TechStuffSpecial guest Jack Pattillo joins the show to talk about the former Disney Hollywood Studios attraction, The Great Movie Ride. From immersive storytelling to the implementation of a new kind of animatronic, Jack and Jonathan explore this long-gone ride.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are You?
So?
Originally I had planned to bring to you an episode about the quote unquote godfather of AI, doctor Jeffrey Hinton, that is still in the works. It is still on this way, but had a little bit of a family emergency that happened late last week and it's still kind of playing out. That has interfered with my ability to bring a new episode. Everyone is okay and slowly getting better, so I don't want anyone to worry about that. But because of that, my attention is somewhat diverted. So rather than go without an episode in two, I thought I would bring to you this episode that we published in September last year that is about the Great Movie Ride, the former ride at what used to be Disney's MGM Studios and now it's called Disney Hollywood Studios. And Jack Pattillo of Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter joined the show because he acted. He performed as a cast member at Disney as part of that ride and he talks about his experience, and we talk a little bit about how the ride works as well, and I grouse a bit about the gradual de theming of Disney Disney parks. But that's because I'm an old man and I get grouchy when stuff changes. Stuff is allowed to change. Parks are living things. Okay, let's get to this rerun episode and we'll be back with new episodes for the rest of the week. And yeah, that's it. Let's go, y'all. I got something special today. I've brought in a special guest, a guest that, frankly, I could have asked to be on Tech Stuff for numerous reasons. I could have asked him because he's a content creator. He's a podcaster, he's a co founder of an incredibly popular network of content. He is an organizer for massive charity events that work with organizations like Extra Life. I mean, the list goes on and on. But the reason I asked him here is because he's also a lifelong connoisseur of theme parks and a former Disney cast member. Welcome to Tech Stuff, mister Jack Battillo.
Hey, thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, sheeez, thank you for all of the list of things I've done, I've never felt older than I do.
Right now, how about it hit you with this, Jack, It has been twenty years since you worked for Disney.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, two thousand and two, man, it was spring of two thousand and two is when I was out there the first time. So I worked. I did the Walds New World College Program, which is a fantastic program. Highly recommend it if you're a college kid looking to not have responsibility for a semester. I did it twice. I did it back in two thousand and two and again in two thousand and five. And both of the rides I worked on are shut down now, which is sad. I worked over at it was Disney MGM Studios and now it's Disney's Hollywood Studios. I worked at the Great Movie Ride, which is now Mickey Minnie's Runaway Railway. And I worked at the Back Loot Tour, specifically the water Tank portion. Right, I got to talk about Michael Bay and Pearl Harbor, and that is now where Batsu is, where all of the Star Wars stuff is, or so it's I think between there maybe Toy story Land. It's kind of like in that general area. It's basically it's just walking path now where I was.
Right, it's one of the hottest sections of the park when you're out there because there's absolutely no shade and it's just a massive cooking surface that has tourists on it. Yeah, and I thought today we could talk a bit about the Great Movie Ride in particular, and talk because there were some really cool innovative technologies that were incorporated into that experience. But I also want to hear from you, as a cast member who worked on the ride, what the cast member experience was, because as someone who has had been on that ride many times throughout its run, including early on in the earliest days of Disney MGM Studios, I know what it's like to ride the ride, but what was it like to work on the ride? So, first of all, can you kind of give us an overview of what the Great Movie Ride was?
Sure my pitch for the Great Movie Ride after someone would walk up, after a guest would walk up and say, is this a ride? And it's like, it's called the Great Movie Ride. Yes, it is a ride. It's a slow moving tram ride through the movies. It's twenty two minutes long, never goes more than four miles per hour, and yeah, and there are live actors. It's one of the few. It's well, at the time, it was one of the few toured are excuse me, guided attractions, so like Jungle Cruise, the Kilimanjaro Safaris, over an Animal Kingdom, those that are really the only ones left at the time. King Kong Over at Universal Studios had it as well, and we were a guided tour. You had a host that would staying there and spiel and then at one point, you know what, it would change up. But it was a slow moving ride that takes you through some of the most classic movies of all time, from Singing in the Rain to Mary Poppins to kind of the gangster era Westerns, Aliens, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Wizard of Oz, all kinds of amazing things with us some really awesome animatronics. Well, when I described the ride, I would always say, this is the ride that Walt Disney would have made if he had access to these fancy animatronics. It felt like very much a classic Disney ride and I always love that and a lot of people they were fans. They weren't as big of fans because it's not a thrill ride. It's not a huge, you know, like where it's it's not a you know, like rock and roller coaster. It's nothing super super fast. But I liked it because it kind of it was informative. Look informative, you gotta learn a little bit about movies and uh and also it was got some spectacle, some like these magical things happen and and it's all over the course of twenty two minutes, so it tells a nice little story compact within the ride. And uh, I really really loved it, and it's sad to see it go. Mickey and Minnie is nice, like it's it's a fun ride. It's it's kind of cool that we got replaced by the very first Mickey Mouse theme park ride ever, which is kind of cool, and that's coming out to Anaheim as well now pretty soon. But uh, but yeah, it's it was a very special attraction and I and I miss it, but at least the facade is still there. I still have my memories of the Chinese theater out in Disney's Hollywood Studios and so h and there's there's lots of little fun easter eggs out in front, even even things that are still there to this day. But I don't know if there's any any Easter eggs inside of Mickey and Mini's of the Great Movie Ride, you know, like I'm sure there's something hidden away, squirreled away somewhere that I just don't know about. But yeah, it's it's It was good time. It was a lot of fun time. It was one of my favorite sort of times in my life. I was, I think twenty years old. I had no responsibility. I drove out from Texas all the way out to Orlando and had a great time.
Yeah, and you know, the the theming was phenomenal. You had, like you said, the Chinese Theater is the facade. They couldn't actually use Grahman's Chinese Theater as the name because Grammans wouldn't allow that, but it was the Chinese Theater and it looked like it did back in the Golden age of Hollywood, complete with celebrity handprint and footprints outside in the in the sidewalk cement. And then you had actual movie memorabilia and props that were in the queuing area, so you could actually see like the arc from Raiders of the Lost Arc and things of that nature. And you also were shown trailers for some of the movies that were going to be featured within the actual ride itself. And as you say, Jack, it told a story, which to me was was the thing that Disney did better than anyone else for the longest time. Now we've started to see other parks kind of pick up that torch and run with it, but for the longest time, Disney was just that was the king when it came to an attraction that also tells a story, and not only that, but puts the guest into the story. You're not just watching it, you're kind of immersed in it as you're going through all these different scenes. And as a cast member, what were some of your duties, Like what roles did you work when you were working on that ride.
