September 2, 2021 • 56 mins
Jonathan's excited about DC? He's not excited about changes to Disney Parks? What is this, bizarro world? It's ok though, our mash up goes back to some classics.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Large nerd Drunk Collider Podcast is a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey everybody, welcome to the Large Ner
Drunk Collider Podcast, the podcast that's all about the giggy
things happening in the world around us and how very
excited we are about them. I'm Ariel Casting, and with me,
(00:31):
as always is the super fragilistic, expialidocious Jonathan Strickland. What
would you do if I sang out a tune? Don't
answer that. That's not your question, Hi, Ariel, that would
be an easy one. Just stand up and walk out
on me. But I have a different question for you,
(00:55):
all right, Ariel, you got a new career coming up.
All right? That career is to be the sidekick to
an established superhero. Which superhero do you pick to be
a sidekick of? Yeah? I mean that's every person's dream
is to be a sidekick, isn't it. Look you gotta
(01:17):
start somewhere. Not all of us can be. Not all
of us can have our our parents killed in a
dark alley after an opera and have access to billions
of dollars. Okay, we gotta work our way up fair enough,
I think, But I would be I didn't stall long
(01:41):
enough for this one. Um, trying to share this with
her beforehand. I'm trying to think, So here's the thing is, like,
I want to say Hulk because Hulk is my favorite
hero and I think it would be cool, except for
I don't want to get on his bad side. Right,
So I'm trying to think of what it would be
star Lord because and even as a sidekick, you're not
really a sidekick, You're part of the team. Plus he
(02:03):
seems like a lot of thought fun because I was like,
well maybe thor mm hmm, yeah, you would have to
be star Lord. Okay, that's cool, So you wouldn't you went, Marvel,
I'm gonna surprise you because I went to see, oh,
who who would you sidekick for? Because I thought for
sure you'd say squirrel Girl. I decided, no, no, no,
squirrel Girl doesn't need a sidekick. She's undefeatable. Um, I
(02:27):
I would I would pick a truly iconic DC character,
one that I think, uh, as far as I know,
has never had a sidekick, so that that knocks out
like Batman and Superman right away, right, Plastic Man. You
know what I thought about Plastic Man, I really did,
But he has like a criminal pass. So I feel
a little weird about that one. So I decided to
(02:49):
go with armfull off Boy because someone needs to pick
up his limbs. But like, so, wasn't he created just
for the suice i'd squad? No, that was not arm
fall Off Boytachable Kid. You have the Detachable Kid, which
was essentially based off arm fall Off Boy, but no
(03:10):
arm fall off Boy. Uh. Technically in the reboot, I
think they call him something else. I can't remember what
the name is, but yeah, arm fall off Boy, because
like I said, it's I think of it. I don't
know if you've ever seen any burlesque aerial, but they
have these stage kittens, and it's the stage kitten's job
to go in after an act and just pick up
(03:31):
all the scraps of costumes that have been thrown everywhere.
I'm essentially arm fall off boys stage kitten. Okay, I
mean it's a little bit more gruesome, but there's no blood.
I mean, he doesn't. It's not like he pulls off
his arm and there's like sinew and blood and bone
or anything. I mean, I don't know that. I'm not
very familiar with arm fall Off Boy. If I had
(03:52):
to pick a DC character, it would be Aquaman because
I really like snarkeling and scuba diving and I'm a
water baby, like but I felt like that would be
like the easy answer. There's also the great song Aquaman's Lament,
where Aquaman is singing to Vicky Vale and saying that
he's a better superhero than Batman, which is a great
song and everyone should listen to it. Um all right, well,
(04:13):
now that we got that out of the way, let's
let's segue into some of our news items. In the
first one is about a virtual fan event d C Fandom.
That's uh d O m E. They had one last
year and they're having another one this year on October six.
Is free, so you don't have to register and pay
(04:34):
or anything. You can register so that you can watch
it and everything. But um, yeah, they're gonna show off
some trailers, some sneak peaks of different stuff, things that
involve not just the films, but also animation, TV, comic books.
So you're gonna get a lot of DC stuff at
that event. And I think it's pretty cool. Yeah, me too.
So it's good to hear you say that it's pretty cool,
(04:57):
because I know that you've been a little bit grumpy
about the d C EU as have I in all fairness,
but they are, you know, they're they're going to talk
about some video games. I've really enjoyed DC video games,
like Injustice. I quite enjoy picking up on a random day.
I'm really excited for the return of Doom Patrol and
(05:18):
Young Justice, and uh, also for the new the new
series Naomi that they're coming out with, because it's it's
kind of going to just be a new thing. And
I look, I have enjoyed DC's television for the most part,
so I look forward to seeing kind of a new property.
Plus I'm really enjoying Sweet Tooth. I'm watching through it.
(05:39):
I enjoy that. And they're they're getting ready to say
goodbye to Supergirl that's going into its final season. Um.
There's also a lot of anticipation for another trailer for
The Batman. They showed off a trailer for The Batman
at the last Fandom and back then the plan was
still to have that film come out this year. That
(06:01):
obviously isn't gonna happen. It's now going to at least
it's scheduled to release in early March of next year,
which makes me wonder if the new trailer is going
to end with question mark zero question mark question mark
because at the end of the last one, because the
riddlers in it, they replaced the two's in two thousand
(06:23):
twenty one with question marks, so now we just get
extra question mark. I mean, I feel like they need
to do that, and then they need to replace the
zero with a question mark, and then need to fill
the screen with question marks until it explodes into like
this question mark frenzy, which feels more jokery than riddler e.
But I also think I feel like that's it's the
(06:43):
right five and and only that area. You've already solved
another problem. If they replace all the numbers with question marks,
it could come out whenever, I mean to be fair.
If they leave the zero in, it still has what
I think, seventy seventy nine more years that it can
come out in. Only that then you can wait another
(07:05):
millennia and then start over again, because it could be
the first numbers of three, not at two because it's
a question mark. I mean, it resembles a two, but
it doesn't have to be a two. All those all
those young girls in three thousand and twenty two who
fall in love with Robert Pattinson just to find out
that he's long gone. Unless he's bionic by that time,
(07:26):
I mean, who knows. Maybe we'll have become one with
the matrix. But wait, that's a spoiler alert. That's a
later story. Um yeah. Anyway, we thought that this was
cool that it's going to be a virtual event. I mean,
obviously there's a lot of people are missing the real
events here in Atlanta. Actually, this this coming weekend, dragon
Con is going to take place in person. They are
(07:48):
requiring that all attendees either be vaccinated or provide proof
of a negative COVID test within a certain number of
days two hours. Um yeah, which with with current weights
is actually pretty in Atlanta, pretty difficult to get. I
drove past a testing center the other day and there was, uh,
like a line drive through testing center. There's a line
(08:11):
like a half a mile long waiting to get in. Well,
and Georgia is a state where there's still, sadly a
large number of COVID cases and lagging percentage of the
population getting vaccinated. It has improved over time, but no,
thanks to I won't go there. This episode is not
about that, but I will if you want to hear
(08:33):
me grant about it, just hit me up sometime and
I will. I will spend hours complaining about leadership in Georgia.
But uh, we just want to say to all of
those going out to Dragon Con, we hope you have
an amazing con Be safe, take care of yourself. Wash
your hands all the time. I mean you should do
that anyway. Wear your mask, definitely wear your mask, wash
(08:56):
your hands. That should happen anyway, because concrud is for eyels, y'all. Yeah. Yeah,
like years when there's not COVID, a large number of
the population go home feeling sick. We have a mutual
friend who got like strep m mono in one weekend
from the convention, and I don't think they were doing
anything particularly risky to do it other than just being
(09:20):
at the convention. So yeah, be safe. Also, you know
at dragon Con, and if there's another convention, you're going
to be nice to the staff. They're volunteers, and if
they're asking you to do something, don't give them a
hard time. We've we've heard about people doing that at Disney,
and yeah, just be nice. Yeah, we're just hoping trying
to have make sure everybody has a good and safe time. Yeah. Yeah,
(09:41):
it's not like any request is a personal affront to
any of the attendees. It's literally to make sure that
everyone is safe and has a good time. But hey,
I'm sure if any of our listeners are planning to
go to Dragon Con that they're already going to be
super cool to all the volunteers and do everything they're asked.
I mean, they wouldn't be listening to us otherwise, right,
(10:03):
because they would be insufferable. Uh. Someone who the the
leader of the Ten Rings finds insufferable is Trevor s
Thank you. Um so, yeah, you might remember that in
iron Man two they introduced the Mandarin Um and uh
(10:26):
wait no, that was iron Man three. Iron In three
they introduced the Man. Iron Man two was Whiplash, and
Iron too. I fell asleep during in the movie theater,
I mean I kind of fell asleep during. Um. The
first iron Man is still my favorite of the three,
but the but Ben Kingsley played the character who was
posing as the Mandarin, a a traditional Iron Man villain,
(10:51):
and everyone was wondering how Disney was going to handle
it because it's a character who in the comics has
like really kind of racist overtone as far as stereotypes go.
So they ended up creating this this character who's actually
an actor playing the part of the Mandarin. He's been
hired to take on that part. Well, they shot a
(11:11):
one shot video years and years and years ago that
was part of the for the Dark World Blu Ray release. Um,
that gave some more information about the character of the actor,
who's this you know, oblivious idiot uh and linking him
to the the real Mandarin. And uh. If you didn't
(11:33):
get that Blue ray, you probably haven't seen the video.
I hadn't seen it. I had heard of it, but
I've never seen it. But now it's on Disney Plus,
which is great because it does give you a little
bit of linking tissue between Iron Man three and the
upcoming Shung Chi. Yes, yes, because Tony Leung is the Mandarin.
(11:55):
I actually missed the Disney one shots, like I didn't
catch this one because I didn't buy the Maybe that
was their effort to try to get people to buy
though in the Dark World, which is which is the
Iron Man two of the four series. Yeah, but I add, well, yeah,
I didn't fall asleep during that one. Maybe that's because
(12:16):
Christopher eccleston was in it, and I really like him
more because there was a little bit more fantastical, so
I can forgive more. But um I I really liked
the one shots they did between the movies, even like
tying in the Hulk movie to the m c U
before we knew what the m c U was. Um
(12:37):
So I'm glad to have a chance to see this. Yeah,
it was fun. I went ahead and watched it before
we did our our show, so because it was like,
I've got time, I can watch. It's fourteen minutes long
and definitely stay through the credits because there are elements
in the credits within the credits that are important or
(12:58):
at least entertaining. If not important, they are entertaining, and
it is cool to see that Disney was thinking, oh,
we should go ahead and release this because it does
tie into this upcoming release. And I remain super excited
about shuan Chi, even though I suspect I will be
waiting the forty five days for it to come to
Disney Plus because I am not quite ready to go
(13:20):
back to the theaters yet. Same same, but I wanted
to do really well. At the same time, I'm so
torn Also, I have a little bit of geek shame
because you kept saying shan chi and I thought for
sure it was shang Chree. And then I watched a
trailer on television and they said shang chi, and I'm like,
I'm wrong. All the shame upon me in my house. Sorry, mom,
h Well, it's it's one of the reason why I
(13:41):
know full disclosure is because my my partner used to
go to school with some people from UM from China,
and that's where I learned that the right pronunciation was
that aw sound not an ass. Sounds like. She had
(14:02):
a colleague named Young, not Yang. It's spelled y a
and G, but young and um. Not only that, but
her last name rhymed with that. I won't go into
everything because I want to. I don't want to talk
about people without their permission. But but yeah, you could
just imagine like the eye rolling you would have to
(14:23):
get used to after hearing your name butchered over and over.
