I don't know if that's capacity or not. We'll have to talk about that on a future show because I'm, I'm, I don't think it is. But anyway, the, the second level is the prime value hotels, which includes Evantura, the Stella Nova Hotel, the Terra Luna Resort, and that's, for now that's, that's it. Offering a mix of services and amenities made for comfort. And then the third is the value ins and suites, which is Cabana Bay and endless summer plus and that's both surfside and dockside, which are fun affordable options for extended rooms and spacious suites with Kitsedets, according to Universal. And I've also, Jim included in the show notes, some concept art from Helios. We've got the, the lobby there, which looks very large and spacious. And it's got, I guess the light fixture is sun. Is that what we're going for? Well, again, Helios. Yeah. I'm going with sun and flowers for the two motifs here, right? Yep. And then the, the guest room is done in different shades of blue. Like, I'd say it all looks good, but Jim, if you were to look at this and say, what are the first 10 words that you would use to describe this theme, would sun come up in there? No. Okay. Just the phrase. I think I would go with the words blue and Hilton before that. Okay. And also limited palette. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. You know what? It depends on the price point, right? A certain amount of decor for a certain amount of money. So this is true. This is true. I will say looking at the lobby spaces and especially the taverns. This is where we get the sense of some style here. And I think the, the flora taverna, which is the, the bar and lobby area, like that's got a vaguely Greek theme to it. I can, I can see that, right? Yeah. Yeah. You can see the tile working in the use of the materials and stuff like that. Yeah. I will be fascinated looking at the, the stuff here for the lobby, particularly, for example, Lotus Lagoon. Oh, yeah. Lotus Lagoon looks great. This is, this is reminds me of the bar riva at the Riviera. So it's an open air bar with the sort of archways that you walk into. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm, I'm going to be interested to walk the physical hotel and especially see how if the lobby spaces seem to suggest big open spaces, let's see if they actually deliver on the art. Yeah. I think so. I'm intrigued by the Lotus Lagoon for a couple of reasons. One, I, I do like a sort of an indoor outdoor bar. But number two, Jim, you noticed the gold dome on the Lotus Lagoon on the inside? Yeah. If that pivots, do you think we could set a flame attacking warships using just the power of the sun? I, I believe that's what it's there for someone get a universal spokesperson on the line. We, we need to get confirmation or denial on that one. Okay. Wasn't this a subplot of the last Indiana Jones movie? Maybe. I don't, I'm just saying. Okay. All right. A couple of other notes back in Disney theme parks, food and wine festival started last week. We're recording this on Thursday and I just came from the opening of food and wine festival with Christina. We'll have to have her on their show soon with all of the best tips. Also, Disney announced that Epcot's Silibration and Kanto is going to run through February 1st, 2025. That's a 25 minute show with six performances daily. I caught one today. It's very high energy. I understand why they have it there. I'm not sure that that's the long term thing for that space. Well, but on the other hand, if what we're hearing about animal kingdom, this is, this is an IP that the company believes in. So definitely. Yeah. I, I like the idea of a show there. I'm not sure this is that show, but to your point, I mean, Disney's probably testing this for some future thing too, right? To see what it, what it's like. So good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I enjoyed it for what it was. It doesn't feel like it's the thing that goes in the center of Epcot. Got it. And there I'm thinking like it has to be dancers in polyester, but why do I think that? I don't know. That's something I have to work through in therapy. I think. All right. We're kind of hired. Wired that way. Since 82. We might be. We might be. Okay. All right. On to other news, Disney Cruise Line announced the inaugural sailing of the Disney Destiny. And that'll be out of Fort Lauderdale on November 20th, 2025. So that would probably be the best time to book that if you wanted to get on another inaugural sailing. Also, Jim, we mentioned a couple of shows ago that there was some activity around permitting on the Disney side in the area that was to be the reflections lodge over in near Fort Wilderness and a new filing by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board, which was picked up by our friends over at www.dwmagic.com noted this, that the Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board has now submitted a project brief that says the purpose of this project is to provide a new Transformer service yard, Transformer Loop, and monitoring cables for a quote, "new resort." Okay. So we have at least committed to the infrastructure. Yep. That's interesting. Okay. Okay. It's got to be a DVC too, right? I mean, Disney has to continue to build DVCs and Magic Kingdom is where it's at for DVC resorts, right? Last little bit of news, and this is for all of you theme park geeks out there. The Magic Kingdom has installed new concrete in Adventureland, designed to look like natural roads with footprints and animal paw prints and more. I did a quick Instagram video on this last week. It's titled, "A salute to all pavements, but mainly concrete." Go look it up. If you guys want, I can do the glorious three hour finale later. Okay. I didn't. I love it. Didn't we learn, though, from Animal Kingdom with its super textured pavement with leaf prints and footprints and uneven things that this makes life difficult for people in wheelchairs and their ADA vehicles? I mean... That's interesting, because it's much flatter. It doesn't have the sort of, you're right, Animal Kingdom has those small undulations in the path. And one of the interesting things about that is, if you were to walk Animal Kingdom, all day for days on end, like we do for research, you start to feel it in your ankles. There's definitely a lower body wear and tear that happens in the Animal Kingdom that doesn't happen elsewhere. But I noticed in the Magic Kingdom, it's pretty flat. Okay. So that should take care of it. Also, you've got to give Disney credit. This is one of those things where it's not a revenue generating project. It's not adding a lightning lane to an attraction, it's not a new merch stand, but it does help establish place setting. And