Yeah, So when I was there, they actually were just bringing in a new system. I think it's called CRS. It was a computer system that they would give you a list of roles. So they had input a list of roles into this computer and the computer would track who needs to go on break, who needs to go on lunch, and stuff like that. So if you were on break, you know, once you're done you would go to this machine and you say I'm back, and it would print out a slip, and that slip would say you go to position A and then you go there, hand the slip off to that person. They would then move to position B and waterfall down to the person at the bottom. Wouldn't take break, which actually was pretty cool because you never stood in one spot for too long. You were always moving around. It was always kind of fresh. You never really got tired of it. But I mean, we did everything on the attraction, the main tour guides or the people, the suspenders and the hat. They would do everything from running the vehicles like or like driving the vehicles, doing the spiel, to all the to working the fronts, like working entrance as well. So we would put on this orange jacket that would go on over our tour guide outfit and change our hats like this orange hat, and that was like our host spot. Basically, the only thing a typical cast member wouldn't do on Great Movie Ride was be the bandit or the gangster. Those were specialized roles that if you were the bandit, you were the bandit all day. If you were the gangster, you were I mean, you were the gangster all day, but basically those roles, but they would be trained for both of them. The cast members would be trained for both of those roles. At the time when I was there, college program employees are cast members couldn't be the bandit or the gangster. I think they changed that later on just due to paffing stuff, but that which was which was sad because I always wanted to be the bandit or gangster. But you actually had to be firearm trained in order to be either of those characters because they did have an actual pistol that fired blanks. And yeah, that was the one thing that I ain't gonna do. But you know, everyone everyone there was family. Everyone knew everyone like the It was a it was a healthy mix of these old timers that have been around. I say old timers, what are the people that have been around, you know for like five to ten years. We had a gentleman there who opened the attraction back in eighty nine, who was still there in two thousand and two, and then a bunch of college kids. So like basically they would keep it. We would keep it fresh because every six months or so there'd be new new blood and so it never got really boring and U and even when I was there, I did they extended one so I went from January all the way to August. So I saw like summer kids coming in and like the new batch of people coming in for the fall semester, and it was just fun. It was it was just a blast. And yeah, I mean there's some really cool things that the cast members got to do. Now. One one my first bit of trivia for you. So the vehicles themselves, they were on a track. You couldn't see the track. It was actually a there was like sensors in the vehicle and that the vehicle would turn and there was an invisible track kind of in between. There was nothing connecting the actual vehicle to the floor, but it would just kind of stay on top of it. I don't know the full technology behind it. So it was kind of like Rise of the Resistance where there's just like a trackless course, except there was like a line of metal or something. There was something keeping it where it needed to go. But the tech guys there, the engineers who worked in the attraction, which they actually we had a whole engineering bay where they would fix up vehicles and fix animatronics and stuff. Those guys could actually disable that and literally drive it around. Like hypothetically they could have taken one of these things out into the park and has driven it around if they wanted to, which would have been amazing, but but no, it's so that was kind of cool. And the vehicles themselves, they were seven rows there. There was two vehicles. There was basically it's technically a tractor trailer where you have the front vehicle had all the thes and everything in it in the back trailer or the back vehicle was literally just a trailer, had nothing in it other than wheels, and so the front wind would pull it. There were four speeds on it, so it was either stopped one, two, three, or four, and depending on where we were in the track, we would go those different speeds. And and also the track could it could it could actually activate different speeds, so like at some points, if you put it on four, it would just go, and then there were sensors that would trigger it to actually slow down the vehicle to a stop, so like you know, you could be focused on spieling and the ride itself would come to a stop and then you would throw it into park. Like it wouldn't just kick off on its own. You have to throw it in a park and restart it to get it to go again. And that was important when you were speeling going. It's like you know the gangster alley or bandit area and but yeah, goad man, I'm trying to think of all the easter eggs. It it's been twenty years, been two decades since I've been out there, man, So.
Well, you're doing great. I mean, I can give a little more context with the ride system. So the system that was under essentially under the floor, really embedded in the floor was a guide wire that would emit radio frequency radiation, so just radio waves radiation. Radiation is radiation because it is part of the electromagnetic frequency, but it's not like radioactive. There is a dopay, yeah, we're talking non ionizing. Don't worry, Jack, The Grave ride did not doom you, no, okayo. The it's just radio frequency radiation. So it's it's r F. It's like the same sort of thing you would use for walkie talkies or radios or anything along those lines. And the trams had within them essentially sensors that could pick up that frequency, and if the frequency would start to drift, like if it started to get too weak on one side, that was a signal to the tram that it needed to make an adjustment and turn in order to return the signal to its strongest point in the center of its sensors. So it gets a little weak on the right side, that means it's time for you to turn left because of your signal is actually moved big to your left. That was the basic idea. So it was really just following this this wire all the way through the attraction, which was almost like something like two thousand feet long something like that. It was crazy long. It was like you said, twenty two minutes the whole thing.
Yeah. The vehicles themselves too, they were all electric, and so there were paths throughout the attraction at different points where you would stop that magnets would actually connect the batteries to the charger. So at the dock, the vehicles would park and an actual like magnet would pull the charger up to the bottom of the vehicle in order to actually charge up the vehicle. And that there were different spots throughout the ride that it would do that. So it would do it there at dock, it would do it in front of the gangster area, in front of the bandit area, in front of a Nubis, which was the scene where the like the bandit or the gangster would go up and turn back into the the cast member. And I want to say Wizard of Oz had one, and then the finale had one. That may be too many. I think we god have five vehicles running at the same time, so maybe not a Newbis, but but yeah, they were. There were a whole lot of them, and we would park them at night, so like they we would basically when we were shutting off for the night, you would take all the vehicles and put them in certain spots, park them and then they would just recharge overnight. Like I don't. When I was there, we never had a vehicle die due to battery loss, so that's I imagine it is a good sign. Because those things were big and they were very heavy, so moving them without power would be pretty tricky, I imagine.
Right when you think of fourteen rows filled with people, that's a lot of extra weight on top of the fact that these things are so big and bulky. So yeah, especially if there's a guest like me. Pandemic has not been kind jacket carrying around extra pounds. But that is a great point. I love that you brought that in because that was something I did not actually come across in my research. I didn't even think about it, but of course it makes sense. I mean, if you're running on an electric vehicle, you have to be able to at least top off the charge a little bit so that you can run it for as long as the park is open, and as we know, Disney parks can be open for many, many hours. We'll be back with more about the Great Movie Ride and Disney Theme parks after this quick break. This ride system was originally developed over at the Universe of Energy at Epcot, another attraction that no longer exists. The Guardians of the Galaxy has replaced that area, but it was called the Traveling Theater, and for the Universe of Energy it was more it was more of a necessity because they had so many different moving theaters. These did not have an actual tour guide as part of it either that they needed to be able to orient themselves properly to become kind of like theater seating for the movie sections of the attraction, and then go back into a configuration where they can move through the rest of it. So you had to have almost the sort of ballet of these large pieces moving, and they determined they couldn't use physical tracks. If they did, they would have to have a switching system to switch each one physically to where it needed to go. And it was just going to be too complicated, too loud, and too expensive, and so they had to invent a technology. So necessity is the mother of invention. Later on, as I understand it, they actually replaced the guide wire with electronic pucks that essentially did the same thing. It just wasn't a continuous wire anymore, but served the same purpose. And I'm glad that you were able to work on it in that span of time. Obviously, it was a little different from when it first opened. The very first sequence that you encounter when you're on the ride after you've entered into the movie section is a Busby Berkeley footlight parade experience. When that originally opened, the characters that you see behind a scrim.