So it's just one of those things that I tried
to I tried to avoid I fall into the trap
all the time. All right, Well, we only have a
little bit of time for this last segment, so let's
just cover this super quick, uh, Matrix four. It they
released some footage that Ariel and I really had trouble
(14:43):
finding in a way that wasn't packaged with like jerk boards,
like us talking over it. Yeah. Yeah, but they released
a little bit of footage. It's CinemaCon in Las Vegas,
I think last week, and um, you know we know
from that footage because everybody likes to describe what happened,
(15:04):
even though I can't find it, that Kanna Reeves will
be at least part of the time in his Matrix
persona or his pre Matrix persona, and that Neil Patrick
Harris is playing a therapist there. I want to see
it automatically because of that. Yeah, if there's a musical
number in Matrix four, then I will forgive Matrix too.
(15:24):
I mean, they do show. They show Neo or Anderson
whatever his name is, Yester Anderson, Mr Anderson. Yeah, I
should know that looking at a mirror taking pills while
they played Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit. So at least which
is the from a material, you know. Yeah, It's like
(15:48):
when when when Breaking Bad finally played Crystal Blue Persuasion
and I'm like, oh, come on, this is a little
on the nose, but yeah, like I think, you know what.
As I've been reading about this, it has me curious because, Okay,
full disclosure, I never saw the third film. I saw
(16:10):
the second movie, and I hated it so much. I
just had no desire to see how the story ended,
because I just felt like the first film was its
own encapsulated thing and that's all I needed, right because
the other the second one, went on a pathway where
I was like, I don't like this. Um. So I
never watched the third one, but I understand that certain
(16:32):
things happen in the third one, which really makes me
wonder how the heck the things that are happening in
the description of the fourth one happened. Yes, no, I
I agree. So I did watch all three, all the
and the Animatrix, which I did. I did enjoy the Animatrix.
Um but they all blended together after the first one,
So the second and the third one, I'd have a
(16:53):
hard time telling you specifically the plots of each. But
I agree. I'm my curiosity is peaked, and it's been
long enough that I will probably give this fourth one
and go and see what they do with it. Yeah, yeah,
I am I am willing to give it a shot.
I mean, I can hold a grudge for a very
(17:14):
long time, as will likely become evident the longer this
episode goes spoiler alert. But but in the meantime, we're
gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
we're gonna talk. We're gonna talk about some things that
Disney is doing that um, we have some thoughts about.
But before we get into our fighting, fighting mode, let's
(17:36):
take this quick break. All right, we're back in Ariel.
I want to apologize to you first, because I said,
we get into a fighting, fighting mode. That's putting my feelings,
(17:56):
that's projecting my feelings on you, and that's not fair.
So I apologize for that. You know what, It's totally fine.
I just got excited because my bro went, let's fight.
I'm already Okay. You gotta know, guys, Folks shouldn't use guys.
I do it all the time. Folks. You should know.
When Ariel said that, she actually made the fists up
(18:19):
rocking back and forth in the Street Fighter get ready
those which I think is awesome. Um, one of these
days we're going to record video because there's all kinds
of gestures and body language and stuff. We have our
cameras on, but we don't record the video part. But
let's talk about some of the stuff we want to cover.
One of the things we want to cover, there's there's
(18:39):
a lot because Disney has recently made some announcements and
collectively they're starting to really rub a lot of fans
the wrong way. And by Disney, I'm talking specifically about
the parks here, and really I'm talking about Disney World
and Disneyland. So one thing that we know, all right,
(19:00):
let's let's I guess we can hit the Genie stuff first,
is that Disney's got an app coming out called Disney Genie.
It's actually more like a suite of features that are
going to be lumped in with the existing Disney apps.
And this one is just supposed to help you plan stuff, right,
Like it gives you ideas of what wait times are
for different attractions, that kind of thing. Well, and it
also is supposed to You're supposed to be able to
(19:23):
tell it what you like in your park experience, and
then it can suggest timing, It can suggest rides, shows
things like anything that food service I don't even know, um,
but just basically it can help tailor your park experience,
so you're cutting out all the stuff you're not interested in.
It says value. It seems like a really good idea,
(19:45):
and that and that one's free. That part is free,
which I think is great. Actually, I really like that.
Like if you have the if you have a smartphone,
and if you download the app, the basic version of
Disney Genie is free to use. How Over, then we
get to the add ons. Add On number one is
Disney Genie Plus, and this is where you have the
(20:07):
replacement for what was the fast pass system. And even
then there's some major differences. Before COVID and before the
shutdown of the parks, it was pretty much standard for
you to go into Disney system uh sometimes up to
I think it was at least sixty days. It might
(20:28):
have been more than that. I think sixty days for
fast passes if you were staying on property, and you
could reserve up to three fast passes per day uh
ahead of time, and you would just select the time
or whatever times you wanted as much as you could.
I mean, if the fast passes were all gone, you
were kind of stuck, and you would build out your
(20:49):
day that way. Then the COVID happens parks shut down.
When the parks reopened, fast pass was no longer a thing.
For one thing, it wasn't really necessary. They were operating
the parks under really restricted attendance, so there wasn't nearly
as many people in the parks. But now they're bringing
back a version similar to fast pass, similar to the
(21:09):
first incarnation of fast Past, where you can only have
one at a time, which I don't think is a
bad thing. No, you can you can only hold one
at a time. Once you redeem it, you can immediately
make your next fast Pass reservation based upon ability. I
remember back in my day when you had to walk
up to a kiosk can get a little printed fast pass. Yeah,
(21:30):
and you can only have one. And eventually they had
it where different rides had different kind of levels of
importance where you could hold one really like choice ride
like Space Mountain, and then you could hold one that
was you know, good but not like not typically as
busy as that one, And then eventually it got to
the three. Well, now we're back down to one. That
(21:52):
part is not bad, but you're gonna have to pay
for it. You've gotta pay if it's disney World fifteen
dollars per person per day to have this feature. At Disneyland,
it's twenty dollars per person per day. And then they're
also expecting that for certain premium rides there will be
an up charge for that ride. So if you're paying
fifteen dollars per person per day, you can get most
(22:14):
of the rides, but maybe not you know, Star Wars
Rise of the Resistance, that would be an extra five.
So I have such mixed feelings about this because on
the one hand, I've heard so many people say that
last past or fast past is the reason that lines
are so long for everybody else because people are skipping ahead,
which means that anyone who's in the regular standby line
(22:37):
they have to wait even longer before their turn because
other people are effectively skipping ahead of the line. Yeah,
and you know, so on the one hand, if that's
the case and they limit and it reduces the number
of people who do that, maybe lines will get better. Anyhow,
I don't know. We'd have to see. The second thing
is like, I love Disney, but my husband doesn't, and
(22:58):
part of his because he just hates waiting in lines,
especially in summer heat and so in Florida's summer heat
lasts until about mid February. Yes, and then it's gone
for a week and then it's back. I've been there
the week that it's gone. Uh, you don't want to
camp during that week. It gets a real cold. But uh,
you know, if we were going to Disney, which is
(23:21):
a mighty high you know budget point already, he would
probably find it worth it if we could afford it,
to pay that extra fifteen dollars a day so that
he has a better experience because he can afford it,
you know, um, and and so on the one hand,
I want him to have a better experience. I want
lines to get better for everybody. But it certainly does.
(23:43):
And and this is going to kind of be our
theme of this segment. It makes everything else. It makes
it for for the person who maybe is saving for
two years to go to Disney, and makes it less
attainable for them, you know, it makes it not fees
all for your average Joe. No, it might mean that
(24:04):
they say, for two years, they go to Disney and
they can't ride the rides that they were most looking
forward to. Because other people like annual pass holder and
DVC members like yours. Truly, I'm both of those things.
I am the problem. People like me might be going
in and jumping ahead of the line, and then you've
(24:25):
got this person who's been, you know, waiting for this
opportunity for a couple of years, maybe like they're bringing
their kids for the first time and they really want
the special experience. It does hit me like I'm like,
I'm like, I I feel extremely conflicted about it because
I can I'm in a stage in my life where
I could afford to do the up charge thing. I
(24:45):
we don't know how much the extra charge will be
for those premium attractions. Disney has said that that will
be variable pricing. It'll be it'll vary upon availability and demand.
So for like days where there's a real heavy demand
for say Rise of the Resistance, it's probably gonna cost
more to get that premium Lightning pass Um. Yeah, same
(25:05):
for the Seven Dwarfs Mind Train probably well. I'm sure
the Guardian's Jalaxy ride will be that when it opens.
Tron light Cycle, when that opens, all those rides that
I want to I want to ride, and I usually
can only go for a couple of days at a
time just because of my schedule, and the more expensive
it gets, the less plausible it makes it for a
(25:27):
short trip, like I can I can justify that expense
over five days if I'm going for five days, but
since I'm usually going with just a couple of friends
by myself, it's usually just a couple of day trip,
and that it gets it gets harder the short amount
of time you're there to justify that cost. I mean,
we're like, we're like eight hours away from Orlando, right
(25:49):
my car. Um For folks who are even further away,
who have to fly or whatever, obviously it gets to
be an even bigger financial burden. I didn't mention we
neither of us main that for that premium right experience,
you are limited to two of those per day, So
that at least is one limiting factor where you don't
have to worry about everybody just eating up all the
(26:12):
premium passes across all the parks, you know, because they've
got like ten of them or whatever. They're limited to
two per day, So that's one thing that helps limit
this a little bit. However, we have some other complicating factors,
one of those being the Star Wars Galactic Cruiser hotel experience.
That's opening up. We talked about it a bit to
day to night experience. Immersive Star Wars experience. You are
(26:35):
encouraged to take part in an ongoing story that unfolds
during your stay. You can pick one of several different
roles to kind of play as you do it well.
Part of that experience includes a trip to Galaxies Edge
at Hollywood Studios. Presumably part of that experience also means
that you are not having to stand in line for
(26:58):
Smugglers Run Rise of the Resistance because you are able
to ride both of those rides as part of this experience.
That means that not only if you're going to Hollywood
Studios do you have to contend with the people who
are using Genie Plus for Smugglers Run or the Lightning
Lane for Riser Resistance. You also have all those guests
from Star Wars Galactic Cruise that are ahead of you
(27:20):
as well, and that starts to pile up, well, but
you know Galactics, it will pile up. Maybe maybe the
park Genie will help organize that mess so that it'll
cut down on the like the bottlenecking of what everybody
wants to do at any given time. It'll maybe it'll
help um encourage crowds to disperse over a more steady
(27:43):
stream as opposed to large crowds. UM. But that you
know that being said, there are not a huge number
of rooms et pretty I think it's just one d total.
