Rerun: How the Great Movie Ride Worked

Special 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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
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?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
So?

Speaker 1 (00:19):
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

(00:42):
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

(01:04):
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

(01:26):
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

(01:47):
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

(02:08):
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

(02:28):
is because he's also a lifelong connoisseur of theme parks
and a former Disney cast member. Welcome to Tech Stuff,
mister Jack Battillo.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Right now, how about it hit you with this, Jack,
It has been twenty years since you worked for Disney.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
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

(03:12):
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

(03:34):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
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

(04:04):
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

(04:24):
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?

Speaker 2 (04:32):
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

(04:53):
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

(05:13):
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

(05:35):
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

(05:57):
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

(06:20):
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

(06:40):
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

(07:03):
drove out from Texas all the way out to Orlando
and had a great time.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
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

(07:32):
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.

(07:52):
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,

(08:12):
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.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
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

(08:47):
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

(09:11):
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,

(09:31):
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,

(09:52):
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,

(10:13):
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

(10:34):
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

(10:56):
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

(11:16):
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

(11:39):
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

(12:00):
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,

(12:22):
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

(12:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
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

(13:11):
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

(13:32):
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.

(13:55):
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.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
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.

(14:38):
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

(14:59):
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,

(15:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
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

(15:49):
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

(16:19):
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

(16:42):
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,

(17:05):
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

(17:26):
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

(17:46):
footlight parade experience. When that originally opened, the characters that
you see behind a scrim.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
The birthday cake, the birthday kid.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Originally those rotated, right, you had yeah, every other one
would rotate.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
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.

(18:24):
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

(18:45):
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

(19:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
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

(19:43):
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

(20:03):
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

(20:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
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

(21:02):
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.

(21:24):
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.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
It was.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
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

(22:09):
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

(22:29):
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

(22:50):
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,

(23:11):
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

(23:32):
when you can. We'd love to have you back. My
dog is losing its mind downstairs.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
That's fine. Minus too, it's it's they're just they're just
co hosting.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
That's fine, they're excited.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
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

(24:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
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

(24:32):
the various support structures that you can't see.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
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

(24:56):
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

(25:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
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

(25:51):
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

(26:13):
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

(26:36):
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.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
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,

(27:15):
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

(27:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
The Mega Emporium. Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
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.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
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.

(28:33):
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,

(28:54):
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

(29:16):
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

(29:36):
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.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
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

(30:19):
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

(30:49):
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

(31:12):
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

(31:33):
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.

(31:56):
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

(32:18):
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?

Speaker 2 (32:29):
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

(32:49):
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

(33:11):
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.

(33:32):
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

(33:53):
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

(34:14):
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

(34:37):
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

(34:58):
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

(35:20):
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,

(35:42):
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

(36:04):
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,

(36:25):
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

(36:49):
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

(37:09):
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

(37:30):
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

(37:51):
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

(38:15):
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

(38:35):
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.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
It's gotta be great to have you on the mono
rail and you can give the speed just before the doors.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Oh oh day, last part. Yes, it's my one line
of Spanish. I know.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
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

(39:24):
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

(39:48):
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

(40:08):
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

(40:30):
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

(40:50):
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

(41:12):
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

(41:34):
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

(41:56):
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,

(42:18):
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

(42:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
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,

(43:22):
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,

(43:43):
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,

(44:04):
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

(44:26):
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

(44:46):
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

(45:07):
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.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
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

(45:40):
gets us into it that that that's LaBrie Slope and
we're just going to complain about this. These all back away.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
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,

(46:06):
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.

(46:27):
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

(46:48):
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

(47:09):
was okay to go. But yeah, that was a fun show.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
It's like having the nuclear key where you have to insert.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
It the same time at the same time make sure that.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Everyone is on the same page.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
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,

(47:44):
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

(48:06):
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.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Yeah, well it's movie magic.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
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

(48:42):
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

(49:05):
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,

(49:26):
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

(49:46):
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

(50:08):
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.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
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.

(50:44):
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.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Oh man, I love that ride. Man, I ride that
all day.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
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.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
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.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
And we did.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
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

(52:08):
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.

(52:30):
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.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
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.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
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.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
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

(53:20):
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?

Speaker 1 (53:28):
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,

(53:48):
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

(54:08):
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.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
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

(54:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
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

(55:40):
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.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
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

(56:22):
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

(56:45):
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

(57:14):
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

(57:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
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

(58:26):
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,

(58:46):
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

(59:08):
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,

(59:29):
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

(59:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
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

(01:00:32):
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

(01:00:52):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
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,

(01:01:33):
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,

(01:01:54):
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

(01:02:15):
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

(01:02:35):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Georgia, then it became Splash Mountain. So it's all good, Okay,
it's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much.
Anytime I get a chance to talk theme parks, I'm
up for it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
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,

(01:03:57):
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

(01:04:17):
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.

(01:04:37):
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

(01:04:59):
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.

(01:05:20):
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,

(01:05:43):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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