The birthday cake, the birthday kid.
Originally those rotated, right, you had yeah, every other one would rotate.
Yeah. Buzzby Berkeley he was known for doing. He was actually a drill sergeant in the military, and he ended up making movies in Hollywood when they were all about spectacle, and so he would do these elaborate choreograph numbers with hundreds of people. And in Footlight Prey, there was a scene where it was a hole like it was a pole scene, so it was all these women in matching swimsuits and they would do choreograph dances and water and stuff. In one of the scenes they came out of the water in this sort of birthday cake looking thing. It was three tiers with women, you know, like in circles around it, and so we had that. It was the first thing you saw when you first pulled into the Gray Movie ride back in eighty nine. On it open, you would that was like you would go in, go through this beautiful proscenium, all a neon of you know, like because the idea is you're entering the movie. So it's like you go through the screen and you're part of the movie now, and yeah, right there on your right side. Initially, apparently there was water and there were bubbles and these these things would spin and it was awesome. They actually they weren't animatronics because they were just mannequins. Because there were so many of them. But yeah, apparently that was the big thing that would falter the most. It kept breaking over and over and over again. So ultimately they just ended up kind of walking in place, and I think initially they just they left the bubbles going, and then ultimately they ended up putting a scrim in front of it and projecting images of them kind of doing their different dances and stuff.
Yeah, so yeah, I would imagine that trying to rig up a rotating fountain, which is essentially what you had there, is complicated on the best of days, and there are stories that there were frequent issues where there would be flooding and that would obviously be a problem for moving giant electric trams through. And yeah, you can understand why they nixed that after some troubles, but it is kind of sad because it was one of those nifty effects that you couldn't see anywhere else, and it also was the first thing you saw on this journey to the movies. Scaled back has slightly less of an impact, I think, as far as the effect goes, But then you move on and you start to encounter the various animatronics, and there are two major types in the ride the most famous, arguably being the Wicked Witch of the West and the Wizard of Oz segment, because she was the very first A one hundred animatronic that Disney ever used. So like the Terminator, there are designations for different generations of animatronics, and this was the first of the A one hundred generation, which I'm sure you got schooled on all of that as you were joining the attraction.
A little bit. I mean, we knew she was special because the amount of movement and like she had like dexterity in her fingers. That was a big thing, because she would point at you, which was great. It was interesting though, because she was by far the most elaborate animatronic at any of the parks for a while, and she was saddled up next to the Munchkins, who were some of the most basic animatronics. Citywhere And one fun one fun story is when before we opened, or when we were closing for the night, we'd still rotate the vehicles through and the show's scenes will still happen, but there'd be no sound. And so if you know anything about old Disney animatronics, when the servos to open the mouths would go, it would just make these clicking noise. So you'd pull in a Wizard of oz bey sitting there, it was quiet. Then all of a sudden, you know, that'd be follow the Ellopic road, but you wouldn't hear that. You just hear the clicklick click click click click. It's from like all around you. It was really a bit disheartening. Yeah, and that that was definitely weird, definitely strange that. I think that was probably the scariest thing outside of Toto. When Toto was off, she would just look at you like the she had like these crazy fangs. I think Toto is a female, but she would have these crazy fangs and she just looked like demented.
It was.
It was. It was really weird. But uh, but yeah, that was fun. Uh. I've heard a story. I don't know if it's true or not. I have no way to verify this, but apparently so, you know, the Wicked Witch. She would move around a whole lot, lots of movements. She had her broom, she would pull and stuff. Supposedly, one day something got loose and she basically whipped her arm around and her wrists snapped and her hand just kind of dangled off and the hydraulic fluid in her wrist started just hosing down the ride vehicle in front of her, so essentially like she broke her wrist and it started spraying all of the guests with her blood. Essentially, that was one of the very few shut the ride down and just evacuate from where you're positioned. We would have multiple time where we'd have to shut the ride down because something like minor would happen where we just rotate through the people that were stolen the attraction. There's not enough to like, you know, kick people out, but occasionally a door would break and it's like, well, we're not moving, and you know, it was a thing where you would have to move out of a section for the next vehicle to move in. And when those happened, those are always fun. They're only happened to me twice over the eight months or so I was there, where you know, you would ask the guests to stay there and then you know, ultimately you'd have to go make sure like a manager would come by like okay, go ahead and clear them out and then they would open the doors. And I always made it a big point of any time, like the two times that happened they said, if that happens, you need to make sure your guests are happy. So if they want to go take photos with Clin Eastwood, let them go take photos with the cliniast would as long as they're not climbing on anything, they can do whatever they want. And so some people out there have some really good photos of like John Wayne and his giant horse and the you know, like standing over by Gangster area that it's like, oh yeah, you're not normally supposed to be there. So that was always a big thing, you know. It was always about like going out of your way to be like, hey, we had an issue. Sorry. You know, at the time I was there, a great movie ride didn't have fast passed. So it's kind of like, you know, come come back when you can. We'd love to have you back. My dog is losing its mind downstairs.
That's fine. Minus too, it's it's they're just they're just co hosting.
That's fine, they're excited.
Yeah, the uh, it's it's that also reminds me like I've only had that sort of experience happened at Disney, I think maybe two times once when I was this happens pretty regularly, but I was on the People Mover when the lights on Space Mountain were all on, so you can actually see the track, and it's it's insane how closely and tightly packed that track is, to the point where you're thinking, I'm going to ride this differently the next time I'm on everything's gonna get tucked in because it's wild.
It's wild, like the re entry tube. You can just touch it. I can just reach up and touch it. It's like that should not happen. And like I imagine now, like legally that couldn't happen. I'm sure as grandfathered in by something. But like there's you can just reach out and touch stuff on that track, and when you're pitch black and you can't see anything, like you hit something at speed, that's not good. So I can imagine the amount of padding they have on all of the all the various support structures that you can't see.