So that's that's potentially one parties if they all go
on the same day. We don't know yet if they're
going to stagger that where another that could be like
(28:06):
four people, yeah, and uh, I guess you could take more, yeah,
because you could have like tons of people in some
of these cabins. But like if you, UM, if you
want to feel a little better about it, at least
you'll know that the people who are doing that paid
out the wazoo in order to do it, because we
learned what the pricing is going to be for the
basic standard cabin aboard the Star Wars Galactic Cruiser, which
(28:30):
is that if it's two people. This is one of
those things where on a per person basis, the amount
goes down the more people are there, but the total
obviously goes up because you're talking about more people. So
for two people for that two night experience, you're looking
at one thousand, two hundred nine dollars per person per night,
So ultimately collectively that's four thousand, eight hundred nine dollars
(28:54):
almost five grand for two people to stay there. Now, granted,
meals are included with that at as it is, including
alcoholic beverages if you're an adult and you drink. I
don't know that. I don't know that all your alcoholic beverages. Yeah,
I was about to say one alcoholic beverage and then uh.
And also the entrance to Hollywood Studios for the Galactic
(29:17):
Galaxy's Edge part and dinner gratuity, so that's yeah. I mean,
I don't tend to drop five dollars gratuity at my
Disney dinners, but I mean if if you're like Mr
money Bags and or miss money Bags or them money Bags,
then maybe you do. Obviously, more people who go in
stay in a cabin at the price per person goes down.
(29:39):
So if there are four guests in a cabin, which
Disney indicates would be three adults plus one child, it
would be seven nine dollars per guests per night, So
collectively you're looking at just under six thousand dollars, but
per person, the price has come down. Um yeah, so yeah, well,
Wicked expect again, I'm I'm I'm torn on this as well,
(30:04):
because obviously you're going to have a lot of people
who have to be in character and performing for you,
even if their front desk staff. We know that they
do this on Avenger's Campus in Disneyland and also at
Galaxy's Edge. All of the park staff are essentially performers
or should be are expected to be, So you're on
all the time while you're working there, you know, And
(30:27):
I want them to be paid. I want them to
be paid for that, you know. But so there's a
there's a high cost I'm sure of operation, but it's
i'm a feeling that Disney's revenue streams could easily cover
this without the prices of the hotel itself being I mean, granted,
if you're saying we want the hotel to be able
(30:47):
to cover the cost of the operation of the hotel
plus ad profit, that makes sense. But we're talking about
a company that almost completely dominates every aspect of media
right now, so it's hard to I mean, granted, it's
built in different divisions. The Parks division is a different
division from the Motion Picture division, which is different from
(31:08):
the animation division, etcetera. But still, um, so there's that.
Then there's also annual passes are making a return. They
were gone once COVID hit and the parks shut down.
If you did not have an annual pass, you could
not purchase one. Um. I happen to have one, so
I was able to renew mine. Uh. But now the
(31:31):
annual passes are coming back in a slightly different form.
There are I think four levels of annual pass now,
but only the last only the last one is available
to people who are not Florida residents and are not
part of the Disney Vacation Club. And that's the most
expensive one, which is like a thousand fifty dollars or
(31:53):
something like that, something like that. Yeah, it's well, no,
no longer no longer includes the photo pass either the
old the old annual passes did so you got you
automatically got all the pictures that that the Disney's photographers
are taking. That was part of your package. Now it's
an add on, So now you have to spend an
(32:14):
extra hundred bucks if you want to add it on. Yeah,
I mean, I think they just don't want people to
get annual passes, is really what it is. And I
can get that for certain places like Disneyland. One of
the biggest issues that they've run into there is that
the park can get overrun by annual pass holders and
annual pass holders, I mean, they're spending a lot of
(32:36):
money to get those annual passes, but they don't tend
to spend a lot of money on stuff like food
and merchandise, whereas like people who are visiting for the
first time or tourists, they spend a lot more in money.
So Disney does prefer there to be more like day
of ticket holders as opposed to annual pass members. I mean,
(32:57):
I wish that all of these increases in costs would
help cover and make the non annual pass hold or
visit a little bit less expensive potentially, because you know,
if I pay less to get into the park, I
will buy more food, I will buy more merchandise. You know,
I'll get higher on those ticket items. Though, another thing
you mentioned, and we're just going to touch on this
(33:18):
briefly because we could talk about this for probably like
twelve hours. Um. You know, one of the things that
I really enjoy at Disney, and I this is something
that's new as an adult, is I love the entertainment
at Disney and and how you can run into it
in many places, Well, you can't do that as much anymore.
They cut a lot of their entertainment, at least their
(33:39):
street entertainment. I don't know about stage um when COVID happened,
and you know, there are people who are saying that
maybe they just wanted to get rid of them anyhow. UM,
I don't have insight into that very much, but I
do note that there was a difference between being like
streets of a Mary to cast versus a face character,
(34:02):
and that was a pretty big difference. So well, let
me put it to you this way. Before pandemic, uh,
the the Disney World Parks employed around seven hundred eighty
equity members. After pandemic, they let go of seven twenty
of them, so only sixty out of seven remained, and
(34:24):
that was as of October of last year. And so
there Ariel and I feel very strongly about this because
we have had parallel experiences in a in a different
live entertainment world. But we've also seen issues with the
difference between the way a a parks cast contributes to
(34:50):
the experience versus how management values that cast. Um and
this this is unfortunately another example of a large corporate
entity seemingly viewing entertainment, which is an enhancement, as not
that important and from like a from like a pencil
(35:13):
pusher approach, you could kind of see like, Okay, they
don't directly contribute to the bottom line, right, They're not
generating revenue by entertaining people in the streets like on
Main Street. But from a guest perspective, that adds such
a level of depth. And you know, magic is the
(35:37):
way Disney would describe it, like magic to your visit
that to lose that is really unfortunate because I think
a lot of Disney fans have said, this collection of
different announcements that have all hit right around the same
time feels like a diminished magical experience overall. And that's
(35:58):
unfortunate because I mean that's what Disney's brand is built upon.
Even just from a hard hearted business perspective, you're like,
you're undermining your own brand. I mean, maybe maybe we'll
see that these changes make a better park experience for everybody. Um,
I hope that they bring the entertainment back. You know,
(36:19):
it's hard because I am very very biased, being a
having been a street performance performer, at an entertainment at
least partially venue. You know, you've said we're both biased
to this because we work the Renaissance Festival. That is
that is very magical for me. I don't know how
much everybody appreciates that sort of interaction at a park,
So maybe we are the outliers in that. Yeah, it
(36:42):
could be. I do hope post pandemic they're able to
bring back some of the street cast me too, and
like the same thing with some of the other shows
and stuff like things that have been curtailed because of it.
I would love to see that all phased back in.
I think, I mean just based upon the way Disney
handle this over the course of the pandemic, that the
(37:02):
Disney Parks handled this, I should really be more specific
because the company is so big that they burned a
lot of bridges I think, with a lot of cast
members who genuinely loved what they did up until the
point where it felt like it wasn't reciprocated. Um, that's unfortunate.
Maybe I'm projecting too much. I hope, I am. I
(37:24):
would love to see a return to that form. Honestly,
I think that the park the parks in in Orlando
really need to focus on that. I mean, we've got
the Magic Kingdom's fiftieth anniversary right around the corner, and
it would be a real shame if live entertainment and
like an energetic cast we're not part of that celebration.
(37:48):
I mean, I agree. I do think part of it
will just depend on health and safety as well, because well,
well I've never had a street character outside of like
a costume character during a photo experience. It all up
in my business at Disney. UM, like you know that
you do have crowding issues, you do have spacing issues
still currently, so we'll have to see how it all
(38:10):
plays out. I never went to the Georgia Renaissance Festival
as a kid because it was pay to get in
and then pay for everything you do, um, and so
that kind of you know, and I didn't make a lot.
I didn't have a lot of money UM at that time.
So that kind of mentality is stuck with me throughout life.
And I love Disney Parks and I don't want to
get hit by that same door. I guess, yeah, Well
(38:33):
I want to be able to continue going. My biggest
hope is that this regular Genie not the Genie Plus,
but the regular Genie part of the app helps folks
plan out their day, make last minute changes and be
able to adapt to whatever is going on in the
parks and still have a magical experience and not have
(38:53):
to I feel like you have to do the pay
to win strategy, like the same thing that people who
play video games absolutely hate. Right m hm, yeah, Well,
we we need to take another break. That's gonna be
this a long episode. We're gonna take another break, and
then when we come back, we're going to mash up
some stuff. Uh, some that we've already talked about and
(39:16):
one thing we haven't talked about yet. So stay tuned.
We'll be right back. All right, we're back. So our
(39:38):
mash up this week, just gonna keep that train of rolling.
It's a phrase now if it wasn't before. Um, So
we're gonna mash up Star Wars because we've talked about
that a bit. With the Star Cruiser, because I mean,
I still want to go everything aside if I have
a windfall that has some extra money after I do
(39:58):
all of my donation plan. I mean, it's more expensive
than an actual Disney cruise, which is already expensive. No,
I'm not saying don't go. I'm saying I wanted to
go to. I still want to go to despite all
the things I just said, I still want to go to.
It just blows my mind that it's more expensive than
an actual like four day Disney CRUI Disney cruise. Yeah, yeah,
(40:21):
so a lot. So we're gonna do Star Wars um
and then the other thing we're gonna do is we're
going to mash that up with Wonder Years. I'm making
good sentences now, people, Um, yes, So we're matching Star
Wars up with Wonder Years. Let's let's talk really quickly
about the original Wonder Years and then you can talk
a little bit about the trailer that was released for
the new version of Wonder Years. So, the the original
(40:45):
Wonder Years series was this series where you're learning about
a boy named Kevin who grew up in the late
nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, and the Daniel Stern
served as the narrator. You never really, you never saw him.
He was narrating the piece and Fred Savage played young Kevin,
(41:06):
and it was a setup for things like kind of
a coming of age tail of growing up in the
suburbs in the late sixties and during this tumultuous time
in America's history where you've got you know, the the
Peace and Love movement, the anti war movement. You know,
it was a big, big time during America's history. So
(41:29):
it's kind of told through the lens of a young
boy who is coming of age, and it was no
kind of a drama, but mostly it was a drama
with comedic tones as well. There's a lot of comedy
in it, um and a lot of people have really
warm feelings for it. And of course we're getting a reboot,
a totally reimagining of the series. So Arie'll talk a
(41:51):
little bit about the teaser. Yes, So they came out
with a teaser and then they came out with an
actual trailer recently, UM for this show. This time it
will be it's still focusing on a family in the
late sixties, but it's a bat black family in Montgomery, Alabama. Uh,
Kevin still likes uh, the kids still likes baseball. The
(42:14):
trailer hits all. Obviously, they deal with issues like integration
and things like that that we're still dealing with today.
But we're definitely an issue in the late sixties um.
