Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, Mango? What's that? Will? All right? So I'm
thinking about joining this V I P Lounge at Disneyland,
you know, the one we were talking about, Club Club
thirty three. I think it's called Oh yeah, I mean
it sits right above the Pirates of the Caribbean right
there in New Orleans Square. You get access to all
sorts of memorabilia, all the perks. And I was actually
just reading the other day that there's a chance you
(00:20):
might run into some of the other rumored members like
Tom Hanks and Elton John. Yeah, but isn't there like
a like a decade long waiting list for it, supposedly,
But come on, don't don't be a downer on this.
And and and I'm gonna need to borrow twenty five
thou dollars if you don't mind, but we can talk
about that after the show. But you know, over the years,
we've heard some pretty crazy facts like this and some
of the other secrets of Disneyland and other Disney parks.
(00:44):
You know, things like the secret basketball accord at the
top of the matter Horn Ride, or Walt Disney is
hidd an apartment above the fire station in Disneyland, which
actually is still there by the way, So we thought
it'd be fun to share nine of our favorite facts
about Disney and its parts. So let's get started. Hei
(01:19):
their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
man guest Ticketer. And on the other side of the
soundproof glass, wearing his save Mr toad T shirt is
our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I like that and
I think that's my favorite shirt he's worn so far.
And we've got a special guest with us in studio today.
Mango right, Yeah, that's right. So we we've got the
managing editor of the brilliant house staff Works dot Com,
(01:42):
Alison Ladermook. Welcome Allison, Thanks for having me. Guys. All right,
we're gonna dive right in. So we've got nine facts
that we might not have known about Disney. So let's
get started. As our guests, we're gonna let you go first, Allison.
What you got? I am delighted to go first. So
as you're just talking about, well, there is that private
apartment that Wall and Lilian used to have in Disneyland,
and one really cool thing that I loved about it
(02:04):
kind of gave me the warm fuzzies. Was that what
would be on the Disneyland premises quite a bit and
he it was kind of like a small little spot,
five square feet decorated. Yeah yeah, quite small, decorated in
the Victorian era, filled with you know, some fun stuff
for Walton Lilan to pass the time. Mango paying attention. Sorry, yeah, yeah,
(02:25):
I heard. It was a small apartment. In this very
small apartment, there was a special thing that I think
you would like. Do you know what? It was? A
grilled cheesemaker. Yeah. Wow, pretty cool. Huh So one of
the cool facts about this apartment. I thought that was
your fact that there was a grilled cheesemaker. That's awesome though, No,
that wasn't my fact. There's a better one. So one
(02:46):
of the cool things, and I think you guys are
gonna like this kind of gives you the warm fuzzies.
It gives me the warm fuzzies was that Will always
had the light burning on his apartment, and when after
he passed in ninety six, Disneyland decided to keep that
light burning on for him. So if you ever enter
the park and you go by the Main Street firehouse,
and you look up on the second floor, you'll see
the light burning. And so it's kind of reminder that
(03:07):
Walt Disney is still alive and all of us. Oh wow,
so it stays. That's amazing. Yeah, I love that. That's
really awesome. Alright, good, good, first fact, Mango, what you got.
So this is one of the strangest things that's happened
at the happiest place on Earth, and it's at the
Beatles officially broke up there and so this is way
back in December of nine, but that's when John Lennon
(03:28):
actually signed the papers that officially dissolved the band. And
there's a photo of him like signing the papers and
in the background you see the uh, the Polynesian Village hotel.
That is pretty crazy. I had no idea about that.
Is that where they fired Eddie Murphy when it was
the Clarence Is before. I don't know if you remember that.