Typically, Yeah, the only other time it ever happened was on Flights of Passage, the Avatar ride, where it just the the video shut down, maybe like we were maybe thirty seconds from the end of the ride. Maybe it was my first time ever writing it, so I didn't know at the time. But I was like, well, we've been going for a while, this thing was probably about to wrap up, and a cast member came on and there happened to be in the group that we were in, a VIP group who had a huge amount of money in order to do this, so they had us sit there, they restarted the ride. We rode the whole so I wrote I got to ride at one point eight times the first time, and then as we're leaving, they gave us all like like a priority fast pass digital fast passes because that was when we were getting to the point we're using magic bands. So yeah, Disney really does go a long way to trying to to make the guest experience magical, as they say they.
Certainly certainly did. I don't know how much that. It seems like nowadays things are you know, if you gettle different is a way they get Yeah, if there's a way they can charge you for it, they're going to charge you for it. If you can afford for it to be magical. Yeah, I mean, I'm I still had my annual pass. I still you know, I'm a you know, multi year annual pass holder. I still enjoy going to the parks. I participate in the run Disney events. I do a lot of stuff through Disney, but it feels like as of late, they've kind of let stuff lied and that's frustrating to me as as you know, as an annual passal, as a fan. It's just like it feels like, especially right now, Disney is at a point where they think that like they're kind of sitting back and like, we're just making lots of money and people love all of our stuff, and I don't think they're looking down the road, like right now, literally down the road down I four. Universal is building a brand new theme park this opening up in twenty twenty five. That's gonna be the new hotness. And unless Disney literally announces something at D twenty three this week or next week that hey, we're gonna have something to counter that they're gonna be caught with their pants down. I think it's it's gonna be very interesting the next you know, the the mid twenty twenties of theme parks in Orlando is gonna be very very interesting. And I don't know how much longer Disney can just kind of rest on their laurels of what they've gotten away with so far, anyway. That has nothing to do with great movie ride, but that's a national side.
It kind of does because there there been ebbs and flows at the Disney Yes, right. It all depends on really the executive leadership team and how they value investing in the parks versus kind of you know, coasting on that perhaps and focusing on other parts of the company, and that obviously changes on various regimes. There was a period, a dark period in the Walt Disney World past, where essentially all the executives who were in charge of the parks came from retail. They came from places like Banana Republic, and that was when we saw Main Street in Magic Kingdom get gutted, where all the things that used to be there, like the Penny Arcade and things that added character but they didn't generate revenue were essentially stripped out, so that you had just very long shops on either side.
The Mega Emporium. Oh yeah, yeah.
So there are issues like that that have been going on for a while. So it's not like this is a sudden decline, but it's certainly the pandemic kind of brings things into sharp relief because you can see how things were going pre pandemic versus Disney's response to the pandemic and then post pandemic. I mean, I don't really think we're in post pandemic, but everyone, yeah, argue we are.
So it's also, I mean the thing is now right, you know, right now, it's we're getting this bounce because we had two years of people basically not going on vacation, saving up all their money and I mean, or not go anywhere and saving up money. And now we're seeing people spend that money. It's like, oh, we we've been locked up for two years, Let's go to disney World. And so I think we're seeing this sort of this this false positive kind of thing where I think, like right now it's like Disney's like, oh my gosh, record profits and huge numbers going to the parks, and it's like that's not going to sustain I don't think. And you know, like tron is gonna bring some people back, but after that, it's kind of what do you got, man? I mean like cosmic Rewind was a lot of fun, but Epcot is a wreck right now, yep. And I mean then you see stuff, I mean, like you know, I love Epcot and seeing you know, Harmonious is a great show, but those barges, I like Eisner never would have let those barges be out in the water like that ruins so many sight lines and even like, I mean, it's just I'm going off on a weird but it's kind of it feels like, you know, Disney from what I knew growing up, like I was, I went to Disney Parks when I was, you know, a kid in the nineties, and I have amazing rose colored memories of that, and then working there in the early two thousands, like that was sort of like the cherry on top. And now as an adult, I can go back and I can appreciate it from a different perspective. And I understand a lot of these decisions, but I don't think they're the right decisions to be made, you know. And so it's kind of like like, oh, well, you know this sort of the you know, you can have a one slice of cake now or wait, you know, two hours to have a full cake. You know, They're like they just want their slice of cake right now, and it's like no, no, you gotta get prepped for this day. You gotta have it over multiple years. You got to look at you know.
Well, because if you get to a point where you have you dishearten people like yourself. And I'm also an annual pass holder. I'm also a Disney Vacation Club member. So yeah, so I have spent a lot of money with MoU's house. So but yeah, you start to you start to feel like the what you might have thought of as an investment before. It's almost like when you go to a really expensive college and then afterward you get a letter from them saying, hey, can you donate money. I'm like, dude, I gave you so much money. I don't need to give you more money. We'll be right back with more about the Great Movie Ride and related stuff after this break. One of the things I found very disheartening personally from the old Disney MGM studio to what we are today with Disney Hollywood Studios is something that I also feel a f EPCOT, which is that you start to see kind of an eroding of identity in that when the park opened in nineteen eighty nine, it was very clearly oriented toward we're going to talk about movies and television production. The attractions all relate to that. We have experiences that are about sound effects or visual effects. We have an animation studio, a working animation studio where you could actually see animators drawing cells of upcoming movies, and you had the backstage tour. You actually had a backlot where real productions were being shot, which honestly caused some problems because MGM initially didn't agree to that and that caused some licensing issues, but they worked that out. They stilled out of court. Ye, But it means that over time, you know, they have gotten rid of all the different elements, with the exception of they still have the Chinese theater facade, so that's still in the theme. They still have streets that are named after street in Los Angeles, so that's still kind of in the theme. But other than that, Hollywood Studios doesn't have very much studios related stuff in it. It's more like Toy Story and Star Wars and that kind of thing. So I was wondering about your perspective on that too. Do you Maybe I'm crazy and I just feel like there's kind of a loss of coherence with Park identity, but do you have a similar feeling about that as well?