But the tone of the trailer absolutely hits every warm
feeling I have about the original show, like every sort
of beat um whilst not feeling like a complete just
(42:37):
rehash of the same old material. Um do lay Hill
is The dad is amazing and so funny in the
little moments he has in the trailer. Like, I don't know,
I watched this trailer and I just this show cannot
come out soon enough for me. I highly suggest if
you liked the original Wonder Years, even if you didn't,
you should watch this trailer. I I feel like, I
(43:00):
don't know because I haven't seen more than the trailer,
but I feel like this sitcom hits hits a place
where I haven't seen modern sitcoms hit in a while,
of of just actual heartfelt and fun and you know
there are a few of them out there, but um yeah,
I'm just super excited about it. So with that in mind,
we have decided to mash up Star Wars and the
(43:22):
Wonder Years. Now, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you
I I stuck with more like the the original run
of the Wonder Years because that's what I'm familiar with.
I haven't obviously seen the new one. Yet um, but
I went with the old one and uh, I'm gonna
go second. So Ariel, do you wanna introduce us to
(43:44):
your your genius work of mash up? Sure? So this
is The Wonder Star Years war uh, because that's the title.
Kevin Arnold loved everything about baseball, just like any other
stereotypical boy his age in the sixties, but he wasn't
very good at it. So when he went to try
out for the baseball team with his friend Paul, instead
(44:06):
of hitting the ball when it was his turn at bat,
he got clocked in the head with the pitch and
knocked out. When Kevin came to he had no idea
where he was, but it certainly wasn't a baseball field
or even his home. He was inside a largish, whitish
metal room with worrying, rushing sounds all around him. But
more pressing than that was the large, hairy, bare dog
creature standing over him and staring at him. Hi. Kevin cried,
(44:31):
cried the bear dog creature. After an appropriately funny amount
of time of the two screaming back and forth, a
hand reached down and helped Kevin up. The hand belonged
to a weird looking pirate dude who said, this is
no time to be sleeping. Kid. You're the one who
wanted to save the princess in the first place, and
we're almost there. Follow me. Kevin followed the weird pirate guy,
(44:52):
who he found out was named Han Solo until they
reached a room with a window, and that's when Kevin
found out he was in space on a spaceship like
in space. After pitching himself real hard and not waking
up he is, he was told to strap in and
help maneuver the spaceship until they reached the Death Star,
and Kevin began to protest that he evedn't know how
(45:13):
to fly this spaceship machine. He isn't even allowed to
drive a car, but as soon as his hands touched
the controls, he innately knew how to pilot the spaceship.
When they came upon the Death Star, it's a it
was immense and breathtaking. He asked hand Solo to remind
him of their plan and purpose because like he knew,
but he just wanted to be reminded, And after an
(45:33):
all too brief rundown followed by the phrase we'll wing it, kid,
they entered the Death Star to steal some Stormtrooper armor
and save the princess. When they found the princess, to
Kevin's surprise, she looked exactly like Gwendolene Cooper, the girl
he had had a crush on. But when he shouted, Whinny,
it's so good to see you, she screamed, don't winny
at me. I'm not some eques, I'm a princess. Uh.
(45:55):
They do save her, and after then he misshaps and
cree easiness. They escaped the Death Star, and this marked
the beginning of Kevin's adventures with Han Solo, the Princess,
the dog bear creature, which he learned was a creature
called a Wookie who you didn't want to get mad,
fighting the wars and Stars, escaping space monsters, and piloting
X wings apparently in a galaxy long ago and far
(46:17):
away you don't need learners permits, and falling more in
love with Winnie, I mean, the Princess. This is until
one day when he encountered the main evil himself, Darth Vader.
It was a tense situation and justice Darth Vader revealed
that he was Kevin's father. Kevin did think that voice
sounded familiar. Kevin blacked out. When he woke up, he
(46:37):
was laying in his bed with his brother Wayne standing
over him. Kevin screamed, Swayne screamed, and after an appropriately
funny amount of time of the two screaming back and forth,
Kevin's mom came in and he told her his whole story.
She told him it was all a dream and he
had nothing to worry about, but Kevin insisted it wasn't.
Wayne later had Kevin recite the story to his friend
(46:59):
George because he found it to be like a total
gas and George said, man, that's lame, and Kevin believed
George until years later when Star Wars came out and well,
that is a story for another time. I love it.
I love it, totally different from mine. So before we
(47:19):
get to mind, because our episode is running along, we're
gonna take another break. But before I get to that,
I've got late breaking news. Oh you ready, Yes, we
now know who's going to play the character of Will
in the reboot of The Fresh Pence of bel Air,
Jabari Banks. Jabari Banks, who was a newcomer. We'll be
(47:41):
playing Will. Uh you know where he lives? West raised, Yeah,
and Apparently Will Smith was the one to call him
up and tell him he got the part. How cool
is that? I'm so excited about that? Yeah, me too.
I was like, wow, that sounds great, Like what a
(48:02):
neat way of of tying it in with the original series.
All Right, well, we're gonna take another quick break. When
we come back, I will give my epic mash up.
We'll have to. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
You know, history will judge me, probably more harshly than
I already do. We're gonna be right back. Okay, we're
(48:41):
back and uh and here we go. Um. I feel
pretty good about this one. I think it's a it's
a short one. It's nice, it's accinct, you know. I'm
really I had a lot of deep feelings, but because
the Wonder Years really brings that out of me, and
so does Star Wars. But I think I think I
was able to rein it in. So Welcome to the
Wonder Wars. Young Luke Skywalker has a problem. He wants
(49:05):
to go to Tashi Station and pick up some power converters,
but before he can do that, we get his opening narration,
spoken by a much older Luke Skywalker, zero B B Y.
I was nineteen years old. A lot happened that year.
I met R two D two and his pain in
the butt sidekicks C three p O. I found out
(49:25):
Darth Vader totally killed my dad, and the Rebel Alliance
mounted its major assault on the Galactic Empire, and I
began my journey toward becoming a Jedi master. But we'll
get to that. Then we cut to the theme song.
What would you do if I stepped? Didn't poo do?
Would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend
(49:49):
me your ship and I'll go to all the rong
with my best bud knob old baby. I gotta have
a little help from old Ben. Yeah, you know, I
need have a little help from old Ben. He's got
my dad's saber. You have a little help from old Ben.
(50:10):
WHOA okay? Theme songs over. Out of the theme song,
we then see a montage of big events that happened
in the year zero B B Y, which, by the way,
that that stands for before the Battle of Yavin, And yeah,
you know, I looked around for some other kind of
(50:30):
dating system, because of course, no one in the year
zero B B Y would have called it the year zero,
because what the heck were they counting down to before that?
I mean, it makes no sense, but I couldn't find that,
so forget all about that. Anyway, we go to Old
Luke's narration. There's no pretty way to put this. I
(50:50):
grew up on a moisture farm. I suppose most people
think of that as a place filled with blue milk evaporators,
and they'd be half right. We had plenty of blue milk,
but our evaporators had been going on the fritz for
a while, and we really needed someone to help us
figure them out. And by us, I mean me and
my uncle Owen and my aunt Burrew, who had raised
me since I was a baby. But really, those were
(51:13):
the wonder years for those of us in the Outer Rim,
beyond the Galactic Empire's long reach, before the War of
the Stars, you know, sort of a star conflict or
maybe star battles. I don't know what you call it,
but on reflection, it was a good way to grow up.
The montage cross fades into footage of Luke writing his
land speeder up to a little dome house and Old
(51:35):
Luke says, there, that's me, Luke Skywalker age nineteen zero
b b Y, the year I'd finally leave tattooing. Now
we cut and it's like essentially Star Wars episode four,
only Luke has his best friend named Paul, who's waiting
at Tashi Station for like five movies before he finds out.
Luke totally became one with the Force through some sort
(51:57):
of weird death by meditation thing. So that's sad, but
we get lots of era appropriate music, like the Moss
Eisley Cantina song over and over again because between that
and Jedi Rocks, I'm gonna go Moss Eisley every time,
and there's not nearly enough diagetic music in the Star
Wars cinematic universe. Oh and we also see Luke develop
(52:18):
a crush on this girl named Winnie, only it turns
out she's his other sister, Like Leiah and Luke have
a sister named Winnie, and no one is really sure
how that happened. But it's okay because explanations in the
Star Wars universe all change based on as Kenobi would say,
your certain point of view. Not that I'm bitter about
a lack of consistency in Star Wars lore. That is
(52:41):
rife with revisionism and rhet conning. No, I'm totally cool
with that. It's awesome. So yeah, Winnie is in this too, Okay,
and she's Luke's sister too, because why not. Heck, it
turns out she is raised mom and the whole you're
the Emperor's granddaughter things a red herring because you know,
we get a lot of those two in the Star
Wars the universe. And you know what, I am mad.
(53:02):
I am mad about Star Wars. Yeah, I'm a grown
man who is mad about a fantasy series about magicians
with magic swords. That it didn't go the way I
wanted it to go. And sure, that's not the purpose
of this mashup that I'm on my soapbox now and
I ain't getting off of it. And another thing, let's
talk about that whole subvert the audience's expectations thing. Okay, Well,
(53:23):
that's gonna do it for episode this week. If you've
got ideas of how Wonder Years and of Star Wars
should be mashed up, you should write us. You can
do so at l n C at iHeart media dot com,
or reach out to us on social media. L n
C Underscore Podcast is Twitter, where Jonathan can't rent this
long at you. Uh. Instagram and Facebook are large nerd
(53:46):
John Collider. Uh, we would really love to hear from
you about topics you want us to talk about, hopefully
again not to make Jonathan rant like this or um
the ideas you have or thoughts you have on the
things we've talked about already. If you like us, please
tell your friends, please subscribe, hit that like button and
share us. Uh. We love you all for listening, and
(54:06):
we hope you love us too. Until next time, I
am Ariel Casting and nineteen years he's been Well, I'll
tell you why because in episode three Jedi were still
relatively plentiful and scattered across the galaxy. Everyone knew who
they were, people feared and respected them. But then you
get to episode four and Han Solo talks about the
(54:27):
Force being some sort of hokey religion, as of Jedi
were never really powerful entities or just the stuff of legend,
but the Jedi being a powerful presence are within the
living memory of Hans Solo, who is clearly more than
nineteen years old, Like he doesn't believe something that categorically
existed in his universe less than twenty years earlier. I mean,
(54:48):
I get that it's magic, but his best friend is
an eight foot tall teddy Bear for goodness sake, So yeah,
the timelines don't work. There needed to be a bigger
gap between the extinction of the Jedi and episode four,
but less than twenty years and it makes no sense.
And don't get me started on how dumb the Clone
Wars were. My goodness, when we got that throwaway line
back in the late nineteen seventies, we all thought it
(55:09):
was going to be the coolest thing ever. But it's not.
It's lame. Anyway, Let's get back to how everything after
Return of the Jedi was a terrible mistake. Okay, well
not everything. I mean I actually kind of liked Ray
a lot and Finn, but wat's his face, you know,
Mr Hutt X Wing pilot guy played by the dude
who did that wicked dance next Makina. He was pretty cool,
but pretty much everything else was terrible. I mean, how terrible. Well,
(55:32):
I've only seen episode three once because I hated it,
and I still haven't seen episode nine, which is crazy.
I mean, if you had told ten year old me
that one day, the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga would
come out and I wouldn't even go see it. I'd
have thought you were nuts. But here we are the end.
(56:00):
Mhm h m hm m m m hm. The Large
Nur Drunk Collider is production of I Heart Radio and
was created by Ariel Kasten. Jonathan Strickland is the executive producer.