That's pretty interesting too. Alright, Well, I've got one. I'm
(03:49):
going to start. Um, let's see which one I want
to start with. Since you talked about them, you know,
officially breaking up are almost officially breaking up there. I
will start with a different kind of contract and that
was one that almost happened. That is, Disney almost opened
a park in St. Louis. So in the sixties, Walt
himself was personally involved in coming up with the plans
(04:09):
for a Midwestern park. It was going to have a
theme around Old St. Louis and rides around the Mississippi
River and the Old West animatronics of Thomas Jefferson and
Napoleon would have talked about the Louisiana purchase. So all
these plans were in order. It looked like they were
going to move forward. And then Walt looked around and
realized that he could buy a ton of swampland in
(04:29):
Florida for a whole lot less money, and so they
decided to go for that, and so in nineteen sixty
five they announced that they were no longer going to
be moving forward with this, but we almost had a
park in the in St. Louis. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
all right, Allison, you're second fact. Okay, So when the
lights go down and all the guests are clearing out
of Disneyland, and there's a whole another sort of life
(04:49):
that comes on as night closes in, and so there's
of course a hard working night crew that does things
like repair and repaint and do all the things that
guests have weirdly done to in the day. But there's
also a whole lot of cats terrifying let's start prowling Disneyland.
And the thing is is, um, the disney folks are
okay with us. Why are they okay with this? To
(05:11):
guys think, oh, you know, what is it? Does that
anything to do with rodents? Absolutely? So they have about
a hundred cats currently like roaming the grounds, and they
take care of them too. Um. They've spayed and neutered
the cats. They have permanent feeding stations installed in two
of the parks, and they generally provide like routine veterinary
(05:33):
care like vaccinations and things like that, maybe a little
flea treatment just to make sure they're not transmitting those
pesky fleas well. That I mean that that makes sense.
You want to get rid of the smaller mice so
that you can concentrate on the bigger ones. So the
interesting thing is they've taken a little flak about it
over the years too, because cat lovers have different feelings
about trap and release programs and spaying, neutering all that stuff.
(05:55):
So some people want to see the cats have a
permanent home, while some people are totally okay with what
Disney How's going on now? So these are just feral
cats that are just around and kind of in hiding
during the day and then they come out at night. Yeah,
although they're not totally in hiding, you can spot them
and people do spot them and cat lovers do. And
so there's a whole thing online, as you might guess,
(06:17):
and it's called at Disneyland Cats. You can find him
on Instagram. There's one particularly photogenic fellow and his name
is Francisco hashtag Francisco Fridays. He's lovely. I caught a
photo of him and he is bathed in a sunbeam
and it looks like he's pondering life. He's got like
this coat of brown and orange and that just like
(06:38):
his coat, is glow. It's lovely. It looks like a
lovely Disney cat. Well, despite the fact that I'm pretty
scared of cats, that is sweet and finally a reason
to go to Disney right right to see the cat
exactly All right, Well, mango, what do you have next?
So this is the story I never would have found
without the wonderful Stacy Conrad, but she told me this
crazy fact about how Walt Disney actually kidnapped Richard Nixon. What. So,
(07:02):
this is when Nixon was VP, and apparently in nine
Nixon visited Disneyland to dedicate the whole new mono rail
system while had built, and when he and Walt took off,
the Secret Service was caught off guard and they were
just standing out on the platform outside, so they weren't
inside the train. But here's the funny part. So they
like raced around the Secret Services all worried, and then
(07:23):
as the train starts pulling into the platform, the Secret
Service starts like chasing to to catch up with the train,
and then Disney takes off again. Apparently as the train
was slowing like, Nixon's daughters were so excited that they
started yelling again again. So you know, Disney Disney, of
course keep them happy. That's pretty great. But what's the
(07:44):
weirdest part about this is that the mono rail had
only been tested one time to that point, so imagine
ears were actually worried that it might break down or
even catch on fire with Nix and his family on board. Wow,
you know, it's even more weird than that, with that
I also have a Nixon related Disney fact of our
I'm facts. Two of them are related to Nixon, and
mine is a little bit different, a little bit less fun.
(08:05):
And that is the fact that he delivered his I
Am not a Crook speech from the ballroom of Disney's
Contemporary Resort hotel. Did you did you know this? I
never knew this until we were digging stuff into this.
So in nineteen seventy three, he's buried in the Watergate scandal. Well,
there's a gathering of the Associated Press managing editors there
and it's it's some sort of conference, and he decided
to take this opportunity to go speak to them, and
(08:28):
he sits down for one on one interview and that's
where he delivers that famous quote of I Am not
a crook. That's the Beatles and Nixon. Yeah, I know,
it's just a big history that happened there. All right.