Yeah, Yeah, I mean exactly that. I mean, when the studios opened, it was it was meant to replicate a working film production studio, you know. And so I mean even like the buildings, like you know, The Great Movie I had the building it's in it was like actually a stage number and they would call it like stage whatever, blah blah blah, and those still might technically be numbered. But yeah, it's over time. I mean, I'm not one to like, I know, the idea that you know, the theme parks are meant to be like a living document where you can change it and you can alter it over time, but it certainly does feel like they have lost an overall tone. I mean, other than like you know, initially it was Disney MGM Studios and it was meant to be like here's how things are made, and I love that stuff. Like I remember going on the animation tour and I think they were working on The Emperor's New Groove at the time, and I think I forget what it was titled when I went there, but they had that big window and they push a button in it would suddenly go clear and they'd see all these animators working. I think they called it the fishbowl. The animators that they hated it apparently, but like being there, it was so cool and like the backlot tour I remember. I like the original backlot tour was like four hours long. It was wild because there were so many different things. Actually they would take you around in the tram but then there was a walking portion where they show you special effects and how they were made. I got to ride on the bee from Honey I shrunk the kids and they did a whole green screen thing and like I got to be on it and they like splice me into the movie. It was awesome. I love that. But like the water tank portion was there and then slowly they started removing it. Like then they actually had I think The Mickey Mouse Club was shot there for a bit. Back in two thousand and two. One of the states over by over By the back lot was actually the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? They actually had a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire replica set when they weren't shooting in la or New York. When they weren't shooting in New York, they would come down and Regis would come down and they'd host the show from Florida. But when they weren't using it for production, they would actually it turned into an actual, like an attraction people could go to, so you could actually play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and see how it was made. It was one hundred percent exactly what they used in the show, which I thought was really cool and one of my favorite stories. When I worked at the Backlots who Are in two thousand and five, By then, the whole walking portion of the attraction was gone. It was just the water tank section and then you would move on to the tram tour which would take you through the residential area and then it would take you over to Catastrophe Canyon. But the walking portion was gone, but the buildings were still there, and in the employee restroom area there was an entrance like there was basically a back entrance into the walking portion where they would have like I think when they finished it, it was the one hundred and one alimations live action stuff, so they showed how they did all the animatronics with the dogs and everything. But every single time I would use the restroom, I would check that door and it was always locked, always locked, every single time I was there for six months, always locked. Literally my last night I was working there, checked the door and it opened, and I was like, like I opened the door and it was just like, oh my gosh. And I walked in and I they if you remember, it was kind of like a pit where it was a circle and you would like they all the guests would be around the circle and they'd look down into this pit and then a cast member would show off all the tech. They actually had like foot plates where they would step on things to make things trigger, and all the plates were still there. All the animatronics were gone, but all the plates were still there, and all like the shelves and everything, and then up they had all of this storage of old props. So like I remember when I was a kid, I saw Johnny five from Short Circuit too, like the gold one. He was up on one of the like up on one of the big racks, and I was like, oh my gosh, and a lot of that stuff was still there, like a lot of the props were still there, and it was just like one of those moments like I did it. I cracked into it, and it was one of my favorite things. One of my favorite memories that in right before I did my when I got my last clock out before i'd go actually clock out from the computer. I had them hold the next backlot to our show, the water Tank Show. I adam hold the show, and then I did a flip into the pool and then I walked out and so uh and then my manager just came tearing around the corner because he heard someone had fallen in and I'm just dripping wet, and he's like, what happened. I'm like, oh, I dove in. He goes, oh, come on, and I'm like, it's my last day, and he's like, all right, well, thanks for working here. Because I was. I was. I was. I enjoyed what I did. I love performing, like if you can't tell, I enjoy being in front of in front of people. And you know, that's that's what really drew me to the Great movie Ride was the idea of performing and actually having like I can affect someone's enjoyment of an attraction. And I love everyone I worked with, but there were a few people that was like, oh, man, Like I like, when I'd see someone hosting one of the like hosting a ride, I'd be like, oh, those people aren't going to get the best show. Because you know, you can read a script so many different ways, and some people would kind of just go through the motions and it's like no, whereas like I, you know, put some put some drama into it, you know, put some effort into it. And I would love doing that. And I also just really enjoyed talking in microphones and that was always my thing in the pre show area, and that where the theater was, which is still Mickey and Minnie's what you go through the Chinese Theater. You go through you enter in through them the main doors of the Gramma Chinese Theater or the Chinese Theater, and then you turn left and everything like basically all of that hasn't been touched at all, Like that was all exactly how it was when it was a great movie ride. But as soon as you kind of around the corner is where it all sorts sort of changes. You eventually do a couple of switchbacks and then the cast member will tell you to go to like, you know, go to theater one, go to theater two, go to theater three. All of those were empty, and that's where the big theater was, and that's where the big projection theater was. With the trailers you were talking about earlier, but there was a microphone at that at the booth for that one, because that's where you would basically hold people before you load, because the dock was the next door. You'd have a door, it'd open, you'd load them up, and you close the door. Watch the movie, you know, five minutes later, reopen it, et cetera, et cetera. Do that over and over again. But that microphone on that desk, for some reason, made my voice sound so good. I love that microphone so much because it had like it really picked up the base and it just sounded good to speak because it was like a theater and so it sounded so nice. And my biggest compliment I ever got was when I'd be there, you know, hosting in the right before load and I do my spiel at the at the podium, like you know, like in just a few moments there the ridea will start or whatever, and people would come down and say, like, I thought that was a pre recorded thing. I didn't realize that was you doing it live. And I'm like, oh, thank you very much, very kind of you. So that's why we had I don't know what it was about the acoustics in that room or that microphone, whatever it was, that that magic it was. It was awesome.
It's gotta be great to have you on the mono rail and you can give the speed just before the doors.
Oh oh day, last part. Yes, it's my one line of Spanish. I know.
Yeah, well that is also again getting back to the story part of the Great Movie Ride, the fact that you had this sort of this interactive element. I thought one of the most fascinating things as a guest riding the ride was that this was an experience where the tour guide that you were with was interacting not just with other humans, but also with some of the animatronics as well. So there was a lot of different acting. There was acting off other cast members, and there was acting off the pre recorded and pre programmed animatronic figures like the Wicked Witch of the West, And I thought that was just brilliant because it really brought that immersion, that magic in there, showing the incredible ingenuity of the engineers who created these these devices. Getting back to the Wicked Witch of the West, there was a point where she was augmented. She was already really advanced by the time that the attraction open. She was the most advanced animatronic that Disney had up to that point. They had developed a system a little a couple of years before they unveiled her called Compliance, And this gets back to the hydraulics you were talking about. The hydraulic system allowed for smooth movement and analog movement, so you could have a range of motion with the old pneumatic systems that the Enchanita tiki room had. You had two positions. You had opened and closed right, like, the beaks would open and they would close. But you couldn't halfway open a beak because you're using an air piston to do it right. It's a solemn noise and an air piston. And if you've ever listened carefully in the Inchennitigi room, you can hear that air, you know, propelling everything that's in there. And that old system was brilliant. The reason they called it audio animatronics is they would record audio tones on originally it was filmed. Later it would be magnetic tape, and the audio tones would make a read vibrate that would close a circuit and that would allow the circuit to activate the solenoid or the pneumatic valves that would then have the beaks open and closed. Brilliant, easy simple solution except for the fact that you have all these tubes everywhere. But they never went with hydraulics for the birds because like the Wicked Witch example you gave Jack, they didn't want the birds to possibly mess on guests if there was a hydraulic leak. You know, air doesn't leak or I mean, it's not going to drip on you, so you're fine. But ye know, once you get up to the Wicked Witch, she was on hydraulics, and the compliance was meant to be kind of a shock absorbing system so that you could do these more dramatic movements, but you wouldn't put so much stress on the figure that it wears out in like a season and you would have to do a full referb on it. So this the brilliance to me of the engineering process was not just that they were figuring out new ways to animate these character in three dimensional space, but they were also already thinking about, if we do this, it's going to cause more wear and tear. How are we going to address that so that we limit downtime and the amount of money we have to spend on maintenance. And it's that kind of engineering that I find really fascinating, and later on they would introduce the A one thousand animatronics. Those are the ones you see in places like Galaxy's Edge, you see it over on the Smugglers Run ride. You know, Hondo is an A one thousand figure. By that time, you've moved away from hydraulics and you're into pure electronics systems that are all precisely computer controlled. I had read that in the A one hundred Days, the Wicked Witch Days. Programming those things was a painstaking process, and it could take up to eight hours to program one second of animation on one of those And when you think about the amount of animation the Wicked Witch had in particular, that's you know, that's someone's year right there.