(56:21):
This show is produced, edited, and published by Tory Harrison.
For more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
The Large nerd Drunk Collider Podcast is a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey everybody, welcome to the Large Ner
Drunk Collider Podcast, the podcast that's all about the giggy
things happening in the world around us and how very
excited we are about them. I'm Ariel Casting, and with me,
(00:31):
as always is the super fragilistic, expialidocious Jonathan Strickland. What
would you do if I sang out a tune? Don't
answer that. That's not your question, Hi, Ariel, that would
be an easy one. Just stand up and walk out
on me. But I have a different question for you,
(00:55):
all right, Ariel, you got a new career coming up.
All right? That career is to be the sidekick to
an established superhero. Which superhero do you pick to be
a sidekick of? Yeah? I mean that's every person's dream
is to be a sidekick, isn't it. Look you gotta
(01:17):
start somewhere. Not all of us can be. Not all
of us can have our our parents killed in a
dark alley after an opera and have access to billions
of dollars. Okay, we gotta work our way up fair enough,
I think, But I would be I didn't stall long
(01:41):
enough for this one. Um, trying to share this with
her beforehand. I'm trying to think, So here's the thing is, like,
I want to say Hulk because Hulk is my favorite
hero and I think it would be cool, except for
I don't want to get on his bad side. Right,
So I'm trying to think of what it would be
star Lord because and even as a sidekick, you're not
really a sidekick, You're part of the team. Plus he
(02:03):
seems like a lot of thought fun because I was like,
well maybe thor mm hmm, yeah, you would have to
be star Lord. Okay, that's cool, So you wouldn't you went, Marvel,
I'm gonna surprise you because I went to see, oh,
who who would you sidekick for? Because I thought for
sure you'd say squirrel Girl. I decided, no, no, no,
squirrel Girl doesn't need a sidekick. She's undefeatable. Um, I
(02:27):
I would I would pick a truly iconic DC character,
one that I think, uh, as far as I know,
has never had a sidekick, so that that knocks out
like Batman and Superman right away, right, Plastic Man. You
know what I thought about Plastic Man, I really did,
But he has like a criminal pass. So I feel
a little weird about that one. So I decided to
(02:49):
go with armfull off Boy because someone needs to pick
up his limbs. But like, so, wasn't he created just
for the suice i'd squad? No, that was not arm
fall Off Boytachable Kid. You have the Detachable Kid, which
was essentially based off arm fall Off Boy, but no
(03:10):
arm fall off Boy. Uh. Technically in the reboot, I
think they call him something else. I can't remember what
the name is, but yeah, arm fall off Boy, because
like I said, it's I think of it. I don't
know if you've ever seen any burlesque aerial, but they
have these stage kittens, and it's the stage kitten's job
to go in after an act and just pick up
(03:31):
all the scraps of costumes that have been thrown everywhere.
I'm essentially arm fall off boys stage kitten. Okay, I
mean it's a little bit more gruesome, but there's no blood.
I mean, he doesn't. It's not like he pulls off
his arm and there's like sinew and blood and bone
or anything. I mean, I don't know that. I'm not
very familiar with arm fall Off Boy. If I had
(03:52):
to pick a DC character, it would be Aquaman because
I really like snarkeling and scuba diving and I'm a
water baby, like but I felt like that would be
like the easy answer. There's also the great song Aquaman's Lament,
where Aquaman is singing to Vicky Vale and saying that
he's a better superhero than Batman, which is a great
song and everyone should listen to it. Um all right, well,
(04:13):
now that we got that out of the way, let's
let's segue into some of our news items. In the
first one is about a virtual fan event d C Fandom.
That's uh d O m E. They had one last
year and they're having another one this year on October six.
Is free, so you don't have to register and pay
(04:34):
or anything. You can register so that you can watch
it and everything. But um, yeah, they're gonna show off
some trailers, some sneak peaks of different stuff, things that
involve not just the films, but also animation, TV, comic books.
So you're gonna get a lot of DC stuff at
that event. And I think it's pretty cool. Yeah, me too.
So it's good to hear you say that it's pretty cool,
(04:57):
because I know that you've been a little bit grumpy
about the d C EU as have I in all fairness,
but they are, you know, they're they're going to talk
about some video games. I've really enjoyed DC video games,
like Injustice. I quite enjoy picking up on a random day.
I'm really excited for the return of Doom Patrol and
(05:18):
Young Justice, and uh, also for the new the new
series Naomi that they're coming out with, because it's it's
kind of going to just be a new thing. And
I look, I have enjoyed DC's television for the most part,
so I look forward to seeing kind of a new property.
Plus I'm really enjoying Sweet Tooth. I'm watching through it.
(05:39):
I enjoy that. And they're they're getting ready to say
goodbye to Supergirl that's going into its final season. Um.
There's also a lot of anticipation for another trailer for
The Batman. They showed off a trailer for The Batman
at the last Fandom and back then the plan was
still to have that film come out this year. That
(06:01):
obviously isn't gonna happen. It's now going to at least
it's scheduled to release in early March of next year,
which makes me wonder if the new trailer is going
to end with question mark zero question mark question mark
because at the end of the last one, because the
riddlers in it, they replaced the two's in two thousand
(06:23):
twenty one with question marks, so now we just get
extra question mark. I mean, I feel like they need
to do that, and then they need to replace the
zero with a question mark, and then need to fill
the screen with question marks until it explodes into like
this question mark frenzy, which feels more jokery than riddler e.
But I also think I feel like that's it's the
(06:43):
right five and and only that area. You've already solved
another problem. If they replace all the numbers with question marks,
it could come out whenever, I mean to be fair.
If they leave the zero in, it still has what
I think, seventy seventy nine more years that it can
come out in. Only that then you can wait another
(07:05):
millennia and then start over again, because it could be
the first numbers of three, not at two because it's
a question mark. I mean, it resembles a two, but
it doesn't have to be a two. All those all
those young girls in three thousand and twenty two who
fall in love with Robert Pattinson just to find out
that he's long gone. Unless he's bionic by that time,
(07:26):
I mean, who knows. Maybe we'll have become one with
the matrix. But wait, that's a spoiler alert. That's a
later story. Um yeah. Anyway, we thought that this was
cool that it's going to be a virtual event. I mean,
obviously there's a lot of people are missing the real
events here in Atlanta. Actually, this this coming weekend, dragon
Con is going to take place in person. They are
(07:48):
requiring that all attendees either be vaccinated or provide proof
of a negative COVID test within a certain number of
days two hours. Um yeah, which with with current weights
is actually pretty in Atlanta, pretty difficult to get. I
drove past a testing center the other day and there was, uh,
like a line drive through testing center. There's a line
(08:11):
like a half a mile long waiting to get in. Well,
and Georgia is a state where there's still, sadly a
large number of COVID cases and lagging percentage of the
population getting vaccinated. It has improved over time, but no,
thanks to I won't go there. This episode is not
about that, but I will if you want to hear
(08:33):
me grant about it, just hit me up sometime and
I will. I will spend hours complaining about leadership in Georgia.
But uh, we just want to say to all of
those going out to Dragon Con, we hope you have
an amazing con Be safe, take care of yourself. Wash
your hands all the time. I mean you should do
that anyway. Wear your mask, definitely wear your mask, wash
(08:56):
your hands. That should happen anyway, because concrud is for eyels, y'all. Yeah. Yeah,
like years when there's not COVID, a large number of
the population go home feeling sick. We have a mutual
friend who got like strep m mono in one weekend
from the convention, and I don't think they were doing
anything particularly risky to do it other than just being
(09:20):
at the convention. So yeah, be safe. Also, you know
at dragon Con, and if there's another convention, you're going
to be nice to the staff. They're volunteers, and if
they're asking you to do something, don't give them a
hard time. We've we've heard about people doing that at Disney,
and yeah, just be nice. Yeah, we're just hoping trying
to have make sure everybody has a good and safe time. Yeah. Yeah,
(09:41):
it's not like any request is a personal affront to
any of the attendees. It's literally to make sure that
everyone is safe and has a good time. But hey,
I'm sure if any of our listeners are planning to
go to Dragon Con that they're already going to be
super cool to all the volunteers and do everything they're asked.
I mean, they wouldn't be listening to us otherwise, right,
(10:03):
because they would be insufferable. Uh. Someone who the the
leader of the Ten Rings finds insufferable is Trevor s
Thank you. Um so, yeah, you might remember that in
iron Man two they introduced the Mandarin Um and uh
(10:26):
wait no, that was iron Man three. Iron In three
they introduced the Man. Iron Man two was Whiplash, and
Iron too. I fell asleep during in the movie theater,
I mean I kind of fell asleep during. Um. The
first iron Man is still my favorite of the three,
but the but Ben Kingsley played the character who was
posing as the Mandarin, a a traditional Iron Man villain,
(10:51):
and everyone was wondering how Disney was going to handle
it because it's a character who in the comics has
like really kind of racist overtone as far as stereotypes go.
So they ended up creating this this character who's actually
an actor playing the part of the Mandarin. He's been
hired to take on that part. Well, they shot a
(11:11):
one shot video years and years and years ago that
was part of the for the Dark World Blu Ray release. Um,
that gave some more information about the character of the actor,
who's this you know, oblivious idiot uh and linking him
to the the real Mandarin. And uh. If you didn't
(11:33):
get that Blue ray, you probably haven't seen the video.
I hadn't seen it. I had heard of it, but
I've never seen it. But now it's on Disney Plus,
which is great because it does give you a little
bit of linking tissue between Iron Man three and the
upcoming Shung Chi. Yes, yes, because Tony Leung is the Mandarin.
(11:55):
I actually missed the Disney one shots, like I didn't
catch this one because I didn't buy the Maybe that
was their effort to try to get people to buy
though in the Dark World, which is which is the
Iron Man two of the four series. Yeah, but I add, well, yeah,
I didn't fall asleep during that one. Maybe that's because
(12:16):
Christopher eccleston was in it, and I really like him
more because there was a little bit more fantastical, so
I can forgive more. But um I I really liked
the one shots they did between the movies, even like
tying in the Hulk movie to the m c U
before we knew what the m c U was. Um
(12:37):
So I'm glad to have a chance to see this. Yeah,
it was fun. I went ahead and watched it before
we did our our show, so because it was like,
I've got time, I can watch. It's fourteen minutes long
and definitely stay through the credits because there are elements
in the credits within the credits that are important or
(12:58):
at least entertaining. If not important, they are entertaining, and
it is cool to see that Disney was thinking, oh,
we should go ahead and release this because it does
tie into this upcoming release. And I remain super excited
about shuan Chi, even though I suspect I will be
waiting the forty five days for it to come to
Disney Plus because I am not quite ready to go
(13:20):
back to the theaters yet. Same same, but I wanted
to do really well. At the same time, I'm so
torn Also, I have a little bit of geek shame
because you kept saying shan chi and I thought for
sure it was shang Chree. And then I watched a
trailer on television and they said shang chi, and I'm like,
I'm wrong. All the shame upon me in my house. Sorry, mom,
h Well, it's it's one of the reason why I
(13:41):
know full disclosure is because my my partner used to
go to school with some people from UM from China,
and that's where I learned that the right pronunciation was
that aw sound not an ass. Sounds like. She had
(14:02):
a colleague named Young, not Yang. It's spelled y a
and G, but young and um. Not only that, but
her last name rhymed with that. I won't go into
everything because I want to. I don't want to talk
about people without their permission. But but yeah, you could
just imagine like the eye rolling you would have to
(14:23):
get used to after hearing your name butchered over and over.