eventually, so you've got to give them credit for doing it, right? I don't know. There's a lot of these sorts of things. It's a detail I appreciate, but again, on the heels of what we came away with the hard lesson of Animal Kingdom, it's like, "That's nice, let's not do that again." Yeah, they're giving you another shot. It does look really, really good. I'm excited to see how they expand it out, so we'll see. All right. On to surveys. Our friend, Jeff Klune, sent in what appears to be a new Disney survey asking how you allocated your money during your last trip. So the premise starts with this, would like to understand how much you spent on each of the individual elements of your recent trips to the Walt Disney World Resort. And that goes on and on. So that's for things like, "How much did you spend on theme park parking? How much did you spend on food in bev? How much did you spend on transportation around the property? Main lane, multi pass, lightning lane, single pass, and so on?" But Jim, to me, the most interesting question here is question three in the survey, which reads this, "Which of the following, if any, did you do to make your recent trip to the Walt Disney World Resort more affordable?" And so there are obvious things like I booked a special promotion and things like I reduced the number of days spent on my trip. So there are other things like I drove instead of flying, I visited during a cheaper time of year, I changed accommodations, I spent less on food in bev, I spent less on shopping in merch, and I spent less on lightning lane, multi pass or single pass or add-ons. And it's the last group of those that I think is most interesting here because Jim, you and I've talked about how most Walt Disney World restaurants right now are barely at half capacity. Like I know what the reservation system says that you can't get a reservation, but if you physically walk into the restaurant as I have, half the tables aren't even being staffed. So my thesis here, my idea is, look, once people hit a certain limit on their vacation budget, any change in spending is a reallocation of money from left pocket to right pockets, not like the amount of money is going to get bigger. So if you feel that you have to spend $400 on lightning lane in order to not wait in the hot Florida sun for your rides, that $400 is going to come out of food in bev and merch or something else. Right? And I think this is Disney asking that question. But I guess what I find intriguing about this is there also has to be an intelligent scattering component at Disney to the effect of how aware are people of what's actually going on here that clearly these are people, the people they're sending the service to our folks who are our Disney World veterans or folks who paid what city given amount to come down for their vacation. So they're pulling that group to get a sense of, okay, fun to expense. Where are we on that line? Did you have a good enough time that it warranted this expense and if not where, where did you feel it the most dearly and to come full circle to what you were saying earlier, though? I mean, when you think about how much money the restaurants on property used to make versus what's going on right now, right, it's just the notion of, okay, how do we get the balance right? Like, how do we move the needle back in the right direction? Because they said it's not like Disney is ever going to give up any of that lightning lane money. I mean, it just, yeah, it's just sort of like, okay, okay, we have to do, right, pet the restaurants on property. Let's figure this out. Exactly. I was talking to a, to an economist about this exact question. And one of the things that they noted was you could actually use the answers to this question if you're Disney to figure out which things people will be last to give up, right? So if you know that people spent less on food and bev and less on shopping and merch, right? But they, but they spent, still spent, you know, $400 on lightning lane. That's the place where you would raise, raise prices because people are showing that that's what they value the most. Oh, but do you ever wonder putting on your touring plans had, because we face it, we have watched the cost of lightning lane, especially during the busier time of year, really climb up. Do you think, honestly, there's a ceiling there without consulting my lawyer, I'm going to say, and you know why I have to say that without consulting my lawyer, I'm going to say that I believe that the supply and demand curve is not yet established for GD plus and I'll leave it at that. Oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry, whatever we do, the last episode of the show, Jim, where we just tell, yeah, we just burn the bridges. It's going to be the episode where you and I will be entering the bridges, number of the bridges, but we call them the favors. Right. Let's go. And just before entering the witness protection program, that's it, that's it. All right, well, well, we've got the car packed for Tucson, we're going to go to Tucson and make kids a city. Okay, either. All right. On to the next survey. Rachel Kay sends in this universal survey asking about her kids media viewing habits and Rachel writes in with this. She said the survey first asked what children under 18 we have in our home separated by gender, then age range, you know, and so on. I selected the 13 to 7 year, 18 year old for the boy and 10 to 12 for our girl. I then got three questions only about the girl. First, what brands would my daughter have heard of? And then so she selected Coco Mellon and Bluey from the long list. The second question was, are you aware of their YouTube channels and she selected no. And then third, about the media consumption habits, like, you know, do you watch more than once a day, once a day or so on. And then Rachel said that once she answered that question, that was the end of the survey. There were no questions about the boys viewing habit. And I wrote back to Rachel and I said, look, as one of four children, I am aware that I am not my mom's favorite. I'm a solid number three, which gets me on the podium, right? And I totally understand why I'm number three. My sister is put up with a lot more from my mom than I do. Okay. And I like to tell Hannah, right? My only child daughter, when she asks if she's my favorite child, I like to say that she's right there in the mix of that conversation and that her therapy's going well, thanks for asking. Okay. But it's something else kind of for a corporation to say, you know, we only care about this one kid. And so my guess is Rachel's daughter is closer in age to the demographic thereafter for that new park in Texas. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But I mean, that's what's going on here, right? Otherwise it's a really abrupt end of that conversation. Well, now remember though, that we have seen just in, for example, we saw DreamWorks land open up in the old woody woodpecker kid zone area. And there is kind of a perception over at NBC Universal that in much the same way that Disney pivoted like we could do better with young boys, which is why behind the acquisition or marvel or that sort of thing. There is a similar perception over on the universal side of the street to the effect of Disney has princesses. And what what do we have for younger? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Because you can't you can't top princesses with princesses. No, you can't. So it's it's I want to say I'm blanking the dream works animation franchise cat core. You know, that that went into dream. Cat core of the chef. No, no, no, I'm I'm I'm I'm blanking the name of the cat based IP that actually is getting its own film next year. But that went into DreamWorks land early this year. Apologies. This is the problem of being a 65 year old male. So much of the entertainment world is just not pitched in my direction. Yeah. I kind of like the idea of cartoon cat core as a cat. Well, there we go. Running around the world is a detective like the whole chef thing is a is a cover. Okay. There we go. On to listener questions. Our friend, then Bodenstein points out an overlooked advantage of putting cars land in rivers of America and Dan writes, if the actual ride design uses something like gradient or springs, racers and test track, each car's going to have 22 wheels with 18 of them being under the track. That means there's a lot going on under the road. Having a carved out river to start working from gives them an advantage of not having to either elevate the road hire or dig. Telecoin. That's an interesting note, though didn't we hear from third parties about the fact that what is it? Radiator spings, racers, ride system, wouldn't work in Florida because of the weather. Right. So the question that I had there and we haven't followed up with that person yet is, does that mean that all similar ride systems wouldn't work or that specific ride system? Is the fundamental design of the ride system flawed or is it just that specific implementation of it? That's my follow-up question there. Got it. I mean, you can do a lot with silicone call these days, that's what I'm hearing. And believe it or not, all right, there we go. All right. From Avery Krause, on a recent episode, you mentioned that your current tracking shows that wait times have decreased both for people using lightning lane and for people who are not and you speculated this might be due to the dad's changes. I'm not entirely certain why that would happen, assuming the same number of people in the park, wouldn't there be the same number of people getting in line, just getting in the standby line instead? Would love to hear your thoughts on the wait time decrease in a bit more detail. All right. So it's probably one of four things, Avery, you know, there's some people who just aren't going to go to the parks if they have to pay for Jimmy Claus, but you can't count that right because you can't count people that aren't there. And to your point, there are some people who are getting into the standby line, right? There are some people who won't ride certain rides because the wait is long and there's some people who are still buying lightning lane, right? We can count that last group because that's baked into that ratio of lightning lane riders to standby riders, right? But my sense is it's this. It's one of two things, a combination of both. There are some people who just aren't going to the parks if they have to pay for Jimmy Plus, right? So some people just aren't going in if they've got to pay for lightning lane and there are also people who are going to the parks, but they're just not able to go on the same number of rides or the same kind of rides as before because they don't have lightning lane. So instead of going from Slinky Dog Dash to Rise of the Resistance to Tower of Terror to Runaway Railway, they're catching shows instead and that would take them out of the lines for the popular attractions and put them in lines for shows. So that's my guess here, is that a lot of people who had lightning lane access before are doing this sort of cost-benefit calculation on whether to go to the parks, right? Our friend Brendan Kaiser asked this question and Jim, I think this one's for you, what's the status of the Moana ride at Animal Kingdom since it didn't get announced at D23 and Jim may put in the show notes, the original piece of concept art from 2022 that showed a Moana themed water ride where we now know we're getting the incanto family attractions? Well, again, what was fascinating about this early piece of concept art, and again, remember, this is also the version of the art that showed us that where the dinosaur, the ride, exists was also where the Zootopia attraction was going to go. And again, what's fascinating is this early on, I want to say, this is Bob Chapick signing off on what was going to go into the parks and later that very same year, there was a new sheriff in town and the imagineers came at Mr. Eiger with a set of options and among them was a more unified take on this side of the park in that we could do attractions that were both set in tropical America. You could take Chester and Hester's dino Rama and make that the village where the Modricle family lived and then in another corner of the tropical America's, you could finally bring Indy, the Indiana Jones adventure from Disneyland and Tokyo Disney Seas to Florida. And that's ultimately where the needle moved. Now what's fascinating is that if we look at this Moana art, it was a boat ride. And what's especially interesting coming out of this most recent D23 Expo is we are up to our hip waiters and boat rides. I mean, between the, what, the Coco boat ride, the Avatar themed boat ride. I want to say there was a third one there in the pile. And meanwhile, we still have one or two coming out November of this year. That's the thing, right? Yeah. It's not like Disney isn't going to do something additional with this IP just for now. I mean, let's remember, we also do have the journey of water inspired by Moana at Epcot. So it did make it to Florida just not in this form. So yeah, that's a great little attraction. Yeah. So Moana 2 comes out November 27th this year. The original 2016 film did right at $327 million in domestic box office. In 2020 $24. And Jim, an additional $150 million in DVDs. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's always been popular in Disney plus. So I think, you know, two things here. One, the success of Moana 2 is really going to determine whether Moana is in the mix for phase two of the Walt Disney World expansion. Because remember, the things that were announced for G23 are basically for the next five years. We've been in an additional five years of projects that Disney is committed to after that to spend that $60 billion. So if Moana 2 does well, we could see plans for a big Moana attraction somewhere in Walt Disney World in phase two. Jim, the big question is what park does a Moana attraction go in? Ooh. You want to leave that for another time? We're going to turn it off. Yeah. Let's leave that for another time. But probably not the studios, right? I think we can rule out the studios. Yeah. And on the other hand, again, remember, we do have another theme park that is getting a lot of money poured into it very, very soon, involving things for little boys. And perhaps five and six years down the line, it's time to put something in the kingdom for little girls. Yeah. We'll see. All right. From Sarah Osler, who says, "I'm a longtime listener of the podcast, and I love how you guys break things down. My sister lives close to Orlando. And when I visit her, I typically go to a Disney park for one day. And this got me thinking, what's the park that gives you the best bang for the buck taking into consideration? How many attractions are in the park, the cost of lightning lane, the hours the park is open, and typical lines? So which park would you say is the best value for a one day experience?" Again, this is the favorite child's question. Yeah. Yeah. But look, forgive me for being obvious here, but if somebody holds a gun to your head and says you're traveling to Orlando and you have one day at Walt Disney or where do you go? And it's like, you go to the first. Yeah. You go to Magic Kingdom. Yeah. I mean, it's got the longest hours to have the most attractions. It can be the most crowded sure, but also it was my current favorite nighttime spectacular, which is happily ever after. That's a really growing on me. That's a good, solid show. Yeah. Number two, I'd say Epcot, because you can spend a ton of time there just going through World Showcase and looking at stuff and tons of dining options. Animal Kingdom for the same general reason, but for animals, also there's tons of walking trails and the food's really good. I don't dislike Hollywood Studios, but something has to be fourth and that would be it. If I were doing that order, I would actually put Hollywood Studios in the number two position, but that's because of my love of the golden age of Hollywood. I'm honestly at this point, I would put Epcot in third and animal kingdom fourth. You might have strange yourself there, Jim. Yeah. Well, I'm interested to think Epcot, I'm still, I'm old. I remember Epcot of '82 and now Epcot of today, which is like, just call it the festival park and be done with it. It's like, come to the gate and get your glass of wine. All right. So I was going to save the story for next week, but I was at Food and Wine today and I was in one of the booths in connection cafe, not connections cafe, the commuter hall, sorry, and they had to come out and announce that they had to run out of beer. And I turned to Chris, I'm like, is there ever a Disney festival whose launch date does not come as a complete surprise to the rest of the Disney organization? Like, who would have known that beer would have been popular midday in Florida on the opening day of Food and Wine? Who could have possibly foreseen that, Jim? I choose. Anyway, God bless the kids for handling that. I would go. I would go. All right. On to Greg Kaster, who says, I think villains land is perfect. You transition from fantasy lands, happy hundred acre woods to the deep dark forest. You could even keep sleepy hollow treats as a villains type quick service and turn ye old Christmas shop into a nightmare for Christmas store. I'm excited to see how Disney presents the villains here. Do they lean into the scariest? I mean, some of these folks tried to kill some of the princesses the next town over. Okay. Fair point. Fair point, Greg. Or do they lean more into the comedy? What villains do they use? And why are all the villains in this area? What's the backstory? So I love this. This is a great set of points from Greg. I think we've said on the show before that the villains are the most adaptable characters in the Disney canon. You could do a wider range of emotions with them. So it's possible to do funny villains during the day and scary villains at night, safer Halloween parties. And Jim, the next line that I wrote was, Oh God, don't get me started on what Halloween party tickets are going to cost in the year 2031. I don't want to think about that. But on the other hand, have you, in fact, you can catch the videos of this. There's the Oogie Boogie Bash nighttime parade for the Disneyland Resort hard ticket. It's a really small parade, but very charming. And it's like, ooh, give that thing five years and a couple of more floats and that's going to be a must see. And a couple of iterations give the give the performers time to see what works. Yeah. All right, one from a Chris Reed who says, regarding your discussion about the imminent end of Liberty Square and the reassignment of the Haunted Mansion to Villainsland, Fox Nolte dates the Haunted Mansion to 1840 to 1850 in her masterpiece book, Boundless Realms. Liberty Square is dated to the colonial period in America, which ended about 1783. Therefore the Haunted Mansion is 67 to 77 years after the colonial period. And hence was never really a part of Liberty Square, eliminating Liberty Square will actually clear up this time more in the Liberty Square area. So Jim, my response to Chris involved, joyful, cursing, and log the lines of, for once the stars aligned in the park makes more sense, right? Insert whatever profanity you think I used as appropriate to get the response on you think I was after there. Okay. And here's the thing. I had to look up why Chris chose 1783 for the end of the colonial period because, I mean, we all know that the Declaration of Independence was 1776. The Articles of Confederation was 1777 and adopted in 1781, and the Constitution was written in 1787 and ratified in 1788, took effect in 1789. So why 1783, Jim? Okay. I had to look it up. The Treaty of Paris, which officially ended with the US State Department, calls the War of the American Revolution was signed in 1783, proving Jim that it is not over until the paperwork is filed. And because we really do have listeners in the State Department of whom I've asked the occasional favor, I will not ponder the use