Yeah, yeah, well, well, I mean, like think before I forget about it. What one interesting thing about the Wicked Which area, the whole Wizard of Oz area was it was one of two portions of the ride where if we were at a busy day, we'd had an we had an A show and a B show. So the the way it worked was and on busy days you would run both shows, the A show of the B show. The A show would be your bandit, your Bandit show, so your Cowboy show, and then the B show would be the Gangster show. We could run without the A show. You could run just just band or just gangster if you wanted to. And what would happen to was, you know, as I, if you're running two vehicles, the first vehicle would kind of speed through the first couple scenes, so you would go through the the you know, the you know, footlight parade, Wizard uh Singing in the Rain, and Mary Poppins. You'd kind of just careened through it, honestly, like you wouldn't slow down at all, because what you're doing is you were making space between your vehicle and the B vehicle, and so you would both kind of land at the portions of the show where you interact with another cast member, you'd interact with the bandit or interact with a gangster, and then you would both move at the same speed up until the switch happened back over at Indiana Jones, and then the B vehicle would then just a haul butt to catch up to the A vehicle, and by that time you would then both enter into the Wizard of Oz area. So that was the one scene where you'd have theoretically four vehicles, or I mean two vehicles but attractor trailer, so four you know, platforms of people on there. And if you had a full show like that, there was actually a microphone off to the side because the witch was designed to interact with just one person, and so she would always point at the driver of the first vehicle. And so if it was just if you're just running a show where you didn't have the other if it was just running a B show and you only had your one car, you would just use your microphone for the vehicle, you know, the one that actually feeds through the speakers. But if you had both vehicles, if you had all four of them going this the back car so the B show, they would they wouldn't be able to hear you obviously on your microphone. So we had a separate microphone that you would you step off the vehicle, pick it up, and it played over the PA inside of the Wizard of Oz section. So on munchkin Land, it will play over the PA, so all everyone could hear you on that as opposed to just your vehicle. So I'm trying to think of interesting tech stuff that you might might find me chemical that's amazing.
I didn't. I mean I knew about the A Show and B Show because I had ridden the right enough times and by the end of it, you essentially only saw the B Show. Yeah, yeah, they did, they weren't. They never had a capacity that was enough where they needed to run both really uh And also I mean, you know then you have half the number of cast members who have to be in costume and yeah, which gets us into it that that that's LaBrie Slope and we're just going to complain about this. These all back away.
But you have the cool fire explosion if you're on the show that was that was the one thing there was an awesome, awesome So it was basically bann Is robbing a bank in the Old West and they would throw dynamite into the store. So that I can go into that a little bit. So on an A show, if you were the the you know, the tour guide, the band would hop out and you'd like take over your vehicle and so you would you would hear that someone's robbing the bank. So you're like, oh, robbing the bank, let me go see what's going on, and you jump off the vehicle and then an animatronic would actually pull a gun on you and you'd be like, oh, you have to kind of stick your hands up and then you know, then then an actual human would come out and they would need to have an interaction with them, and then at one point they get distracted, so you run into the bank and then the bandit would then throw dynamite into the bank and then the whole thing would explode in fire, which is a really really cool effect. They did it a whole lot and it never seemed to have any issues, which is wild. But one neat thing is, uh, the doors, Like so they're swinging doors to go in and out of the bank, those doors were like six inches thick of fire padding and everything, and as the as the the the cast member the tour guide would actually go into the bank and they would have to push a button on the inside basically saying they were clear. And so once you would hold you would hit that and then the the cast member outside would hit the other one and that would trigger the explosure or basically say like it's okay to go. It would be like the green light to go. I think that was the case. I could be wrong on that, but I'm pretty sure we had to hold a button on the inside to basically notify the system that everything was okay to go. But yeah, that was a fun show.
It's like having the nuclear key where you have to insert.
It the same time at the same time make sure that.
Everyone is on the same page.
Yeah.
Yeah. For those who are wondering what we're even talking about, as Jack was saying, the way the ride would progress is that you would stop. If you were the A Show, you would stop at in the Western section, and then this scenario would play out and a band it would take temporarily take over your tour. They found the alien section very upsetting. And then if you were the B Show, you did the same sort of thing, except it was in the gangster movie segment, which was a little further back, and a gangster would come in and take over your tram temporarily, and in both cases it gets resolved in the Indiana Jones Ish section little past that, where you have both of both the gangster and the the bandit end up being too greedy and they try to get a sacred gym and end up being fried, and the tour guide magically returns and yeah, apparently from the dead in the story.
Yeah, well it's movie magic.
Right.
That was that was always like that. The scene was amazing. I loved it because, first of all, so the way it worked was there's music playing over the PA's and it's called the Anubis scene. Is what it is is where the big gym is, and so the ganger, the gangster, the band it would be like, you guys, wait here, I'm gonna I'm gonna steal that gym, you know, and they then they they'd walk up these stairs and the music would play, and there's a lightning bolt, like a certain like lightning bolt. When they heard that, they would hit a little button like a little like arcade button on on the actual scenery, which would then trigger the Halt Unbeliever, which is like this big, you know, booming voice, and then the team or the cast member would then react to that and then they'd be like ah, whatever, and they'd put their hand on the gym. Smoke would go, and the smoke dissipated. It would reveal the skeleton standing there like reaching for the gym, and then you know, it turns out like, oh, that was actually your your your tour guide was the the other person. That was a neat effect because that was actually it was a door, so it was a rotating door that the smoke would the smoke would you know, there's enough of it to to you know, cover the door, and then it would it would spin around, and then the the you know, the band of the gangster would hold the door closed. So it didn't because it was just on a little magnet and so like if if they just kind of walk through it, it would swing and then sometimes swing back or be like halfway open, so they would have to hold it closed and then and then you reveal like, hey, it's me, and then you'd run back down and then add another lightning bolt. You would then start your vehicle up to get the timing right. And some of the more some of the more like, I mean, you have relationships with all the people there, and so some of the people like to mess with you. So some of the gangsters or bandits, they would like to take the microphone cable and just wind it all around the steering wheel, and so you'd go to grab it and it was just stuck and you'd have to sit there and not like lean over it and like talk into the microphone by your wheel while you're trying to unwind it and stuff that was. That was always fun. But that was a cool scene. That was a really neat, really neat bit that movie that that wasn't really any specific movie, the Anubist scene, but right before it was Raiders the Lost Arc, which was awesome. And then you know, Alien was fantastic too. That little the goofy stuff in the background is always super gross. I love that.