So it's just one of those things that I tried
to I tried to avoid I fall into the trap
all the time. All right, Well, we only have a
little bit of time for this last segment, so let's
just cover this super quick, uh, Matrix four. It they
released some footage that Ariel and I really had trouble
(14:43):
finding in a way that wasn't packaged with like jerk boards,
like us talking over it. Yeah. Yeah, but they released
a little bit of footage. It's CinemaCon in Las Vegas,
I think last week, and um, you know we know
from that footage because everybody likes to describe what happened,
(15:04):
even though I can't find it, that Kanna Reeves will
be at least part of the time in his Matrix
persona or his pre Matrix persona, and that Neil Patrick
Harris is playing a therapist there. I want to see
it automatically because of that. Yeah, if there's a musical
number in Matrix four, then I will forgive Matrix too.
(15:24):
I mean, they do show. They show Neo or Anderson
whatever his name is, Yester Anderson, Mr Anderson. Yeah, I
should know that looking at a mirror taking pills while
they played Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit. So at least which
is the from a material, you know. Yeah, It's like
(15:48):
when when when Breaking Bad finally played Crystal Blue Persuasion
and I'm like, oh, come on, this is a little
on the nose, but yeah, like I think, you know what.
As I've been reading about this, it has me curious because, Okay,
full disclosure, I never saw the third film. I saw
(16:10):
the second movie, and I hated it so much. I
just had no desire to see how the story ended,
because I just felt like the first film was its
own encapsulated thing and that's all I needed, right because
the other the second one, went on a pathway where
I was like, I don't like this. Um. So I
never watched the third one, but I understand that certain
(16:32):
things happen in the third one, which really makes me
wonder how the heck the things that are happening in
the description of the fourth one happened. Yes, no, I
I agree. So I did watch all three, all the
and the Animatrix, which I did. I did enjoy the Animatrix.
Um but they all blended together after the first one,
So the second and the third one, I'd have a
(16:53):
hard time telling you specifically the plots of each. But
I agree. I'm my curiosity is peaked, and it's been
long enough that I will probably give this fourth one
and go and see what they do with it. Yeah, yeah,
I am I am willing to give it a shot.
I mean, I can hold a grudge for a very
(17:14):
long time, as will likely become evident the longer this
episode goes spoiler alert. But but in the meantime, we're
gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
we're gonna talk. We're gonna talk about some things that
Disney is doing that um, we have some thoughts about.
But before we get into our fighting, fighting mode, let's
(17:36):
take this quick break. All right, we're back in Ariel.
I want to apologize to you first, because I said,
we get into a fighting, fighting mode. That's putting my feelings,
(17:56):
that's projecting my feelings on you, and that's not fair.
So I apologize for that. You know what, It's totally fine.
I just got excited because my bro went, let's fight.
I'm already Okay. You gotta know, guys, Folks shouldn't use guys.
I do it all the time. Folks. You should know.
When Ariel said that, she actually made the fists up
(18:19):
rocking back and forth in the Street Fighter get ready
those which I think is awesome. Um, one of these
days we're going to record video because there's all kinds
of gestures and body language and stuff. We have our
cameras on, but we don't record the video part. But
let's talk about some of the stuff we want to cover.
One of the things we want to cover, there's there's
(18:39):
a lot because Disney has recently made some announcements and
collectively they're starting to really rub a lot of fans
the wrong way. And by Disney, I'm talking specifically about
the parks here, and really I'm talking about Disney World
and Disneyland. So one thing that we know, all right,
(19:00):
let's let's I guess we can hit the Genie stuff first,
is that Disney's got an app coming out called Disney Genie.
It's actually more like a suite of features that are
going to be lumped in with the existing Disney apps.
And this one is just supposed to help you plan stuff, right,
Like it gives you ideas of what wait times are
for different attractions, that kind of thing. Well, and it
also is supposed to You're supposed to be able to
(19:23):
tell it what you like in your park experience, and
then it can suggest timing, It can suggest rides, shows
things like anything that food service I don't even know, um,
but just basically it can help tailor your park experience,
so you're cutting out all the stuff you're not interested in.
It says value. It seems like a really good idea,
(19:45):
and that and that one's free. That part is free,
which I think is great. Actually, I really like that.
Like if you have the if you have a smartphone,
and if you download the app, the basic version of
Disney Genie is free to use. How Over, then we
get to the add ons. Add On number one is
Disney Genie Plus, and this is where you have the
(20:07):
replacement for what was the fast pass system. And even
then there's some major differences. Before COVID and before the
shutdown of the parks, it was pretty much standard for
you to go into Disney system uh sometimes up to
I think it was at least sixty days. It might
(20:28):
have been more than that. I think sixty days for
fast passes if you were staying on property, and you
could reserve up to three fast passes per day uh
ahead of time, and you would just select the time
or whatever times you wanted as much as you could.
I mean, if the fast passes were all gone, you
were kind of stuck, and you would build out your
(20:49):
day that way. Then the COVID happens parks shut down.
When the parks reopened, fast pass was no longer a thing.
For one thing, it wasn't really necessary. They were operating
the parks under really restricted attendance, so there wasn't nearly
as many people in the parks. But now they're bringing
back a version similar to fast pass, similar to the
(21:09):
first incarnation of fast Past, where you can only have
one at a time, which I don't think is a
bad thing. No, you can you can only hold one
at a time. Once you redeem it, you can immediately
make your next fast Pass reservation based upon ability. I
remember back in my day when you had to walk
up to a kiosk can get a little printed fast pass. Yeah,
(21:30):
and you can only have one. And eventually they had
it where different rides had different kind of levels of
importance where you could hold one really like choice ride
like Space Mountain, and then you could hold one that
was you know, good but not like not typically as
busy as that one, And then eventually it got to
the three. Well, now we're back down to one. That
(21:52):
part is not bad, but you're gonna have to pay
for it. You've gotta pay if it's disney World fifteen
dollars per person per day to have this feature. At Disneyland,
it's twenty dollars per person per day. And then they're
also expecting that for certain premium rides there will be
an up charge for that ride. So if you're paying
fifteen dollars per person per day, you can get most
(22:14):
of the rides, but maybe not you know, Star Wars
Rise of the Resistance, that would be an extra five.
So I have such mixed feelings about this because on
the one hand, I've heard so many people say that
last past or fast past is the reason that lines
are so long for everybody else because people are skipping ahead,
which means that anyone who's in the regular standby line
(22:37):
they have to wait even longer before their turn because
other people are effectively skipping ahead of the line. Yeah,
and you know, so on the one hand, if that's
the case and they limit and it reduces the number
of people who do that, maybe lines will get better. Anyhow,
I don't know. We'd have to see. The second thing
is like, I love Disney, but my husband doesn't, and
(22:58):
part of his because he just hates waiting in lines,
especially in summer heat and so in Florida's summer heat
lasts until about mid February. Yes, and then it's gone
for a week and then it's back. I've been there
the week that it's gone. Uh, you don't want to
camp during that week. It gets a real cold. But uh,
you know, if we were going to Disney, which is
(23:21):
a mighty high you know budget point already, he would
probably find it worth it if we could afford it,
to pay that extra fifteen dollars a day so that
he has a better experience because he can afford it,
you know, um, and and so on the one hand,
I want him to have a better experience. I want
lines to get better for everybody. But it certainly does.
(23:43):
And and this is going to kind of be our
theme of this segment. It makes everything else. It makes
it for for the person who maybe is saving for
two years to go to Disney, and makes it less
attainable for them, you know, it makes it not fees
all for your average Joe. No, it might mean that
(24:04):
they say, for two years, they go to Disney and
they can't ride the rides that they were most looking
forward to. Because other people like annual pass holder and
DVC members like yours. Truly, I'm both of those things.
I am the problem. People like me might be going
in and jumping ahead of the line, and then you've
(24:25):
got this person who's been, you know, waiting for this
opportunity for a couple of years, maybe like they're bringing
their kids for the first time and they really want
the special experience. It does hit me like I'm like,
I'm like, I I feel extremely conflicted about it because
I can I'm in a stage in my life where
I could afford to do the up charge thing. I
(24:45):
we don't know how much the extra charge will be
for those premium attractions. Disney has said that that will
be variable pricing. It'll be it'll vary upon availability and demand.
So for like days where there's a real heavy demand
for say Rise of the Resistance, it's probably gonna cost
more to get that premium Lightning pass Um. Yeah, same
(25:05):
for the Seven Dwarfs Mind Train probably well. I'm sure
the Guardian's Jalaxy ride will be that when it opens.
Tron light Cycle, when that opens, all those rides that
I want to I want to ride, and I usually
can only go for a couple of days at a
time just because of my schedule, and the more expensive
it gets, the less plausible it makes it for a
(25:27):
short trip, like I can I can justify that expense
over five days if I'm going for five days, but
since I'm usually going with just a couple of friends
by myself, it's usually just a couple of day trip,
and that it gets it gets harder the short amount
of time you're there to justify that cost. I mean,
we're like, we're like eight hours away from Orlando, right
(25:49):
my car. Um For folks who are even further away,
who have to fly or whatever, obviously it gets to
be an even bigger financial burden. I didn't mention we
neither of us main that for that premium right experience,
you are limited to two of those per day, So
that at least is one limiting factor where you don't
have to worry about everybody just eating up all the
(26:12):
premium passes across all the parks, you know, because they've
got like ten of them or whatever. They're limited to
two per day, So that's one thing that helps limit
this a little bit. However, we have some other complicating factors,
one of those being the Star Wars Galactic Cruiser hotel experience.
That's opening up. We talked about it a bit to
day to night experience. Immersive Star Wars experience. You are
(26:35):
encouraged to take part in an ongoing story that unfolds
during your stay. You can pick one of several different
roles to kind of play as you do it well.
Part of that experience includes a trip to Galaxies Edge
at Hollywood Studios. Presumably part of that experience also means
that you are not having to stand in line for
(26:58):
Smugglers Run Rise of the Resistance because you are able
to ride both of those rides as part of this experience.
That means that not only if you're going to Hollywood
Studios do you have to contend with the people who
are using Genie Plus for Smugglers Run or the Lightning
Lane for Riser Resistance. You also have all those guests
from Star Wars Galactic Cruise that are ahead of you
(27:20):
as well, and that starts to pile up, well, but
you know Galactics, it will pile up. Maybe maybe the
park Genie will help organize that mess so that it'll
cut down on the like the bottlenecking of what everybody
wants to do at any given time. It'll maybe it'll
help um encourage crowds to disperse over a more steady
(27:43):
stream as opposed to large crowds. UM. But that you
know that being said, there are not a huge number
of rooms et pretty I think it's just one d total.