of both war and revolution in their title. Please do not cancel my global entry. I just, there we go. I do want to take a moment here to, again, praise Fox no days, the boundless realm book about the hunter mentioned, because there is so much stuff I learned from that book. I had not previously known, I mean, for example, Columbia Harbor House only exists because at one point, I mean, literally just as the park was opening, there was supposed to be a Mark Twain River boat just like out in California and a Columbia just like out in California. And in fact, there's a whole nuance take on the Florida Haunted Mansion that suggests that the Columbia House Harbor House in, there was a sea captain that was actually right much more involved in the mansions Florida mansion story and and the other detail which I have to check when the very next time I'm in Florida is that Fox directs folks to the I want to say the second floor of Harbor House to a message board that's on that walkway that leads over toward Memente Moray and that evidently there, if you look again, leaning into this notion of this is this is a place where the folks who work go to see look for jobs and that sort of this a notice that captain a high up is looking for able-bodied seamen to join him on the big one and it's like, oh, no, really, it's a nice touch. Nice touch. All right. And speaking of the oceans, our friend Ray Castner writes in with this on the D23 recap show, you mentioned that Disney would use two of its four upcoming ships to replace the magic in the wonder, but Disney said they'll have a fleet of 13 ships and that would make it able to compete with larger fleets since they're undersized now compared to others. That's a fair point. It actually has said that. Okay. I mean, here's the thing though, right? They could also buy two more ships to keep it at 13, right? But maybe Disney keeps the magic in the wonder. There are a number of reasons why I don't think that makes sense and all of them have to do with revenue. Number one is the magic in the wonder or captive 2700 passengers, newer ships or 4000 to they're limited in the number and types of suites that they offer and those are premium products that generate better than average revenue. Three, their ability to upcharge is limited on the magic in the wonder. The spa isn't modern. They have only one specialty dining restaurant and bar space is limited. Also, I mean, maintenance eventually becomes a problem, right? They have older engines and older technology. They can retrofit all of that. But again, there's a cost associated. I mean, at some point it's going to be difficult to convince consumers to pay Disney prices for a 30 year old ship. And I do note this. I went out and did some research on some other cruise lines. So the magic was launched in May of 97, the wonder in February of '98. Very few cruise ships make it past 30 years. Royal Caribbean has ships the same age as the magic in wonder, which are the vision of the seas, the enchantment of the seas, both 1998 and then raft city of the seas and grander of the seas. Vision sales out of Baltimore, which, Jim, I note is not the most competitive cruise market in the United States. I would be surprised if Disney ever chose an east coast port out of anywhere other than Florida since the appeal of visiting Walt Disney World Winter in Florida is an add on that Disney almost certainly values, right? So raft city grander and enchantment sale the Caribbean out of Florida. So they're not relegated to the Icelandic Greenland cruise market, but they probably don't generate a ton of revenue relative to Disney. So I looked it up, Jim, you and I could go on the grander of the enchantment right now for under $70 per person per night. In the raft city's $90 night in comparison, the least expensive cruise on the magic, excluding one way sailings, is $305 per night or three to four times more expensive than Royal. So the question is, is can Disney maintain that three X or four X premium on a 30 year old ship? That's an interesting point. I mean, but that's tough, that is tough, but at that said, the the satisfaction level. No, yeah, true. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the reason why Royal is sailing the ships is people still go on them, right? They're people that love the ships and how small they are. Right. I get it. And the other thing, I mean, to raise point is the ships are certainly paid for by now. So the margins on them have to be fantastic. Oh, true. Right. So Disney's going to keep them around for as long as the numbers work. But all right, two more, two more things real quick on the subject of rides you'd ride for 24 hours. Nicole Kaplan says she'd gladly ride pirates of Soren for 24 hours. Jim, do we want to know what our clothes would smell like after 24 hours on pirates? Well, I'll put on the other hand, soaring, lovely orange scent, citrus, say, come on. We would be scrubbing that out of our skin for days. True. True, true, true. Also, our friend Shane Grisard reminds me that he was part of a team that attempted to set a Guinness World Record by riding the TTA for 24 hours during the last 24 hour day in the Magic Kingdom. I can't remember how that resolved. I can. But I'll check with Shane. Okay. Okay. Yes. Wow. All right. Last little thing from Ryan McGee, he says, and I quote, hear me out. Space Mountain Goof Galaxy, the 100% Ryan from your lips to God's ears. Okay. Okay. All right, folks, we're going to take a quick commercial break. When we come back, Jim gives us the history of Friteerlin's Big Thunder Mountain. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's Labor Day weekend. For a lot of folks, that's the signal that summer is coming to a close and fall is coming up fast. So get ready for school and all of the other challenges that this time of year typically throws your way. I have to say that as an adult, I don't necessarily miss the physical act of going to school. Twelve years of writing at a bus will do that to a person. But that said, I do miss the challenge of having to learn new things, which is why as an adult, you really have to make an effort to keep your curiosity alive. What do you do if your sense of wonder seems to have wandered off? This might be one of those moments where talking to a therapist would prove to be helpful, help you reconnect with your curiosity. If that's what you find yourself right now, a time when the rest of the world is getting ready to head back to school, well, maybe BetterHelp can help you. BetterHelp is professional therapy made simple. Just fill out a brief questionnaire and then BetterHelp will match you with one of 34,000 licensed therapists based on your location, preferences, and therapist availability. More to the point, BetterHelp is entirely online, which means it's deliberately designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Look, if you previously listened to this podcast, well, you know that back in the mid-1990s, I had what could politely be called a "bad stretch." My personal and professional life had both spun in and if it weren't for my therapist back then who taught me the coping skills I needed to get my life back on track, I don't honestly know where I'd be today, and therapy can do the same for you. So come on, you deserve to be happy, too. So rediscover your curiosity with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/dizindish today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com/dizindish. We thank them for sponsoring today's show. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Not pay boost conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer cards going abandoned, and more sales going to Ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit Shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. And we're back. All right, Jim, lots of construction going on in Walt Disney World, right? And also in Disneyland. Yeah, yeah, and just a quick recap here, we talked about this earlier in the show here today, folks. Again, Chester and Hester Dinerama and Dinerland USA, we've got that in Canto-themed area going in. Likewise, the dinosaur, the ride, becoming the Indiana Jones adventure. And we also talked briefly earlier about what's going on at the Magic Kingdom, where Rivers of America about to get its plug pulled. And after they drain that body of the water and then flatten Thompson's island, we get our car steam road rally interaction, which I know, again, is upsetting. A bunch of Disney theme park fans and changes hard people. But if it's any comfort at all, people who love Disneyland Park out in Anaheim went through a similar situation in the mid 1970s. That's when that theme parks mind train through nature's wonderland, which Walt himself helped design more importantly, had been in Disneyland in one form or another since the place first open in July of 1955 that get plowed under in early 1977 to make room for the original Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Now given that this runaway train attraction doesn't exactly follow a straight path, it's only fitting the Big Thunder's road to being built is filled with twists and turns. Also worth noting that the very first Big Thunder Mountain Railroad wasn't supposed to be built in California as Fox Knowlte noted in her excellent new book, Scoundrel Villains and Naves, Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean and Pop Culture, which by the way, published by Inkling Wood Press, just this last month on August 15th to be exact. Anyway, as Fox notes in this 342 page paperback, back in the late 1960s, the original plan for Florida's Magic Kingdom called for a massive tabletop mountain to be built along the shores of the Rivers America and this genuinely massive structure, which was actually supposed to be three giant buildings that were bisected by the Walt Disney World Railroad, that would have been home to a number of frontier land attractions. There was going to be a runaway mind train. There was a vlog film, there were hiking trails that guests could have followed to then reach the top of this tabletop mountain where visitors to the Magic Kingdom would then have found a recreation of an authentic Pueblo village, where guests could have shopped for genuine handmade Native American crafts and goods, not to mention learn more about the culture and traditions of the first people by attending storytelling sessions or watching dance presentations. And mind you, all of this is going on on the outside of Thunder Mesa, by the way, that's the name of this structure. Meanwhile, inside this interconnected series of three show buildings, well, in the load area, there was going to be a restaurant much in the style of Disneyland's Blue Bayou. So you were going to sit there and eat Southwestern cuisine as you watched boatloads of people float by and the people on those boats, they were going to go off on a Western River expedition, which as Fox know, they describe it. It took the dramatic beats of Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride and then used those moments as the jumping off point for a Western musical. It was going to be a musical all the way through then. Really? I didn't know this. Yeah, that literally the theme song would start with bison and prairie dog singing. Well, yeah, I mean, everyone knows that. Well, there you go. Okay. Now, really, it was going to be a musical, a musical attraction. Okay. Now, Leonard and I have talked at length about Western River expedition or earlier editions of Disney dish. So we're not going to talk much about this never built attraction on today's show, but we are going to take a few minutes to discuss why Western River expedition, which by the way, was in serious development at wed from the late winter, early spring of 1968, right through to December of 71, why this never got built. And it has to do a lot with Walt Disney's productions, initial expectations for Florida's Magic Kingdom. Again, in scoundrels, villains and naves, Fox shares a quote from Marty Scallar, who talks about how Buzz price and Len spent a lot of time in the Buzz price archive. This is the guy who company hired to find just the right spot in the Sunshine State to build Project Florida. Anyway, buzz in a report that he shared with Disney's board of directors in the early 1960s prior to the company committing to buying up all that land in central Florida. He projected that the Magic Kingdom in its first full year of operation, Len, 6 million people would visit that theme park, which given that this information matched Disneyland's attendance levels for the same period of time was a stat that mouse house managers could put faith in could could take it face value. But here's the thing, Len, by the time Florida's Magic Kingdom is actually under construction in 1969, Disneyland Park out in California is now getting 8 million visitors a year. Oh, was management concerned that they weren't going to get 8 million in Florida? No, if anything, that they were like, Oh, crud. If that's what the trend is out in California, we need to think about seriously revising our attendance expectations for Project Florida that they would need to knock that number upwards and more to the point. We need to be thinking about what additional capacity are we going to be creating to deal with it. And to be honest, mouse house management was so glad that they actually did this, especially given in the park's first full year of operation, Florida's Magic Kingdom, Len actually got over 10 million visitors. Oh, so more than more than 50% more than the original projection of 6 million. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so, okay, long story short, as originally designed, Disney's first Florida theme park wasn't going to be nearly big enough to meet yesterday, but here's the thing, given that the overall cost of turning this 40 square miles of swamp land in central Florida into well, Disney had skyrocketed gone from 100 million to 400 million. Okay. But again, also 6 million to 10 million visitors. So you can kind of see that you can you can, but at the same time, when you're making cold blooded decisions about treating your theme park like a chessboard, that the super deluxe tabletop mountain version of Thunder Mesa, which was going to take years to build and easily add more than $50 million to the cost of completing the Magic Kingdom. The match years were under tremendous pressure. Look, pair that project down, make it turn into something more reasonable, easier to build with the idea that the saved revenue could then be used to add additional more affordable ride chosen attraction to the theme park, which would then more quickly address the Magic Kingdom's capacity problem. So okay, we're back now to December of 1971. The park has been open for two months, and the imagineers have done what managed at us. They have taken Thunder Mesa and peeled away. Well, the Pueblo village on the top, the sit-down restaurant inside the flume ride, the slid down the front of the mountain, not to mention the runaway train that rolled through Kenyans hidden in the back of Thunder Mesa, leaving only a slim down version of Western River expedition. And Roy O. Disney, Walt's brother, had indicated I will sign off on that. But then Roy is felled by a stroke on December 18th, 1971, and dies two days later. And because the man who replaced Walt's brother as the new head of Walt Disney Productions, it was a far more cautious fellow than Roy O. Disney. This is Card Walker. Western River expedition effectively dies with Roy O, which by the way, this is something that Jim Schul, our partner over on the Disney Unpacked Project, that series of videos that Landon and I have been doing for Patreon, wanted me to point out that one man can make a huge difference at Disney. I mean, and we've talked repeatedly on the show, Landon, for example, about the version of New Fantasy Land that was supposed to be built in Florida when J. Rosulo was in charge of the theme parks versus the one that actually got built after Tom Staggs took over that position. And Schul brought this up to me just the other day because obviously people are still losing their minds over what potentially is going to happen to Muppet Vision 3D at Disney's Hollywood Studios. And Schul put it out and said, "Look, Bob Iger is supposed to be stepping down as the company's CEO in 2026." "Go ahead, Jim. Go ahead. Hold on. Say it and then won't laugh. Go ahead. Go ahead. Do it again. Do it again. All right. I know. Bob Iger always says he's going away and that never goes away. But I do want to point out that just last week and is the exact date, August 22, 2024, Oregon Stanley executive chairman James Gorman was officially put in charge of the team with that will now search for a successor to Bob Iger. Jim, are the other two people on that team a bottle of chloroform and a handkerchief? If not, I think I need to consult for James. Okay. Okay. I get the point. But more to the point, when someone else is finally in charge of the Walt Disney Company, supposedly in 2027, he or she could potentially take all of the supposedly shovel ready plans that Bob Iger supposedly signed off on and just toss him out the window. I mean, you and I both know having worked this side of the street for decades at this point. September 24 to January of 2027, that's just two years and five months away, folks. I mean, that's barely a blip in theme park time. Yeah. And my my former boss used to have this saying anytime a project team membership changed. And the saying is this new team, new game, there we go, which means basically everything resets when when new people are added to a project. And one other quick aside here, there are a lot of folks who will moan about what might have been when it comes to Western River expedition that how this proposed in park attraction for Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom was Mark Davis's loss masterpiece that the greatest thing that this genuine Disney legend ever designed and well, look folks, over the past 30 years, I have seen a lot of concept art that Mark created for Western expedition. In fact, he shared some of it personally with me when I visited him and his wife Alice at their home in Los Feliz in Los Angeles back in the early 90s. And I have to say that Mark's comically caricatured versions of Native Americans that were supposed to have appeared in in Western River expedition with not have done well now. No, they would have not that that they were in fact they were very much in the style of the red men that you see in Disney's animated version of Peter Pan from 53. And as we discussed just on last week's Disney dish, if the company had seemed fit to redo the Indian encampment scene, the one that gets fly over on their pirate galleon as they soar above Neverland Island as they experienced Peter Pan flight at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. If they just did that, there is just no way that the Native Americans that Mark dreamed up the Western River expedition back in the late 60s and early 1970s would still be up and running would be available for viewing in 2024 America. But okay. Now, back to December of '71, Royal Disney is dead, Card Walker is the new head of Walt Disney production. As we mentioned, Card is a much more cautious businessman than Walt's brother. You kind of understand his decision about Western River expedition, right? Because it's 50 million out of 400 million or one-eighth of the project's total cost for one attraction. What was the capacity of this thing though? Well, if it was like 8,000 people an hour, I can kind of see it. But if it's 1500, yeah, I mean. Well, I mean, the thing is that this was supposed to be Walt Disney World's Pirates of the Caribbean from Disneyland, which remember in the super efficient days of the late 1960s, there have been reports that Disneyland at one time, what they were getting, 4,000 people an hour. I've heard that. I don't know if I would have been in that ride on that day, but yeah. Just I picture, you know, you always hear those stories about the Japanese subway. Exactly. Yeah. Showing crammed on. Yeah. Pilot, a few more people on that boat. It's still above the water line. Okay. So we don't we don't get River Western River expedition fine. But on the other hand, card is listening to everything that's coming out of Florida and what he's hearing about these people who are going to City Hall on the way out of the park and saying, hey, I thought they'd be a Pirates of the Caribbean here. When is that attraction coming to Orlando? So card takes that info and runs with it. He goes to the Imagineers Land in April of '72. He has been on the job 4 months at this point and he says, forget about Western River. I want a version of Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean for Florida and it has to be up and running by December of '73. So that's that's I'm working the math here at blend. What is that? That's that carry the two drop the four. That's 20 months. Is that right? 