Yeah. No, the the effects on the ride were uh, like I said, it really was pulling you into the experience as if you were in the fiction of those movies. It is, by the way, in no way, shape or form at all similar to actually being on a movie set, but if you had been magically pulled into the movies themselves. It was like that. Uh and yeah, yeah, that's it was. It was one of those rides, very charming ride as you as you say. It wasn't exactly like a throw ride or anything. But again, like to this day, my favorite ride at Disney is still Pirates of the Caribbean. I like the story based rides. I mean I like the throw rides too, Don't get me wrong, I love a good throw ride. Loved Guardians of the Galaxy needed about twenty minutes to recover after I wrote it, but I loved it really.
Oh man, I love that ride. Man, I ride that all day.
I've jack I've reached the age where where where thrill rides. I have a strict limit, and after I hit it, man, I cannot go past it. Actually, the worst though, are for me the ones that incorporate VR elements or screen elements. Those can get me a little.
Yeah, for a forbidden journey over at Universal, I have to look at my feet during the screen portions. I can't do it anymore. Like even like Simpson's ride, I get a little like a little queasy.
Yeah. My wife and I we made the mistake of we decided to do park hoppying back when you could easily do that. You can still do it today, it's just not as easy.
And we did.
The Flights of Passage first, so that's a VR based ride. We hopped over to Hollywood Studios and in Star Tours it's another VR ride. We hopped on over to Epcott and we did sore in which we usually were totally fine on that, but it turned out that that was one screen based ride too many, and we both kind of felt that that lingering motion not like acute motion. Sickness, but more like, yeah, I don't feel right. And then we decided to get all the heat and went into the China film, which is a three hundred and sixty degree film. The screen is completely in a three hundred and sixty degree arc, which is amazing in itself and I should probably talk about that technology at some point. But that disoriented us to the point where we spent probably the next three hours just sitting in the World Showcase and people watching because we couldn't. We were afraid to move.
So yeah, living with the land man, Yeah, living with the land After doing sore In, let it cool off a little bit, see how the plants are made.
Or maybe the the well what's now the three Kabaetto's ride but used to be the River of Time ride over in Mexico. That's always there's never a line for it. It's always cool. So I like that one.
I was told, I don't know if this is true or not. I imagine you might know, because you know a whole lot about animatronics. When Great Movie Ride shut down, which was about five years ago at this point, I think I don't know exactly when it shut down. The rumor was that the Wicked Witch the eight hundred. A one hundred animatronic moved to Pirates of the Caribbean and now it's Red. So like supposedly Red is the old Wicked Witch from movie Ride. Is that true? Do you know if that's true?
I cannot say if it's true or false because I don't get the answered that. But I can tell you I mean Red is an A one hundred figure. So Red is of the same generation as Wicked Witch. Whether it's exactly the same a skeleton underneath, I am not certain. There's no reason it couldn't be. It certainly couldn't. Yeah, because these the big innovation of a one hundred was that you had far more options when it came to programming the figure and a much larger range of motion if you wanted to have a very expressive figure. You know the fact that if Scarlett the Pirate is in fact the former Wicked Witch of the West, that means she's also an animatronic that was altered by the company Sarcos, which is mostly known as a military and industrial robotics company. So what I'm saying is, don't mess with the woman Pirate because maybe she's a terminator. I don't know.
Yeah, she might, she might turn. I mean, just looking at a photo of Red her her right hand she's holding she's holding a gun, so her right hand is really not moving much and her left hand is holding the bottle and she moves it a lot, which similar to the Wicked Witch. She had her broom in one hand and then her other hand was pointing a lot. So I've been told that's her. I don't know if it's true. In my headcan and one hundred percent that's the Wicked Witch. And then I guess they made another one for the Hollywood Park or the Anaheim Park. But but yeah, I like to think, you know, she she landed over there.
I'm totally cool with that. Yeah, I think I'm gonna adopt the same head cannon because Pirates is one of my favorite rides. I love the Great Movie Ride. To think about that legacy living on under a different costume and skin, I think is brilliant. So I'm gonna go with that too.
So a lot of people would say that the so at one point you go to Casablanca and in Great Movie Ride, and there was a plane there. It was basically recreating the scene that you know you know, there are problems don't amount to a hill of beans. And so there was a plane in the background that would like slowly spin up and stuff, and a lot of people said, like, oh, that's actually the plane from the movie. They would use that as fact. That was not the plane from the movie. One hundred percent was not the plane from the movie. As a matter of fact, the back of that plane ended up over at Jungle Cruise. So there's a crashed plane in Jungle Cruise, and the rear section of the plane is basically they split in half. Put half a Jungle Cruise half at movie ride. So you ever hear that fact that is a lie. That's one hundred percent a lot.
I do love that both halves of the plane were existing in cast member guided attractions. Yeah, like that's one of the beautiful things about Jungle Cruise. It's a very corny ride, but it's still a ride where you get to see someone going through performance and if they haven't reached the Skipper Dan part of their career, then they can really be a lot of fun. Like you say, it all depends on who you get and what kind of mood they're in. I mean, all human beings, but hopefully you get someone on a good day. Yeah. I heard one rumor that that plane might have been used, not obviously not in Casta Blanca, but possibly in one of the Tarzan films. But whether that's true or not, I don't know. It's just again, there is a Tarzan section in the grit Or. There was I can't use the present tense anymore in The Great Movie Ride, but they did use the plane in that one. I had to go in the Castle Blanka section. Stick around because we have a little bit more about The Great Movie Ride and Dizzy and Dak Pattillo to talk about, and we'll do that right after this break. This has been a great talk. I've really enjoyed it. I really appreciate your time. But one thing I really want to talk about before we wrap up is your podcast, Annual Pass, where you dedicate episodes to all things theme and amusement park oriented. There are episodes that are about specific attractions or shows. There are interviews with people who have worked at these various places or have even invented some of the attractions that people know and love today. And you have two great co hosts. You've got Jeff and b Ka, so You've got Jeff, who's an old grumpy man like myself. I think he and I were born a week apart. And then you've got b Ka Youngin, who has a totally different perspective thinks of you two as her dad's.
Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Manual Pass is definitely one of those things where I was looking for something that, like, what could I make a podcast about that I'm passionate about? And if you have only heard me on this podcast here, you can tell that I love theme parks. And so I made a pitch about, like, hey, let's do a show all about theme park attractions and then let's go into it. And we've been doing it now for about seventy episodes, and it's been so much fun, and the theme park community, like because you know, obviously there's a big theme park vlogging community, they've been so friendly and I was so nervous getting into it because like I've been listening to you know, like theme Park Stop and defunk Land, Yesterra World, you know, all of these amazing shows, and I've had the opportunity now to talk to these creators and everyone is so friendly and so nice and just being in this space has been so much fun, and I think we're kind of finding our footing now. We're having a really good time with it. We're more of a lighthearted kind of look at things, but if you want to find out more about a specific attraction, we go into it. We do ride throughs, but like you said, we do interviews. As a matter of fact, we recorded one today with a woman who was super knowledgeable about Halloween Horror Nights and the lore of Halloween Horror Nites, and so we did a whole we're doing a whole episode on that, and it's just it's a lot of fun because you know, we, like you said, we've had imaginears on We've had people designing rise for Universal and hearing the stories about what goes into the making of these attractions. Like we've oddly enough, we've talked to two different gentlemen who had to pitch Steven Spielberg on attractions on different ones. One for one for Velosit Coaster, the Drass Park themed one, our Dress World themed one, and then one for Men in Black. So it's like and like hearing their story. Apparently Steven s Fielburg is a super nice guy, so that's cool. That's good to hear. But but yeah, it's been so much fun, and you know, if you want to listen to it, I'd love for that. That'd be fantastic. We are Annual Pass. You go to YouTube dot com slash Annual Pass, or find us anywhere you get your podcast Spotify, rovertroosterteeth dot com slash Annual Pass, like wherever you want to go to find it, Please give it a listen. It's it's a lot of fun and you know, as long as people are listening, I'm going to keep making it. So that's the the dream at least, you know. Any the whole goal was to get my parent company to buy me a ticket to go to a theme park. So I still pay for my annual Pass, I'll say that much. My Disney annual passes so well seek for.
iHeart and I have yet to leverage that into concert tickets, but it's always in the back of my mind. Jack Uh, Yeah, Annual Pass is a great listen. I highly recommend it for people to go check out. It's first of all you will I can't think of another word to describe Jack's performance an Annual Pass besides exuberant. I think that that is that is the appropriate word to use. Your ride throughs are so enthusiastic. That's what I love most is that it's it's like, imagine the friendliest Carnival barker walking you through the traction that you've always wanted to be on but you haven't. And and I look forward to hearing a lot more. You've had some great guests and and and all your topics are always fun, and it's always fun to hear the interaction between you and the other hosts. So definitely do check that out. Are are there are there any theme parks or tractions that you're eagerly looking forward to that you haven't experienced yet, either ones that are on the cusp of coming out or just ones that exist but you haven't managed to get there.
Man, I mean, really a lot of stuff outside the US, That's what I want to do. Like, I mean, I've been fortunate enough to go to Disneyland Paris and you know, Disney Studios Paris. That was great. Actually this year we went to Thorpe Park in England, just south of Heathrow, which was really cool. We get to go on the saw ride and like the Walking Dead, the ride is like really intense. But apparently Alton Towers is the European park, so we got to go order to the London Park, so we got to go to Alton Towers next. But anywhere in Japan, Shanghai, I mean, there's so many amazing things and a lot of stuff, Like you know, I try not to watch ride videos on stuff that I would like to go on someday. So I watched the tron light Cycle ride through because I'm like, I'm probably not gonna go to Shanghai anytime soon. And then of course, like immediately later they're like, oh, yeah, we're gonna put a Nepcot and that was six years ago, so we'll see if it ever actually does open. But yeah, I mean I love any sort of theme park. I love small little like family mom and pop parks. I love the big ones. I'll ride anything. At this point, I've pretty much given myself up where I'm like, I don't I don't fear being on an attraction. I love them and so that's a blast, so I will do anything. Like so we so many people like, oh, you need to come to this park like I would love to. I would love to, Like I'm never gonna say no, like I'm always I'm always up for whatever I want to go to stuff. So I'm actually going to six Flags Great America, the one near Chicago later this month, and then ideally we're going out to Halloween Horror Night sometime either towards the end of September or October. So I'll be back out in Florida hopefully soon to go to some parks and you know, make that annual pass pay for yourself.
If you get down to six Flags over Georgia, you can you can ride what was formerly known as the Monster Plantation, and then I'll tell you all about the problematic history of that particular attraction, because that that has undergone a pretty massive thematic change, as you would imagine, from an attraction that was previously known as Monster Plantation in.
Georgia, then it became Splash Mountain. So it's all good, Okay, it's okay.
We'll make that Princess and the Frog one day. All right. Well, well, Jack, thank you so much for being on the show. It was a pleasure having you on. And yeah, feel free to come back anytime. We'll talk theme parks till the cows come home.
Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much. Anytime I get a chance to talk theme parks, I'm up for it.
Once again, I want to thank Jack Pattillo for coming onto this show. You know when he co founded Achievement Hunter. That was back in two thousand and eight, the summer of two thousand and eight, which is the exact same summer that this show launched. So he and I have been in related business for a very long time. He has seen phenomenal success and has done amazing things. Seriously, you need to go and check out his charity work because it's truly inspiring stuff. It got me to participate on my own, not in any big way, many times, so check that out too. It's for a good cause. It's for children's healthcare, which is obviously a great cause. And yeah, check out Annual Pass as well. It's a fun podcast. And if you love theme parks and you love learning more about the attractions and what they're like and trivia about them, it's a really fun listen. So check those out. If you want to get in touch with me and suggest topics that I should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff, tell you what you can do. You can download the iHeartRadio app. It's free to download. Navigate over to tech Stuff. There's a little microphone icon you can click on, and there you can just leave me a message of up the thirty seconds in length, or you can reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff HSW and I hope to do more interviews in the future. They're a little challenge because you know, scheduling can be you know, it's tough. People are busy, and so I will do my best because I love having someone else on the show to talk to, get their perspective, learn things that I can't find out just through, you know, research on my own, because these are the people who are actually there. I want to do more of that in the future. If you have people that you think I should have on as a guest, send those my way. I can't promise that I'll get them, but I can at least try, and with that I'll talk to you again. Release So tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