So that's that's potentially one parties if they all go
on the same day. We don't know yet if they're
going to stagger that where another that could be like
(28:06):
four people, yeah, and uh, I guess you could take more, yeah,
because you could have like tons of people in some
of these cabins. But like if you, UM, if you
want to feel a little better about it, at least
you'll know that the people who are doing that paid
out the wazoo in order to do it, because we
learned what the pricing is going to be for the
basic standard cabin aboard the Star Wars Galactic Cruiser, which
(28:30):
is that if it's two people. This is one of
those things where on a per person basis, the amount
goes down the more people are there, but the total
obviously goes up because you're talking about more people. So
for two people for that two night experience, you're looking
at one thousand, two hundred nine dollars per person per night,
So ultimately collectively that's four thousand, eight hundred nine dollars
(28:54):
almost five grand for two people to stay there. Now, granted,
meals are included with that at as it is, including
alcoholic beverages if you're an adult and you drink. I
don't know that. I don't know that all your alcoholic beverages. Yeah,
I was about to say one alcoholic beverage and then uh.
And also the entrance to Hollywood Studios for the Galactic
(29:17):
Galaxy's Edge part and dinner gratuity, so that's yeah. I mean,
I don't tend to drop five dollars gratuity at my
Disney dinners, but I mean if if you're like Mr
money Bags and or miss money Bags or them money Bags,
then maybe you do. Obviously, more people who go in
stay in a cabin at the price per person goes down.
(29:39):
So if there are four guests in a cabin, which
Disney indicates would be three adults plus one child, it
would be seven nine dollars per guests per night, So
collectively you're looking at just under six thousand dollars, but
per person, the price has come down. Um yeah, so yeah, well,
Wicked expect again, I'm I'm I'm torn on this as well,
(30:04):
because obviously you're going to have a lot of people
who have to be in character and performing for you,
even if their front desk staff. We know that they
do this on Avenger's Campus in Disneyland and also at
Galaxy's Edge. All of the park staff are essentially performers
or should be are expected to be, So you're on
all the time while you're working there, you know, And
(30:27):
I want them to be paid. I want them to
be paid for that, you know. But so there's a
there's a high cost I'm sure of operation, but it's
i'm a feeling that Disney's revenue streams could easily cover
this without the prices of the hotel itself being I mean, granted,
if you're saying we want the hotel to be able
(30:47):
to cover the cost of the operation of the hotel
plus ad profit, that makes sense. But we're talking about
a company that almost completely dominates every aspect of media
right now, so it's hard to I mean, granted, it's
built in different divisions. The Parks division is a different
division from the Motion Picture division, which is different from
(31:08):
the animation division, etcetera. But still, um, so there's that.
Then there's also annual passes are making a return. They
were gone once COVID hit and the parks shut down.
If you did not have an annual pass, you could
not purchase one. Um. I happen to have one, so
I was able to renew mine. Uh. But now the
(31:31):
annual passes are coming back in a slightly different form.
There are I think four levels of annual pass now,
but only the last only the last one is available
to people who are not Florida residents and are not
part of the Disney Vacation Club. And that's the most
expensive one, which is like a thousand fifty dollars or
(31:53):
something like that, something like that. Yeah, it's well, no,
no longer no longer includes the photo pass either the
old the old annual passes did so you got you
automatically got all the pictures that that the Disney's photographers
are taking. That was part of your package. Now it's
an add on, So now you have to spend an
(32:14):
extra hundred bucks if you want to add it on. Yeah,
I mean, I think they just don't want people to
get annual passes, is really what it is. And I
can get that for certain places like Disneyland. One of
the biggest issues that they've run into there is that
the park can get overrun by annual pass holders and
annual pass holders, I mean, they're spending a lot of
(32:36):
money to get those annual passes, but they don't tend
to spend a lot of money on stuff like food
and merchandise, whereas like people who are visiting for the
first time or tourists, they spend a lot more in money.
So Disney does prefer there to be more like day
of ticket holders as opposed to annual pass members. I mean,
(32:57):
I wish that all of these increases in costs would
help cover and make the non annual pass hold or
visit a little bit less expensive potentially, because you know,
if I pay less to get into the park, I
will buy more food, I will buy more merchandise. You know,
I'll get higher on those ticket items. Though, another thing
you mentioned, and we're just going to touch on this
(33:18):
briefly because we could talk about this for probably like
twelve hours. Um. You know, one of the things that
I really enjoy at Disney, and I this is something
that's new as an adult, is I love the entertainment
at Disney and and how you can run into it
in many places, Well, you can't do that as much anymore.
They cut a lot of their entertainment, at least their
(33:39):
street entertainment. I don't know about stage um when COVID happened,
and you know, there are people who are saying that
maybe they just wanted to get rid of them anyhow. UM,
I don't have insight into that very much, but I
do note that there was a difference between being like
streets of a Mary to cast versus a face character,
(34:02):
and that was a pretty big difference. So well, let
me put it to you this way. Before pandemic, uh,
the the Disney World Parks employed around seven hundred eighty
equity members. After pandemic, they let go of seven twenty
of them, so only sixty out of seven remained, and
(34:24):
that was as of October of last year. And so
there Ariel and I feel very strongly about this because
we have had parallel experiences in a in a different
live entertainment world. But we've also seen issues with the
difference between the way a a parks cast contributes to
(34:50):
the experience versus how management values that cast. Um and
this this is unfortunately another example of a large corporate
entity seemingly viewing entertainment, which is an enhancement, as not
that important and from like a from like a pencil
(35:13):
pusher approach, you could kind of see like, Okay, they
don't directly contribute to the bottom line, right, They're not
generating revenue by entertaining people in the streets like on
Main Street. But from a guest perspective, that adds such
a level of depth. And you know, magic is the
(35:37):
way Disney would describe it, like magic to your visit
that to lose that is really unfortunate because I think
a lot of Disney fans have said, this collection of
different announcements that have all hit right around the same
time feels like a diminished magical experience overall. And that's
(35:58):
unfortunate because I mean that's what Disney's brand is built upon.
Even just from a hard hearted business perspective, you're like,
you're undermining your own brand. I mean, maybe maybe we'll
see that these changes make a better park experience for everybody. Um,
I hope that they bring the entertainment back. You know,
(36:19):
it's hard because I am very very biased, being a
having been a street performance performer, at an entertainment at
least partially venue. You know, you've said we're both biased
to this because we work the Renaissance Festival. That is
that is very magical for me. I don't know how
much everybody appreciates that sort of interaction at a park,
So maybe we are the outliers in that. Yeah, it
(36:42):
could be. I do hope post pandemic they're able to
bring back some of the street cast me too, and
like the same thing with some of the other shows
and stuff like things that have been curtailed because of it.
I would love to see that all phased back in.
I think, I mean just based upon the way Disney
handle this over the course of the pandemic, that the
(37:02):
Disney Parks handled this, I should really be more specific
because the company is so big that they burned a
lot of bridges I think, with a lot of cast
members who genuinely loved what they did up until the
point where it felt like it wasn't reciprocated. Um, that's unfortunate.
Maybe I'm projecting too much. I hope, I am. I
(37:24):
would love to see a return to that form. Honestly,
I think that the park the parks in in Orlando
really need to focus on that. I mean, we've got
the Magic Kingdom's fiftieth anniversary right around the corner, and
it would be a real shame if live entertainment and
like an energetic cast we're not part of that celebration.
(37:48):
I mean, I agree. I do think part of it
will just depend on health and safety as well, because well,
well I've never had a street character outside of like
a costume character during a photo experience. It all up
in my business at Disney. UM, like you know that
you do have crowding issues, you do have spacing issues
still currently, so we'll have to see how it all
(38:10):
plays out. I never went to the Georgia Renaissance Festival
as a kid because it was pay to get in
and then pay for everything you do, um, and so
that kind of you know, and I didn't make a lot.
I didn't have a lot of money UM at that time.
So that kind of mentality is stuck with me throughout life.
And I love Disney Parks and I don't want to
get hit by that same door. I guess, yeah, Well
(38:33):
I want to be able to continue going. My biggest
hope is that this regular Genie not the Genie Plus,
but the regular Genie part of the app helps folks
plan out their day, make last minute changes and be
able to adapt to whatever is going on in the
parks and still have a magical experience and not have
(38:53):
to I feel like you have to do the pay
to win strategy, like the same thing that people who
play video games absolutely hate. Right m hm, yeah, Well,
we we need to take another break. That's gonna be
this a long episode. We're gonna take another break, and
then when we come back, we're going to mash up
some stuff. Uh, some that we've already talked about and
(39:16):
one thing we haven't talked about yet. So stay tuned.
We'll be right back. All right, we're back. So our
(39:38):
mash up this week, just gonna keep that train of rolling.
It's a phrase now if it wasn't before. Um, So
we're gonna mash up Star Wars because we've talked about
that a bit. With the Star Cruiser, because I mean,
I still want to go everything aside if I have
a windfall that has some extra money after I do
(39:58):
all of my donation plan. I mean, it's more expensive
than an actual Disney cruise, which is already expensive. No,
I'm not saying don't go. I'm saying I wanted to
go to. I still want to go to despite all
the things I just said, I still want to go to.
It just blows my mind that it's more expensive than
an actual like four day Disney CRUI Disney cruise. Yeah, yeah,
(40:21):
so a lot. So we're gonna do Star Wars um
and then the other thing we're gonna do is we're
going to mash that up with Wonder Years. I'm making
good sentences now, people, Um, yes, So we're matching Star
Wars up with Wonder Years. Let's let's talk really quickly
about the original Wonder Years and then you can talk
a little bit about the trailer that was released for
the new version of Wonder Years. So, the the original
(40:45):
Wonder Years series was this series where you're learning about
a boy named Kevin who grew up in the late
nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, and the Daniel Stern
served as the narrator. You never really, you never saw him.
He was narrating the piece and Fred Savage played young Kevin,
(41:06):
and it was a setup for things like kind of
a coming of age tail of growing up in the
suburbs in the late sixties and during this tumultuous time
in America's history where you've got you know, the the
Peace and Love movement, the anti war movement. You know,
it was a big, big time during America's history. So
(41:29):
it's kind of told through the lens of a young
boy who is coming of age, and it was no
kind of a drama, but mostly it was a drama
with comedic tones as well. There's a lot of comedy
in it, um and a lot of people have really
warm feelings for it. And of course we're getting a reboot,
a totally reimagining of the series. So Arie'll talk a
(41:51):
little bit about the teaser. Yes, So they came out
with a teaser and then they came out with an
actual trailer recently, UM for this show. This time it
will be it's still focusing on a family in the
late sixties, but it's a bat black family in Montgomery, Alabama. Uh,
Kevin still likes uh, the kids still likes baseball. The
(42:14):
trailer hits all. Obviously, they deal with issues like integration
and things like that that we're still dealing with today.
But we're definitely an issue in the late sixties um.
But the tone of the trailer absolutely hits every warm
feeling I have about the original show, like every sort
of beat um whilst not feeling like a complete just
(42:37):
rehash of the same old material. Um do lay Hill
is The dad is amazing and so funny in the
little moments he has in the trailer. Like, I don't know,
I watched this trailer and I just this show cannot
come out soon enough for me. I highly suggest if
you liked the original Wonder Years, even if you didn't,
you should watch this trailer. I I feel like, I
(43:00):
don't know because I haven't seen more than the trailer,
but I feel like this sitcom hits hits a place
where I haven't seen modern sitcoms hit in a while,
of of just actual heartfelt and fun and you know
there are a few of them out there, but um yeah,
I'm just super excited about it. So with that in mind,
we have decided to mash up Star Wars and the
(43:22):
Wonder Years. Now, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you
I I stuck with more like the the original run
of the Wonder Years because that's what I'm familiar with.