So it's our last fact of the day, Allison, you
got one more for us? I sure do, And this
is a good one. Okay. So in Disney gets together
with co Tex or rather Kimberly Clark, who, as we
(08:49):
all know, is the big multinational corporation, and they make
a lot of consumer products, and co Tex in particular
is a maker of women's hygiene products, like you know,
things like liners and pads and tampons and stuff like that.
So they get together and they're like, yeah, let's let's
do this thing. Let's tell let's tell young women the
story of menstruation. And so I watched the film a
(09:10):
bunch of times on YouTube. There is this bunch of
times I did, Yeah, absolutely, it's uh. There's this lovely
um lilting narration throughout, very practical to a lot of
common sense. She is uncredited, which bummed me out because
I wanted to find out who she was. Um. And
so she takes you through the whole She takes young
females through the whole story of menstruation, and there's I
(09:33):
thought it should be a good refresher course. Honestly. Was
this distributed somewhere or like or where where was this?
It was shown to millions of kids in health education classes.
Very interesting. It's pretty wide ranging too. Once you get
through the actual mechanics of menstruation. There's a lot of
(09:54):
advice that comes with it, and they do a little
myth busting, which I particularly dug um as brs exercise,
it's good for you. Um do in fact, shower when
you're going through menstruation. That's a good thing as well.
Um and some other stuff. I just got a kick
out of it. Well that is super interesting, Okay, I
know it's crazy that Disney was in the sponsored content
(10:14):
game exactly. Alright, mano, you got one more. Yeah, so
mine is strangely an underwear related fact. And uh so
this is a headline I found from two thousand one
and it caught my attention. It was in the l
A Times and it reads, quote new contract gives Disney
workers clean underwear. So apparently, thanks to their team Stares union,
(10:37):
Disney employees negotiated a new contract where they received individual
underwear and they no longer had to wear the communal
underwear that had been supplied. So basically this is how
it worked. Like you get your goofy, your mini mouse costume,
and then you wear it for the day and then
you turn it back into Disney Services for laundering. But
something wasn't working because enough people got license scabies that
(10:58):
they had to change their rules. And now employees not
only get their own underwear, they also get to wash
them themselves. How sweet. Wow. All right, well that's kind
of a scary fact. But I decided to also end
with a bit of a spooky fact as we're getting
closer to Halloween here, and this one has to do
with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. So according to
Jason Searle, who's the author of a book called Pirates
(11:20):
of the Caribbean From the Magic Kingdom to the movies,
they apparently used to use real skeletons in this ride
when you would go through it because they were worried
that like fake skeletons or fake bones wouldn't look real enough.
So they worked with u C l A. I know, yeah,
like that's not a real skeleton. Everything else here looks
super real, but not those skeleton bones. And so they
(11:43):
worked with u c l A Medical Center in order
to get real bones. And this was this was the
case for a little while until they decided that maybe
this was a little bit insensitive to be using these
actual bones from real dead people, and so they decided
to return the bones. But apparently there's a lone skull
and crossbon is looming in the headboard in that scene
where a long dead pirate is sitting in a bed.
(12:04):
I think he's clutching a magnifying glass. So that's the word.
I don't know if that's true, but that's what they
say that that's the lone skeleton, real skeleton still in.
I love the idea that, you know, like some people
don't neate their bodies of science, if you could just
tick the box that donates your bodies to like Disney,
I would totally do that. I mean, give your organs
to better causes, right, but when it comes to the bones,
(12:25):
like sure, that'd be awesome, be forever remembered as part
of a ride. So I'm going to Disney World. Yeah.
Have you guys been to Disney World. Yeah, I've been
to Disney World. I've never actually been to Disneyland. Yeah
yeah yeah. But Mr Tristan over here is passionate with
his same Mr Toad. I hope it happens one day, Tristan.
(12:45):
Good luck with that, alright, Mango. So those are our facts.
What do you think we gotta give out a trophy today? Well,
I mean, I I feel like you present some good facts,
and I had some good facts. But I really love
the feral cat story along with the you know, the
menstruation story and the lamp one, so I feel like
Allison really deserves it. Alright, congratulations, your first visit here
(13:06):
and you get the trophy. Oh I'm thrilled. I like, hey,
you couldn't quite figure out what you were, but thrilled
is what you decided on. Quite thrilled. That's terrific. We'll
be back with a full length episode tomorrow. Thanks so
much for listening.