20 months. Okay. So where this gets interesting is if you get the fact that it's Fox who pointed this out that if you cold bloodedly look at Florida's version of Pirates of the Caribbean, it has an awful lot in common with the never built Western River. It has it's a boat ride in a show building that's the same approximate size as a slim down streamline version of Western River, the one that Royo was going to sign off on. Not only that line, but the Florida version of Pirates reportedly has the exact same number of audio animatronic views that were had been approved for Western River expedition. So complete coincidence, Jim. Complete coincidence. What I love about this is you just did some imagineer is sitting there at their desk and looking at that timeline, April to '72 to December '73, it just takes the work orders and scribbles out cowboy and Indians and scribbles and pirates. You know they had two pieces of corrective tape ready. Oh, okay. And one said pirates and one said spaceman. Yeah. It was like. There we go. There we go. Spin the wheel. Okay. Now speaking, by the way, recycling is important. Recycling is important. Jim, go ahead. Oh, no, no, no, no. But again, speaking of recycling discarded plants, remember, uh, all that's important. Stuff that had originally been proposed for Thundermason, Florida, indoor restaurant, flume ride, Pueblo Village on the top of the mountain and that runaway train ride. Now that that runaway train idea that catches the attention of then relatively young imagineer Tony Baxter, uh, he had just come over to wed in January of 1970 after spending five years working at Disneyland among his jobs at the park. He was ice cream scooper. And so for the past year or so, um, Baxter's actually been in the field in Florida. He was doing things like helping to get opening day attractions like 20 K up and running the Magic Kingdom. But now it's 1972 and Tony is back from Florida at 1401 Flowers Street and he's looking for a way to make himself useful because this is the thing they don't tell you when you pursue a career in themed entertainment that once a project is complete, most of the creative team then gets laid off, um, yeah, so Tony's in back at wed and actively looking for ways to make it look like someone imagine earring should be hanging on to and and Tony, he does a very smart thing. He takes this runaway mind train idea, which again originally had just been a bonus feature for the Thunder Mesa project and says, you know, this looks like a ride in and of itself, but not one for Florida. I think this would be a much better fit for Frontierland at Disneyland in Anaheim. Um, now mind you, in order for that to happen, as we mentioned at the top of today's feature, that means mind trained to nature's wonderland, something that won't himself, it helped design by the way with Mark Davis's help. It has to go away first. Yeah. I mean, give, give, give so any credit for not only picking out the right idea, but then saying, and we have to sacrifice one of Walt's rides. There we go. There and make it happen. So, ooh. And that's a tough thing to do right after just that's not a one, that's not a one conversation decision. No, no. And also at a time when we just lost Walt's brother, yeah, yeah, to be kind of that ruthless and cold blooded. But anyway, so how exactly the imagers did that, built a runaway mind train ride right in the middle of a still operating family fun park, uh, which by the way, is the very same sort of construction challenge that we're about to see get underway at both Disney's and Old Kingdom. Yeah. And over at the Magic Kingdom, we will discuss on the second installment of the series, which will, uh, get conclude, uh, next edition of Disney dish. Fantastic. And then before to you, Jim, that if there's one ride that I could go back and ride, it would be mind train through nature's wonderland. Like I, that's the ride that I regret not being able to see in its, uh, in person. We, when my family went cross country in the summer of 1970, that was one of the ones, the rides we did get to experience during our day in the park. In fact, we, we, to commemorate that we have my, my father's incredibly shaky, handheld camera. Eight millimeter. Yeah. And it's, and the thing of it is it's very charming in a, a early 1960s version of audio animatronics. It's a lot of bears going, rah, and then, rah, but, but yeah, I mean, it was definitely on the low, uh, low thrill side of, of the Disney theme park experience, but but it did. It had a lot of charm. Yeah. And it covered a lot of ground as well, that, that, that's the other thing they, and again, getting back to the rivers of American Tom Sower's Island that when they sacrifice that attraction, they got a lot of real estate, they, they got a lot of places they could build things. All right, folks. That's going to do it for the show today. You can help support our show by subscribing over to patreon.com/gmailmedia where we're posting exclusive shows every week. Our most recent show with Imagineer, Jim Schul, tells the story of how Shrek got started. And if you didn't just say out loud, don't get, what are you even doing with your life? On next week's show, we're going to continue the story of Big Thunder Mountain. You can find more of Jim at Jimhillmede.com and more of me, Len, at touringplans.com. We're produced spectacularly by Eric Crissy and David Gray, who'll be joining John Melon Camp on stage for authority song and check it out live at the 2024 Outlaw Music Festival. Show those torn off mattress tags for $1 off admission. This is coming Friday, September 6, 2024 at the Somerset Amphitheater in beautiful downtown Somerset, Wisconsin. While Eric and David are doing that, please go into iTunes and rate our show and tell us what you'd like to hear next for Jim. This is Len.