I haven't obviously seen the new one. Yet um, but
I went with the old one and uh, I'm gonna
go second. So Ariel, do you wanna introduce us to
(43:44):
your your genius work of mash up? Sure? So this
is The Wonder Star Years war uh, because that's the title.
Kevin Arnold loved everything about baseball, just like any other
stereotypical boy his age in the sixties, but he wasn't
very good at it. So when he went to try
out for the baseball team with his friend Paul, instead
(44:06):
of hitting the ball when it was his turn at bat,
he got clocked in the head with the pitch and
knocked out. When Kevin came to he had no idea
where he was, but it certainly wasn't a baseball field
or even his home. He was inside a largish, whitish
metal room with worrying, rushing sounds all around him. But
more pressing than that was the large, hairy, bare dog
creature standing over him and staring at him. Hi. Kevin cried,
(44:31):
cried the bear dog creature. After an appropriately funny amount
of time of the two screaming back and forth, a
hand reached down and helped Kevin up. The hand belonged
to a weird looking pirate dude who said, this is
no time to be sleeping. Kid. You're the one who
wanted to save the princess in the first place, and
we're almost there. Follow me. Kevin followed the weird pirate guy,
(44:52):
who he found out was named Han Solo until they
reached a room with a window, and that's when Kevin
found out he was in space on a spaceship like
in space. After pitching himself real hard and not waking
up he is, he was told to strap in and
help maneuver the spaceship until they reached the Death Star,
and Kevin began to protest that he evedn't know how
(45:13):
to fly this spaceship machine. He isn't even allowed to
drive a car, but as soon as his hands touched
the controls, he innately knew how to pilot the spaceship.
When they came upon the Death Star, it's a it
was immense and breathtaking. He asked hand Solo to remind
him of their plan and purpose because like he knew,
but he just wanted to be reminded, And after an
(45:33):
all too brief rundown followed by the phrase we'll wing it, kid,
they entered the Death Star to steal some Stormtrooper armor
and save the princess. When they found the princess, to
Kevin's surprise, she looked exactly like Gwendolene Cooper, the girl
he had had a crush on. But when he shouted, Whinny,
it's so good to see you, she screamed, don't winny
at me. I'm not some eques, I'm a princess. Uh.
(45:55):
They do save her, and after then he misshaps and
cree easiness. They escaped the Death Star, and this marked
the beginning of Kevin's adventures with Han Solo, the Princess,
the dog bear creature, which he learned was a creature
called a Wookie who you didn't want to get mad,
fighting the wars and Stars, escaping space monsters, and piloting
X wings apparently in a galaxy long ago and far
(46:17):
away you don't need learners permits, and falling more in
love with Winnie, I mean, the Princess. This is until
one day when he encountered the main evil himself, Darth Vader.
It was a tense situation and justice Darth Vader revealed
that he was Kevin's father. Kevin did think that voice
sounded familiar. Kevin blacked out. When he woke up, he
(46:37):
was laying in his bed with his brother Wayne standing
over him. Kevin screamed, Swayne screamed, and after an appropriately
funny amount of time of the two screaming back and forth,
Kevin's mom came in and he told her his whole story.
She told him it was all a dream and he
had nothing to worry about, but Kevin insisted it wasn't.
Wayne later had Kevin recite the story to his friend
(46:59):
George because he found it to be like a total
gas and George said, man, that's lame, and Kevin believed
George until years later when Star Wars came out and well,
that is a story for another time. I love it.
I love it, totally different from mine. So before we
(47:19):
get to mind, because our episode is running along, we're
gonna take another break. But before I get to that,
I've got late breaking news. Oh you ready, Yes, we
now know who's going to play the character of Will
in the reboot of The Fresh Pence of bel Air,
Jabari Banks. Jabari Banks, who was a newcomer. We'll be
(47:41):
playing Will. Uh you know where he lives? West raised, Yeah,
and Apparently Will Smith was the one to call him
up and tell him he got the part. How cool
is that? I'm so excited about that? Yeah, me too.
I was like, wow, that sounds great, Like what a
(48:02):
neat way of of tying it in with the original series.
All Right, well, we're gonna take another quick break. When
we come back, I will give my epic mash up.
We'll have to. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
You know, history will judge me, probably more harshly than
I already do. We're gonna be right back. Okay, we're
(48:41):
back and uh and here we go. Um. I feel
pretty good about this one. I think it's a it's
a short one. It's nice, it's accinct, you know. I'm
really I had a lot of deep feelings, but because
the Wonder Years really brings that out of me, and
so does Star Wars. But I think I think I
was able to rein it in. So Welcome to the
Wonder Wars. Young Luke Skywalker has a problem. He wants
(49:05):
to go to Tashi Station and pick up some power converters,
but before he can do that, we get his opening narration,
spoken by a much older Luke Skywalker, zero B B Y.
I was nineteen years old. A lot happened that year.
I met R two D two and his pain in
the butt sidekicks C three p O. I found out
(49:25):
Darth Vader totally killed my dad, and the Rebel Alliance
mounted its major assault on the Galactic Empire, and I
began my journey toward becoming a Jedi master. But we'll
get to that. Then we cut to the theme song.
What would you do if I stepped? Didn't poo do?
Would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend
(49:49):
me your ship and I'll go to all the rong
with my best bud knob old baby. I gotta have
a little help from old Ben. Yeah, you know, I
need have a little help from old Ben. He's got
my dad's saber. You have a little help from old Ben.
(50:10):
WHOA okay? Theme songs over. Out of the theme song,
we then see a montage of big events that happened
in the year zero B B Y, which, by the way,
that that stands for before the Battle of Yavin, And yeah,
you know, I looked around for some other kind of
(50:30):
dating system, because of course, no one in the year
zero B B Y would have called it the year zero,
because what the heck were they counting down to before that?
I mean, it makes no sense, but I couldn't find that,
so forget all about that. Anyway, we go to Old
Luke's narration. There's no pretty way to put this. I
(50:50):
grew up on a moisture farm. I suppose most people
think of that as a place filled with blue milk evaporators,
and they'd be half right. We had plenty of blue milk,
but our evaporators had been going on the fritz for
a while, and we really needed someone to help us
figure them out. And by us, I mean me and
my uncle Owen and my aunt Burrew, who had raised
me since I was a baby. But really, those were
(51:13):
the wonder years for those of us in the Outer Rim,
beyond the Galactic Empire's long reach, before the War of
the Stars, you know, sort of a star conflict or
maybe star battles. I don't know what you call it,
but on reflection, it was a good way to grow up.
The montage cross fades into footage of Luke writing his
land speeder up to a little dome house and Old
(51:35):
Luke says, there, that's me, Luke Skywalker age nineteen zero
b b Y, the year I'd finally leave tattooing. Now
we cut and it's like essentially Star Wars episode four,
only Luke has his best friend named Paul, who's waiting
at Tashi Station for like five movies before he finds out.
Luke totally became one with the Force through some sort
(51:57):
of weird death by meditation thing. So that's sad, but
we get lots of era appropriate music, like the Moss
Eisley Cantina song over and over again because between that
and Jedi Rocks, I'm gonna go Moss Eisley every time,
and there's not nearly enough diagetic music in the Star
Wars cinematic universe. Oh and we also see Luke develop
(52:18):
a crush on this girl named Winnie, only it turns
out she's his other sister, Like Leiah and Luke have
a sister named Winnie, and no one is really sure
how that happened. But it's okay because explanations in the
Star Wars universe all change based on as Kenobi would say,
your certain point of view. Not that I'm bitter about
a lack of consistency in Star Wars lore. That is
(52:41):
rife with revisionism and rhet conning. No, I'm totally cool
with that. It's awesome. So yeah, Winnie is in this too, Okay,
and she's Luke's sister too, because why not. Heck, it
turns out she is raised mom and the whole you're
the Emperor's granddaughter things a red herring because you know,
we get a lot of those two in the Star
Wars the universe. And you know what, I am mad.
(53:02):
I am mad about Star Wars. Yeah, I'm a grown
man who is mad about a fantasy series about magicians
with magic swords. That it didn't go the way I
wanted it to go. And sure, that's not the purpose
of this mashup that I'm on my soapbox now and
I ain't getting off of it. And another thing, let's
talk about that whole subvert the audience's expectations thing. Okay, Well,
(53:23):
that's gonna do it for episode this week. If you've
got ideas of how Wonder Years and of Star Wars
should be mashed up, you should write us. You can
do so at l n C at iHeart media dot com,
or reach out to us on social media. L n
C Underscore Podcast is Twitter, where Jonathan can't rent this
long at you. Uh. Instagram and Facebook are large nerd
(53:46):
John Collider. Uh, we would really love to hear from
you about topics you want us to talk about, hopefully
again not to make Jonathan rant like this or um
the ideas you have or thoughts you have on the
things we've talked about already. If you like us, please
tell your friends, please subscribe, hit that like button and
share us. Uh. We love you all for listening, and
(54:06):
we hope you love us too. Until next time, I
am Ariel Casting and nineteen years he's been Well, I'll
tell you why because in episode three Jedi were still
relatively plentiful and scattered across the galaxy. Everyone knew who
they were, people feared and respected them. But then you
get to episode four and Han Solo talks about the
(54:27):
Force being some sort of hokey religion, as of Jedi
were never really powerful entities or just the stuff of legend,
but the Jedi being a powerful presence are within the
living memory of Hans Solo, who is clearly more than
nineteen years old, Like he doesn't believe something that categorically
existed in his universe less than twenty years earlier. I mean,
(54:48):
I get that it's magic, but his best friend is
an eight foot tall teddy Bear for goodness sake, So yeah,
the timelines don't work. There needed to be a bigger
gap between the extinction of the Jedi and episode four,
but less than twenty years and it makes no sense.
And don't get me started on how dumb the Clone
Wars were. My goodness, when we got that throwaway line
back in the late nineteen seventies, we all thought it
(55:09):
was going to be the coolest thing ever. But it's not.
It's lame. Anyway, Let's get back to how everything after
Return of the Jedi was a terrible mistake. Okay, well
not everything. I mean I actually kind of liked Ray
a lot and Finn, but wat's his face, you know,
Mr Hutt X Wing pilot guy played by the dude
who did that wicked dance next Makina. He was pretty cool,
but pretty much everything else was terrible. I mean, how terrible. Well,
(55:32):
I've only seen episode three once because I hated it,
and I still haven't seen episode nine, which is crazy.
I mean, if you had told ten year old me
that one day, the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga would
come out and I wouldn't even go see it. I'd
have thought you were nuts. But here we are the end.
(56:00):
Mhm h m hm m m m hm. The Large
Nur Drunk Collider is production of I Heart Radio and
was created by Ariel Kasten. Jonathan Strickland is the executive producer.
(56:21):
This show is produced, edited, and published by Tory Harrison.
For more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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